In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Northvolt CEO: Batteries, sustainability, Elon Musk and speed

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Peter Carlsson is steering the Swedish battery developer and manufacturer towards sustainable battery production. Northvolt is constructing one of Europe's largest battery factories, in a very competitive landscape with strong competition from China. Check out Peter’s visionary and bold approach, what we learned from his time at Tesla with Elon Musk and much more.The production team on this episode were PLAN-B's Pål Huuse and Niklas Figenschau Johansen. Background research was done by Sigurd Brekke, with input from portfolio manager Stein Birkeland.Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to In Good Company. Today we are diving into the world of batteries, renewable energy, innovative technology with Peter Karlsson, the CEO of Norvolt. Thank you. Now, Peter, what is Norvolt? Now, Peter, what is Nordvolt? Nordvolt is a battery company that focuses on developing the most sustainable products in the industry. One of the things we recognize is that batteries and battery supply chains are incredibly energy intensive. And as such, they're also actually producing a significant carbon footprint. they're also actually producing a significant carbon footprint and what we want to show is that there is another way by building sustainable supply chains by building factory setups in grid solutions that actually provide renewable energy and doing it with the latest technology including

building circular setup that we can drive this battery revolution in a more sustainable way. And thereby, we get a significantly bigger impact on the green transition. Now, you've got some really wonderfully hairy goals. Yeah. I love it. Now, where are you going to be in 10 years' time? I think in 10 years' time, we will be an entirely fully circular company. We will probably at least have 50% of everything that we produce, we will produce with recycled material.

I think we build out our footprint to be kind of the Western leader, both in Europe and North America. And then with sodium ion, which is a new emerging technology, I think we are rapidly evolving a footprint in, if I call it, the developing world. India, Middle East, Africa. Well, when you started Northvolt in 2016, many people in the industry didn't think you had a chance, but wow, here we are. And the factory you are building, you can see on Google Earth, that's how big it is. Now, one of the reasons why they were skeptical was because of Chinese competition. So just tell me, what are the challenges you are facing here? I mean, what are the challenges you are facing here?

I mean, you know, the Chinese ecosystem and this is, you know, batteries is a scale business. It is go big or go home. Pretty generally a good rule in life. Yeah, that is true. But the Chinese, they have a five to 10 year head start on scale, which we need to catch up. But they have from the vehicles to the battery supply chain to the battery value chain taken a very strategic position. raw materials mining up until really a very, very clear transition plan towards electrification and have driven scale out of that. And then, you know, they're formidable in running operation. So, you know, a head-to-head competition with the Chinese is going to be difficult. What we are trying to do is that we can do it in a different way. We can stretch the technology.

We can do it in a more circular way. And we can build customization and customer intimacy. Because batteries are going from kind of being commodity. Five, six years when we went out to many of our customers, they were thinking of a battery as a black box. out to many of our customers, they were thinking of a battery as a black box. And today, as this market evolves, we see that the battery, it's a chemistry system. As a chemistry system, you can basically optimize that towards the features that your products want to be and that your brand have as an aspiration. And what we perhaps have been a little bit better than some of our competitors

is to work together with our customers' engineering groups on that optimization. You know, if you're a Volvo, you sell a lot of cars in the Northern Hemisphere. So cold weather performance is a key feature for battery. If you're a Porsche, your customers don't want to stand waiting long at the charging station. They really want fast charging and, of course, large accelerations of charge-discharge. So that kind of intimacy and optimizing the systems is also something that we see. This is where we can really differentiate. So what do you actually need to be successful here? I mean, if I now decided to start a battery factory and we have had some attempts, or we have some attempts on, you know, to start up in Norway, what are the key things there? Is it money, technology, people? How would you rank the input? Yeah, I mean, the starting point is,

you know, obviously you need a really, really good core engineering in terms of how you optimize that chemistry system. Is that people or is that intellectual property? Can you buy that? Not really. You know, in a similar way as with many others, you know, these architects, these R&D architects who has the full visibility of both how to optimize the chemistry system, but can also understand how it affects the process and the manufacturing setup. They are worth their weight in gold. As a first mover with a very clear impact mission, we were able to recruit a handful of these people, primarily from Asia. Then we filled up with people from all over the world. But that's kind of the starting point. And it is still a very emerging technology. So I would say there's probably less than 100 people in the world, it's rapidly growing,

