Alten Stock

Hello, everybody. Very happy to co-present with Bruno Benoliel and Cyril Malarge, the presentation of this half year results for the year '26. And as usual, and in a very precise way, we will convey to you a vision of what happens on the market, in particular, as regards Alten.

As regards the results, as you could see in the announce, the revenue that we know is at EUR 2.1 billion, which means almost double for the whole year and even better than that. And the organic growth is of 1.6%, but in fact, 1.2% because of the M&A, which was a little bit less performant for the start of the year. So 1.6% as an absolute value is not really a matter to celebrate because apart from the different crisis, we have an average of 8% to 10% organic growth before. So I hope it's just symbolic showing that we are on our way to reach a positive organic growth.

International and France. Well, France is driven by aeronautics and defense activities with Airbus. They have enabled to be performant within this organic growth, even if the other sectors are very well performing, energy, automotive, because we have been doing what had to be done, in particular, to offshore in the low-cost countries. As regards the results themselves, the revenue is -- sorry, you have muted your microphone, sorry.

So 8.9% compared with the 7.3% of revenue at June '25. Well, compared with that, that's the revenue for France. And hopefully, I hope we will have a global year around 10% operational results. 8.9%. This improvement compared with the first half year '25 is linked to a very performing control of sales, HR and administration as well as the gross margin -- potential gross margin, which was quite stable and is also due to a very -- an excellent management of our project as well as the cross contract and other contracts.

The gearing is good as usual at 14% (sic) [ minus 14% ]. As regards to headcount. If you look at December things were difficult, but we caught back up. What I can say. Things have improved since the end of June. This is a growth dynamic, which I don't think we should be carried away with, but we should be fairly optimistic about what's going to happen next.

Okay. So if you look at this slide then, we're going to look at the last few years. Now it's important to look at this correctly because there's a real message that has to come out of that beyond the figures. And you need to go to the last column for the first half of 2026, obviously.

But what you really need to understand are the first 2 columns between the first quarters, if you look in 5 years, we've doubled our turnover. We changed size. It's no longer the same group. If you look at the size, if you look at the volume and if you look at our geographic sharing in the 25 main countries where we're present, things have changed. And what does this mean? Well, it means there's a very important change in the group's organization.

Our clients have changed as well. So beyond the actual size of Alten, we've seen that our clientele has become more international. We're no longer dealing with one client. We're not always dealing with them at national level. Every client has to be dealt with in 2 or 3 countries, not just 1 country anymore.

So you can imagine this has been a huge change. And then of course, you have -- in spite of this, this all took place, as I say, in spite of COVID and those 2 years, we're managing the group and this change in the market. If we look at Alten as being in the top 5, perhaps the top 3 in the world of engineering services. We have to say that '24 and '25 were difficult years. We see quite flat years were difficult. And in spite of all the offshoring, et cetera, we can see that the turnover has been divided in 3 if you look at things that have been relocated. And in spite of AI, which is increasing the needs for engineers in some projects, but we've offset that with new projects and new types, the new different kinds of needs that we have.

So we really hope that 2026, '27 are going to be fruitful, and we're going to see growth taking off. Now I'd like to hand over to Cyril, who is going to talk about the results more specifically.

Well, thank you, Simon. Well, what are the messages then that we have to retain for this first half year? Well, there are 2. First of all, we can see that we're returning to organic growth. That's been confirmed. And our objectives then for 2026 have been upscaled. So if I look at the first one, this idea of getting back to growth, well, the first main country is -- well, look at France, is doing well. It's performing well after the first very flat quarter, up by 1.7%. This is very structural. This is good. Why? Because the markets in the future are going to be interesting, ASD, aeronautics, aerospacial in France, we're hoping that's going to be good. We're talking about 3% of the revenue in France, so it's important. Rail is also fairly dynamic here. That has an impact in France. So as opposed to that, we'll have to look at the automotive industry, which is less than 1% in France. And we are in the public sector. So this is an electoral year. We're going to perhaps be less impacted than others.

We're looking at a scope, which is our core heartland, if you like, and things are doing very well. The second element is Germany. Germany is doing well. In the second quarter, it's up 4.5%. With automotive, everything is going up in Germany. And this is going to allow us to amortize the lack of growth in the previous years. It's still there, but it's better. And we're going into a positive organic growth, thanks to the growth of all of the other sectors.

In the U.K. then, we're growing. Q2 we're up 2% after a flat quarter, and this has been by energy and defense. Now if we look at the market for the 5 years to come then in terms of growth, bear in mind when we do so, that Aeronautic, Space, Defense and Energy, mainly nuclear, well, these are structurally growing matters, and they are worth about 40% of Alten's revenue. So we want to see that going up given the position we have for the upcoming years. And the second element you must retain -- we are in a risky phase with the automotive industry.

We've gone from 20% of turnover in 2022 to less than 14% today. So we can say that perhaps the most difficult part is behind us, but we must be very cautious at group level. Secondly, then when I talked about the improvement in results in the full year for 2026, well, our objectives, we've upscaled them. We've put them -- we've set them at a higher level. You can see we're going to try to aim for 1.7% to 1.9%. And that is thanks to the performance that we saw in the second quarter and the visibility that we have in the second half of the year, as you said, Simon, it was a good summer. The second 6 months kicked off pretty well.

So we can allow ourselves some hope for growth in 2006, 2007 (sic) [ 2026, 2027 ]. Well, what's next? Results then were around 9.2% the first half of the year was very positive. We went from 7.3% to 8.9%. Now is it going to be a dominating trend? I don't know a dominant trend. We'll have to see. Now the visibility that we have on the second half of the year allows us to believe in the growth at regular speed that we've seen up until now, and we think there's going to be an increase in results, not just in France, but elsewhere.

So this is the company itself and not just one country, the company itself that is following a certain dynamic. Now next slide. Well, let's talk about headcount then and the growth of a number of engineers that we have. We've gone, as Simon said, went from 51,000 to 52,200 between December last year and June this year. And so the message is clear. All of the zones are growing. As you can see, headcount is going up in each.

Look at North America, look at France, we've got 300 more. Europe outside France has gone up as well. Well, you have the size because you can see they've all gone up. You can see the 2 colors. So it's extremely interesting because then again, we're looking at all the zones are performing rather well.

So we're fairly confident about the future in the second half of this year, and this really should confirm the trend that we've seen up until now. Now -- we are going to be very synthetic here. But I think it's interesting to share with you what's happening in different markets. So let's begin with this slide. Let's look at ASD, Aeronautics, Space and Defense. These 3 market segments. You can see this accounts for a certain amount of turnover for the group.

It's really a driver within the group. Clients -- well you've got usual clients, you're familiar with all of them, Airbus, Safran, Rolls-Royce, Dassault, Thales, et cetera. And we're on a market which is doing well and looks -- the outlook is very good for the 10 upcoming years with growth being pulled forward by studies, by research, design of new projects by manufacturing, by the supply chain efficiency and effectiveness, optimization of TCO and maintenance and maintaining services for the services industry.

So we want to make sure that we are a leader across the board here, and we are. So you have the figures. Now with spatial -- well, the whole lot comes down to about 16% of turnover. And again, I've already mentioned these clients.

And these clients, many of them have just signed new contracts as well. So that's very positive. This is going to be supported by Europe as well. So it's a niche market, which is really growing, and I think it's going to be fruitful in the upcoming years. [indiscernible] Naval security is 9.7%. You've got Leonardo, you've got Thales, Naval, MBDA, Saab in Sweden, Navantia in Spain, the usuals to coin the phrase. So this is an open door.

It's a European market, which is fairly bullish at the moment. And we hope to see growth, 2-figure growth in this market. And our specificity here is this is a market that we can see delivered country by country. So in France, it's France, it's dealing with France. In Germany, it's Germany and the U.K. and U.K. it's the U.K. You see it's market for market definition. And this is how we want to address this market.

We really want to do it country by country rather than doing it in a comprehensive manner. Then let's move on. Let's look at the automotive market. You've got the figures, 13.7% of market share of turnover, pardon me, with our major clients. You've got the same ones that you would expect to find Stellantis, Renault, Volkswagen, Volvo, BMW, Traton, Ford, Mercedes-Benz.

Now what we can say that this is obviously a market which structurally speaking is not growing. It's quite obviously not growing. So -- but we have seen a little growth in some areas, even though it's less important, we are stabilizing sequentially speaking with manufacturers, we're suffering like everybody else with equipment suppliers, as I said in the beginning, for us, it's no longer an issue because the toughest years are behind us. We're quite content with the figures we're seeing with our current know-how we employ a certain amount of people in this field.

Let's say that we see we have -- we estimate that we have a role to play in the growth of this sector. For rail then, where are we? Well, with 3% of market share with, again, the usual suspects, Alstom, et cetera, communication systems, signaling systems, we are very nicely represented in France and Germany, a niche market where we are the major players. With industrial equipment then 8.1% of the group's turnover.

We can see that industrial equipment activities are stabilizing with regards to electronics and semiconductors. Well, we think that the priorities of our clients is to get their parts as quickly as possible rather than really going into R&D. So we have a very nice vision within that market as a result. Energy then energy and environment is a very strategic market, thanks to the acquisition of Worldgrid a few years ago, Worldgrid.

So we have a very nice stance in the nuclear field. You can see 11.9% of turnover and here we deal with EDF, Schneider, Altera, Technip, Total, Siemens, major investments for the future and new projects in the field of oil and gas, very positive. So it's a given moment, we're not sure when, but a given moment, this is going to really become our second most important sector for Alten. So we're going to continue to focus on this sector.

How about Life Sciences? Well, 7.4% of turnover, Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, et cetera. This is a real bit of a tough reality, tough CRO market to run clinical studies, major players who are now transferring to the U.S. So we're slightly down in growth there, but it is a future market for the company.

Telecom, structurally, again, it's a market which is not growing in France with SFR, et cetera, we're working upstream with these players to make sure that we have a role to play. Well, it's been difficult because the sort of the business scenery has been changing -- now what about insurance?

We're 8.5% of turnover. And there again, you will find major French banks, Portuguese banks and our traditional clients. It's a market which is fairly flat. It's a very heterogeneous market. So we are following the trend.

Well, in France, we're actually -- we're staying flat. But in Spain and Portugal, we're actually growing. So again, extremely important for us. And finally, retail services and the public sector, where do we stand?

This is a market where we're generating a slight level of growth in the first half of the year, particularly in the U.K. and Spain, in Italy as well and indeed in France. So that is a very -- it's a whirlwind vision of what's happening in the market. Now what we'd like to do is share something very important with you.

Because we've made a great deal of headway in the AI field. And on this first slide, we're going to look at what's happening in go-to-market. We've been working a great deal on go-to-market. We've formalized a catalog of various offers, and these we have set per sector of activity. Now we've trained our teams, and we have dedicated teams in order to go and discuss these projects with our clients. We've got KPIs for unrolling this offer, rolling it out with our clients. And in front of you now, you can see on this slide, per sector the details -- well, it's not really details, it's a few elements of how we're going to implement this catalog of offer. And each and each one of these subjects, there are clients and projects.

I don't want to get into the details because all the information is there anyway, but you can see that we have really made a great deal of headway.

You can see we're very present in aerospace. We're looking at the data, product design, other examples, the supply chain, very nice offer there, also in automotive. We can see, if you look down the side for all the different segments, we have some very nice references, especially things that stuff that we're rolling out in other accounts. AI with us is not simply a slide.

There are real projects, real clients behind these projects, the target of our projects. And if we move on to the next slide -- this is your go-to-market because it's within a much wider remit. As you know, we have a Chief AI Officer who is on the Executive Committee, and he is responsible for sharing this information with Alten, with everybody in Alten with dedicated teams.

This is really steered from the top, and you've got 3 pilots, 3 streams. I've talked about the go-to-market. You also have the deployment of our products and the implementation of structures and platforms. Now three-quarters of all our employees are being trained in AI. So we've been able to go fairly quickly to this. With the go-to-market stream, I focused on the offer 30% of all the group projects have AI contained within them and 80% of all of the proposals are AI infused. Now that's quite interesting.

It's quite a high figure. So a great deal of training has gone into this for our teams, and we've structured partnerships to go hand-in-hand with this. We are working with Mistral and with Google, in particular, and with others. We have rolled out the program with Mistral, and we did that in the first half of this year.

So rolling out AI in our projects, well, we saw that speeding up in the first quarter, a new work package, which was developed with an average of 10% of productivity generated, thanks to this new AI-infused project. And we've continued to do this, haven't, we've continued to scale up and roll out these projects as quickly as possible, but as carefully as possible.

Roughly about 50 people between Morocco and India who are working on these accelerators to help our teams to help them respond to calls for tender and to unroll all the different projects that we put in place. Well, if you look at the streams, platforms and infrastructure, well, we've really targeted the implementation of our infrastructure platforms deployed around Mistral, OpenAI, Anthropic Claude and agentic environments. We have a policy in place to help us master and manage the token -- well, we've got token cost optimization rules in place to help us do that. Now I'm going to hand back to Simon, who's going to talk about mergers and acquisitions.

Well, thank you, Cyril for this presentation. I'll finish the AI. We are assessing today the reduction in the number of engineers needed in the Alten's core business model by 7% per year. So what we're talking about, the same type, the same volume of projects with AI, AI means we can have -- we can be down 7% in productivity per year. And it's not us that are going to benefit from this improvement because the clients have negotiated and 80% of new calls for tender in front of us in 80% of them, we have to ensure that the client can see that we've imposed AI and we've set them into our products and the clients are negotiating this reduction of roughly minus 7% across the board in all of the projects.

So in spite of that, we've managed to see organic growth. And that's why I think we have to be -- I suppose, cautious with our figures, 2% in organic growth when you encompass the growth of minus 7%, and this is in the volumes required by AI performance. We are still growing organically. So what does that mean for the future? It's not because AI is in place and it's going to replace a certain number of jobs or partially replace them or even engineers, young engineers that our market is going to collapse.

We are going to continue to grow, and we will continue to win market share, and we will win new projects in spite of AI, if you like, and we will continue to grow organically. The last 3 years, I've had this question fairly regularly. So it's a fairly positive comment I'm able to make there. Now let's talk about M&A. A little disappointed with the market around the world, the number of acquisitions made in the first quarter. When you see the size of them, it's roughly 700 people -- and that's roughly -- our goal is 3,000 to 4,000 per year.

We have our objective, and this objective would allow us to -- we have -- we're able to buy more than that, but we don't want to just buy any old thing in order to ensure that we maintain the status of M&A, and we don't want to buy for buying sake. Now there have been times where we've had our eyes on -- we've had CapEx, et cetera, and we've not been able to purchase and we've had companies that have left us. But I think as you can see from this slide, our M&A has been fairly limited, but there's a strong message to take from this. We've got a lot of LOI's signed.

Due diligence is a great deal of due diligence underway, and we're very surely going to make some quite interesting announcements in the weeks and months to come. I'm not sure if it will be before the end of the year or the first quarter of 2027, but this will help us catch up a little bit. You know Alten, you know that we were cautious there, and we want to look at prices, and we want to look at the quality of the companies we're interested in acquiring.

Now concerning capital, well, it's not really changed. If you look at buybacks, share buybacks, we did this when securities were slightly lower. All of this to ensure that there is a message of confidence out there. We believe in ourselves. We believe in what we're doing.

What you can see when the securities were extremely low, we bought shares and that leaves us a little less cash, obviously.

But we make sure that we could self-retention more than 5%, 5.43% to be accurate. Founders were still around 15% and the employees with their employee sharing somewhere around 2.34% and the rest is institutional investments. And that is the end of the main indicators for the group. And now I'd like to hand over to Bruno, who's going to talk more in detail about the financial KPIs.

Yes, hello. I do not want to go back on the analysis of organic growth. Maybe as regards the change -- exchange rate, here, we have a second half year, if you remember, which was lying above the 3%. It has been impacted by an important exchange rate. Revenues on this basis has been impacted by 1.6%.

All the flows are -- all our financial flows and business is being done in several currencies, so 26% altogether, which means that we have a negative variation on exchange rates on our flows. This has been obtained in the cable business as well as engineering.

This negative exchange rate consequence should be rounded up during the second quarter and the first quarter compared with the first quarter '25. Half year turnover. We published last July these results. I'm not going to dwell upon the different analysis. I would just like to point out that ASD, naval, train has been okay. The same in U.K., thanks to energy and public sector. Our position has improved considerably.

Good go back to organic growth in Germany. And this is really worth mentioning because of the automobile activities, it represented 45% of our German turnover. It's only a quarter, which is left. So we have derisked our activity, but the development in Germany was very good in ASD. It represents 30% of the German turnover, but also other sectors like telco, energy, in particular, and also IT, lesser in a lesser way.

An excellent activity in South Europe, where the growth has been accelerated. We still have problems in Benelux and also in Eastern Europe, Netherlands, in particular, because of the car industry and also in the Nordics. The improvement is visible in North America. The activity in North America has been penalized by the automobile activity.

Canada represents 30% of our Northern American activity is growing. We expect to be back on the right track as regards to organic growth latest at the beginning of '27. Then the organic growth has also been confirmed in Asia Pacific, thanks to Japan and China. The second quarter has shown significant improvement in the Nordics, and this should be confirmed, by the way.

Results of the first half year. So just for you to remember, the year '25 and in particular, the first half year '25 is a year which was not normal, we could say because of the bad performances in several geographies and also the operational margin was at 7.3%, but again, not normal. 26% profited from the organic growth development, productivity and a very clear improvement of several activities.

So this is why we have an operational margin and the revenue, which has increased from EUR 152 million to EUR 187.3 million and the 7.3 percentage of revenue of this operating profit has increased and reached 8.9%. This has nothing to do with what we do in normal years again or normative years. The bps progression, as we said before, is for 60 bps due to the operating profit and the SG&A represents 70 bps.

Now we have the very conservative vision of the presentation of our accounts. This has to do with HR. Whenever there is a reduction of activity, we integrate that in gross margin obviously that was less this year than last year. The improvement on the margin yield due to the project management in Germany in particular. For SG&A, we profited from the absolute gaining back of value. It has already been positive during the second half year '25.

As well as a dilution of cost because of the coming back of organic growth. And this is also the consequence of what we have enhanced last year. Because of the plan and the share-based payments have not increased. The amortizement of intangible assets recognized in business combination. This is recurring from year-to-year. It comes exclusively from the acquisition of Worldgrid. You have the PDA, which has been presented in the annex document.

The nonrecurring results of EUR 12.5 million. This is because of restructuring plans that I have indicated before. It accounts for, let's say, EUR 10 million, EUR 6.3 million for Germany. We still have to cut down the headcount. Italy for EUR 1.6 million and the Life Science activity for EUR 1.4 million. And then the proceeds from disposal.

These are the fees for legal expenditures. That's only EUR 2.6 million half year result. As we indicated, we sold an activity in Life Science which was linked with the CRO activities based on an in-house solution. We didn't have the critical size, and this is why we became very quickly -- we started losing money. And this is why we have an operating profit of EUR 158 million, which grew by 26.9% compared with last year. Financial income is very easy.

You will see on the next slide, we have an income tax expenditure of EUR 47.7 million. And this leads to the net income group share, which has improved by 38%, moving up from EUR 82.6 million to a little bit more than -- the financial income analysis at Alten is not deeply analyzed here. With the IFRS standard, well, out of that, the financial result is at EUR 6 million composed by different financial products like cost of net financial debt of EUR 5.7 million, interest on leasing contracts, which is EUR 2.8 million.

And then we have FX income, EUR 1.1 million decrease and other net financial incomes. Split up according to regions. The performance has improved in all our countries. We have said it before, the performance has led us to progress on our margin, 200 bps in France from 5.5% to 7.7 -- 7.5%, sorry. Here, we have the corporate non-allocated costs. We have 9.5% margin in France.

The improvement of margin is for 60 bps accounts on the improvement of the net operating margins and for 130 bps, it is the improvement of SG&A, which is a little bit better than the global improvement of the group on SG&A. We have an operating profit that increased by 150 bps, thanks to the increase of operational margin in almost all our countries.

As was said before, it is true for all the countries of the group and not only 1 or 2 countries. Within the Nordics, the situation remains difficult. This is the only place where we have an operational margin, which is below 5%. In Germany, the operating margin was near to 0 in '25. It has improved and is very close to 5%, like the Asian-Pacific geography. Benelux, North America lies at 10%.

But U.K., South Europe and Eastern Europe, we have an operating margin of a little bit more than 5%. We have a healthy balance sheet. Once the dividends have been paid, EUR 1.7 million. That's a good result. Then the position in net cash is good as regards to the development between the end of '25 and the 30th of June '26. The operational cash flow is of EUR 180.7 million, which is 8% of our turnover.

We go back to an operational cash flow, which comes close to the activity one, which is absolutely normal as regards to what we are doing. The taxes paid are at EUR 37 million, which is less than the tax burden because the -- what we paid in '25 -- as regards the activity -- well, they have been paid because of the activity of '25, but then the rest, which is due and paid in '26 is based on the final figures of '25.

The cash need for cash is of -- and this is due to EUR 65 million, of which we have a part which is due to organic growth and 40%, which is due to the increase of DSO seasonal between December and January. We had 86.5 days in December, and it went up to 90 days by the end of June. I would like you to remember that the DSO was of 90 days. So we have increased by a few days to the comparable day between end of June '25, end of June '26. The fiscal debts of the groups are linked to seasonality and activity.

The variations are not significant. As you can see, the CapEx are low. It's only 0.4% of our turnover. It's a little bit less than for a normative year, which means that the free cash flow is at EUR 105 million, that's 5% of the turnover and increased by 33% compared with last year. And this is -- I mean, despite the return of organic growth.

And on the next slide, you will see that for guiding 12 months because we need to to guide, we have 6.4% of the revenue. Our cash flow is 6.4% of our global revenue. Very quickly to the flow analysis and the other elements, the investments, financial investments are at EUR 73 million. That's the down payment and M&A. Dividends are stable. That's EUR 51.5 million with the payment end of June.

