BIC Stock

Good morning, everyone. [Foreign Language] It's a big honor for us to welcome you here personally in our headquarters, here in Clichy where it all started for BIC many years ago. And of course, also a warm welcome for those who are joining us online today.

For those who do not know me yet, my name is Rob Versloot. And I have the pleasure to lead this company since almost 1 year, if everything goes well today, I hope to celebrate my first anniversary at BIC in exactly 8 days from now.

And a bit about my background. I've been working in the fast-moving consumer goods industry for the last 30 years. And my first job was a salesman. And you will notice today in the presentation that DNA of the salesman has always stayed with me, I'm all about commercial execution.

I spent the first 15 years of my career in originally a Dutch company called Numico. The bankers here maybe remember the deal that Danone did when it acquired Numico many years ago. So spend a couple of years with Danone as well and then transitioned to a Swiss food company called Hero, where I had the pleasure to lead the company as CEO for the last 12 years.

And now since 1 year at BIC, and I can tell you, I'm honored. I'm honored as a Dutch man to lead this iconic French company and to contribute to its development.

Let me see if this works, it does. So luckily, I'm not alone today, but I'm joined by my wonderful colleagues of our Executive Committee. And this is a new team. This is a team that I have assembled over the last 12 months. And it's a great combination of some long-standing experienced BIC executives, complemented by new hires, mostly in the commercial and financial areas.

So today, we have the pleasure to start with -- I have the pleasure to start with sharing our overall strategic ambition. We will then welcome my colleague, David, who will take you through the category strategies of each of our core categories.

We're then going to switch and focus on in-market execution, starting with our largest market, North America, that we presented by my colleague, Haven; followed by Alina, who will take you through our in-market execution in our international markets. We then will speak about sustainable development, very important topic for a company like us before Greg will take you through the numbers, our transformation, our financial ambition, and I will finish off with a conclusion.

So yes, it's really a pleasure to kick off this meeting today and take you through our strategic ambition. But before doing so, I'd like to share with you what I have learned here now 12 months in this wonderful company. And I'd like to take you through some of the key strengths and assets of which we are very proud here at BIC.

They are starting with our most important asset, a legendary brand, a French icon. Having worked for so many years in fast-moving consumer goods, there are not many brands in this world who can count on the same global awareness as the BIC brands can. So it is really a fantastic asset to build on.

Secondly, I mean, I have them here, our products, yes; they're absolutely iconic. They are being recognized all over the world, the lighter, the pens, the shavers, absolutely iconic design, wonders of industrial design. And this is something we're very, very proud of. And when you think of design and these icons, we really plan to leverage that more and more in the future as well.

Thirdly, I spent roughly half my time in markets. I've traveled all over the world to all our important big markets. And what I see everywhere is people with a real heart for the company, passionate professionals who want to make things happen and will give it all day by day. Really a fantastic culture with great people.

And then manufacturing, I told you already, I'm a commercial guy, but I do know something about supply chain. And the BIC factories are absolutely state-of-the-art. I have not encountered in my professional life such great technical know-how, such fantastic efficiencies.

And it's pretty amazing that we, as a company, which are offering relatively affordable products, we can generate gross margins of over 50%, and that is very much driven by a fantastic supply chain and manufacturing footprint on which we are very, very proud as a company.

And last but not least, distribution. You can travel basically anywhere in the world, and I guarantee you, you will be able to find BIC products in literally every corner. Still not enough, we still have a lot of opportunity for distribution but we are present in more than 160 countries. So really a fantastic worldwide distribution footprint.

This is a lineup of which many companies are jealous. I can tell you this. This is a fantastic basis to build from. But we want to be brutally honest with you also today. And when we look back at our performance, we conclude that we have some issues to fix here at BIC.

Today, we are a 2 billion company, and that's not bad. That's great. The problem is, 10 years ago, we were in a 2 billion company. I want to be very clear, we have not been able to grow our business structurally in the last year. We have lost volume, and we have also suffered from declining profitability. Our EBIT margin last year was 13.6%.

At the same time, I want to be balanced, I want to be balanced. I want to call out the issues, but I also want to be balanced. The company has remained with a very, very solid financial foundation and structure that has been able to really sustain shareholder returns.

I want to be very clear about what is our priority here at BIC. Our #1 priority is to drive organic growth. But before doing so, there is a couple of things that we need to fix. And we are very aware of that.

Coming from fast-moving consumer goods industry, what surprised me when I started here at BIC and started to analyze our P&L and look at our commercial activity, we're not investing sufficiently in both brand support and commercial execution.

For the elderly people in the room like me, I remember BIC as a company who used to advertise like crazy, Tour de France, John McEnroe. Who remembers John McEnroe? A famous American Tennis player. BIC was all over in advertising. And I think when we look today, when I go to the socials, when I look at TikTok together with my daughter, I don't really see us. So we really have an opportunity to improve our brand support. When we benchmark with other companies, we can also clearly see that there is a gap.

Second issue, which struck me is I think the company has been busy in the recent years with acquiring in what I call rather exotic new businesses. So the company made several acquisitions. We're very proud of one acquisition, namely Tangle Teezer, I will talk more about that today.

But we also did other acquisitions in categories which were pretty far out of where the DNA and the strength of BIC is. So we acquired several businesses in the beautiful art of skin, temporary tattoos. We bought a company called Rocketbook in digital [ notepads ]. We invested in a company called AMI.

And in my view, this has led to a lack of the core business. And one of the first decisions the Board and I took -- when I started last year in Q4 was to say goodbye to those businesses. They were not contributing to either growth or profitability and we wanted to make a clean start. And you've seen that last year in Q4 that we took that step.

Third point I want to call out is our organization, very, very complex in my view, which surprised me. I think BIC's DNA is an entrepreneurial company, a family-owned company. But we saw very many different management layers, a bit unclear on who's accountable for what.

So we took a lot of steps in the last 12 months to implement a leader more commercially focused and less complex operating model. And that, of course, caused a lot of change here in this company, but that change was necessary in order to be fit for growth going forward. And I'm convinced that our new commercially-oriented setup will also help to speed up innovation to be much closer to consumers and customers in order to grow the business.

So we're very clear on what our issues are, and we're very clear on what we need to fix. The great news is there is so much opportunity still to grow our business. I know some of you are a bit doubtful about the growth profile of some of our categories. But I can tell you, on a global level, all our categories still show growth. And on top of that, our market share is much smaller than I thought when I started to work at BIC. I think the name is bigger, the brand is bigger than the factual market share.

And for those of you, I know the questions will come, Lighters, I just want you to remember this fact. From the 10 lighters sold in the world, only one is BIC, 1 out of 10. So there is a lot of opportunity to capture share, and I'm going to explain to you today how we plan to do that.

The point I want to make is we're very clear about our priorities. As I already mentioned, key KPI going forward is organic growth. And in order to trigger that, we know we will need to invest more in our brands and our commercial execution. And in order to enable that, we need to transform the way we are organized. As I mentioned, we took a lot of steps and change our ways of working. We need to change the shape of our P&L in order to drive this company as a true fast-moving consumer goods company.

Now when it comes to growth, it's all about execution. And growth doesn't come by itself. So we really took the time to make deliberate changes in the way we plan to execute growth. We have developed a model, which is based on quite a well-known theory called How brands grow? of professional Byron Sharp. And we call it How BIC grows?

So we have been training our organization. We're still in that process to change the way we plan to execute growth. And it's all about penetration. So our strategy will be focused on how can we drive additional penetration? How can we make from 1 out of 10, 2 out of 10 in lighters?

And there are ample opportunities for additional penetration in this company. And it has to do with, of course, the availability, the physical availability of the product. It has to do with mental availability, and that's why I'm so keen on really driving that brand and mental and brand support going forward. And it also has to do about product and portfolio.

I'm going to come back later on this, but we are moving from locally diverse commercial execution to a standardized growth model going forward, which is called How BIC grows. Now of course, you are very curious to see how we're going to make this all this happen. And before explaining that, I have a video to show you, to give you an idea.

[Presentation]

Ladies and gentlemen, let's get back to what made us great. And I was talking about growth before the video. And I think it's very important that we are clear about our North Star, who do we actually want to become this growing company? BIC to the future is about becoming the leader in beautiful, better everyday essentials. That's what I'd like this company to be recognized for.

Why beautiful? First of all, we have this background of this iconic designs in the company. And through design, through a rejuvenated brand, through great packaging design; we will seduce more consumers in order to increase penetration. And the combination is better and with better is a testimony to the superior product performance that BIC big products deliver.

Again, the lighter, I can testify to this personally. Unfortunately, I am still smoking for the last 30 years. There is no better pocket lighter than the BIC lighter. Tangle Teezer, I mean, I invite you to try this. You will never use a different brush again, yes?

So we have this combination of really products that really deliver on performance. And what we want to do is we want to beef up the beauty, the attraction of our products. Beautiful, better everyday essentials. And that will help us to increase penetration.

Now we're announcing our strategic plan today, but it's not that we have been sitting still here in Clichy in the last 12 months. I already mentioned the decisive action we took in order to refocus the company on what it knows best, our core business. And we have divested or stopped the things that were distracting us.

Then I mentioned Tangle Teezer. We are incredibly happy and proud to have Tangle Teezer in our portfolio, and you will hear today that the category of brushes will become the official fourth leg of our company. And why does this so fit well with BIC? Again, let's go to beautiful, better everyday essentials.

Great-looking products, fantastic product performance, made from plastic, which company can produce plastic products like no others. So we have great opportunity for in-sourcing margin expansion. And we can leverage our worldwide distribution footprint. So this is really a perfect match. Very happy with Tangle Teezer. And you've seen also in our recent result publications that we have made great progress with integration, but also with acceleration of growth.

Then I'm not the only new guy here at BIC. You will meet my team today, which has been renewed for an important part. But also our Board of Directors has had many changes. And we feel incredibly supported by our renewed Board, and we are 100% aligned on the strategy that we are pursuing and explaining to you today.

I mentioned our operating model. We took decisive action to adjust our organization structure in order to become more agile, to become closer to customers and consumers. And we are pleased. I want to be -- I won't say satisfied, but we are pleased with that we see after a very tough year last year, we see that the momentum is improving at BIC.

We had a moderate growth in the first half year and a very high EBIT margin, thanks to a one-off related to the tariff substitution and strong cash flow. So I think we are managing to stabilize the company, slightly growing whilst we are preparing for sustained growth going forward.

I'd like to keep the things very simple and clear. So on the -- from the category point of view, we've made clear choices. We are going to focus on our traditional three core categories plus brushes because we see an incredible opportunity to develop the brushes category.

If you go to the store like I do every week, I invite you to take a look at the brushes section. It's a section where there is no branded leader. And when we look at Tangle Teezer and its performance in the U.K. and in the U.S., our 2 main markets where we invest; we take share with an incredible speed. And we did a lot of research on Tangle Teezer. And in my career, I have not seen a consumer funnel, which is so strong as Tangle Teezer has. So the relation between awareness, trial, repeat is really fantastic.

We're also very clear on the role of each of the categories. And my colleague, David, will enlighten you a little bit more about it, but each category has its own role to play in the total BIC mix.

On the country side, we have also taken decisive action because as this plan is a lot about commercial excellence, we want to make sure that we are properly set up in our country organization to execute with excellence. And what we have done is we have categorized our markets in four different buckets, depending on its development stage or the performance, and have adjusted our in-market strategies based on the category of the country type.

White spaces, also important. You will learn, despite the worldwide distribution footprint we have, there is an incredible amount of white space still available for our company to capture.

Now I showed you where we want to play, both from a category point of view and from a country point of view. Let's now discuss what are now the levers which we can pull in order to improve that organic growth performance at BIC. I'll take you through these one by one, starting with portfolio.

The BIC company is in love with SKUs, I have noticed. Really, there's a deep love for developing as many SKUs as possible. But when we analyze that portfolio, I think we have over 10,000 different SKUs. But when we analyze which part of the portfolio is now actually driving our growth, our profitability, it is a very small part.

So we really believe we have an incredible opportunity to clean up our house, to reduce the portfolio and focus much more on those products and SKUs that really matter. And that will help our commercial colleagues to be more clear. I believe less is more in this particular case. It will not only help our commercial colleagues to improve their focus, it will also benefit our supply chain.

You can imagine if you have a smaller portfolio but you have higher production runs on your core SKUs that, that will help efficiency even further. We are at a good level, but we don't want to stop where we are today. We want to increase going forward.

This is my favorite one, the BIC brand. And what you see here is some early directional work, which we are pursuing at the moment. BIC is a fantastic brand, but it's a little bit outdated. It starts to feel like yesterday's BIC brand. So what we want to do is we want to rejuvenate this wonderful brand, we want to connect with younger consumers. And we are working at this as we speak, and you see some first directional executions here.

The mission is clear. BIC has to become cool again. I don't want my generation to talk about BIC. I want my children to talk about BIC in school, at the clubs, wherever they are. And there is this wonderful basis and great heritage, but it's time for renewal, for reconnection with new consumers. I see a wonderful opportunity to propel this brand into the future.

So we are working on the brand. And once we have defined the renewal, that's the time when we're going to start to invest behind it and make the whole world known about the new BIC. You saw in our growth model, it's about portfolio. It's about mental availability and investment in brand support, but it's also about making the product available everywhere.

What I've noticed here in my time at BIC is a very strong focus on what I call the traditional super and hypermarket channel. You can -- when you're here in France, you can go to the Carrefour, [ you share ] products, et cetera. The point is there is a lot of opportunity in alternative channels. And I can name a couple of examples.

Fastest-growing channel in Europe is discounters. BIC is underrepresented. We have to get in there. In Stationery, yes, back-to-school, that is, of course, nice and an important season. But do you know which distribution point we sell the most for color pens here in France? Disneyland, Disneyland, Marne-La-Vallee next to our factory, yes. We got to go there where the consumer shops, recreate, travels.

So I see a lot of white space in channel development outside traditional supermarket hypermarkets. The traditional channel, convenience channel, discounters, tourism, leisure, you name it, we have to be there. So an important lever for us in our ambition to increase penetration is to start to occupy white spaces in the distribution landscape.

And then I mentioned it already. This company was known for great geographical expansion. Our founder, Marcel Bich, traveled the world and opened countries 60 years ago, went to Brazil, went to Mexico. And I don't want to compare myself with Marcel Bich, but I do -- we got to take the learnings of what made us great. And when you analyze the geographical footprint of BIC, there is opportunity to increase our presence in emerging markets. That was a great timing.

Now talking about emerging markets, we know we want to be selectively. So we have carefully chosen which markets do we already have brand equity? Where do we already have a structure? Where do we have the right to win? And we see particularly on the African continent, we see huge opportunities for growth.

We have already a strong presence in Africa, so it's not that we're now suddenly starting to embark on an African adventure. But we have analyzed that we can really turbocharge our sales through the recruitment of hundreds of new colleagues in sales. And when you look at Africa from a demographic and an economic growth point of view, it is in a great case for growth. Population will double in Africa. So clearly, we see opportunities for geographical expansion for our business.

I'm coming to the last lever, which is innovation. Of course, as a fast-moving consumer goods company, we need to renovate and innovate our portfolio. When we talk about renovation, remember the mission, beautiful and better. I want all our products to look outstanding, I want to seduce and attract consumers. And there is so much we can do with decoration and execution and packaging design and product shapes. So that is where we will focus.

And when it comes to innovation, I want to be selective because most innovation fails, yes. Most innovations clutters the portfolio, most innovation has to be withdrawn from market. So I want to surely innovate, but we will test, we will learn before we roll out.

Yes. Those are the five levers which we want to pull in order to drive growth. I'm coming now to some other enablers, which will help us to realize what I've just told you about. I think we already spoke about the brands. We have two wonderful brands, BIC, which needs a renewal; and a great Tangle Teezer brand.

We spoke about consumer and commercial excellence, the whole focus, the relentless focus on excellent execution in markets. We will continue to nurture our supply chain. We're not going to fix what isn't broken. We have a great supply chain. We're proud of it. We will nurture it.

Where we have work to do, and Greg will speak about it later today, is in our digital infrastructure and capability. Clearly, we are not where we want to be. So part of our transformation is also a very deliberate investment to get up to speed in the area of digital capability.

We spoke about organization. And as I mentioned, we've taken a lot of decisive steps. And last but not least, our sustainability strategy will be fully focused on circularity. We have, of course, in a company like ours, a duty to think about the end of life of our products. And my colleague, Francois will take you through our thinking how we will try to become a circular company in the future.

On organization, I am -- as it's so important in order to help us execute well, I'd like to take you through how we plan to execute commercially.

I spoke about that focus on four core categories. So we have established a unified category organization. And that part of our organization is responsible for our brands, is responsible to define the right portfolio. It is a big change versus the past. Portfolio used to be managed locally, responsible for innovation and is also responsible for manufacturing. So this is the what we make and how we make.

And once we have done that here, once we have rejuvenated, we have redesigned the portfolio; it's being handed over to our commercial leaders, who will focus on execution, execution, execution. And Alina and Haven will take you through the plans. So they are all about distribution, customers, service levels and local activation of our business. That is the operating model we have implemented here at BIC. And it's a big change for the company. It's really a big change.

So I'm coming to the end of my presentation. And as I already mentioned, I'd like to keep things simple. So this is a one slide summary of what I've been sharing with you this morning. Now I know you now all look at the numbers or probably you have seen them already. Yes, we truly believe organic growth is possible at BIC. And remember that slide with the market shares, there is so much to be found.

So we want to guide you that we will be able to grow around 3%. And maybe I want to include some comments on that, on this projected organic net sales growth. It's very broad-based. It's very broad-based from both a category point of view and from a geographical point of view. We believe that all our categories can contribute to growth.

We expect double-digit growth in brushes. And if you looked at the recent results, you see that it's there, and we will -- we are convinced that we can sustain that going forward. And from a country point of view, also there, we have really found a balanced picture. We foresee robust growth in our #1 market of the United States of America. We foresee double-digit growth in the emerging footprints, which we are developing and investing in.

Last point I want to make on targets, and this is a very important point. We have chosen targets that are ambitious but credible. I think our company in the past has disappointed investors at times by not delivering upon commitments.

This is not my style, this is not my style. I want to make sure I want to build a trusted relationship with our investors. I do what I say and I say what I do. That's the style. So these are credible targets. They are ambitious, they are a step-change versus what we did, but we want to deliver upon them.

Last point I want to make before I hand over to my colleague, David. I'm sure you agree, our strategy is not rocket science. This model is a proven fast-moving consumer goods model. This is best practice. Its success will depend, very simple, on execution, execution, execution. That's why I spent at least half of my time with our colleagues in the markets, execution, execution. That's where our focus will be.

And Greg will also later show you in our whole transformation, we have focused on how can we ensure execution? How can we make sure we don't go wrong here? As the former salesman that I am, I love execution. I get happy when I'm in the store and I see the perfect portfolio in the fantastic packaging on the display. This is what we're going to be about.

My ambition is to develop BIC together with my team into a professional growing and winning fast-moving consumer goods company. We have wonderful heritage here at BIC, but I'm convinced about a great future for this iconic company and look forward to become the leader in beautiful, better everyday essentials.

Thank you very much. I'll give the floor to my colleague, David, to talk about our four beautiful categories.

Good morning to everyone. My name is David Cabero. I'm the Chief Growth Officer at BIC. My career has been divided in three different periods. The first one, 10 years with finance experience in Arthur Andersen and L'Oreal. 20 years with commercial experience as a General Manager in different countries, subregions and regions. The last role that I took was the General Manager of Europe. And the last 2 years as category leader, first in Stationery and now with the 4 categories in my new role.

I'm 22 years at BIC, so I know well this house. Yet, our success at BIC has been anchored with simple, functional, desirable, long-lasting accessible products, what we were calling our better everyday essentials. Those attributes today do not longer -- are no longer sufficient to grow. So that's why we are adding design to the products to our core range, which means that we are turning those products into beautiful, better everyday essentials, adding the beautiful part.

The ultimate objective of this is twofold. First is to attract new consumers through penetration as some consumers that are buying today, other brands and other products will buy BIC, and generate new purchasing occasions. It's a very important shift in our strategy because it means that we are strengthening the core, it means that we are increasing volumes through penetration, it means that we are increasing margins through mix as those products are more expensive.

And we are making a better use of our current manufacturing capabilities with the objective of profitable long-term value generation. So I invite you now to visualize all that through a video.

[Presentation]

Growth will come from integrated strategies of those four category plans. These framework enables us to adapt our play to win in each and every market.

So in Stationery, there will be a penetration-led volume growth in developing markets as we have plenty of space to grow still. In developed markets, we'll double down on animation with the new ranges that you have seen already before at the entrance of this session and always with a profit-oriented mindset because I want to remind you that Stationery is the lowest profitable, in percentage, category that we are having, the less profitable.

Lighters in developed markets where we are already present, the focus will be in visibility on the point of sales, while in developing will be again, penetration, presence, market presence. We'll increase our brand appeal with renewed decoration, both on the Lighter itself and also on the POS material.

In Shavers, we'll double down. We'll grow the core, our base, the nonrefillable market, while we will do the first steps into the premiumized segment, the refillable market that accounts for 60% of the total market and where our market share is still very, very low. And we'll gain distribution in the channels, the growth channels where we are still very limited presence. An example is e-commerce in Shavers.

In brushes, we'll accelerate in the premium segment. We will win through innovation from the Tangling, the core of our business. You have seen probably the complete care range that is outside that James has been showing you, a very nice range that is now being sold on the market as we talk. We targeted geographical expansion to scale the high-growth momentum that we are going through.

The value creation algorithm, where it resides, it resides on giving to each category complementary roles. We're going to invest in Tangle Teezer, and we're going to invest in Shavers. But in Stationery, we will be much more profitable mind. So this will be the compensation that we're going to create, and the algorithm will come from the sum of all those parts.

There are three common levers that you'll find across all categories, the four categories. First, our way forward is striking an equilibrium in our commercial regional footprint. As developing markets grow double digits year after year until 2030, by 2030, developing markets developed and NAM will have equal weight. It means that each one of them will have 33% of the net sales of the company, mitigating risk and limiting growth dependencies in only one region.

Second, we'll reduce our portfolio between 30% and 50%. We'll focus on the core in the hero products and we'll eliminate the tails, right, for cash generation. And third, we'll focus on the right channels. discount and e-commerce which are the fastest-growing channels today, FMCG, but also traditional channel, where we have already 50% of our business is very fragmented. There are plenty of white spaces across the world, across the regions.

Let's move now category by category. Let's start with Stationery. The key feature of Stationery is that this is a very fragmented category with a lot of fragmented in terms of competition, with a mature market that's a mature category, very volume sensitive. It means that the small variances in volumes has significant impacts in our cost of goods. And limited technological innovation, it's not each and every day that we change the inks.

The value opportunities for BIC reside at volume in developing markets as we grow in penetration, value through mix in developed markets following the archetypes that we just saw. Entering in new channels, and I will mention gifting as an example, leisure, tourism.

The four colors of Euro Disney is sold at a higher -- at a price higher than EUR 8. If you go to back-to-school in France, as an example, you'll find at less than EUR 2. So it's times 4 the price. It allows us to capture value through increased product desirability and design. It's new consumer occasions that we are entering in. And last but not least, we'll leverage BIC's unique brand, but also scale as we are today a global business.

Today, Stationary is a category with lower profitability. I just mentioned it before. So we want to turn Stationery into a value-creative category to improve cash generation. How we get that? Through three must-win battles. We boost penetration in developing markets with volume growth, leveraging already our current commercial and industrial footprint, we're already there. We have the infrastructure to do it.

We elevate the brand in developed markets. You saw it. We're shifting on those markets into beautiful, better everyday essentials, bringing design, bringing attractivity. You saw the Vibbies, probably you had the time, our new range also in the video, a range that is attractive and allows us for trade up and allows us for -- to increase penetration through new consumers that were not buying our products, especially in the young generations.

And always improving profitability through reducing portfolio complexity, and with the launch of higher-margin products.

So if we talk about portfolio strategy, we'll bring design into our products, making our products more desirable, launching the Vibbies, launching four colors with new colors like the mineral tones, pastels, leveraging the trends that are changing each and every year and collaborating with brands like the Stranger Things that you saw that we did in Brazil.