that have that system, full system overview, and they are so important. Then, again, coming back to that, this is a scale business, then you need to be able to attract talent at scale. What does that mean? How many people is that? Well, I mean, we've grown from 25 to 6,000 people in the last six years. But what I would say is, you know, per factory, you need a process engineering team that is very, very talented. And I think you need to be somewhere around 300 to 400 really good process engineers per factory setup. So that talent base, that is crucial to bring on. And this is a big, big bottleneck for the industry right now. Then, obviously, you need the capital base. So you need

to have strong investors like yourself. How much money do you need? Well, as a rule of thumb, you basically need somewhere between 70 to 90 million US dollars per gigawatt hour that you're investing. you're investing in order to make scale and to become significant we think that you you need to reach at least somewhere between 200 to 300 gigawatt hours so so so if you do the math how much money is that that is somewhere around 20 to 30 billion give or, 20 to 25 billion dollars in over time. Then, obviously, we've developed a model. So this is not for the poor people? This is not for the poor people. And then, of course, you need a scalable footprint. You need a way of setting up your lines and your factories that is systematic, that can be scaled in an efficient

way. So people, capital, and a scalable blueprint. I think that is the core. You mentioned the client relationships. You have a great relationship with Volvo, Volkswagen, Porsche. I met the CEO recently who's really excited about this. How important are these relationships and the contracts you have? I mean, they are essential.

If you didn't have any contracts, you couldn't go ahead? No, you couldn't. You know, it has been, you know, when we... Excuse me, but are these not pretty indifferentiated products? Can't I just produce loads of batteries and sell it to whoever want to have them? Well, you know, there is a commodity market where you can buy 280 ampere hour LFP batteries at a very, very low cost today from China. But if you want to design a leading edge vehicle to beto-head in competition with Tesla and some of the others, then you really need a highly high-performance battery, highly defined towards your brand and

your performance optimizations. And those are not commodities. I mean, obviously, we are fighting head-to-head with CATL and LG and Samsung in those RFQs. But through these relationships that we managed to build, this has been crucial also to get our investors comfortable that we will not go the way solar cells went and where the Western kind of lost all the operations to Asia. You worked at Tesla for some time. What did you learn? And what are you bringing to North World? I learned a lot.

I must say that when I came to Tesla, I felt that I was a pretty seasoned supply chain and operation guy. I worked with mobile phones for a long period of time. I worked with semiconductors. But coming into a startup where you build the rail in front of the train and where you constantly need to challenge and your strongest assets is your speed and your mission. You really, really stretch your comfort zone. And Elon for sure stretched my comfort zone. What did you learn from him? What I learned from him is how powerful it is to drive a company with a super, super clear mission. You could argue about management methods, but you can't argue about the mission. And that is giving an incredible passion among people and loyalty. Then he always challenged the conventional way.

Why should logistics be, you know, why should ocean sea freight be slower? Why can't it be faster? I still remember one time we were sitting and we were looking at the cost of the Model S. You were in the same room with him? Yeah, I mean, we met weekly. In the beginning, we were basically giving away a check with every vehicle that we produced. And Elon told me, you know, I would like the entire bill of material to be analyzed based on the cost of atoms for every part. And, you know, a vehicle is like, you know, it's just a bill of material. It's like 3,500 part numbers.

And, you know, to analyze the cost of the atoms. I mean, it was like, it blew me away. It's like, holy shit, how do I do this? But we got the team to work through. And a couple of weeks later, we came back. And there was actually a whole bunch of different learnings about what is the cost of atoms for a steering gear and what is the sales price and does it make sense? We learned a lot and I would not be here today. I would not have dared to start Norfolk if I haven't been on that journey.

Do you also have a reality distortion field? haven't been on that journey. Do you also have a reality distortion field? Yes. I think sometimes I'm a little bit naive in what I think we can... So give me some examples of where you are kind of asking for the impossible and where it is actually happening sometimes too. Whenever I see a budget or whenever I see a timeline, I always think there must be ways to cut this 30-40%. There must be smarter ways to drive the capital structure, etc.