The share buyback, we had spent EUR 65 million end of June for information, EUR 1.8 million investment for 2.4% of the capital, which has been bought back. Other financial flows, EUR 8 million, that's financial interest and exchange rate consequences on foreign currencies, which means that we end up the half year with a cash flow, which is quite important, EUR 313 million, a gearing of minus 14% after payment of acquisitions, paying of dividends and the share buyback.

We are -- well, I mean, I'm not going to comment on the following slides because I just said what had to be said. You will be able to read that. As a summary, what you have to remember on financial results of this group is -- and it joins what Cyril and Simon already explained. Alten returned to growth -- organic growth during the second quarter '26, thanks to civil, aeronautics, space, defense, naval, rail and energy, altogether 42% of the turnover.

The automotive is still slightly declining. Slightly. It is -- we have a stabilization of the main activities, even if the situation remains a little bit complicated for OEMs because once you have a decrease, such a decrease, there is no possibility to decrease further. So there will be a stabilization of the activity. The operating margin has increased very importantly during the second half year. It represents 8.9%, 9% of our global turnover. Apart from the Nordics, all the countries have improved their OPA apart -- yes, as I said, apart from the Nordics.

The OPA has increased by 23% and the free cash flow by 33% compared with half year '25. The activity is completely self-financed, thanks to the cash generation, which is particularly important. That leaves perspectives for the year '26 that we have increased, of course, as long as the geopolitical situation remains unchanged.

We have a growth, which should range between 1.7% and 1.9%. And it is, in particular, end of September, beginning of October that we have the best visibility on the new projects which are going to start on the customer side during the last quarter. And this is why the operating margin has been increased.

We have roughly 9% by the end of July, and we have 9.2% for the whole year as regards to the positive elements that we communicated upon. And now I'm going to hand over to Simon. He's going to tell us more about the growth strategy for the coming half year and the coming years.

Thank you very much, Bruno. A comment on the slide with the variations on the cash flow, there are a few things that happened only during the first half year, the share buyback and the payment of dividends.

And this is altogether EUR 116 million that you won't have for the second semester. So you can imagine the cash for the second half year. Now as regards the conclusion, the 2 slides of conclusion, summing up all that has been said till now, the complicated environment, the size of Alten that's really a change within the organization.

We have -- that's a change for the top 5 companies for engineering with a lot of people employed. And well, we are not really afraid of that. Even if globally, it means conquest to compensate the drop of the requirements of engineers and the necessity to keep up with the organic growth.

Now all these elements altogether and what is going to -- and what is happening means that we are particularly optimistic to grow. We have a very ambitious plan for the coming years. So that's the plan 80,000 engineers. But of course, it will take to be able with Cyril, to set up a very strong international organization on the management with the global accounts at international level. It used to be national.

The capacity to deliver, which means a technical organization that has to produce a global project. This is already done. I think the technical management and organization is already the best that we have within the profession because we have the possibility to deliver offshore, and it's not bound to one country anymore.

It's transnational with the technical managers who are already transborder. And then we will also have to show our customers that we have strong offers in terms of AI as well as projects. And then the retail, as I said before, it's going to improve. And the capacity that we have to capture in M&A, the interesting and optimistic signs will be important despite the fact that it's complicated because we already have 90% of our targets, which has been -- have been captured.

And then when they are put back on the market, it becomes extremely difficult to grab them. But we have good hopes to identify good targets in Europe. Now it's the end of this presentation. Thank you very much for this presentation, and we are ready to take your questions.

Okay. Let's move on to the Q&A. We have a first question from Mr. Nicolas David.

Yes, indeed. I hope you can hear me well.

I would like to raise my questions as regards the margin. And first of all, the guidance for the whole year, you have a margin of 5%, but it's less in the year-to-year vision. Why is it going to lower in the year-to-year forecast?

It seems that we are back to a normal -- to the normal. It doesn't sound intuitive to have this drop of or this aim of 5%. Could you tell us more about the gearing? You would have less gearing on the TSA.

Is there something logical behind that? For the engineering, you have done an enormous amount of work. So ASD, the telcos are diminishing. Maybe AI is going to help us on the margins? And what are we going to do for projects?

I mean it's mainly a question as regards margins. Well, concerning the margin for the second half year, it's going to be higher than the first one, obviously. And even if we look at the second half year '25, it's going to be higher than the one for the first half year '25.

So there is a dynamic development of first and second half year, which is due to the calendar effect or consequence even if it is less important than for all the activities which are embedded in a package, et cetera. I do not share the same analysis than yours. And what is true also, and this is why I mentioned that the margin difference between half year last year and this year is important, but it will be less this year for 2 reasons. The first one is that the margin for the first half year '25 was not part of the normal, and now we are back to normal. So it sounds logical. And also because we did an enormous effort on SG&A, and it was reflected in the -- it was reflected in our activities.

So it will be less visible between half year '26 first and second half year. We have other investments to do to schedule the development of our group, all the different projects that have been mentioned. We are in going international transport, et cetera. So we do not expect a dramatic improvement of SG&A rate. And then also, we are going to consolidate a certain number of acquisitions, which are going to account for the margin. As I indicated before, the operational margin is going to be less than the normal. And so it takes 1 to 2 years to bring it back to the group level.

So the dynamic is particularly logical and relevant. Now to come back on the 10% Indeed, it is how to increase the margin within geographies where it is less than normal. For Asia, we are at 5%. For Nordics, they will, in time, react and we are going to see the improvement dynamics, which is going to impact the project. And even long term, it will mean a reduction of the relative rate of SG&A, but it will be longer in time. And I would say as a complement, we are growing and we have more margin in the growing phase than the reduction -- and then in favor of work packages, we have higher margins because we master better our capacity to generate profit on the work packages.

If you look at asset divestment, I'm not sure I had the right figure because I had 9.6% in margin as a sustainable margin. I think perhaps you have some room for maneuver with regards to this 9%. Just to give you a quick follow-up on growth. I have some very positive comments, particularly for the Nordics and the United States. That being said, growth for the year is roughly around 2%, which is less than the second quarter last year. So what can we do in order to offset all of this?

The publication of the third quarter takes into account that which today is gaining ground and that those are the projects which are being launched. So that's usually as of the 15th of September, we've had better visibility up to October, that is. And I think this allows us to really set the figures. Of course, you must also bear in mind that the comparison that's in place, we had a very good bounce back at the end of 2025. So that means that you have a knock-on effect on how you're going to read the figures. And that might allow you to believe that this growth is going to slow down in the second half of the year, whereas in reality, we're continuing to recruit or continuing to win new projects.

So we do have this growth dynamic, which is fairly highlighted. And I think this itself is going to lead us to -- will be under 2% in the second quarter, perhaps, but this will allow us to reach the figures that we have communicated. So I think it was easier to do like that than to focus on 3% for the first part of 2025.

Thank you. So let's move on to the next question. Yes, there is one, Frederic Boulan.

I want to talk about AI. You talked about inflation around -- well, 7% figure of 7%. Do you think this is going to be sustainable in the upcoming years? Or do you think this is going to be very much concentrated on this particular year and next year? And how can this be offset by a widening of our scope? -- scope, widening in the client activities? And could you describe the change in expenses with our main clients -- are we going to maintain, keep this 7% savings or we're going to retain it to invest in projects which are wider and which would allow us to increase our turnover from our clients?

Well, what you must remember is that it's not really -- the 7%, this minus 7% is what? It's a figure that shows that we're focusing on work packages and doing what our clients want. We're trying to give extra services to our clients, and this is what we can see in the teams. And you have to make the difference between the gross impact of AI and the reality on our staff levels, which you can see through the impact on our teams. There is a difference. That's the first point to retain in mind when we talk about this minus 7%. And the second element is that this engineering market is not a market where we have 200, 300, 400 people in one place is very different.

We're driving our clients' products with clients who have small teams, 5, 6, 7 in a team. Well, the impact of AI is going to be less on them than on the turnover. We think AI is going to be more qualitative in order to deliver services more quickly and with better quality. Now I can see that there's a difference from the IT world. And here, the impact is very different compared to that. And lastly, we've trained all our teams, all the business managers we've more than trained them. They've been through e-learning, online training. They've given us a business plan based on the scope, and they were certified for this so that they can be more proactive in delivering the new uses, new business models. And we didn't do that up until now.

And this is in order to be able to take a stance upstream with offers which are perhaps hitherto unsolicited by the clients. And of course, we are using AI in an offensive manner as we are on the offensive to try and win clients. A figure which is of great interest to me that we've with the program and at program that we established with the team, this team was -- this project was used in 80% of the calls -- replies for calls for tender at 80% at the beginning of the year, but now it's 50%. So we're still using teams. We're using this intelligently and adapting the AI to the project and the package that we're trying to implement or offer. And if I may add, when you talked again about this 7%, this is what we see in the current contracts. Is this a trend that you would -- do you think is going to set in? Or is it ephemeral? Is it structural just to improve effectiveness and this perhaps will not last over time? To be honest, it's very difficult to reply to that question.

This is not a homogenous 7%. You take some activities, it can be between 10% and 80% in testing. So it really depends on many things, what's coming out every week, what new tools, what new functions are coming out. So the questions that I ask now are all about training my teams, looking at the platforms, and that's our responsibility to make sure that all of this is available for our teams and make sure that our teams want to use these tools. So it becomes natural. That is our job to ensure that this becomes natural behavior in order to avoid being subjected to the areas of the market.

So this 7% is the estimation that was done by our AI officer for the 4 years in front of us. It's in the specifics of engineering services, the economy of production engineered by AI with the reduction of certain tools with our clients and some tools that we furnish to our clients. So as Cyril said, it goes in some cases, up from 0% to 80%. But on the specific stance of Alten, the averages 7% over 4 years right up until full deployment. Now what will happen afterwards? -- who knows? We don't know. But our challenge is to offset this need for engineers, which is going down by 7% with higher tariffs or by extra offers or by conquests for an organic growth, which means that the 2% of organic growth that we're going to suggest could correspond to the 9% 5 years ago or 7 years ago when it was rolled out.

So it's just an average. It's an estimation and assessment done by the AI officer. Well, that really leads me to think about AI. We had TMA before, I believe. This was -- and then it was offshore and then it was something else. It's just new developments. It's -- this one is called AI, but it's the same dynamic as we've seen in the past with new developments. We have to continue production but with different tools and be more effective.

Next question Mr. Laurent.

I have 3 questions. The first one, again, with regards to AI, we talked about these tools, which are replacing some young engineers. In your 3-, 4-year plan, have you anticipated an average age for the engineers stable in stable employment? And what will be the impact that this might have on our margins? That's the first point. The second one, I want to look at the mix. You talked about 70-30. So engineering, IT services. Are we going to see a difference in that mixture, that balance over the next 6 months in terms of growth and in terms of margins? And finally, last question, I would like to know what your vision is for the next 5 to 10 years for the nuclear activities, in particular, you said 2%, 3% of our turnover today. How far can we go in this sector? And what stance should be taken in the new sectors in France? I think we're talking about -- we're looking forward to 2030. Are we beginning to see a genesis of activity in this area then?

Thank you, Laurent. For the first question and the impact on the average age on our engineers, it's sure that fairly naturally, we're going to probably employ less young engineers, but that's really what we're seeing today. The model isn't being brought into question because engineering, as I said earlier, AI is not the same -- it doesn't have the same role to play in IT and in engineering. And this means what it means, quite frankly, that we have not observed a structural impact on recruitment. We recruited more people than last year, for example, or on the average age of the people employed.

Now when it comes to the margins, well, we're working on that because that's going to depend on our capacity to hand over to the client, that which we promised, making sure that the proposals are met. The subject is not on the table today because with the client, we're sharing the fact that the margins which emerge are reemployed. We invested 7% of 10 people. That's a lot. 9 times out of 10, our clients are going to ask us to retain their staff. So we have to reconcile that with margins. And we saw this with offshore. With the difference in growth and margin between IT services and engineering, I don't think there's any significant difference. No, actually, there's not one. And this is due to our stance in ASD, which is strong. If you look at our dynamics per sector of activity, you can see we're flat in the yellow part, if I can make IT services and quite strong in growth in IS&T and in engineering, even though we went down in the automotive industry.

Overall, I don't think there's any difference in dynamic. I have to say.

Laurent, there are statistics which -- with which everyone is familiar. We update them every quarter, and we look at average experience of engineers that are with us in various sectors of activity, including the engineering world, pure engineering, R&D, et cetera. Clients do have senior employees. We've got project leaders, architects, and they really are in charge of their projects. They outsource some but not all of their projects. We're not going to go and tell Airbus how to design the landing gear. That's their job. We're not going to go in and say you have to get rid of 7% of your engineers. In Airbus and places like that, they do have younger people. Their average age is 29. And that means that the average level of the experience is only 3 to 4 years.

So with management, the average is going to go between 0 to 8 years of experience. And this -- actually, this accounts for 40% of our recruitment. In IT, it's different because our clients, they want specialists. They want to outsource as much as possible. They want to develop an application for SAP or for Salesforce or any given software. With any IT department, anything they can externalize or if they -- if you have a BPO offshore or not, they're going to try and outsource it. So there, they're going to need people with more experience. And when you say more experience, say they're older. There's a gap of about 3 years in the average age between people from engineering and people from IT.

But to pick up on what Cyril said just beforehand, AI hasn't really had that much of an impact on the average age of engineers. It's really only just maybe 1 year of difference. We're still recruiting as many people. But in engineering. So AI has not killed the profession of young engineers, but it leaves time for schools to train engineers to use projects and to construct their projects differently. This is -- we're seeing a change. We're going to be a development of software tools in engineering and we'll be able to train them and allow us to have architects who become junior engineers. So it's really just an adaptation. It's a slight tweaking of what we traditionally considered to be engineers. It's going to be architects that are going to pursue their training and become engineering and this one can be in any domain that we do, automation, whatever. So these young engineers are going to be able to train further to become more experienced.

The nuclear field, what I can share with you is that in Worldgrid, we had EPR2. Which is going to work for the next 5 years. But so we're looking at growth there in 5% between now and the 5 upcoming years. And I'm not talking about the starts that we might have on other SMR projects with Worldgrid, for example, they provided -- well, you have the SMR from Simon. They work on expensive projects, but it's worth the effort because it's strategic for us. It's a very unique offer on the market and somewhere out there, we're continuing to invest in it.

And this means that we are hope -- we have hope that EPR2 is the second reactor, whatever is going to stop, and we will then repair it, we'll do maintenance perhaps over the next 20 years, we are able to address the upcoming subjects for the nuclear group. And I mean, that's for EDF, for example. If you're talking about the delivery of a new EPR, pardon me, we have to look at how we work, how we work with the major industrial players. That's where we're at our strengths. So we're looking at least 50% growth for EPR2. And this knowledge and this offer have to be reconciled.

Next question from Ines Mao.

I have 2 questions. Firstly, on energy. Can you give us more information, please, on the type of region that is typically at stake? And do you have a typology for clients -- clients that you would have to help locally, you're talking about nuclear. Is that going to become your second segment? Now is that accompanied with what with an increase in offshore population? And my second question, I'd like to come back on what you said about the public sector in France. I know that it's limited, but is there not a risk that we have when we deal with major French companies like Airbus and Thales, if the elections have an impact, isn't this going to have an impact in turn on the visibility that you have for the next 10 years in the aeronautics sector?

The activities around U.K. and France for nuclear activities are good. We also have a very nice position in Spain and Germany apart from that. We also would like to make sure to be able to develop around IT. So we are currently working on a project together with Worldgrid and Alten to develop IT. So it's energy. But onshore activities, it's not only for nuclear, but also for other energy branches. We work mainly for operators. So it is EDF, but also Schneider, for instance, but this is really the target.

As regards aerospace, it's a world -- the world traffic is going to double every 10 years. So I mean, honestly, the French elections are not going to impact this kind of development. It's a market which is developing, increasing. Airbus is going to deliver more, the Germans also. So I mean, this is what we have. And -- but now I do not know what kind of decisions are going to be taken and the ones which will have an impact on the economy in general. It's not going to be Alten or Airbus. I think what is its stake goes far beyond presidential elections. Maybe you have another opinion. No. Indeed, says Bruno, if you look at the real subject, that's the arrival of COMAC on this market, and they want to accelerate the development to really make a difference. The C919 has not been certified yet, but it's probably going to be -- so it is the competitor, the newcomer, in fact, within 5 to 10 years.

But that's going to be positive for investments in terms of R&D and projects. with all the different projects that go along with it with data, et cetera. But the presidential elections won't have any impact on Airbus activities. Yes. And the public sector, by the way, is this going to be impacted? We are not really exposed to that.

Next question. Derric Marcon has a question.

I have 4 questions. The first one as regards AI. We started talking about it 2 years ago. It will go on for a while. Can you tell us a little bit more -- can you tell us more about the expectations of customers who would like to have more with less people? Is this -- is it possible to qualify that to say what kind of projects are concerned and the budget of R&D where AI well, where the customer do not want -- doesn't want to diminish or to reduce the R&D cost because of AI or with AI. Then electronics, could we say a few words about that? Because are they more focused on building new companies and new factories instead of working on projects.

But what do you see in the coming 12 months compared with the one that we just went through? The third question regards is about North America with H2, which is better than H1. What are the different improvement sectors that you are aiming at? And then within the figure that you gave, Renaud, have you taken into account the acquisitions which were made, EUR 7 million by end of December last year, and it went on diminishing. The earn-out, I thought was consolidated, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Derric, I'm going to try to answer your 4 questions. So first of all, the team, which was mentioned by Cyril is the team, which is around the Comex. It doesn't mean that we have only this number of people participating. We have 30 in Morocco, 30 in India, technical management, roughly 15 people. So in terms of investment, -- and we have much more than that. In fact, if we -- without reinvoicing, we have the AI tools, innovation departments really investing on AI. So it goes beyond that. And in terms of business impact, what happens is that when you have teams working on the customer side, they request for similar task for a similar project where you calculate in terms of hourly production.

Indeed, the customers sometimes ask for a reduction. But now obviously, we are also in competition with other companies, which are also going to use AI and offer savings. in time and productivity. But we managed to keep up with our position on the customer side because we do more business. And for a project with 10 people instead of going down to 8, we are going to work on another project that we would not have been able to get if we had eliminated 2 people. This is what I call the management gains. It is compensated on Alten side. I mean, the loss of work due to AI is compensated by working on new projects. So it could have been worse. But it is a market share gain because thanks to AI, you save money.

But I mean, that's -- it has been going on for 20 years. We have a lot of gains on productivity for quite a while. It was not called AI. It was called IT, but it's the same. And when we say that the turnover in the automotive sector went down, it does not mean that we have less engineers working there. It only means that the daily cost of an engineer wherever he or she is located is devised by 2. So globally, we will have as many engineers in the automotive sector than in the aerospace one. And if we have to put everyone in China one day, well, sincerely, I don't even want to talk about that because I hope it's something to take place.

But yes. But as regards AI, the costs are -- is it possible to invoice the customer? And if yes, how much does it represent at the group level?

Real cost, it is roughly EUR 12 million. We do not reinvoice them. It's an investment. Unfortunately, and I mentioned that before, the savings that AI brings in productivity, our projects last for 1.5 years in average. So as soon as we reached a new project, the customer says, well, for the same kind of work and the same unit, number of units, we have this and that to do, and I would like to have a discount of 10% to 15%. So it is extremely difficult to keep our savings. The ones who could keep the savings of AI, but I'm not so sure about that, are those having a BPO like in Indian. I mean, they have 300 people, the support of a software for an administration or a key account, they are going to put that in India, and it's going to be cheaper.

They also have with their own internal universities and internal trainees, they had important savings. But in R&D, the projects are renewed on new subjects every 1.5 years. So we do not have the time to keep the savings for us. I don't know if you understand what I say.

Yes, yes. And the EUR 12 million, that includes the management and not only the tools.

No, no, no, no. Everything is included, the tools, the platforms, the investments, everything. This is part of what we call the not reinvoiced costs or investments at the technical management level. And like the ones that are working on the accelerators, yes. There is one thing. I mean, no one is -- has understood the market or yet. It is the cost of tokens, which are associated with projects. The explosion of costs is really high. We have a platform that we target to make things easier. We are trying to look at the LLM typology for an AI investment, it's necessarily going to be increased.

At a certain time, the discussion with customers will be about reinvoicing the tokens, which have been used. There is no other choice.

Yes, that was part of my question. Do you reinvoice?

No, like the salary cost of the engineer plus the cost of tokens, et cetera.

No, not yet. This is what Simon told you about. It's not part of the DNA. We are selling what our engineers do. Now we have to develop support tools. We will have to do that because we're going to have secondary costs like, for instance, when the customers required work packages, we included technical management costs. We have a margin, which is linked to that. We were asked to develop projects within our walls. So within our buildings and facilities. So we have included that too. That's so much per day. Now maybe we will have also to integrate all the AI tools according to the project typology. It's not done yet. We have to learn how to do it.

Okay, fine. And we start with the PMO activities to do that because the correlation between service delivering intellectual property and work which is being done will have to change. And then we have our engineers working on the customer side. And then they use the customers' tokens and infrastructure because it's internal and sometimes it's at our level. As regards electronics, this market is complicated. We do not have so much of it. And I regret it because I am an electronics engineer. So why don't we have so much of it? Because we need a very wide category of population. When you have a work package, it takes precision technicians, blue collars, test equipment, labs, you have to deliver e-cards, which have been tested, et cetera.

So it is not really part of the DNA Alten where we have only engineers. It's complicated for us or we should have to pair up with other providers. But sometimes we have a partnership with other companies to deliver electronics. But usually, electronics is really put aside. We do not have so -- we have a little bit technical assistance -- or technical support, but not so much. I was thinking at the semiconductors. Well, semiconductors There, we have 800 people working for all the big companies of semiconductors between U.S.A. and India.

We would like to ramp up to, I don't know, 1,500. But the prices of companies working on semiconductors, that's 3x the turnover. That's a little bit scary. And we don't know if it's going to be sustainable. We almost signed 3. And each time negotiation failed on due diligence or requalification of the real EBIT anyway, complicated. So in mechanics, yes, we are moving on very slowly, 1,000 engineers based mainly in the U.S. We have a few activities in Germany, but that's it. ASML, that's a machine. This is where we are very present, 500 people working with it, but this is not semiconductor. It is the industrial equipment machine sector, and this is different.

