Bureau Veritas Stock

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Bureau Veritas 2026 Capital Markets Day. It's really great to see you. I mean, so many of you here in Paris, and a warm welcome as well to those joining us online. I think this is going to be a great day. We have a very nice venue, very nice view. You've seen it, great weather. So we are very delighted to host you at the [Foreign Language]. That's a venue that could not be more fitting for Bureau Veritas. You know our story began nearly 200 years ago, helping ships operate safely across the world's oceans. Since then, we've come a long way, evolving into a global leader in testing, inspection and certification.

So of course, while maritime is where we started, today's story, it's all about where we're going next. Early in 2024, we launched our LEAP 28 strategy. Today, we'll show you our progress report and of course, what's to come, what's next. So you'll hear about Bureau Veritas, how Bureau Veritas will enter into a new growth and -- new phase of growth and implementation with a stronger portfolio, expanding positions in attractive markets, accelerated M&A, AI-enabled services and a continued focus on value creation.

So before we set sail, a quick safety reminder because as you know, safety is absolute at BV. So in the unlikely event of an evacuation, please remain calm, please smile, follow the green exit signs and proceed to the assembly point at [indiscernible]. Our staff and security team will be available to assist you. Please also note that this event is being webcast and recorded. If you do not wish to be filmed or photographed, please make sure to inform the IR team or communication team.

Now let me quickly walk you through what awaits. So during the morning, our leadership team will take you through the strategy, our growth opportunities, our performance, people programs, our digital and AI road map and of course, the financial ambitions that support them. And of course, this will not be a proper CMD without your questions. So we have 2 dedicated Q&A sessions throughout the program. So please keep them coming.

This afternoon, you will have a chance to explore our technology -- our tech digital corners and join deep dives on some of the most exciting growth opportunities across the company. Before welcoming our Chief Executive Officer, Hinda Gharbi, who will share our vision for the company and the opportunities ahead, we'd like to set the stage with a short video that captures who we are today, how far we've come and where we are heading next. So let's watch the video.

[Presentation]

Thank you, Laurent, for the introduction, and I hope you enjoyed that video. Good morning to our guests in Paris. Good afternoon, and good evening to those listening online from elsewhere around the world. Thank you all very much for joining us today. 2.5 years ago, I shared with you the strategy that my leadership team and I developed to drive Bureau Veritas forward to new levels of growth and performance. We are now exactly midway in our LEAP 28 strategy, and I want to share with you the execution to date, how we will amplify our programs in the next 2 years to deliver on our 2028 ambition. We will also explain how AI has created opportunities to drive productivity and unlock new markets, making Bureau Veritas an even more valuable company.

For nearly 200 years, Bureau Veritas has helped customers, organizations and society navigate major technological, economic and societal changes. Our strength is built on independence, integrity, expertise and global reach, enabling safety, trade integrity, product quality, sustainability and regulatory compliance worldwide. Our mission, shaping a world of trust by ensuring responsible progress remains timeless and guides what our people deliver every day. We are a technical knowledge company, 64,000 technical experts amongst 82,000 of our colleagues. We operate in 140 countries and serve more than 400,000 customers globally. Our experts are close to customers on the ground with deep knowledge of their industries, the risks and the regulations that shape them.

Before updating you on LEAP 28 progress, let me briefly look back at Bureau Veritas' journey to where we are today. Bureau Veritas' journey has moved through 3 clear phases: building the portfolio in the 2000s, diversifying in the 2010s to reduce cyclicality and transforming in the last 3 years or so. LEAP 28 that we have developed with our leaders in 2023 and launched in early '24 is driving a comprehensive transformation and a step change in growth and profitability. For the last 2 years, the company has delivered organic growth north of 7%, steady margin improvement, earnings growth and strong cash generation. In 2025, Bureau Veritas delivered EUR 6.5 billion in revenue and adjusted operating profit of EUR 1 billion and adjusted net earnings of EUR 630 million and a free cash flow of EUR 824 million.

In my presentation this morning, I will show you that Bureau Veritas today is highly cash generative, more resilient and exposed to higher growth markets with strong barriers to entry. Lastly, our market is fundamentally growing and resilient, supported by strong structural trends that I would like to explain now. Our markets are not only resilient, they're becoming more strategic, more technical and more assurance intensive. This is why we are confident in the underlying growth of Bureau Veritas. And there are 4 powerful shifts that are reinforcing demand for independent assurance and for our services.

First, technology. Digitalization, AI, data centers and advanced infrastructure are creating new systems that need to be tested, inspected and assured. Today, virtually all companies have started to integrate AI in core sanctions. Second, energy. Energy security and the energy transition are driving investments in power, grids, renewables and industrial assets. Electrification needs are driving grids expansion CapEx at a multiple of GDP growth. Third, risk. In a more uncertain world, clients need assurance, not just for compliance, but to manage operational, supply chain, cyber, sustainability and reputational risk. Fourth and finally, sovereignty. Supply chain management reconfiguration, localization and defense spending are increasing the need for trusted independent verification. These trends are expanding our addressable market and increasing the value of what Bureau Veritas does, bring independent technical expertise where trust matters most.

Marios will be explaining more about our markets. The tailwinds are strong. The opportunity is structural. LEAP 28 is how we turn that opportunity into growth and stronger earnings. LEAP 28 is our transformation agenda that we unveiled in '24. It is how we are turning Bureau Veritas into a more focused, faster-growing and higher-performing multi-specialist. The plan, as I said, started in '24 and the first phase from '24 to '26 was the execution phase, building the foundation of our transformation with a rapid ramp-up in delivery. That means combining the scale, global reach and resilience of the company with strong leadership in our product lines.

LEAP 28 is built on 3 reinforcing pillars. First, the portfolio, focusing on businesses where we can build leading positions and strengthening them through organic growth and accelerated M&A. Second, performance, modernizing how we work through technology adoption, operational excellence and scalable processes. And third, people, making our expertise an even stronger competitive advantage by developing leaders and building specialist capabilities. LEAP 28 is not just about participating in attractive markets, it is about improving our ability to capture value from those markets through clearer priorities, stronger specialization and better execution. That is how we are transforming into a multi-specialist company.

The purpose of our portfolio strategy is simple: make growth more focused, more repeatable and more accretive. First, we have rotated the portfolio, reallocating capital and management attention towards markets where Bureau Veritas can leverage leading positions and attractive returns. Second, we have moved to a more interconnected product line-centric model from 6 reporting lines and 21 subsegments to 4 divisions and 10 product lines. Together, these actions create a new operating model that simplifies our growth algorithm. It leverages our strength across regions, focusing on better markets, faster execution and stronger capabilities. The result is a more repeatable growth model, a multi-specialist company with clearer priorities, stronger accountability and higher conversion of growth into profitability.

The new operating model enables us to deliver a self-sustaining dynamic of organic growth and M&A, faster growing, more focused and more value accretive. This growth model, the best way to think about it is it is 2 reinforcing engines. The first is organic execution. Each product line acts as a growth platform, expanding services, scaling expertise across geographies, driving cross-selling and using targeted acquisitions to fill specific capability gaps. The second is disciplined M&A. We use acquisitions to strengthen leadership positions, add targeted capability, increase density in attractive markets and accelerate our entry into selected high-growth markets. Together, organic growth and M&A create a compounding effect, increasing our organic growth potential, strengthening our execution and giving us the financial capacity to reinvest in the next wave of growth.

I'm now going to show you that our portfolio choices are already lifting the company growth profile. Acquisitions and planned divestments and exits accounted for EUR 1.2 billion, representing 21% of our revenue. This portfolio rotation is improving our growth profile. The businesses we are keeping and strengthening are growing faster, while active portfolio management releases capital and management focus for higher growth opportunities. In 2024, our current portfolio grew 10.8% organically versus 10.2% preplanned divestments and exits. In 2025, it grew 7.1% versus 6.5%. The current portfolio supports our 2026 organic growth outlook, in line with the LEAP 28 ambition of mid- to high single-digit organic growth.

Let me now turn to the other 2 pillars of LEAP 28, performance and people and how they are strengthening the operating backbone of the company. On performance, we are creating operational leverage and functional scalability through a combination of standard processes, operational excellence, digital operation systems for the former and shared services and disciplined overhead management for the latter. The objective is simple: higher productivity, lower cost to serve, better customer experience, and we expect to generate stronger margins. The impact is already visible. We are on track to achieve a cumulative 110 basis points of margin improvement by end of '26 and progressing towards our ambition of 180 basis points by 2028. We are reinvesting part of the benefits to modernize the company. These investments are in data, in technology, in governance and digital tools that help us scale the innovations we have.

On people, we are making expertise even more scalable. Our multi-specialist operating model helps us build capabilities faster, deploy experts more effectively and respond with greater focus to client needs. We are already seeing progress through stronger internal mobility and global development programs. And these -- all these achievements I've already covered are already visible in the financial results to date. The first 2 years of LEAP 28 show clear delivery in line with our 2028 ambitions. In both years, we delivered strong organic growth, improved margins, robust free cash flow and double-digit shareholder returns. This strong performance reflects the combined effect of portfolio refocusing, disciplined organic execution and performance programs. Our strategy is doing exactly what it was designed to do, strengthen the company, improve execution and create financial capacity for the next phase.

For our outlook for 2026, we remain committed to delivering in line with our LEAP 28 guidance. Let me now walk you through how we will scale these achievements in 2027 and 2028. The next phase is about scaling execution and amplifying impact. The strategic architecture does not change. Portfolio, performance and people remain the 3 pillars of the strategy. What changes is the level of ambition, pace and scale of execution. On portfolio, we move from refocusing the company to scaling growth, deeper organic execution, continued bolt-on M&A and selected strategic moves to expand our positions in attractive markets. On performance, we move from building the programs to rolling them out more broadly across the company so that standardization, digitalization and operational excellence translate into stronger productivity and margins. On people, we move from capability building to an expert-first model, making specialist expertise more visible, more mobile and more scalable across product lines and geographies.

Let me start with portfolio because this is where the scaling phase will improve the quality of the growth. We are increasingly shifting the company towards markets that offer a higher competitive moat, higher growth and stronger margins. We're doing this by deepening specialization within each product line vertical, strengthening capabilities and targeting geographies where Bureau Veritas can build market leadership. The opportunity spans both large established markets and high-growth niches, including digital assurance, transition services, renewables, grids and mission-critical infrastructure. But market attractiveness is only one part of the equation. We will prioritize where we will have the right to win, the ability to scale and a clear path to better earnings.