This animation strategy has also a benefit -- some benefit in our P&L. We don't develop products from scratch. We're starting from hero products. This means quicker speed to market to bring animation, but also lower capital requirements as we have already the machines to do it.

Secondly, we'll execute with renewed geographical focus, so developing markets on volume, develop markets on value through mix. And with that, what we are doing is we're bringing the developing markets and the center of our strategy, and that's a big shift in the strategy that we are presenting to you today.

Increasing penetration through hero products, selling more the Cristal is something that we master. We've been doing that for decades, right? It has been the base of our international expansion and has brought predictable returns over time. So this gives us a lot of confidence of how can we do that globally again.

Thirdly, we'll simplify our portfolio, focusing on the core products, cutting the long tail, which is a big part of the portfolio, but it adds very few sales and very few additional consumers, and that's the plan on the portfolio strategy.

Let me move now into Lighter. That's a very fragmented category. And as mentioned by Rob, only 1 out of 10 products are sold by BIC. So 90% of the products in the market are outside BIC. This means unlimited possibilities of growth independently about the market evolution.

The growth pools globally are shifting toward white spaces, towards developing, towards where population is still growing. And growing in developed markets requires an excellent execution on the point of sales. So we have white spaces in one part and execution very important on the markets that already more mature markets like the developed ones.

The value opportunities for BIC. What we want to do is first to capture those volumes that are outside our hands. That's the first priority. And we'll do that through penetration. physical availability, target route to market and brand investments. There will be some targeted investments in this category; defend, of course, the U.S. profitability, which is the big part of our profitability today, and increase the portfolio desirability.

Lighters for BIC is a profitable growth category. Whenever we sell more products, more lighters, we do profits that we have seen that for years, and you know that well. So we'll drive profitable growth through animation and penetration. We want to be seen, we want to be there, and we want to be desired.

So be seen in developed markets. We are already present. So all the focus is on visibility in the point of sales. Be there in developing markets. We are there, but with very limited presence. So here, the question is more on the white spaces, on being present, and that will be the focus, bringing the products into the shops. Be desired is to increase brand and portfolio preference, product preference.

And you will tell me for Lighter, what does it mean to have a product preference? That's very simple. From our consumer insights team, what we know is that 40% of the purchases are impulse driven. Decisions happens at the point of sale. And the attractive decoration is what drives consumer preference. So the solution is very simple. To drive growth, we will improve our decoration designs and the designs of the products that we're going to launch in the next few years.

As with the weight of the decors, the decorated lighters grows and particularly those of the premium lighters that we benefit from mix, we benefit from higher sales and margins. As you will understand, the price of a decorated product is much bigger than a classic range lighter.

Let's move into Shavers. What are the key features in Shavers? The larger and faster-growing value pool are not -- are outside of the big perimeter. Why? Because it's 60% of the market, the refillable market, and you have a very small and tiny market share in this category.

Female shaver is a pocket of growth. We know that, has been that for a while. And there are new usages and shaving occasions. So the value opportunities for BIC are quite straightforward.

We're going to grow in our core, which is the nonrefillable where we are strong, where we're going to start building our presence in premium. You saw it. We have the full range at the coffee -- close to the coffee machines of the new products that incorporates all premium technology that we have been developing in the last few years. We're going to leverage the female shaving growth with our brand, our franchise, [ Soleil ], very well known. And we'll go to innovate to answer changing consumer needs.

And you see, in contrast with Stationery and Lighters, now in Shavers, we're talking about innovation and high brand investments. That's the different complementary roles that I was mentioning at the beginning of each and every part of our product portfolio.

So what we want to be? What is our brand positioning in Shavers. But we want to be is the brand of choice for [ savvy ] consumers, those that look for great performance at affordable price, that's what we are, that's what BIC is.

There will be -- the way of doing it is through three must-win battles. The first one is to grow our nonrefillable core. We need to start entering to refillable market. This is growing, and we are not present. So that's the second.

And third, last but not least, is to enlarge our footprint, particularly in developing markets. And you know in Shavers, in developing markets, this is where our value for money proposal counts the most because that's a great competitive advantage in countries where purchasing power is low.

We're going to drive mental availability, increase brand preference, and we're going to convey to our consumers the right messages through the right channels. Leveraging partnerships, we're successfully launching a new advertising campaign, featuring international football player that you might all know, which is Ronaldinho in Brazil, with tremendous success. And of course, we'll have to continue securing excellent execution in the point of sales where decisions are taken.

Let's move into brushes, which is our fourth and last category before concluding. Tangle Teezer has been an amazing acquisition, a very successful one with double-digit growth compounding across quarters, quarter after quarters since the moment of the acquisition. Our brand benefits from leading market positions and exceptional brand awareness. We have been delivering through robust execution across markets.

Manufacturing and supply chain synergies, as mentioned by Rob, we're a plastic company, are well on track, and that's helping also this flying wheel of reducing costs, investing in the brand and growing.

We have launched successful media campaigns supported by key partnerships that adds to the brand and helps the brand like the Devil Wears Prada that you have probably seen, and also Kim Kardashian's SKIMS brand.

Now what are the features of this category, brushes? Firstly, it's a highly fragmented category. This means that today, there is no global leader, market leader. The value is concentrated in the premium segment. Growth is driven logically by brand desirability and product performance.

E-commerce and premier channels are reshaping the market, and they are fast growing compared to the rest. So the value opportunities for BIC are also very straightforward. We're building leadership in the premium brushes. We're prioritizing e-commerce and premium channels where we want to be and win.

We are supporting Tangle Teezer unique brand image through those partnerships that I just mentioned. And we're scaling selectively in priority markets, growing in the U.S., growing the U.K. and selecting some other markets, but we want first to become leaders in each and every market that we enter instead of spreading across plenty of different geographies.

The ambition is to become a global market leader in brushes. I think you had already imagined it before, the undisputed global leader. So how we'll execute our ambition? So we're going to extend from the core with innovation, the complete range that you saw at the entrance and also at the video.

We're going to drive brand awareness to convert the high-value consumers as we increase our packaging and our launches, we're going to refine the packaging and increase visibility to make clear the difference between the ranges for our consumers and to facilitate their choices. And we're going to prioritize high-growth markets, pockets of growth in very selected markets.

We are extending our portfolio through a pipeline of differentiated products with a strong focus design, with color trends that change each and every year. As you can see here, that's the last collection, with patent protection and there is technology behind, and that's why it's a perfect product and great for use.

We are currently launching the complete care range, a team, a need identified by our -- again, our consumer insights team to complement our [ detangling ] range. And we are launching partnerships like the Devil Wears hPrada product just to reinforce and continue reinforcing our brand.

To conclude, we're shifting our strategies. And when we do that, this requires also a change in our operating model for excellent execution. We work as one BIC. Categories define the strategy, regions deliver local commercial execution. This new model brings agility. It brings simplicity, very important for us. And it brings scalability to help growth.

Our current commercial and industrial footprint allows for the geolocalized strategies that we're having in -- across the regions, the ones that now Haven and Alina are going to present to you. Haven, Alina?

It is a pleasure to be with all of you today. Since this is our first time meeting, I figured I'd give all of you a brief introduction to myself. Alina will do the same in just a moment.

I'm Haven Cockerham. I lead the North American business. And I've been with BIC now for just 5 months longer than Rob, so almost at that 1.5-year mark after a long career in consumer packaged goods. That time has been spent primarily between Procter & Gamble, Heinz and Sanofi, another French-based company, with those early years focused largely on marketing, innovation and selling.

More recently, I've spent just over a decade really in senior general management roles, mostly across North America, but also some time in global category roles as well. And in fact, most of that time was spent on businesses that are very much in need of transformation, not all that dissimilar from the North American region for BIC.

Alina?

Thank you, Haven. Good morning to everyone. I am Alina Asiminei, and I've been with BIC almost 1 year, end of September. And I was -- I'm serving as Chief Commercial Officer for International Markets. I bring 26 years of experience in consumer goods across Nestle, Philips and Kimberly-Clark.

And my journey has taken me from Romania to Portugal, to Latin America and United Kingdom now and across a broad range of responsibilities from sales to marketing to strategy to general management in both local and global roles.

Throughout my career, my focus has been very consistent, driving results while transforming the business through people and with people. That is the experience and mindset I bring to BIC as we unlock the growth potential of our international markets.

So today, we want to show you how both of our regions will contribute to BIC's growth ambition through 2030. We have one, I repeat, one BIC commercial strategy and one common ambition that is really to grow household penetration, earn our margins and relentlessly simplify our business. Both of our markets are very, very different starting points. And therefore, while our destination is common, our destination is shared, we will create growth in different ways.

Exactly, Haven. So that is a very important point. We are not creating a North America strategy and an international market strategy, we are executing one big strategy against different market realities. So in North America, the opportunity is primarily about strengthening an already powerful core and scaling new sources of growth.

Across international markets, we have a completely different opportunity, enormous geographic reach, but significant headroom to recruit new consumers. And that leads to two different growth equations, and that becomes even clearer when we look at our commercial growth agenda.

So you can see that philosophy here. At the top of this strategy house is our common ambition, as I mentioned, growing penetration, earning our margins and simplifying our business relentlessly. For North America, our role is to strengthen the core while at the same time, scaling new growth with deliberate choices across countries, channels and our categories.

And for international markets, our role is to scale penetration and recruit new consumers. Our choices as well will be very deliberate across regions, channels and categories. And underneath both regional models are common big capabilities: Supply chain, digital transformation, brand support and innovation, talent and commercial capabilities.

So I would summarize this house very simply: One roof, one ambition, one set of capabilities, different growth equations because winning in a market mature like North America and recruiting new consumers in Africa or Asia requires a different execution, but they are serving exactly the same big strategy.

So if we could advance the slide, please. So I'd like to start by giving just a little bit of context on the North American region for those who are less familiar. So North America is our second biggest region after Europe with around 35% of our net sales. This region consists of 2 countries only, 2 large countries, including the U.S., which is by far BIC's largest market.

And when we think about our market share position across North America, we are #1 in lighters, still with additional upside. We are #2 in stationery. We are #3 in hair brushes and #4 in shavers, also tremendous upside across all of these categories.

While the region is large, the problem is that net sales has been decreasing significantly over the past 3 years. And this is impacted by several reasons. In Lighters, we know the driver. The driver has been Asian imports, counterfeits, declining cigarette smoking uses.

In Stationery, drivers are different. Ball pen segment, which is the segment where we're most heavily developed, has been declining faster than the market. And then on Shavers, we've seen fierce competition in the Shavers business, particularly on the women's side of the business.

And on top of that, as you heard David mention earlier, there's a very large portion of the segment of the market where we simply don't have presence. And that large segment is actually premium refillables, which is growing.

So we're very clear on what has caused the decline in the past. However, importantly, we're also now very clear on what needs to be done differently to stabilize this region and return it to growth. And in fact, in 2026, we're already seeing early signs of achieving this transformation with stability in the first half of the year.

Here's how we're going to proceed because going forward requires us to not only stabilize but maintain the stability we've achieved thus far and accelerate even more going forward. We have a very clear roadmap.

Our ambition is to transform North America into a penetration-focused growth engine for BIC. And our approach is to strengthen the core while establishing these new platforms of growth. Importantly, these -- the development of each of these new growth platforms is already well in progress.

You might argue that transforming North America is one of the biggest challenges of the company, and you're about right. However, our initial actions are already having the positive effect with growth in the first half, I want to reiterate that.

Here's what it's going to take to sustain that growth going forward through our 2030 time horizon. First, on Stationery, Protect the core. This means increasing penetration in our strongest and our growing segments. Our growing strong segments are mechanical pencil, correction and mechanical -- and ball point, thank you very much.

We have successful results in Western Europe already. And that -- the results in Western Europe have come largely by premiumizing this category. So while the idea of premiumizing our business is not new to us as a company, it is new to the North American region. This is an established model that's proven in Western Europe. Our opportunity in North America is to recreate and leverage this proven model across the region.

So the path forward to transforming the Stationery business is well defined. David mentioned the unlock in Stationery is unlocking new premium channels such as museums, bookstores, amusement park, again, proven.

On Lighters, our #1 priority in the U.S. is to stabilize this business, and we've managed to successfully do so in the first half. However, beyond stabilizing the business, we will build from here to reach new consumers in emerging channels. We'll increase brand desirability, as David mentioned, through many of the design opportunities and improve our profitability.

And in fact, in just two slides, I'll give you an even deeper view on the strategy that is already starting to deliver the sustainable improvement that we need to deliver on this business.

On Shavers, our recently launched product ranges, Soleil and Flex, are continuing to deliver solid results around the world. We'll continue to accelerate the rollout of these products in the U.S. We will not stop there. Since we currently do not address 65% of the market, the growing segment of the market, we will move into that space in the future.

And quite frankly, we now have best-in-class technology that rivals industry leaders to allow us to better compete in that space. This will allow us to compete with the full product offering in the shave category, creating potential for BIC in the North American region that we've never before experienced.

Brushes, the model that we're executing in the North American region for brushes already works super well. This is not a fix, this is not a restart. This is continuing to expand our points of purchase, driving in-store and online visibility and continuing to innovate to maintain the momentum that's already healthy and already established on the brushes business. We have a key differentiated brand with solid awareness and consumer sentiment, and we will continue to invest behind the Tangle Teezer brand.

So as we think about our road to 2030, we are a well-penetrated company across North America. But as many of us have said around the globe and especially in North America, we have significant upside. We still have white spaces that we do not address today, and it's time to unlock this potential.

So our way forward is already defined. First, scaled growth in new channels. I've mentioned some of them already for Stationery, and there are more for Lighters. Secondly, consumer insight-led innovation. This is a discipline that we are using now across all of our categories.

Thirdly, leveraging more iconic products. You've heard several speakers before me refer to the need to streamline our assortment and increase efficiency and focus on those SKUs that are most productive in market. And lastly, we are well on our journey to implementing a new leadership structure in North America. And in fact, we have established new capabilities across sales, marketing and even supply chain with new leadership across each of those.

Our plan for the U.S. Lighter business is important. So I want to focus on U.S. Lighters for just this one slide here because U.S. Lighters has been a bit of a pain point for the company over the past several years.

First, while this business experienced significant decline in 2025, we believe our plans are right and moving in the right direction given the improvement that we've already seen the stability that we've already seen in the first half on the U.S. Lighter business. And importantly, it's well positioned for continued growth going forward.

So let me give you a hint of the strategy to reinvigorate growth and profitability on this business going first -- going forward. First, we do have a safe harbor already. And that safe harbor shall really rely on defending and strengthening key elements.

First, we have leading position and a very, very strong market share already across the North American region, okay? The second safe harbor is continue to support and enable our efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chain.

So these are never going to change, first and last items on this slide. However, as we think about unlocking growth, new growth opportunities, those really come from activating weapons that we really not leverage aggressively up to this point in time.

First, David mentioned growth through design and innovation. This winning innovation is key for unlocking growth in white space, growing segments and large retailers where we're currently underrepresented.

Secondly, we see the unmeasured channels as a significant opportunity of growth. While we have roughly an 80% market share in measured channels, our recent estimates show that we're significantly underdeveloped in unmeasured channels. And when we refer to unmeasured channels in the North American region, think of rapidly growing and emerging outlets, those outlets like smoke shops and dispensaries. So big opportunity for the U.S.

To unlock opportunities in unmeasured channels, we are working to enhance selling and in-store execution with a focus on improving visibility through significantly more disruptive in-store display execution. Rob and David both mentioned visibility, improving visibility is the key in these channels.

Lastly, we must recommit to counterfeit defense on this business. While certainly committing to counterfeit defense has the ability to protect our revenue, single most important reason for committing to counterfeit defense is because we have an obligation to protect our brand, our brand image and also consumer safety. Those are the most important reasons for us to double down as a new leadership team in protecting the business via counterfeit defense.

So returning NAM to growth is not only dependent on the Lighter business. U.S. Lighters is an incredibly high priority for us in the North American region, but it will not be our only focus going forward. We also want to reignite growth on our other categories, and we'll adopt a dedicated mindset that's unique to each of them.

On Stationery, our focus is all about improving profitability by elevating and simplifying the portfolio, very consistent with the global strategy. We're doing the same specifically in North America. We're rationalizing our portfolio simplifying the tail SKUs and driving increased desirability through animation.

Lighters. I just told you about lighters and how we're chasing profitable growth in new, faster-growing emerging channels and segments and white space. Ultimately, we'll be driving visibility in these emerging, faster-growing channels while defending our safe harbors.

And then on Shavers, Shavers is the opportunity to crack into premium, refillable, the premium refillable segment and innovate on our core business. We have to keep the core fresh, both on the Soleil brand and the Flex business.

And then lastly on brushes. In brushes, we will invest to grow and continue accelerating this business. We have a fantastic asset. And investing in brand support is a priority as it allows us to accelerate distribution gains fueled by innovation and partnerships.

So I hope this gives you a sense for the overall direction in North America. And now I will turn it over to Alina, who will give a similar overview for international markets. Alina?

Thank you, Haven. So now let me take you inside the international markets growth equation. BIC has an extraordinary geographic reach. We are present, as Rob was mentioning as well, in more than 160 countries with iconic products, strong brand recognition and leading position across many markets.

But when I look at international markets, what excites me most is not only the scale that we have today, it's the headroom that we still have ahead of us. Across our markets, there are millions of consumers we can still recruit. And that is the opportunity at the heart of our strategy, turn our geographic scale into consumer scale, put BIC into hands of more consumers and do it through a more focused, repeatable and profitable growth model.

So our international growth equation starts with penetration. So quite simply, right, more consumers buying BIC. But to recruit those consumers, we need to win on three fundamentals: availability, affordability and visibility. We need to be where consumers buy. We need to offer the right products at the right price point that they can afford. And when they are ready to buy, BIC needs to be visible and easy to choose.

But penetration alone is not enough. We need to create penetration that brings sustainable volume-led growth. We need margin resilient growth through mix, pricing and portfolio quality. And we need execution excellence, many times mentioned here by Rob. So superior availability, service, customer service, superior customer service and forecast accuracy.

So while the growth philosophy is common, the way we activate this equation naturally differs by category, and I will start with Stationery. So here, it's all about simplification, David was already mentioning, portfolio tiering and pricing power.

In Lighter, again, David mentioned, it's about focusing on market share through affordability and visibility. And in Shavers, it's all about brand building, geographical expansion and portfolio tiering. Last but not least, in brushes, it's again about penetration through brand visibility and focused innovation. So again, one growth equation, different category place.

But to capture this opportunity, we need to change how we operate. Today, international markets is characterized by very different growth profiles across countries. Execution has been historically very country led and very siloed. And our portfolio became too complex. So this makes it very, very difficult to constantly translate our strength of BIC into scalable growth.

By 2030, we want the model to look very different. So we are moving towards scalable, repeatable growth enzymes, simpler execution and greater leverage of our iconic products. So basically, in other words, we are moving from individual countries' growth stories to growth model that we can understand, we can repeat and we can scale. That is a fundamental change in how we manage international markets.

So now the question is where we are going to deploy those growth engines. International markets is clearly not one homogeneous market. So that's why we are not going to apply one formula everywhere. We have organized our markets in clear archetypes. So let's look here.

Africa is fundamentally a penetration engine. Asia, it's a white spaces where we need to unlock it. Mexico, it's a turnaround where we need to rebuild the fundamentals. Europe, it's a combination of developed and developing markets where we need to scale and optimize as much as we need to do it in Oceania. And Central and South America, it's all about scaling up. So different starting points, different place, one growth philosophy.

And across these different place, the commercial levers become increasingly common. We have six commercial levers in international markets. We need to win in the growth channels, we need to strengthen our route to market to win traditional trade, we need to reinforce our brand and pricing power, and we need to simplify our portfolio.

The fifth one is about building strong value retailer proposition, what matters for our customers. And last but not least, we need to create innovation that drives incrementality.

So this is the way we are going to create repeatability without pretending every market is the same. And most importantly, this is not only the strategy for the future. We already have evidence that this model works.

Brazil is one powerful example. Look at what happened in Shavers since 2019. Market penetration increased by 5 percentage points. BIC penetration increased by around 16 percentage points. and our volume doubled. We didn't simply participate in category growth, we recruited consumers materially faster than the category and penetration translated into volume.

And if you think back to the growth equation I showed you earlier, the ingredients are quite familiar, availability, affordability, strong branded products and disciplined execution. Brazil matters not because we want to copy Brazil everywhere. It matters because it proves that the underlying principle of the model can work.

So now imagine applying those principles where the penetration headroom is significantly greater. We need to create more Brazils in international markets, in markets where millions of consumers have yet to enter our category and buy BIC.

And that is why developing market represents such an exciting part of our 2030 opportunity. We have millions more consumers to recruit at scale. And we see potential for double-digit growth in many markets by 2030.

But population alone doesn't create growth, we have to unlock it. And we are going to do so, focusing on three pillars: expand availability, so basically, be where consumers buy. This means expanding go-to-market, strengthening our traditional trade execution and putting more feet on the ground.

Secondly, increase affordability. So we win the first purchase with the right entry price points with smaller packs and formats and where appropriate, local sourcing and manufacturing.

And the third one is about scaling execution. So basically build repeatable engines through reliable supply chain, stronger distribution capabilities, sales force automation.

So when you talk about recruiting millions more consumers, this is not an abstract ambition. We know what drives penetration. We have evidence that it works. and we are building capabilities to replicate it at scale.

International is already a business with extraordinary geographic reach. Our opportunity now is to turn this geographic reach into consumer reach across different categories, across different geographies with different growth plays, but one growth philosophy, recruit new consumers, scale what works and turn penetration in sustainable and profitable growth.

I will turn over to Francois.

Good morning. You all know this product. We have sold 50 billion of them in more than 160 countries. It is one of the most iconic objects this company has ever made, engineering the [ everyday ] to deliver up to 3,000 flame safely and at a price per flame that almost everyone on earth can afford.

But what happens after the last flame of this product? Many still think this product went out of flame [ worth ] exactly zero. This is -- there is a name, and it's known as orphan product. Those products are those that are too small to be collected, that are melting different raw materials, plastic and metals together. And as such, there's no recycled stream, which is accepting them.

I would like you today to take a fresh look at that. My name is Francois Clément-Grandcourt. I'm serving BIC for 26 years. Before BIC, I worked in marketing for Coca-Cola and Danone. And I have 20 years in BIC of general management position, first in distribution and second, in industry. In the last 10 years, I took over -- I was responsible for the Lighter division after [ Francois Bich ].

[ Francois Bich [ was very founder of rules. He was a founder of Lighters and basically defined the proper way to do it to be safe. But he was regularly reminding the fact that some point in time, the rules need to change. And he was taking very often the example of Marcel Bich changing the rules of the Americas Cup. This is the whole point of this presentation. Our future lies in changing the rules to create new value pools.

As BIC entered this new phase of transformation, sustainability has becoming an even more important part of our journey and our long-term value creation as well, and I will be insisting on that. Today, I will be focusing on BIC sustainable development program to 2030, which is based on three pillars: first one, circularity; second, climate; third, people. But even more specifically, today, I will be talking to you about circularity.

In 2015, every expert we consulted told us that recycling lighters was technically impossible. And the others were adding that with a product with 19 parts like this, all this, it was not only impossible to disassemble, but it was financially absurd for a simple reason, not enough raw materials to pay for everything to get back and to disassemble.

That was a consensus. It was not unreasonable at the time. It was the state of the art of the knowledge at that time. No more today. So why didn't we walk away? Because of what this company is, always engineer the every day.

Since the start of the company, BIC has done one thing better than anyone in the world, take an everyday object and solve through manufacturing excellence, a problem everyone else considers impossible or not worth solving. For example, having pens for a few cents.

So we did not treat circularity as a communication nor as a corporate social responsibility program, but as what it is really about, an industrial challenge. And industrial problems are precisely what this company was built to solve.

So the group gave us three things that are rare in a large company. The first one, the freedom to try. The second one, the patience to let us learn and on it work, the full weight of industrial power of the company. I show that as well that the initial momentum was provided 20 years ago by Marie-Aimee Bich-Dufour, and that drove a lot of what we have today. So what I'm about to describe is what BIC culture of innovation is all about.