As regards North America, that creates a link with what I was saying. North America is strategic. We have a little bit less than 3,000 engineers working on that for American projects, of which half is doing the low-cost development in India or in Mexico. And Colombia also because it's really moving, it has become interesting for the U.S. market. We have to capture 10,000 engineers on projects in the North America. We are looking like man for acquisitions, but we don't have so many. The Indians, they win markets in the U.S.A., but they work in India. So what we are looking at are Indian companies working and serving American customers. But again, it's becoming more and more expensive. We will be successful in North America. The day we will manage to buy Indian companies.

It's -- most of the time, it's local to local. I talk about U.S.A. and not Canada. A lot for defense, aerospace and even Boeing is offshoring a lot to India. For defense, we will have to create -- to create a company with the CFIUS. So we think about that. The managers -- I mean, the best managers working in the defense sector in France are observing all that. They are -- they have set up a watch. And so it will be mainly to start with U.S. and India. And now to the earn-outs. We have bought up 2 companies, 1,000 people. We had one located positioned on the short earnout. That the volume is not very important. And I think that if we do what we have in the pipeline and if we make an official announcement, then we will have an important earn-out provision for '26. So it is already contained in the figure for '26. Yes, it's part of it.

Next question, [indiscernible].

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Well, thank you very much to the teams for those figures. I've put my question in the chat. I have a first question as regards the share of the world work packages. Could you tell us within the engineering?

Well, it represents almost 80% of turnover. We are quite mature, and it corresponds to the customers' wishes. We want to have teams managed by the technical management. The definition of the work package is not a lump sum package or project. We deliver a managed team with the technical management and around the competence. We measure the number of hours, and we deliver, again, a lump sum, I mean, it's extremely difficult because it's innovation, R&D specification change all the time.

And we spend a lot of time looking at the contract -- management contracts more than the work which has to be done. It represents today roughly 80% of our turnover in engineering. It's back to normal. In the IT services, this is what we call the yellow world at Alten, bank, finance, retail, distribution, et cetera. We deliver technical support, 1/3 of work package and 2/3 of technical support. And we organize that in terms of competencies, very precise competencies linked to a project or a specific request from the customer like market finances, et cetera.

Okay. I have 2 questions as regards AI. The counterpart, is that going to -- is that going to be an increase of 7% of engineers cost per year?

Not at all. It is the number of engineers which are requested. It has decreased by 7% in general, but we think it's going to be the end of the tunnel in 7 years' time. We -- once we have increased the productivity of AI. No one delivers a precise answer on that. It is what the AI officer told us. Those 7% are not going to be caught back by the increase of seniority or whatever. It is being done by the winning of more market shares. Yes. But if you could keep the productivity gains, you will see an increase, yes, of the margin of the margin. But unfortunately, as I said before, they want for each project to have the -- all the costs included.

And do you have requests from side of our customers to replace internal softwares packages by internal business solution that you develop for them? Have you observed that?

No. In the world of engineering that represents a lot of our turnover, we work on short-cycle innovation and not specific products. It exists in the world of IT services and all the big companies, ESN, Capgemini, I mean, Accenture and whoever, they have a department, which is called product and they develop specific applications for customers. This is not Alten's business at all. And you do not have any other models.

Well, okay, I talked about France. You've talked about Britain. I think there was EUR 74 million in risk that wasn't divided, and I thought that the subsidiary was then closed. So should we be looking at the constitutional provisions cash out in '26, '27?

I don't know. It's really scandalous, an English subsidiary, which develops a business outside France, which pays its tax according to French ratios. Then it's just been process after process, penalties this idea of fraud, we'd injected this injected, so they would have an audit over the 10 years, et cetera, is absolute racket, scandalous. And that's where we are. We have provisioned the amount. We are trying to feed that up the chain to the head of state. We're trying to put great pressure of this because this is a system which is generalized in many groups. When they have subsidiaries abroad, they try and pretend that it's a French subsidiary.

But when it's not actually, whereas this is all -- we have reduced activity there anyway. Yes. But what do you mean it's provisions? It's a second provision in the balance sheet. I'll let Bruno reply. For the reasons Bruno has explained, it's a very complex tax position. So that's why we fed up the chain to the Head of State. So '26, '27, we hope to have some results there to see exactly what's happened. But given the current political context, we can presume that this kind of decision will be taken out with the sort of a legal framework. And I'm really weighing my words here when I say it's a real racket. But thank you.

We have a question from Nicolas David.

I'm afraid there's -- I didn't hear that correctly. You're talking about turnover. You're saying that there weren't any gains in productivity, you aren't going to meet 2% or 4%. Is that not a little optimistic? Because if we see that there are opportunities elsewhere then with a given client, is this not linked to the fact that they could find less expensive projects, which will help infuse the budget and allow for other projects. So there's a gain in effectiveness even though the volumes are different. And you might think that this is linked to something else due to outsourcing or a hike in the R&D budget, et cetera. But actually, it comes down to the architecture of volumes. Everything is linked.

Well, the client maintains its budget in order to keep things simple. He's going to impose increased productivity, so less engineers for the same task, but reduces its panel of suppliers because every year, they review the supplier selection. We always manage to be in the top. So we have an extra market share. And that's pretty much how it happens because it's more practical for the client to do it like that.

So it's rather gaining -- you're talking about gaining more market shares than actually opening up new market shares because you're not really talking about unblocking a budget then you're trying to do the same or even more volume with the same budget in order to -- yes, when you talked about this 7% when we have to look at savings and needs and the volume of engineers with our clients. Well, we're going to offset that with the gains in market share by the Alten teams. I'm sorry, everybody is speaking at once there.

And if we had to compare this to offshore production and IT before you saw price reductions, reduction in salaries.

No, that's another process. The number of engineers staying the same, but the costs are divided by 3. So of course, that then cuts the turnover in 3 for the same number of engineers. That's what happened in the automotive industry. Yes, but this seems to be slower. Well, we're at 1,600 engineers who work in the automotive field. You know them. 15 years ago, they were all in France. Today, there are 1,600 engineers and the 200 of them, live in France and the rest are offshore. So it's different.

But you can remember the discussion that took place a few years ago when we were talking about offshore, onshore and how it was going to be catastrophic. But we've all seen what's happened and the reality -- the reality is that growth was improved. So I think we're looking at the same type of phenomenon. We're not looking at soft skills and production. It's going to be done differently, but it's pretty much the same process and the budget remains. The budgets are used different, shared out differently.

I think I've seen the time. I know that so much is happening in Alten, we could stay for another 2 years, but I thank you for -- 2 hours, pardon me. Thank you for having participated in this meeting. We are obviously available to take any extra questions afterwards by mail, et cetera. And I hope that you have all the information that you need for Alten at the moment, and I'd like to wish you all an excellent day and a great weekend. Thank you very much, and goodbye.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

[Interpreted] Hello, everybody, and thank you very much to participate in this conference. We will talk about the activity at the H1 2026. I think that everybody received the press release, which was published a few minutes ago. I would like to tell you a little bit more about the different activities at today's day. And you will see that for the second quarter, you will also -- we will highlight also the second quarter. The first quarter has been much better than anticipated. We will come back a little bit later on, on the split up according to regions.

We have a relaunch in a certain number of sectors for the first quarter, but the second quarter turned out to be much more dynamic than anticipated, thanks to a few sectors, which accelerated the growth rhythm for the whole half year. This helped Alten to return to organic growth when we did not anticipate that before the second half year '26, and good news. At the end of June '26, the turnover is at almost EUR 2 billion, which is an increase by 1.2%, an increase. In France, we have increased by 4.4%. And out of France, we have a decrease of 0.5%. The exchange rate has been a negative effect. And at constant scope, the activity rose by 1.6%, and it is 3.3% in France and 0.8% outside France.

At the second quarter, in particular, working to go immediately to that page. The turnover is at EUR 1.055 billion. It is an increase of 3.3% compared with the second quarter of '25. It is an increase of 2.2% out of France. At the constant scope and exchange rate, the activity of the group has increased by 2%, 6.5% in France and 1.5% outside of France. I remember that there is no calendar effect for the second quarter. The total of the activity has -- was at 91% for the second quarter, which means that we have 91.1% rate of activity by the end of the first half year.

The activity of the group increased again after stabilizing by the end of the first quarter. We had 450,000 people working for Alten. We are 58,000 by the end of June, of which 12 -- of which 58,000 engineers. Alten has divested a company which was specialized in life sciences at the international level. We had 61 consultants. The M&A has contributed to 800 people, more engineers than we had foreseen, 400 people more by the end of the first half year, 150 in France and 250 outside of France.

According to regions now. This is the dynamic of our activities. It's important to compare Q1 and Q2 in sequences to understand what has happened for the whole half year. In France, we stabilized during the first quarter, thanks to aerospace, an activity that accelerated strongly in Q2 because you see that we went from 0.3% to 6.5%, thanks to aerospace, which is increasing by 20%, the train also Defence, Security and Naval with more than 13%. And this is only for France. Nuclear grid and equipment for energy have also grown by 3%. Automotive industry has declined, which is representing only 8.5% of the turnover in France, but has declined even furthermore.

Then in Life Sciences, Telecom, Treasuries and other activities are still declining slowly, which means that globally, carried and supported by Aerospace, Defence sectors, we have this increase of 6.5%, which means that we have an increase for the half year of 3.5%. The Iberic zone, global increase of 10.3%. All the activities there are increasing like for the Q1, those we -- it represents in the aerospace and defence sector more than 10%. In Italy, we had a slowdown during the Q1, but it reaccelerated during Q2 with an increase of 3.2%, which means 2.2% increase for the half year globally. It is the bank and finance activity that represents a little bit less than 50% of the turnover in Italy that shows the greatest decline. All the other activities are increasing and developing, including the automobile sector.

In Germany, the performance is really remarkable and has to be pointed out because Germany went through a certain number of quarters, which really have shown a decline, '24, '25 have been like down, but it stabilized during the last quarter of '25. And the first quarter '26 helped us to almost reach the balance on a year-to-year basis. And Q2 has an organic growth of 4.5%, which helps Germany to be growing for this half year of 1.1% growth. The automobile sector represents a little bit less than 30% of our turnover in Germany. It is year-on-year basis declining, but the sequential growth has slowed down because it is between 5% and 10% nowadays. Still, the OEMs are declining strongly and the part of the activity at BMW, which is positioned on the AOUG shows slow and little margins. But Aerospace has strongly increased to reach beyond 25% of organic growth as well as Defence and Security with more than 10% of the global turnover in Germany and is growing by 30%.

In U.K., the activity is, again, part of the organic growth during the second quarter. The sectors for automobile and civil aeronautics is still declining, but Defence has more than 20% now and represents more than 10% of our turnover. The same for Energy. Energy represents 10% of the U.K. turnover, which is good. Public sector, we are present, thanks to the acquisition of the company, which is called [indiscernible] a few years ago. This public sector was declining over the past 2 years, but it is growing again. It's a slow growth, but it is a growth.

In Benelux, plus Benelux and Nordics are the geographic zones where we still have problems. But Benelux, the activity is stable in Belgium, is declining by 7.2% because of half conductors and energy. In Eastern Europe, the growth rhythm has slowed down only 2.2%. Poland represents the 3/4 of the zone has stabilized the activities, whereas in Romania, 1/4 of this activity of the zone is declining by 13% because of automobile and bank and finance.

In Nordics, to end up with Europe, the decrease of the activity has slowed down, but is at 12% for H1. In Sweden, we still have minus 10% and in Finland, minus 15%. North America, the situation is increasing -- is improving by and by -- it is changing from the organization point of view. Management organization has changed and the perspectives are favorable despite the first quarter, but we are hopeful for the second quarter. In North America, the activity has declined by 3.3% globally, but it has -- it has developed favorably.

In the United States, we still have an important activity, thanks to the automobile industry. It represents 50% of the turnover. Life Science and Retail Services are declining. But we are observing an interesting increase in telecoms, aeronautics as well as other industries. Canada represents 1/4 of the zones is increasing by 6% and growing by 6.6%. Those 2 sectors -- this activity is supported by the main activities in Canada and then we have an increase of -- we did not talk so much about Mexico because the activity is at the margin. However, the activities represented there like automobile industry is -- the activity is interesting because they really act on the local market as well as a little bit on the American U.S.A. market.

Asia Pacific growth is back again since the beginning of the year, stable activity in China. It is 1/3 of the zone. The activity is growing strongly in India. 1/3 of this zone in Defence, Energy, Electronic, and Services. In Japan, another 1/4 of the zone, an increase growth of 4%, thanks to Services, but Korea declined by 4% because of the automobile industry, but it represents lesser activity. So you see that for the second quarter compared with the first quarter, we have very encouraging signs, positive signs [indiscernible] because growth is accelerating in those activities, driving the business or by and by stabilization of the activity according to geographical zones.

If we look now at the activity according to the different sectors where we are present. Automobile, 13.6% of the whole turnover, which is stable, 13.7%. It is a proof that the activity stabilized. It is still on a year-to-year basis at -- declining by 11%. However, the activity is increasing and is improving during the second quarter because we had minus 12.7% during Q1. It's only 10% now for the second quarter. The activity, which is really stabilizing, we can say, and where the decline of the activity is slower on the OEM side, that represents 14% of the activity. It means that this activity is really stabilized from a sequential point of view, 20% decline on the OEM and equipment part.

Rail, we have 3% turnover -- 3% of our turnover. Here, we have an improvement during Q2. Aerospace, obviously, representing 17.6% of our turnover is also increasing growth. We have plus 20% for the whole first half year, a very strong growth on the constructor point of view. We had anticipated that. We have also the whole equipment and service part of aerospace, where the growth is only of 8%. Defence, Security and Naval, 9.7% of our turnover goes on developing very strongly, plus 20% for Q2, which means plus 17.3% for the half year. Energy, 11.9% of our turnover has increased by 3.3%, thanks to nuclear grid and also oil and gas, which is positive again for the year '26 so far.

Life Sciences. Here, we have the decline has slowed down during the second quarter, a decline of 6% for the second quarter, which is stabilizing for medical equipment that represents 17% of this part -- turnover of this part as also pharma industry. Pharma industry is still decreasing, a decline of 5% on year-to-year. But we have several parts which are developing and growing again. But unfortunately, the decline is due to our 2 main customers, Sanofi and Novartis. They are important for us, but the investment in Europe, in particular, in France, has decreased.

Industrial equipment, electronics and semiconductors is declining, but it represents 8.1% of our turnover. We have a decline of 2.2% for the whole quarter. Unfortunately, the one-off electronics and semiconductors still decreases even if -- from a sequential point of view, it tends to stabilize. Telecom, minus 18.7% for the 2 quarters. The activity is still deteriorating at the operator's point of view, but it's better for the equipment providers even if on year-to-year data remains negative. The financial sector, 8.5% of our turnover declined minus 2.7%. We have a very heterogeneous situation according to our customers. We have some bank customers in Italy, in particular, where the decline is quite important.

And then finally, the retail and public sector is increasing again at 11.3%. The services and public sectors are the drivers. They represent 5% of our turnover. And out of the 16.4% altogether, they are growing with a 4.5% growth rate. You see that ASD in particular, is really driving growth, but apart from telecom automotive also, which is still declining and the subsector of semiconductors, we have, let's say, a situation that tends to improve globally. And if they are not completely stabilized yet for the ones I mentioned, the decline is less strong than in the past.

So ASD, which is Aerospace, Security, Defence, Rail is really improving with the sensitive growth. We will see what the second half year will bring if it may be comforted in those sectors or not, if it's going to stabilize during the second half year. However, this activity, which is increasing is going to generate a global growth because of this end of the half year's results, which are positive. As M&A is concerned, during the last call, I told you that we have acquired Klanik, EUR 68 million turnover, 12% internationally. We also acquired a small company in Germany with EUR 22 million turnover, 230 consultants. They are specialized in the automotive sectors, mechanical design as well as software-defined activities, which is the validation of quality insurance and project management.

Those subjects are interesting. And this company is specialized. Again, in Germany, it is extremely difficult to outsource. So this is why we have acquired this company. So it is -- and it is a performance, I mean, the EUR 22 million revenues. We have, as I said before, divested a company which is specialized in life sciences, and international activity. They were working on clinical studies on the basis of ownership, which was showing deficit. We took the decision to stop complementary investments in this activity because it's quite marginal in this group. It represented only EUR 11.3 million revenues for the year '25. So we divested and we are going to deconsolidate it. Well, we have already deconsolidated it on the 1st of March this year. This is the reason why the reference turnover is EUR 4.91 million, something, if I remember well.

So the outlook for '26 because of this good half year and despite the geopolitical circumstances, which are completely uncertain and despite also the development of the Iran conflict that goes up and down. So despite a very unpredictive context, we decided to increase the forecast for the year '26. We did not take into account the very brutal deterioration of any kind of those situations I mentioned before like Iran. But it seems that the markets get used to it, and they do not overreact anymore. So this is why we reevaluate our organic growth because of the second half year, we reevaluated between 1.4% and 1.8% for the whole year. And this 1.8%, which is the upper evaluation is still critical.

The improvement of the operational margin will happen during the second half year. I have indicated -- I had indicated 8.8% altogether. We believe that for the whole year '26, we will have an operational profitability of, let's say, overall 9%. But we will confirm that in September during the publication of the results, and maybe we will have the opportunity to do some fine-tuning at that moment.

This is it for my part. So I suggest that we move on to questions and answers. Maybe we could open up to questions, if you don't mind.

[Interpreted] Yes. Thank you very much. We open up to questions and answers. We have the first one from Mr. Laurent Daure, who raised his hand.

[Interpreted] Bruno, I have 3 questions. The first one is we have a relaunch, but also uncertainties in terms of recruitment. What is the policy of the group? What is the strategy of the group? Then for Aerospace, maybe if you could detail a little bit the kind of projects which are growing in -- as regards to Airbus in particular. And then to the buybacks, the buyback may go up to 7%, if I remember well. Where are we there in terms of buyback and also M&A because we had an amount of money, which was to be put in relationship with the second half year. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more.

[Interpreted] As regards recruitment, the HR policy and strategy is particularly opportunistic. Had you raised the question during the last call, how many people are we going to recruit during the second half year, I would not have said 400. First of all, because there was no forecast, there was no budget. Second, because honest -- to be very honest, we were not expecting the recruitment of so many people because we have not anticipated this increase of our activity during the first half year.

So the recruitments are done by the operations and the businesses because it is completely decentralized and done according to projects. So if growth goes on like that, the -- we have more than 92% activity rate for the time being in the work package activity goes on and that brings us about having enough engineers to answer and to process the tenders. So we have shorter delays now, which means that if we go on growing like that, we will go on recruiting. But to be very honest with you, it is impossible for me to deliver any kind of forecast. It will depend on the forecast. And it will depend on the activity. I can't tell you more according to the context.

Now as regards the Aerospace activities, we externalize any kind of projects. We have an increase -- a very nice increase of projects in the field of concept. Airbus went back to investments in R&D. We still have projects in the field of engineering. We still have projects in data. And even if it represents an activity which is lesser for Alten, we also have IT activities. So we cover all the references of the group. And to the contrary of engineering which was driving the activity, we can say that the whole portfolio of the activity is represented there.

And as regards buyback, we bought back 4.1% of the capital. We know that we can go up to 7%. We have also acquisitions we do not have really restructuring activities that would mean that we really have to borrow money because, et cetera. But for the buyback, we had indeed, as you have mentioned, had set 2 limits, the M&A limit, but is not going to limit -- we are not going to be limited in terms of M&A. The second limit is the stock exchange rate. So we have a share rate, which has been defined. I don't know if it is good to keep up with this policy. However, we spent EUR 87 million in this buyback program. It is going to be prolonged during August. And in September, we will see if we stop at 7% or even before.

[Interpreted] Ms. Nicolas David over to you.

[Interpreted] I have 3 questions. First is something like details 91.8%, and that means a [indiscernible] of 92%. Is that right? We are just slightly above 92%, yes. Is that is a bit heating up. Is that right?

[Interpreted] No, we aren't overheating. That would be 93%, 94%. No, 92% is our normal level. We have had trouble keeping it up, but we have had trouble keeping it up in recent years, but we have been able to hold a level of 91%, 91.3%, which isn't bad, but thanks to the recovery of activity, we are coming back to the normative Alten level of 92%, that seems to me to be remarkable with the kind of heterogeneous growth that we've been seeing in this kind of context. I remember if I remember, it was quite difficult. The automobile, which is dropping; ADS, which is aero, defence that is growing strongly. Is there something a model, something that's been done to allow this, something different, something new? Or is it something -- it's not strategy? What it's an average, of course, yes, it's an average. It's a weighted average. And so there are sectors.

It's not so much the sectors, but it's the countries. Within certain countries of the sectors, we have intercontract levels that are much higher than the 8% and intercontract in the wider sense, it's invoicing that is much higher than that. There are even places when we are -- where we are asking ourselves, should we not adjust our personnel if the level of activity doesn't improve. But there are other areas, other places where we feel that there's a lot of recruitment and we need to face demand and growth within a given country, we might have skills that move from one sector to another, and it's good to manage it. But different skills aren't always -- cannot always be transferred from one sector to another. So we need to regulate on one hand and recruit on the other.

[Interpreted] And my other question is -- could you go back to the automobile sequence? As OEM from quarter-to-quarter have improved, but the equipment manufacturers are dropping, but the sector is stabilizing. That was the case in Q1 and Q4. Is there still a scenario year-on-year where we might -- maybe around Q4 where we might have absorbed the decrease? Or at the end of the day, are we going to just have to note this drop and will not return to growth in the near future?

[Interpreted] Yes, I think we will be in 2026, year-on-year will be -- will continue to drop in the automobile industry. There are OEMs where growth has relaunched, has recovered, has restarted. One is CBM 1 where -- as I mentioned, there was a drop, but decrease, but we stopped answering tenders where the margins were very low, very narrow. So of course, we've lost a number of projects that are -- have very narrow margins that we don't always compensate for with BM in work package activity.