So I have an inherent push to see where is the boundary? Where can I stretch? And at the end, many times we are not reaching that stretch, but we're still reaching towards something that was better than what we started with. And that is, of course, very, very important when you are in any type of industry to continuously stretch. Can you do this a little bit faster? Can you do this a little bit more effective? Can we do it with a little bit less people, et cetera? And how does this work in the Nordic region and in Sweden? I mean, are we fast enough? Are we efficient enough? Are there too many regulations and rules? enough? Are we efficient enough? Are there too many regulations and rules? I do think there are too many regulations and rules. Obviously, in an early stage,

you're 50 to 100 people, you work around the clock, you could do this anywhere. But then, when you're starting to scale up, it's basically impossible to operate in Sweden without the collective bargaining agreement and authorities. Not unless Elon Musk tried. Yeah, I mean, it's tried. And that is an interesting dispute because I'm not sure who is going to budge first, to be honest. And it's not easy to see how you will find a win in that situation. But you have a situation where if you're building a company, if you're starting up new factories, especially if new factories that haven't been built before, that's not done in a nine to five

environment. You need extra flexibility from people, and normally people are willing to give that. It doesn't need to be demanded. Normally, you can get it on a voluntary basis. And then when you're trying to convert this into how does this adhere with the collective bargaining agreement, you stumble into a whole bunch of bottlenecks with the central organization because they are basically saying, you know, it's not that they don't understand what you need, but they are, of course, worried if we give this flexibility to you, immediately a Volvo or an ABB will start and come for the same. a Volvo or an ABB will start and come for the same. And we get stuck to some extent in our regulation. I think actually it is time to a little bit review some of these structures we

have because nothing comes for free. Succeeding also requires hard work. And as long as it is a mutual understanding, why not? Why not allow people to work specifically during a certain period of time when you need that? So which part of the structure, kind of the Scandinavian model, is it that you think we need to review? I think we need to allow more flexible working hours, specifically during in Norway, in Sweden, a lot of our industrial infrastructure was built long ago, and it wasn't built by nine to five. And if you look at our competition that has been built in China, you know, to take an example, I was visiting one of our competitors and we were walking through their factory. And I was kind of, is it free shift structure or is it a four shift structure?

And they would say, this is a two shift structure. four-shift structure, and this is a two-shift structure. So we have two teams, 12 hours a day, six days a week, and then flexible overtimes on Sunday. And we are competing with a five-shift structure in order to fill the factory. I'm not saying that we should go towards the Chinese model. But what I do say is that if they want to make a bigger impact, if they want to work a bit more, also making more money, we should have a bit more flexibility for that. Is that why you are starting factories outside Sweden?

No, it is not. The reason why we are doing that is both proximity to customers, but it's also access to talent base. We have recognized that in at least short term with what we're doing in Västerås, what we're doing in Skellefteå and what we're doing in Gothenburg, we are draining a lot of the capabilities and the talent base that is in the surrounding. So it is driven by other reasons. Moving on to the whole battery market, you say that battery is the key technology to replace the use of coal and gas.

Why? Can you elaborate a bit on that? If we should, for example, if Europe should meet our Paris treaty obligations, which is basically 80% CO2 reduction over three decades, we basically both need to get oil out of our transport. That's a little bit more difficult with airplanes, but with most of our transports, it's absolutely doable. But then it needs to be replaced by electrification. Maybe some hydrogen, but primarily, which is also driving an electrical powertrain, but primarily, it's going to be batteries. And we also need to transform our energy generation from natural gas and coal and oil.

And we need to build a new infrastructure with renewable. You know, Norway and Sweden have the hydropower that is crucial in this. But then it is wind and solar. And, you know, there's probably a certain part also of nuclear. But all of these will create more and more instability in the grid, which means that your ability to store energy to balance this in the grid is also becoming crucial. And you also have the situation where we're sitting here in Stockholm today.

Stockholm has basically an infrastructure. I think it is around 3 and a half thousand megawatts. That's the copper cables that comes into the city. This is maxed out between nine and two o'clock in the day. And with all people that is now transforming into electric vehicles, coming in from the suburbs, want to charge the vehicle during the day and get back,

we probably need to create an additional maybe 50% increase during the peak hour. And we can either do it by digging up the entire city and pumping copper, or we can build energy storage in the cities so that we can fill that up during the night and we can utilize it during the peak hour. And I think the later one is going to be a much more efficient model for how we develop that. So the ability to store energy is absolutely crucial in the transition. Now, historically, we've been dependent on lithium, which you find in places like Argentina,

Chile, and China, but not in Europe. So what are the challenges here? There is a challenge. It's not a challenge about access in the sense that lithium is very available on Earth. sense that lithium is very available on earth. The easier access is either by rock, where Canada, Australia, for example, is really big, but we have it in Serbia, we have it in Portugal, in Europe and in other locations. Then you have groundwater that has a strong lithium content. And they are, for example, South America, where you pump up and you're basically evaporating big brines.

