Astrid Hermann, CFO Beiersdorf – From NIVEA to Tesa: Steering a Global Portfolio in Changing Markets

[MUSIC] Leading corporate transformation, the podcast by VHAU Autobysime School of Management, powered by PWC, on the transformation of companies and their culture, from decision makers for decision makers, or from entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. [MUSIC] Dear listeners, welcome to a new edition of our VHAU podcast leading corporate transformation, powered by PWC. My name is Martin Clam. I'm a professor at the VHAU Autobysime School of Management. And as always in this podcast, with me is Gory von Herrscherzen from PWC. Gory. Thank you Martin and one worker, most of from my side. Hello everyone. We're from Herrscherzen, this is my name. I'm the transformation consultant in this round. I lead the cross industry transformation practice of PWC. So that basically means everything outside of public services and financial services. So and it is a great pleasure for me today, because we are at the Bias Dorf headquarters. And we have Astrid Hermann with us. She's the CFO of Bias Dorf. And we are very, very pleased to have you here, Astrid. And I'm sure many of our listeners know, of course, Bias Dorf. And I also have heard about you, but nevertheless, it would be very cool if you could give a short intro to you and to Bias Dorf. Thank you and welcome here in our headquarters. Great to have you here. So my name is Astrid Hermann. I've been with Bias Dorf now for five years, responsible group CFO. But not only for the finance function, also for our legal and IT function. So working very closely with our CIO and head of legal as well. And you know a bit about the company I'm assuming we do have two, we call them business segments, but divisions you could call them as well. One is the consumer side with very iconic brands such as Nivea, Yusurin, aqua 4, Hansa Plast, I could continue. And then we have our industrial part, the TESA business, which also has a little consumer business, but a much, much larger industrial business, where we sell tapes that are in most smartphones in many different other applications, automotive and so on. Our company has been around for a long time, 1882. And we're obviously quite proud of what it's been achieved today. I think it would be interesting to have a little glimpse at that history. I was amazed. I mean, I have to say in Bias Dorf is a name one knows all these brand names, one knows them. I knew that Nivea was quite, you know, I think it's called a heritage brand, right? Quite old and had its hundreds per day some time ago. But I wasn't, I was amazed when I looked it up that other products of the company are actually yet older. I think the company started with Hansa Plast. And another thing that I found out was known to me was that La Bello, actually a brand that is older than Nivea still. That is true. So the company was founded by an apothecary. And he founded or made the first plaster. And that's where it really came from. And actually even our taser business comes from there from essentially the glue used in the plaster. So absolutely. And yes, La Bello actually this company created the first cream emulsion that really was sold to consumers. It created the first lip balm. It created so many first products that then you know became standards. You know, in the industry actually our dermatological brands were the first dermatological brands existing. Usurin based on usurit, which is this very, I call it fatty substance that you can put on your hair, your skin for healing. It's all coming from this company. So it has a long history. Maybe one other little fact about the company history that is quite important also to where we've landed is we did lose rights to our brands in almost all the countries outside of our call them the core European countries. And even there we lost the rights to many brands that we bought them back over 50 years following World War II. And the last actually company affiliate we bought back was Poland in 1997. So the company spend a lot of time maybe versus other companies buying its own brands back and not new brands. But I think that's a really interesting part of you know the history as well. The management teams for a really long time were very committed to that. Indeed. I find, as I'm looking at this, I find that fascinating when I think about intangibles and I'm teaching you know the reporting and accounting for intangibles, I think of research on the one hand and brands on the other hand as being quite distinct but in your company it comes together very strong. And to think about that something like Nivea is based on real you know research in these days and finding out the first stable cream that that was it right. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And this is our heritage. This is also how we in many parts of the world where they do not know very well by our store and they do not know very well our history. We do sell this German science. You know you know German engineering from many different companies, but it's also with us the same way. We have what some French competitor have the wonderful mineral water that they use in their creams. We actually have real stuff that works based on you know the R&D that we do here on the grounds. That's the perfect segue to maybe deep dive into the consumer division more because if we say Nivea as you said is a well known brand around the globe. That's one part of the story but there's also there's the La Prairie business. Can you speak a little bit about these three different categories. Yes, so look we go from mass and it's not just Nivea we have in our mass business that you would find in all the stores, all the normal you know, and so on around the world. But then we also have our dermatological business which in many parts of the world are still sold in pharmacies or other stores like that. And then we do have the luxury part of the business and actually with La Prairie we have the most expensive cream there is our most expensive line is about 2000 euros for a little jar. She's really cool. It has lots of things in it. Yes and the average basket of a consumer is really somewhere around 600 euros. So it's quite quite an expensive brand. But we're trying to grow this part of the portfolio to right now luxurious going through a little bit of turbulent time because I think you know the consumer confidence is not quite at the level we've seen in the past. But over the long time luxury has been a very well developing part of our skincare business and just globally a great market. So we want to continue to grow that brand that part of the business which is why we also bought a new brand not too long ago. Shantekai a few years ago. And that's also been part of our heritage now. You said that before that damah is of course at the moment is outperforming from a growth perspective. The other segments can you