So what did it take? It took building every link of a chain, which basically was not existing, collecting millions of small objects that has never been collected, a way to sort what comes back, a way to take a part, an object that honestly, believe me, we spent years to make sure that nobody could dismantle. And that allows at the end, having spent decades on this, we have a way to get recovered material, metal and plastic back into production at our own quality standard.

None of that existed. Our team built it after more than 10 years of R&D, the engineers and operators of the Lighter division did it. Today, used lighters are collected, sorted, dismantled and recycled. That is the world's first. No one anywhere has ever recycled a lighter.

Let's give a step back. Big industrial strengths are unique, strong vertical integration, applied R&D, full rooms, mechanical engineering and integrated automation departments, fitting shops, production workshops, obviously, backed with deep operational raw material expertise.

This unique capability built over the last 80 years allows to disassemble industrially high volumes of small parts with high precision. And I'm insisting on each of these words because that defines precisely the know-how which was developed. And it allows to get 100% purity of raw materials and allowing as well to recover parts, basically engineer the everyday up to product end of life.

Along the way, we learned the most important lesson of all. A orphan product is not worth zero. The day it went out of flame, this product still has value. Our last production allowed to produce lighters recycled with 80% of the nonconsumable lighter value. It works.

Don't make me wrong, when approached as industrial discipline, not as communication exercise, circularity is financially sound. The end of life of our products has stopped being a dead end, leveraging what was supposed to be our weakness, 1.5 billion units of a tiny complex object. Handled industrially, it has become a source of value that we control and a value creation lever for the group.

So part of the plan to 2030, circularity is a strong focus of BIC's roadmap. A few years ago, I presented to you at our general assembly, our very first disassembly machine. That was the first building block. Now we have 6 machines in line. We are ready to launch the first ramp-up phase, bringing the Lighter program at scale in France by '27 and the start of other pilots in other geographies to be ready for further expansion from 2029. And

after 10 years of debugging lighters, as this is working, we want to build and expand the same principle to the other categories. Here, you have what a crystal look like with all the tiny parts, which you may not see precisely. Here, you have a full 4 colors, another kind of animal, and we are preparing the first machine for these products.

The question is, can pen, [ cheveron ] brushes end of life become as well a value pool? And this matters now because the world is catching up with this subject. fast. European regulators are turning a tiny paragraph in the report into a mandatory legal obligation. Major retailers are now ranking their own suppliers based on circularity, and we stand already among the pioneers.

Last, raw materials and their accessibility are a challenge. They will remain volatile as far as anyone can see for today. So for our whole industry, the end of life of product is becoming a cost. BIC has turned it into a capability years before the market demands it. Today, that capability serves BIC product in BIC plants for BIC customers, but the problem it solves small everyday product with no end of life exists far beyond us.

What I take away from these years is pretty simple. This company still does exactly what BIC started 80 years ago. It takes a everyday problem the world considers impossible, and it is engineering the everyday. That's BIC's DNA. It was true of writing and of all big product categories. It is now true for all the products beyond the last flame, the last line, the last shave and the last brush.

Thank you. I now turn it over to Gregory, who will go over our transformation initiatives and financial ambition. Thank you.

Thank you, Francois, and good morning, everyone. My name is Gregory Lambertie. Today is my 8-month anniversary at BIC, and I'm delighted to celebrate it with you. I've joined BIC because I saw it as an incredible opportunity to revive what has been a story of entrepreneurship, growth, performance and emotional connection with the consumer.

Before that, I spent 25 years in finance internationally in the U.S., Canada, in the U.K., West Africa, South Africa, first as an adviser, then as an investor in consumer companies and family companies. Finally, in the corporate world, first, leading strategy, M&A, public affairs and then as a CFO.

You now heard how we intend to grow across our categories and markets. Let me show you how this translates into BIC's financial algorithm. There are three things I'd like you to remember. First, we're targeting balanced growth supported by both volume growth and price and mix with the right contribution depending on each category.

Second, this growth will create operating leverage, meaning that the profit will grow faster than sales as execution improves and the transformation takes effect. And third, that we will fund the transformation while strengthening cash generation and growing shareholder returns with a disciplined capital allocation approach.

Now what does this mean in terms of value creation? We're starting from a financially sound business with a number of actions already started and some -- yielding some early results, as you saw in our H1 publication. Our plan is a combination of an investment plan on the one hand and a transformation plan.

We will invest in BIC's key assets, manufacturing, commercial capabilities, distribution and of course, the brand. And we will make targeted investments in processes, digital and IT transformation with clear returns leading to growth acceleration and improved profitability and cash generation. So it's about investing in the priorities with the clearest returns and making sure that the transformation delivers productivity gains and savings.

So what does it mean in terms of financial terms? If we turn to our 2030 ambition on the next slide, by 2030, we are targeting three clear financial outcomes, supporting a capital allocation framework. First, organic sales CAGR of around 3% between '26 and '30. Second, operating leverage, together with the benefits of the transformation will drive around 200 basis points of margin expansion versus 2025 for adjusted EBIT, reaching more than 15.5% in 2030. And thirdly, those profits will translate into cash, meaning free cash flow of more than EUR 250 million by 2030 and cumulative free cash flow over '27, '28, '29 and 2030 of EUR 900 million to EUR 950 million.

This is a self-funded investment plan that still maintains a clear framework for shareholder remuneration with a growing dividend and a payout ratio of 40% to 50% of adjusted EPS. The logic is clear. Growth supports operating leverage, transformation supports productivity and cost savings.

Moving on to slide -- to the next slide, our 3% organic sales growth ambition is broad-based, as you've heard many times this morning. All four categories will be contributing. What matters financially is the quality and the breadth of the growth they create. Overall, we should expect growth to be balanced across volume as well as price and mix.

Volumes remain important, particularly where we have the opportunity to increase penetration and improve availability, as you've heard from Alina. Price and mix will also contribute through portfolio premiumization in brushes, for example, and targeted innovation. So the plan does not rely on a single lever. This results in a healthier model, reaching more consumer, improving portfolio value and translating category momentum into sustainable growth.

Let's now look at the sources of growth. The first building block is strengthening and growing our core operations, as you've heard from Rob this morning. About 1/3 of our overall growth is expected to come from strengthening the core, so stationery, lighters, shavers. We already have significant scale. We have a strong brand. We have top-notch manufacturing and broad distribution in our existing business. The opportunity is to get more from these assets through better execution. This means increasing penetration and availability, strengthening our go-to-market execution and implementing the category road maps you've heard about today.

In developed markets, it's about -- it's more about protecting our strong positions while improving channels, particularly as you've heard from convenience, from e-com and from e-commerce as well and discount channel as well as improving the mix and the execution. In developing markets, it's recruiting more consumers through better availability, affordability and route to market. So financially, this gives us a much broader and resilient base for growth.

On the next slide, on top of that stronger growth in the core, the second building block is new growth avenues. Those are expected to represent 2/3 of the growth ambition. They are concentrated in 3 areas: the continued scaling of brushes, which we expect to carry on growing double digit; greater penetration in developing markets, as Alina mentioned; and selective expansion in higher-valued areas like refillable shavers. And here, we're not starting from scratch. We're leveraging existing assets, brand, manufacturing, distribution and our consumer proposition, which we all know.

Second, we're applying a measured risk-reward approach. For example, if I take developing markets, this is not about taking crazy risk in new countries. It's about taking advantage of the fact that we're already in 166 countries and that we intend to selectively turn the dial on some of those where we know the market, we have good partners, and we see the most attractive risk reward.

To sum up, the core gives us the foundation. These focused growth avenues give us the acceleration. And that combination underpins our net sales growth trajectory to 2030. In order to deliver that acceleration, we will invest around EUR 100 million in one-off OpEx, the majority in the first 2 years, and those costs are fully reflected in the plan. We will need to invest in the capabilities, the systems and the execution discipline we need to change that. We've already done the bulk of the first part, organization. We're now focusing on improving productivity, unlocking efficiencies and strengthening execution discipline across the group.

We will also increase CapEx in the early years before reducing it slightly thereafter, while remaining broadly around 4% of sales throughout the plan. The phasing is deliberate. We want to invest early so that the benefits can build throughout the second half of the plan. On the next slide, you'll see that the transformation is concentrated around 4 clear operating priorities.

First, manufacturing, where we intend to improve productivity, ensure the appropriate investment in AI capabilities, predictive maintenance, for example, and choose the right balance between internal and external production through the appropriate use of OEMs. Second, in supply chain and planning, we will be moving to next-gen supply chain management systems, providing us better visibility and allowing better route planning and savings. Third, on commercial unification, it's about standardizing part of our field sales effectiveness and tooling while reducing portfolio complexity. Fourth, on digital and systems, it's really about improving corporate function productivity.

In total, the current road map comprises more than 100 initiatives expected to generate around EUR 80 million of savings, annual recurring savings by 2030, supporting our margin expansion ambition. You could say this is all very nice, but it will not happen by chance. And you would be right. To ensure disciplined execution, a dedicated transformation office will monitor the program, track implementation and the benefits delivery and reinforce accountability with the right incentives aligned with the delivery.

This governance is new. It will be critical to maintain pace, prioritize the highest impact initiatives and ensure that we deliver the recurring savings. So what does this do to the shape of our P&L? Our ambition, as you heard earlier, is to move closer to the economics of a traditional fast-moving consumer goods model. First, OpEx come down as a percentage of sales, supported by the EUR 80 million of recurring savings I just described. Second, we reinvest part of those savings behind the business with higher and more targeted brand support to drive penetration and visibility. And third, that investment, that reinvestment increases adjusted EBIT, driving approximately the 200 basis points of margin expansion between the end of 25% last year and 2030, as we said earlier.

So this is not simply a cost reduction program. We're changing the shape of the P&L, taking cost out and reinvesting selectively behind growth, expanding margins at the same time. Moving on. Let me now bring this to life in terms of margin progression.

Adjusted EBIT will grow faster than sales, taking margin to 15.5% by 2030 with steady progression across the period and categories contributing evenly to the uplift. Importantly, that EBIT expansion has 2 engines. Around 60% comes from the business itself, growth, mix, operating leverage and 40% comes from transformation net of the reinvestment. So productivity, simplification and targeted savings. That balance is important. We are relying both on growth and cost reduction. Now on free cash flow. Cash generation is central to the plan. We're building a profitable growth model that can self-fund the transformation plan while still growing free cash flow over time. The core business provides the first source of cash generation. We then invest in transformation, which generates savings and helps us fund the new growth avenues. And as those scale, they add further free cash flow contribution.

Here, the phasing matters. It is important to bear in mind that we invest early, particularly in '27 and '28. And as those investments begin to deliver, free cash flow accelerates from 2028 to reach more than EUR 250 million in 2030. This supports our ambition to generate between EUR 900 million and EUR 950 million of free cash flow over the next 4 years to 2030.

In other words, the plan is designed to strengthen the business while increasing cash generation throughout the period. This leads us to our capital allocation policy. On the net, our approach here is guided by one simple principle: discipline with flexibility, growing shareholder returns are a cornerstone of that framework. The foundation is a growing dividend within a payout range of 40% to 50% of adjusted EPS. But beyond dividends, buybacks remain an available tool subject to share price evolution and market conditions. And we will deploy any remaining capacity where it creates the most value, whether through external growth or additional opportunistic returns.

So let me conclude with the financial commitments at the heart of this plan, around 3% organic sales growth, margin reaching more than 15.5% by 2030 and EUR 900 million to EUR 950 million of free cash flow over the next 4 years with the final year above EUR 250 million. That is the financial outcome of sharper portfolio choices, stronger execution, disciplined reinvestment and ambitious transformation creating the capacity to support growing shareholder returns.

Thank you for your attention. I now turn it over to Rob for the conclusion before we go into a Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Gregory. Thank you for your patience. We're coming to the conclusion. I promise to wrap it up shortly. It went so well with the slides today. Now my last slide refuses to appear. There it is. Okay, good.

Last slide of today before we go into Q&A. First, a big thanks to all my colleagues for fantastic presentations today. And I hope that you agree with me after having seen this new strategy being presented today that our path is crystal clear. We're going to focus. We're going to execute. We're going to transform, and we're going to grow and deliver.

We will focus on our 4 beautiful everyday essentials categories. We will grow through investments in a cool and rejuvenated brand. And we will dial up on innovation and selective geographical expansion, as Alina has showed you. Most importantly, we're going to execute with commercial excellence in every market. And thanks to Greg and all the colleagues, we're going to transform this company. We will become simpler, leaner and more efficient. And that will lead to a situation where we will deliver sustainable cash generation, shareholder returns and long-term value creation.

That is the new BIC. Focused, built to grow and positioned to create value for years to come. Thank you very much for your attention. [Foreign Language] Please bear with us a minute while we set up for the Q&A, we're very happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your attention. Before we start the Q&A session, just a quick reminder that questions are reserved for analysts and investors in the room. When asking your question, could you please just state your name and the name of your institution. Thank you.

Geoffrey d'Halluin from BNP Paribas. I would have 3 questions, please. The first one is related to the cadence of the organic revenue growth targets. Should we expect the growth to be steady over the plan? Or should we expect to have any kind of acceleration towards the end of the plan? So just to get your thoughts on the cadence of the organic growth rates.

The second question is related to the margin expansions. A bit the same questions. You expect 300 bps of margin expansion compared to 2025. That means about 40 bps per year. Should we expect steady margin expansions? Or again, should we expect to have further acceleration towards the end of the plan? And the last question is related to the brushes, which is now the new category for the company. Keen to get your thoughts on where the growth should come from in terms of geographies. I think you said you would expect double-digit growth rates over the period. So if you could also remind us what was the revenue achieved by Tangle Teezer in 2025 and maybe also the margins of the campaign.

Thank you, Geoffrey, for your questions. I will answer your question on growth and then Greg will talk about margin. So on growth, if we put the things in perspective, we come from an organic -- a negative organic growth performance last year of minus EUR 4.7 million. For this year, you know our guidance, we're guiding for slight organic growth. And we aim to subsequently increase our organic growth going forward step by step. So there is some acceleration towards the later years in the plan. So that's concerning growth.

And on the margins, as you heard, we're going to front-end the investments. So there is the one-off OpEx on the one hand, but there is also initial OpEx in new feet on the ground in some brand support that is part of our cost base that will weigh on margins initially. So I would expect some acceleration in the growth increase versus 2025 throughout the plan.

I think the last question was concerning Tangle Teezer's growth. Yes. So for Tangle Teezer, we -- from a geographical point of view, we expect continued double-digit growth in our key markets, especially in our largest market, the U.S., fueled by innovation as the complete care launch and also increased brand support.

And we will progressively deploying new geographies along the plan. Right now, it's more U.K. and U.S.

Correct.

Christophe Chaput from ODDO. I have 3 questions, please. The first one is a kind of follow-up regarding the free cash flow. So obviously, it will be very strong in 2030, above EUR 250 million. But I'm sure there is a phasing effect as well. So concerning 2027, I know it's probably too early to give that guidance, but would you say it will be above EUR 200 million? The second one is about Brazil on Page 55. You gave a lot of insight regarding the volume and the penetration improvement since 2019. Could you give us as well the profitability evolution, probably not some precise figure, but rough, let's say, one could be great.

And the last one, if I may, that on Shavers. So you share with us the ambition to develop into the refillable segment. So my question is that what is the risk that the leader react, let's say, negatively to that ambition, let's say? And do you have already some indicators to help us to understand what could it be or your early success, let's say, in that field?

So on your first question around free cash flow, as we mentioned, the investments in the EUR 100 million of transformation costs, one-off OpEx will be front loaded, so more in '27 and '28, where we expect to spend the majority of this EUR 100 million. As a result, the free cash flow will really accelerate throughout the period with 2027 being the lower point. And on whether it should be above or below EUR 200 million, I would say that we would expect '27 to be kind of in line with what we'll post for '26.

The next question was on Brazil with volume penetration and profitability. I don't know if you want to take the volume and penetration and profitability. We do not comment per country. What I can tell you is that the Shavers business that we just show with increased volume, increased penetration showed a better profitability. I will not go into country-by-country profitability detail.

Yes, I think it's -- and it's through the mix, it's working their own portfolio. We have a strong brand in Brazil. So it's a combination of factors that enable us a healthy equation in Brazil.

Yes. And your third question was concerning a potential competitive reaction in Shavers. I think you even asked if they would like it. I'm pretty sure they will not like it. But if we look globally at Shavers, we all know who the market leader in premium Shavers is Gillette. Gillette has been very successfully challenged not to their success, but by the challenges, for instance, in the U.S. by a brand called Harry's. And actually, it has been losing market share steadily and consistently.

So this proves to me that it's not impossible to challenge a market leader. I think it is all about how we execute, how we dare to be different, and that's why we're working on our brand so much. And we will be -- and that is maybe also a change versus the past. With innovation, we will not suddenly deploy that everywhere. We will launch customer by customer. We will check progress, and we will only roll out once we have proven success, and we are already quite far in preparation for that.

Marie-Line Fort from Bernstein. I've got 3 questions as well. In terms of SKU reduction, could you come back on this pillar, which is a usual topic for the strategic plan for BIC. I would like to know what is the division the more exposed? And why -- what is the time horizon to execute this strategy? And also, do you expect any impact on sales in the first years of the execution of the plan?

Second question is about your transformation plan and the EUR 100 million of cost. Could you elaborate a bit on what kind of investment you are going to do split between brand support cost savings, OpEx reduction, whatever? And last question is about M&A. You don't mention M&A as part of allocation plan. Does it mean that you would not consider any project? It would be interesting to have your view.

Great. Thank you for the questions. I will answer your first and your last question. And Greg will take the second one. David will maybe help me on the first one. So your question was which category is most exposed for portfolio simplification. That category is stationery. And in fact, if you look more in details in our stationery category, there is actually a very profitable core, our key SKUs. We have a very long tail of smaller products, which we aim to rationalize. There are also opportunities in the other categories, but not to the extent as is in stationery.

I really like your second question because, of course, this is also what our sales teams are asking, will we not lose sales in this process. It's all about executing it together with your sales forces and customers. My experience is that it leads to increased sales and that is a bit counterintuitive. But if you simply offer shelf space to products that have a much higher rotation instead of occupying that by products that actually nobody wants to buy. So -- but of course, it has to do with a careful synchronization together with customers and the sales force. So we will be very deliberate in the way we execute.

In terms of the EUR 100 million investment, it's really in the 4 pillars I mentioned, we will be investing in the manufacturing on the one hand. For example, I mentioned predictive maintenance and this sort of thing. We will be investing in the supply chain to ensure that we optimize our routes and our order total in full, so meaning the accuracy of our delivery and therefore, increase revenues. We will be investing in the commercial area with a number of investments in RGM, in pricing, in feet on the street, as we mentioned. And we will be investing in IT, of course, to ensure that we take the best -- make the best use of AI for our G&A spend.

I would like to complement on what Rob said on the SKU rationalization rights to give you some additional numbers and thoughts. 1,000 SKU is only 2% of our net sales. So at the end, what happens is that as in a Pareto world that we are living, the most sales are concentrated in few SKUs. There are plenty of SKUs not generating much sales, not generating additional penetration consumers. And to the point, rotation in the point of sale is very small. If we don't deplete it, it will be our customers doing that for us. So we need to anticipate that. And those products generate cost, less agility, less flexibility on the -- in our industrial footprint and a lot of stock. So it consumes cash flow.

So very limited sales downside. On the contrary, we need to execute with a process. We have been building a process now with the commercial teams. So there is a portfolio strategy. We apply that per regions. We work with the commercial teams to avoid some mistakes, right, when we do that centrally. So it's a collaborative process that we believe will bring not only more sales but much better cost and cash over time.

Your third question concerned M&A. Let's get back to the core of this plan is about organic growth because this is, for me, our most important KPI, which we need to drive. Second, I think we, as a company, need to prove that we can truly integrate and scale Tangle Teezer because as I was honest to you about some early acquisitions, we don't have -- we didn't prove it with those exotic new businesses. So I want to go step by step. I want to show you that we can grow organically. I want to show you that we successfully integrate and scale Tangle Teezer. And then, of course, I think it would be unwise to exclude M&A as part of a future strategy.

What I do think is what is necessary that we will be very critical and really understand what kind of assets fits within this strategy that we choose by focusing on beautiful and better everyday essentials. And again, back to Tangle Teezer, why is this such a great combination? It's a beautiful brush, superior product performance. It's an everyday essential. We can manufacture it more competitively than third parties, and we can help Tangle Teezer scale worldwide. I mean if we find another one like that, I promise you, we will do M&A.

It's Andrei Condrea from UBS here. Only 2 questions from me, please. Obviously, your plan is -- it hinges on execution and you're improving in that space after years of underinvestment. Can you speak more on what exactly you're doing to improve your commercial capabilities and your execution, bringing people from the outside like, I believe, you've done in Mexico, for instance, or applying the learnings you've had from businesses like P&G, like KCL -- sorry, Kimberly-Clark and Nestle, for instance?

And secondly, particularly on U.S. Lighters, obviously, it's a very important part of your business, and it's also been one of the most challenged parts of the business. What has been lacking historically? What's hitting the business now in terms of structural declines from cigarettes? And how do you expect the shape of the improvement over the next couple of years to be like?

Yes. Thanks for your question. Commercial capabilities, I will answer, but feel free, looking to my commercial colleagues to step in. I want to be very clear. This doesn't go without leadership changes in our key commercial roles. So over the last 12 months, in most of our key markets, we have taken deliberate decisions to attract fresh talent from -- with fast-moving consumer goods background in order to occupy roles. We mix that also with internal talent, but it would be foolish to not change anything and expect different outcomes. So both on our category leaders, we found a mix between internal tenants and recruit external tenants, but that's also true for many of our country commercial organizations. That's one.

The second thing we're doing is we take our how big growth program very serious, okay? so we have launched a huge training effort in order to make sure that all our people are aware and are becoming used to this new way of thinking. By the way, not only the commercial people, we also train our noncommercial people.

Secondly -- thirdly, we have changed the way we plan. So we have launched a unified commercial planning process where we ask our countries to clearly describe the commercial execution plan before we even talk about budget. So over the years, our planning was more a financial exercise. But we now do, it is a commercial exercise, which then will be translated into a financial budget. If you want to add anything, but I think those were 3 important changes.

Yes. No, I think this is the main one. And in the international market as well, I was talking about scaling execution. We are so much siloed in our -- so whatever would happen in Brazil, we would not travel to other developing markets like Poland or Turkey or Africa. So this is as well something that we are learning how to do it through this archetype that I have mentioned.

And then, of course, capabilities like sales force automation, how we really track and understand what is going into the right direction and what we need to adjust. So we are agile in terms of how fast we need to eventually be flexible in terms of adjustments. So it's mindset as well together with tools and together with people from -- with a lot of big experience and new people. So...

Let me comment first, and then, of course, I'll do -- this is such an important question you raised on lighters in the U.S. and I know there is a concern. First of all, our lighter sales are not decreasing in America this year. So let's get the facts straight first. Secondly, we, as a company, have been super focused on the modern mass market, Walmart, Target, retail. There is a growing channel in America, also driven by legalization of marijuana smoking. I'm from Amsterdam, but I tell you, the marijuana smoking in the U.S. is growing way faster than it has ever grown in the Netherlands.

So we have simply not been focused on claiming our rightful share in what Haven calls the nonmeasured channels. These are smaller shops. These are smoke shops, these are dispensaries. And Haven and I, we spent days in different parts of the U.S. driving from smoke shop to smoke shop to dispensary to dispensary. And we have seen it with our own eyes, we have audited. So there is white space. There's white space to be captured.

Thirdly, Haven spoke -- I know, it a little and so question is about your traffic. Thirdly, Haven spoke about counterfeit. I can't judge the past, but I can see what there is today. We are exposed to counterfeit. And we have noticed, and that is very much thanks to Haven and his leadership, we have started to take aggressive legal action, and we have started to communicate very clearly to customers. You better think twice before. And that has yielded some first effects. And part of the plan is also that we significantly enhance our legal budgets to fight this. Please, Haven -- sorry.