To deliver this market expansion, a well-defined M&A road map is crucial. Our M&A road map is disciplined and tailored to the starting point of each division. We are targeting the right M&A strategy based on market position, growth potential, capability gaps and the ability to create value. If we go by division, in Buildings and Infrastructure, the priority is to expand leadership in buildings and to continue to develop new services in mission-critical assets. In Business Assurance, it is about rapidly acquiring digital assurance targets in cyber and AI assurance and addressing our gaps in transition services. In Industrials & Commodities and Product Testing and Services, here, we have a greater scope to diversify from mature businesses. We will be building new strongholds in energy and industrial assets and diversifying consumer and technology product lines in line with supply chain sourcing shifts.

Essentially, M&A strengthens the portfolio by bringing in opportunity and growth. At the same time, the new operating model helps us unlock more growth from within through cross-selling in high-growth transverse markets. As we move into this '27, '28 scaling and amplifying phase, the new operating model becomes a stronger engine for organic growth. With 4 divisions and clear product line accountability, we can bring more of Bureau Veritas to each client faster, more systematically and with stronger commercial focus. We are concentrating this effort on 4 priority transverse markets: sustainability, AI-driven markets, defense and mining. These markets are supported by powerful structural trends and already today account for 30% of our company revenue in 2025.

Our key account managers are working across regions, divisions and client organizations to identify where one relationship can open the door to multiple services. The result is a more systematic organic growth engine, more growth from existing clients, faster expansion of our product lines and better leverage of our global scale. This now completes the portfolio view for the Amplify phase. I will now turn to performance and people, where the objective is to move to full deployment. On performance, we are confirming our 180 basis point margin improvement by 2028. We will accelerate our programs and complete the rollout of the new operating systems -- operation systems across the company. Our goal is to improve productivity, service quality, customer experience and margins by scaling what has already been proven during the first phase, and Noor will detail some of this later on in his presentation.

On people, we will deepen our capability building programs and strengthen the expert first model. We will continue to strengthen our digital innovation framework with AI as a key accelerator, modernizing operational journeys, supporting experts in their work and helping us scale innovation faster across the company. AI is an accelerator that cuts across the full transformation of our portfolio, performance and people pillars. And this is what I would like to focus on now. Bureau Veritas' role is to turn standards, regulations and risk requirements into -- role ease to turn, sorry, standards regulation and risk requirements into independent evidence. That evidence allows products to enter markets, assets to operate safely and organizations to make credible claims on quality, safety, sustainability and risk.

In an AI-driven world, this role becomes even more important. First, AI creates new physical markets. The build-out of the mission-critical assets like data centers, semiconductor fabs and power infrastructure will require testing, inspection, certification and assurance at scale. Second, AI transforms how trust is delivered. It enables wider data collection, automated analysis, continuous monitoring and new forms of verification. This is changing how we work and it creates a data advantage, allowing Bureau Veritas to develop new services in digital assurance, asset resilience and performance. What differentiates Bureau Veritas remains the same: independence, technical expertise, accreditation, physical access, global reach and very, very importantly, accountability and responsibility for what we deliver. AI increases Bureau Veritas relevance. It expands the markets we already serve, and it gives us new ways to deliver trust faster, more continuously and at scale.

Let me give you the first example of how AI is already expanding the markets we serve. AI is amplifying several structural trends supporting Bureau Veritas' Building and Infrastructure division markets. Data centers are a first example. AI workloads today require large-scale mission-critical infrastructure. Data centers capital expenditure is projected to grow by about 10% to 15% on an annual basis from 2025 to 2030. Semiconductors are the second example. Advanced AI depends on more powerful and more specialized chips with semiconductor CapEx expected to grow by 12% on the same period. Both markets are highly relevant for Bureau Veritas as they have complex, high-performance and assurance-intensive assets.

Our LotusWorks acquisition actually completes our portfolio to address this very interesting and important market. This kind of assets require lots of inspection, commissioning services, construction support, and that's what we're bringing. Our aim is to deliver $800 million of revenue from these activities by 2030 from a base of $300 million at this point. AI strengthens the Bureau Veritas value proposition in 2 ways. First, it broadens our relevance. As complexity, regulation and data-driven risks increase, clients need more, not less, independent assurance. The combination, our combination of data and insights, experts ecosystem and our ability to invest at scale is a fundamental competitive advantage to innovate and provide solutions to our clients. They also expect that assurance to be faster, more continuous and more insight-driven.

Second, AI enhances our delivery model by automating routine work, supporting our experts, improving consistency and strengthening the customer experience. It also brings assurance closer to clients' operations, moving from periodic checks to more embedded workflows. Very importantly, AI amplifies our foundations of independence, expertise and accreditations that remain essential. By scaling our trusted expertise, AI makes Bureau Veritas more relevant to the clients, more efficient in how we operate and more differentiated in the market. So how does AI transform our delivery model? Bureau Veritas has a very strong starting point, a rich data environment. We have today 8.8 petabytes of data accumulated across our activities over decades. We also have 64,000 experts with deep knowledge of our customers' assets, operations, industries and regulatory environment.

The opportunity is to connect these 2 assets, data and expertise through AI-enabled operation systems. That will help us improve planning, automate low-value tasks, support technical decisions, accelerate reporting and make service delivery more consistent across regions and product lines. The operational impact will be significant, a better customer experience, higher service quality and, of course, improved productivity and stronger margin profile. By 2028, we expect a full AI integration in operations that represent 30% of our revenue by 2028 and 60% of that revenue by 2030. This will allow us to develop new services, which is the next example.

The next growth opportunity lies in new AI-enabled and AI-related services. As AI adoption accelerates, our customers face new risks, model reliability, data quality, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance and very, very importantly, responsible deployment. These challenges are a natural extension of Bureau Veritas' core role, helping clients demonstrate that complex systems are safe, compliant, resilient and trustworthy. We will develop new services in areas such as AI assurance, cyber, data integrity, automated monitoring and technology-enabled certification. This will build on our existing customer relationships, technical expertise and credibility as an independent third party. We are expecting that revenue derived from these services will reach $200 million by 2030 from a baseline of $70 million today.

With that, let me bring the full picture together and confirm how our LEAP 28 strategy execution supports our 2028 ambitions. We are confirming our LEAP 28 ambition. The first phase has made Bureau Veritas stronger, a more focused portfolio, better execution, higher margins and robust cash generation. This reinforces our confidence for the next phase. We confirm our organic growth guidance, and we upgrade total growth ambition at constant currency for 2027 and 2028 as we accelerate our M&A programs. We are maintaining our strong cash conversion, tightening our leverage range and confirming our double-digit stakeholder returns ambition based on EPS CAGR and dividend yield.

LEAP 28 is positioning Bureau Veritas as a faster-growing, higher margin, always highly cash generative and more differentiated company. AI is a transformative technology that creates multiple opportunities for Bureau Veritas. We will continue to integrate this technology broadly into our strategic programs. Our ambition is to generate $1 billion in revenue from AI-driven markets and services by 2030. Thank you for your attention, and I welcome to the stage now, Marios Broustas and Emma Ritter to take you through our portfolio progress.

I'll start with a quick introduction. I'm Marios Broustas. I'm the EVP for Corporate Development with responsibility to drive our M&A activities. I also work alongside Hinda, my colleagues and our Board to help define our portfolio priorities. I joined Bureau Veritas in early July and bring approximately 30 years of M&A experience. I've spent 2/3 of my career as an investment banker and 1/3 similar, in a similar role in another global B2B business. I'm thrilled to have joined the company. We are a global leader in a phenomenal industry with multiple levers of growth. Bureau Veritas is a company with terrific colleagues that work with a collaborative team spirit. And most importantly, we have a great opportunity ahead of us to deliver meaningful value creation for our shareholders during the second half of LEAP 28 and beyond. Joining me on stage is my colleague, Emma Ritter.

Emma?

Yes. Good morning to everyone. So I'm Emma Ritter. I'm leading Fuels, our oil, petrochemical and coal business as President. I was previously VP M&A at Bureau Veritas, and I have close to 20 years of experience in the energy sector.

Thank you, Emma. Emma and I will cover 3 topics this morning. First, I will address our growing market opportunity. Second, we'll present an update on our progress to date during LEAP 28 using the KPIs we shared with you at the time we launched the strategy. Finally, I'll share the key elements that support our growth ambition during the second half of LEAP 28. Let's start with the market opportunity. We operate in a large market that has grown consistently at 4% to 5% over the years. We estimate our market to be approximately EUR 350 billion today. About half of this market is addressable by TIC companies like us, with the remainder reflecting activities handled by governments, specialist organizations or companies themselves. This results in an addressable market for us and our competitors of approximately EUR 175 billion.

Our strategy, as you have heard from Hinda, is to focus on markets with attractive growth fundamentals, strong profitability and where we operate with a global leadership position. We have global top 3 positions across 8 of our verticals today, representing more than $85 billion of addressable market. This provides us with significant room to grow in product lines where we will continue to win. I want to share a more granular view into our business, which reflects our strategic approach. We look at our business by specialist product line. These are depicted on the bubble chart. We have rotated 20% of our portfolio during the first 2 years of LEAP 28 and exited all the businesses in gray that you see at the lower left-hand side of the chart.

As you can also see from the chart, our portfolio today consists of product lines with both leadership positions and attractive growth fundamentals. This is the power of the multi-specialist model, a business with global reach where each product line has winning attributes. We address sizable markets and the product lines grow at least in line with the average TIC market growth and many grow well in excess of this growth rate. In addition, we prioritize subsegments and geographies within each of these markets that have advantaged growth dynamics versus the product line as a whole. I'll deep dive into this topic in the second part of my presentation.

Our growth equation has a dual engine. The first engine is due to our portfolio advantage. This advantage is enabled by portfolio composition. Our multi-specialist model means that we seek to operate with leadership on a global scale and winning product lines. Leadership enables us to continually invest behind our world-class capabilities and crucially to drive innovation in critical areas such as AI deployment. You'll see evidence of this in the tech corners during the breaks. Our commitment to quality and to innovation builds trust with our customers, with regulatory authorities, trade bodies and governments. Trust is at the core of our business, and it is at the heart of our ability to deliver sustainable growth.

Our second growth engine is M&A. We operate in a highly fragmented market. 75% of the market is in the hands of smaller operators. This means that we can be a global leader in our product line and still have substantial opportunities to fill in our capabilities, both with a geographic and an activities lens. This gives us tremendous runway for organic investment enhanced by a well-structured bolt-on M&A program. Let's turn now to the progress we have made on our commitment for LEAP 28. You will recall this chart from our 2024 CMD. At the time, we conducted a comprehensive bottom-up review of our portfolio that has guided our journey of investment and divestment.

This strategy has been predicated on executing across 3 dimensions: expand our leadership position in businesses which benefit from structural growth tailwinds; Invest in new strongholds. These are smaller businesses for us, which have attractive growth dynamics and operate in new economy segments. We are committed to strengthening our portfolio of these activities and product lines and building leadership positions. Finally, optimize value. These are also businesses where, in most cases, we enjoy leadership positions. These businesses operate in markets with lower structural growth, but with attractive cash flow generation profiles. My colleague, Emma, will now take you through our progress on the execution of our strategy against each of these dimensions.