But on the other hand, if that German OEM shows growth, I'm not going to give the names of the different OEMs. But according to certain geographical regions, if I look at the U.S., some OEMs are growing, others are decreasing. In France, we are growing almost everywhere even if there are -- we are growing, particularly with Stellantis and Renault. It's slightly more complicated with Renault. Stellantis is growing complicated with Renault. In Sweden, it remains complicated. In Germany, there are OEMs that have started growing again. We have an overall outlook that is globally improving in the automobile industry.

Just a year ago, we were all over dropping, decreasing. But at the moment, as I said, given the details that the European Union has been given as to regulations for OEMs who are defining their own strategy and each person, it requires a recovery of investment, and we will be coming back to this in Europe. That's for sure. But I do hope that we will be stabilizing that activity at the beginning of 2027, year-on-year sequence in sequential approach with OEMs by the end of the year, but with equipment manufacturers who depend on the OEMs, there's always discussions ongoing as for the part -- the share of European components that must be included in vehicles that are made at least produced by European OEMs.

That discussion is still ongoing and the situation with a number of equipment manufacturers is still complicated. Year-on-year, we are still at minus 20%. It will end up by stabilizing because the activity has dropped so much that once it will no longer be able to drop any further. When we were thinking about manufacturers, the situation is going to be -- if it doesn't improve, if it doesn't stabilize, the decrease should slow down, but that hasn't happened yet. Fortunately, that's less than 20% of the automobile industry turnover. So we should expect less decrease in T3, T4, but still decreasing in the automobile industry and hoping that 2027, things will recover.

[Interpreted] Last question was as for the guidance during Q2 is lower than -- is weaker than Q3. I know that automobile is during the second half, automobile is going to stop -- is going to slow its decrease. Is it Aerospace and Defence that's going to compensate? Or is there other sectors that are maybe going to slow down as well?

[Interpreted] We have been looking at hypotheses that are quite relevant for H2 because we have no visibility on the additional growth of H2. Of course, projects that started at the beginning of the year in S1, they will continue in S2. So they are in our project portfolio well established, but then decrease part of it depends on the onboarding decrease. But for the next semesters, we have looked at hypothesis of growth that have been fairly prudent. We mustn't forget that we have Q4 2025 that was a good one, even if it was still decreasing, but it surprised us by being more -- less decrease than we thought.

There has been what we call the end of semester project interruptions that were quite important at the end of '25 that were quite high and surprised us. And we explained at the previous call, end of March, we recovered the level of activity that we had at the end of December '25.

So -- in fact, there is some growth on ST, but there is a dip during the semester, but we are now at the -- above our level of activity at the end of '25, and that had not happened to us in '25. We hadn't found a level of activity of '24, neither had we found in '24, the level of activity at the end of '23. So these are positive elements that show a dynamic that is settling in, general improvement of activity. And as we had a Q4 fairly strong with a slowing decrease and new projects at the beginning of '26. That's not -- that wasn't particular for end of '25. At the end of every semester, we lose projects and then we, within 3 months, we recover them -- recuperate them. So in '26, it's gone better than in traditional years.

At the end of June, we also had a number of projects that came to an end, and that will be replaced by others in September. So we will maybe at the end of September, when we have the analyst meeting. I don't know if it might be a bit early, but at the beginning of October, in any case, for the third quarter, we should be able to see clearer with more details as to recovered projects and see further ones that will have been launched at the beginning of September. 1.4 is a worst-case scenario. So we can have a T3 that could be quite positive, but we need to be slightly more careful, cautious for T4.

We don't have any more questions for the time being. Yes, we do have a question. We have a question that comes from a phone number that I'm going to read. I'm going to let you speak up and please give your name and your name before you ask your question. Thank you.

[Interpreted] I have 3 questions. The first is on Life Science, the Sanofi shift in the U.S. And at the same time, I'm saying that in U.S., it's not really a good dynamic. Are projects that have been shifted or transferred in the U.S. That was my first question. Second question is as for acquisitions in Germany, you said there were specific activities, but I've heard testing quality, things that could be carried out by artificial intelligence. Can you tell me why you are so confident that these activities won't be replaced by AI?

And third question relating to Defence. We see there is a lot of growth in some countries, Germany, U.K. Can you tell us -- explain to us why this growth is so clear and how sustainable it is? Because we might say it's linked to an accelerator, a lot of CapEx, a lot of R&D? Or is it something that we can be basing ourselves on with the big defence industrial interests and that is going to last over time, like we've seen with Airbus and other of the big ones.

And one last little technical question. Q1 growth, is that linked [indiscernible] is that the end of March that you were spreading out to the -- all of the S1?

[Interpreted] I'm going to try to pick up the questions one after the other. As for Life Science, indeed, I believe that the policy of outsourcing clients is not homogenous depending on the region. The American context is probably less likely to be out -- is less favorable to outsourcing even if it will happen. But by losing a number of projects in France or in Europe because of transfers of investments to the U.S., we are not necessarily symmetrically picking up the same volume of activity with U.S. activity. That's for sure. It's a given. Then maybe there is also a commercial topic here that we maybe not be -- we haven't been as good performance in the U.S. It's neither one-to-one or project for project.

But overall, we could imagine that in the U.S., there is a lot more investment than proportionately, the volume of outsourcing, even if it's lesser, it is increasing and that we should be able to pick up part of that market that we don't pick up. I cannot tell -- say for sure, but probably going to be a mix of both effects. And the reality is that, indeed, what the figures are saying is that what you are seeing, yes.

In Germany, my quality testing, I mentioned it because they do some of it. That's not the main core activity of the company. But even with those activities, particularly the testing activities, these are activities that have to be carried out on location, on vehicles. Less risk of these activities being either outsourced or given to AI. There has been -- they have lasted for quite a long time. We wanted -- we took our time, we started in '25 to talk with this company in 2025. It wasn't the best year to be talking about this because '23, '24 were meaningless for us, of course.

But -- so we wanted the trading for '25 results and the renegotiation of projects, pluriannual projects that were signed by this company at the beginning of '26. We waited to see those before deciding on a final investment decision in order to be certain that the turnover could be anticipated as being -- was realistic. The main part of this activity is onboarded electronics.

In the defence sector, yes, of course, there are clients who we did not have previously or that we didn't have many of who are growing in Germany, in the U.K., et cetera. I believe that this is -- history shows that Alten has begun to work with a number of clients. We have always developed our business relations with clients that we work with. When the activity of the client has contracted as in -- with the telecom sector, we, of course, stay alongside them during the contraction of an activity, but we've never worked for -- on a one-off basis with big clients. Projects that are ongoing because of -- and require pluriannual investment. I don't see how we could have investment strategies both in state level could be reconsidered.

In Germany, there are big transfer plans, people working in automobile industry towards the defence industry because of the German government planning to avoid hundreds of thousands of jobless people. They are hoping to use skills in other sectors. I'm not worried about the sustainability from a maybe not a 20% growth rate, but defence is going to represent a market which not so long ago was only 3% to 4% of Alten's turnover and now is up to almost 10% of our Alten's turnover, and it will grow to higher than 10%. Why not 15% if activities continue to develop as they seem to be. We are involved with some of the biggest defence companies. In Germany, it has grown, but it remains small. Even in the U.K., it's grown, but it remains small. We have development potential and growth potential that remains very high. And so it is a sector that I am very confident at Alten.

[Interpreted] As for the last question, for the divestment, our growth in the first term has not been modified. In your annexes, you have 0.3 at the Q1 and -- 0.3 in Q1 and 3.2 in Q2 and -- it may be a mistake in the slides because the turnover has not shifted.

[Interpreted] I'm going to check up on that. But the turnover figures have not shifted. We maintained during Q1, the company was still in our accounts. So there's no reason why the Q1 figures should shift. But the reference turnover figure has to be reconsidered for the second quarter and second semester, second half year. I'll be going back to that point, checking it and giving it -- giving more details.

[Interpreted] As for the U.S., one last question. You were talking about the change in organizations in management, I think you even mentioned. Can you explain what is ongoing, what projects are ongoing, where things -- we can look for improvements that have been identified? And what will be the setup of Alten in the U.S. once some of these projects are finished.

[Interpreted] We're not going to revolutionize our U.S. organization. We have been present through a number of different brands. Some of them are -- can be competing with each other, with joint clients, and they carry complementary tenders. So there is a transverse planning strategy of bringing together the different commercial resources, and that's ongoing by integrating not necessarily by merging these different companies, which for some don't have offer -- tenders that aren't -- have answered tenders that aren't in the U.S. There are a number of companies in the U.S. that have skills and who are working directly with India.

We have a company in China that works in the same way. But rather than everybody going higgledy-piggledy, we are hoping to be coordinated and rationalize the commercial strategy that we're going to be implementing, and we are looking at a new boss for the U.S., somebody who already has a commercial strategy for the U.S. who's identified the growth areas for the second half year. And even if we have remained cautious with our H2 prospects with decisions for organization and the implementation and then results, there's always a certain time delay. There has been an improvement in U.S. activity because we do believe we have a potential that is not exploited to its -- not exploited to its full potential.

[Interpreted] What has been the driving point for this decision? It was -- it had become clear that there was things lacking in the commercial strategy?

[Interpreted] No. Yes, it's true to an extent, yes, of course, because given that we have clients who are asking for a much more transversal organization of our activities because they want to talk to single correspondents, and they want to have easier access rather than a number of different correspondents with offers that are diversified. So that is part of our commercial approach, transverse strategy like -- which is why we are explaining in recent meetings that we are structuring our global sales account managers, particularly in the auto, the aerospace and energy and life science. These are processes that are -- that have been already initiated and that are part of the strategy in the coming times.

We have a number of people in important roles in the U.S. that have left -- and it has caused -- given us the opportunity to go and recruit managers, particularly a new boss for the -- all of the North American -- all of the Americas. He doesn't cover Canada at the moment. He's only covered the United States for the time being, but to review our approach and our strategy, it's someone who comes -- who's well established in the business, who knows the competition, knows the clients. He knows the Indian ecosystem as well with India. And so he will be able to develop -- work on developing -- do development that has not yet been carried out up to now.

[Interpreted] Have you -- will they replace people that managers that you've been sending to the United States?

[Interpreted] We had India and United States, there were some French managers. There are in the commercial organization, some French managers, but the main boss at the U.S. is an American now. His name is Bryan. The name of the man who left was Bryan. We now have an American boss with an Indian name, Indian from India, and we believe that he has real potential.

Do we have any further questions? We now have no more questions now. There is a question that arrived on the screen. Why has growth accelerated -- why did growth accelerate compared with your expectations in Q1? And why in Q1? And why do you think the rest of the financial year will see growth similar to that in Q2?

Why has our -- why did growth accelerate compared with the expectations in Q1? Well, why we had anticipated and identified growth dynamics in the SD, but we didn't think that growth would be so strong in those 2 sectors of activity. I never thought that we'd do more than 20% growth in Q2, even if we expect it to be between 10% and 15%. So it's actually good news is 20%.

I don't have any more questions either. So if there are no more questions from the participants, I am going to close this meeting. I remind you that the next meeting, the publication of our results will be on the 24th or 25th of September for H1. And I wish everyone good holidays and see you at the -- in September. Have a good evening, everyone. Thank you. Goodbye.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Hello, everybody. Hello. I would like to thank you for being with us for our conference, and we will talk about the figures by end of March 2026.

First quarter, which has revealed an activity. half notes, not really good. The figures you will see have improved for some of them and others are still decreasing. By the end of March 2026, we had EUR 1.7 billion turnover, which is a decline of 0.8% compared with the same period last year. In France, we progressed by 1.3% and out of France, minus 1.3%. We had bad conditions in terms of exchange rates. And we have managed to come back to an increasing organic turnover by 1.6%, which is stable out of France.

For this quarter, we have no calendar effect and the activity is almost identical to the one last year, and it had -- it is at a stable perimeter. At the same constant perimeter, we have improved the turnover, thanks acquisition. Alten was having 54,000 people working for this company. We are -- we have altogether -- 154,000 altogether, of which 51,851 engineers. The acquisition have contributed, thanks to the increase of the engineers part at constant perimeter, we have a better progression out of France.

According to the different geographical zones, this is what the activity looks like, and it has developed the following way. In France, the activity is stable, plus 0.3% year-to-year. The automobile sector is not decreasing by minus 1.9%. Aerospace, security, defense are increasing slightly. However, for dipping sciences, tertiary, telecoms, this activity has decreased.

In the [ Iberic ] zone, 85% for Spain, the rest of Portugal. The growth is still very positive. We have an increase of 6%, apart from the automobile sector, thanks to [ SEAT ] and a slight decrease in the bank. In Italy, the activity has slowed down. We have 0.2% decline apart from the bank and finances, which is declining more, but all the other sectors are increasing, including the automotive activity.

Germany, we have a performance, which with turnover is decreasing, in particular, because of the automotive sector, we had already the same phenomenon in '24 and '25. It seems that as we had indicated during the last communication that the activity is getting stable in Germany, year-to-year minus 2%. In the sequences, we will have a look and take a close look at that during the next quarter, but it seems that the activity is coming back to stable.

The automobile is decreasing by 30% year-to-year. But at the same time, the whole activity is slowing down in this sector. The aerospace representing 22% of the German turnover is at plus 2% year-to-year. Same for safety and security, it represents now 7% of the turnover and is increasing by 1%. Still in Germany, the activity is -- from a qualitative point of view, has strongly increased.

That's quality. We have started the sectorial development, but this policy really reveals to be fruitful. We have -- we are hopeful and we hope that the activity is going to stabilize completely and will turn back to growth by the end of the year.

U.K., the activity is stable for this quarter. The automotive sector is representing 10% and aerospace civil is still declining, both activities, but defense is increasing by more than 1% that represents 10% of the turnover, the same for energy. As regards the public sector, that represents 40% of the British turnover, the decline has stabilized now.

Benelux, the activity is still declining, but is improving by and by. In Belgium, the activity is stable, but it declines in the Netherlands because of the half semiconductors for [ KSML ]. In Eastern Europe, a decreasing activity of 5.6%. Poland represents the 3/4 of the zone declined by 3%. Romania is losing 3% because of the tertiary sector. Nordics, it remains the only geographical zone where the decline is still very important. In Nordics, the activity has a drawback by 6%, even if we know that overall, it tends to reach the minus 5%. And still the same reasons. automobile, life science and [ office ] activity. In Finland, it's a little bit better, close to 0 for tool machines.

North America, the activity has decreased by 5%, but we think that it's going to increase in the coming quarters. The United States represents -- of America, represents a decline by 10%, but that's because of automobile industry and life science. It is stable progressively and stabilizing in Canada, a plus 7%, thanks to aerospace and bank and finance.

Then Asia Pacific that is back to growth this quarter. The activity is stable in China, 1/3 of the zone, increasing more than 10% in India, another 1/3 and 6% growth in Japan and Korea decreases strongly because of the automobile industry. Considering as we usually do, if we consider the activity by sector, the automobile industry represents 13% of Alten. However, it declines and it goes on by 2.6%, a little bit less in sequential analysis. OEMs are declining too. And hopefully, by the second quarter, we will reach the balance, maybe at the third quarter rail.

As we had indicated during the last conference, rail needs to tackle modernization. Growth is back during the first quarter, which is -- represents 10% of this activity in a sector that should progress further on in '26 over the whole year. We hope that the problems of Alstom, as you could read in the press is not going to bring them about to decrease their investments.

Aerospace has confirmed the growth of last quarter last year. Even aerospace has really reacted very well. Defense, Security and naval goes on to progress very strongly. We have almost 10% increase year-to-year. Energy, 10% of the overall turnover has progressed, thanks to nuclear energy. Life Sciences are declining and go on declining, only 7% of the turnover. Industrial equipment and pharma is also declining by 7%. That's -- no, sorry, that's still Life Science.

Industrial Equipment and Electronics this time as well as semiconductors is declining by 8%. In the overall industries, we have minus 6%. The activity tends to stabilize by and by, and we hope it will turn stable at the second or even third quarter.

Telecoms, that's the only field of activities, which is really at minus 18%, a very strong decrease. It is a decline that has to be split up between operators and telecom. Then we have bank finances insurance. Last quarter was positive of EUR 25 million, but now it slightly decreases during this first quarter because of France, Italy, Spain and Southern Europe in general.

But there is one activity that has increased in other geographical fields where bank finance insurance is important. It is Portugal, Poland as well as North America or Canada. And then it has to be pointed out public service and retail. This was decreasing over the last quarters. But during the first quarter '26, it has rebounded, and we have a slight decrease only. We hope it's turning back to stability, and we hope we will grow again during this year of '26.

So you see that globally, apart from the telecom sectors, all the activities are coming back to growth or are stable. This looks much better for all our activities than 1 year ago. And for -- and as well as for this first quarter, that tends to confirm the stabilization of our activities. As M&A is concerned, we have signed but not completely closed. It will happen in the coming days, a company for which we have for which we have communicated about it's [indiscernible]. We signed 2.5 months a year ago.

They have EUR 60 million turnover, a company that has 470 consultants, many external people working for this company. They are working on data, IT, cloud software development. It's a company that reinforces our critical size in IT in France, in particular, out of Paris, Southeast of France, but not only.

Our forecast for the year to come. macroeconomic, geopolitical context is of a high uncertainty. And so it is extremely difficult to have a forecast. However, in this given environment, we are working in environment which is not taking into account a deterioration that could happen because of the war in Iran. We forecast an organic growth between 0% and minus 0.5% for the whole first half year. And according to this hypothesis, the operational margin should increase compared with the one that we achieved in '25. We have no precise guidance for this time.

Of course, we talk about operational margin of the activity. We do not expect an explosion. The increase of margin is going to happen by and by and will be strongly marked by what we are hoping for and the different sectors back to growth. But we thought that the margin at 8.6% during the year '25 well, this margin is going to be higher in '26. And now I am going to hand over to you, participants to this conference.

If you want to raise questions, you are very welcome and I will answer your questions. Thank you very much. So we open now for the question and answer.

Nicolas David has a first question. He has raised his hand, and you have the floor, Nicolas David.

Here I am. I would like to come back on the guidance. I understood that it does not take into account a degradation even at the bottom. But I'm surprised because when we hear the comments, we hear a lot of increase or stability, automobile, but also even Germany, if there is an increase, if there is an improvement, then do we have countries who are going to deteriorate? It is just countries or activities? Is it possible to find out if it has a link with Iran? This is my first question.

Well, data is being published on a year-to-year basis. Now you have to understand that there is a business dynamism. We have a first quarter, which is quite acceptable from an activity point of view. But this can be explained by 2 different things.

First of all, we had a first and second quarters of '25, which were not good with the -- coming back to growth by the end of the last quarter. And then at the beginning, of the first half year '26, it degraded again a little bit because you know that's how it is. It's the beginning of the year. We have projects that do stop on the 31st of December, and then it goes up again. And during those activities and expansion periods, we again come to crossroads with the loss that we had at the beginning of the quarter, which is going to be mixed with the growth that has been generated.

Now this year, I mean this has come true again. For the first half year '26, we have lost a certain number of projects. And now we are still trying to catch up, but we have not reached yet the end of '25. It's going to happen. It was not done before. I think it is going to be achieved in '26, except if we have a real degradation of our activity. But the level of activity for the first quarter and even half year is going to be -- no, first quarter is going to be higher compared with the first one of '25, but we're not back to the situation end of '25.

So to be clear, even if there is a certain dynamism which is okay and others which are less okay, I mean, we have countries that still decline and even sectors of activities that decline, we also have the contrary that goes into the good direction where we are going to be -- to reach a certain stability even if we do not go beyond, but we will reach the 0 level.

This is why the uncertainty is about how is it -- how will we regain projects? And what about the amount of projects we're going to lose. But this has nothing to do, if I may say, with the economic context that we are in. It has to do with this kind of cycle of our activities usually. It has always been like that. So we will see what happened by the end of the first quarter, and this will be the first trend, if I may say so. But we have to wait. I don't know if this answers your question.

But to be even more precise and what about the minus 0.5%? Well, first of all, you understand that the gap -- I mean, we have not put minus 2%, plus 2%. We have a gap which corresponds to our convictions today to what we are hoping in and what we observe on the market. There is a growth dynamism, which is very sensitive in particular, as regards aerospace, defense, and this should not be destroyed because this -- even if things are better in the automobile industry, I mean, it has dropped so much that at a certain point, you reach the bottom.

But there are other sectors that decline and decrease. So what we can say today is that the war in Iran has so far no consequence on the dynamic of our customers. It is a 0 effect. There is no effect. There is no consequence. But we do not know because even our own customers are not able to deliver any kind of indication. We don't know if the consequence is going to be deferred in time, maybe summer after summer or never.

And according to what already happened, we will -- we have to wait to see the possible consequences. However, we can't say what is going to happen there. Maybe there is going to be a major oil shock. However, again, we do not know anything about the consequences. So we have no worst case. It is a worst case at, let's say, roughly around 0.5%. And we are absolutely unable with this war in Iran to say anything better than that.

That's quite clear.

Plus it's far away, a lot of uncertainty. So for the SPE, there is this 0.5 and it's logical. For the second quarter '25, the second half year '25 even, we had a sequential worsening of the situation. Now it is the second quarter '25. I can't even understand how the year-to-year T2 of the quarter of this year, '26 could be better because minus 20% would mean a scenario of strong degradation. I can't observe that.

The minus 1% for the second quarter is careful, prudent. There will be a sequential degradation because the second quarter is always lower than the first quarter. And then the question is, is this the result because we have less days, working days? Or is it because we have an additional decrease because of the internal functioning of our company? We also had a slight stop of projects by the end of the first quarter this year, a little bit more important than last year, but we are catching up with it.

So it hindered a little bit the whole mechanisms. We took that into consideration, and we will see by the end of the quarter what we do. Organic growth, the second quarter will be identical or slightly inferior to the same quarter, but last year. And in the worst case, we would have a minus 1%, minus 1.2%. It's extremely difficult to proceed to a forecast at this detailed level at the beginning of this quarter.