And this industry is evolving very fast. I have a little bit of a concern over creating these big dams in the desert. Over time, I think this will have a pretty big environmental impact but there is also new technology emerging around so so-called dri and so where you you do direct reduction without these brines so i think technology will solve it part of the challenge today is that almost all of this lithium in, if I call it an early concentration form, is somewhere between 80 to 85 percent of the world's production is in China. So that's an advantage that Chinese producers have. It is an advantage. And this is where we need to build value chains.

You know, we started a joint venture in Portugal together with Galp to build one of Europe's first lithium processing. And this is a necessity to build this supply chain because eventually batteries will be a regional business. Batteries are so heavy, they are a bit dangerous to transport. And the customers would like to have just-in-time setups. So there will be a regionalization of the market. And as part of that regionalization, it's super crucial to build also these regional supply chains. Do every country have to have a battery production? Not every country needs to have a... Does Norway need to have it?

Every country needs to have a... There's no way you need to have it. It's a good question. I think Norway probably has the opportunity of having good battery production given its grid setup, from my point of view. But then there is a whole bunch of other things that needs to come together for that to happen. But in reality, over the next, I would say, next couple of years, most of the decisions that will drive the transformation of the entire auto industry will be taken. Where is my key strategies for battery supplies? Then it will take 10 years to execute them. But it is very important that Europe as total is on our toes, because if we don't have

this infrastructure in the next decade, then the train have gone. And then the infrastructure is built up and it's so much capital that it's going to be very difficult to change this. So then we would be in a situation like we have been in solar panels, microchips and so on, right? Exactly. Tell me about the new sodium ion breakthrough you've had. It's something we were very excited about. So this is a new technology to make batteries? Well, sodium ion has been in research for quite some time, as it is probably the second best to lithium in order and even more abundant. So it's been in research for quite some time. And from a Norfolk perspective, one of the things that we've seen over the last couple, have grown a lot, drivencost passenger cars, it works. And obviously, as a company, you're sitting and seeing that, and you're kind of, you know, should we address that market?

What should be our strategy? We've been struggling with how to approach this, I must admit, both from that we would be almost 100% dependent on Chinese active material and the fact that this active material would come with a very large carbon footprint. So it would be very difficult to kind of, you know, how do we combine our mission with this type of technology? And lastly, these LFP batteries, they are, as they're less valuable,

there hasn't been a natural development of recycling methodology. It's coming, but it's also going to require more regulatory demands in order for that to make it happen. When can you have a big production of this? So we are right now working on our industrialization plan for this. And we think we can scale this up in the 2026, 2027 type of timeframes.

What we're doing right now is... Will this be a unique product? Well, you know, there is type of timeframes. What we're doing right now is... Will this be a unique product? Well, you know, there is a race on sodium. What is a bit unique is that I think we were a bit ahead of the competition in being able to develop based on this Preussian blue cathode to produce an LFP type performance. Competition is either working with an iron-based cathode material that has lower energy density or they're working with a nickel-based cathode. So what we've shown is that we can do a product without both and this I think is a big edge.

What is also very interesting with sodium ion batteries is that lithium is very reactive, but sodium, you can basically heat up a putting battery storage in the desert next to a solar farm, or if you're moving energy storage into cities and where the fire hazard is, of course, very, very important. Just one more thing. You touched on the importance of having this recyclable infrastructure as well, parallel to your battery production. How does this work? So basically, the way it works is you're taking

end-of-life packs and you're dismantle them you remove copper and you know the aluminum in in the pack and you discharge it it seems simple but to take a battery pack to absolutely down to to zero is is not in industrial it's not that that. Then you basically crush and sort it where you need to take out the electrolyte. That is very important. And the end product of that is black mass. And out of that black mass, you can then either use pyrotechnology, so you use furnaces to remove it, but then you lose lithium. Or you can take the way that we've done where you're using a hydrometallurgical separation.

And then you can basically get over 90 towards 95% recyclability of nickel, of cobalt, but also of lithium. Do anybody else do this? There is other companies who are evolving, but we have been able to build a pretty strong IP base around this. And up in Skellefteå, we are right now commissioning Europe's largest recycling facility. It's a four gigawatt hour setup, and there's a brilliant bunch of people who are now getting all these processes to work. Very interesting. getting all these processes to work. Very interesting. Peter, moving on to corporate culture.