So I'm pleased to share with you our progress against the objectives we set for ourselves for delivery of the LEAP 28 plan. As Marios outlined, our strategy has been built on 3 dimensions: expand leadership, new strongholds for growth and optimize value and impact. So let's start with the numbers. At CMD in 2024, expand leadership was generating 45% of Bureau Veritas revenues. This has now increased to 52%. New stronghold has increased from 10% to 16% of revenues today. At the same time, our optimize value and impact portfolio has decreased from 45% of revenue to 33% today.

At CMD in 2024, we also articulated our objective to increase the portion of our business where we have leadership. So on the right-hand side, you can see that we have increased the share of our business where we are global leader or top 3 from 75% of revenue to 80% of revenue. Today, at midpoint of our plan, we are on track to deliver LEAP 28. This achievement is a result, as stated by Hinda and Marios, of our dual growth engine, a combination of organic growth and portfolio upgrading through M&A and divestments.

Moving to expand leadership. Expand leadership encompasses mainly business in Building and Infrastructure and certification, 2 strongholds of BV. Expand leadership product line generates today 52% of BV revenues and has contributed 36% of BV organic growth to date. Although this is below our target of 55% for LEAP 28 due to the outperformance of optimize value and impact, we are positive about the growth momentum we see in expand leadership. Since 2024, we've been engaged in pivoting our B&I business to further expand our leadership in these product lines through M&A and organic growth. We've made 6 acquisitions, generating close to EUR 300 million of revenues.

After mid-single-digit growth in '24 and '25, B&I has enjoyed high single-digit organic growth delivered during H1 '26 as well as strong margin delivery. This is driven principally by strong organic demand trends in the mission-critical business, which has been complemented by the acquisition of LotusWorks that closed in July and will add to this momentum during H2 of '26. [ Renato and Kieran ] will tell you all about it later this morning. We are also enjoying strong organic growth beyond mission-critical, driven by acceleration in our core CapEx and infrastructure business in Europe, in Asia and in the U.S. We are also especially focused on continuing to build out our B&I footprint in North America.

Moving to certification. Our certification product line has embarked on an exciting modernization journey with the development of a next-gen certification platform that we call SmartCert. Deployment is well underway, and we look forward to sharing with you the details during the deep dive session this afternoon. Moving to new stronghold. We've had a meaningful portfolio shift in favor of the new stronghold for growth. At midpoint of LEAP 28, they represent 16% of BV revenues, but they are generating 25% of our organic growth. This reflects that new strongholds are growing at double the rate of our other businesses, and this is in line, by the way, with our expectation for LEAP 28 growth delivery.

In M&A, in new strongholds, we executed 15 bolt-on acquisitions, generating EUR 99 million revenues. Our ambition is clearly to do even more during the second half of LEAP 28 to continue building this portfolio. We remain focused on building out our renewables capabilities with end-to-end solution. We also extended our capabilities in grid and nuclear that are benefiting from the broader energy trends that Hinda described earlier. We remain firmly committed to our ambition for transition services. ESG trends are less pronounced today than they were in '24. However, our services remain very much in demand because sustainability considerations have become embedded in the risk management practices of our clients. Marios will develop that in a few minutes.

Turning to cybersecurity. We are keeping on building out our offering with a focus on North America and addressing our clients' OT needs. Finally, we continue to see an exciting opportunity building out our testing capabilities in high-tech products such as electricals through a combination of organic lab investment in Asia and targeted bolt-on acquisition. Last but not least, our optimize value and impact portfolio has experienced a significant step change. Starting with divestments, we have sold close to EUR 770 million of revenues with 3 strategic moves. The sale of the food testing business to Merieux. We also announced late June this year, the planned disposal of our oil, petrochemicals and coal inspection and testing business to a European private equity firm. This is the business I lead, and I can tell you this major transaction is on track and expected to close in Q1 '27. The exit of the Government Services subsegment is also ongoing.

Our optimize value and impact portfolio is high quality. It includes Marine & Offshore, oil and gas asset services, consumer product services and commodities. They are all cash-generative, high-margin mature businesses. During the first 2 years of LEAP 28, these businesses contributed 39% of organic growth versus our target for LEAP 28 of 20%. This is due to the outperformance of M&O and oil and gas that have benefited from favorable dynamics that were not visible in '24, especially with strong investments in new ships and oil and gas assets.

Turning to CPS. This business has a leadership position and plenty of white space to continue growing organically and/or via bolt-on acquisition. In commodities, we see opportunities in mining that will be covered later on in this presentation. So as a conclusion, even if we see lower long-term structural growth potential for our optimize value and impact portfolio than in expand leadership or new stronghold, we love our remaining optimize value and impact businesses, and we will keep on leveraging them. Back to you, Marios.

Thank you, Emma. We have executed against the strategic priorities we set at the outset of LEAP 28. The strategy is working. We are now well positioned to amplify our performance delivery during the second half of this strategic cycle. I want to highlight 2 important financial impacts enabled by the portfolio rotation. First, revenue growth. As you've heard from Hinda, portfolio rotation will provide a 60 basis point tailwind to our revenue growth delivery. Francois will share the analysis behind this during his presentation. On margins, our portfolio mix also provides tailwinds. This chart shows our revenue mix by profitability band.

As you can see, the 20% plus band is roughly the same size as it was in 2023 when we first showed you this chart. The 15% to 20% band, however, has increased significantly. We have shifted approximately 20% of our revenue mix from the 10% to 15% band to the 15% to 20% band. Today, more than 3/4 of our portfolio is at or above 15%. This margin picture reflects the contribution from product lines only. This margin profile will be further enhanced by the performance measures that we have implemented. As [ Noor ] will describe during his presentation, some of these programs are already underway and many more will scale over time.

This is our portfolio today. We have 4 strong divisions. Industrials & Commodities is home to 2 market leaders with great cash flow characteristics, our Marine & Offshore product line as well as the oil and gas business within Energy & Industrials. The Energy and Industrials product line, of course, includes businesses where we are investing for growth, such as power and utilities. And in the commodities product line, we are investing behind the Metals and Minerals business. B&I includes mission-critical, but of course, it includes a lot more than that, including especially a vast base of OpEx-driven services in Europe and several CapEx-driven activities, both in the U.S. and in emerging markets. Business momentum in B&I has picked up considerably during '26, and we are excited about the growth momentum in this division.

Business Assurance is the smallest division today as a percentage of revenues and includes our leading assurance business. It also includes new trust domains like cyber and AI assurance and will be a key contributor to group organic growth in the years to come. Finally, product testing and services includes the vast majority of our testing activities in IPC. We have leadership positions in consumer and IPC and are investing to grow our technology product line. This division has an attractive sustainable growth profile and significant opportunities for CapEx investment in addition to M&A to support growth delivery. Bottom line, our portfolio provides us with a strong foundation to deliver sustainable and profitable growth. I hope the messages are clear. We operate in markets with attractive fundamentals, and our portfolio today is well positioned for sustainable and profitable growth.

As a final chapter, I want to share with you 2 important amplifiers of growth that are enabled by our multi-specialist approach, our strategic market priorities and M&A. As you heard from Hinda, we will complement our winning portfolio with strategic market priorities. We are specifically calling out these priorities for 2 reasons. These are attractive business segments with advantaged structural growth dynamics, global reach and attractive profitability. These segments have historically been challenging for us to access at scale, but which we can now access, thanks to our multi-specialist approach.

Why have they been so hard to access historically? The strategic market priorities are transversal, meaning that they draw on capabilities that sit across multiple businesses. For example, sustainability draws on capabilities that sit in all 4 divisions. A segment like defense requires capabilities that stretch across B&I and M&O. Additionally, addressing the needs of customers in this space often means drawing on resources from around the world as is the case for some of the AI-related businesses. Specialist product lines enable us to connect the dots and to deliver a compelling and comprehensive product offer.

By bringing focus and accountability on these segments, we will enhance the quality of our service for our customers and improve our ability to cross-sell. You will recognize sustainability from the 2024 CMD, and of course, this remains a focus. I will deep dive on this on the next slide.

In addition, we introduced today 3 additional priorities: AI-driven markets, defense and mining. I'll start with AI-related markets. This includes 2 areas of focus. We are supporting our clients all along the mission-critical value chain with a growing portfolio of services starting from a strong base in commissioning. Renato and Ciaran will deep dive into this in a moment with a focus on LotusWorks.

The second area of focus is AI assurance, a newly emerging market with significant potential. Bureau Veritas has been a global leader in assurance for decades. We have permission to win and lead in this space with our experts, our licenses to operate, our well-earned reputation for independence and the trust of our clients and their stakeholders. Our focus is to extend these capabilities into AI assurance, much as we have done in cyber. During the deep dives in the afternoon, my colleagues will share where we stand on this journey. And as Chief Corporate Development Officer, I'm excited to scout for new opportunities that accelerate the pace of our development in this critical area for LEAP 28 and beyond.

Defense is an area where we have meaningful capabilities and then there is no established global TIC leader. Today, our service offering is fragmented across our portfolio, both by geography and by product line, and it lacks critical mass. We are building a cohesive product offering in defense and extending our geographical reach to enable us to bring a compelling and complete offering to both existing and to new customers.

Finally, mining. We are in the global top 3 in metals and minerals with a lab network that has an attractive footprint and a well-balanced portfolio between upstream and trade.

Our opportunity is to leverage this strength with a focus on minerals, especially copper and gold, which benefit from favorable structural growth dynamics. We are ramping up our go-to-market for ancillary services for mining, including assurance, inspection and OpEx support. You'll see a tech corner that reflects this effort. I now want to spend some time on sustainability. Our focus on sustainability has evolved over the last 2 years together with the market.

Today, sustainability is a core component of risk management for our customers. This is a EUR 27 billion market growing at mid-double digits. 2/3 of this market is in transition services. This extends well beyond corporate reporting and includes supporting our clients across the entirety of their sustainability journey. 1/3 of this market is in green objects. We help our clients build, operate and maintain green assets while improving their operational excellence. Two examples. We support renewable energy assets throughout their life cycle, and we provide services for maritime decarbonization to support the deployment of green and low emission ships. Both transition services and green objects touch multiple parts of our business and are enabled by our multi-specialist approach.

Our sustainability revenues reflect good progress and have grown to 8% of our group revenues versus 5% in '23. Our target remains to increase sustainability to 15% of our revenues by 2028. We also continue to actively pursue acquisitions in this area to aid in the delivery of our growth ambition. Let me close by addressing M&A. M&A is an essential part of our growth delivery. We have acquired in excess of EUR 400 million of revenues across more than 20 transactions during LEAP 28 thus far. We aim to meet or exceed these levels during the second half of LEAP 28 while laying the groundwork for continued M&A momentum beyond '28.