speak a little bit about the importance of this this specific product or this product line and what makes it so special and how do you look at the mass market the dermatological business and the luxury business from a from a CEO perspective. Yeah. So look they're all very important parts of our business. The mass part of the business has started there for just a minute. It is the largest part of our business significant obviously also significant because it is so big. It is really truly the biggest brand and skincare. And thereby also a really large part of our business almost too large you know they are really has to work. Otherwise it's quite difficult to to you know offset any pain there. The dermatological part and we've just looked actually yesterday because there was a very important presentation actually in this room we're in two parts of our supervisory board but we've really tripled our Derma business over the last since 2016 we've tripled the business tripled. And it really become now a core pillar of our business it's highly profitable has the highest gross margins we have in the business. And it has a very nice also profitability at the bottom but beyond that is just this growth trajectory and the anchoring of our R&D in all those products we typically launch new innovation for example our T.A. Medoal against pigmentation. And we've got pigmentation spots from you know hormones and everything we launch in Derma because there we have a chance to actually speak to dermatologist and explain them the science. Same we did last year with Episoline our anti aging ingredient we launch it in usurine because that's where we have a chance to explain also what is in our what is the science behind our products whereas it's much harder to do in our mass business where you have 15 seconds to do it. And we have 15 seconds to explain you know product to the consumer in an ad online or or on TV on TV. take-tock it's even six seconds, you can pretty much not explain anything outside of showing some nice pictures. So that's really what we use to anchor all of our innovation. And then again, the luxury part of the business, which historically has been again, also a real growth driver, that business has grown significantly, especially I'll say to COVID, the times 2015 through 2019, were amazing growth periods for a luxury business as also the Chinese consumer. Traveled a lot, had a lot more disposable income. We were really feeling that and the profitability, as you can imagine, is also very nice on our luxury business, very high growth margin. But also a pretty significant fixed cost, all those beauty advisors and stores, we help pay for them. A lot of our beautiful locations, we have to pay for them. So difficult times, the fixed costs are not so good. In really good times, a lot of it falls to the bottom line, whatever you earn on top. So that's kind of a bit our business model too. - I want to come back to a point we talked on just a moment ago, the combination of what you explained, technology sort of, and R&D, and then brand, and brand recognition, and brand, the transportation of this knowledge to the customer, how you do that. And you're in the middle, and so on. You're also in there as the CFO, looking at that with numbers, I found that fascinating. How that goes, because to me, I'm absolutely not a marketing man, but I know that understanding advertising, for instance, and the impact of advertising and how it works and how it functions, it's really difficult to measure. But how do you, as a CFO, look at that process? - Yeah, and it's got significantly more difficult to measure in the last, I'll call it 10 years, because of the advent, obviously, of one the internet, but then more generally, so the media, there used to be a lot of transparency. When I grew up, and I worked in marketing, controlling, it was never called like that in the US, we don't use the word, controlling to call functions that, but when we were looking at our marketing spend, it was quite easy. You had a share of market share, a voice report, you could really track independently, there were agencies that would track the spend that would know what our competitors are doing, what are we doing, where do we need to maybe increase, decrease, what sort of returns were we getting? It was simple, that's much, much harder to track nowadays, just because it's so dispersed, there's no one, there's no one agency that's able to really comprehend in the end what everyone is doing. So you're much more in the blind, and you do have to find ways to measure your own impact, but you don't always know what others are doing, and how do you need to react to that? So it's a much, much harder field, and what's gotten even more difficult in the last, let's say, since the advent of social media is you constantly have to check, is it having the intended consequence, and if not, you have to change quite quickly. We call this precision marketing, you cannot just do an ad for, I don't know, three months, and then see what happens. It's every day, what's the weather out? How do I need to react to that? What should I show? The person's looking for this, what do I then serve them? So it's much, much different than it used to be in the past, it's a lot more complex, and it's much more difficult to react than it used to be. So when you say you have to constantly check, that means with your own numbers. Your own numbers. Or with our agency, we work obviously very closely with our agency partners, both on to, to be honest, traditional media, but also on the new media, and we need to work with them and constantly make sure that in the end they adapt for us, or we adapt for ourselves, to make sure that the consumer sees the right message. To put things into perspective, can you give a percentage of within maybe the two divisions, how much marketing or advertising the budget is, and how much R&D is relative to revenue? Oh, R&D, obviously, is the much, much lower percentage. We are in the range of where our competition is two at around 3.2%. Of our annual net sales goes into R&D, we continue to, it's the one area that we say when we think about our fixed cost, that we want to have grow at the same pace as our top line. The rest of the cost we try to be a bit more frugal about, not about the strategic investments, but certainly the remainder of overhead. But in R&D, we want to invest, and similarly on the advertising side, we call it marketing budget. We absolutely want to make sure that we are around 26 to 27% of advertising spend, so quite significant. Much lower on the teaser side, about 2%. Because the consumer business is so low, but on our side of the business, the big part of it, it is a very high spend. And within that, just to describe, it used to be not too long ago, maybe 10 years ago, 100% TV or some print, you know, some things like that. And now it's 70% online digital. So it's very, very