17 years making decisions at BIC. Message to my team

I am proud to celebrate this week my 17th anniversary at BIC. Few days ago, I was reflecting of what we achieved together. You all know that I am more often thinking in the next ten years than in the last ten. I will make an exception today.

In the last two years I had limited occasions to meet all of you in the field and celebrate all the successes we cumulate. I thought that writing a few lines and making them public, would be a way to acknowledge your efforts, celebrate your results and thank you for the way you get them.

Let’s start by the end, the HOW. The BIC Europe team is a rare combination of ambition and humility, the kind of team all are happy to work with. Teamwork, passion, genuine interest for our people, collaborative decision-making processes where we take the best idea, not just the one proposed by your boss (me!), and we make it a great decision.

Fully dedicated teams across the region, playing in the same way both in years of peace but also in years of war. War meaning all the crisis we have fight together: the Greek crisis in my early beginning, the PIIG's crisis in Southern Europe, the exchange crisis in countries like Ukraine, Turkey and Russia, and not to forget, war times. I always thought that is it the HOW we play which enables the WHAT we achieve.

On the WHAT we have our strategies, our plans and what we achieve. The list of your achievements is long:

- We have grown our net sales in a yearly basis for as many years I can remember, and the team had been growing them also before 2005, the year I join you. An amazing track record that honors all the members of our team

- I regret one exception, 2020 where despite all our efforts we could not beat the pandemic, and our sales decreased mid-digit, also our EBIT did

- It took us one year to recover what we lost in

2020, and as you all know in December 2021, as recently published in our earnings release, Europe was back to 2019 levels of Net sales and EBIT ?

Our future is bright, we will continue growing market shares in the complex markets we operate across Europe (stationery, lighters and shavers), providing reliable and predictable source of growth, profits and cash to the company. We will do our job to generate the funds required for our transformation strategy, the one that Gonzalve Bich, our CEO, is pushing ahead. Moving our strategy into bigger addressable markets like human expression, flame for life and blade excellence will provide further growth opportunities to develop our people, our brand and our business.

Thanks for all what you did last year, and for the ones that like me have been here for longer, all my respect and admiration for what you delivered in the last seventeen ones. Your determination will be key to succeed the three-year plan ambition we are building together.

In the meantime, I pray for peace, which is the best base we need to protect and develop our people.