Well, you've covered a lot of material. Just a little bit of color commentary on some of the points that Rob mentioned. I think we often identify in the U.S. on the declining cigarette smoking trend. But the increasing smoking trend in cannabis that Rob mentioned is quite significant. When we look at just the number of outlets in the U.S. right now, we estimate there's 15,000 to 20,000 outlets that have really not been a priority, a focus area for us up to this point in time when we think about distilleries and smoke shops. That's significant opportunity.

Now we have to execute differently, right? We have to make sure that we have the right selling organization structured to penetrate those channels. We have to make sure that we're providing the right executional guidance in terms of the right assortment and the display activity that we need to show up in those channels, okay? So tremendous opportunity for us on a go-forward basis.

The other thing that I'll mention regarding commercial capabilities also links to our selling capabilities. We mentioned increased opportunity in North America on our stationery business. And this is about recreating the model that's been proven effective in improving profitability in Europe around gifting, entertainment. That means we need to have presence in amusement parks like Disney. That means we need to have presence in museums like the Met that requires the right selling organization and selling structure. So hopefully, that gives you a sense for just the upside capability that we -- or capacity that we see when it comes to cannabis and the capabilities required to penetrate some of these new segments.

And even in existing segments, what is the #2 retailer in the U.S.? #2 largest retailer in the U.S., Costco. BIC is not in Costco. We're not in Costco. So nobody can tell me we don't have distribution opportunity in the U.S. There's quite some white spaces. And I don't know if you're familiar with Costco, but -- and Haven knows that I very much would like to enter Costco, as you can imagine. But these are very sizable opportunities. And of course, I mean, I will not challenge on cigarette smoking, although that goes also quite gradually and there's cannabis smoking. But for all these reasons, we clearly believe there is growth to be found.

One last point.

It's a bit of competition...

It is, can you tell that we're passionate about the opportunity on lighter? One of the points that we've not mentioned is the fact that we have been increasing our partnership with a handful of U.S. retailers to quantify the upside potential of simply expanding our presence. As an example, we see upside potential of expanding the distribution within retailers where we currently have presence from the front aisle commonly associated with smoking at checkout to placement in the kitchen aisle, to placement in the candles aisle. These all represent significant upside opportunities for us even in the U.S. marketplace.

Yes. And to come back on your execution question, I think we were clear on the commercial part. I think it's important to bear in mind that we will be very nimble with your capital. First of all, we have created a transformation office that tracks 100 initiatives, how much we spend and how much those delivers. And we will apply strict ROI criteria to make sure that they deliver and we'll be ready to adjust as we go to make sure that we are using your capital appropriately. So that's pretty important. And the incentives will also be aligned on delivering those. So the accountability that you will have in a plan will be very precise. So I thought that was important in terms of execution, execution, execution that Rob mentioned earlier.

Alessandro from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have 2 questions on the geographic expansion. You mentioned that 90% of volumes are outside of BIC. And I assume a lot of comes from China, India as well. Those 2 countries, particularly have proven difficult to penetrate to gain market shares there. So which countries or regions are you specifically targeting when you talk about geographic expansion? And what makes you confident you can grow market shares there? And the follow-up would be on the pricing strategy in those regions because some of those countries have lower purchasing power. Are you going to chase volumes or focus on margins on those regions?

Yes. Great. Thank you. Well, to be very clear, we're not going to India, and we're not going to China. Very simple, very high competitive intensity. And I think we have just divested our Cello business last year, which hopefully gives enough proof that we are not -- do not have what it takes to compete effectively India or China. So that's one. We have analyzed in which markets do we have attractiveness and where do we have a right to win. And that is -- so it's a very selective approach.

But to be concrete, in Asia, we are targeting Vietnam and the Philippines. Why? Because we already have some infrastructure, we have some brand equity, we have the customer relationship. It is about accelerating there by putting more feet on the ground, simply hiring more own -- your own salespeople. So that's Asia. Bear with me. Then the majority of our expansion is targeted in key African markets. Again, markets where we already have presence, we have also a supply chain footprint in Africa. So it's about increasing number of salesmen, merchandisers to get control over point of sales and drive distribution. And I think you had a question on price points.

Yes, you're going to take it.

Yes, because I know what you're going to answer.

Okay. Thank you for the question. Affordability is a key point when we go into geographic expansion for sure. But it's not about discounting or low price points every time because it's about really understanding the value proposition in that market, so what it makes sense. So we have different options. There is different formats, different packaging, entry price points that make sense, local manufacturing and sourcing. So it's a combination of factors of mix and what kind of portfolio we bring to this market and how we understand exactly what the local consumer and shopper want through the specific channel being the traditional trade in many cases in this market.

So we have proven in many -- as Rob was saying, African markets, we are already there in many of the markets. We know how to unlock it, and we are successful in many of the African markets. Asia, as Rob was saying, is very targeted. We have developing markets in Europe like Poland, Romania, Turkey. There are -- it's not only about some of the continents in Latin America, we talked about Brazil, but there are so many other countries like Chile, Peru, where there is potential. Mexico is booming. We are doing so good there this year. So it's pretty much understanding the formula that is local, understanding that we have some specific drivers that we already know that they work. So it's proved already.

On Lighters, another complementary thinking and numbers, right? When we see the level of concentration of our sales in the U.S., you divide sales by number of inhabitants and you make the calculation by areas, but you will find out that mathematically in most of the areas, we have between 10% and 30% of market share in most of our markets. If we take out the Asian countries where we are not. When you are at 15% to 20%, your brand is well known. You are available, you are present.

And then you need to work visibility, you need to work on route to market, but the effort from being present known and a well-known brand and product into double the market share is much lower than the adventures of building a new business in China, in Asia generally, right, in white spaces. So my message to you is when we are present, we know which markets we can have a good return of investment, right, balance. And those are those markets that we're going to push in the years to come.

Cedric Rossi from Stifel. I have 2 questions as well. So the first one is regarding the brand perception overall. So I think, as you said that BIC has a unique positioning. And I think part of it stems from the unique value proposition that you were offering to consumers. Since you are implementing this premiumization strategy, which is a necessary strategy, how are you going to deal with this strong value proposition carrying on the premiumization strategy without jeopardizing this strong value for money image that you have in the consumer's mind? So that's my first question.

The second one is regarding the supply chain. So in FMCG, we are seeing more and more brands, digital brands on TikTok or on social media, which are very agile, fabless surfing on 1 or 2 products that go viral and then shift to others. Since you have this integrated manufacturing footprint, how are you going to deal with this competition? And do you also plan to reduce your lead times?

And the third question is on the margin improvement. So we talked a lot about the operating leverage. So does it mean that you expect gross margin to remain at similar levels? Or do you also expect an expansion there?

Thank you very much. I'll take your first question concerning the brand. So what we show today is that we want to rejuvenate the brand and to connect with younger consumers. I think I called it to make it cool again. It's not necessarily an automatic premiumization strategy from the brand perspective. It is about a great value for money proposition. Now pricing is highly conditional. I informed you today that our best-selling distribution point of the 4-color pen is Disneyland Paris. The price is EUR 8, and people consider this a fantastic value. This is great.

So I think we have to evolve our thinking of being in all cases, the most affordable player. Now we have to be great value for the particular occasion. I mean, let's face it, we pay EUR 6 for a little bottle of Evian in the airport, but it costs EUR 0.50 at the Fall Creek. So this is the type of thinking we want to implement here at BIC. And I do sort of see where you're going. Of course, when a product and the packaging and it looks more attractive and more cool, it will offer opportunities for additional pricing. But that is not the main intent behind this brand rejuvenation project because clearly, Greg, you also mentioned that, we want to have a healthy balance between volume and value in our growth.

And this happens not only to the EUR 8 product, but also in back-to-school or outside of back-to-school. Do you believe that the kids today, they want just the EUR 0.20 big ball pen or they want a colored pen, attractive that they will have it -- and they will be EUR 2, right? We're not talking about EUR 20 or EUR 30. We're talking about moving and offering a breadth of solutions, right, on the pen, where we have a good mastering of the quality of the product, right, of all the industrial processes. So we are adding design. As we mentioned, we are adding features.

And you have seen the French people here, you're absolute in for colors, we have been evolving for colors over time, but we'll do it also in Crystal and our main hero products. And then what you do is you bring attractive products that can be sold not in Euro Disney, but in the Carrefour, right, at a higher price, capturing volumes and capturing margins because that's new consumers for us.

I think your second question was concerning our agility in the supply chain to launch quickly new trends, which some of you described some of competitors do that on TikTok. This plan is about our hero SKUs. So we're not developing new products. We are addressing the brands more nicely. That is what we do. And we have unique capability here at BIC, where we can very quickly change our packaging sleeves, our decors and make the look and feel of the product very differently. We have a great example. You all know that Spain won the World Cup, right? Our team in Tarragona, where we have also production, was able to have World Cup Spain lighters and pens in market 1 week after the goal was scored in the final. So that is amazing, fast capability. And that is something we want to apply to all our categories. So from -- and I don't want to steal the gross margin question, but you can guess the answer already and everything.

And I can complement because we already have this -- of course, strong in Tarragona, but we already have in Mexico, we have it in Brazil. And we are building in Africa. So it's not -- it's exactly the strategy to be closer to the consumer and to really attend their needs and this ongoing added value.

Gregory, before you speak to margins, I think one other consideration related to the -- I think it was your second question. Yes, you asked about supply chain, but embedded in that question, you also referred to digital-first businesses, digital-first competitors. So across our markets and all of our categories, we're continuously monitoring the digital brands that are trying to pop up and move into our categories. So as we think about living into this new support plan, this new model on our 2020-'30 time horizon, as Gregory mentioned, a huge part of that is increase in our brand investment, right? That increase in brand investment is very much digital first. So I wanted to make sure that you fully understand, yes, we are very aware of those competitors who try to play in the digital space. But at the same time, we're actually bringing our brands to life in a digital-first way.

And finally, Cedric, for the model, I would not model any increase in the GP. Our objective is to offset inflation here. So we'll be cautious on the GP outlook. That's what we have in the model.

Is there any last question before we close the session? Okay, Alessandro, one last one. Thank you.

Sorry, last one on circularity. I thought that was interesting. Will you -- do you plan to sell maybe refurbished products with the things you collect? Or how does that -- yes, circularity plan will increase value for company?

Yes. So thank you for the question. The answer is yes. At the end, this is what we want to. And the test we did with this lighter precisely in which we included 80% of the value of old lighters into a new lighter, in fact, proving that we are able to do it at scale. The level of performance and the level of safety is equivalent to those of BIC, meaning that we are able to put them on the market and to sell them. The question is how do we use them? We could use it and it's still not defined for the time being in some channels, which we want to push or in other geographies where we want to be more aggressive. This is not defined for the time being. Priority is to come at scale in collection and to come at scale as well in industry, okay? So those are the 2 key levers.

I would say as well beyond lighters because I talked a lot about lighters because this is where we did -- we made it happen. But the objective is to make it transversal. The -- what we want to aim at is that -- and we are pretty confident about that. It took us 10 years to reach where we are in lighters. We think we can do the same on the 3 other categories in a matter of 4 years, allowing us then to gain scale and to potentially propose if we succeed, and I do insist on this one, it is not for sure, a range which would be a recycled range for sale.

All right. Thank you very much, everyone, for this very interesting Q&A session. Rob, back to you.

Yes. No, I think I want to say a big thank you on behalf of me and my team, on behalf of the company, we are very pleased with your interest in our company, and we thank you very much for being here with us today, either in person or online. We have outside the conference room an area where we have displaced many of our products, of which we have been talking about. We're very happy there to receive you and have a snack and have a drink, if I'm not mistaken. A drink only, the snacks already been eaten probably. So no, big thank you for being here. Thank you very much.

Good day, and welcome to BIC's 2026 First Half Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And now I would like to hand the call to your host, Brice Paris, Vice President, Investor Relations.

Good morning, and welcome to BIC's First Half 2026 Results Call. I'm Brice Paris, Vice President, Investor Relations. We're in Clichy today with Rob Versloot, our CEO; and Gregory Lambertie, our CFO. This call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website with the presentation and press release. We'll start with the usual results presentation, followed by a Q&A session.

First, please take the time to read the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation. With that, I give the floor to Rob.

Thank you, Brice. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Let me start with 4 key messages from our first half performance. First, we delivered a good set of results in the second quarter, resulting in H1 organic growth of plus 1.7% -- this performance gives us increasing confidence that the actions we launched are beginning to deliver tangible results. While there is still a lot to do, these encouraging early signs allow us to raise our full year outlook today. Second, our Q2 growth of plus 1.8% was well balanced across our categories and geographies.

We saw continued sequential improvement in the U.S., driven by the strong performance of Stationery and Blade Excellence. Tangle Teezer delivered another outstanding quarter with organic growth accelerating to plus 21% in Q2, confirming both the strength of the brand and the quality of its innovation pipeline. In parallel, the Middle East and Africa region returned to strong growth after a challenging first quarter.

While we remain mindful of the evolving geopolitical environment and its potential implications for our business and supply chain, we are encouraged by the resilience demonstrated across the region. Third, we delivered an adjusted EBIT margin of 16% and generated EUR 64 million in free cash flow. While U.S. tariff refunds provided a temporary benefit at the end of June, this improvement was also supported by the operational progress we are seeing across the business.

Finally, 2026 is a pivotal year for BIC. We are moving with speed and discipline to strengthen the foundations of our business. I look forward to sharing more about our priorities and ambitions during our strategic update in September. Let me now turn to the performance across our different regions, starting with the U.S. We continue to see sequential improvement during the first half. Stationery delivered strong growth, supported by distribution gains at specialized retailers and continued momentum in e-commerce.

In Lighters, net sales stabilized following a difficult year in 2025. Shavers remained challenging, particularly in the women's segment in a highly competitive environment.

At the same time, we continue to see encouraging momentum in premium men's products, especially with our Flex 5 refillable shaver, which is gaining traction with consumers. Tangle Teezer once again delivered an excellent performance in the U.S., supported by further distribution gains with major retailers, continued e-commerce expansion and additional market share gains. The Matte and Chrome premium collections performed particularly well alongside the successful " The Devil Wears Prada" collaboration, reinforcing our confidence in the long-term growth potential of the brand.

Beyond the U.S., we also saw resilient performance across our international markets. In Europe, growth was broadly stable in the first half year. A slower start to the back-to-school season was offset by positive momentum in Lighters and mid-single-digit growth in Blade Excellence, driven by Tangle Teezer. We also continued to invest behind our brands through impactful consumer campaigns, including the launch of our new Vibbies collection in France and the M10 Smurfs campaign in Belgium, celebrating the 70 years of our iconic BIC Pen.

In Latin America, we delivered a solid first half with stabilization in Mexico following a particularly challenging 2025, flat organic growth in Brazil and strong performances across Argentina and several other markets. Strategic partnerships continued to support growth in shavers, including our recent Ronaldinho campaign in Brazil, which strengthened brand visibility and contributed to positive commercial momentum.

In the Middle East and Africa, we returned to high single-digit growth in the second quarter after a difficult first quarter impacted by the regional conflict. Overall, the region delivered slightly positive growth in the first half, led by stationery with a particularly strong start to the back-to-school season in North Africa alongside continued strength in Lighters. This once again demonstrates the resilience of our business in the region.

Overall, what is particularly encouraging is that our improvement is becoming increasingly broad-based. We are seeing positive momentum across most categories and geographies, reflecting both the resilience of our portfolio and the early impact of the actions we have taken. That said, we remain realistic about the second half. Comparisons will become significantly more demanding and the macroeconomic and geopolitical environment continues to require caution.

However, we believe the progress achieved during the first 6 months of the year gives us confidence that we are moving in the right direction and building a stronger platform for sustainable, profitable growth. With that, I will now hand over to Gregory, who will take you through our first half financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with an overview of our key financial figures. Net sales in Q2 were EUR 586 million, up 1.8% on an organic basis, driven by solid performance in Blade Excellence and Flame for Life. For the first half, net sales stood at EUR 1.040 billion, up 1.7% on an organic basis with positive contribution from all categories in key regions.

H1 adjusted EBIT stood at EUR 166 million, representing a 16% margin. This margin includes a positive contribution of 1.5% from U.S. tariff refunds. Excluding this impact, adjusted EBIT margin was 14.5% compared to 13.7% last year. This increase was mainly driven by the exit of underperforming businesses. Adjusted EPS was EUR 2.81, comprising a EUR 0.30 positive contribution from U.S. tariff refunds. Excluding this impact, adjusted EPS was EUR 2.51, up 7% versus last year.

Lastly, free cash flow was very strong at EUR 64 million compared to a negative EUR 14 million last year, mainly driven by tax phasing and the impact of the tariff refunds. Turning to Slide 7. Let's review the main building blocks of Q2 net sales evolution. Q2 net sales were EUR 586 million, up 1.8% organically, driven by positive contributions from Blade Excellence for EUR 8 million, Lighters for EUR 3 million and other products for EUR 2 million.

On the other hand, Stationery had a negative contribution of EUR 2 million. Foreign exchange and perimeter had a negative impact this quarter of respectively, 0.3 points and 3.5 points on group net sales. Turning to Slide 8. Let's review the main building blocks of net sales evolution for the first half. Organic growth was 1.7% in H1 with net sales reaching EUR 1.040 billion, driven by positive contributions from all categories, starting with Blade Excellence for EUR 8 million, Lighters for EUR 6 million and Stationery and other products, each contributing EUR 2 million. Foreign exchange and perimeter had a significant negative impact of respectively, 2.4 points and 2.8 points on group net sales.

Turning on to Slide 9. Let me now walk you through the performance for H1 2026 by division, starting with Human Expression. Net sales were EUR 377 million, up 0.5% on an organic basis. In North America, significant growth in H1 was mainly fueled by distribution gains and good performance in e-commerce. Key products contributing to growth included correction products, ball pens and mechanical pencils. In Europe, H1 '26 net sales declined as a result of slow back-to-school sell-in, particularly in France and the United Kingdom.

However, BIC new products performed well in the region, such as our Cristal Vibbies collection. In Latin America, net sales performance was negatively impacted by Brazil and Mexico due to the continued challenging competitive environment in both countries, particularly in the modern trade channel.

Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, organic growth for the first half was up mid-single digits. After a tough Q1, BIC delivered a solid rebound in Q2, notably driven by strong back-to-school momentum in North Africa. Human Expression adjusted EBIT margin was 13.7% in H1 compared to 11% last year. This increase was mainly due to U.S. tariff refunds as well as the exit of underperforming businesses, partially offset by unfavorable fixed cost absorption and currency fluctuations.

Moving on to the performance of the Flame for Life division. Net sales were EUR 351 million in H1, up 1.7% on an organic basis. After a challenging 2025 in North America, performance improved, leading to flat net sales for H1 this year. This was particularly driven by growth in the convenience channel and in e-commerce. In Europe, slight organic growth was driven by strong performance in the traditional trade channel across key European countries.

In Latin America, growth was solid, mainly fueled by solid commercial execution in Mexico. Flame for Life adjusted EBIT margin was 31.9% in the first half compared to 28.6% last year. Key drivers included the positive contribution of tariffs, favorable price and mix as well as lower brand support investment compared to last year.

Turning to the next slide on Blade Excellence. Net sales totaled EUR 296 million, up 2.9% on an organic basis. In North America, organic growth was slightly up, mainly driven by Tangle Teezer's robust double-digit growth. At the same time, our Shavers business declined due to distribution losses and a tough competitive environment.

In Europe, organic growth was up mid-single digits, fueled by Tangle Teezer. In addition, in our Shavers business, our premium razors across the Flex and Soleil ranges gained distribution. In Latin America, BIC's premiumization strategy in the triple blade segment continued to deliver, driving growth in both Mexico and Brazil.

Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, the slight decline in H1 was primarily due to a challenging first quarter affected by the conflict in the Middle East. Performance rebounded strongly in Q2, supported by growth in Western and North Africa. Overall, Blade Excellence adjusted EBIT margin was 15.2% in H1 versus 14.7% last year. Once again, this increase was driven by the positive contribution of U.S. tariff refunds as well as a favorable price and mix as well as manufacturing efficiencies.

Finally, let's turn to Tangle Teezer on Slide 12. Tangle Teezer accelerated to 21% organic growth in Q2, bringing H1 organic growth to 16%. Growth was driven by the U.S. and Europe, supported by distribution expansion, market share gains and strong demand for our premium detangling ranges.

Moving on to Page 13. H1 2026 adjusted EBIT margin was 16%. Overall, gross profit had a positive impact of 0.8%, driven by positive impact of U.S. tariff refunds, the exit of underperforming businesses as well as favorable price and mix. This was partially offset by continued negative impact from currency fluctuations. Brand support was lower by 0.3 points and operating and other expenses had a 1.2% positive impact.

On Slide 14, let's review the key elements of the P&L. Adjusted EBIT stood at EUR 166 million, up EUR 19 million versus last year. Nonrecurring items amounted to EUR 8 million. This included restructuring and transformation costs as we start to implement our new strategy as well as costs related to discontinued activities. As a result, income before tax was EUR 157 million compared to EUR 111 million last year.

Net income group share was EUR 108 million compared to EUR 76 million last year, while our adjusted net income group share was EUR 114 million compared to EUR 97 million last year. Our adjusted EPS stood at EUR 2.81 compared to EUR 2.35 last year.

On the next slide, you can see the main building blocks of free cash flow in H1 '26. Operating cash flow amounted to EUR 221 million, up EUR 22 million year-on-year, following the positive contribution of U.S. tariff refunds. Change in working capital was EUR 107 million. Income tax paid was EUR 14 million. CapEx were EUR 31 million, relatively flat versus last year.

As a result, for the first half of 2026, free cash flow was EUR 64 million. Before giving the floor back to Rob, let me go briefly through our net cash position on Slide 16. On top of the free cash flow elements, in H1, we paid EUR 98 million in dividends and bought back shares for EUR 18 million. This concludes the review of BIC's consolidated results for the first half of 2026. To conclude, -- we posted a good set of results in the first half, enabling us to raise our outlook for the full year.

Looking ahead, we have a clear strategic road map and have already begun executing it with discipline. We look forward to sharing more detail with you at our September strategic update. With that, I give the floor back to Rob.

Thank you, Gregory. Our first half performance gives us confidence in the trajectory of the business. And as a result, we are raising our full year outlook. We now expect modest organic growth in 2026, implying flat to slightly negative net sales in the second half. adjusted EBIT margin to be slightly above 14%, reflecting our decision to continue investing behind our brands and our transformation as we prepare for 2027 and free cash flow generation to be broadly stable compared to last year.

As you know, 2026 is a key transitional year for BIC. With my new leadership team, we are strengthening the foundations of the business and positioning the company back on the path of growth. We have streamlined our portfolio by discontinuing noncore and underperforming activities. We've initiated our transformation program and will accelerate its execution during the second half of the year. We have a clear road map with well-defined priorities and disciplined execution. We are encouraged by the progress we have already made and remain fully focused on delivering sustainable and profitable growth.

On September 8, we will present the next chapter of this journey during our strategic update, and we look forward to sharing it with you. Thank you. We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question we have is from Christophe Chaput of ODDO.

First, if I may, congratulations for the first half results. And if I may, I've got 2 set of questions. The first one is, I'd like to come back on the page on the Slide 13 on your EBIT page, just to have a little bit more granularity because excluding the U.S. tariff, the EBIT is EUR 151 million versus EUR 146 million, whereas in the meantime, you benefited from the discontinuation of underperforming activity and the [indiscernible] was positive during the semester. So my question is, could you remind us the positive impact on the discontinuation -- and what are the potential tailwind that you had nevertheless? I think you mentioned the currency, but what was the amount of the negative impact of the currency?

And the second part of the question is that on the full year guidance, you expect your gross net profit margin to be slightly higher than 14%, which means that excluding the U.S. tariff, it should be more or less flat versus last year. If we consider the H1 performances, which are good, it implies a decline in H2 for your operating profit margin. So is it a degree of cautiousness from your part? Or should we take into consideration future [indiscernible] let's say, for example, marketing expense or again, negative impact from the currency, so just to have a better granularity.