significant, which makes it also so difficult to track. If you look at this from a competitor perspective, what does it mean for your competitor landscape? Is this also changing based on this? Very significantly. So it used to be much harder, much higher hurdles to get into the market, because you had to spend big money on TV and so on, to even, you know, be visible to your consumer. You had to, oftentimes it was much, much harder to get into the retail space to be able to display your product. Nowadays, those hurdles are very, very low. You know it, founder, lead companies that come up with some sort of cream developed in some sort of laboratory, or with a 3PM that produces it. You get online as long as you have enough people that listen to your story, you know, it's quite easy to do that. So local brands, as well as these, I'll call them founder, lead brands, have continued to rise quite significantly. Okay. And certainly they're part of some of the challenges that we are seeing. We're growing, but, you know, these brands are taking up a lot of space, absolutely. And can you say this happens more in certain regions in the world? Is it more in Asia? Because something that I learned from my wife, basically, is how important also Korean cosmetics are these days. So is it also that you can locate these new competition coming from Asia more? So it used to be less or more concentrated, let's say, on the western side of the world, North America, but it is as you describe. It's everywhere. Okay. And particularly the Korean brands that is true are getting a lot of publicity. They are real experts in skincare. There's a lot of research there, sort of a lot of innovation that comes out of Korea. And it's spread around the world. So absolutely, yes. And it's now a global phenomenon. You find, you know, local brands, new local brands, you know, pretty much everywhere, Indonesia, India, Africa, everywhere. So there is a lot of coming and going. Yes. A lot of those brands do not make money. I would suggest they, many of them don't survive the five years. But in the meantime, they are a bit of a pain. And we need to find our own ways, obviously, competing with those. I think we do very well, obviously, on the dermatological side, because we bring so much to the party. We've done also really well with Nivea the last few years. But in the last year, as markets have also really slowed, I think we're seeing an impact on consumer confidence versus the years before that is having a bit of an impact. We are seeing some pressure there. And certainly the local brands are gaining more. Interesting. They are oftentimes also cheaper. Yeah. So that might also make a difference in consumers' pockets. We obviously are really concerned about ensuring the right quality for our products and the right ingredients. And which is an important differentiating factor, right? If you can keep this, and especially in the demo, to the knowledge business, it's so important. Absolutely. Yeah. We obviously pride ourselves on that. Yeah. That the consumer in the end, our long-term consumers know what's in our products. So I would like to come back to the different important world markets in just a moment. But we would like to touch before we go there on the reason developments. You mentioned Nivea, especially has had a tremendous growth story over the previous years, with I think double-digit growth in some years. Wonderful. But more recently, it's more sobering, right? I don't know whether it's actually negative, but the growth is certainly not there anymore right now. What's behind that? Is it the consumer not wanting to spend anymore because of uncertainties in the world, but I mean we had them also three, four, five years ago. these uncertainties. So what's different in 2025? Yeah, that's a good question. What we do know, we don't have all the answers, unfortunately, but what we do know is that markets truly have slowed. And for example, emerging markets, unheard of really where we see the markets in the latter part, you know, even negative volumes, which is really again unheard of. This is market. This is not a TV performance as you say, maybe as still growing, not where we want it to be for sure, but growing. But it's really the markets that have declined significantly in the end. I think what we are seeing as the one bigger differentiator certainly is the geopolitical uncertainty, how much in the end, I think the uncertainty of what's happening, tariffs here, there, you know, all the worst to be honest, are having an impact on how the consumer chooses to spend money. And we are seeing our very robust over many, many years. When I came as a CFI even looked at to see what happened during the recession, the financial crisis, you know, what did we say, see there? Extremely robust categories. And they are feeling a bit of a challenge today. And I wonder if it's related to that that consumer saying, okay, these are now, after quite a few years where they have spent a lot of money, whether they are now holding back a bit on a bit of more discretionary category, that said, I do think over the long term, you know, consumers are really into how they feel about themselves, their skin, how they look, and so on. I can only imagine that this is more of a short term trend and that we should be able to return to better times too. So I looked at the numbers, actually, I looked at the numbers for 24, because the 25 numbers are still, you know, we're in the period where they probably prepared in your office right now. Germany is still a very strong market, right? It's our number one market. It's the number one market, okay. And you still invest also quite strongly in Germany we've seen. You know, there is a new plant in, I think, in Leipzig, is that correct? And also an innovation center in Hamburg. And I'm impressed. I think we're all impressed about the compass here that you have here in the other place. Yes, great place. So, by your surface, strong on Germany still, because we hear a lot, you know, in the media, practically every day now, that Germany, you know, no growths and to cost us to high and the future is uncertain, but you are still investing here. Yes, we are. I mean, one, it's because these is the ground where our heritage was created. And in the end, if you are about a call it German scientific development, you kind of have to be here as well, that says we are investing other parts of the world. So we have a big innovation center here, but we have also innovations helps in other parts in New Jersey, in Sao Paulo, in China. In terms of our manufacturing footprints, given that we do have still a very large European footprint and a relatively easy way to, for example, a ship to Africans one from here, that this was a good location to build. The light sick plant is highly automated. So it's a huge plant with a lot of, you know, in the end, technical lines that do a lot themselves. We need to do