The primary focus of our M&A strategy is to accelerate our group revenue growth while delivering earnings accretion midterm post synergies in the product line where the acquisition occurs. We are actively pursuing acquisitions across all of our divisions while recognizing that thanks to LotusWorks, B&I has been the primary beneficiary of M&A activity during the first half of our strategy. We remain focused on active portfolio management, and we regularly assess new markets to enter as well as potential disposals. That said, we expect that the large disposals we had anticipated have been announced.

Our focus for the second half of LEAP 28 is acquisitions. We are committed to executing a disciplined program of bolt-on M&A, which consists of fill-in acquisitions that extend our geographic reach in segments where we are already present as well as acquiring businesses that enhance our service offering, particularly in the new strongholds and in the strategic market priorities. We aim to complement bolt-on M&A execution with the acquisition of midsized targets that bring platforms with complementary capabilities to Bureau Veritas. We will, of course, remain disciplined with respect to such targets, always with a focus on value creation.

Our multi-specialist approach supports our ability to realize synergies across our portfolio of acquisitions by enabling our ability to scale acquired capabilities across our enterprise. Our commitment to strong value delivery from M&A is further enabled by a disciplined and systematic approach to integration. I would like to leave you with 3 messages. Portfolio rotation is complete, providing us with growth and margin tailwinds during the second half of LEAP 28. The multi-specialist approach underpins our ability to outperform our underlying market trends by enabling us to drive transversal initiatives like the strategic market priorities. And finally, focused execution on M&A will further amplify our revenue growth delivery. Thanks for your attention. Renato and Ciaran will now take you through our mission-critical business and how it has been enhanced by the LotusWorks transaction.

Well, thank you very much, Marios. Good morning. My name is Renato Catrib, and I'm the President of Buildings & Infrastructure and Mission Critical. I joined Bureau Veritas 24 years ago. And throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to work in a variety of roles across several geographies, spanning support functions, corporate development, sales and operations. Along this journey, I had the privilege and opportunity to grow the business, develop the portfolio and work on the acquisition and integration of companies across different markets.

Before handing over to Ciaran, I would like to briefly introduce the main topics we will cover today. Ciaran will begin by presenting the simplified structure of Buildings & Infrastructure and explaining where our mission-critical business sits within the organization. He will then provide an overview of mission-critical assets, the strategic priorities identified by Bureau Veritas and our existing data center business. I will then introduce LotusWorks and explain the unique platform created through the combination of our existing mission-critical business with LotusWorks. Ciaran, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Renato, and good afternoon, everyone or good morning, everyone. My name is Ciaran Hyland, and I've been managing the mission-critical data center business for Bureau Veritas for the past 8 years. And today, I'm going to give you some insights into that mission-critical business.

But before we deep dive into the mission-critical business, it's important to understand how we organize the Building & Infrastructure business and how Mission Critical fits within that portfolio. Building & Infrastructure is a defined division within Bureau Veritas and is organized into 2 product lines where one is in buildings where mission-critical sits and the other is in infrastructure.

Bureau Veritas offers numerous solutions from feasibility studies through construction and asset operations across the building and infrastructure product line. For buildings, we have a well-balanced portfolio between CapEx and OpEx activities and especially for mission-critical after the acquisition of LotusWorks, we operate in both phases of the asset life cycle. Infrastructure is strongly oriented for large-scale projects like rail, airports and metros as examples. Buildings represent 82% and infrastructure, 18% of the total business. So what is a mission-critical asset?

A mission-critical asset is an asset with a component or system whose failure would cause significant downtime, disrupting services for clients or society. These systems have high consequences of failure, which could result in shutdown of core business functions, financial loss or even safety risks. These systems are inherently complex. Their topology incorporates numerous pieces of equipment and software that must be seamlessly integrated into one single operating system.

Our team of technical specialists collaborate closely with organizations to ensure that the design is realized and the construction adheres to all specifications. And they need trusted technical assurance.

Over the past 8 years, we have developed long-standing partnerships with the largest data center providers, supporting all their design and delivery teams as they grow their infrastructure across the globe. For our clients, we ensure reliance and reliability. Our full life cycle commissioning services, tailored quality assurance programs support our clients at each distinct stage from the design through construction, through commissioning and into the operations.

Given today's market dynamics, speed to capacity is increasingly essential, and we achieved this by creating detailed milestone-based commissioning schedules, preventing rework through rigorous testing and executing parallel subsystem commissioning.

And finally, we operate at scale. Given the strength and the depth of our teams, we support our global clients who need consistency in delivering projects simultaneously across their platform. We adopt a selective strategy focusing on mission-critical fast-growing complex sectors, such as data centers and now semiconductor facilities and pharmaceuticals, each of which require specialized services and seasoned professionals mirroring the platform we have successfully built in data centers. So as mentioned over the past number of years, we have grown significantly in the data center sector. We offer 3 distinct services.

Firstly, quality assurance and quality control. Here, we deliver end-to-end support at the design phase throughout the manufacturing of the equipment and across the construction life cycle. We leverage comprehensive process monitoring and regulatory compliance checks to ensure consistent, verifiable quality. We also offer full life cycle commissioning. This is our performance assurance, where our dedicated project specialists support all stakeholders of the project by executing commissioning ability studies, factory acceptance testing, component level testing and functional performance tests of each system. We complete each project with what is called an integrated system test where we prove out all failures under multiple failure modes.

Commissioning is a dedicated technical methodology to make sure that the facility will perform according to the specification and the design intent. Operations and consultancy is currently a niche market with limited scope, but as Renato will explain, LotusWorks now brings significant capabilities in this area. We have over 132 global data center clients and operate in over 35 countries and have over 1,000 technical engineering specialists. We established a dedicated mission-critical university to continually cultivate the expertise needed for tomorrow. This initiative directly supports the growth strategy by ensuring that we have talent and capabilities to scale our services both across mature and emerging markets. So as you can see, we've built a very successful, scalable delivery platform for all mission-critical assets. Now I hand it back over to Renato, who will talk about the next phase of expansion for this mission-critical platform.

Thank you very much. Well, let me now introduce LotusWorks and explain why this acquisition is such an important milestone in the development of our mission-critical platform. LotusWorks is a highly specialized technical services company with more than 35 years of experience in advanced fabrication facilities and more than 800 qualified professionals. LotusWorks has established positions in semiconductors, pharmaceutical facilities and data center projects. It has built a particularly strong reputation in the semiconductors industry, one of the most demanding and technically complex type of mission-critical assets.

The company is widely recognized for its expertise in commissioning, quality assurance and quality control, supporting clients in bringing highly complex facilities to their expected operational performance. These capabilities are especially recognized in semiconductor manufacturing, where quality, precision and uptime are absolutely critical.

Importantly, LotusWorks brings much more than commissioning expertise. They have also developed a meaningful portfolio of operational services, including operational support, maintenance and calibration activities. These services allow LotusWorks to remain connected to clients and assets long after the CapEx phase has been completed, creating deeper customer relationships and more recurring revenue streams.

And when we combine LotusWorks with our existing mission-critical business, we create something much bigger than the sum of its parts. LotusWorks significantly strengthens our global leadership in mission-critical assets. Here, you can see a simple view of our capabilities across the asset life cycle from CapEx activities such as commissioning and construction services through to OpEx services across our 3 mission-critical priorities: data centers, semiconductors and pharmaceutical facilities. The blue bubbles represent Bureau Veritas's existing capabilities, while the green bubbles show the additional capabilities brought by LotusWorks.

As you can see, our mission-critical business has historically been concentrated in commissioning and construction services for data centers. LotusWorks meaningfully expands these platforms in 2 important ways. First, it strengthens our presence in operational services, extending our reach across the full life cycle of mission-critical assets. Second, it broadens our exposure beyond data centers through deep expertise and strong market recognition in semiconductors together with established presence in pharmaceutical facilities. These are 2 clear and complementary expansion drivers, expanding our capabilities across the asset life cycle and expanding our presence into additional high-growth mission-critical markets.

Together, Bureau Veritas Mission-critical and LotusWorks result in a combined platform representing more than 1,800 qualified professionals with revenues exceeding EUR 300 million in 2026 and operations in over 35 countries.

By combining Bureau Veritas's global leadership in data centers with LotusWorks recognized expertise in semiconductors, pharmaceutical facilities and operational services, we are creating a unique mission-critical platform that is broader, more diversified and better positioned for sustainable growth. Most importantly, we are building on a strong and complementary customer base, creating a powerful platform for our next phase of growth, our global leadership and reinforcing our global leadership in mission-critical assets. Thank you very much for your attention.

Okay. So thank you, Hinda, Marios, Emma, Ciaran and Renato. Hope you enjoyed the first part of this morning plenary session. So we've heard about how Bureau Veritas has transformed its portfolio, sharpened its focus and position itself for the next phase of growth.

So now it's your turn. We'll move to the Q&A session. And because our speakers this morning have been super efficient, we'll have a bit more time for Q&A, and I'm sure you will appreciate. So just to give you a couple of information. So we'll start with a question from the room, then we'll move to the webcast. Please focus only on the first part of this morning. So no financial question. It will be discussed later on when Francois will present you the financial ambition. So let's start with the first question. Annelies, the floor is yours.

It's coming.

It's coming. And please come to the -- that will be much easier if the speakers are here to answer the questions. So please...

Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. I have 2 questions, please. So just firstly, on the organic growth, you're still targeting mid- to high single-digit, but you're obviously accelerating your portfolio mix into higher-growth segments, and that's going to continue with the growth into AI. So what do you think that implies for organic growth beyond the LEAP 28 plan if you think about the next 2 years, do you think B&I could sustainably become more of a high single-digit organic growth business?

So thanks, Annelies, for the question. I think what we're doing right now is we are in that process of putting together the multi-specialist model, and I think we talked about it this morning. Mid- to high single digits is what we see to the horizon of 2028. Of course, a lot of we talked about in terms of M&A between myself and Marios was gearing towards a bit higher growth, a little premature to say exactly what that will be beyond 2028. But I think what's important here is in the next 2 years, we'll continue to work relentlessly to make sure that the product lines really upgrade their growth profile. And then in 2028, we will answer that question precisely.

And a quick follow-up on defense, which I wanted to delve into. I think historically, that's been quite a low outsourcing market for testing for security reasons. So what is changing here? We know about the growth in defense markets, but what is it about that market that is now perhaps more addressable to BVI. And I assume that will also be a target for acquisitions as well.

I'll let Marios, do you want to address that?

Sure. Look, I think it's an evolving market. The complexity of the defense market is significant and the different parts of the value chain have evolved significantly. So obviously, there's a very important government component. But we are addressing the defense market today in a meaningful way, but not in many geographies. So the opportunity is to deepen that. And again, it's enabled by the multi-specialist approach and the product line focus.