So first, on your first question, thank you very much, Christophe, for your good words and for your questions. On your first question, which is around perimeter, I'll answer in 2 ways. First on H1, second and the impact on the full year. On the perimeter impact for H1, there is 2 main impacts. 2/3 is on Cello, which is at sales level impacting around by 150 basis points and 1/3 is Rocketbook and Skin Creative, which is impacting the top line by 60 bps. If I look at EBIT, which was the core of your question, it's the other way around, given relative profitability.

Cello has an impact of around -- a positive impact of around 50 basis points, whereas the disposal of and closure of Rocketbook/Skin Creative brings a positive impact of 110 basis points. So that's for H1. For the full year, it's pretty similar, although Cello was sold towards the end of the year, so Cello weighs a little bit less. So if you have to look at full year impact, Cello is probably 110 basis points on the perimeter with Rocket Book, Skin Creative at 60 basis points, and it's the other way around in terms of EBIT for the full year. So round about 100 for Rocket and Skin Creative and 40 bps for Cello. So that's the impact on the EBIT margin.

Then you had a second question around the impact of currency, I believe. Is that right?

Yes, totally. The impact on the currency for H1, yes.

Yes. So on the currency, we basically had a transactional Forex for H1, which was unfavorable on gross profit. It's pretty -- between 1% and 2%. So it's pretty significant. It's mainly due to unfavorable dollar Brazil cross and dollar-Mexican cross, which is the heavy -- the latter being the heavier impact. So overall, Forex had a negative impact of around 150 basis points on EBIT margin. That's what you should have in mind.

And your last question is around how do we see margin evolution for H2. Here, I want to be pretty clear. We have, as Rob just said, we're taking an outlook which is cautious on H2. We're seeing some uncertainty globally. We're seeing some momentum -- positive momentum still in our Tangle Teezer division, for example. But overall, the view is that in terms of cost outlook, given the Middle East crisis and given the fact that we want to reinvest the majority of our tariff refunds into the business to prepare for growth for '27, we guided at a slightly improved 14% -- above 14% margin.

The next question we have is from Marie-Line Fort of Bernstein.

The first one is about the scope impact on your Blade excellence. I saw you have 490 basis points scope. I would like to know where does it from.

The second question is to have some ideas of how the U.S. tariff refunds has been splitted across the division? Because if we look at the Blade Excellence, the ramp-up in margin is lower than other division. Is it linked to the fact that probably this division did not benefit as the other one from the U.S. tariffs. And on the U.S. tariffs also, I would like to know if you are expecting additional refunds from the second half or not?

And lastly, I would like to better understand what makes you cautious on H2? Is it linked to particular division? I'm thinking about Stationery where probably you've got some order books giving you some ideas of the second half momentum. So if you can comment further on your view on the second half would be helpful.

Okay. Thank you very much, Marie-Line for your question. I think the first one is pretty straightforward, the scope impact on Blade Excellence. It's entirely related to Tangle Teezer. You may remember, we acquired it in the -- at the end of 2024. So there were some revenues from 2024, which were consolidated in the first half of 2025. Those were adjusted in our '26 release and leading to this perimeter impact. So that's entirely on Blade Excellence given the fact that Tangle Teezer is accounted for there.

The second part of your question around tariffs split by division, we don't provide that. There hasn't been that much difference between divisions. However, the impact on margin that you're referring to is mostly driven by the brand support allocation that we've -- that we've chosen for, for the first half. So indeed, there was an impact here.

Third question around additional tariff refunds. We don't expect anything material here. The vast majority, 98%, 99% of what we claim has been received. So really no impact to be expected of significance for the rest of the year. And by the way, just clarifying for listeners on the call, we do not expect the new regime of tariffs to change our outlook compared to what we had said previously.

Now on your last question, which is similar to what Christophe was asking a minute ago, no particular caution on any particular division. I think as I said earlier, there is, on the one hand, a cost outlook that's slightly more negative and has been called out by others in recent earnings release, given the uncertainty in the Middle East in particular. The second piece is what I mentioned earlier, which is the fact that we're going to reinvest the benefits -- a majority of the benefits of the tariffs into the business, into growth to prepare for '27.

And that's what we want to do to make sure we are on an accelerating trend.

I just want to come back on your answer about the scope impact on Blade, but why is it negative by 4.9%? That's my question.

The overall impact of around EUR 7 million for that extra 2024 revenues that was accounted for in the H1 of 2025 leads to that level of magnitude. So it's around EUR 7 million.

The next question we have is from Geoffrey d'Halluin of BNP Paribas.

Just 2 questions, if I may, please. The first one, just to confirm your margin targets for the year. So the new target includes about, let's say, [EUR 15-16 million] of tariffs, which is how much you got in the first half, just to be 100% clear on that point, please.

And the second question is related to the free cash flow target, which is unchanged while you raised your organic revenue growth and EBIT margin target for the year. So just wanted to get what free cash flow target is unchanged for the year.

Thank you for your question. So on the first one, very clear, yes, everything is included in the outlook. As I mentioned, we'll reinvest that in the business for a majority hence the overall guidance.

Second, on the free cash flow, what I wanted to be clear about is that in H1, we have exceptional -- exceptional impacts, one of which is a phasing that should normalize throughout the year. And then we have the tariff refunds, which we will be reinvesting partly as I mentioned earlier. Then for the full year, our outlook implies lower free cash flow in H2 versus last year, mainly driven by 2 factors. The first one is we ended up the year with inventories, which were a little bit too low to our liking. And so that's the first bit. The second bit is that we have transformation costs, as you see in H1, we started the transformation. We expect to continue with that transformation. That will have additional costs, which we will be sharing -- I mean, we'll be sharing the overall plan and the intent on the 8th of September. So please bear with us until then, but that's the driver for that -- for maintaining the free cash flow guidance.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. And I will now hand it back to Rob for final remarks.

Yes. I would like to thank everyone for having joined us in our call this morning and also use this opportunity as we are close to the August month to wish everybody great holidays in case you have a break. We look forward seeing you during our Capital Market Day on September 8 after the holidays. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning. I'm very proud to address you today for my first general meeting as Chair of the Board of Directors of BIC. I'm joined by our new CEO, Rob Versloot. On behalf of all members of the Board, I'm thrilled to welcome you to this General Meeting for FY 2025. This general meeting is being webcast live on BIC's corporate website and will be available for replay.

First, allow me to introduce the directors who are present in the auditorium today. Rob Versloot, our CEO; Albert Baladi; Marie-Aimee Bich-Dufour, GeoffroyBich, Sebastien Drecq, Karen Guerra, Esther Gaide, Candace Matthews, Veronique Laury, Hela Madiouni; and Marie- Edmee Vallery–Radot. The members of the Executive Committee are also present. Laura Vanhoutte will act as Secretary for the General Meeting. The following persons will act as vote tellers, Ms. Marie- Edmee Vallery–Radot, who represents MBD, Shareholder and Director; Domitille Meheut, who represents Phison Capital, shareholder.

We will give priority to the shareholders of BIC during the Q&A session, but I ask you to kindly authorize the presence of journalists and analysts in the room. Before we proceed, I would like to pay tribute to Francois Bich, who passed away on the 23rd of February. He was the son of Founder Marcel Bich and devoted his entire career to the group. He left an indelible mark on the group's history, mainly through the development and the global success of the Big Lighter division that he run for more than 40 years. He was a visionary and was deeply attached to the group's values. He left a lasting impression on all of our employees.

I now declare open the general meeting of our company. And let me now hand over to Laura Vanhoutte.

Thank you, Edouard. For the record, this general meeting was convened by a prior meeting notice serving as meeting notice which was published in the bulletin of official legal notices that Ballot on the 10th of April 2026 as well as a meeting notice published in the Journal Special des Societes on the 29th of April 2026. An attendance sheet was established, was signed by each member of the general meeting on their way in, either in their personal capacity or as authorized representative. It is noted according to the provisional attendance sheet that 1,576 shareholders who together 34,913,598 shares who represents 85.87% of the share capital are present or represented.

As 1/4 of the shares comprising the share capital and carrying voting rights are present or represented, the meeting is therefore declared duly constituted and may validly deliberate on both ordinary and extraordinary matters. I shall disclose the final figures before the vote on resolutions. All documents required by law have been submitted to me. They were made available to shareholders at the company's registered office and on the company's website within the statutory deadline.

The agenda for the general meeting will be reviewed and detailed before the resolution are voted on. It is noted that this agenda was set by the Board of Directors on the 24th of February 2026. I can also inform you that no shareholders have submitted any draft resolution. We shall start this meeting with a presentation of the highlights for the past year as well as on our progress in terms of sustainable development by Rob Versloot, our CEO. Then Gregory Lambertie, our Chief Financial and Digital Officer, will be presenting the 2025 consolidated results and performance in the first quarter of 2026.

We shall then listen to a presentation of Tangle Teezer by James Vowles, CEO. We'll then continue with the parts and corporate governance and the reports by statutory auditors. We'll then move on to the presentation of and the vote on resolutions before ending with a Q&A session. Now over to Rob Versloot.

Thank you, Laura. Hello, everyone, and welcome to BIC's Annual General Meeting. I am Rob Versloot. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of BIC. Now if I may, I will proceed in English. I am very happy to be here with you today for my first shareholders' meeting as CEO of BIC, having joined the group in September last year. I was also co-opted by the Board of Directors of BIC upon the recommendation of the Nominations, Governance and CSR Committee. The ratification of this cooptation as Director is submitted to the vote of the general meeting today, and I would be honored if the shareholders would approve it.

Throughout my career, I have seen firsthand the reach and relevance of the BIC brand around the world. It's a brand that people know, trust and use every day. And that's something truly special. BIC offers iconic essential products used by billions of consumers globally. And I'm honored to lead this remarkable company with such a strong legacy, and I'm energized by the opportunity of writing BIC's next chapter of growth. As the new CEO, my first priority when I arrived was clear, shift gears and set a strong foundation for the future. This transition didn't happen overnight and is still in progress.

But together with my new leadership team, we're moving quickly with focus and determination to shape and deliver our new strategy. When I look back at my initial assessment of BIC's strengths and the foundations for our new strategy, I am fully confident that the power of our brand, the depth of our distribution network and our excellence in manufacturing will remain instrumental pillars in shaping BIC's future. And I look forward to coming back in September to share with you our new strategy and the next phase of BIC's transformation.

Let me now tell you more about BIC's performance in 2025. 2025 was a tough year for BIC. We navigated significant headwinds across some of our key markets, marked by macroeconomic uncertainty and softer consumer trends. In addition to this, BIC's own performance was challenging. I would like to highlight the following key takeaways about this challenging year. First, in this demanding environment, we managed to stabilize the business in the second half of the year and delivered results in line with the expectations I set when I joined as CEO. Second, we took decisive actions by streamlining our brand portfolio with the discontinuation of underperforming activities such as Skin Creative and the sale of our Cello business in India. At the same time, we successfully integrated Tangle Teezer, which delivered double-digit growth in its first year with BIC.

This very strong performance reflected clear evidence of disciplined execution, strong cross-functional collaboration and the rapid alignment of Tangle Teezer with BIC's operating model. At last -- we put in place a new leadership team that is fully mobilized and actively shaping the organization to support our future operating model and restore sustainable profitable growth. Let me now walk you through BIC's shareholder remuneration for the 2025 fiscal year. In line with BIC's capital allocation policy, the Board of Directors proposes an ordinary dividend of EUR 2.4, representing a 51% payout ratio.

In addition to this dividend, we are renewing our share buyback program in 2026 with a total consideration that can reach up to EUR 40 million. Our resilient free cash flow in 2025 enables us to continue delivering these returns to our shareholders while reinvesting in the business to deliver on our strategic goals. On that end, our new strategy will be communicated to you in more detail during our strategic update in September.

I now would like to go over the progress we have made on our sustainable development journey and outline the next steps we are taking to continue advancing on this path. In 2025, we continued to make tangible progress, completing the last year of the Writing the future together sustainable development plan. We achieved key milestones across 3 core ESG KPIs. 100% of cardboard packaging now comes from a certified recycled source. Second, we reduced our Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 47% compared to 2019. And lastly, we helped improve learning conditions of 245 million children across the globe, notably through the work of the BIC Foundation.

More recently, we have just published the new edition of our sustainable development report that can be found on our website, and we have announced our new commitments going forward as a continuation of the Writing the Future, Together plan. Going forward, our next steps are fueled by everything we have learned so far, and we are actively mapping our path ahead. Our new sustainable development priorities will be focusing on 3 key pillars: Circularity, Climate and People. First, creating everyday essentials for circularity with responsibility and accountability. Second, making climate action part of how we work, create and grow together. And Third, putting people first in our communities, products and workplaces. The targets and main KPIs behind each of these commitments will be disclosed during our strategic update planned in September.

Let's now take a closer look at our 2026 outlook. In this year of transition and as BIC's leadership team prepares its strategic plan, we anticipate under current assumptions, improving organic net sales trends in 2026, a slight expansion in adjusted EBIT margin as well as a stable free cash flow. At the same time, we remain mindful of the highly volatile environment, particularly the evolving situation in the Middle East. While our direct exposure is limited and no major operational disruptions have been observed to date, we are actively managing potential risks and maintaining flexibility in our execution.

To conclude, 2026 is a key transitional year for BIC as we are focused on improving and transforming our business as well as implementing the right structure and operating model. With the full support of the Board of Directors and my new leadership team, I strongly believe we are well positioned to prepare a clear action plan and write the next chapter for BIC. And I'm very optimistic that the decisive actions we have taken so far are laying strong foundations for BIC to return to sustainable profitable growth. I now would like to give the floor to Gregory Lambertie, who will present to you our 2025 consolidated results and our net sales performance for the first quarter of 2026. Gregory?

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. I am Gregory Lambertie, CFO of Societe BIC. I'm delighted to be with you today for the shareholders' meeting. And like Rob, this is also my first AGM at BIC, having joined the group this past January. I'm pleased to present BIC's consolidated results for fiscal 2025 together with our net sales performance for Q1 2026.

Let me begin with an overview of our financial performance in 2025. Net sales totaled EUR 2.09 billion, down 0.9% on a like-for-like ForEx basis. Excluding scope effects related to the integration of Tangle Teezer and the disposal of Cello in Q4, organic growth was down 4.7%. Adjusted EBIT came in at EUR 283 million, representing a margin of 13.6%, down 2 points compared with 2024. And this mainly reflects the decline in net sales, partially offset by the cost base actions we implemented during the year. Adjusted group earnings per share were EUR 4.74 compared with EUR 6.15 in 2024. Lastly, free cash flow reached EUR 222 million, and we ended the year with a net cash position of EUR 234 million.

Let us now review our 2025 performance by division. First, net sales for the Human Expression division totaled EUR 736 million, down 6.3% at constant currencies. This decline was mainly driven by weaker performance in Latin America and the U.S. as well as the negative contribution from businesses discontinued in 2025, namely Cello, Rocketbook and Skin Creative, which offset the continued strong growth recorded in the Middle East and Africa. Net sales for the Flame For Life division came to EUR 723 million, down 6.7% at constant currencies, notably due to softer performance in North America and Latin America. Lastly, net sales for the Blade Excellence division reached EUR 602 million, up 15.7% at constant currencies, primarily driven by the contribution from Tangle Teezer. Excluding Tangle Teezer, sales were down 0.8%.

In addition, the integration of Tangle Teezer has been a real success with strong sales growth in 2025 and a 4.1 point contribution to group net sales, while also delivering a positive impact on margins. This excellent performance reflects disciplined execution, close collaboration between the Tangle Teezer and the BIC teams and Tangle Teezer's rapid integration into our operating model. James Vowles, CEO of Tangle Teezer, who's kindly joining us today, will speak to this outstanding performance in just a few moments.

The next slide presents the group's main income statement items for 2025. It should be noted that in 2025, BIC carried out several asset disposals and discontinued activities that have been dilutive to the group's growth and margins. As a result, a number of exceptional items were recognized during the year. In 2025, nonrecurring items amounted to EUR 127 million compared with EUR 53 million in 2024. And they mainly included EUR 104 million related to the discontinuation of the tier 2 businesses grouped under Skin Creative as well as Rocketbook. EUR 11 million related to disposal of Cello in India and EUR 10 million in fair value adjustments relating to long-term power purchase agreements entered into in France and Greece.

This slide outlines the main components of our free cash flow generation in 2025. Cash flow from operations totaled EUR 400 million, down EUR 71 million versus last year, mainly reflecting the decrease in operating margin. Changes in working capital had a positive effect of EUR 7 million. Income taxes paid amounted to EUR 90 million, and CapEx totaled EUR 87 million, broadly stable compared with last year. Overall, free cash flow generation remained solid at EUR 222 million. In addition to the free cash flow items just mentioned, the group paid EUR 127 million in dividends and carried out EUR 40 million in share buybacks in 2025.

As of the end of December 2025, our net cash flow stood at EUR 234 million, up EUR 45 million compared with December 2024. Let us now turn to Q1 2026 net sales, which were published on April 28. Net sales totaled EUR 453 million, representing organic growth of 1.6%, in line with expectations and with the trajectory shared at the beginning of the year. Growth was driven by all categories and major regions. The continued improvement in North America reflects the effectiveness of the actions implemented by the group in this key market, particularly in stationery, lighters and hair brushes. However, we recorded a decline in sales in the Middle East and Africa as the ongoing conflict continued to weigh on regional performance.

Lastly, following a successful first year within the BIC group, Tangle Teezer once again acted as a strong growth driver, delivering sales growth of 13% over the quarter. The outlook is a positive one. To conclude, our Q1 performance was in line with expectations. Over the remainder of the year, we will continue to strengthen our commercial execution across our key regions. At the same time, we will continue to advance our strategic transformation with the objective of reinforcing the core fundamentals that have underpinned the group's success since its inception. In September, we will present our new strategy designed to return BIC to sustainable and profitable growth.

I will now hand over to James Vowles, CEO of Tangle Teezer, who will present the business and its recent performance.

Thank you, Gregory. Good morning, everyone. My name is James Vowles, and I'm the leader of Tangle Teezer. I speak a little French, but forgive me now if I switch to English.

I'm delighted to be with you today to talk to you about Tangle Teezer. By way of introduction, I spent the last 9 years with Tangle Teezer and now with BIC, leading the special brand through sustained growth. Myself and the Tangle Teezer are delighted to be part of the BIC Group and looking forward to taking the brand to new growth heights.

We're a very visual brand. So what we wanted to do was to start off the presentation with a video which captures some of our brand highlights and innovation across 2025 and also 2026.

[Presentation]

Great. I hope you enjoy that as much as I did. The key thing to take away is Tangle Teezer is delivering consistent growth across markets and across product groups, a real sign of brand strength. I'm aware that many of you are not as familiar with Tangle Teezer as you are with the other big products. So I wanted to give you a little bit of a recap to Tangle Teezer. So Tangle Teezer was created in 2007 by a hair stylist, Shaun Pulfrey, who launched the product on the Dragons' Den, known in France for distribution in a leading high street retailer boots in the U.K. before expanding internationally. Fast forward 19 years, we've now sold 140 million brushes worldwide.

At the heart of Tangle Teezer's success is the ability to customize the bristle or the teeth to work for different hair types, whether you have fine hair, straight wavy hair or thick and curly hair, the brush works really, really well. Over the years, the brand wins multiple awards from titles such as Marie Claire, Vogue and ELF as well as generating 5-star reviews across the world from consumers. It's a very, very special brand. So in summary, Tangle Teezer is a fast-growing brand in a growing category, which is also very fragmented, but has lots and lots of opportunities for growth.

So the brand is sold in 75 countries worldwide and the ability to customize the hairbrush for different hair types means that we are a market leader in a number of very diverse markets, whether it's the U.K., the U.S., France, Brazil or Japan. We also have great strategic partnerships with retailers, bricks-and-mortar retailers and online retailers, where our premium price positioning, coupled with our sustained growth makes us the preferred choice amongst retailers as well as consumers. In 2025, we delivered double-digit growth, and that was marked by consistent growth across markets, across sales channels and across product groups.

At the heart of our model is investing in marketing. And so 2025 saw very successful launches from Extra Gentle, which you saw in the video, the Chromes Collection, which I'll touch on and also the Matte collection. At the end of the day, you'll get a Matte hairbrush as part of your goody bag. 2025 also saw us integrate into BIC's world-class supply chain. So we are now using BIC's facilities to both manufacture and distribute the products with the objective of delivering cost savings, which can be reinvested into the business. And across the world, we retain those market-leading positions. We're the #1 in the U.K., the #3 in the U.S., and we have top 3 positions in markets like France and Germany and Japan. So a really strong year.

I wanted to bring to life our sort of brand business model with the Chromes collection. So all of our innovation or animations is rooted in insights. We work with trend agencies a couple of years in advance to identify what are going to be the trends which are going to be on the cat walks or the red carpet events. And then we deliberately design products, fabulous projects -- products, which will encapsulate those trends. We then work with curated gift boxes, with influencers to bring their products to life and then present them to retailers. And the commercial model, the premium priced nature of Tangle Teezer plus our sustained track record in delivering growth year after year means that we generate disproportionate shelf and in-store gains. And then we see consumers add great 5-star reviews to our product pages as well as some fabulous comments about their experience with Tangle Teezer.

Moving on to 2026. The momentum has continued. As Gregory said, we delivered 13% net sales growth in quarter 1, and that's been consistent again across regions. We also saw the benefits of the supply chain integration with BIC, and that's not all for 2026. Whilst quarter 1 has started very strongly, we're very, very confident about sustained growth for the rest of the year. Also in the video, we talked about the Devil Wears Prada collaboration, which sets our execution to a new level. So we invested in social media, both in terms of paid and organic programs, a lot of work in terms of influencers and gift boxes. We've got great support from our retailers, both in-store and online. And we hosted events both in the U.K. and the U.S. where we invented -- invited top-tier journalists as well as influencers to be part of the launch.

And that, in turn, has generated great press coverage. And that's not just it for 2026. We have some really, really exciting product launches, which will set the new standard for accelerated growth for Tangle Teezer for years to come. So in summary, this is a fabulous business with lots and lots of growth opportunities. We're very, very excited about the future, and I look forward to talking to you more about some of the new product launches at future meetings. I'm now going to hand over to Edouard Bich, who's going to take you through the governance part of the section. Thank you.

Thank you, James. Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we now move on to governance. I just start with a few words on the organization of governance, and then I'll give you a recap of the work of the Board of Directors for FY 2025. To date, the Board is comprised of 12 directors, which 4 independent directors and 2 directors that represent employees and all in all, 60% of women. First, in terms of governance. Following the announcement that Gonzalve Bich position as Director and CEO, the Board of Directors organized his succession plan. And an adhoc succession committee in order to carry out the selection and preparation process for this nomination.

Thus, Rob Versloot was appointed CEO. This decision came into force on the 15th of September 2025. Besides, the Board reviewed the terms and conditions of the remuneration Gonzalve in the context of his departure as well as those applicable to Rob Versloot in his capacity as CEO. Again, in terms of governance, the Board strengthened its membership by appointing new directors. The approval of coaptations will be put to your approval today. Now in terms of strategy, the Board has supported the completion of the Horizon plan that came to an end in 2025, while starting to reflect on the group's future strategic orientations. In addition, further through the acquisition of Tangle Teezer, the Board followed the integration work of that business within BIC.

The Board also carried out a strategic review of the group's activities, which led to the disposal of BIC Cello India and the discontinuation of tattoo activities that were grouped under Skin Creative as well as Rocketbook. As part of its work, the Board also paid particular attention to the sustainability, environmental and societal challenges, mainly through the review of the CSR directive requirements. Last, in line with its fiduciary responsibilities, the Board continued its work on risk management -- on the risk management strategy on the financial and legal risks or aspects related to group's activity as well as all issues related to corporate officers' remuneration.

In 2025, the Board convened 13x the attendance rate was 93%. It demonstrates the commitment of our directors. Throughout the year, our Board also benefited from the expertise of its 3 specialized committees. This committee is convened many times. The engagement rate was high. This has translated into an average attendance rate close to 90%. The Audit Committee supported the Board on the review of financial statements on risk monitoring as well as the monitoring of liquidity and strategic operations. The Remuneration Committee was instrumental in the context of managerial transition by ensuring that remuneration policies would be in line with market practices and corporate interest.