that too, because you know, also there's not that many workers around in Germany. So we need to manage that quite well, but it is a really good location. So we really did a study to say where should we place a plant like that and that location came to be quite high in the right thing. At the same time, you have a real global footprint, right? And you see, you just stated how important India is. That's the top priority for biased off. What makes India such a compelling story? Well, beyond the one point, I don't know, is it six million? Lots of consumers. Also, long heritage, funny enough, my first visit for Bioshoew to India, I was picked up by a cab driver. And then I said to the, he asked me where I'm from and what I worked for and I said Bioshoew, and then I realized Bioshoew that means something to people here in Germany, but not to others. So I said, oh, you know, I work for the company that makes Nivea. And then he said, but that's an Indian company. There's no way you could work for an Indian company. And then I explained that that's not the case, but it's been around so long in India first with the distributor and only recently in the early 2000s with our own affiliate. And it's done an amazing journey since. And we really see it as a huge growth market for us. It's where we want to invest, where we want to grow. The Indian consumer, as you know, continues to grow in their own disposable income. And certainly our categories are accessible and a perfect way to also grow our business, while obviously getting new consumers to buy into our great brands, that they also know already. We expanded also, we launched user in that market as well. So that's going very well. And even our luxury brands. So absolutely. It's a great. Because we have all three categories. Obviously, as you can imagine, the, the, the, the, the size and luxury only recent two years that we've launched them. And they're still quite small business comparatively, but absolutely grown well. Okay. Interesting. So let's look at the other big, big, big market in Asia, China. Right. Relatively the same number of people and for many, many companies in Germany, one of the most important markets, also one of the most difficult markets nowadays. Right. Because what we hear from a lot of companies is that, you know, the local competition is now very, very strong. Chinese companies are innovating. And in some markets are even leading technologically. I mean, is that phenomenon? You also notice that within your area, the competencies have, you know, improved in China. And then you get a lot of local competition from there. Yeah, it's, it's a bit different depending on the business. So we see less of that in luxury. In luxury, it would suggest it's still one where the Chinese consumer aspires to buy, you know, the big luxury brands. And they said they are spending less because they feel, I think, less confident about their future at the minute. So Chinese consumers certainly are holding back their purse of it in terms of luxury, but they still tend to look for the big luxury brands. But in the remainder of the business, mass, and also even dermatological brands, absolutely. There's been an amazing amount of local innovation in China. Companies that are very fast, very agile. I don't know if they make money, because they do so much, invest so much, they spend a lot of money online in China. The large part of the market is online. It's a very small, in the end, market in stores. And a huge amount of spending behind all of these brands, but yes, they're proliferating very, very fast. And they do come with really good packaging innovation, really fancy looking, but also ingredient innovation. So yes, it's certainly kind of replicating what's happening in the rest of the world as well. Interesting. The US, we talked about it, very, very big. You invested specifically in some brands that are local brands, copper tone, for instance, I think. However, it's, you know, it's in the news every day, regulator, uncertainty. tariffs. How does it affect you? Are you affected by that? Would you consider even moving production over there to avoid tariffs, things like that? So we have very, very limited impact in the US from tariffs so far, which is the good news. We import very little from Europe to the US. The bulk of our US sold products are produced either in Mexico or in the US itself. So that's quite limited impact, which is very good. We consider the US, I consider the US to be honest, our most important market. Well, it's part of your whole market anyway. But beyond that, it's our second largest, the country right after Germany, a few millions it will overtake Germany, I think, quite soon. It's double the size. It was just a few years ago. So the performance has been fantastic. We have iconic brands in that markets. It is still a market that grows much more robustly than any other, I'll call it, developed markets. So it's a fantastic place to be. We have, again, really strong brands there. We have good plans. I truly believe that that is the market that we need to crack. We need to double it again in a really short period of time. Absolutely. Let's hope that USMCA stands because we do rely on a lot of Mexican production. And if that changes, there's ongoing negotiations that obviously could have a negative impact. Let's see. So Mary, we talked a lot about consumers, the consumer's division, which is by far the largest of course but Now maybe let's switch gears and let's turn our eyes on TESA. You are on the supervisory board of TESA. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the business model and a little bit about the current trends that you see in the market and how important is TESA and how does this fit together with your consumer business? Yeah, we get asked that question all the time. As you can imagine some analysts would suggest it doesn't belong to our company. But to be honest, TESA is not a diversification play by buyer's store as in they bought TESA. It's truly made by this company. Yeah. It's part of the foundation of this company. It's not something we acquired. We have some synergies. I would not overplay those, but in the back of society, things of that nature we do benefit some contracts we buy together and so on. But in the end, it's part of the heritage of this company. Yes, I am on the supervisory board. I actually work quite closely with the TESA team. In fact, this morning, my first call was with the chairman of TESA. It's a great business. It's done quite well. It's really catapulted to be honest. The industrial part of the business, when quite a few years ago, it decided to much more closely work with the electronics. Big electronics player, including the one on the west coast in the US, we're not allowed to use their name. But they really even have an office in their office where they develop things together. That's really catapulted TESA. Baking really small