I think perhaps just to add to that, Annelies, is that transverse nature of the market is very important. So there are services we can do, for example, in our building and infrastructure and defense, in business assurance. And where you're absolutely correct. When it comes to industrial and commodities and product testing, that's where the level of, I guess, invasiveness of an external player becomes a concern. But as Marios mentioned, we do work today for some defense projects that I can't discuss, unfortunately. But those are the things we're looking to scale and see where can we actually expand.

Suhasini from Goldman Sachs.

Just a couple for me as well, please. I think just to follow up on defense. Just trying to understand the scope for organic versus M&A opportunity here and which countries maybe in particular that you're targeting? Is it -- or geographies at least, is it Europe versus the U.S. versus rest of the world? Just getting some color there, please. And the EUR 1 billion revenue target by 2030 from the new areas, what is the state of the M&A pipeline today? How much do you expect to add via M&A versus organic growth? Maybe just some color there as well, please.

Let me address the defense and then we'll tag team on the second question on AI. So on defense, I think, as I said, the important thing for us is to think of the defense market as a transverse market. So our, I would say, natural inclination is to say you're going to test new weaponry, for example. That's not what we are talking about today. We're thinking about all our capabilities. And as defense spending increases, there are needs for inspection and testing and assurance. So give you an example -- for example. In terms of facilities, there's a lot of work in that space, right?

Why? Because there are elements of not only security, but there is certain requirements in the defense sector that are very specific, and we have this competency in terms of early, for example, support during construction phase and then later on for facilities management support. So we do some of that today, and we want to expand.

We have capabilities, of course, in the marine space we do today. And we have multiple contracts in countries to support some national marine or Navy to work on different projects. I can't really go into the details, of course, for security reasons, but we have that sort of work we do. We want to expand.

And then the third one, which is participating fully into the production system. That's the part that, to Annelies' earlier point, that's an area that is normally a lot more in-sourced. And our intention here is to participate in any outsourcing that is coming anyway just because of the ramp-up of the defense spending and the lack of capability. So that's really we're sitting in that phase. Now while we're waiting for that outsourcing to happen, anything organic in that transverse market is -- that's what will carry the growth.

On the second question, I will start by saying that, first of all, we have made the LotusWorks acquisition in the mission-critical space. We have our existing data center that Ciaran explained earlier. We expect organic growth to continue in that area. That's really what is carrying us primarily.

Now in terms of capabilities, we're scouting for capabilities to say what can we do beyond just the capabilities we have today because we do commissioning, but there are many other things you can do in a data center, particularly in the -- what we call the operations and maintenance phase or OpEx phase, right, that we are looking at. And I'll pass it to Marios in a second here. But the second part of that EUR 1 billion is the EUR 200 million is coming from digital assurance. And digital assurance there is 2 parts. It's AI assurance and cybersecurity. And there, we will be looking to do a combination of organic and M&A, but we'll let Marios comment on the M&A piece.

Look, we have a well-defined organic road map across both of those dimensions. And then particularly on the second part, the digital assurance and the cyber, but also on the first, we then scout for targets and see where we can either accelerate elements of the organic road map or where there are side branches of opportunity that fit that road map. And that's -- but fundamentally, these are capabilities we need and we can build organically and the M&A is an accelerator of that rather than a must-have.

So the next question over there.

Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Three questions for me, please. Firstly, there's a persistent gap between the multiple that BV trades on and the private market transaction multiples in this sector. Today, you're outlining a plan to accelerate higher growth, higher margin and probably higher multiple M&A growth into the future.

At the same time, you described the existing portfolio is well set to benefit from higher structural growth potential. How do you think about the relative value of deploying capital into high multiple M&A versus buying back your own stock? And how can you ensure that continuing to pursue high multiple targets will result in value creation and not instead in value destruction?

So I think what we have said very clearly is that we are pursuing specific markets that have higher growth and higher margins, very importantly, higher barriers to entry. We remain extremely disciplined in how we pursue the M&A, and we compete on multiples that make sense to us, and we are not shy, I would say, from walking away from transactions that actually don't complete that. We're very clear that whatever we buy needs to be accretive to the product line. The businesses we buy are accretive in terms of growth and profitability to the division that is buying it. And we make an arbitrage on the multiples.

And I don't think at any time, we have pursued just higher multiple for the sake of it. And it is a very competitive market. It's fair to say. We have a lot of private equity, of course, in this space who drive things for different reasons. We remain extremely -- the word is disciplined and careful because we think we have the advantage, and we know we have the advantage of scale that gives us proximity that these other sponsors don't have. And therefore, I think Marios explained it, but you can explain it again, is our capacity to leverage that presence, that proximity and the brand that we are, I think, helps us mitigate the multiple challenge sometimes on some transactions. Do you want to add to that?

Yes. Look, and the very high multiple transactions tend to happen in the larger -- for very large transactions. And we talked about having 2 components. One is programmatic bolt-on M&A where the multiples are not at those levels. And if we were to pursue a transaction on the midsized or larger, again, the value creation levers would need to be there and will be there enabled by the scalability brought by the product line approach.

The second question on the secular trends that you've outlined today. They're slightly different understandably to the ones that you highlighted 2.5 years ago. Given a large part of the strategy outlined today is on continuing to deploy capital into these secular trends, how much confidence do you have in the durability of these secular trends as compared to the ones that you highlighted 2.5 years ago? And a related question, over the last 2.5 years, have you moved any of your businesses between the various value buckets? Do you see businesses that maybe previously were optimized value are now expand leadership, for example?

So a couple of things. I think -- and thank you for the question because I think it's an important point to clarify. We haven't really changed. What we highlighted is that the secular trends we showed in '24 have evolved for 4 reasons. The first one is the technology race has accelerated, as we've explained, the digital infrastructure spend, particularly to support AI. And we -- and that also introduced the reindustrialization because if you look today, the reindustrialization, if we use a very broad term, has accelerated around AI, particularly around semiconductor and any specialized manufacturing has moved very quickly because of this whole drive. So that's a change versus what you said about urbanization, for example.

Digital and AI didn't change. It's really connectivity, we moved now to full-scale deployment of digital system and AI. And energy, we talked about energy demand is the big kind of new force. But what happened here is the only thing we're saying is the energy transition alone is no longer just the driver. It's more of an energy addition where we are seeing really all energy sources now for energy security reasons are accelerating, which is good for us because we're well positioned in oil and gas to start with, and then we are expanding.

And then finally, frankly, on the rest, the only thing I would like to highlight is the risk management approach has really increased versus a regulatory compliance view in terms of ESG and sustainability. Those are the things. So for me, they haven't changed. They have evolved slightly. And we continue to monitor this evolution because it allow us as well to move the portfolio faster within the product lines. The second part of your question is, did we move around the bucket? We did not. That's where we sit today. Now of course, as we move in the next couple of years and for beyond 2028, we will have to make that assessment again.

And then just a final very quick question. The upgraded revenue growth guidance, does that mean that looking forward to '27 and '28, probably we are done with disposals? Or is there still potential for further rotation through disposals in the business?

Francois, do you want...

Well, I think overall, I think it's been mentioned by Marios in his presentation, the bulk -- the largest one of the disposal we had in mind have been completed. Now we're in a constant portfolio reshaping and assessing the quality of all of the business we have. The short answer is most of it is done. Some may still come, but the bulk of the effort will be in accretive M&A. You'll see that in the financial presentation. When you do net M&A acquisition and disposal, you have a kind of already a very different view. And we would like to reinforce the M&A accretion in the next 2 years in a disciplined manner. And again, coming back to your point on multiples, we've seen a lot of what we would call proprietary deals, which are trading well below the type of multiples we are offering. So we believe we have the firepower and the capacity to accelerate on the accretive part of M&A.

Victoria from JPM.

My first question is on the mining business. You've highlighted mining as a key growth accelerator market along with sustainability, defense, AI, et cetera. But your Metals & Minerals business is still classified within the optimized value basket despite having a top 3 position. So can you help bridge this difference? And what other key commodities you're exposed to now given that you've disposed of the core testing business? And generally, what's your upstream versus trade mix and how you expand -- expect to grow in the more complex methods that you've mentioned?

Yes. Thank you for the question. So for us, the mining market, as shown by Marios, is the full exposure of our services to the mining market. So it's not only the metals and minerals. It includes inspection, for example, and other services. So that's how we are. We're looking at it as a transverse market again, where we go beyond what we traditionally do in that market and do other services. So that's for the cross-selling piece. To come back to the Metals & Minerals, it is true that we put it in the optimized value and impact. But there are 2 things we're doing today.

First of all, the cycle -- the super cycle is ongoing and it's structural, and we see it in precious metals. We see it in what we call green metals, including copper. And there, there is long-term trends that are very positive. And we are investing now in -- we are accelerating our investment in CapEx, and we will be opportunistic for M&A. It's a space that doesn't have a lot of players. It's not -- you don't have 50 players in that space. There are very few. So the fact is sitting on the optimized value impact is the capabilities to do beyond organic growth that was limited.

Now with this market, with our decision to invest and accelerate spend in that space, I think we will -- we see more opportunities. And to the earlier question, I wouldn't be surprised in a couple of years that business moves somewhere else. But we have really changed, I would say, our approach to metals and minerals because we believe we have real opportunities. And today, 2/3 of the business is upstream and 1/3 is trade, and we intend to continue to expand in upstream. Do you want to add to that, Francois?

No, I think the question that keeps on coming is what about those buckets? Do they change, not change? I think when you run the business, and I know that analysts have sometimes difficulties to get around this is you need to adapt. So I think there are some of the assumptions we've made, which have proven too conservative. And then we will -- typically on Metals & Minerals, most probably moving forward, we may reconsider, as I mentioned, in the next phase of a plan to bucketize this a bit differently. But that's the beauty of running a business in the real life.

It's bringing a smile to our President of Commodities. So just...

He is happy. He already CapEx approval...

I mean just a follow-up on the buckets again, sorry. On M&O, is that a similar situation because it also sits into your optimized value basket? What do you think are the key growth drivers here? Is it more the oil and gas? Or how much is the kind of decarbonization agenda going to be in terms of materiality to growth here?

I think for Marine & Offshore, it's a slightly different space because the market is a good market. It's between EUR 4.5 billion, EUR 5 billion market. But the players, a lot of them have some -- we talked about the Navies, et cetera, before. This is not a space where things can consolidate easier. So that's why we put it there. We still think it's a fantastic business, and it has delivered really above normative growth, I would say, in the last few years with a massive development. I think the key thing for Marine & Offshore is to expand their services on the asset that is a ship. What can we do more around the ship, around the ecosystem of marine, around everything that has to do with marine. We have fantastic expertise. It's an engineering really product line that we have there that can expand. And that's really what our chiefs there who are sitting here as well are working on to see how do we expand, but we continue to be a core class company with capabilities to support shipowners throughout the life cycle of the ship.