And the drop in headcount, does that reflect the degradation?

Yes, yes, exactly. However, the activity levels are still okay. I mean we have -- we do not anticipate on a loss of contract for the second quarter.

Okay. And a last one before I hand over to others. How do we explain the decrease in electronics and semiconductors? How do you explain that? Is it specific to Alten? Is it specific to the market? Could it really go back to growth?

[ ST Microelectronics ] are back to growth. This is an excellent question. We have exactly the same kind of question, by the way. And yes, we would like to understand and for reasons that we all know, it is an expanding sector. So either the sector is less externally organized and the investments are about production and less on subjects that we are working on like [ SML ]. SML, we know very well.

What we know -- we can't speak for all the sector, but for SML, we know despite a backlog with a very positive year and investments, the investments will start again. But for the time being, the subcontractors do not profit from it. So nor do we nor do the competitors.

So is it possible to extend that to the whole sector? I don't know, and I'm not sure. In the sectors of semiconductors, we have [ ASML ], Samsung, [ STMicko Electronics ], et cetera. So what is surprising is that on all of those accounts, we have a degradation of the turnover. So either it is a dynamic that has to be broken down sector by sector or we are bad and we do not have the right sales strategy to develop those accounts, and they are still very important for Alten. So we will have to investigate a little bit to better understand. I understand the question. I do not have the answer.

I think it's probably better to remain quite cautious at this juncture anyway. We don't really have the comfort of the certain amount of visibility in order to be particularly confident at this stage.

Now let's move to another question, Laurent Daure, over to you.

I have 3 questions. The first is related to the aeronautic section, which is slightly better after the last few quarters. But you see what's happening with regards to air traffic. Well, do you have any concerns about an eventual slowdown at the end of the year? What have you heard from [ Airbus ], et cetera, that would be interesting to know.

And my second point, we're talking about margins, increasing margins. I just wanted to make sure that we were still on this dynamic salary versus price with the increasing strength of AI.

And thirdly, I want to talk about the acquisition that was announced. If you could share with us the profitability levels expected and see if the price paid is within standards, I suppose.

Well, yes, the last question, yes, we're within the traditional standards. It's not going to be any burnout in this company. We have paid some which are similar to other acquisitions in the past. in terms of profitability of the company, it's at 7%, 7.5% of operational margin, bearing in mind that this is a company for which the group margin, the gross margin is pretty good. And that means what? It means that there will be a potential improvement to 10% pretty quickly.

And when I say quickly, I'm talking about 2027. For margins overall, well, the dynamic is interesting. But let's bear in mind that we have less and less activity in classic time and material. And the challenge, therefore, is to really maintain the margins for our projectors to ensure the internal production is up to par in order to even improve it so that the clients have calls for tender, and they're going to consider the technical, but they're also going to look at the budgets that are allocated.

But overall, we are managing to stay afloat and to hold our gross margins in a fairly satisfactory fashion. It's always a mixture, isn't it? There are areas where it's less good than others. But at group level, the gross margin is holding up. With regards to the aeronautic section, well, this is why I haven't really made any specific commentary on Iran. because we really don't know what's going to happen. We haven't got much feedback from the field.

However, in my head, I believe I have some ideas. And I look at 2024, for example, where we had no warning or very slight warning before any crisis and then suddenly we were face-to-face with a work stoppage, project stoppages, one after the other, and that was in October 2024. Our clients, the traditional ones, people working in the field, don't have much information currently, which would allow us to anticipate any slowdown before the end of the year.

Now you know how it works. When the cash flow isn't there, well, the clients might very well decide to walk and to invest elsewhere from one day to the next. And it's not easy to predict this kind of information. Our direct clients are not necessarily informed of what's happening. Now today, we can see that for the last 2.5 years, we are changing. We're moving in an environment which is much less sure in terms of prediction because our own clients are often as unsure of what's happening as we are, particularly in terms of the budget.

So similarly, as in 2024, we were caught off guard, and we weren't the only ones, let me tell you. In 2025, when we published our first quarter, first semester, we're trying to anticipate a recovery of the aeronautic industry in 2026. But actually, we've gone much quicker than we expected, even if the clients have been faced with certain problems because budgets fell after summer.

So overall, it's generally satisfactory. But today, we just don't have any slowdown included in our predictions for Airbus for the end of the year. But we're not exactly forecasting an enormous expansion either. We have to remain focused, measured but we haven't forecast a slowdown in -- or a decline in activity. If we thought that the war in Iran was going to change everything, we would be obliged then, of course, to change the way we interpret all of the information we receive. But today, I think it would be [ inquisitive ] to do that because we just don't have the information.

And the acquisitions are going to be consolidated at the beginning of Q2?

No, no, no. So it will be at the beginning of Q3 if they are within the scope. And by that, I mean, they're able to provide what's necessary to get into those figures. Failing that, it will be the 1st of October.

Have you got many deals which have made a great deal of headway?

Yes, yes, we have deals on the table. They're not major deals, but we do have deals there. We have deals in Asia, in North America, in Europe, quite a few, which are taking a long time to be developed perhaps because of legal implications from the salespeople or because of the negotiations and some who are waiting because the results in 2025 weren't quite what were announced, and they'd like to prefer.

They would like to wait and see how the first quarter fare -- how they fare in the first quarter rather than getting involved in any kind of embedded vision. We have 2 fairly advanced deals which are practically finished, and we've got more than 5 deals underway. That's for the new deals. But if you look at the files that we have, we have deals that are signed. We've got more than 10 of them, which are in the wings.

So it's much like February last year?

Yes, it's exactly that. Now let's move on. The next question, Derric Marcon.

Well, my first question is how we can reconcile the performance of the first quarter with this embedded growth that you outlined at the end of January? The second question is why in H2? Why is that equivalent to H1? If you're going to continue to increase our staff hiring, the basis is going to develop at least in the third quarter.

And the third question is related to the auto contracts in Germany. Can you give us some information on the major framework that you won or lost or which are underway? And how you view -- I suppose, what's your hypothesis surrounding these deals that are won or hopefully going to be won when you look at the organic growth of 2025?

And with regards to the semis in the hypothesis which you have announced when you look at commercial performance, et cetera, they haven't relaunched investment. Is there an option because this is usually a part of deal for the deals for semiconductor clients? Are there any particular deals that you are aware of that are traditionally onshore, which are now being sent offshore?

Right. Well, if I take your question one by one. Embedded growth is annual, okay? So how have we managed to reconcile it with the figures from H1? Well, you're talking about cure. We're not talking about the same standards. What we were saying -- what I was saying anyway is that the principle of embedded growth is if the year that's starting, so let's say, 2026 is a year which is particularly flat given the situation of 2025, then we're going to be less than 2. That's what we estimated anyway.

And then you are taking the ratio -- you're looking from December to January? Or what are you talking about?

Are you looking at the cut in this [ 2, 2 ]?

No, I'm not including the cut. You were looking at annual performance. We're not just looking at the first quarter.

How do we compare Q1 to Q1 last year?

We're not looking at -- not using the same standards when it comes to comparing the 2 things.

So well, it should be worse then because we were above minus 2.2%, won't we?

Yes, this is an average, a yearly average based on last year's average. But last year, we fell, remember at the beginning to then climb back up. We recovered -- so at the end, we were higher. So what you have to do now is compare what. You have to compare the situation or average activity for the first quarter 2025 with exactly the same period in 2026. You look at the current situation, which will consider the cut, which will include the cut, kind of like internal control. You just have to compare what's comparable. But it doesn't work in a direct fashion, so to speak. It's not simple because we're comparing 2 standards or 2 modes of reference that are not the same.

Then you say H2 equivalent to H1, can you [ restipulate ] your [indiscernible]? Why do we say it was equivalent? That was that your question?

Why is there no improvement? Compared to H2 and H1 when your basis for comparison was that it was going to improve the further along you get in the year. And if you continue to look at positive staffing in Q2, well, or Q3, you're going to bring along growth, which wasn't included before that. So that gives you 2 good reasons to consider organic growth in H2, which you didn't have in H1, I believe.

Well, in the event -- the hypothesis that we had, H2 in 2025, if you consider the period, from September, the last quarter. Then you have a basis comparison, which is very high because that's where we had the strongest rent of growth. And we haven't -- we still haven't recovered. We are still not there at the level of the end of 2025. So we're going to compare the 2 H2s, we can have organic growth in H2 2026. We're going to have to have recovered not only the growth that we saw in H2 2025, and we're not there yet. We're still underneath it.

So our hypothesis is it's going to come back, but we're not there yet, but we believe we're going to go beyond it even. So the hypothesis adopted is that we're going to be at 0 if everything goes well. And that's why we communicate on 0 and minus 0.5%. This means that we have to continue growth throughout 2026. And if you look at the situation today, it's not contradictory with the hypothesis that we had before. We haven't reached there yet.

But we're looking at Q1 and 2026, we're going to catch up with -- and managed to get the few hundred engineers that are missing, I suppose, are lacking, but we are going to recover that level throughout the course of the year. So when you look at the figures, it's not very easy to understand because you're looking at Q1, Q2 to Q3, Q4 2025. You look at negative staffing over the 4 quarters. Is that right?

So if you were stepping down a staircase, for example, in 2025, you have to try and stabilize in 2026. How does it work?

No, hold on. Staffing is one thing. People left the company last year because some projects -- some projects were slowing down, but we've maintained a certain level of activity with a turnover in the last 4 quarters, which was well above what that which was anticipated. Today, it's purely mechanic. Today, we're still missing a few hundred projects or engineers. When I say projects, it's the number of engineers that work on these projects, obviously. project might involve 5 people, 10 people, et cetera. So a measure -- a unit of measure is an engineer working on a project. So today, we -- it's still below the average in the last quarter of 2025.

Okay. I didn't see it like that. I didn't look at it like that actually.

When we look at the total headcount, that's the figure we have. So we don't necessarily see the number of staff allocated to each individual project. And of course, there are also subcontractors and external factors. We have the [ Phoenix ] effect. Over time, we lost quite a lot of turnover. and in Europe. And this has been substituted by turnover generated elsewhere.

Now when it comes to Germany, in reality, when you look at the contracts, these are contracts which are framework contracts. And within those framework contracts in using the guidelines, the OEM in Germany -- sorry, once we've signed them, and we could be asked to carry out jobs to the tune of EUR 100 million. It doesn't mean that you're going to see turnover immediately. We're looking at perspectives in Germany.

And I think the fact that we signed a certain number of contracts with, for example, BMW, Volkswagen, et cetera, today in the turnover -- this allows us to answer calls for tender to be a reference candidate, and we try to win those contracts with the people in place or the people working for us, for example, in the most part in India. But it doesn't surprise me to take -- it doesn't give me any certainty that, that turnover is going to be made largely by the OEMs.

So a couple of months ago, you didn't know what you made, what you hadn't made. There was affairs pending. Is that right?

Yes. Well, some that we did not win, others which we won. When I say we won, once again, I'd like to mention the fact that I'd like to be very clear. These are framework agreements, there's no client commitments on stacks of EUR 300 million to EUR 500 million. The data has to come once the turnover is there. So they can play with the money, and we've adopted certain hypotheses regarding stabilization in the stability in the automotive industry in Germany today.

It's time and material activity in BMW, for example, where the gross margins are very, very low. Well, there, for example, we're still referenced, but we're not really competitive anymore. You have to understand that in Germany, if we maintain the automotive activity, we have to adopt a dynamic of changing the mix, getting out of projects where the margins are very, very low, very weak. BMW, for example, has tightened its price list. We had to wonder, should we stay or should we go? But we also could have decided quite simply to abandon this because there is turnover, but very little margin.

And this could actually have a negative impact on the margin for these client counts. We remained -- and I think the client understands the economics of it, but I think he would might have approached us for leaving and for maybe not responding to calls for tender on work packages or projects, which are slightly more exciting. So in Germany, we had to adopt a double hypothesis, maintain the auto activity as it is today, which is not bad actually because it's still slowing down.

And the other hypothesis, of course, has been this idea of modifying the mix, changing the mix, a gradual exit from activities which have a very weak margin the time and material, for example, and try and boost activities related to work packages where there's going to be a stronger margin with these clients, but there are extra costs which we have to assume.

Okay. One or 2 perhaps that you've lost, but can you quantify the number that you've won that we've won just so we can have an idea of commercially speaking, we've done the job and the doors are now open to us. Or are there still things where there's a great deal of uncertainty when not everything has been concluded and some doors are still shut?

Well, the calls for tender, for example, come in slowly. Well, what about framework? Did you win the framework agreements that you won? We can -- okay, we can lose 1 or 2, but there aren't that many of them out there. It's not -- when you talk about loss, it's not neutral. There's not one call for tender per [ OIM ].

I'm not talking about individual projects. I'm talking about calls for tender. You can have many calls for tender in one OEM. There are always calls for tender for hybrid engines, electric engines, some for defined software. You have calls for tender for different parts, different pieces of the software, some platforms, some engineering, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

It's not for clients?

No. No, no, no, it's not for clients. Okay. So I want to know you any more with that gentlemen. We haven't seen -- I don't know maybe we're not seeing the switch to selling activities offshore. Other people are going directly offshore looking for resources through local service providers, perhaps.

Again, we have to really investigate that in order to understand. But we haven't been called upon as we might be in the automotive air industry by our clients on any way to see if we could help them to produce. So offshore, the clients have their own activities. Well, they -- most of the clients have their own contacts. Perhaps, yes, it's possible. But I couldn't really say, to be honest. It's a real topic that has to be discussed though. There is a market trend which is fairly counterintuitive with the business dynamic.

Are there any other questions? I don't see any other hands raised. If you don't have any more questions then I'd like to thank you for having participated in this webinar. Perhaps some people are on holiday, I don't know. I know that for the Paris district, people are on holiday. We shall meet again. I'm always available. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to send them to me.

Saying that, I think the next publication is going to be the 28th of July. And then we'll look at the first semester, the first half of the year and the results and the activity. We'll talk about the economic and context. And perhaps I will be able to be able to be a little bit more precise in our vision of the operational margin and what we see -- what we potentially see anyway between July and December. Have a lovely evening, and I shall see you soon. Bye-bye. Thank you.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

[Interpreted] Hello, everybody, and I would like to thank you very much for attending this annual results session 2025. We -- you will hear several things about artificial intelligence, offshore business because it's part of our world nowadays. I would like to inform you that we are going to be 3 people making this presentation, myself as a Chairman, and not the CEO as I used to be. Then we have Cyril Malarge. He joined a little bit more than 3 months ago. He is the CEO. And it is probably Cyril, who's going to make the presentation next time. And then we have Bruno Benoliel, the Deputy Chief Officer Manager.

So in terms of revenues and turnover, those figures have already been announced. We have a reduction of turnover by 1.1% compared with the year '25, but this includes M&A and the essential activity of Worldgrid, which was achieving EUR 25 million. And at a constant parameter, we would have had a decrease of 4.5%. We will come back later on, on those sectors, which are the most concerned. This slowdown of the activity started, first of all, because of IT services, mainly that started already in '24. We had big problems by the end of '24 in the field of Aeronautics, and we had a ramping up again of Aeronautics by the last quarter '25, and that leaves us really very optimistic for '26.

And the split up of turnover and growth between France and the rest of the world at the international level was a little bit severe at the international level, much more than for France, but quite similar. As concerns the results, because of a slight increase of the SG&As, we have 8.5% of OPA '25. We were expecting 8.1% and we ended up the year a little bit better. We did not sacrifice our organization or even the investments. On the contrary, we have enormous investments which were done. And we adapted our margins -- increased our margins to have this result of 8.5% in an unfavorable context. And it is, of course, going to improve during the year '26 and '27.

Then as regards the number of headcount, engineers are participating in the projects in the group, we have 51,000 by the end of December '25, we had 51,900 altogether, Worldgrid started in November '24. So it did not impact in any way, which means that in a certain way, our activity has -- should we present it like that, has decreased by 900 productive engineers with a ratio which is similar of 90% engineers within our headcount -- overall headcount. And I hope that we will catch up this number by the year '26 and even go beyond that. And I would like you to remember that we have, again, 51,000 engineers also by the end of '23.

As regards the geographical split up of our activity, the continents who resisted very well, and this is linked to the M&A that's Asia and Africa, you can see the numbers here of our engineers. We -- 13,900 in Asia and a slight decrease, which goes with the with North America. So we moved from 51,900 to 51,000 engineers. And again, Worldgrid was already integrated in December '24. But what is interesting in this slide is to show the geographical allocation. So on the whole planet, it is obvious that we have to work intensively to reach a much more critical size in Africa as well as China.

As regards what happens in the automotive industry, we also have to find solutions for North America where M&A is almost nonexistent. We have a split up of many different little companies and consulting companies, and we need to accelerate the organic development and growth. This international split up and allocation is, of course, very interesting, but we need to bring it to a full potential. We have customers who are split up all over the world, Asia, Europe, Americas and Middle East and Africa. And we have a lot of technical staff working on behalf of those projects, which are delivered all over the world. And this is really of an advantage. We have local people. We have local companies working there. It is particularly good.

As regards the allocation per sector, Here, we have the breakdown according to the different activities. And then you will have a dedicated slide sector by sector, delivering more information, but you will have the opportunity to read it by yourself. I'm not going to comment on it. Now the 2 fundamental sectors and initial sectors are Terrestrial Transportation, Automotive and Rail activities. And on the other hand, we have Aerospace, Defense and Naval, but they behave in a different way.

Automotive did not suffer so much and represents still 15.2% of our activities compared with 16% 1 year ago. This reduction of turnover -- the turnover share within the global revenue share is because of the decarbonization, which is prevailing going as well as the manufacturing, which is going to low-cost countries, the manufacturing, we have -- so manufacturing is located in U.S. or Morocco and even in China and India. So the automotive sector is decreasing in turnover, but not in terms of headcount. We -- you have to understand that when the sales price or when the cost of labor is reduced or divided by 3, then obviously, the revenue is also and the turnover is diminishing. As regards the Rail part, we have a revamping of projects again by Alstom in particular, Alstom Bombardier as well as Siemens. This brings us to be very optimistic for the year 2026.

Let's go back to Aerospace, Defense, Security, Naval. Aeronautics, the civil aerospace made us suffer in '24 because of logistic problems, deliveries, but a very strong recovery, in particular, at the -- for the company, Airbus second half of '25. And this led to a positive development of projects and engineering when -- and the other sectors stabilize. This gives a positive vision, relaunch of activities and the stop of the decrease of those activities, in particular, for Civil Aeronautics as well as Aerospace OEMs.

And then, of course, we have to be very careful. We have a nice visibility up to 5 years' time from now. But then we will have the arrival of a competitor from China. But for the time being, we are fine. For Civil Aeronautics, we want to conquer Boeing and Boeing's OEMs to reach the critical size. So we are very much appreciated being the major partner of Airbus, in particular, in Europe. The problem that we will have is the rolling out implementation of a managing team and competence centers and technical management in the U.S.A.

As regards Defense, obviously, an important budget and important budget help us to be very confident -- we have Airbus Defense, Thales, Leonardo in Italy, et cetera. The -- we are optimistic for a very nice development of this activity. One of the problems we might have is that we need to be agreed upon. We need the accreditation outside of Europe as a company, which is a European one and even a French one. The space activities were very stable in '24, '25, even slightly decreasing. But we have joined forces and projects. naval works only for defense. So it is -- it's -- we are optimistic. These are the reference activities of ALTEN, the engineering for Terrestrial Transportation and Aerospace, Aeronautics, Defense, Security, Naval. That's really the big chunk.

And then, of course, we want to be present with a significant size on all the other industrial sectors like energy, life science, telecoms, industrial equipment, energy, thanks to the acquisition of Worldgrid, we could open doors, in particular, for EDF as a customer. EDF has managed to define the strategic development for EPRs, and that was really the challenge that we had to face and that we wanted to achieve, by the way, the results, thanks to the acquisition of Worldgrid. So we are very hopeful for all kinds of energetic partners that we might get in Europe.

Obviously, we also move on with renewable energies, but there is -- there are less projects where ALTEN manages to integrate like on windmills or solar energy because the equipment is done in countries where we're not really present. But we want to remain very optimistic for '26 and even '27 on the energy sector, in particular, nuclear energy.

As regards Life Science, our presence in this field, pharma industries, et cetera, consider 2 main activities. The first one is conception, certification of technical equipment, scientific equipment that we have a lot of pressure because of new molecules and new drugs. This activity is moving over to the U.S.A. Even Sanofi are aiming at the American market. So we need to help them and to support them for what we call the CRO activities. We need to go with our customers. In terms of certification, validation, traceability of pharmaceutical products, where we have -- and that's the other half of the activity in Life Science, this remains very strong. And in Europe, of course, we are one of the major actors. And again, we are particularly optimistic. The balance between both won't help us to grow, but to keep up with this level of activity, in particular, because the other part of Life Science is moving to the U.S.A., and we will have to go with them.

As regards the industrial activity, it's not really a crisis. It's a slowdown of the overall mood and activity, be it the OEMs in Aerospace or the ones delivering the resolution for Telecom and even OEMs, they have frozen their investments a lot. And now as regards to the automobile industry, they have started offshoring. They have outsourced to India low-cost country, all their development. So our challenge is to support them in India and other countries like U.S.A. also in particular. So you see that there is a shift. And again, we are confronted with what we have known in the automotive sector 5 years ago.

Now for Telecom, we have projects of the 5G and even the upcoming 6G. But again, we have a very strong offshore activity. But we... But we managed also to hold on to our turnover, thanks to the international situation and deployment that we have in Asia. And then the 2 sectors that we suffered most from because we have the yellow ones, we have retail services, media, public sector on one side and bank finance insurance on the other. Those 2 sectors really started suffering by the end of '23 because they started freezing their investments or projects, they slowed down the IT investments, but IT services are our main spokespeople.