tapes that look fantastic on glass. You cannot see it compared to maybe liquid tape that you might see a dispersion. That's really what's and now it's pretty much in almost all electronics. It is a hard business. Every year we have to regain that business. So we constantly have to innovate at TESA. We constantly have to find new ways to make it slimmer, to make it more holding and so on. One big topic is debonding. The big manufacturer also want to be able to recycle, to contribute to in the end our climate and recycle parts and so take it, but then also taking it apart and being able to recycle is a big topic and then the whole area of immobility. So we've invested quite a bit behind also helping the car manufacturers create lighter cars, tape batteries for fire protection, do all these kind of things. Those two areas actually the real core of our modern TESA business. Structurally the consumer business is much larger. I don't know, seven, eight times or something like that. Again, as a structure, the TESA business is completely separate. I understand. So that's how it works. They used to be here with us, so not far away in our old campus and then kind of grew out of that and moved to Nordesteit. It's not too far away. Again, there are collaborations on some parts, but it is truly a separate extent on its own business. I'm sure you do get these questions from analysts. Absolutely. That's the normal thing. So let's take a look now to the finance domain. To Europe. Let's go there. Maybe we start with the stock market. Looking at that, I couldn't help, but see that two years ago or a half ago, the stock price was at what, 140 something, almost 150 euros, I think. Now it's down quite a lot. Roughly a third of that has gone. What's behind that? What do you tell investors to regain confidence, I guess, or to look into the future with confidence? Look, I think the really great performance of many years before that, or the four or five years before that, obviously contributed to doubling almost of the share price to be honest, not quite, but really strong performance for, let's say, some 80 euros up to the height you mentioned. But to be honest, the analysts and the investor community are a bit spooked by the trends that they're seeing. In the end, we were hoping at the beginning of last year, we did not see the market slow down as much as they did. We had given other guidance, and then, unfortunately, mature, and then even in the third quarter, we had to revise that guidance and you know how that goes, setting the right expectations and meeting those are kind of, you know, the most important things you can do when managing a publicly traded company. And that was difficult. So, and again, it was not having that visibility. We had seen things like that before. For example, in 2024, first half, the US business was very soft. The markets were very soft, but then they rebounded quite quickly. And what we were seeing last year is just this much more global phenomenon of the markets really, really slowing down. And that's what, you know, in the end, surprised us if you look at some of your competition has gone through similar challenges. And I think that spooked a bit the investors. They're worried about the trends they're seeing. You know, in the end, the only way you can turn that around, obviously, by delivering better figures. It's also a mixed performance as well. I think that's important to talk about, you know, when you look at our nine months results, we still had a very strong, derma business, a very strong healthcare business, but certainly maybe not growing as fast as not helping. So my understanding is that you focus on two things, one, on growth areas, like the derma business, but also on improving margins. There is a specific program we saw, win with care, that you're pursuing. Can you elaborate on that? How you do that to, you know, improve your operational efficiency? Sure. So look, I mean, yes, we did give ourselves with our new strategy, a, you know, charge to deliver on, on profitability when you're given a goal of plus 50 basis points. And we made that a couple years in a row, really in the end, growing through a few areas, innovation very clearly, but not just also white spots. We really expanded into countries and thereby really grew the top line. And in the end, our margin significantly helped by a very strong mix, a much stronger growth of our skincare business, which is more profitable and much stronger growth in the end of our derma business, which is much more profitable. We really had a big impact from positive from mix. Also for pricing, we have to acknowledge we did take quite a bit of pricing, obviously also to compensate costs. So that was, you know, more of a play to offset, but our mix really significantly improved. And then what we tried to do is make sure that we really managed our overheads very well. You're looking at our overheads, a percentage sales, they've really come down very nicely. While we've invested in the strategic areas, you know, maybe digitalization, e-commerce, digital media, and so on, we really wanted to make sure that we are doing the right things for our business, but at the same time control our overheads. And that makes sure it's really contributed to us delivering on the bottom line performance. And that is our goal to we want profitable growth. So we want to emphasize both growth is important. We see it again and again that the market really, really cares about growth, but that combination of driving profitable growth is important. That said, we always set this as well. We have a long-term perspective. You're going to ask me anyhow about our major shareholder and they certainly have a long-term perspective. And we do not want to make short-term wrong decisions that in the end are not the right thing for our brands. So looking at this, this means that especially you as a CFO and your performance management is of high relevance at the moment. Can you speak a little bit about how you do performance management at Biasdorf? Obviously we have our key indicators and we look at that monthly with our teams. We have our cycles where we look at it in a bit more detail, our forecasts and our budgets. We were very, very closely with the regions. We are set up in regions. We have an emerging markets region in European North America. And our luxury business, we were very, very closely. I think nowadays just to be in kind of your rigid process is not good enough. I think since the COVID time we've had to be much, much more flexible and really be at the pulse of the business and also make more short-term decisions to be honest of how we need to shift the business. So it's really this close collaboration in the end looking what's the right thing to do for us as a company. It's really required us to have a lot of visibility. We've invested a lot behind our reporting to make sure that we have a lot of good