The Nomination Governance and CSR Committee focused on the membership of the Board on succession plans and sustainability issues. Last, in the context of our recent I inform you that BIC as well as the French financial authorities, the were notified in compliance with applicable regulation that we entered into a share agreement with MBD So MBD entered into a shareholder's agreement with the voting block, which accounts in total 44.5% and 59% of the voting rights. This shareholder's agreements reaffirms the BIC's family's commitment to maintaining its long-term shareholding in societe BIC. Its primary purpose is to formalize a family preemption rights in the event of the sale of Societe BIC shares held by family shareholders. This is an additional milestone, which demonstrates and strengthens in the long term, thew BIC family's commitment for BIC and this is in line with the changes that occurred in the company's governance in 2025.

Now let me hand over to Laura Vanhoutte, who is going to be presenting the evolutions that will be put to your vote in relation to the membership of the Board. Laura?

Thank you, Edouard. As regards to governance, we propose to the reappointment to directors. First, the renewal of Candace Matthews' term for 3 years. Then we would like you to make a decision on the reappointment of Veronique Laury for 2 years. Further to the changes in governance in the FY 2025, the Board is recommending you to vote on a number of ratifications, cooptation and reappointments. First, we propose that you approve the cooptation of Rob Versloot, who was provisionally appointed by the Board of Directors at its meeting on the 12th of September 2025 as a director replacing Gonzalve Bich. Rob Versloot will serve the remaining term of his predecessor until 2028.

We further propose that you approve the cooptation of Albert Baladi provisionally appointed by the Board of Directors at its meeting on the 12th of September 2025 as an independent director and to reduce term for a period of 3 years.

Over to Albert Baladi.

Thank you, Laura. Greetings. My name is Albert Baladi. I'm a Spanish National and I have Lebanese origins. I spent most of my career in international groups, global groups as it were. For more than 40 years my wife and I have lived in 7 countries on the 5 continents. We're delighted -- I am delighted to be able to introduce myself. I started my career within Procter & Gamble. I then went on to be for PepsiCo, the Yum! Brands Group. And then Suntory, where I eventually became the CEO of the spirits part, Beam Suntory, which is now known as Suntory Global Spirits. In that context, I brought about strategic changes in a very demanding, very challenging environment, which was quite similar to the environment where BIC is operating today.

Today, I'm a shareholder. I'm also an Independent Director at Pernod Ricard. I'm also an independent director for a number of startup companies. I remain particularly focused on governance, strategy and corporate responsibility matters. I'm delighted to have been co-opted as a director of Societe BIC. It's been an amazing experience in the past 2 months. And I am honored to be able to continue to serve and thank you in advance for your support, and I hope to be able to make a meaningful contribution to the next chapter of BIC's development. Thank you very much.

Thank you Albert. We're next asking you to ratify the cooptation of Geoffroy Bich as Director made on an interim basis by the Board of Directors at its meeting of September 12, 2025, and to renew his term of office for a period of 1 year. Geoffroy, the floor is yours.

Dear shareholders. My name is Geoffroy Bich, and I'm a member of the BIC family, the controlling shareholder of Societe BIC. I began my career with the BIC Group more than 30 years ago, 35 years ago, and over the years, I have held a variety of operational and leadership roles, both within the group's industrial operations and in international environments. I held several positions within the manufacturing activities with BIC's 3 divisions before taking responsibility for industrial sites in France, Spain, Brazil and China.

And these experiences gave me an in-depth understanding of our businesses, our products and the industrial, commercial and human challenges facing the group.

Today, as Vice President in charge of Business Development, based in Dubai, I support the growth of BIC's activities across the Middle East and Africa through a pragmatic and performance-driven approach while remaining deeply attentive to the human dimension that lies at the heart of our success. Building on this experience, I would like to continue supporting the group in its growth and transformation ambitions. But bring to the Board a detailed understanding of its operations, its markets and its teams. Thank you for your trust and support.

Thank you, Geoffroy. Lastly, we are asking you to ratify the cooptation of Karen Guerra as Independent Director made on an interim basis by the Board of Directors at its meeting on December 2025 and to renew her term of office for a period of 3 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. Hello, my name is Karen Guerra. I speak a little bit of French, but it's probably safer for everyone if I revert back to English. I graduated from the University of Manchester. And my career has been focused on the industrial and consumer sectors. For more than 20 years, I held senior positions in leading international companies, notably at PepsiCo and Colgate Palmolive. Most of those years were at Colgate Palmolive. And I served finally as the PDG Director General for the U.K. and then finally for France.

I've acquired a solid nonexecutive and governance experience by serving as a Board member for several international companies, including Amcor PLC, Campari, RS Components which was formerly called Electrocomponents and Swedish Match.

Finally, since 2020, I've been an independent director and member of the Nominations and Remuneration Committee for British American Tobacco. And in fact, in April, I was elected as the Senior Independent Director of that company. Drawing on these experiences, I'm fully prepared to assume my responsibilities as Director of BIC, and I would be honored to contribute my expertise to the Board in support of BIC's long-term success. Thank you.

Thank you, Karen. Following this shareholders' meeting and subject to the approval of the resolutions, the Board of Directors will comprise 12 directors, including 4 independent directors and 2 employee representatives. I will now hand over to Jeremy Thurbin representing the statutory auditors for the presentation of their report.

Thank you, Laura. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning. On behalf of the statutory auditors, members of the EY and Grantonnton networks. I have the pleasure to report on our engagement for fiscal 2025 and summarize the various reports we have established. Next slide, please. Our reports regarding the ordinary part of the AGM mostly we're reporting on the related party agreements and the consolidated the parent company financial statements. Regarding the extraordinary part of our AGM, we have issued 2 reports regarding delegations of authorities and proxies given to the Board of Directors for a number of share capital transactions.

Regarding the financial statements, we have issued reports on the consolidated financial statements as well as the annual financial statements. You can find them on Pages 322 and 346 of the URD. We expressed no reservations. We have an unqualified opinion regarding the fairness consistency in the interview of the financial statements. There is, however, a change in the accounting method regarding the annual financial statements. In 2025, key audit matters considering the relative contribution to the financial statements as well as the discretion judgment required included the following assessment of the recoverable value of goodwill. I'm referring to our report on the consolidated financial statements and secondly, valuation of equity investments. I'm referring here to the parent company financial statements.

We also performed a number of specific verifications. We have no observations regarding the information disclosed in the management report as well as the corporate governance report in line with existing legal provisions. Next slide, -- we also established a report on related party agreements. You can find it on Page 350 of the URD. It's been brought to our retention convention, which was authorized during the previous years and entered into during this fiscal year, this agreement between your company and Gonzalve Bich allowed on December 11 financial arrangements for a 6-month period following the end of its term of office. Our special report also refers to agreements approved during the past year between your company and Gonzalve Bich previously authorized by the Board on December 11, 2024 which determines the financial conditions of his exit.

Next slide. Regarding the resolutions are proposed for the extraordinary part of your AGM, we have established reports regarding the authorizations and dedications given to the Board to perform a number of share capital transactions. The reports regarding resolutions 24 and 25 call for a nonqualified opinion on a part.

This concludes our presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention.

I will now present a summary of the proposed resolutions before moving on to the Q&A session, during which priority will be given to the shareholders. In summary, the following resolutions are submitted for your approval. We are submitting for your approval of the parent company, consolidated financial state fiscal 2025. Having taken note of the various reports issued by the company, the statutory auditors. We're also proposing the payment of an ordinary dividend of EUR 2.4 per share. The detailed information relating to these 3 resolutions was presented earlier in the meeting by Gregory Lambertie.

We are also submitting for your approval. The statutory auditor special report confirming the absence of related party agreements for fiscal 2025 and describing the implementation of agreements previously authorized. Under the fifth resolution, you are being asked to renew the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to trade in BIC shares within a limit of 10% of the share capital.

With respect governance matters. We are asking you to renew the terms of office of Candace Matthews and Veronique Laury appears for periods of 3 years and 2 years, respectively. You are also being asked to ratify the cooption of Rob Versloot as director.

He will serve for the remainder of his predecessor's term, namely until 2028. Lastly, we are asking you to ratify the cooptations and renew the terms of office of Albert Baladi and Karen Guerra for periods 3 years as well as Geoffroy Bich's term of office for a period of 1 year.

Resolutions 15 to 23 relate to the compensation of corporate officers. In addition to the presentation made earlier, detailed information relating to this compensation is set out in the Board of Directors, corporate governance report in Chapter 4 of the 2025 URD as well as in the notice of meeting brochure.

This compensation is submitted for your approval in accordance with the provisions of the French Commercial Code. Resolution 15, 16 and 16 and 20 therefore, related to the compensation policy, including, in particular, the compensation of Gonzalve Bich, CEO until September 15, 2025, and have Rob Versloot, CEO from September 15 onward for the 2025 financial year. And the principle is applicable for 2026.

Resolutions 18, 19 and 21 relate to the compensation components applicable to the Chairman of the Board for FY 2025, namely Nikos Koumettis, who served as Chairman until May 20, 2025, and it would be who served as Chairman since May 20, 2025 as well as principles applicable for 2026. Resolutions 22 and 23 relate to the directors' compensation policy and to the aggregate annual amount allocated to directors' compensation for fiscal 2026 set at EUR 750,000.

Let us now move on to the extraordinary resolutions. Under Resolution 24, you are being asked to renew the financial authorizations granted to the Board of Directors to reduce the share capital through the cancellation of shares. Resolution 25 relates to the delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to carry out a capital increase through the issuance of new ordinary shares and/or securities giving access to the share capital while maintaining shareholders' preferential subscription rights.

Resolution 26 relates to the delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to decide 1 or more capital increases through the capitalization of reserves, retained earnings, share premiums or any other amounts eligible for capitalization. Resolution 27 proposes an amendment to Article 8 of the company's Articles of Association relating to disclosure thresholds. Lastly, the 28th in financial rather than a resolution is a customer 1 and relates to the granting of power is required to complete the legal formalities.

Now let's open the Q&A session.

My name is Jean-Pierre manager of a shareholder. I have a tiny question. And maybe a silly question, but following previous AGMs. I'm sorry, so we can barely hear you. In previous AGMs, we were given ball point pens as a goody. We were given lighters, we very given shavers. And I showed this quite original lighter to the people around me, and they felt it was extremely convenient and being able to use flat faced lighters. And we try to find it elsewhere and nobody has ever been able to find it. So is that on purpose, is that marketing campaign? Or does something fall through the cracks.

Thank you very much for your question. This product is very interesting indeed. It's extremely useful and has an added benefit. Its environmental impact, Its environmental footprint is extremely low. And we launched it in the U.S. market, and it's been extremely successful there. Why did we give the U.S. market priority? Well, in terms of supporting the brand, it's taking longer to launch and build this brand in Europe. Over time, you will be able to find it in more and more stores. But I'm delighted that you actually look for it. Thank you.

I'm an individual shareholder. Can you tell us about the proportion of plastics that come from the conflict areas in the Middle East? Is that a lot? And what is the impact on your cost prices? [Audio Gap]

My name is Mr. Rosen. I'd like to ask a question about the 4 color big pen. You can see it everywhere in France. You can't go to museum or to a new agent or to a small town without seeing it. There are new collections every week. I'd like to know what the impact is on Stationery. And this formula, this recipe has been very successful in France. Has it been copied elsewhere in the world?

David?

Thank you very much for your question. Yes, you're absolutely right. The 4 color pen is an iconic product for BIC. It was already very successful a few decades ago in France, but now it is in the U.K., in Spain, in Belgium, also in the United States. We have our Head of U.S. Operations. I think we have hit the 5 million or 7 million -- actually 7 bar, and we hit the 75 million bar, the world recently. So it is really expanding from France, the legacy country -- and now our ambition is to gain market shares everywhere in the world.

Thank you I am an individual shareholder. And I'd like to address the tattoo experience that was taken over a few years back. The company said that the outlook was fairly bright. So what are the main takeaways? I mean, what conclusions did you draw? Why did you decide to discontinue this activity? Also, India will become the largest population worldwide. Why are you pulling out of this market? And one last question. One of big specificities as I see it is integration, manufacturing and a lot of marketing activity. Is that -- how do -- what about the marketing activity for hair brushes? Is it done in-house? Or is it outsourced? Over to Rob.

Let me start with answering your question concerning the tattoo business, Skin Creative. I think earlier, the company was expecting a good performance of this business. But after having seen its performance in our portfolio for a couple of years, we concluded that, that business was actually negatively contributing to both our growth and profitability. And despite various tentatives to change the direction of that business, the company didn't manage to do so. So we felt for the long-term future and health of BIC, it was better to seize those activities. So that's Skin Creative.

Your second question is concerning our divestment of our operations in India. Also here, we concluded after having observed the performance over several years and several tentatives to improve the performance that we concluded that this business would not contribute significantly both to growth and to our profitability. So again, for the long-term future, we felt it was a better decision to divest the business.

And the third element. I think we are extremely happy with Tangle Teezer's performance. And as you may have seen also in James' presentation, they have a very strong marketing capability. I think we, as BIC can learn from it, but our intention is to maintain the marketing of Tangle Teezer separately from our other activities.

As regards to Tangle Teezer the gentleman's question was whether there was an industrial integration of production like in BIC.

Sorry, I misunderstood that. Absolutely. I think this is one of the many good aspects of the combination of Tangle Teezer and BIC. So we have started to produce the Tangle Teezer brushes in the big factories, both in Mexico and Tunisia. And by doing so, we will be able to generate cost savings. And you heard James speaking, he'd like to reinvest that in the brand to further accelerate the growth of Tangle Teezer So it's -- there are great supply chain synergies between BIC and Tangle Teezer.

No more questions. The Q&A session is now over. No one has requested the floor. We shall then vote on resolutions. Before we proceed with the vote on resolution, I'm going to inform you on the final quorum. There are 1,616 shareholders, voting shares that are present, represented or voted by proxy that represent a quorum of -- that represents 34,917,671 shares. That represents a final quorum of 85.88%. The quorum is therefore met for resolutions. We're going to watch a short explanatory video on how to vote with the tablets. A tablet has been handed over to you to vote during the general meeting. It's strictly for personal use and will be only used during this general meeting.

When the voting on resolution is announced, the voting window will automatically pop up on your tablets, even though the tablet can be on standby. Voting is extremely simple. Press the button that reflects your choice in favor of abstention against. Press okay to confirm your choice before the end of the vote. Once your vote has been approved or confirmed, you cannot change it. Please make sure you return your tablets on your way out of the room. Thank you.

Resolution 1, approval of the corporate statements of the financial year ended on 31st of December 2025.

[Voting]

The resolution is adopted with 99.99% of votes.

Resolution 2, approval of consolidated statements for the financial year ended on 31st of December 2025. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is over. This resolution is approved with 99.99% of votes. Resolution 3, appropriation of earnings for the financial year ended on the 31st of December 2025 and setting of the dividend. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. Excuse me, sir. The question was off mic, but the interpreter that Mr. said as from the 3rd of June, this resolution is approved with 99.97% of votes .

Resolution 4, report by statutory auditors on related party agreements. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is over. This resolution is approved with 81.64% of votes. Resolution 5, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to allow the company to take action on its own shares. The vote is open.

[Voting]

This resolution is approved with 99.92% of votes. Resolution 6, reappoint of Candace Matthews as a director. The vote is open.

[Voting]

Vote is closed. This resolution is approved with 91.99% of votes. Resolution 7, reappoint Veronique Laury as director. The vote is open.

[Voting]

Vote is closed. This resolution is approved with 86.11% of votes. Resolution 8, approval of the cooptation of Rob Versloot as director to replace Gonzalve Bich. Vote is open.

[Voting]

Vote is closed. This resolution is approved with 99.3% of votes. Resolution 9, approval of the cooptation of Albert Baladi as Director in replace of Jake Schwartz. Vote is open.

[Voting]

Vote is closed. This resolution is approved with 99.9% of votes.

Resolution 10 reappoint Albert Baladi as a director.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 99.23%. Resolution 11, ratification of the cooptation of Geoffroy Bich as a director to replace Timothee Bich.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 91.08% of the votes. Resolution 12, reappoint of Geoffroy Bich as a director.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 90.05% of the vote. Resolution 13, ratification of the cooptation of Karen Guerra as a director to replace [indiscernible].

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.52% of the vote. Congratulations. Resolution 14, reappointment of Karen Guerra as a director.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 98.61% of the vote. Resolution 15, approval of the information on the remuneration of the corporate officers referred to Article L 22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code for fiscal year 2025.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 99.03%. Resolution 16, approval of the fixed variable or exceptional components of total remuneration and benefits paid or granted for FY 2025 to Gonzalve Bich, CEO until September 15, 2025. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 76.7%. Resolution 17, approval of the fixed variable or exceptional components of total remuneration and benefits paid or granted for FY 2025 to Rob Versloot CEO from September 15, 2025. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 93.78%. Resolution 18, approval of the fixed variable or exceptional components of total remuneration benefits paid or granted in FY 2025 to Nikos KoumettisChair of the Board of Directors until May 20, 2025. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.91%. Resolution 19, approval of the fixed variable or exceptional components of total remuneration and benefits paid or granted in FY 2025 to Edouard Bich Chair of the Board of Directors from May 20, 2025. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 94.27%. Resolution 20, approval of the remuneration policy for the executive corporate officers. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 94.24%. Resolution 21, approval of the remuneration policy for the Chair of the Board of Directors. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.99%. Resolution 22, approval of the remuneration policy for directors. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.86%. Resolution 23, setting the total annual amount of remuneration for directors for fiscal 2026. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.86%. Resolution 24, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to reduce the company's share capital by cancellation of treasury shares. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 99.99% Resolution 25, delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by issuing ordinary shares and/or securities giving access to the capital with preservation of shareholders' preferential rights of subscription. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried Resolution 99.71%. Resolution 26, delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to decide to increase the share capital on one of several occasions by incorporation of reserves, profits or premiums or other sums of money whose capitalization shall be accepted. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried, 93.99%. Resolution 27, amendment to Article 8 of the company's Articles of Association relating to threshold crossing. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 87.27% Lastly, Resolution 28, powers for formalities. Please vote.

[Voting]

Resolution carried 99.99%. This concludes the voting process. Thank you. And I will now hand over to our CEO.

Thank you, Laura. Dear shareholders, first of all, thank you. Thank you for your votes. I'm delighted to have taken part in my first shareholders' meeting as Chief Executive Officer of Societe BIC. And I would like to share a final few words with you, and I will do it in French. Thank you.

I have always been struck by the unique character of this company. BIC is a universal brand that is deeply embedded in the everyday lives of billions of consumers around the world. Our mission is rooted in a simple belief to provide essential, high-quality, thoughtfully designed products that meet the real needs of consumers or as I often say, beautiful everyday essentials.

To continue strengthening the power of its brand, the group must keep reinventing itself. 2026 will be a year of transition, a year during which we will continue streamlining and transforming the organization. The goal being to restore sustainable, profitable growth and also create long-term value for all stakeholders. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to all our teams. Across the world, I have met employees who are committed, who are deeply attached to the brand and who are determined to move BIC forward.

Also, I would like to thank the Board of Directors. Thank you all for your trust. I'd also like to thank you, dear shareholders, for your support throughout this important year for BIC. Thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, as Rob just said, 2026 will be a transition year for our group, a year during which the leadership team led by Rob with the support of the Board of Directors will present and implement a new strategic plan. Please be assured of the commitment of all our employees around the world, our leadership team and our Board of Directors to uphold and embody BIC's values.

It is now time to bring this AGM to a close. Thank you all for being with us today, and I propose that we adjourn the meeting. I look forward to seeing you all again next year.

Good day, and welcome to BIC's First Quarter 2026 Net Sales Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

And now I would like to hand the call to your host, Brice Paris, VP, Investor Relations.

Good morning, and welcome to BIC's First Quarter 2026 Net Sales Call. I'm Brice Paris, Vice President of Investor Relations. We are in Clichy today with Rod Versloot, our CEO; and Gregory Lambertie, our CFO. This call is being recorded, and a replay will be available on our website with the presentation and press release.

We'll start with the usual results presentation, followed by a Q&A session. First, please take the time to read the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation. With that, I give the floor to Rob.

Thank you, Brice. Good morning, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by highlighting that Q1 unfolded in a still highly volatile environment, marked by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and their broader consequences across markets. Against this backdrop, we delivered 1.6% organic net sales growth in the first quarter, in line with the trajectory we outlined in February.

More importantly, we are executing with discipline and clarity. We are taking the right actions to reposition the group and build a stronger foundation to deliver sustainable performance. We have streamlined and strengthened our portfolio, exiting underperforming businesses that have weighed on our growth and profitability for too long.

These actions were critical to simplify our portfolio and improve focus. Our new leadership team is fully in place and operational, working with focus and determination to shape and deliver our new strategy. We have reset our priorities with organic growth now firmly established as our leading KPI, guiding decisions and execution across the organization.

Turning to our Q1 performance. There are 3 key takeaways to highlight. First, growth was broad-based across all categories and key regions with a clear improvement in North America, an important signal that our actions are gaining traction.

Second, Tangle Teezer continues to be a strong growth engine, delivering double-digit growth in both the U.S. and Europe, driven by distribution gains and increasing brand momentum.

Third, performance in Middle East and Africa was impacted by the ongoing conflict, which continues to weigh on the growth of the region as we speak. Let me now briefly walk you through our performance by geography.

In the U.S., we saw a clear sequential improvement driven by stationery, while lighters returned to stable performance. Shavers remain challenging in a competitive environment, but we are seeing encouraging traction in value-added products in the men's segment, particularly with the Flex 5 Refillable shaver. Tangle Teezer again delivered very strong performance in the U.S. with double-digit growth fueled by further distribution gains and continued market share expansion.

This enabled us to consolidate our #3 position in the U.S. hairbrush category. Brand visibility remained high, supported by strong cultural relevance from high-profile appearances such as Zendaya's polished look using a Tangle Teezer Chrome Brush at the 2026 Oscars to successful collaborations.

These included the recent sellout partnership with Kim Kardashian's SKIMS brand, followed by the upcoming Devil Wears Prada limited edition collection. Looking at the rest of the world, performance in Q1 was more mixed. Europe and Latin America showed improving momentum, driven by Tangle Teezer in Europe and solid execution in lighters and shavers in Latin America.

Innovation also contributed with promising early results from the new BIC Cristal Figurines in France. In Mexico, we are seeing early signs of stabilization, which is an important step given last year's weak performance.

In Middle East and Africa, as mentioned, performance was negatively impacted by the ongoing conflict. At this stage, the financial exposure remains limited, the region accounting for less than 2% of group net sales, and we have not experienced major supply chain disruptions so far. However, the situation remains fluid, and we are closely monitoring developments with a disciplined and proactive approach.

To conclude this first part, we delivered Q1 net sales in line with expectations. And more importantly, we are making tangible progress in reshaping the group. 2026 remains a transitional year, but the early signals we see today are encouraging and consistent with our road map. Our priority remains unchanged, building solid foundations to deliver sustainable, profitable growth.

With that, I now hand it over to Gregory to walk you through the net sales performance in more detail.

Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin with an overview of the main drivers of our Q1 evolution. Q1 net sales stood at EUR 453 million, up 1.6% organically or EUR 8 million, driven by positive contributions from all categories, starting with stationery for EUR 4 million, lighters for EUR 3 million and Blade Excellence for EUR 1 million.

Foreign exchange and perimeter had a significant negative impact this quarter of respectively, 5 points and 1.9 points on group net sales.

Turning to Slide 7. Let me walk you through our first quarter performance by division, starting with Human Expression. Net sales were EUR 141 million, up 3% organically.

In North America, BIC delivered solid organic growth, fueled by a strong performance in e-commerce and at specialized retailers in the U.S.

Among the best-performing products during the quarter were correction tapes, ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils. In Europe, net sales were relatively flat. While we saw growth in key markets, thanks to strong commercial execution and distribution gains, this was offset by weaker performance in countries such as the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands.

In Latin America, the strong performance in some markets was partially offset by muted performance in Brazil, back-to-school. Finally, in Middle East and Africa, organic net sales declined, impacted by the current situation in the Middle East alongside weaker performance in Nigeria and South Africa.