Next question, maybe Arnaud in the middle. You can share mic, maybe just talk to you back later.

James Rowland Clark from Barclays. Just on AI, I think you said on the presentation, you target 30% integration by 2028. What is that integration today? And how much has it helped margins to this point? I realize we'll probably talk about AI more later. And then more on M&A, please, if that's all right. Could you help us with the balance of platform versus bolt-on deals? I appreciate that AI is a big focus for platform deals potentially, but what about the rest of the business? And then finally, on M&A, how is the pipeline looking today versus maybe 6 to 12 months ago because M&A to this point has perhaps been a bit slower than the market was expecting. So how can you reassure us that you've got the deals coming through?

So let Marios, you go with the M&A, we will answer AI after. Go ahead.

Look, I think let me start with the pipeline and then go to the platform versus bolt-ons. Look, I think the pipeline is in good shape. We have good momentum. The market is there. There's plenty of deal activity. And it's about us executing on that in the best way possible, which is focusing on cultivating proprietary deals where we can and participating in an information advantaged way in competitive processes. So we're actively working through that. And look, we delivered more than 20 transactions in the first half of the strategy, over EUR 400 million of acquired revenues. And as I said, our objective is to at least meet that and hopefully exceed that over the next 2 years.

Now the question is, is it bolt-on or the midsize? The bolt-on, I would say, is part of the regular activity that we see. The midsize, we're, of course, working on those as well. Those are harder to predict because to the question that was raised earlier, the value creation equation there can sometimes be more challenging to get right, and we're going to be very disciplined. So when we do a platform deal, it's about bringing new capabilities into the company. And as I said, it could happen across all 4 divisions. And what we really look for is companies that bring new capabilities and that we can then create value from the product lines and the cross-selling that has been talked about. So that -- so again, -- but it's harder to predict the midsized deals in quite the same way.

On the AI piece, what we're doing today and Noor Sait, our Chief Performance Officer, is going to go through some of that along with Philipp Karmires, our Chief Digital, will also talk about that. But what we mean by full integration, meaning that this workflow itself of a particular service has been really fully reengineered with AI. That's what we mean full integration. And we -- the reason we said 30% by 2028 because some of these are just starting. So we will detail that. And those of you who have signed up for the certification session and the inspection session, those are 2 sessions that can show you some of the early promises of AI and how that is conducive to us to really revamp and review.

And the last point I would like to make is some platforms, we started them before really, I would say, fully and quite candidly grasping what AI can do. So we are putting it on top, while others were really at the inception of this new operation system. And there, we are starting it in an expert first only always, but AI really native way. We're rethinking about the journey. So if you just hold that thought a little bit, I think we will address that a bit more later on. Do you want to comment on the margin?

On the margin, I don't want to steal the thunder from our next presentators Noor and Philippe's presentations, but it's ingrained into performance programs that we have been starting to develop, and you'll see the state by the end of '26. And that's the next level of further improvements for the next 2 years. So if you roll down the second for the second half, you will get more insight and then we can come back to this in the next Q&A if you need more.

Next, Arnaud. The floor is yours.

Arnaud Palliez, CIC. A question on cybersecurity. It seems that 2 years ago, it was more of a development priority for Bureau Veritas. So I would like to understand if there is a change in terms of the development potential for business assurance in cybersecurity or if it is because cybersecurity is everywhere in defense, in AI-driven businesses, so just to try to better understand.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question. So cybersecurity was sitting in our new strongholds. It remains there. Why? Because the market is double digit. It's very pervasive to your point. It's a concern every organization has. We haven't changed our mind. I think what really was interesting to see very quickly is the cyber challenges and risks have increased dramatically, particularly with AI.

And the way you develop the capabilities is evolving. So it's not always -- we have a very nice businesses that go look at enterprise risks in general that took out some of the connected products, and then we have the operation technology, which is industrial assets, cyber, and we have really very strong expertise there.

We're now trying to reconcile that with how AI capabilities are, in a way, either boosting opportunities or changing the game in some of these areas. So we didn't change our mind. We continue to scout for good opportunities, but with this new lens that in '24, to be completely frank, that wasn't as understood as where we are today. And we have a couple of presentations. I think we have a presentation this afternoon in the deep dive, the new trust domain that will specifically talk about that.

So we still have time for 2 questions for the break.

It's Tom Horsey from Wellington. Thank you very much for inviting us here and putting the whole day on. Just it feels as though when you think about these verticals like -- or horizontals like defense and sustainability and mining that at some stage, you felt as though maybe BV was too siloed to really address them. So could you talk a bit about really how that became apparent and what you've actually changed to break down those silos to allow you to address these markets and how you're monitoring that the people really understand what their new role is?

Yes. Thank you. Good to see you, Thomas. Thanks for the question. Look, I think we were very clear. The new operating model I described, and Maria will give the people lens of that later on, is really about breaking silos. When we put together the new organization, it was the first -- in fact, the motto was divide and conquer. We really wanted to make sure that the strength of our region, which is fantastic proximity to customers, understanding deeply what's happening in the production systems and what's happening in the economies where they sit, the regulatory landscape where they sit was very strong. But we felt that the product lines because they were fragmented geographically didn't connect.

And some of these businesses require that, either because the global -- the business is really of global nature or because the customers themselves have certain needs or the industry has a certain -- we talked about mining is a global sector. So we realized that we needed an organization that preserves that strength of the regions and strengthens the product line so they can move quickly, replicate solutions quickly, connect accounts and enable cross-selling because cross-selling is very hard when you're extremely geographical, right? You need to be geographical for the proximity of the customer and to serve, but you need to have a channel that can do that cross-selling.

And that's why for us, this strategic market priorities is all about cross-selling. It's capacity to facilitate it through the key account organization through the product lines and by making regions that are very similar in composition where it makes sense. So it's easy to make these decisions, right?

Maria will show you -- will talk about that. The key thing is, one, the organization and how it connects. So those are the things we launched in summer '25 and now the organization has progressed. Two, the leadership traits, there is a certain leadership behaviors we expect. And then finally, the incentive system that needs to align all that. And those are the things we have been working on in the last, I would say, 12 months plus.

Okay. The last question we come from [indiscernible]

[indiscernible]. I think one of the most discussed topic this year was one of the largest transaction in the space over the last few years, the Intertek 0transaction with EQT. Were there some conclusions that you draw from this transaction? And were some of those conclusions potentially reflected in the plan you are presenting us today?

Thank you for the questions, [indiscernible]. Good questions. Of course, it's a defining move, right? It's such a large competitor. I think what it means is, in fact, -- that move reinforces our conviction that we need to advance and progress on our multi-specialist. Growth is going to require that focus. Our approach to focus, we never really talked about multi-specialist when we launched in 2024, but I can tell you that was the jargon we were thinking about and really the direction we wanted to go to because the market uptick of testing, inspection and certification has evolved and requires a lot more technology. It requires a lot more new ways of working that we didn't have in the sector before. So we were working in that direction. And the fact to see one of the competitors in that position, it reinforces our conviction is the best way to grow is to do all these things so we can become a more valuable company. So it's a move that to us reinforces our strategic direction. That answers your question. I don't know if anyone wants to comment.

I have just another comment perhaps. I think it's a great move. It shows investors have an interest in this segment. And I think some of you have been following Veritas for quite long. And we've gone through -- the sector has gone through some years of less interest. I think those years have definitely gone.

We've launched here at Bureau Veritas, the first movement of starting to dispose some of the portfolios a couple of years back with movements happening. Now this movement is happening with Intertek. I think it's quite interesting. It shows that there is interest and then some of the valuation here around being questioned.

So all in all, the growth agenda that Hinda mentioned is the most powerful tool for Veritas to demonstrate to create value. You consider the Intertek story, obviously, they were the least growing entities among the listed assets.

Okay. So thank you all for your questions. We'll now have a 20-minute deserved break, coffee break. Feel free to ask questions during the break. And let's be back at 11:10 -- we'll restart at 11:10 sharp. So let's be back at 11:05.

[ Break ]

We will be focusing on 2 key pillars of our LEAP I 28 strategy, performance on one side and people on the other side. So first, Noor Sait will take us through how we are strengthening performance across the group. We then turn to our people agenda with Maria Fraguas Lorente and because no discussion about the future will be complete without innovation, Philipp Karmires, our Chief Digital & Innovation Officer, will join us to discuss how AI is already transforming the way we work, serve our clients and create value.

So please join me in welcoming Noor to the stage.

Good morning, and welcome to the Performance-Led Execution presentation. My name is Noor Sait, and I'm the Chief Performance Officer at Bureau Veritas. I joined Bureau Veritas a year ago after spending more than 30 years in the upstream oil and gas industry. During that time, I led and grew engineering, manufacturing and field operations businesses in several locations around the world. Improving performance has been central to all my roles, and I'm very excited to bring this experience to Bureau Veritas and to join an impressive ongoing effort to improve how we work at scale.

Over the next few minutes, I will walk you through the performance-led pillar. I will share what has been delivered at the midpoint of the LEAP I 28 strategy against our commitments that we made in 2024. And I will show you that the performance agenda is a structured effort with tangible progress and results applied across a large portion of the organization. It consists of multiple programs and projects designed to improve how we operate and how we work and how we deliver value.

I will begin by reconnecting the program to our stakeholder commitments. As Hinda has shared earlier, our purpose anchors our plans and vision and defines the commitments we make to all our stakeholders. For our clients, that means putting them at the center of what we do and the experience we provide them and the novel solutions we develop, all supported by the LEAP I 28 strategy and especially by the portfolio pillar that Maria has just covered.

For our employees, it means helping them progress and develop to bring growth and impact, and this is covered in the evolving -- in the Evolved people model, which Maria will present later. For society, it means operating transparently and contributing to a more sustainable world as reflected in the CSR progress I will share with you.

And for our investors, it means stepping up our operational performance to unlock growth, improve margins and create the capacity to reinvest in the business. Performance-led execution, therefore, sits at the heart of our stakeholder commitments. It is not just a financial imperative. It is how we build and sustain trust with every stakeholder that we serve.

Turning to our corporate social responsibility commitments. Our CSR plan is built around our vision to shape a better world through a better environment, a better workplace and through better business practices. This journey started with the Bureau Veritas sustainability framework and continues through engagement with external stakeholders, our Board of Governance Committee and our employees around the world. Our targets cover 5 priorities, and we are making good progress across all of them. This progress is recognized through our external ratings such as our #1 ranking from Sustainalytics, our #2 sector ranking by S&P Global and our gold rating from EcoVadis.

I will now move to the performance programs that support our investor and customer commitments. So performance and execution consists of 2 streams. The first is operational leverage and functional scalability and the second is innovation.