data. And again that we can. and more quickly have scenarios together on what's it looking like now. We started the year first week of January already talking about, instead of just working on the close already talking about, what where do we see now, the year 2026? And so we need to be able to do that. We need to be able to take what the business is giving us and using that to drive different decisions. Absolutely. Do you have advanced analytics in place? Do you use newer or latest technology to explore where you are and do you develop new KPIs around? Because, I think, as you said, profitable growth is the key target. And this means to manage around the globe with all your different markets. This is a very complex task, I guess, and so my question is, how much technology helps you there and what kind of technology? Yeah. So it does. So with a good news is, a few years back, we implemented Sforhanan. We have a really amazing foundation that is everywhere, except for our luxury business, and we're working on that. But everywhere, the same one platform, which is really fantastic, basis to build off quite a few years ago. We also introduced one reporting so that we also again look at the business in a certain way that's common. And we talk about the same language. So we've really tried to build this foundation. And now, of course, we are using AI and other means to really look at our data and decide for what it's telling us. So absolutely, we're always trying to stay on top of-- I think we need a lot more. So it's an ever-ending journey. We need to stay on top of that and continue to invest in growing that. But we have, and we even have put together small teams, for example, in our post-nan hub, that work on analytics that continuously kind of look at, OK, what, how can we develop that area for our business in order to make sure that we have the right insights for our business. So you've just mentioned the reporting side of things. My recollection is that Byersdorf has a very-- shall I say, an almost unique approach to that by having outsourced a lot of its reporting and doing that jointly with companies in India, if I recall it correctly, is that correct? Not reporting. Not reporting. Zero reporting. OK, then. But accounting. Accounting, OK. Yes, so we did-- when I joined, we only had one shared service in Hamburg of all places, which is not known as that shared service. Not really. But we had taken the first steps to take, I'll call it the very basic accounting to GenPACT, our partner. And since then, also with the help of a fantastic leader for our shared service hub, which I only needed to unleash-- That's excellent. Yes, exactly. But him and our organization, because it's really also collaboration together with, I think, all the other finance leads. But even beyond that, these are our cross-functional shared service hubs. We now have a truly global footprint. And yes, we're doing, again, continue to work with GenPACT. They are a great partner on doing all of that. I call it basic work and also developing that with us. It's not static. It's not the same as we were a few years back and we continue to also automate there. But it's a good partnership that I think has brought us a lot. Right. In order for that to work, the processes, I imagine, would have to have been very highly standardized. And otherwise, this kind of collaboration with the partner and outsourcing to a third party doesn't work. Does that give you now the possibility to work a lot with the data? Because it's already standardized early on. And you have made your homework, so to speak, to apply AI and other advanced technologies with that. Yeah. I mean, data I feel like is a never-ending story. And you always can be better, more disciplined, and so on around data. But it is true that biostorporally, already even before my time, I can't even take complete claim for that. But it really worked on having the same account structure and so on. Exactly. All these things. It's really, really help. And really help when you give it to a partner because the last thing you want to give to a partner is many different things that is too expensive. And the partner usually doesn't do the best job of streamlining it for you, although GenPAC does work really closely with us on these topics. So that is a different foundation we have. That said, I shouldn't give the impression. We still do a lot ourselves. So we have our own shared service. We have managers and teams that work on that. But then they also have, again, this basis of our partner GenPAC below that. And in our hubs, it's really our own employees as well. So it's a good mixture. From my previous company, we owned it all. The previous company's shared service was all internal. So I know that that can work. But this good mixture of both internal people, as well as external people, I think, are quite a good formula as well. I think another very, very important aspect of your job as a CFO is that, my stove is a publicly listed company, right? But the majority control, a bit more than 50% of the shares are held by the HAT family, right? So my question would be, I do believe sometimes it can be tricky for a CFO to balance the interests of the family and the public shareholders. Can you speak a little bit about what does this mean to work in such an environment as a CFO? Yeah. So look after having spent my entire career previously at American companies, publicly listed American companies, that certainly have a certain aim, I think, it's good to have this. It does allow us a much more longer term perspective that I think is really helpful, especially in times like these, where it's turbulent, where we don't have kind of a consistency of the business year in, year out. It's very important to have this backing of saying, we do what's right for our brands, not just for this quarter or for this year, but for the longer period of time. And I think that's good. And the public part of it is good too, because they do critiquists, and they do give us a lot of good insights and challenges. And I think trying to balance this, I think is a good mixture. It's an advantage, I think. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. As you describe it, I think that's a perfect structure because it combines these two different aspects. So this is completely public knowledge. It's the Hertz family that owns controlling stake in Biosaur, just over 50%, something like that, I think, of the shares. How is the involvement? They are invested through a vehicle called Max Invest, I think. How do they influence the strategy of the company and the financial strategies, and then basically then your work as a CFO directly? Sure, I mean, there are obviously members of the Supervisor Board of Firestore. He had himself as member of the Firestore, but all the chairman is obviously connected to the CFO of Max Invest, and our board. So they're quite close to us as a company. They're very interested. They're very collaborative with us. They're obviously very present also in our company. And through the Supervisor Board, obviously, can influence all those important decisions we make, whether it's strategic investments and so on. It's a close collaboration, obviously, as you can imagine, as a CFO. And it's one about, in the end, when I came building that trust that we can work together and that we have the right intent around what we do for the company. So it's a really important part. Yes, it is special because it's obviously one majority, shareholder, but in the end, you have to do that always with your Supervisor Board. You have to have a relationship where you can work with the Supervisor Board, where you can build trust. Transparency, I think, is extremely important. So I think, yes, it's a little different, but it's the same. The setup, you share that with some other companies, big companies, especially in Germany, also, that's not so unique, but it's a defining characteristic, I think, of a company like Byosov. Well, I understand that it gives you stability and helps you pursuing a long-term strategy and orientation. Isn't it also limiting in what you can do in terms of your financial, or shall I say, discretion, when it comes to big investments, investments that other companies might finance easily with another equity issue where here, the equity structure probably is a given. Look, in the end, we as a management team have to come with persuasive proposals, to believe in that in the end. That's our responsibility. And I think if we have those, we've shown that we can persuade our Supervisor Board to go along with that, may it be. big capex investments like we've made over the last few years on building a few big plans or expanding those or even acquisition. So I think it's absolutely doable, but it has to be, I think, the right plans for, to be honest, from a financial perspective, but even more important strategic perspective for us as a company. Yeah, very interesting. So as I said, I do believe this combination is very compelling because it gives you this long-term perspective while you, as you said, being challenged by capital markets, getting good insights from being listed, of course. So that's a very interesting way of doing it. We could talk from my perspective for hours about that, but looking at the time, let's switch to another topic. Let's switch to you as a person. As you started your career here in Germany at Ica Tell, if I remember this correctly, but you moved early to the US and you have spent more than around 16 years with Koehgata Pymolief. So first question, what brought you to the US? Well, that's funny. A little story just to tell, just a minute, but I went to America for a six week trip the day after my final exam from studying. I already had a job light up for the first of September and I'm going to do a big trip to the US and I wanted to see business schools because I wanted to do my MBA in America. And I did go and look at some business school, but on day two, I met my husband. And obviously he was not my husband then, but I decided to then not even a year later to, I worked for a whole year in my new job at Ica Tell, but also continued to waitress. I did that my entire study to save all the money I can so that I could then move to America. And I was lucky to the my boss at Ica Tell gave me a dollar, one dollar with his name and phone number on there. And he said he thinks it's a great idea what I'm doing. And if I'm not successful, he will take me back. So that's great. Very nice. It was the best thing that happened to me. I think I always say that because I landed in San Francisco in the heydays of Silicon Valley. If you had any, brain, you could get fantastic jobs and learn a lot and it was a really, really good time. So I'm very grateful that I had that opportunity. Right. So you spend a lot of time with American companies, the Chloric's company first and then Colgate Pummel. What have you learned there that helps you now? What are the big takeaways from these years altogether? It's more than 20 years or something roughly 20 or even more than 24 years that I worked for these two American companies. That's true. So actually I started working when I landed there. Typical German maybe a little bit, but I the minute I had my work permit, I applied to various companies and I'm not exaggerating within a week. I had, I don't know how many job offers. So it's really fantastic time. And I thought, oh, you know, Bank of America was one of those and I thought, oh, you know, big bang and swan, you know, this is the place. Very solid. You know, I will go there. And within a week, I knew this was not the place for me. I was one analyst on this floor with, I don't know, two, three hundred analysts all sitting in front of a computer and I thought, oh my god, this is not what I want. But luckily I could get a new job and I went to Clorox and Clorox as well as co-gate our really strong financial companies. They have a certain management style. They have a certain way of including finance in everything they do. And I really learned what finance is all about there. Clorox could even have a rotational program, but not as you think about it here, a trainee program, but really every 15 to 18 months, you got a new job in your first part of your career, five, six years. And you learned everything about the company and that was just an amazing foundation for my career. Loved it. So with this strong financial focus as you describe it, so you have been and financial analyst, you progress to become a finance manager, finance director, vice president of finance. And ultimately now you are a CFO. So it was becoming CFO. Was it already your plan? I got that question a few times. No, not at all. Absolutely not. But what I did, very early in my career, decide is actually when I started at Clorox, my first bosses, not even just the first boss, but the first bosses were women, finance directors. I didn't report directly into them. I was a lowly financial analyst, but they were the finance directors of the units that I worked in. They were women. They had families. They were so good. I really wanted to be that right away. I pretty much knew that in a few months. And that's what I worked towards. I said, "Okay, what do I need to do to get there? What experiences do I need to have? What parts of the business do I need to get into?" That was my way forward. And then from there, it was more. When I got asked, I always said, "As long as it's challenging me, I have more responsibility, a broader scope. That's what I want to do as long as I have fun." That just continued. Okay, yeah. That sounds fascinating. That sounds great. International career. Responsibility is more and more and broader. And you have family. You have two kids and you have family. It seems almost unbelievable, but how do you do that? How do you manage