So the cloud migration, et cetera, procurement of hyperscaler, all this was considerably reduced and slowed down the development of the new releases. for all the IT systems of bank finance and insurance. It was quite violent, I must say, and the decrease has been important. It used to represent 28% of our turnover, and it's only 25%, which are left, I mean, both together. This is not specific to our company, ALTEN. It is an overall situation. All the IT service companies are at 25% with IT business.

Now of course, I'm ready to take all your questions according to those different sectors in the Q&A after this presentation. But again, you have a lot of details if you look at the slides that come up after this one, where all the different sectors are detailed in a much more important manner.

I also wanted to mention investments in AI for ALTEN, we started 3 years ago to organize ourselves to cope with this technological development as well as functional development of this world of services. The artificial intelligence is aiming at different universes. Well, first of all, everybody is concerned. Within the ALTEN ecosystem, priority has been given to the integration or to train all our engineers to train them with all the tools containing accelerators and leverage possibilities to work on new projects while integrating all those new tools and possibilities.

Now since we are in competition with world actors, we have a lot of investments, in particular, in information systems and in training sessions, 65% of our employees have already been trained on AI. So it's a big investment. We had no spectacular announcement, but you can believe me, we are working on that, and we are not late at all. However, we are not a consulting company specialized on artificial intelligence. What we want to do is to master the tools and the accelerators, which are existing and suggested in terms of AI to work on projects that we deliver to our customers. And we managed to do that. Each time we were competing for projects we won because we were able to roll out the AI tools.

Now of course, obviously, it's easy to win compared to small and little local companies, but not only this, also the big ones. And we were rewarded for that because they appreciated the very pragmatic way of talking about those tools. Now we have to -- we also have to adapt to the tools which are chosen by the customer. But in -- but most of the time, we manage to suggest our own tools because the customers are late in choosing their tools and processes. So sometimes we have this kind of double situation. We come up to the customer with our tools, but they have already started to implement their own tools. But it's okay. We just need a very solid time management according to the kind of projects we are dealing with.

In average, the efficiency that we obtain, thanks to the deployment of AI is a 15% -- and that's true for the whole ALTEN universe and engineering, sorry. So to reach 20% or even more percent, it is possible like the technical support or basis activities, but it is, but it is not the major part of our activities. So for the R&D concept, we use AI and the tools for analysis. We reached those 15%. And for one project, if we have 30 engineers, it would have been up to 30% more expensive compared to -- well, compared to what we had 3 years ago. Thanks to AI, we have -- we win our tenders. We are not late. We are much more proactive. We have the AI competence and all the skills which are required to make an important amount of economy. So -- and we are cheaper. So this is what we call AI for projects and we're very performance.

We have trained all our managers and the technical management on all the teams, and this is what we call the AI go-to-market and partnerships, and we also have the AI platforms and infrastructures which are requested. We have set the priority on AI for our client projects. And now we would like to use AI to improve our administrative functions, recruitment, accounting, et cetera. So of course, that's being rolled out and has been now since September last year, and we hope that we're going to make some savings with costs.

Now when it comes to M&A, where are we? I'm a little disappointed, I have to be honest. I'm disappointed in the volume that we were able to realize in 2025. I would say that 2024, we acquired acquisitions which were expensive, which give us long-term visibility, and that's why we did spend so much. And there was also a small acquisition of 350 people in 2024. If you look at 2025, you can see the 4 companies that we purchased. It's -- there's no miracle here. You've got all the consultants that could have been one single company rather than 4. We have to look at the number of consultants when we consider this purchase of any company abroad, except for one, I believe, in Life Science, which had about 190 consultants in Life Science. And I mentioned that company earlier. That was the one big company.

So we are really highlighting specific skills in merger and acquisition. We can find them offshore, and that's why you are going to find 2 major structures and companies in India who have the skills specific to CRO for life science, where you have embedded software, for example, DAS in India. You have the skills there, the skills that we can offer offshore to our clients. And we will come back to that in some detail later, if you will.

Now let us look at 2026 and the current outlook. I think that we can hope given the current climate that we are going to be able to have access to acquisitions at normal prices. However, it's not exactly the case as yet. Now when you look at -- this is 90% for all service and enduring companies on the market, they're having a similar experience, except perhaps for those who are in Southeast Asia, most of these companies are in private equity, and they have been able to pay very expensive prices, 50%, 80% more than we are ready to pay for any kind of acquisition, and they were doing this as of 5 years ago. So the private equity companies, I'm not going to cry over them or for them. They're suffering today for their purchases of 5 years ago. They are suffering on a market which for ALTEN is fairly favorable. They are going to have to divest. They are not -- and they're going to have to try and compensate for what's in their portfolio. However, these are the ones who are perhaps our competition for the acquisition of companies which could be of interest to us.

We are looking at companies which are fairly independent at normal price. When you look at ALTEN and our position today, I would love to be able to purchase the entire earth with the current ratios. If you look at the multiples that private equity as the triple the multiples that we have and they triple our value on the stock exchange today. Today, we are purchasing roughly 7% to 8% of the operational result plus a year's revenue on a basis which is solid and fairly favorable. Well, we're suffering to find companies in that price range just now. It's not problematic. We are looking at prices and the real estate valuation, given our real estate value and available cash, we are going to continue to hunt down these opportunities even if they don't necessarily fall within our operating income purchase aspirations.

Now I hope that we're going to have some kind of [indiscernible] in 2026. And given the slight growth in our headcount in 2026, I think we can imagine what ALTEN will look like in 2026 at Christmas, M&A included. Now if we look at capital, let's move on to shareholders. Well, I don't think there's very much to be said. It's very stable. It's flat and has been for the last 10 years, I think. Of course, for the last few years, I've been talking about my will to transfer 5% of my assets towards charity. Now given the value of these shares, I'm waiting a few years in order to do this.

Now I'm going to hand over to Bruno, who's going to talk more about the figures.

[Interpreted] Hello, everybody. Good morning. Well, here you can see the evolution of the group between 2029 and '22, going back slightly, you can see that we doubled in size you look at pre- and post-COVID years, which is not bad. And since 2022, '23, the group's activity has stabilized around EUR 4.5 billion in turnover. You can see the number of engineers yourself. You can see there's a slight organic degrowth. Our engineers, we have 51,000. Well, they are spread out between France and the international field, where we have roughly 39,000 in 2025. As you heard, we had to look at -- we had to face organic degrowth of 800 -- over 800 of these engineers. So 331 in France and the rest out with France. We thought that by purchasing Worldgrid, we would have had 956 engineers and 650 are in France and the rest are out with France, spread between France and Germany, I believe.

Now there's another small change. You can see a change in France, which was a small bit of turnover. Now it's roughly 35% of turnover. You shouldn't draw too many conclusions from this in terms of group strategy, but this is just a technical effect linked to the organic degrowth in France over the last few years and the acquisitions that have been made, for example, which have bolstered the turnover in France.

Very quickly then, we can see there's a drop in 4.4%. We thought through acquisitions that 4.3% would be okay. We have a change in scope. We have FX impact, which is fairly significant. You can see that on the slide given to the group overall appreciation, particularly with regards Canada, U.S.A. and particularly the rupee and the Chinese currency, this has had a huge impact. Now 32% of the group's turnover is made abroad out with France. You can see the impact of foreign exchange, it's not constant.

Now let's look at that turnover by geographical area. And I'm going to go over this fairly quickly because we've already spoken about the activity at some length. We did this last month through the publication of our 2025 figures. Here you are then in France, organic decline about 5% in the last quarter. You have an activity which was penalized by the downsizing in the automotive industry, which was down 20% in France, and that's 10% of France's turnover. And if you also look at minus 20% in turnover, we explained that because part of these products are carried out in countries we call low-cost or offshore countries. Therefore, turnover is obviously weaker.

Telecom, let's look at telecom. There's been a fall of 10% and in bank and financing, we're at 17% in terms of decline. However, the upside is that in Aeronautics, we are growing again. It's 1/3 of the French turnover. So you can see that's a growth of 3%. Defense, well, there's some surprises there because that represents more than 12% of turnover. We're up 15% in France and Rail has actually grown as well. You have the figures in front of you.

Internationally speaking, then, where are we? Well, look at Southern Europe. South Europe is still performing very well, satisfactorily anyway. It's a geographical zone, which is still showing some organic growth. If you look at the Iberian Peninsula, you've got over 85%, which consists of -85% comes from Spain and industry, which is 5% of the zone's turnover. All the rest are growing, particularly in the last quarter. Italy, the activity slowed down in the first quarter. You can see it's growing again, roughly 3% per year, except for the telecom industry, which is quite poor turnover in Italy. But apart from them, everything else seems to be progressing fairly stably.

Germany. Germany, which is recruiting or recruited a great deal in '24. We're looking at the 3 quarters. We've been taking things slowly carefully. We can see a slowed growth in -- we've gone from 20% to 3% in the fourth quarter. Degrowth, which has slowed down, however, because when you look at the degrowth in automotive industry, this has fallen due to the lack of outfitters or the disappearance of outfitters in this activity through and orders from the OEMs. So that is beginning to stabilize, okay, at a weak rate, but it's stabilizing. And you can see this in German OEMs. You can see there's a slight decline but it is stabilizing. So overall, the automotive industry, which is more than 40% of the German turnover is representing half -- pretty much half has gone -- has fallen by 25% with sequential growth, which has had a huge impact in the last quarter.

Another sector, which is important for Germany is the aeronautic sector, 20% of turnover in Germany, an activity which had been declining up to the third quarter, but is fighting back nicely in the fourth quarter, an activity which is growing not only sequentially but year-on-year in Germany. And finally, in Germany, well defense. Defense, which is a sector of activity, which is fairly anecdotal and activity, which is growing, which has developed and has developed greatly in the last few quarters and it's roughly 7% of the turnover in Germany.

In the U.K., where are we? 2% -- 12% growth, not been particularly marked otherwise, not within the public or the private sector. Defense represents 10% of the turnover. And if we go to the Benelux countries, you can see a fall by 11%, but no improvement at the end of the year. 9% of the activity in Belgium has fallen -- has fallen to 9%, I should say. Again, if you look at the -- and similar in the Netherlands.

In Eastern Europe then, the activity is stable. change, which is fairly contrasted between Poland, which is 3/4 of the activity of -- in Eastern Europe, up by 3%. You have Romania, which has fallen by 10%, I think, linked to the bank and financing sector. In Scandinavia and the Nordic countries, most of -- 70%, I would say, of the turnover is done in carried out in Sweden. Now Sweden is very much like Germany. You've got an activity which is very much focused on the automotive industries, 55% of the turnover in Sweden, and this has fallen by 25%. So roughly the same as what's happened in Germany without really slowing down terribly much, but we still see it's falling back.

If you look at Finland, we have a very concentrated sector in machinery, declined by 12%. In North America, the activity has fallen by 6%, a rhythm, which has slowed down in the last quarter, interestingly. In the United States, it's 70% of the North American zone. The Automotive, Life Science and Rail and recent services zones have fallen by a certain amount, but have stabilized. In Canada, however, you can see this is 25% of turnover. The activity has grown by 5%, thanks to the automotive, finance and aerospatial industry.

In Asia Pacific, we have the activity, which is slightly is slowing down with changes which are different depending on where you are in Asia, you've got China, which represents 1/3 of the area. All sectors have grown even automotive, except perhaps for telecom, that should be the exception. India represents 27% of the zone. We see a fall in automotive. Japan, 23% of the zone's activity. You see it's growing 12%, but that's thanks to the automotive industry and the tertiary industry.

Korea, given the climate, we've just lost a major client, and this led to a fairly significant degrowth, 25% in the automotive industry, which represents half of Korean turnover. So overall, you can see there is a degrowth of 4.5% in a very organic fashion, but very heterogeneous performances across the board. It's -- we can see the real -- in the Nordic countries in the Germany, there have been -- that's where we see the real degrowth, and that will have an impact on the group's results.

So 2025 then, let's look at that without any surprise. The second part of the year, it was superior in terms of profitability. Obviously, the calendar was more favorable in terms of days. We can see an improvement in activity, which was much better in the last quarter and a reduction of costs, which actually was maintained through the second end of the year. And this allowed us to really be at 8.5% in terms of operating profit and activity. So better than what was anticipated. And given the current context, it's giving us quite satisfactory profitability, I should say.

Now we look at operational margin, well, this was already felt the impact of an unfavorable calendar, less working days in the last quarter. So that you can see the results here. But the level of activity has been very well mastered. We are slightly above the normal rates. So very similar to what happened in 2024. If we look at the increase of payroll taxes in France and the U.K. has to be considered in the operational margin of the group. It's had an impact. We know we've talked about Germany and the Scandinavian countries. You can see the lowering of activity in certain countries has had an impact on the gross margin, not only of Germany and the Nordic countries, but all around because it has an impact on the entire group. However, when you look at SG&A, very well managed in 2025. This allowed us to maintain satisfactory profitability because we went down by 25 bps compared to 2024. This gives us an operational margin for the group, which is down by 65 bps by -- compared to 2024, but will be reestimated if our turnover continues to grow.

Now with operational activity, you also have some lines which you might be familiar. We look at shares, EUR 21 million, which is comparable to last year. Now these asset payments are reconciled in-house, but the assets which -- assets and liabilities are subject to deadlines for investment and this has an impact on cash -- overall cash. In 2026, I think it will be roughly the same as 2025. If you look at our nonrecurring profit, it is slightly up, but only in apparent fashion because the fine that we had to pay to the competitive authorities, EUR 21.5 million for an appeal that was upheld in court, well, we shall see. This has to be taken into account. And the nonrecurring profit is EUR 24.8 million, so it's slightly down on last year. But if you look at the current context, it also includes EUR 3.7 million of acquisitions, EUR 1.4 million of complementary fiscal and social implications here and abroad, structuring costs, EUR 12 million, which are dedicated directly to Germany. So all these costs have to be borne and expressed somewhere.

For the first time, you can see up here the amortization of intangible assets, which is the acquisition price for Worldgrid. Now usually, the company includes and reconciles this given the size of the targets, the difference between prepaid and equities with Worldgrid when you look with regards to the size of the operation and the intangible assets, and we registered a part of the acquisition price within the accounts. in compliance with IFRS3. So part of what we see in the accounts is going to correspond to this amortization.

Goodwill then. This brought us to our depreciation, which isn't really habitual for us. We went for the first time -- first time in 10 years from EUR 44 million last year to -- with goodwill in our accounts given the pressure between IT and finance activities in France, particularly for ALTEN anyway. We had to depreciate as well, amortize as an acquisition that we carried out in Life Science for reasons which Simon explained earlier internationally. And again, we have acquisitions. We purchased an entity in India, and that allowed us to -- that meant that we had to have an overall depreciation for these activities of EUR 67.4 million. So that means that we have an operating result, which is down 30% as opposed to last year because we're at EUR 200 million in 2025.

Tax then we're at over 80%. That means we have a headcount that has gone up, and that has been reflected in our payroll taxes, obviously, and our exceptional contributions to tax -- fortune tax in France. Fiscal deficits we're very active in this field, particularly abroad. We look at this tax that we had to pay in the U.S., all of that has to be considered. For 2026, we have an effective level of 29%, which is more coherent with the reality in which we live.

On the financial income analysis, I don't think there's much to say. We're cash positive. Our results we have an income analysis, which is with the IFRS16 is there. We're at EUR 5.9 million. When it comes to negative charges linked to our exchange position and the currencies in which we work, obviously, the dollar and in other countries that don't choose the dollar, all of that has to be reflected and other intentional income charges, which correspond to charges all around the world. So you can see on site retreat minus 4%, but an economic result of up 0.8%.

Then geography then, where are we with the different sectors? In France, operational results, condensed income statement, 16.2%. As you can see, it has to be retreated because you haven't got the non-allocated costs included, the noncorporate ones anyway. So we're at 9.3% in 2025 and you have to compare that to 9.4% in 2024. And of course, less working days as well, which do have an impact on our income statement. Again, impact in France is 30 bps. When it comes to economic performance, we can see there's an improvement of 35%, thanks to the lowering of tax in France.

Internationally, however, we've seen operational result, which has gone back by 60 bps. In Germany and in the Nordic countries, we can see there's a real lowering of activity between 2%, 1% and 3%. In Benelux and in North America, the APAC region, when you look at activity, we're looking at 6% to 10% in terms of retreat and decline. And in the U.K., Nordics and Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, we have a result which is above 10%. So all in all, for the group, we have operational profit of 8.5% with performances which are heterogeneous across the different geographic zones.

Now the balance sheet, again, I don't have a great deal to say. It's identical to the one that we had last year and the years before. Perhaps you should just notice one thing. You look at on tangible assets, noncurrent assets, we could reduce liquidity there. We have net cash flow, which was going to almost at EUR 100 million. debt, which is EUR 7.5 million at the end of 2025. So EUR 1.5 million and more than a year. Consequently, you have gearing, which is largely negative.

Here's the analysis of our cash position. And we're looking at 2025 here, let's remember. Our cash flow -- now you can see we [ EUR 300 ] -- we're looking at the difference between the finance and the percentage of cash flow. So we have operational cash flow here. We have nonrecurring elements, which have not been significant that we had to bear EUR 45 million to the tune of EUR 45 million. We have this tax paid. You can see the amount in front of you. So we can see that the net cash of EUR 390.2 million.

Now in France, we pay our taxes over the actual year, the year afterwards. So there is a slight discrepancy with regards to other countries. you have cash generation, which can be explained in the cash position, there's -- you can see there is an increase of 50%. You can also look at the organic growth and EUR 30.7 million, an improvement in DSO in days because we've gone up to 96.5 days (sic) [ 86.5 days ] at the end of 2025. And this in spite of the favorable evolution of the country mix because this was developed where the tax was actually quite high.

Now with suppliers, this was in decline, because we had less use for outsourcing that helped us make some savings in terms of the premises and variations, they're not very significant. Now we look at CapEx, which is still quite feeble, 0.3% in terms of the turnover, historically quite weak anyway. And this is also linked to much of the IT in France have moved to OpEx has moved to OpEx pardon me. We've gone towards SaaS, and we have migrated many applications towards the cloud. Now we have a free cash flow, which has gone up to 5.9% of the turnover. And financial investments, EUR 62.9 million are largely made up of M&A. So almost EUR 63 million, EUR 70.9 million for the OPs in 2025. Return for action for shareholders, dividends, et cetera, EUR 62.2 million. With regards the other financial flows, well, they are linked to exchanges and the translation. So what is the cash flow, then we're at EUR 390.2 million.

Now as I said, I'm giving you the follow-up of free cash flow over the current year. And we have to look at the total 12 months. It's the only way you can read the -- you've got the presentation. It's available on our site, so you'll be able to get a bit more information there.

Now there's a summary here of the results, the 225 results and of course, the financial results for 2026. So activity has gone down by 4.5% at constant scope and foreign exchange, but only really went down 2.2%, thanks to a revival of the Civil Aeronautic and banking sectors like with France. Now Energy & Defense have been accelerating over the last quarter. And just by way of information, if you exclude the decline in the aeronautic world, which can be explained, organic degrowth was limited to 1.5%, which is actually fairly satisfactory given the current climate.

This has been impacted by the calendar. The gross margin reflects the problems in the different countries despite the SG&A effect, which is lower than over the past years. So we remain with an OPA at 8.5%, which is better than what we had anticipated. We hope to improve the cash situation by the end of the year. And then despite the uncertain environment, we will have to wait for the end of the first quarter 2026 to deliver more precise information on the outlook for the global outlook for 2026. You know that the beginning, the start of the year is -- shows a slowdown in activity, and it ramps up then later on during the year. So we will have to organize the recruitment and reorganization of projects to have a more fine-tuning presentation and to -- for the year '26.

I am going to -- no, I'm not going to hand over to Simon. I'm going to comment very quickly on what we did in terms of ESG performance. As you know, ALTEN has been acknowledged from the quoting agencies as a high-performing ESG company. We started having an evaluation even long before ESG became stringent. And before having to report on that specifically, the quotation started already in the year 2010. And since then, we constantly improved our quotes. We are always at the top of the companies within the sector. And we are very much appreciated by our competitors, I must say, because it is a continuous policy, which is reflected that as well as it is performance. So we have the certification, which is very much appreciated.

And then as regards the CO2 print, we are better off than the target. We have reduced the GHG emissions by 60% compared to 2019. We even wonder if we should not reevaluate in a positive way the objectives since we are really better -- I mean, to reevaluate the targets for 2030 since we are really very -- in a very good situation.

Now I hand over to Simon for the growth strategy for the coming years.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Bruno. And to conclude on this presentation before the Q&A, a few important points as regards the strategy for the 3 to 5 coming years for the ALTEN Group. First, ALTEN as one of the top 5 world leaders in the consultant and engineering business is very hopeful in consolidating this privileged situation despite the fact that we have world actors like the big Indian companies, but we are part of the top. So it's okay. The customers do appreciate our positioning. And however, it does not mean that we have reached the top of our capacities, in particular, as regards artificial intelligence, but not only.

So to keep this success, you have those 2 slides that you will discover, but you have to remember mainly 2 things. ALTEN is an international structure, and it is not possible to think country by country. The strategy of ALTEN before COVID was to privilege country managers as well as an organization with trainings and business managers, project managers. We recruited in China the best engineers, et cetera. But it is not enough any longer. So on all the items that you can see on this presentation, we need and this is really our light. We need to really strive for this international organization. It's a change of mindset in terms of the organization of ALTEN. And it also means that competencies and skills need to be different.

If you take HR, which is the first column, you need to create mobility of managers, in particular, French ones because this is our basis. This is the solid one, and this is where the big experience is located. And we need to convince them to go to Asia, other European countries, U.S., et cetera, because it is not by asking the chasing specialist in the U.S. that we will find managers who will know everything about our business and be very quickly efficient on the business model. So we need to really, really to lever on mobility, which means that we have to invest massively on human resources and career development plans.