Operational leverage and functional scalability focus on improving efficiency and productivity, reducing our cost to serve, differentiating through superior customer service and supporting growth. The second stream, innovation, provides the digital backbone that enables our performance programs and supports new services and delivery models. Philipp will take us -- tell us more about that in the digital and AI session next.

My presentation focuses on operational leverage and functional scalability and the innovation embedded in the performance programs that I will share. As we shared in 2024, performance-led execution has one clear financial objective. It is to deliver 180 basis points of cumulative margin improvement from 2023 to '28 with half of the gains reinvested to fund modernization and growth. We will now look more closely at the operational leverage and functional scalability streams. The slide summarizes how these streams are organized and the programs and the projects under them as well as the commitments and progress.

Under the operational leverage stream, we have 3 programs supported by multiple projects with an ambition to deliver up to 100 basis points of cumulative margin improvement from '23 to '28. The 3 programs under the stream are performance management, process improvement and tech augmented ways of working. Similar to innovation, our progress on tech augmented ways of working will be evident in the performance programs I share.

Under the functional scalability stream, we have 3 programs supported by projects with an ambition to deliver up to 80 basis points of cumulative margin improvement from 2023 to '28. The 3 programs under this stream are shared service centers, strategic procurement and overhead management. From '24 to '26, the focus was on securing gains through optimization. And from now to '28, the focus is on realizing the benefits from our structural investments.

Moving now to the results achieved. This slide shows our margin gains to date from the programs. We have achieved approximately 110 basis points, as Hinda has already shared, towards the ambition we shared in 2024 of the 180 basis points by 2028. Of this 110 basis points, operational leverage has contributed 50 basis points. And the remaining 60 basis points have come from functional scalability. Just past the midpoint of the LEAP I 28 strategy, I can tell you delivery is on track.

From '24 to '26, our focus was on capturing early optimization wins while laying the foundation for more structural gains in the second half of LEAP I 28. By 2028, we will deliver the remaining 70 basis points as our optimization wins compound and our structural investments bear fruit. In the next 3 slides, I will step into the 3 programs that contribute to our current progress and to our future 180 basis points ambition.

I will start with functional scalability. Functional scalability has been the largest contributor to the gains we have made so far. The program has delivered 60 basis points from the 110 achieved to date. The program combines 3 connected actions. First, we have maintained disciplined overhead management by ensuring functional costs grow slowly -- slower than revenue. Second, we launched strategic procurement projects such as supplier base reduction and spend consolidation with suppliers. And third, we created and deployed the shared service center model, starting with IT across 4 global hubs.

In IT, we have achieved 32% of our workforce being centralized, and we have achieved 30% reduction in our payroll costs. The structural work ahead is to complete the IT deployment and expand the finance and HR functions into the shared service center model. The model covers 43% of the workforce in the shared service workforce. I will now turn to the 2 programs under operational leverage, starting with performance management.

The first program under operational leverage is performance management. This program contributes approximately 30% of the total cumulative 50 basis points delivered to date for operational leverage. The objective was to create a consistent data-driven operations discipline across the organization where we had inconsistent local solutions. We created standardized KPIs, a common global dashboard and a performance methodology that has helped managers turn data into decisions. The scale is significant, 63% of the global production workforce is in the scope of the performance program.

As an example, in one midsized business unit using the methodology, we achieved a 24% improvement in net production per FTE, per field technical engineer. This is a good example of the methodology working as designed, and it continues to replicate across the globe. Scaling the program across all product lines and management layers is a key contributor to our total 180 basis point improvement ambition by 2028.

The second program under operational leverage is process improvement, which contributes the remaining 70% of the total cumulative 50 basis points being achieved today for operational leverage. Process improvement is about building and deploying digital operation systems for our 5 key workflows across a large portion of the company. The program covers 58% of our global workforce. These digital operation systems standardize how we work and how we reduce our costs to serve.

An added benefit is that the programs create the digital landscape for an AI integration. Approximately 60% of these digital operation systems are deployed to date, and the system will be fully deployed by 2027. As deployment scales and the system enhancements compound, process improvement will continue to drive the contributions from operational leverage. I will make this program tangible by sharing an example of one digital operation system for the certification solutions workflow.

So SmartCert is an end-to-end digital workflow management system developed for our certification solutions product line. It is one of the clearest illustrations of what our digital operations systems deliver at scale. The system integrates the full certification solutions workflow from sales to invoicing and everything in between in a single integrated digital operations system. For the clients, the system also provides live interaction and project visibility.

For our teams, it reduces manual tasks by 43%, reduces by half the number of systems they previously needed to access across the workflow, and it increases our capacity by about 15%. This is exactly how process improvement and other digital operations systems create value by standardizing workflows, simplifying the employee experience, improving client deployment into measurable operational gains.

At full deployment by Q2 2027, the project aims at delivering 150 basis points organic margin improvement compared to 2023 by 2028. The harmonized workflows and digital operations systems like SmartCert also enable modernizing our way of working through -- further through AI enablement. So our digital operation systems like SmartCert provide the foundation for AI, which is already moving from experimentation to providing operational value.

We see this happening at 3 levels across the company. First, more than 22,000 AI assistants have been created by skilled employees to improve their day-to-day work. Second, more than 300 employee-created assistants have been validated and published for reuse across the organization. And third, more than 140 solutions -- AI solutions are integrated directly into our workflows. At this level, AI becomes part of how we work, creating operational leverage at scale.

Two examples bring this to life. In Marine & Offshore, an AI-powered knowledge management system covering approximately 15,000 pages of complex rules and standards strengthens the expertise, sharing them across 2,000 experts. In Consumer Product Services, an AI integrated into our digital lab operations system automates the ingestion of approximately 2 million client requests forms and has saved an estimated 150,000 hours.

You will see more examples of AI-enabled projects later in the digital and AI session and in the tech corners and deep dives. This reinforces the performance story because AI is becoming the next layer of structural value creation on top of our digital operations system.

And as Hinda has already mentioned, our next frontier is to reimagine and reengineer the end-to-end workflows with AI. At the midpoint of our LEAP 28 strategy, we have delivered tangible progress at scale, including 110 basis points of margin improvement. These gains have come primarily from optimization efforts with functional scalability making the largest contribution.

At the same time, our structural projects are in process and are modernizing how we work as we move to digital workflows and begin to integrate AI-enabled operations. We have a clear path towards 180 basis point ambition by the end of 2028. The next phase is about scaling our programs, accelerating our adoption and extracting full value from the systems capabilities that we have built. Of course, performance excellence cannot be achieved through process, systems and technology alone. This is why the evolved people model is so essential.

Thank you for your time. Maria, over to you.

Thank you, Noor. After so many numbers, I'm going to give you a break, and we're going to talk about people. I'm Maria Lorente Fraguas, Chief People Officer at Bureau Veritas. I joined the company about 2 years ago with 25 years' experience in the energy sector.

I have an engineering background, and I spent half of my career in product development and operations roles internationally before transitioning to HR. And this combination of operational experience and people leadership allows our people function to act as a true connector between strategy and execution. And this is particularly relevant for us at Bureau Veritas because our success relies on our people and their expertise.

Noor has explained how we are executing and amplifying our performance programs. But what does it take to sustain this performance? It takes having the right organization, strong leadership and the right capabilities. And this is the role of our Evolved people model. It is the pillar that connects portfolio strategy and performance execution, ensuring we build and deploy the capabilities to win in our chosen markets and to sustain also performance at scale.

In 2024, we made 2 commitments to develop new economy skills in areas like sustainability, energy transition and digital and to embed augmented ways of working across the organization, helping our people work more effectively and focus their expertise where it creates the greatest value. Two years on, those priorities are as relevant as ever, and we are on track with the programs well established to deliver them.

So let me share with you the progress we have made in our programs, placing the experts at the center of our people strategy and building on what makes us unique, the scale and depth of our expertise. As Hinda mentioned earlier, we are a global multi-specialist company. More than 64,000 technical experts work across 10 product lines with a wide range of expertise distributed across more than 90 different technical domains.

And these figures illustrate not only our scale, but also the breadth and the depth of our expertise, the expertise that we can bring to our customers because our experts understand the industries in which our customers operate, the regulatory environment they must navigate and also the technical risks they need to manage. So our opportunity is very clear to make this expertise more visible, more connected and easier to deploy across the organization.

And this becomes even more important as the world of work changes around us. In 2022 -- 2024, we also highlighted 2 major shifts: the growing scarcity of critical skills, and the emergence of technology augmented ways of working, and both shifts have now intensified. Critical skills remain scarce and are evolving rapidly in areas like sustainability, cyber and AI. And these are not just peripheral topics to us. They're increasingly central to the services our customers require from us.

So recruitment alone is not enough. We must develop these capabilities internally and at scale. At the same time, AI is changing how work is done. It's changing the nature of the work itself, but also the technology our people use and it's also changing the capabilities that our experts, managers and leaders need to have. And for us, as we mentioned before, there is an additional dimension. We need the AI capabilities to transform how we work internally for sure.

But we also are building the expertise to assess these technologies and give customers confidence in their use. So we have a dual responsibility to use AI effectively and to build trust in its use. And because all these changes are happening at an unprecedented pace, our ability to learn and adapt will increasingly determine our ability to lead, which is why the priorities we set in 2024 matter even more today.

So over the past 2 years, our focus has been on putting the foundations in place. We started with the operating model because the organization and mindset had to evolve before everything else could. And we began to build the capabilities we needed to support our growth priorities, including programs such as the sustainability graduate program. And together, these elements provide the organizational, leadership and capability foundations of our evolve people model.

I will cover each of them, starting with the operating model. And we started with this because to become a multi-specialist company, we need an organization that makes it easier to develop, connect and deploy expertise. As Maria explained earlier, our portfolio strategy has 2 priorities: focus our portfolio on the most attractive markets and extending the reach of our specialist product lines across customers and also geographies.

And our operating model is enabling both because it combines a product line-centric organization with a shared leadership framework. Put it simply, the organization provides us the structure and the leadership framework, the behaviors that make it work. We have introduced a common structure across the company built about a simple principle, geographies own the market, product lines own the expertise. And this makes it easier to navigate the organization, connect expertise across the group and also deploy it where it creates the most value.

We are already seeing the benefits of this new operating model. On the business side, stronger collaboration within but also across product lines has contributed to a significant increase in our pipeline. On the people side, our teams are benefiting from more opportunities to learn, grow and take on new challenges across the company. And we see this reflected in our employee Mobility Index, for example, which has increased from 17% to 23% since 2023 and also our retention rate, which has improved by 100 basis points. Our focus now is to deepen adoption and convert that momentum into stronger growth outcomes.

But of course, a change in operating model does not happen just by changing the organization. It works in practice only if the mindset and the behaviors evolve with it. And this is what our new leadership framework is all about. But instead of describing the framework in detail, let's hear it directly from our employees.