Moving on to Flame for Life. Net sales were EUR 165 million, and BIC delivered 1.7% organic growth. In North America, organic growth was slightly positive. And following a challenging performance in '25, our lighter business in the U.S. improved significantly.

This was primarily led by growth in the Pocket Lighter segment. In Q1, we saw an improvement in the convenience channel, driven by effective anti-counterfeit defense from BIC.

In addition, the U.S. lighter trends improved in the measured market, growing 2.1% in value year-to-date. In Europe, organic growth was flat. Strong growth from the iconic BIC Maxi Lighter and solid execution in France and Central Eastern Europe were offset by softer performance in Germany and Netherlands. In Latin America, organic growth was solid in all major countries. In Brazil, performance was driven by strong execution in the Pocket Lighter segment, while in Mexico, growth was fueled by distribution gains in traditional channel.

In EMEA, net sales grew organically, driven by strong performance in North America and Ivory Coast, partially offset by net sales declines in the Middle East. Turning on to the next slide on Blade Excellence. Net sales were EUR 139 million, up 0.6% organically.

In North America, strong performance at Tangle Teezer was more than offset by declines in the core shaver business in the U.S. in a challenging competitive environment, particularly in the women's segment.

However, value-added products such as BIC Flex 5 Refillable contributed positively to growth in the men's segment. In Europe, strong organic growth mainly came from Tangle Teezer and from our shavers business across Western and Eastern Europe.

Product ranges such as the BIC Flex 5 Hybrid and Soleil Escape continued to deliver supported by strong commercial execution. In Latin America, organic growth was strong in both Brazil and Mexico, driven by the success of the Soleil and Flex ranges, illustrating the continued success of our trade-up strategy.

Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, net sales were significantly down, mainly due to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, which resulted in shipment delays and reduced market activity. Finally, let's turn to Tangle Teezer on Slide 10. Building on its strong first year within BIC in '25, Tangle Teezer continued to deliver a very strong performance in the first quarter with net sales up 13% organically.

Tangle Teezer grew double digits in both Europe and North America, mainly driven by e-commerce with additional strength in partnerships. Growth was fueled by products from the core and the premium detangling ranges, including our flagship Chrome and Matte collections.

This concludes the review of our net sales performance for the first quarter. For the remainder of the year, we will be focusing on sharpening our execution in key regions to reach our objectives.

We are fully committed to deliver a sound strategic transformation, reigniting the core values that made BIC a success. We will share BIC's new strategy to renew with profitable growth in September. With that, I give the floor back to Rob.

Thank you, Gregory. I'd like to conclude by reaffirming that 2026 is a key transitional year for BIC and my first as CEO. After a period of underperformance, we are taking decisive actions to reset the business on a stronger, more sustainable footing. While we will present our full strategy in September, our immediate focus is clear, delivering on our commitments.

And our Q1 performance was fully aligned with this objective and with our full year plan shared in February. As a result, our 2026 outlook remains unchanged. We continue to anticipate under current assumptions, improving organic net sales trends, a slight expansion in adjusted EBIT margin and stable free cash flow year-on-year.

At the same time, we remain mindful of the highly volatile environment, particularly the evolving situation in the Middle East. While our direct exposure is limited and no major operational disruptions have been observed to date, we are actively managing potential risks and maintaining flexibility in our execution. What matters is that we are moving forward with focus, discipline and increasing momentum.

The new leadership team is in place, fully mobilized and already shaping the organization to support our future operating model and restore sustainable, profitable growth. I look forward to coming back in July for our first half results and in September to share with you our new strategy and the next phase of BIC's transformation. Thank you. We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

The first question comes from Andrei Condrea with UBS.

Two from me, please. Firstly, on the Middle East, could you please quantify the impact you've seen in Q1 from the conflict when it comes to group organic sales? And I appreciate it's still early days, but could a prolonged conflict put at risk your FY '26 outlook in terms of improving your OSG trends versus '25?

And tied to that, because we're looking at potentially higher input costs from the conflict, particularly in oil, how confident are you in your ability to take pricing in what is now a very different market from 2020?

And what tools and levers do you have at your disposal to mitigate these risks? And secondly, on Tangle Teezer, obviously, Q1, very strong on the back of a very strong full year '25. Should we expect 2026 to be similar to the growth you've seen in '25?

And what options do you have at your disposal to sustain or even better accelerate this growth this year and over the medium term?

Thank you, Andre. I'll take the first question. This is Gregory speaking. So on Middle East, as you saw, Middle East and Africa have a net sales decline of minus 4.9%, which is effectively driven by significant deterioration in the Middle East following the conflict in the region.

Obviously, we're monitoring the situation closely and its global consequence. If you think about specifically the overall impact on our Q1, it's 0.5 percentage point on the Q1 growth. So we would have been at 2.1% without the Middle East impact.

If the conflict lasts, we anticipate negative impact on growth and disruptive impact on global supply chains, freight and raw material costs. Obviously, variation in oil prices impact, plastics, chemicals and this could start hitting our P&L in H2 '26 and continue in '27 if we were to have a prolonged conflict.

The levers that we're using are obviously a strong cost discipline. We are taking some cost actions. And we're also closely monitoring our ability to hedge further our exposure.

Should the conflict be prolonged and oil prices remain at a significantly high price, we would be back to you in H1 results. So that's that for Middle East conflict and let me...

Yes. Hello, Andrei, Rob speaking. I'd like to take your second question concerning Tangle Teezer. Looking back on Q1, we are proud of the very strong performance of Tangle Teezer in Q1 with a remarkable organic growth of plus 13%.

Tangle Teezer is contributing about 0.5 percentage point to the group growth. And looking forward, because you were asking us what are your expectations for Tangle Teezer in '26?

We're confident that Tangle Teezer will continue to grow strongly and be accretive to the group's margin with continued momentum, both in the U.S. and Europe. And our confidence is supported by continued market share and distribution gains, solid e-commerce contribution and brand and marketing investments. So we're looking forward to a good year with Tangle Teezer.

The next question comes from Christophe Chaput with ODDO.

Christophe Chaput speaking from ODDO. Two questions for me, please. The first one is on the current trading. The Q2 will be probably much more difficult in terms of basis of comparison. So what should we, let's say, expect in terms of organic, even if I fully understand that the context is volatile and we are at the very beginning of the Q2.

But what are -- yes, the current trading? And the second question is that in the 1.6% organic you print in Q1, is there a specific price effect? And what category, let's say, it could impact during the quarter?

Thank you for your question. I'm going to take your first question concerning expectations for the second quarter. Very simple, we expect to continue to be in line with our full year plan and the trajectory that we have outlined in February.

Of course, we have to remain cautious given the volatile environment in the Middle East, and we are closely monitoring this. And as you just heard from Gregory, the Middle East, Africa region was negative in Q1. If that conflict will last longer, we do anticipate some negative impact on growth and certainly also a disruptive impact on global supply chain, freight and raw material costs.

And Christophe, I'll take your second question on the split of our growth for Q1. So if you look at things, it's very, very simple, minus 1% for volume. And so the volume continued to decline slightly. And on the price/mix front, we're seeing positive signs on all our markets. So it's a pretty good quarter from that perspective.

The next question comes from Marie-Line Fort of Bernstein.

I've got 3 questions on my side. Could you remind us what percentage accounts -- plastics accounts in your input costs? That's my first question. And you mentioned that you don't expect any impact before H2 2026.

So we can suspect that you've got enough inventories at some point to manage your production for the first half? The second question is about Tangle Teezer. You mentioned in the call at the end of 2025 that you start some production integration, if I remember, in Mexico, was a test. Could you come back on this test?

And at what reason do you expect to produce -- to pass to a real production for Tangle Teezer? And the last question is about shavers. The division seems to be under pressure. There is a lot of competitive pressure that we can see in Europe as well on the women segment.

What is your strategy there to regain momentum in face of very high competitive pressure?

Hello, Marie-Line, good morning. So in terms of the raw material, the plastics account for 40% of our raw material costs. As you rightly point out, this will be a delayed impact given the 6-month inventory that we effectively hold.

So that's the time lag to be reflected in our P&L. However, we will be taking on impact on our free cash flow since we will be buying as of now. So the free cash flow impact will be felt earlier. So that's on the sort of impact and timing for raw material. Obviously, as mentioned to Andrei earlier, we are taking cost actions already, and we'll be back to you with an update on margins in H1.

Hi, Marie-Line, I will take your question concerning Tangle Teezer and your other question concerning shavers in the U.S. So your question concerning the in-sourcing of Tangle Teezer, I'll give you an update on that. We have started to build capacity in our Mexican plant in Saltillo.

And we expect towards the end of the year to deliver those products to the market, so to really commercialize that. That is well on track, and we look forward to that. Your question concerning strategy, U.S. shavers or maybe broadly more than the strategy in shavers here, I would like to pause and inform you once we have our strategic plan. We are very busy at the moment defining our category growth strategy. So if you allow me, I'll come back on that one in [ September ].

[Operator Instructions]

The next question comes from Alessandro Cuglietta of Kepler.

I have 2. First is on the consumer and distributor behavior. What are you seeing with the current macro environment in terms of consumer and distributor behavior? Are they more cautious or are still things very volatile?

And the second question is regarding U.S. tariffs, especially the reciprocals. Just wondering if you filed any reimbursement claim if they were accepting and how this new environment could change your outlook? Is it mostly positive or neutral?

Hi, Alessandro, this is Rob speaking. I would like to answer your first question concerning consumer and distributor behavior.

Obviously, it's a tough environment. I think especially in the U.S., lots of inflation in the past, consumers are under pressure. And of course, the conflict in the Middle East is also concerning and might lead to further pressure on consumers.

However, I think within this context, we have managed to deliver growth. And as mentioned earlier, we expect also our performance to be in line with the plan that we outlined in February.

Okay. Hi, good morning Alessandro. And on your second question on U.S. tariffs, as you know, and as we all saw, the tariff landscape changed recently with last year's tariffs no longer in place. The U.S. administration pivoted to a 10% to 15% global tariff framework, and we're currently assessing the impact on our business and the way we will respond.

In the meantime, we've also applied to the refund. It's still uncertain outcome as of today, but that should be a positive on cash flow. The question is when, '26 or '27. And overall, given the comparison we make between the old and the new framework is probably a net positive for our P&L this year.

So net positive for the P&L this year. We had expected to have EUR 31 million in total, EUR 13 million of which we took last year and EUR 18 million was expected to be taken this year.

I would say that we -- compared to that older environment, we're probably better off by around about EUR 5 million.

So this concludes our question-and-answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BIC's 2025 Full Year Results Conference Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Brice Paris. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to BIC's Full Year 2025 Results Call. I'm Brice Paris, Vice President, Investor Relations. We're in Clichy today with our new management team, Rob Versloot, our CEO; and Gregory Lambertie, our CFO. This call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website with the presentation and press release.

We will start with the usual results presentation, followed by a Q&A session. First, please take the time to read the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation. With that, I give the floor to Rob.

Thank you, Brice. Hello, everyone. I am pleased to be here with you today for our first full year earnings call together. And I'm joined by Gregory Lambertie, our new Chief Financial and Digital Officer. I will start with a brief overview of the key highlights from 2025. Gregory will then walk you through the consolidated results for the year. I'll then introduce my new leadership team and share our outlook for 2026. Highlighting the opportunities ahead before closing with a few concluding remarks.

2025 was a year marked by a volatile macroeconomic environment, softer consumer markets and geopolitical uncertainty. Against this backdrop, BIC faced many challenges in 2025. When I look back at my initial assessments of BIC's strength, and what we can build on for the new strategy, they are all clearly confirmed, the power of our brand, our deep distribution network and our excellence in manufacturing. The key takeaway for 2025 is that we delivered results in line with the expectations set when I became CEO. We achieved full year net sales of EUR 2.1 billion, down 0.9% at constant currency, an adjusted EBIT margin of 13.6% and a resilient free cash flow generation at EUR 222 million.

Most importantly, we stabilized the business and achieved modest growth in the second half. Let me start by commenting on our main challenges in 2025. We faced significant headwinds in the U.S. across our 3 categories impacted by tough market trends. In the lighters, shavers and ball pen segments, markets were down mid-single digits in 2025. In Latin America, we faced serious challenges in Mexico. Net sales performance was impacted by big distribution losses and intense competition. We recently made leadership changes in Mexico with a clear objective to improve performance going forward. Finally, the very disappointing performances of our Skin Creative businesses, Rocketbook and Cello, weighed significantly on our growth and profitability in 2025.

As I mentioned in Q3, it is my responsibility to act swiftly and rationally. As a result, we have taken decisive steps to streamline our portfolio, including the discontinuation of these underperforming activities. However, despite the numerous challenges we faced, we saw an improved performance in the second half of the year, particularly in the Middle East and Africa and in the U.S. Now let me highlight some key achievements for 2025. First, Tangle Teezer was integrated successfully, growing double digit in 2025 and contributing 4.1 points to the group's growth with accretive margins. This very strong performance reflects disciplined execution, strong collaboration across teams and the rapid alignment of Tangle Teezer with BIC's operating model.

I will come back to this in more detail later. Second, we saw strong momentum from our value-added and recently launched products, all supported by impactful advertising campaigns. Products such as the 4-Color Smooth pens, the BIC Flex 5 and Soleil Glide shavers resonated well with consumers reinforcing the strength of our brands and our ability to drive mix through meaningful innovation. We also continued to make tangible progress on our ESG actions. We launched the Twin Lady razor, featuring a handle made from 87% recycled plastic and blades incorporating 70% recycled steel, reflecting our commitment to more sustainable product design without compromising performance. In addition, we achieved key milestones across 3 core ESG KPIs. 100% of cardboard packaging now comes from a certified recycled source. We reduced our Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 47% compared to 2019.

And lastly, we helped improve learning conditions of 245 million children across the globe, notably through the work of the BIC Foundation. I now want to tell you a bit more about our recent innovations and partnerships launched in 2025 and some planned for 2026. At the heart of these initiatives is a renewed focus on the power of our brand, which I strongly believe and see as essential to successfully execute our new strategy. In 2025, we launched the BIC Soleil 5 Glide, a new premium women's shaver supported by an impactful marketing campaign designed to modernize the category and strengthen brand engagement. Innovations like this one or like the BIC Soleil Escape are key to sustaining our leadership and driving mix within this segment.

In 2026, we will further strengthen our shaver portfolio with the launch of the new BIC 5 Trim and Shave. This innovation combines a 5-blade shaver with an integrated precision trimmer, delivering superior performance and versatility at an accessible price point. In 2025, we executed highly successful partnerships with Netflix on Squid Game and Stranger Things across Europe and Latin America, leveraging a strong cultural moment to create distinctive collectible designs that resonated particularly well with younger adult consumers.

For example, in Brazil, we partnered on a limited edition of the BIC 4 Colors and Stranger Things collaboration as one of Netflix's most successful global franchises, Stranger Things powered an activation that blended local pop culture with global entertainment, turning an everyday icon into a collectible. 2025 was also a year of major ramp-up for our first reloadable utility lighter, EZ Load. The product posted encouraging results, particularly in Europe, and our teams are working on expanding distribution further. EZ Load represents an important step in our efforts to combine innovation, sustainability and category premiumization. Lastly, in stationery, our iconic 4-Color pen once again delivered strong performance in 2025 with new additions such as the 4-Color Smooth contributing to growth.

In January '26, we launched new BIC Cristal Figurines now available in our main markets. This great innovation combines the quality of a BIC Cristal with playful animal figurines and pastel colors to target a younger audience and encourage a collection trend. This launch allows us to access a growing consumer segment while leveraging one of our most iconic products. Finally, we also delivered several exciting innovations and partnership within Tangle Teezer, which I will cover more in the next slide.

Moving on to Slide 6. Tangle Teezer delivered a very strong performance in its first year within BIC with double-digit net sales growth and margins accretive to the group. From a product perspective, The Ultimate Detangler hairbrush family drove strong growth in 2025 with consumers picking up the new premium Chrome and Matte collections. The Mini Ultimate range also proved to be a highly successful driver of incremental sales in impulse retail locations. And at the end of 2025, a limited edition collaboration with the popular SKIMS brand of Kim Kardashian further reinforced Tangle Teezer's appeal and was a clear commercial success.

More recently, Tangle Teezer also partnered with the hairstylist of Grammy Awards winning artist, Olivia Dean, using the Ultimate Detangler for her red carpet look, authentically placing the brand at the center of a high-visibility global cultural moment. All these achievements helped consolidate Tangle Teezer's market leadership, securing the #1 position in the U.K. and growing market share in the U.S. to become the #3 detangling hair care brand. Finally, I am proud to see the continued progress in seamlessly integrating Tangle Teezer. And I'm very happy to share that in December 2025, we started to produce our first Tangle Teezer brushes in a BIC factory.

Now before I give the floor to Gregory on the financials, let me go over our shareholder remuneration. In line with BIC's capital allocation policy, the Board of Directors will propose an ordinary dividend of EUR 2.40, representing a 50.6% payout ratio. In addition to this dividend, we are renewing our share buyback program in 2026 with a total consideration that can reach up to EUR 40 million. Our resilient free cash flow in 2025 enables us to continue delivering these returns to shareholders while reinvesting in the business to deliver on the strategic goals and new capital allocation policy that will be communicated later this year.

With that, I will now hand it over to Gregory, who will present to you our 2025 consolidated financial results.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Having joined the group in early January, I'm pleased to be here with you today for my first earnings call with BIC. I'll present to you our full year '25 consolidated results and then hand it back to Rob for the conclusion.

Let's start with a general overview of our key financial figures. Full year net sales stood at EUR 2.1 billion in 2025, down 0.9% at constant currency and 4.7% on an organic basis. As mentioned earlier, we saw improved momentum in the second half after significant declines in the first half. Net sales in Q4 were EUR 495 million, up 1.1% at constant currencies. Excluding perimeter impacts from the acquisition of Tangle Teezer and the sale of Cello, net sales declined 2.3% in Q4. Full year adjusted EBIT was EUR 283 million, representing a 13.6% margin compared to 15.6% last year, mainly impacted by the decline in our revenues and partly offset by cost actions. Consequently, adjusted EPS was EUR 4.74 compared to EUR 6.15 in 2024. Lastly, free cash flow totaled EUR 222 million in '25, down EUR 49 million versus last year.

Turning to Slide 10. Let's review the main building blocks of Q4 net sales evolution. In Q4, net sales were down 2.3% organically, mainly driven by the 2.2% decline in Flame for Life and in Human Expression by 1.7%, while Blade Excellence was up 1.6%. For the full year, net sales were down 4.7% organically, 0.9% at constant currency. Again, Human Expression and Flame for Life were the biggest negative drivers, declining minus 2% and minus 2.5%, respectively while Blade Excellence was down 0.2%.

Turning to Slide 12. Let me walk you through the 2025 performance by division, starting with Human Expression. Net sales for the full year were EUR 736 million, down 5.6% organically. Constant currency performance was lower since discontinued businesses were a drag on growth. In North America, BIC's performance was significantly impacted by Skin Creative and Rocketbook. And as Rob mentioned earlier, we took decisive actions in Q4 with the discontinuation of these activities. In addition, the U.S. ball pen segment, where BIC is most exposed, declined mid-single digits in value. However, net sales for the core stationery business improved meaningfully in H2 versus H1 as we experienced a strong back-to-school sequence in Q3 in segments like mechanical pencils and correction.

In Europe, following a very good 2024 driven by growth in flagship products such as the 4-Color Olympics, net sales were slightly down in 2025. Performance was resilient despite a challenging market, and it's worth noting the sequential improvement throughout the year, thanks to steady distribution gains and the success of recently launched 4-Color pens addition like the 4-Color Smooth.

In Latin America, the decline was mainly driven by Brazil and even more by Mexico. In Mexico, in particular, we implemented managerial changes and are already seeing a stabilization. Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, net sales grew mid-single digits, driven by good commercial execution and solid back-to-school season in key countries like South Africa. Human Expression adjusted EBIT margin was 7.5% in 2025, flat versus last year. The impact of unfavorable currency fluctuations and higher raw material costs was offset by lower expense as well as favorable price and mix.

Moving on to the performance of the Flame For Life division. Net sales were EUR 723 million in 2025, down 6.7%, both organically and at constant currencies. In North America, net sales were down significantly in the first half of the year and were impacted by deteriorating trading environment and lower consumption. Market trends, however, showed sequential improvement throughout the year. The U.S. pocket lighter market ended at minus 3.7% in value in 2025, and BIC managed to maintain its share in the [ lighter ] market. Our net sales were more significantly impacted in the convenience channel.

In Europe, net sales were slightly down, impacted by soft performance in key countries like Italy and Germany. This more than offset distribution gains in the discounters channel and solid performance in the utilities lighters segment. In Latin America, we were impacted by challenging market trend with tough competition in Brazil and Mexico. In Mexico, in particular, performance was particularly poor in the traditional channel. As mentioned, this has been addressed through managerial changes.

Finally, our net sales in Middle East and Africa grew double digits with strong commercial execution in Nigeria and distribution gains in Morocco. Flame For Life adjusted EBIT margin was 29.9% in 2025 compared to 33.3% last year. This decrease was mainly due to net sales decline and the negative impact of U.S. tariffs in H2.

Turning to the next slide on Blade Excellence. Net sales totaled EUR 602 million, down 0.8% organically. As mentioned, Tangle Teezer performed very well, growing double digits and fueled by new products and distribution gains. In the U.S., our core shaver business declined mid-single digits, facing deteriorating market trends and high competition, particularly in the women's segment. However, we did a solid performance in the premium range and the new products such as BIC Flex 5 and the BIC Soleil Glide.

In Europe, net sales declined slightly on a like-for-like basis as a result of softer performance in key countries such as Italy and Greece, and this more than offset strong commercial performance in Eastern Europe and the success of value-added products like BIC Soleil Escape. In Latin America, our trade-up strategy towards the multiblade segment continued to deliver positive results, particularly in Brazil.

Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, net sales grew slightly, mainly driven by good Q4 performance in key markets like Morocco and Nigeria. Overall, Blade Excellence '25 adjusted EBIT margin was 15.9% compared to 18.5% in 2024, mainly due to tariffs and a very high comp in '24.

Moving on to Page 15. Full year '25 adjusted EBIT margin was 13.6%, down 2% versus '24. Gross profit had a negative impact of 1.6 points, driven by high raw material and the negative impact of tariffs. This was particularly offset by continued manufacturing efficiencies and the positive contribution of Tangle Teezer. Brand support was relatively flat versus last year, and we had lower operating expenses, thanks to disciplined cost control. That said, as a percentage of net sales, operating expenses increased 0.3 points due to negative operating leverage.

On Slide 16, let's review the key elements of our P&L. Adjusted EBIT stood at EUR 283 million, down EUR 60 million versus last year. Nonrecurring items amounted to EUR 127 million, mostly due to the sale of Cello and the discontinuation of our Skin Creative activities and Rocketbook announced in Q4. This included mainly EUR 104 million related to the discontinuation of Skin Creative and Rocketbook announced last December, EUR 11 million related to the negative impact of Cello's disposal and EUR 10 million related to the fair value adjustment on the Power Purchase Agreement in France and the Virtual Power Purchase agreement in Greece. As a result, income before tax was significantly down to EUR 139 million compared to EUR 298 million in 2024.

Lastly, net income group share was EUR 86 million compared to EUR 212 million last year, while our adjusted net income group share was EUR 195 million compared to EUR 256 million last year. Our adjusted group EPS stood at EUR 4.74 compared to EUR 6.15 last year.

On the next slide, you can see the main building blocks of free cash flow in 2025. Operating cash flow amounted to EUR 400 million, down EUR 71 million year-on-year, mainly due to the decrease in operating margin. Change in working capital was a positive contribution of EUR 7 million and income tax paid was EUR 90 million. CapEx were EUR 87 million, flat versus last year. As a result, in 2025, free cash flow was solid at EUR 222 million.

Before giving the floor back to Rob, let me present our net cash position on Slide 18. On top of the free cash flow elements in 2025, we spent EUR 127 million in dividends and EUR 40 million in share buyback. This concludes our review of BIC's full year 2025 consolidated results.