Pretty unique situation to build something from zero to 6,000 people in eight years. How do you think about what type of culture you want to have in the company? So I'm a person that is driven very much by passion and energy. And obviously, it is a company culture that reflects that is very, very important to me. When I step into a room, I'm very sensitive to the energy level in the room. That is a very important thermometer for me, whether there is true activity going on, you know, in the room. I'm sorry, just on that, and how do you measure that? So now you come into a room, what do you gauge? What do you look for? Well, what you're looking for is, can you feel the energy? Can you see people standing over together, you know, looking at something, whether it's in a display, whether it's, you know, it's a prototype or collectively you can feel whether it's an energy, whether it's like a newsroom, you know, before the night's 7.30 play or whether it's a trader room in a stock market, that type of energy.

So that is important to me. The other important thing, and we worked a lot from day one and we kept the same kind of core words, which is being bold, being passionate and being excellent as the key pillars of what we're doing. and being excellent as the key pillars of what we're doing. But one important thing when you're building something like this and that we're driving, that is you cannot run at maximum speeds all the time. It doesn't work like that. But when you're hitting a bottleneck,

when you are being pressed towards a time plan or you're finding an obstacle that is really difficult, that's when the light needs to be on. That's when you need part of an organization to sprint. And that principle is very, very important to me that whenever we stumble, because it is still so, speed and the pace forward as a company is one of our biggest assets. Who do you hire? We have 125 nationalities in the company, so we're very, very diverse. difficult things, who have done multiple experiences, that are not afraid to roll up the sleeves and go dig shovel dirt. We want to hire people specifically that is logical, but also dynamic.

You say speed is an asset. Now, in our strategy document for the fund, we have speed is a mindset. How do you make sure that you keep the speed up? Do you walk around on the floor here and whip people in direction? No, I think it's incredibly important to constantly drive that culture. And that is a challenge

when you're growing very, very fast. Last year, we were having a kickoff with, call it the first and second layer, the 50 people. And we realized that we have one group who's been with the company for three, four, five years, and they are totally engraved in the culture. But then we're starting new sites and we're bringing in more people. And it requires a bit of effort to bring everybody else into, you know, what is it being a North Walter? And this is crucial because...

Well, what is it to be a North Walter? Well, I come back to it is about being passionate. It's about being bold and being excellent in what we're doing with a strong focus on what our customer need. But it's also, you know, it is a challenge when you're being proud of being this diverse, but you also have to remember that if you come from 125 different nationalities, your perspectives, if you come from Asia on how an organization works from a bureaucracy versus the Nordic model of being very flat and goal-oriented. This is a big mental transition, and this won't happen over days.

So we work a lot with both getting people together in big team buildings. So I, for instance, hear that you have a weakness for crazy challenges. So you got your whole management group to do Vasa Loppet. Now, for those of you who are not into cross-country skiing, Vasa Loppet is a pretty damn long cross-country trip, 90k, right? Even the people who hadn't done it before in cross-country, they had to do it. So how did that go? We haven't done it yet.

Okay. So we're on the path to achieve the Vasa Loppis is not the important thing but basically what we said is with this focus that we have on on the ramp up in the factories we will have our management teams up in Skellefteå on a weekly basis this is where the focus needs to be. And as a little bit of a feature to being in Skellefteå is the availability of snow. So Monday evenings after we have had our management meetings, we're doing a joint training on cross-country skiing. And we have this excellent coach. His name is Claes Nilsson. He won Nordenskjöldsloppet, which is the world's longest cross country. It's 220 kilometers.

So he has been helping us and as bringing the team together with one goal, it's been very fun, but we've started on very different levels. And perhaps kind of suitable to go for something which is pretty marathon-like, because this is going to be a marathon to build North World now. It is a marathon, for sure. What are your leadership principles? What is the most important thing for you? I think it is very, very important in order to understand a problem,

to go to the depth. So whenever you have a problem to go to the depth. So whenever you have a problem or something blocking, don't just leave it at face value, but go and the Japanese have this saying, go to the source and see it. And I very much like that philosophy. We're trying to find a model and I'm trying to apply a model where people are given a lot of responsibility and I will leave them alone until they prove that they can't manage that responsibility. But otherwise, I'm a strong believer in people. So I don't set the agendas for people.