that? Because I think that a lot of our listeners will look at such a career and think, "Wow, that sounds interesting." But how do I balance that with private life and with having a family? As I mentioned, it's a much more common thing in the US. To be honest, again, my first finance, as we talk about the '90s, when I moved to the US. It was a kind of normal thing already then there to be able to do that. And one, I think, because the companies, at least that I worked for, are kind of judged for everyone, but they allowed you to. There was none part-time work. You cannot have a career in America with part-time work that I don't mean at all. That's a very German way of approaching things. But it was more of a, you could leave at six. You might need to go back to your computer at nine o'clock when your kids are asleep. But there was a flexibility there that allowed you to manage it. It was hard work. And for a period of time, I truly did nothing other than my career and my kids. Friends were little, you know, little and even my husband, you know, unfortunately, it was only those two parts because I did want to do also justice to both. So it really was about my career. And as much time as I could spend with the family, and I didn't miss out on things, it was also normal to say, I need to leave at three because I have to go to my kids' performance. That's completely accepted. Even then, accepted in America, just might mean at nine o'clock I still need to get my stuff done. So I think that is, you know, a way of being able to manage that in the US beyond that, though, I did have the right partner. And I always tell that to young women, pay who you think you can do a life together. I think that's really, really important. And, you know, I think requiring your husband to be part of that is really, really important. And then another big factor that I give so much credit to is my parents. My parents, even though my dad is an entrepreneur, my mom worked for him. They immediately dropped everything my mom would come and stay with me when budget periods were. And, you know, or when I had some crazy stuff going on for, she came once for almost an entire year when I did an executive program with Colgate. You know, she was there. They helped me do that. So I think it's also about how do you create an environment for yourself where it's not just about you, but it's about this community that helps you make it happen. That's fascinating. On top of that, if I get it right, you also spend time, you just said you focused, right? But you spend also time on voluntary work, right? Outside your job, mentored veterans, I think you're working with the school kids. And then can you talk for just a moment about this also? Sure. And wait a little while. You know, in this also, I'm sorry to say the Americans have ahead of us. Yeah. Clorox. From the beginning, the first time I volunteered was at Clorox. We went to the soup kitchen in San Francisco, in the tenderloin, and gave food to two people. I've done that many, many times. And the first time I did a reading program in Oakland, in the school, really close to the Clorox says headquarters, we went and we read with kids that came from an underprivileged background in my lunch. So I, yes, I gave up my lunch. I gave up the this cool sub kitchen one. on a Saturday I gave up my weekend but to be honest it was already in that environment that from a very early time in my life you know it was kind of built in. Expected but also fun and a good way to do it and I stuck with that. I always you know participated in all those things that were given also because I feel like I benefited from a lot of things in my life where other people invested time and effort so it's it's a really good thing to do. Absolutely. Very interesting. So how you combine all these these different challenges and pursuits that you were following. So to learn even a little bit more about you what we always try to take as one of the last questions is is there something that is very inspiring to you? It can be a book, it can be a podcast, it can be even a TV show. Is there something where you say you take a lot out these days from? Oh okay so you're asking me a little different before you gave me heads up that you might ask about a book and I have a book. It could be a book yes of course. If you're asking this so I feel like I feel like the world is so heavy. If you read news it's so difficult to and then there is the daily show. Yes. With John Stuart. Yes. I listen to that. That's also a podcast version because obviously at nighttime it gives me so much pleasure to listen to that. They are so smart about things so perceptive about what's going on in the world and they do it in such a funny way that it just gives me joy to listen to that and laugh every day, Monday through Thursday. It lightens my day. It's lovely to have a little bit of laughter in this grey and crazy world. So humor is a key. It's just so important. Absolutely. Very cool. Yeah so yeah listeners to take this into consideration. We had obviously primed our to look for a book or to think of a book we should also understand. Right? Yes. But yeah please ask. I think we should right? So sure. What would be the book recommendation then? So I love reading historical biographies or novels. I also like reading like hardcore history books but they can also be boring but novels where it's really more also the story behind everything are amazing and Eric Larson. I don't know if you know him but he writes great books. I read a few months ago his Churchill novel, The Splendid and the Vile. Fantastic. Unbelievable. Go to really understand what it was like. You almost can live it. You know what it was like during that time. But then also more recently I read The Devil in the White City and it's about the world fair in Chicago and what that actually did to the city and really to the world also in terms of architecture and building cities and so on and it's just fantastic. So I really recommend those two books. That's super. Thank you so much. And Asperg you must have a superb time management to get everything in including reading the historical novels. This as always brings us to the end of this episode. Thank you so much for spending time with us. It's been truly truly fun. I hope you listeners also enjoyed the episode and I hope you stayed tune in for further episodes to come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thanks Asperg and let me just take one quote from Winston Churchill because you dropped his name. So he liked to say keep on bargaining which is very important in these days today right. So thanks Asperg for the great insights and yeah listeners looking forward to have you tuned in next time. Thanks. Thank you so much. That was leading corporate transformation. The podcast by Vihau U. Aurobysime School of Management powered by PWC. Editorial team Onika Luke Swerik and Zimon Girlach.