In the second column, you can see that the global account managers can't remain within our countries anymore. I mean it is not possible to service Rolls-Royce or GE while having everything concentrated on the -- in one country. So the sales organization is not bottom up anymore with managers trained on the spot, et cetera. It also has to be top down because it takes global managers for the 120 most important customers all over the world. And you can believe me, this is not very easy. It's particularly important even beyond growth or slowdown, et cetera. And Cyril Malarge actually joined us. And he will be in charge of the setting up of this international organization, which is going to help us to really very well support those 120 international customers. We have also already managed to have an international technical management, and this is done, and it's okay, which means that we manage projects at the international level. Now we just have to consolidate this aspect.

And this is the third column to capitalize on all our offers. We have fabulous offers in China, in India, in Canada, in France, obviously, and even in Spain for analytical AI. Now we need the whole group to profit from that, which means that we have to value our offers. It's an important challenge, to be honest.

And then without coming back on that, this is what I said at the beginning. We also need within the field of M&A to get a hold of complementary structures. We have the financial structure that it takes. So we need those main and major bricks to be integrated within our international structure. We could use our cash differently like buying up our own shares because of the value of the shares. It's an ongoing discussion that maybe we will have with you, by the way. But if we prove that we have the possibility to get a hold of very fine targeted companies, it will be very nice to use this cash to do that.

So as a conclusion, the 5 fundamental pillars are well defined, and we are there to challenge that. We have Cyril who joined. We have international managers. We are very optimistic to reach those -- this target of 70,000 engineers in 2 or 3 years' time, we will see. It will depend on the conjuncture. It was okay before COVID, and we doubled. We went from 25,000 to 50,000 between 2017 and '22, and then it slowed down because of COVID, et cetera. But it's not only a figure to be successful. It's -- in particular, we need to lean on this international organization, which is going to be our major challenge.

So well, I thank you very much for your attention. It took us some time, but we are at your disposal to take your questions.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much for this presentation. Let's move on to the question-and-answer session. We have a first one, which is from Aditya can't hear...

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Just a couple from me. So firstly, on the 2026 outlook, as you said, visibility remains low and you want to wait for Q1 to refine the outlook. But can you just talk about how you're thinking about the development of growth during the year? When you think you might be able to return to a positive trajectory given your conversations with key customers?

Second, on the margins as well, how we should think about the different moving parts. Any further -- any impact of the number of working days and any other factors there?

And finally, on AI, you mentioned all the capabilities and the investments you've made. But can you share some numbers on what percentage of bookings are related to Gen AI today or what percentage of revenue? And which sectors are you actually seeing more demand for your solutions on AI? Is it more on Automotive or Life Sciences? So if you could give a bit more color on that.

Okay. So on the outlook for '26, Aditya, as I explained in January, it's too early to say because we are in the business where many projects end at the end of each semester. Accordingly, we start the year with a lower level of business, and it takes normally 1 to 3 months to recover before we can start again. Last year, in '25, we were facing a difficult year because it took a lot of months before we recovered. In '26, what we are seeing is that the recovery is slightly faster. But before the end of March, to be frank, it's very difficult to have a real feeling in those times because there are difficult times to have a real feeling on what could be the outlook, even though it's just the first one for '26. So we will give a more precise view on the expectations in terms of revenue growth or revenue outlook probably in April.

Regarding the margins, it's exactly the same. Of course, we hope that we will get and reach a better profitability in '26 than in '25, but it's clearly linked to the revenue growth or evolution for '26. That said, and you're right to mention it, we have in '26 1 day more than in '25. So that could normally help to improve the margin by roughly 25 bps depending upon the geographies.

For AI and our capabilities in AI, Simon explained that we are infusing AI in many projects, many geographies and many activities and many projects. We have succeeded in experiencing a very successful book with many customers within many verticals, of course, with our main customers like Airbus, Stellantis, Thales, Rolls-Royce, et cetera. There is -- so to be more precise, this is among our main customers than the AI infusion is the most advanced, and that's not surprising, of course.

To tell you exactly what is the percentage of booking coming from AI, we don't have that number because we don't -- we put some AI wherever it's possible and it's not possible in all the type of projects because I remind you that we are not 100% dedicated to software coding or testing. This is not the main part of the business. So the main part of the business today cannot be addressed by AI. But every time it's possible to, of course, we help the customer to make some productivity gains with AI. So we -- as we don't have a dedicated activity, which is AI consultancy unlike other IT companies, like, for example, Accenture, Cap, et cetera, I suppose. I will say it's a day-to-day business for our business manager and technical management to propose AI every time we think and they think that it could be helpful.

So in terms of revenue, what type -- what level of revenue it will bring for '26, accordingly, I cannot tell you because we will see at the end what happens and what type of -- how many projects and what percentage of projects will be managed with some AI support throughout the year.

We have a question coming from someone asking why due to our multiples, we don't launch a share buyback. So I'm going to let Simon answer that question.

We have every day internally some questions with ALTEN teams because, obviously, with the value and the capitalization of ALTEN, we are very tempted to make some share buyback.

[Interpreted] And we have -- obviously we have a balance sheet that enables us to buy up to EUR 500 million of our own shares to buy back, and it would be an excellent investment. But as I said before, we constantly raise the question. We are waiting to be clear on the volume of merger and acquisition that we will that we will work on during the first half year of '26. And according to the volume, we will see whether we start a project of buyback shares or prefer to invest. We do not want to have too much debt. Sometimes it is appreciated, sometimes it is not. But I mean, of course, it is very tempting to do that. We will look according to the M&A, whether we do that or not. And if we proceed to the share buyback project.

[Interpreted] We have a few raised hands among, Ina [indiscernible], for instance, you raised your hand.

[Interpreted] Can you hear me? Two questions. I understood you want to have more offshore engineers. Is it a capacity transfer to answer or cope with the existing contracts?

And my second question is on costs, extremely difficult to understand. I'm sorry because it's on the phone. Sorry, it was difficult to hear.

[Interpreted] I can deliver an estimate of offshore engineers with the figure we would like to have for the future according to the way we appreciate the present situation and even the future forecast. And you can very well imagine that it differs from one sector to another. We won't have any offshore on defense or even Aeronautics, even if the American Aeronautics had offshore to India, but this will be handled differently.

The 2 big activities that do offshore, that's automotive, where they want to go up to 80%, there is no nationality anymore. And also R&D can be done everywhere why not in China? And the second sector is telecom. There is a lot of supervision of data and deployed net and grid, and this is the same. It can be done everywhere in the world. So on those 2 sectors, it's going to be important, but less on the others. So we have a little bit less than 10,000 people in offshore for projects.

And I go back to the definition. What is offshore? It's a project which is issued in one, let's say, Western country, U.S.A. -- well, North America and Europe that we are supposed to deliver or work on in low-cost countries like Mexico, South America, for the U.S. Morocco, Senegal, where we are present for a certain number of customers now and India and Vietnam in Asia and less Poland and Romania. They are less local than they used to be. So it's probably going to double, which means that ideally, we are supposed to reach 20,000 engineers in low-cost countries to cope with the Western demand. And then it will depend on what we are going to roll out in the U.S. because the U.S. has offshored a lot even for strategic fields like space and defense.

So if from tomorrow on, we have 20,000 engineers working for the U.S., it is obvious that we are going to have 10,000, if not 15,000 exclusively for the U.S. But those projects, we will -- well, we will have those projects only if we proceed to major acquisitions, like companies working exclusively for the U.S. Apart from this, that may happen -- apart from that, we should move from 9,000 to 20,000 in 5 years' time with a logical development. And this means that we will altogether have 70,000 to 75,000 engineers. There is no major cost linked to this kind of situation. I mean it's a -- global costs are expected like training, et cetera. But this is something that we -- it's not going to cost too much. It's not going to be a major investment. We just need to gain projects because then it will go along with it.

It could be possible that, well, in Vietnam, we have, let's say, roughly 1,000 engineers. It's possible to go up to 3,000. This is not going to be too expensive. What is important is to win markets where we are not present today. And to be more precise in our answer, there is -- a transformation has already started, and the offshore transformation will be dedicated to 20%, 25% of bps on the existing. And all the rest will be how to conquer new projects that we really have to obtain. -- in the U.S., in Asia.

[Interpreted] We have a question from Derric Marcon.

[Interpreted] I have several questions. I hope you can hear me well. The first one is on the allocation of your activity according to the Project Logic. We have to go back very far, but you had a breakdown of your activities according to electronic engineering, et cetera. Is it possible today to quantify the part of your activity, which is closer to engineering? And what kind of productivity gains could you expect in the field of AI?

The second one is on the write-off of goodwill because it's not comparable to 2025, like automotive sector or the company in U.K. that you had bought. It's much more about activities, which like Life Science, it is not the sector that has suffered most. So I would like to understand if it is the companies which went down. And what about this goodwill?

And the third one I don't know what is impacting the cash flow of -- on '25, cash out, et cetera. And then I also understood that you can't give any precise information about the real impact of AI within the project. But if we take a snapshot today, do you have statistics on the number of projects containing AI versus the one having nothing at all with AI? I would like to know the number of projects containing AI compared with the global amount of projects having none of those tools.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Derric, for those questions. Well, as regards to the splitting up of our activities, I can give you information about our internal cuisine, as we say, the way we do breakdown because it could take the whole day. Globally, we have what we call product engineering. We conceive and we manufacture products for the Industrials, Aerospace, Automobile, Rail, Defense, OEMs, et cetera. We have -- they represent today 65% of our turnover. This is the very strong engineering basis. From those 65% activity, you have 2 big blocks, the upstream, which is development -- research and development; and downstream, which is the delivery to customer, the robot optimization, quality on the customer side, customer support. And from those 65%, 2/3, 1/3, 2/3 in research, development, with this conception engineering and 1/3 for the supervision rolling out deployment and quality control. I hope I'm clear.

Within R&D, you have all the components of all the engineers contributing to the piece of equipment that the customer has asked for with all the technical components, which is microelectronics, electronics, embarked software, mechanical design and then the engineering system, which is all around or system engineering, which means that those engineers have a global vision of the whole project. And they are quite important in terms of numbers.

Now AI within R&D activities, AI is going to account very strongly for -- well, generative AI for the development of software, but we are not so much present in that. Creative AI -- well, and this is because the amount of electronic design has slowed down and decreased. So AI is not so much in there. It is associated to automobile much more with a reduction -- cost reduction ratio, which -- I mean, the cost of a labor day is not going to change, but it is more the time which is going to be dedicated by one engineer to AI. And like predictive maintenance, analytical accounting is going to decrease. We can improve the result. We can also improve the design, mechanics, et cetera, and we can improve up to 20%, 25%. So the average is 15% in the field of R&D suggested by ALTEN. That's the engineering work, the level of master 2, et cetera.

And we've rolled this out across all our projects, not just one project, we haven't created tools or specific AI for different companies. But beyond the how and why people that use ChatGPT or the other tools, now we have to look at the accelerators and very specific tools that we have implemented. So we spent a great deal of money, and that concerns 25% of our projects. So 25% of our R&D projects are fitted out with these accelerators, et cetera, to be more performing in order to win the projects more easily. Now that's a response to my first question.

Now I talked this figure of 65% of activity. This is R&D for product and for the design engineering, as we say in English, you have manufacturing operation, which is 1/3 of the 65%. And that's everything that accompanies the rollout in the factory. Now you have your great order for workers and to supervise the factory. We have ALTEN engineers doing that. We are talking about manufacturing in the most highly qualitative sense of the word. Now obviously, with the tools, we're going to use AI. And using this, we have reduced the time necessary for operations. The outside of that is, and this has been happening for 35 years, for 35 years that I've been working in this kind of field.

We look at all the new needs that come into place with regards to regulation, certification, assessment and all of this offsets and compensates, I suppose, for the reduction in demand on one side. But then you also have the fact that we have to make sure that we have the right engineers in plus. And that is why I'm not worried at all. We're not going to have a surplus of engineers one day. We still got enough. We still don't have enough of them in engineering schools in France or elsewhere. So we have to make sure that we capture the needs as they are expressed, and this was the case in other technological evolutions. The 35% the rest remains in terms of activity is all about rolling out the networks in utilities.

So these are energy networks or telecom operators that accounts for the other 35% of the 65% of which I've already spoken. Now there you have now 10% of activity, which needs to be increased. And I'm not really going to talk about energy production because I included that in manufacturing. But then you've got 25% in IT services, particularly with the IT services within the different companies. Now I think there's going to be quite a lot of automation implemented. We essentially, we're not really developing software. We -- in banking and in finance, we're working with market financing. And then we're going to look at analytics. That's what we work on where we can make savings of such and such percent, but we want to improve the result. That's the end goal in architecture and in coordination.

So the overall statistic with ALTEN is we're going to look at what the impact is going to be in reducing time by 15%. So this is a business equivalent. If we can't conquer new markets, we can lower our cost, et cetera, by 15%. But how can we win market share permanently. We have to -- well, you can see that small players are eliminated and the major players have managed to seduce many of our clients who are coming back to us today. They were once with others, they're returning to us. And that leads us to growth, growth even in difficult times.

And I'm coming back to your first question, but I'm going to reply to the third one, and I'll let Bruno perhaps respond to the second. When you're talking about the fine we had to pay. This was from the competitivity authorities. I have to be very delicate in what I say here. It's -- for me, it's scandalous. There's an authority that's taxed us of EUR 24 million because the competitive market is a bit stressed. They say there was a long-date agreement between some company managers. This was not true. There was no proof of this either. So they decided unilaterally, the independent authority decided unilaterally that we should be content. We have paid EUR 24 million. But I hope that this will be considered a nonevent very shortly. But have we paid the EUR 24 million? Yes, we have. Yes, well, we had to pay it. But this is going to proceed to a different tribunal and with real judges. So not the fellow -- the former Bessé members, so very political in France.

But that's what's happened. Let's be honest. But again, I have to be careful in what I say. With regards to that subject, there is an appeal underway -- we don't have a timetable on as to know when that is going to be resolved. But the appeal is underway, and we have some real arguments in place. This is the reality.

[Interpreted] Now with regards to your question regarding goodwill, well, last year, we certainly looked at this with regards to automotive companies, particularly in the U.K. This year, the evaluation was done correctly. We have depreciated the companies which are out with France. And by that, I mean companies that were acquired and merged enterprise services in France and perhaps internationally as well. We, however, we've seen an lowering of activity in the last few years. When you go overseas and when you look at what's happening to date, as opposed to what happened a few years ago, we had to draw the conclusions that we effectively had less substance in terms of activity compared to the acquisitions that we had made over the course of the last 10 to 15 years. So that's for the IT part.

Now for Life Science, it's particular, slightly different because you're dealing with an activity which is very specific when it comes to fore. And we this is an activity which has looked to the major players who have a large market share in the life science field. So this very specific activity has lost market share without over the last couple of years. I think we have to make some major investments, particularly in the software field because the offers that go out with a software support are more interesting for investors than others.

Consequently, we have decided to withdraw from that activity -- these activities which were -- for which we had depreciated the goodwill.

[Interpreted] What is the size -- what does this represent in terms of size? Are we looking 50% CRO, 50% quality? What is the representation in terms of share?

[Interpreted] Well, I can give you some figures, of course, an activity which EUR 11 million to EUR 12 million in turnover this year, 2025, I should say. And we've depreciated EUR 20 million, EUR 23 million, which is the price which we paid to buy it 8 years ago. So that's going to have an impact on 2022.

[Interpreted] So when you say stop, that would mean that we've already seen a part of the lowering of the reduction?

[Interpreted] No, no. Either we're going to withdraw completely from this activity or we're going to divest this activity. We prefer to close these activities for which we have preferred to close out goodwill.

Thank you, Derric. We have a last question, please. Laurent Daure. Laurent Daure, over to you.

[Interpreted] I had several questions, of course, 4 questions. The first, if you could talk to us, Bruno, about the exact performance of Worldgrid, given your expectations, if it's completely aligned as it is an activity for which you paid quite a lot of money. Is there a risk in terms of depreciation and goodwill?

Second question, the buyback, please. Decision in the upcoming months. We're talking about several hundred million. You're not going to close 10 acquisitions in a couple of months. So what is that -- what's the impact? Is there a restructuring deal in place, one in which a decision has to be made fairly quickly?

And the 2 last questions I have pertain to the following. I know it's too early to have a complete vision of 2026. But at the end of February, in terms of information on activity compared to last year, which was very weak. This is more classic here. Are we looking at data which is being fed out? Is the data fairly classical? Or is it coming up less quickly than a normal year?

And lastly, when we look at the operational margin and the speed with which this information is coming to us, if you look at theoretical hypothesis here in the next few quarters, if growth were to speed up to, say, 4% to 5%, and it was well shared out, then how much time, in your opinion, would we need to come back to 10% EBITDA?

[Interpreted] Well, the question regarding Worldgrid, yes, it is meeting the initial expectations of the group. In 2025, we had a turnover of EUR 65 million with an operational margin, which is well within the costs about roughly the average of the group. There are no real surprises. There is a development plan in place, which is linked to the EPRs for the future. And it's not simple because we have to look at the export market. This has to be considered in order to respond to an eventual kind of risk with Worldgrid. There's no risk of depreciation at the moment.

With regards to your question on the buyback, I don't know if Simon really spoke about this. This is going to be cited in the next month. We have this possibility with regards to traditional acquisitions of 300, 500 engineers, the volume already committed to this. and we're signing contracts at the moment. So we've got roughly a volume of 3,000 more engineers roughly. So we're going to look at EUR 200 million more. Now we have more structural acquisitions, which might come up before the signature of this, one with which I'm sure you're familiar. We -- so we don't really know where that's going to go at this stage. However, it is true. We're not going to link a structural acquisition to a very expensive buyback. We can't. So we're giving ourselves the time to see how things pan out.

In April, we hope to be able to reach a decision and I hope we're not going to regret having the buyback at EUR 60. We'll wait and see. We have a very sort of prudent cautious approach to this. We've always wanted to be around cash 0, not be in debt because we've been setting very poor examples with our competitors. We do not want to sink into debt and through risk and sometimes we're accused of being too cautious. So we're going to try and see the light of day behind all this very quickly and be as less indebted as possible. And I'm sure we'll have some news for you fairly shortly.

When we look at activity and the return that we're getting, the feedback that we're getting as of the end of last year, well, the information is coming back quicker than we thought, but less quickly than we would like, less quickly than when we had a real organic growth of 5% per year. That's for sure. That's clear. If you look what happened in the fourth quarter, it was fairly positive. We had a number of engineers working on projects where we had a great deal of feedback between September and December, there was a cut, the cut before New Year, which was important, not violent, but important, much like a normal year. In general, we make up the difference at the end of January and beginning of February when you look at the start-up of rolling out new products or projects. This year will perhaps be March.

So it's slightly disappointing because we're taking longer, but it will be there. That will be the start -- the kicking off of the first quarter. It's encouraging all the same.

And I'm going to let Cyril respond to the 2 other questions that you asked on the evolution of operational margin and another question, which is related to the following: offshore capacity. Cyril, over to you.

[Interpreted] Thank you. What can I say? The real subject for me is not really coming back 10%, it's about regrowing. It's about getting growth started again. That's one of my priorities to ensure that the conditions are propitious. I am convinced that the return to 10% is going to be done fairly naturally. The company is going very well. It's very healthy. We've got well-identified industrial processes. So the 10% is not going to be instant, but we're going to get there. I hope we're going to improve this year. We're going to get to '27 and '28, we'll see if we have really returned to cruising speed. We are in a growth period, it's going to be fairly solid. And I think that operational margin at 10% is fairly obvious, structural even.

Now the other question that you had with regards to AI. Regarding AI and the catalyst for the pricing deflation, I do not consider this is the case. I consider that the pricing deflation should be catalyzed by the move to offshore than by the AI momentum, I would say. With AI, we will have and Simon explained that previously to generate some savings in terms of productivity. We mentioned the figure of 15%, okay? This 15% we are organized to try to keep this profitability for than to give it to our clients. But besides this move, the objective that we have is to deliver more added value to our clients because besides the deployment of AI, we will have the possibility, and we already have the possibility to sell additional services with good added value. So I consider that all in all, AI will not be a catalyst for the pricing deflation.

I would like to add 2 elements. The first one is the sectors in which we are working when you are working on sovereignty for defense, even for Civil Aeronautics, when you're working for the energy sector and so on, you are much less constrained by the impact of AI. So this is a key point. And coming from where I'm coming, I can see quite the same positioning in terms of sovereignty positions. Maybe the difference is the nature of activity because probably you are much more exposed when you are delivering IT services than the nature of activities that were described by Simon just before, I consider that the exposure of ALTEN probably it's much less. We are often compared to the pure IT services companies, but honestly, it's quite different, I would say. And I would say it's much more different. And I think that the exposure is not the same.

Having said that, as you know, we are accelerating strongly the development of accelerators and on projects because we consider this is the best way to capture new business and because we want to keep the growth strategy as the key driver for the group. So that's the principles we are working on. That's it for the answer.

[Interpreted] Perhaps we could take a last question.

[Interpreted] There are no hands raised. So there are no more questions.

[Interpreted] Well, thank you all for being here. I hope that we were able to respond to your questions and to any queries you may have regarding ALTEN. And as usual, we try to be as transparent and pragmatic as is possible. We are always available to take questions out with this room, of course, with this meeting. And I would like to wish you all an excellent day. Thank you very much, and good day. Thank you.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked

[Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]

Hello, everybody. I would like to thank you very much for attending this conference, which is for Alten for the presentation of the activity and the turnover by the end of December 2025. The situations are different according to different geographical sectors. By the end of December '25, the turnover is at EUR 4,143 billion compared to last year, more than EUR 100 million roughly.

In France, the activity has -- I'm sorry, I was mixing up with the global level. The activity has increased by 4% out of France with a decrease of 7%. The activity has been reduced by constant change rate by 4%. Our activity has been penalized by less working days than last year. This had an impact that we have estimated by 0.25% of the turnover on internal growth. The organic growth would have been lying at 4.2%. To the contrary of the precedent quarter, the fourth one really is marked by a slowdown of the overall activity. The turnover is at EUR 1.23 billion, a decrease of 35% compared with '24, where it was of EUR 1.26 billion. At constant rate, the activity decreases by 2.4% at the fourth quarter, decreases by 2.4% in France and 2.2% out of France, which is a decreasing rate, a decline which is inferior to half of the precedent decline. We hope that this means at last stability of the activity before starting again in '26.