But I'm very focused on two things. One is how they, together with the team, achieve their objectives. And secondly, how they are building the teams around them, how they're being talent attractors. And these for two is when I'm having performance reviews. These are the two parameters that is very, very important for me. When you make decisions, how dependent are you on analysis and how much is pattern recognition? Are there things you've seen before? I think data is important, but because a number of the things that we're doing is, to some extent, we're doing it for the first time. But I'm also cognizant about you can go and collect data forever.

It is about having the sufficient amount of data so that you're not going totally off the track. But if you have 80% of what you need, then I'm normally ready to take the decision and go on. Now, one former colleague of yours described you as optimistic, bold, forward-leaning, and aggressive. So where does this come from? What is your driving force? I think, as with many of us, there is a little young achiever inside that want to do good, that want to learn and want to succeed. And then, obviously, wants to get a certain recognition for it. I'm not driven by financials, but I do like to get recognition. It was interesting. I gave a speech at the Stockholm School of Economics yesterday, and I asked people to put up their hand if they really wanted to show the world.

And surprisingly, few people did. And I suspect it's just because they didn't want to admit it. But who do you want to prove wrong but who do you want to who do you want to prove wrong who do you want to show i don't want to prove well yes in in the sense i wanted to prove the ones that that is is saying that we can't solve this big problem, the climate crisis and the green transition in the timelines that we set up. We need to give ourselves more time because the solutions to solve these problems is there. It is about executing them. It is about executing them. And in 2017, I was out for an accident. I was in an avalanche. And when they found me, I didn't breathe.

So I actually don't recall it until I was on a helicopter on the way to a hospital. And I was in pretty bad shape. to a hospital and I was in pretty bad shape. But when I was recovering, I was laying there and thinking, what is important now that I got kind of a second chance? And then what came very, very clear, because I was also engaged in a whole bunch of other startups and things, it became very, very clear that this is my mission in life.

This is combining what I've learned from my career with my passion. This will be, hopefully, you know, the important effort of my life. And that is sometimes, you know, when you can feel a little bit almost overwhelmed, you know, what have I started when I kind of go back to, well, you know, at the end of the day, you know, this is really, really important. If we should be able to contain climate and global warming to at least below two degrees, we need to take these dramatic, rapid actions and we need to be bold. of, I get comfort in that. Did the Avalanche change your life in other ways? It did, some on the private, but also I think it made me much more humble to how, you know, how fragile life can be and to make sure that, you know, you're not pushing all your wants to

the future. And I can clearly say that if I would die tomorrow, I would still, you know, be very happy with the life I've had. How do you relax? One of the things that I think is a good feature when you're an entrepreneur is I have this tendency, you know, as an entrepreneur, you have a lot of shitty days. You know, you're thinking we're not going forward, going backwards, and you just get, you know, an aggregate of all the pile of shit that happens when, you know, when you're building and starting new things. But I have this ability to feel like shit, go to bed, sleep, and wake up with total new energy.

It's almost like a goldfish. How much shit does one have to take to be a good entrepreneur? to take to be a good entrepreneur? I think, you know, the harder task you take on, the more pile of shit you will probably experience during that way. I think that is probably a law of some sort. But what I was also a little bit coming back to, I'm also a bit of an on-off person so later we have a board meeting today but but later tonight I'm going to jump on the the train and and I'm going to go up to to Ora with my kids and then I'm gonna I'm just going to focus on going skiing and spending a weekend with them and and go back a little bit refreshed uh on Monday. Sounds good. Lastly, Peter, what is your advice to young people?

I think it is super important to follow your passion. Don't follow what other people tells you to do, but really follow your passion. Because if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're not going to put in, you know, that extra effort that is required to really achieve excellence. And then, you know, in the early days, we were sitting in an attic in Stockholm, a small team, and we had a room where we put up favorite quotes. And there is two quotes that still sticks out very much in my mind. One was, and I think it's from the Google founders, is a good idea is normally perceived as not good at all until it's really good. If you have an alternative idea, you should

never give up and try. And when you've tried and proved that it works, your surrounding will recognize, oh, you know, this was a really, really great idea. But it takes a lot of effort to get there. The second one was from Mike Tyson. Everybody got the strategy up until they went in and get the first punch in the face. And that's, you know, that's really something that's really something, what do you do then? And that's, I think, to continue going on when you're constantly being challenged,

that is a very, very important thing. Well, Peter, it for sure seems like you are following your passions. And I have to say, I'm also thinking perhaps a few more of us need a tiny bit of avalanche to shake out the really important things in life so we can focus where it really matters. But a big thanks for taking the time and all the best of luck.

Thank you.