In summary, 2025 was a difficult year for BIC in most of our key regions, marked by continued inflation, consumer anxiety and tariff uncertainty in the U.S. Against this backdrop, the group continued to focus on free cash flow resilience through disciplined cost management and working capital improvements. Looking ahead, as we develop our strategic plan, we will continue to focus on protecting our cash, simplifying our organization to ensure we are fit for growth and well positioned to drive growth and profitability. With that, I give the floor back to Rob.

Thank you, Gregory. 2025 was also a year of major changes in our governance structure. I just put in place a new leadership team, tighter and leaner with a clear objective of improving the business going forward. I strongly believe that BIC now has the right structure and leaders to execute and drive our next phase of growth. In addition to this, more, than half of BIC's Board of Directors was renewed last year and it is now fully equipped to support the implementation of our new strategy. These leadership and governance changes are essential to putting the business back on track.

Let's now take a closer look at our 2026 outlook. Starting this year, BIC will now guide on organic net sales performance, a key KPI and priority for us going forward. It reflects the true underlying performance of our business, excluding the impacts from perimeter and foreign exchange. In this year of transition and as BIC's leadership team prepares its strategic plan, which will be presented later in the year, we anticipate under current assumptions, improving organic net sales trends in 2026, a slight expansion in adjusted EBIT margin and a stable free cash flow generation year-on-year.

To conclude, 2026 is a transitional year as we are focused on improving and transforming our business as well as implementing the right structure and operating model. With the full support of the Board of Directors and my new leadership team, I strongly believe we are well positioned to prepare a clear plan of action and write the next chapter for BIC. I'm very optimistic that the decisive action we have taken so far are laying strong foundations for BIC to return to sustainable, profitable growth.

I could not conclude this call without honoring the memory of Francois Bich, son of our founder, Marcel Bich, who sadly passed away this Monday. Throughout his career, Francois played a pivotal role in developing iconic safe lighters and transforming them into a global success through his visionary leadership from the acquisition of Flaminaire in 1971 to leading our lighter category until 2016 when he retired from his executive position. When I joined as CEO, I had the immense privilege of speaking with him. And I have to say that without Francois, BIC would undeniably not be the company we all know today. His legacy will continue to inspire us for the years to come.

This concludes our presentation for today. We will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And we take our first question. And it comes from the line of Andre [indiscernible] from UBS.

Obviously condolences to the Bich family. I have a couple of questions. Firstly, on the 2026 outlook. Could you confirm that when you talk about an organic -- an improvement in organic trends, this does not necessarily mean you're going to return to growth in full year '26. And coupled with that, your margins will only increase up to 10 basis points because you talk about a small margin improvement. Coupled with this, where do you see the sharpest improvement coming within your divisions? And how much of that will be driven by Tangle Teezer?

And secondly, obviously, Rob, Gregory, you've been with BIC for a few months now. What are your first impressions? And without giving too much ahead of the strategic update, any areas that strike you as most right for improvement?

Andre, for your questions. I will start with your first question, which was about our guidance for 2026. I want to make it very clear. 2026 is a transitional year in which we aim to stabilize performance and laying the foundation for our new growth cycle. That would be our key priority for this year.

I think your second question was related to the margin expansion. Look, I think what helps us in 2026 is the fact that we have exited underperforming businesses in Q4, namely Rocketbook, Cello and Skin Creative. We are also focusing on disciplined cost control. But on the other hand, we're also being hit partially by tariffs in the U.S. So the combination of all this makes us believe that we will be able to slightly expand our margin in 2026. It was related to my impressions of BIC.

I would like to summarize that in 3 things. First of all, we have a wonderful brand, which is known in many places across the globe. So I think it's a fantastic brand platform. The other thing that has impressed me in my first month is the amazing manufacturing capabilities we have to produce super high-quality products at very cost competitive levels. And thirdly, we have a fantastic distribution footprint in many parts of the world. So I think this company has some really -- some key strengths and -- which will help us to revive growth going forward.

Last point, if I get you right, Andre, was the Tangle Teezer performance. I can honestly tell you, we're super happy with Tangle Teezer. Also in 2025, our first year of full integration, we could notice that Tangle Teezer continues to grow at a fast pace, double-digit top line. It's margin accretive for our company. It has consolidated its #1 market share position in the U.K., and it's a fast-growing brand in the U.S., now reaching #3. So yes, all lights on green for Tangle Teezer and it also has been a key contributor to our growth in '25 with 4.1 points to the group's net sales performance.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Geoffrey d'Halluin from BNP Paribas.

I've got 2 questions, please. First one is related to the end of 2026. If you can share with us any thoughts on the trading trends you've seen in the first weeks of 2026, especially for the Flame For Life division in the U.S. That's my first question, please.

And second question is related to the exit of businesses, so like Cello, Skin Creative business and Rocketbook. Could you share with us how much is it in terms of revenues, which is exited the company? And maybe also any thoughts regarding the profitability of this business? And on top of that, do you expect any additional one-off costs related to these disposals or business exiting?

Geoff, thank you very much for your question. This is Rob speaking. I will answer the first part of your question, and then I will pass on to my colleague, Greg, to answer the second part. So your question was related to our expectations for Q1 and current trending. What I can tell you is that we expect a relatively flat organic growth for Q1. And what we are doing is we are taking actions to set ourselves up for real sustainable growth, amongst others, by rightsizing level of inventories at key distributors and wholesalers globally.

Maybe more in particularly because I think you were also mentioning the Flame For Life. We expect a slight recovery in the U.S. despite the fact that macroeconomic environment continues to be uncertain with especially low-income consumers continuing to feel the pinch following the implementation of U.S. tariffs. We can also notice that we see some key customers continuing to optimize their level of inventory. So that's the U.S.

Then in Mexico, where we, of course, in the recent days, we had a lot of unrest, where our primary concern is the health and safety of our employees. But concerning performance, we clearly expect a stabilization in Mexico. We had a very tough year last year. We took action, put new management in place, and we believe that we will be able to improve the performance in Mexico accordingly. Other regions, our expectation for now is more or less flat versus last year. This concludes my answer to your first question. I now pass on to Greg for your other question.

Geoffrey, on your second question regarding disposals, I will not comment on the specific in terms of numbers, but the disposal of Cello and discontinuation of Rocketbook and Skin Creative will have a positive impact on organic growth and should be pretty -- organic growth in EBIT margin and should be pretty neutral between the disposal proceeds and the wind down cost in terms of free cash flow.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Marie-Line Fort from Bernstein.

Yes. I've got -- I would like to come back on 2 topics. The first one is about tariffs, the impact of the new tariff announcement? And what do you expect at this stage, even if it's not very clear?

The second question is about the start of production of Tangle Teezer brushes. Could you tell us a bit more? Where is the production located? Is it a trial? What will be the ramp-up? And when do you see new synergies in terms of production and in terms of evolution in margin?

Regarding tariffs, it's obviously too early to tell regarding the impact of the Supreme Court decision. It should persist -- and our view is that it should persist as we enter 2026 because raw material and local inventories were built at a higher cost that included those tariffs. So we'll now need to assess how the U.S. administration will react to this decision.

Just to give you a sense of the numbers, in the current environment, the overall impact of tariffs for BIC as of -- for '25, '26 on an annual basis, the overall impact is EUR 31 million, of which EUR 13 million already impacted 2025. So we have EUR 18 million ahead of us, which we obviously try to offset through a number of levers, pricing, gross profit optimization, accelerating transformation of our supply chain and adjusting our manufacturing footprint and also disciplined cost management, which has to be one of our priorities as well. So that's that regarding the impact of tariffs. And on Tangle Teezer production?

Yes, let me take that one, Greg. Marie-Line, I want to come back on your question related to Tangle Teezer. So we have started to produce the first brushes in our factory in Mexico by the end of last year. And we also have plans to produce the brushes in Tunisia in the course of 2026. So that integration is going well.

And in terms of synergies, any kind of ideas of what could represent and at which or reason?

Sorry, Marie-Line, we couldn't hear you very well. Can you repeat, please?

Sorry. Just wanting to know if you can precise the synergies expected, not in terms of figures precisely, but in terms of calendar, at least?

So it's pretty much limited in '26 and should be accretive going forward.

Excuse me, Marie-Line, do you have any further questions?

No, that's fine.

Thank you so much. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Rob Versloot, for any closing remarks.

Thank you. I'd like to thank you all for attending today's call. And looking forward to stay connected with you throughout the year. Thank you very much.

Indeed, thank you for your attention. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.

Good day, and welcome to BIC's Third Quarter and 9 Months 2025 Net Sales Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

And now I'd like to hand the call over to your host, Brice Paris, VP, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to BIC's Third Quarter 2025 Net Sales Call. I'm Brice Paris, Head of Investor Relations. I'm glad to welcome Rob Versloot, our new CEO, who will lead his first analyst call at BIC. Chris Dayton, our interim CFO, is also with us today in Clichy.

We will be available after the presentation for the usual Q&A session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded, and the replay will be available on our website, along with the presentation and press release. As always, please take a moment to read the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation.

With that, I now give the floor to Rob.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. It's great to be here with you for my first earnings call as CEO of BIC. Taking on this role in September was a new chapter opening for me, both personally and professionally. I'm honored to lead a company with such a strong legacy, and I'm even more excited about the opportunities ahead.

Throughout my career, I've seen firsthand the reach and relevance of the BIC brand around the world. It's a brand that people know, trust and use every day, and that's something truly special.

I want to start off by acknowledging that 2025 is a challenging year for BIC. Since the beginning of the year, our global business has struggled in the face of a tough environment, and we've now experienced negative organic growth for the third quarter in a row. In Q3, each of our categories declined with the exception of Tangle Teezer. And this leads us to revise our full year outlook, which I will detail more on in my conclusion.

As the new CEO, my first priority is very clear. We need to shift gears and set a strong foundation for the future. This transition won't happen overnight, but we're moving quickly with speed and focus. I'll share more on how we're approaching it at the end of the call.

Specifically, regarding BIC's Q3 performance, I want to highlight 3 key overarching takeaways. First, our performance in the U.S. continued to be challenged despite a slight rebound in our core Stationery business. Second, we saw areas of growth in other regions, driven by our value-added products and strong back-to-school season in several countries. And third, we had mixed performances in our acquired businesses. While Tangle Teezer continued to perform super well, others like our Skin Creative business and Rocketbook were disappointing and weighed on our overall financial results.

Starting with the U.S. The overall business environment remains difficult for our 3 categories. However, in Q3, we saw a solid improvement in our core stationery category with record high net sales driven by strong retailer momentum and stand out performance in the Mechanical Pencils segment.

In Flame for Life, net sales were still negative in Q3 despite improvement in lighter market trends since the beginning of the year. And in Blade Excellence, we struggled in a deteriorating shaver market with slowing consumption trends and ongoing competition.

That being said, we had areas of growth in other regions and categories. Our value-added shaver products, including our Flex and Soleil ranges performed particularly well in Brazil and Europe. Back-to-school seasons were solid in several key European countries like Germany and the U.K., while performance in France was relatively flat.

Finally, it's worth noting our acquired businesses delivered a mixed performance in Q3. While Tangle Teezer positively contributed to 3.6 points of the group's growth, other businesses such as Cello, Rocketbook and Skin Creative had a 2-point negative impact on the growth of our Human Expression division in Q3. Therefore, one of my first key actions as CEO is to complete the divestiture of our Cello activities in India.

Despite our repeated efforts to turn the business around, BIC was never able to transform Cello into a growing and profitable business. My responsibility as CEO of BIC is to ensure that every decision and every part of the company drives sustainable and profitable growth while reducing complexity in the organization.

To conclude this first part, I am determined to act swiftly. Since I joined the group a month ago, I've been closely analyzing BIC's long-term performance, and I've gained a deeper understanding of the current challenges we face. Right now, my teams and I are working hard to prepare a clear plan of action and define a new strategy to write the next chapter for BIC.

I will now hand it over to Chris, who will share more details on our net sales and operational performance during the third quarter.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone. I'm Chris Dayton, Interim CFO, and let's begin with an overview of our net sales performance for the third quarter of 2025 on Slide 6.

Net sales totaled EUR 519 million, down 3.9% as reported and up 0.3% at constant currency. Excluding the 3.6 points positive impact from the Tangle Teezer contribution, net sales were down 3.3%. Currency fluctuations had a negative impact of 4.2 points, mostly coming from the U.S. dollar.

Turning to Slide 7. In the first 9 months of 2025, net sales totaled EUR 1.595 billion, down 5% as reported and down 1.6% at constant currency. Excluding the 3.8 points positive impact from Tangle Teezer, net sales were down 5.4%. Currency fluctuations had a negative impact of 3.4 points, largely coming from the U.S. dollar and the Brazilian real.

I'll now provide you with a snapshot of the performance of our 3 divisions for the third quarter, starting with Human Expression on Slide 8. Net sales were EUR 192 million, down 0.5% at constant currency, a strong sequential improvement since the beginning of the year.

In North America, net sales grew high single digits at constant currency, with solid growth in the U.S., mainly driven by back-to-school phasing of orders from Q2 to Q3. However, this was partially offset by poor performance of both Rocketbook and Skin Creative.

In Europe, net sales were relatively flat at constant currency with mixed performance across the region during the back-to-school season. Growth was solid in Eastern Europe, Germany and the U.K. And our value-added products like the 4-Color Smooth, Intensity paint markers and break-resistant Mechanical Pencils performed well. However, this was offset by weaker results in Southern Europe.

In Latin America, net sales declined high single digits in Q3 at constant currency, mainly due to tough performance in Mexico, impacted by significant competitive pressure from private label. In Brazil, net sales growth was negative but improved compared to previous quarters.

Finally, in Middle East and Africa, net sales grew slightly at constant currency, driven by a solid back-to-school season in the Middle East and good performance in Nigeria from our iconic BIC Cristal and Lucky Pen products.

Moving on to Slide 9 to review Flame for Life performance. Net sales totaled EUR 175 million in Q3, down 4.3% at constant currency.

In North America, the U.S. pocket lighter market improved versus the beginning of the year while remaining negative at minus 2% in value in Q3. Additionally, the utility lighter market declined minus 4.1% in value. In this context, BIC's performance remained challenging and net sales decreased mid-single digits at constant currency.

In Europe, net sales declined mid-single digits at constant currency as a result of softer performance in Eastern Europe, Italy and Germany. This more than offset solid growth in France and the Netherlands where we saw distribution gains, particularly in utility lighters.

In Latin America, net sales decreased mid-single digits in Q3 at constant currency.

In Mexico, BIC faced strong competition from low-cost pocket lighters while in Brazil, we were impacted by market slowdown and heavier competition.

Finally, in the Blade Excellence division, Q3 net sales amounted to EUR 146 million, up 7.4% at constant currency.

As Rob mentioned earlier, Tangle Teezer was the main driver, posting double-digit growth driven by the U.S. and Europe. Excluding Tangle Teezer, net sales were down 6.1% in Q3. In North America, net sales declined double digits, excluding Tangle Teezer.

Our core Shaver business continued to face challenging market trends and continued competitive pressure. Net sales were also negatively impacted by reduced promotional activity versus last year.

In Europe, excluding Tangle Teezer, we experienced slight growth on a comparative basis in the quarter. This was driven by continued distribution gains in Eastern Europe and the success of value-added shavers such as hybrid Flex 5 and Soleil Click 3. In Latin America, Q3 net sales increased low single digits at constant currency.

The continued success of our 3 to 5 blade offerings led to robust growth in Brazil. However, this was partially offset by a weak performance in Mexico due to a very competitive environment.

Lastly, in Middle East and Africa, Q3 net sales decreased significantly at constant currency mainly due to poor performance in Northern Africa and competitive pressure in South Africa.

This concludes the review of our Q3 and 9 months net sales performance. With that, I'd like to hand it back over to Rob.

Thank you, Chris. I think it's fair to say that BIC has faced difficulties adapting to shifting consumer trends and a challenging global market environment. And this was again the case in Q3 where the performance was not where we wanted to be. As a consequence, and since we expect Q4 performance to remain broadly in line with what we have seen over the past few months, we are adjusting our full year outlook.

We are now expecting net sales growth at constant currency in the range of minus 1% to minus 1.5%, an adjusted EBIT margin at around 13.7% and a free cash flow at around EUR 210 million. This outlook now includes the full impact of U.S. tariffs in our P&L and free cash flow, which was not the case before.

As I mentioned earlier, my goal as the new CEO is to build a solid foundation and clear plan for the next chapter of BIC. While I'm still refining the strategy, my goal is to move as quickly as possible. I will share more details on further strategic priorities in due term.

As we approach the end of the year, my top priority is to sharpen our focus on operations to make steady progress despite the hurdles we face.

With that, that team and I will take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Geoffrey d'Halluin of BNP Paribas Exane.

I will have three questions, please. The first one is related to your new guidance, especially the new EBIT margin guidance. Would you mind to give us a bit more details on what you expect in terms of U.S. tariffs impact? And basically, breaking down what drove the new guidance before the prior ones.

My second question is related to your Cello disposal. Would you mind to give us a bit more details on -- or at least remind us what was the overall revenue and EBIT numbers for this company?

And the last question is -- so I get the point you would update the market for your new strategy in due course. But maybe a question is regarding the portfolio of brand activity in BIC, are you happy with the current portfolio? Or could we expect to have much more exit of brands in the next coming months, as you've just done with Cello?

Yes, Rob speaking. Thanks a lot for the question. Maybe to comment on your first question on overall, the main reasons behind the outlook revision. Maybe starting with the U.S. and as mentioned by Chris, in the lighter segment, we see slower-than-expected recovery, and the business is still down mid-single digit in Q3, and we believe that this should continue to be down in Q4.

And in another important segment, the shavers in the U.S., there, we see higher-than-expected decline in net sales mainly due to a combination of deteriorating market trends, continued competitive pressure and less promotional activity. Also this situation, we expect to remain tough for the remainder of the year. So that's about the U.S.

Then if we look in our Latin American business in Mexico, which is one of our top 5 countries in net sales, we saw a poor performance in Q3, double-digit down due to tough market trends, intense competition for private labels and distribution losses. We recently changed leadership in Mexico with the objective of improving the situation.

A third element is concerning our new businesses. We observed very disappointing performance of Skin Creative, Rocketbook, BIC Blade-Tech and Cello. And this is one of the reasons why we concluded the sale of Cello to limit the negative financial impact it's having on our results.

And lastly, and I think you were alluding to that, we are now including the full impact of U.S. tariffs on both our margin and free cash flow outlooks. And the gross tariff impact in 2025 is expected to be about nearly EUR 50 million, and we should be able to offset less than half of it at adjusted EBIT margin level. At a free cash flow level, the impact is expected to be at nearly EUR 15 million.

Commenting on your second question, the divestiture of Cello. We've looked at it, and we have observed that Cello has been dilutive on the Human Expression division financial performance for many years. And despite repeated efforts of the company to turn the business around, BIC was never able to transform Cello into a growing and profitable business. So yes, my first decision as CEO of BIC is to conclude the sale of Cello to limit the negative financial impact going forward.

And generally speaking, I see it as my responsibility to sharpen our focus on activities that can drive growth and profitability while continuing to invest in markets where we have a winning strategy.

Coming to your last question with what about the strategy going forward, I want to manage expectations. I joined BIC a bit more than a month ago. So I'm afraid that I can't give you any communication on my strategic plan right now or in the near future.

I have been analyzing closely the long-term performance of BIC and gaining understanding of our current challenges. I'm currently working very hard with my team to prepare my action belt. I am determined to act swiftly. My first bold move is concluding the sale of Cello, and I will update you in due course of the details of my strategic plan. That said, my top priority as we approach the end of the year is to focus on operations and make sure we deliver on our promises. Thank you.

And we'll now take our next question from [ Andre Conger ] of UBS.

Two for me, please. First of all, on the outlook, and this is more about 2026, if you can share anything is, obviously, you saw the market deteriorate in Q3 and Q4 expected to be similar. What does this imply for the BIC, at least for the beginning of 2026, given the subdued market growth rates?

And my second one, just going back to the tariffs, if we may. For 2025, you said that the impact is about EUR 15 million growth. What is the impact you envisage for 2026 essentially on an annualized basis, if I may?

Thank you for the question. Rob speaking here. Talking about 2026. As mentioned, I'm working on my strategic plan, 6 weeks in the business. So analyzing the long-term performance, but also the current challenges.

I'm afraid it's a bit too soon for me to give an expectation on the 2026. But be assured, this is on our agenda. We'll come back on that as soon as we can and have a full understanding of the business where we are and our plans going forward. Thank you.

Andre, thanks for the question. This is Chris. To answer your question on the annualized impact of tariffs, we expect it to be around EUR 30 million on an annualized basis. We should be able to offset more of that on an ongoing basis than we do in 2025. We've built our action plans around 3 levers: pricing, gross profit optimization and then finally, managing at the EBIT level through cost management. Thank you.

And we'll now move on to our next question from Marie Fort of Bernstein.

First question is about the Shavers. What do you attribute the market pressure in Q3 which is very strong? And how do you plan to implement a new strategy in this context? And particularly regarding Blade-Tech, what is your thoughts on Blade-Tech?

Second question is about your governance structures. How do you envisage the new organization? And particularly, will you mention -- will you maintain a dual organization between Paris and the U.S.? That's it for my question.

Thank you, Marie-Line, for the question. The performance in U.S. Shavers during Q3 had 3 key drivers. First of all, difficult market trends, particularly in the drug store and discount channels with an accelerated market decline in Q3, it was down nearly 5% in value. We are seeing continued competitive pressures as well, especially in the women's segment despite the success we've seen in BIC Soleil Glide.

And finally, while some competitors are aggressively pricing to take share, we decided to reduce certain promotional activity versus last year to eliminate low ROI programs.

Yes. Marie, Rob speaking. Thank you for your question on organization. Yes, as we are still working out the strategy, which is, let's say, our first priority. And of course, as a logical follow-up, we will look at what is the best organization to execute our strategy. As we have not concluded our strategy process, yes, it's a bit too early for me to make any remarks about our organization going forward. Other than that, we will look at opportunities to simplify the organization. Thank you very much.

And coming back to the BIC Blade-Tech performance. Here, we noticed that this part of our business continued to report poor performance in Q3 and is expected to be flat this year. That said, BIC Blade-Tech represents a no material amount of the group's revenue. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] And we will now take our next question from Alessandro Cuglietta of Kepler Cheuvreux.

So most of my questions have been answered, but I can add maybe one on Flame for Life. Maybe can you detail what's driving the underperformance this year? Do you think it's only macro-driven or still some structural headwinds in this category in the lighter business?

Thanks for the question, Alessandro. We did have poor performance, challenging performance across the board in Flame for Life. In the U.S., despite the improvement since the beginning of the year, net sales declined in Q3. Remember that in Q2, we did see some positive benefit from the inventory replenishment at certain retailers that didn't repeat in Q3. We are seeing continued improvement in the convenience channel since the beginning of the year. And it's also important to note that we've taken recent actions against counterfeit lighters in the convenience channel, including lawsuits against several wholesalers.

In Latin America, we continue to face heavier competition in both Mexico and Brazil. And in Europe, we had soft performance in Eastern Europe, Italy and Germany. On the bright side, I would say that the Middle East and Africa posted growth during the quarter, driven by continued distribution gains and geographical expansion. Thank you.

There are no further questions in queue. [Operator Instructions] And we'll now take our next question from Christophe Chaput of ODDO.

Yes. Just a quick one for me. So just to offset the tariffs, let's say. So on several segment, you are going to pass some price hike, I assume in 2026. And I just wonder if you could give us more detail about what you could do in '26. Is it going to concern, let's say, all the division, only a part of it because in shaver, for example, the competitive landscape seems to be difficult? So yes, that's the first for me.

And the second one is that could you, let's say, give us more detail about the level of inventories on the Stationery business? Is there a good, let's say, [ adequation ] sell-in, sell-out on the market in the U.S.

Thanks for the question. Yes, we'll take pricing as a weapon or as a mitigating activity against the tariffs. I'm not going to go into any more specifics around that. And then we do see normal levels of inventory within our retailers in Flame for Life. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions coming through. I will now hand it back to Rob for final remarks.

Yes. On behalf of the company and our team here, I'd like to thank you very much for joining our call this morning. Thank you also for the great questions. And I'm looking forward to meet you soon. Thank you. Have a great day.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.