The activity rate is relatively stable. It is -- lies at 91.4% for the last quarter, equally to '24, 91.11% for the whole year, which is identical to the year '24, which was at 91.2%. Our headcount in a decreasing perimeter has decreased less during the last quarter than the one before. However, you will see that by the end of the year, by the end of December '25 year -- by the year of '25, had headcount that has slightly increased where we have a splitting up between engineers and overall employees.

Globally, from the 51,000 engineers that Alten had by the end of '25, 8,000 and a little bit more are in France and the rest out of France. At a constant scope since the beginning of the year '25, the engineering part has diminished by 96 people -- 960 person. And on the 1st of January, we had an increase of engineer, which means that we have -- and thanks to the acquisition, we have compensated the decrease of the group.

The increase of our activity by the last quarter as contrary to what we had anticipated has generated a supplement of EUR 28 million, 1/3 in France, 1/3 internationally. The spinning up of the activity according to geographies is the following one. In France, the organic flow is of 3.6%.

Next slide, please. But only 2.2% compared with the last quarter. The activity is penalized by a decline in the automotive sector, car building activity, which is very important for France. Telecom, minus 20% with 5% of the activity for France and the bank also, which is declining and decreasing by 17% Aerospace on the contrary is booming again. It represents 1/3 of the activity in France, and it has increased by 3.5% year-to-year. The defense sector, 12% of the French turnover, 12% organic growth and rail, 5% organic growth have remained dynamic.

At the last quarter, in sequential vision and not year-to-year, the activity has stabilized in the automobile industry, finance bank and growth has increased in aerospace and defense beyond what we had anticipated. For [indiscernible] zone, we have a good growth of 5% for the overall year and 6% by the end of the year, except the automotive sector that represents 6% of the turnover. All the sectors are booming, an increase which is very good by the end of the last quarter.

In Italy, the activity has increased by 2.4% and 2.9% for the last quarter after a slowdown during the first quarter. And again, we have an increase of 2.8% with the exception of the telecom sector, all the sectors have increased. Some have been better off than others like aerospace and defense as well as automobile that has increased again. In Germany, year-to-year, we have 13% of the activity. And you will see the rhythm of growth in the appendixes that we have published according to the different quarters. And you will see that by the last quarter, the rhythm of the decline in Germany has slowed down. It moved from 20% by the end of '24 to 90% at the beginning of '25, and it is close to 3% by the time of end of December.

Automobile represented almost 4% of the automotive turnover is declining, but the sequential decline has also diminished. So this sector declined until the end of the third quarter, but the activity went up again in the aerospace sector that represents 20% of our turnover. It is an activity which is -- has an organic growth during the last quarter. So year-to-year, but also in sequences. The same for telecoms, 9% of turnover.

In Germany, the activity has developed very quickly. In the field of defense, it has increased -- where it has increased considerably, and now it represents 7% of the German turnover. Last quarter that reveals be much more favorable than anticipated also in Germany, even if the activity remains very complicated in this country, which is not over now with all the problems around the automotive sector. In U.K., the activity has declined by 12%. And to the country of other countries, the fourth quarter has not been marked by an improvement. The decline has even increased in the automotive industry. It represents 15% of turnover in U.K. Decline also in aerospace, civil aerospace, 20% of the turnover, minus 6% decline. The same for public sector, which is decreasing by 20% to the country of that, a sector that develops in a significant way is the one of defense with an increase of 11% and represents now almost 10% of the global turnover of the country.

Benelux countries, the situation is almost identical to the one of U.K., a decline of activity, which has been accentuated during the last quarter, carrying all the problems of this zone at minus 2%. Belgium represents 40% of Benelux has a decline of global activities by 9% because of automobile and tertiary activities. Netherlands, 60% of the zone, the activity has declined by 13% because of sectors out of industrial and energy. They do represent 40% of the turnover.

Semiconductors, which is the best known in the -- for the Netherlands is very stable. In Eastern Europe, the activity remained very stable with a growth of 3.5%. Romania represent -- has a decline of 10% because of the automotive and bank and finance sector in the Nordics, the global activity has declined by almost 20% and the rhythm of decline has slowed down in Sweden that represents 30% of the overall turnover. Difficulties in the automobile and truck activity. In Finland, the decline is of 12%. But in the field of tooling machines, the development is good.

If we move from the Atlantic to the Northern -- Northern America, the activity has a decline of 6%. The growth has almost -- has also slowed down. We have a sequential slowdown. In the U.S., 60% of the zone. Automobile, life science and retail have declined, but are stable, progressively stable by the fourth quarter. Canada, the activity has increased by 5%, thanks to automobile, aerospace, bank and finances.

For Asia Pacific, we have a slight decline, 0.7% and the activity is globally stable for the second half year. The chemical activity is increasing. All the sectors are increasing apart from telecom. In India, we have a decline of 3% because of automobile and offices. The other sectors are increasing. Japan, 23% of the zones, an increase of 12%, thanks to the automobile industry and also offices development. Korea is declining strongly because of automobile and also because of the loss of an important customer.

Now let's have a look at the activity as we usually do per sector as a percentage of revenue. You see that the automobile industry has globally declined by 7% for the same scope and change situation for a decline of 12% for the builders and for equipment providers, 27% decline. As you know, it is the strongest decline in Germany, which is really accounting for this very strong decline for the OEM industry. This is due to Germany. This decline is now, I think, over. We have -- we have figures for the fourth -- third and fourth quarter that reflect upon progressive and by and by a stabilization of the activity.

Rail is stable. It should develop for '26 if we listen to our customers. Aerospace activities represents 15.5% of the activity is again on a good trend for organic growth during the fourth quarter, the decline is at 2%. And even the space activities, which were strongly impacted is growing again. We had communicated around organic growth for '26, but in fact that started already during the last quarter '25. Defense & Security, naval as well as naval represent 8.8% of the turnover have increased by 4%. The growth rhythm may reach -- has reached 16% by the end of the year.

Energy, 11.9% of turnover has grown, thanks to nuclear activities as well as energy. Oil and gas is stable. Life Sciences, a decline -- a decline of 1.2% only for the fourth quarter. Medical equipment, pharma sector is declining by 2%. The activity in absolute value tends to reach a certain stability in a sequential way. The industrial equipment, semiconductors and electronics is declining by 1.1% -- similar to other activities. We have an activity that has started to stabilize in the field of electronic and conductors, and it has deteriorated in other fields of the industries.

Telecoms are declining by 8.8%. The activity has decreased by 10% for equipment providers and 7.5% for providers. It is still marked on year-to-year, but the absolute value is supposed to stabilize around 4% -- and then bank finance and insurance remained stable. It decreased by the first half year, but the activity gained back in stability during the third and the fourth quarter. The situation improved everywhere in the world during the last quarter of '25 and mainly in Southern Europe and Canada, it is only in those countries where -- and regions where the growth is really important.

Then we have retail services and public sector, a decrease of 7.7% with a stability, which is remarkable for the fourth quarter. As to M&A, Alten has acquired 4 companies this year. The 3 first ones between -- between July and December have been communicated about -- no, sorry, between July and September have been communicated in October. A last one in the field Life Sciences has been acquired during the fourth quarter, a company where the turnover is estimated at EUR 20.4 million with an important growth rate.

So to sum up the perspective, this is the year '25 and the perspective '26, even if '25 has a global decline by 4.5%, it seems that the last quarter really indicated that stabilization is possible like for aerospace, like bank finances and insurance businesses. As always, by the end of the fourth quarter, the activity following the end of the year celebrations is always a little bit slow, but we will have to wait until the end of the first quarter to get an idea about the dynamism of '26.

Supplementary working days are limited to 1 for the year '26. And of course, the decline does not mean that we observed for the year '25 does not mean that the decline is going to happen for and hold on for '26. The last quarter '25, which is better than anticipated, helped us to generate more turnover, which is going to be accounting for the operational results. We had indicated an expectation of 8.2% for -- by the end of '25, but it will be higher than that, and we will talk about it when publishing the results on the 25th of February.

And now I'm going to hand over to our participants. If you could open up the conference to help the questions to pop up. We have Nicolas David.

Two questions. As regards the fourth quarter, it's a little bit better than expected. Do we have to consider that customers have just finished their budgets because they were a little bit late. They hadn't been -- they hadn't consumed it all? Or is it more fundamental than that? So -- this is the first question. The second one is the decline. If you look at the first quarter of the year '25, it had been decreasing strongly.

So Sorry, we are losing Mr. David. We can't hear Mr. David anymore. Sorry, Nicolas, your second question can't be understood. I don't know what happens with the network. It holds on. So okay, let's try to understand. As regards to the first question and the fourth quarter, it's not only about spending the budget, be it for public sector or elsewhere that could have generated an overgrow of activity or surplus of activity. There is indeed a recovery. More projects were released in the field of aerospace, for instance, a certain number of projects had been postponed from one quarter to another. And then all of a sudden, it started, not only in France, but also in Germany, and it participates to the improvement of the situation in Germany. an increase also of aerospace activities in Spain -- so I believe that this is a reincrease of activities for Airbus in particular, like what had been announced.

And these projects are spread over a certain number of months. And so it will really reveal the full potential in '26. As regards the second question, extremely difficult. Indeed, from a mathematical point of view, it's okay. Is it possible to envisage 0% of organic growth year-to-year in '26, if I got it right from your question. It means that we will have to compensate the embarked decline of '25. It's not impossible. If things go on like that, we have the up-ramping of a certain number of activities already. So -- if we -- if it gets -- if it reaches stability, we will have an increase by the end of the first quarter.

And then it will be possible to imagine reaching 0 for the whole year. But it's a little bit too early to do that because if you look at the activity before the end of March, it's difficult to have a very clear vision of what the dynamism of activity will be for the year. We have a few periods, key periods, end of February, beginning of March and then end of September, beginning of October. Okay. I had the feeling that we could even reach that in May or June.

We will see. It is not my assumption. If this is a question, it's not my assumption. We start the year with a certain number of projects, which are less important than the end of '25. We have to remember that. So I mean, we are by the end of January right now and we haven't caught up the delay we had. So I don't really understand how it could be possible.

And we have a question from Laurent Daure. You may raise your question, Laurent Daure.

Bruno, can you hear me?

Yes, very well. Sorry, we still have the echo, a little bit for everyone.

First question, it's a little bit early in this year. But as regards recruitment headcount, what are the guidelines which were given to the teams? Is it a wait-and-see attitude? Simon was -- Germany is almost stable. It is extremely difficult to hear Mr. Daure. What about degradation of Germany? And then could you make a comment on that?

Recruitment only if necessary and just in case we do not have the competent the internal skills to do and to work on the projects. So we have no, we have no objectives in terms of recruitment, The activity has not started again. What is important is to have a terrestrial activities -- we lost Mr. Benoliel for a few seconds.

If the activity grows and goes on growing, then we will recruit. Now for Germany, from a global point of view, the activity has increased in the field of aerospace, telecom, defense activities, they start to -- they start to recover. However, automotive industry still represents 40%. And in the automotive sector, the situation has not changed fundamentally, which means that the call for tenders that we receive are still extremely demanding. They also require systematically offshore activities. And so we will need to balance out the projects for the big projects.

The Germans are increasing in terms of outsourcing of engineering, thanks to -- or because -- and yes, thanks to their suppliers in a much more rapid and massive way than the French did 10 years ago. And if we -- if we look at the German P&L, the automotive sector is -- will go on declining. I have no specific figures, but -- and then it will probably stabilize a little bit more during the year and then -- but the P&L of the car industry will remain negative in terms of contribution. Today, we have projects and our offshore activity obliges us to consider that at the beginning of the project, which is in a deficit situation at the beginning of the month.

So there is no major change of paradigm, except that globally because of Germany, we have an automotive contribution, which is lower. The growth is going to slow down because you know that for OEMs, it is extremely difficult to do something. And this is true for Germany, but not only. It's also true for all the European car builders. Since the commission set new rules and in a certain way, the Horizon has lit up for the all electrical by '35. We had a certain number of automobile builders who were waiting for that and instructions to stop -- to define the final strategy. And this really contributed to enroll us in a certain number of projects.

A certain number of projects are also going to be reduced. So I think the activity is going to stabilize from a turnover point of view, even if globally the offshore contributes within the mix to reduce the generation of turnover for a certain number of projects. However, I can't imagine that Germany is going to make money in this field in '26. But the increase of defense, as we said before, aerospace, et cetera, will hopefully compensate. And we should have an overall improvement of the situation in Germany by '26. So you can see that today, we've got 10 companies, not major companies.

Most of them have perhaps several hundred people, some consultants, maybe 1,000 consultants in Europe, all the countries if we group all the countries together in North America, in South America equally, principally in Brazil in order to support European manufacturers in Asia, equally, India, China. So it's a fairly dynamic market, but there are no major targets at the moment. But it was an activity that dried up at the end of 2024, but I think it's bounced back quite nicely.

And since we're talking about mergers and acquisitions, the 4 companies acquired in 2025 and you can see them in the communicate, the press release, they consolidated as of the 1st of January 2026. But nothing has been consolidated up until now. No, no. It will be the -- as of the 1st of January 2025?

No. Could I ask something, please? If you take the hypothesis that this business is going to stabilize, can we have a rough idea how we're going to manage the cost base. And given this hypothesis that the activity is going to stabilize, what can we expect in terms of margin? Do we have to rework the sequential turnover?

No, there will be a margin in 2025, which will be slightly up on the one announced because we have a cost structure which is very similar. It's equivalent. So this means, of course, that we're going to have to look at the margin, which will be okay in 2026. Perhaps we should wait a bit before we ask this question. But if the activity stabilizes, then we should have a similar structure. We have a slight appreciation on the margin. If the activity kicks off again, -- if we have to increase the structure, there's going to be a positive effect on the margin in 2025 as well.

Now we have a question from Derric Marcon.

Hope you can hear me? I have 4 questions. Can you hear me? The first question is, can you give us an idea on the importance of quantifying this passage from December to January in terms of the staff members that we've lost projects we've got an idea of the rhythm. Do you think you're going to be able to pull these figures back up? Is it going to be comparable to previous years, where you have a situation on the 1st of January in 2026, which might be better than anticipated?

And the second question is in the -- is related to what you're talking about in Germany, major references -- the automotive industry has had a huge impact on our margins. Can you talk about the flows? Can you talk about the possible impact on turnover in terms of financing, if you look further, where can we go if we take BMW, Volkswagen, if we take them as customers? Can you give us an idea? Does this multiply the turnover that you might have just now? Or is it 20% more if everything goes well, obviously? And the third question, in fact, I've only got 3, says the gentlemen. The third question, when we look at constant OpEx, you talked about EUR 30 million of a delta compared to what you thought. So that's like 50, 60 base points on margin like that, we must look at things, I think, this upcoming year.

I'm going to begin by the last question. When you have extra turnover, the top line doesn't go down immediately. You have costs between the 2. Salaries, for example. So automatically, you can't have 50, 60 points more on EBIT. Well, salaries, yes, but you already have them considered. You don't do that with employees. I'm afraid the sound is very poor. I can hardly hear the gentleman. You have to look at cost of sales. We don't -- we're not working with luxury gross margins. We mustn't wait for the margins to go up to that degree. It will be better. It will be substantially better, but perhaps not as well as you think it might be. When you look at the gross margin, we have to look also at performance. Performance has been better, perhaps there will be more commissions taken. There's a rob between EBIT and turnover, which must be taken into account.

Now with regard referencing the articles, this is a question perhaps which is slightly more complicated. We have won new references. But we can see through the calls for tender that there's a real concentration, particularly in Germany, which is going to have an impact on several players because if you don't have any offshore, then we -- we can participate freely in the calls for tender. These calls for tenders are used for a volume of activity. And these volumes of activity may or may not be assured. There's going to be status of work and purchase orders, which come into play. Then you have technical services direction, the calls for tender at the heart of these references and volumes of activity, which could account for tens of millions of euro with production objectives in place, then it have to be considered project by project.

So currently, we can't see any significant increase even as there are calls for tender in place, we can't see any significant increase in turnover related to that with the car manufacturers in Germany, not in the way we might imagine the turnover improving with 10% to 20% with some activities next year. Perhaps that will happen. But today, we don't have any real concrete element which allow us to forecast that accurately. What we do know is that we are consulted frequently.

We're going to win a set number of projects, a set number of tenders -- so we're going to see that the costs are going to have an impact on the bottom line. Others we're going to do better more quickly. This is a change, and it's a significant change in the way we operate business in the automotive industry in Germany. This has been about 1 and 1.5 years. We received calls for tender with the average price of EUR 50 to EUR 60 per hour. And now we're talking EUR 30 to EUR 35 per hour with this demand to be close at hand for the technical interfaces with the clients.

That meant we couldn't outsource everything we wanted to do, obviously, because you have to be close at hand, you can't outsource elsewhere. So that means we have competitors who are 100% German. We don't know if this will work or not, but they are 100% German. Others like us who are French perhaps, but have to assume the ramp-up cost in the initial period. An idea by the end of the year. Well, every year, we are going to pay 1,300 and 1,500 engineers. We have projects that was through this year, last year. It was less at the end of June. We got a bit of an identical phenomena. We could had recovery -- we're in a progressive recovery.

And that's why I indicated that we have to wait for the end of the third quarter to see how much time we need to recover fully because afterwards, that's when we're going to regenerate growth in the interim period, and that's why I explained to Nicolas, of course, that I didn't believe organic -- positive organic growth as early as June because we've got -- we've still got a dip in January and February. However, as opposed to last year, if you had to compare the 2, that's what I've done, the recuperation, the recovery phase is going to be quicker this year.

Well, that's what I wanted to ask. I believe he's talking about framework agreements. Can you quantify what that represents in terms of challenge, are we talking about EUR 150 million, EUR 100 million a year? Can you give us an idea of what it represents?

I know this is hypothetical. No, no, actually, no, I can't because we don't have any indications, not operational ones, which are specific enough, which would allow us then to have this kind of projection.

Now we have a question from Aditya Buddhavarapu...

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Just a couple of points I wanted to clarify. So on 2026, can you just clarify what you are saying in terms of the trajectory of growth during the year? Are you saying that Q1 and maybe Q2 will still be negative and you might only see a return to positive growth by the end of Q2 and maybe flat for the full year? Is that sort of based on the embedded projects you have for this year? That's the first question on the growth for 2026. Second, also, could you just clarify on the margins for 2026? How should we think about it if growth is stable or maybe growth is slightly positive? How should we think about the margin outlook for the year overall?

So first of all, regarding the growth for 2026, as I explained, we don't give any guidance at this stage for 2 reasons. The first one is that we know what is the embedded decline because it's not any more embedded growth because of what happened in '24 and '25 for the coming year. So it's minus 2% roughly. On top of that, each end of semester, we are losing projects because projects are ending. And also, we are facing people leaving the company. okay? That's the way it works. So end of '25, we roughly lost 1,400 people for the [indiscernible]. I mean, whether internal or external, but that's the fact.

And we have to offset that loss by hiring people, and we can hire people only if we win new projects. Of course, customers having projects ending end of December will relaunch new projects independently of their global budget portfolio. They will relaunch new projects during January, February or March. So for us, it is very important to wait until we have offset that loss to know when we are back to the situation we faced at the end of the previous semester. Will it be mid-February, end of March or later. In '25, for example, we never succeeded in offsetting that loss because of the global, I mean, economic decline within our industry.

And this is why we today cannot know if we will breach that threshold and above all when. Accordingly, we are unlikely to post organic growth, meaning that we will have not only offset that loss at the end of the year, but also the embedded decline of the company at the end of Q1. I mean it's almost impossible when we had positive growth in Q1 during the years -- the previous years before '24, it was because we had generated sufficient positive embedded growth to offset the people leaving the company at the end of December and building in a very positive growth, we had customers launching many new projects in February and March.

Unfortunately, we will not be in that situation in '26, even though the situation is probably better than the one we are facing Q1 '25. And to be honest, I cannot tell if and when Alten will post a positive organic growth in '26. What we just saw is that the activity seems stabilizing globally if we think on a sequential basis, I mean, comparing Q4 and Q3 in terms of revenue. And we today have some sectors growing, I mean, from an organic standpoint, which are aerospace, making and finance, defense and naval mainly and nuclear activity among the energy field, okay?

So the picture is globally better than it was 1 year ago, but still we are not back to positive growth. Regarding the margins, of course, we will release the margin end of February, and it's much too early to talk about the margin for '26. And we never give any guidance in February when we release the numbers because it is linked, as you know, with the assumptions in terms of growth okay, because we have to deal with the bench and also with the cost base. And we wait normally until April when we know better about what will happen in H1. And we know the mood of the customer, so we can make some assumptions for H2 before we need any guidance. We give any guidance.

But for sure, the margin for '25 will be above the estimation because we were guiding to a minus 5% organic growth. And at the end, it was minus 4.5% -- so automatically, since the cost base is the same, we will slightly improve our margins compared with the guidance we gave in October. And we will see in April where we expect that the margins could -- what the margin could reach in '26, but we need 2 to 3 months more to have a better view...

We have no other questions. Would anybody else like to say anything? We have another question from Mr. Marcon.

Bruno, just to be sure, I think you've already responded to the question. But the consolidation date for the fourth is the 1st of January 2026, because I'm not in India and the United States, it might not be the same.

No, no. No, it's 1st of January 2026, but you're right to highlight this because we had the forecast a consolidation in October 2025. But when it came to management and accounting, it was very poorly organized. So the Indian colleagues were not able to respect that deadline. It's very marginal because this is a company that has EUR 7 million in turnover. It doesn't really change very much. But you did well to ask the question because we had to kind of move their first consolidation because of the state of affairs in the company. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Well, I think that was our last question. Okay. If you have no further questions then, I'd like to thank you all for having participated in this conference on our 2025 fiscal year. We will have the results in just over 3 weeks. I wish you all a great evening. And if you do have any other questions, you know how to reach me. So I would say thank you very much, and hope to see you soon. Good evening.

[Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]