[Presentation]

No matter how many times I watch this video, it still brings emotions because what you saw in the video is actually our employees working in our facilities, in the customer premises and probably expressing better than we could ever express the leadership behaviors that we need to embody.

So this brings me to the next priority of our people strategy, building the new economy skills that our portfolio requires. We have always been highly effective at recruiting technical talent. But in a market where critical capabilities are scarce and evolving rapidly, external recruiting alone is not enough, as I mentioned before. And so we decided to take a very different approach.

We're developing those skills internally at scale. And the sustainability program is our first proof point of this model. It is a 15-month structured program designed to attract, fast develop and retain early career professionals. Participants benefit from an intensive learning experience and retention stands at 97%, but the value of the program goes way beyond the individual participants because it brings together managers, mentors and technical experts from different product lines and geographies. It mobilizes our entire network of sustainability, strengthening that capability, and it helps us connect expertise across the organization.

We now have more than 3,000 sustainability experts supporting our growth in transition services, and the program gives us a repeatable blueprint that we can progressively apply to other priority areas like cyber, mission-critical or renewables. So with the organizational leadership and capability foundations of our Evolved people model now in place, the Amplify phase is about getting more value from them. And this is where our Expert-First approach comes central.

At Bureau Veritas, expertise is our differentiator. So rather than starting with technology and asking where we can deploy it, we start with our experts and ask different sets of questions. What is their judgment creating the most value? What work can be simplified, automated or supported? And how can we give them more time to focus on customers, complex decisions and technical expertise?

So our goal is simple, to amplify the impact of our experts. And this is why one of our key priorities in the Amplify phase is building a tech-augmented workforce. This builds directly on the work Noor described earlier. We are modernizing workflows, simplifying processes and embedding digital tools across the company. The objective is to remove friction around our experts, improve how work flows across the company and give people better tools to do their jobs. AI is definitely the next step in that journey. It will allow us to go beyond digitalization and begin augmenting expertise itself.

And while AI is already part of how we work at Bureau Veritas, we're just at the beginning of what's possible. The opportunity is not just to give people access to AI tools, it's to build genuine capability. The confidence, the judgment and the skills to use AI in ways that strengthen what experts can do, but also in a way that our customers can trust.

So to do that at scale, we will be developing different programs for different populations. We have designed 4 targeted programs to address this. AI Spark builds responsible AI adoption across the company, moving people from AI-aware to AI-enabled and ultimately, AI-ambassadorship. This is a program for the entire workforce, so nobody is left behind. Build the builders equips process owners and transformation leaders to redesign workforce with AI. And AI for Developers supports our development and product teams in applying AI to their work.

Last but not least, leading a tech-augmented organization prepares senior leaders to prioritize investments and also lead adoption at scale. And the early results from AI Spark are really significant. We have 3,000 people that have completed the training. We have 10,000 weekly active AI users. And as Noor mentioned, we have also more than 22,000 AI assistants that have been created in-house. Our belief is that AI will amplify expertise that differentiates us, not replace it.

And let me conclude by bringing everything together. We are a global multi-specialist company across 10 product lines and more than 90 technical domains, and our differentiator comes from the scale, the depth and our customer proximity of our expertise. Our people model is designed to maximize the impact of that expertise, and we are doing it through 3 mutually reinforcing enablers: First, a new operating model and leadership framework designed to scale expertise. It gives us the structure, the speed, the behaviors that we need to connect the expertise across the group and deploy it where it creates the greatest value. Second, building the new economy skills required for our growth priorities. We have achieved this through our sustainability graduate program, and now we have the blueprint to replicate it in other growth priorities. Third, tech-augmented workforce.

We have put in place the program to modernize how work gets done, simplify workforce and equipping our people with digital and AI capabilities that amplify what our experts can achieve. And this is what we mean by an expert-first company, a company that can scale expertise across multi-specialist organization, a company that can build critical capabilities required for future growth and a company continuously increasing the value created by experts. Thank you.

I will leave the floor to Philipp. He will cover Digital and AI.

Thank you, Maria. So good morning. I'm Philipp Karmires. I'm the Chief Digital and Innovation Officer for Bureau Veritas. I'm responsible for group IT technology, digital AI and innovation. I joined the company at the start of 2024. My passion is enabling productivity, growth and innovation through technology.

Over the next few minutes, I will show you how we have built the group's digital foundation, how AI is already improving our operations and how we intend to convert these capabilities into productivity, operating leverage and new sources of value through 2028.

Our digital innovation strategy is built around 3 connected layers, the digital backbone. I first announced it in 2024 as part of our LEAP 28 strategy. The goal of the strategy is to establish centralized technology standards, supporting our large global setup, as highlighted by Maria, with our 82,000 employees operating in over 100 countries.

The first is enterprise foundation, the common infrastructure, governance, data capabilities and technology partnerships that support the entire group. The second is operation systems, the platforms embedded in the daily delivery of our services to clients. The third is innovation platform, where we integrate AI, create differentiated client experiences and build new service capabilities.

The layers reinforce one another. The foundations enable our operation systems. Those systems generate the workflows and data on which innovation can scale. Together, they support 3 outcomes: greater productivity and scalability, technology augmented services that strengthen our competitive position and new revenue opportunities.

From 2024 to 2026, our priority has been execution, establishing the technology and operating foundations required to scale digital and AI across Bureau Veritas. At the enterprise foundation level, we built a multi-cloud architecture, group-wide governance and shared technology capabilities deployed consistently across the business.

At the operations systems level, we are building the platforms that run our core service lines. SmartCert is the clearest example, which Noor highlighted before, and I will cover with more technical details. At the innovation platform level, we built the AI integration framework that connects our operation systems to AI services in a controlled, governed and scalable way. This execution has moved digital and AI from fragmented initiatives to an integrated group capability. We are now ready to amplify its business and financial impact.

The execution phase has delivered a technology foundation operating at a significant scale. Through technology standardization as well as shared services for IT, as highlighted by Noor, we moved from decentralized environment with applications and systems redundancy at a product -- to a product line-centric organization. In addition, we made sure we have AI infrastructure capable to interface with our systems at any level.

Today, 95% of our applications are cloud-based, including our core enterprise platforms and operation systems. This gives us the flexibility to support growth, portfolio evolution and acquisitions without rebuilding infrastructure each time. We are doing this through working with leading technology platforms and innovation partners in a multi-cloud architecture.

Across our systems, Bureau Veritas holds 8.8 petabytes of proprietary data accumulated through decades of inspection, certification, testing and assurance work. The opportunity is to progressively govern, structure and activate the most valuable elements of this data for operational improvements and new services. The foundations we have built and as well as the operational systems are important because AI is creating opportunities on 2 fronts for Bureau Veritas, as outlined by Hinda this morning. To recap briefly, on one side, AI enhances how we deliver trust.

On the other side, AI itself creates new trust requirements. Let me explain the structure how we have -- the structure that we have introduced as part of our execution phase. We govern AI across the group through one framework with 4 connected components: deploy, modernize, activate and assure. Deploy and modernize are our immediate priorities. Deploy is about covering the large group and number of employees, as highlighted by Maria. It means providing the technology, controls and skills that make AI usable at group scale.

Modernize means integrating AI into operation systems and transforming how core work is performed, which aims through our performance programs at 60% of our operations, as you heard from Noor before. Activate converts these capabilities into differentiated services and new client value. Assure extends our trusted third-party role to AI-related risk, governance and resilience.

To learn more about Activate, please visit the Deep Dive for modernization inspection later this afternoon with Ginger and Bertrand. For assure, please visit the Assure New Trust Domains deep dive with Vincent and Pierre. AI is deployed across Bureau Veritas today at group scale with early operational impact. Deploy is about making it available for our applications and our people. For applications, we do this through providing internally an AI API, a programmable interface for internal applications and projects to integrate with various large language models.

There are currently over 140 integrations through that option. For people, more than 10,000 colleagues actively use AI personal assistants on a weekly basis, including our own platform, that serves multiple large language models as well as through Microsoft Copilot. The compute capabilities for deploying AI and large language models is at enterprise scale.

Our AI platforms process more than 650 million tokens every day. AI has moved beyond experimentation and is now becoming embedded in how Bureau Veritas operates. This deployment is translating into modernization impact in specific use cases to enable operational leverage as previously shown by Noor.

We are now able to activate the data of 83,000 audits through our systems integration. Equipping our salespeople with AI-assisted copilots show initial savings between 2.5 and 4 hours per week. And in certification review, reported review time has been reduced from 90 minutes to 45 minutes. These examples demonstrate the progression from broad AI deployment to measurable operational impact.

From 2027 to 2028, we move into the amplifying phase. The 3-layer strategy does not change. What changes is the pace, scale and business impact of what we have built. At the enterprise foundational level, the focus shifts to sustaining, optimizing and industrializing the platform at lower technology costs. At the operation systems level, we amplify AI integration in existing operational systems.

Embedding AI is a key element in new systems development. At the innovation platform level, we create new sources of value through AI-native process transformation with inspection delivery as a primary focus. Amplifying means visible financial results, improved operational leverage, scalable delivery and differentiated service capabilities.

Let's look at 3 examples for the upcoming Amplify phase for 2027 and 2028, which we are currently developing. The first is about integrating AI into existing systems. The second is about embedding AI as part of systems development. And third, how inspectors natively engage with AI.

Let's move to the first one. Certification is a EUR 550 million yearly revenue base for Bureau Veritas. SmartCert is our new end-to-end digital operations system for certification delivery. It covers the full workflow, sales, auditor portal, back office and client portal, all in a single integrated platform. It is a key contributor to process improvement, as highlighted by Noor. It's already operating at meaningful scale. Approximately 60% of Certification Solutions revenue is in scope by end of 2026.

More than 1,000 users are actively on the system today. More than 4,000 certificates are issued through it every month. More than 40,000 production dates are scheduled through it every month. Integrating AI now into this system will support our evolution. Please visit our deep dive in the afternoon to learn more.

Inspection for industrial and energy assets represents a EUR 900 million revenue base for Bureau Veritas. Modernizing how we deliver it is a centerpiece of the amplification phase. The workflow spans 5 stages: configure, prepare, inspect, report and capitalize. We are digitizing this end-to-end workflow with tools tailored to have AI embedded.

By 2028, our ambition is to have more than 80% of inspection activity digitized and AI-enabled. More efficient and consistent execution improves speed, safety and client experience. At the same time, digital workflows create structured, validated data assets that can support recurring data-driven services beyond the individual inspection.

And one last example for an AI native enabled approach. Today, more than 3,600 inspectors globally spend a significant portion of their time documenting findings and producing reports in the field. With our AI-powered voice assistant, we are fundamentally simplifying that process. Instead of typing notes after an inspection, inspectors capture observations naturally through voice during the inspection itself.

The experience is seamless and unstructured, allowing them to focus on the asset site or customer rather than administration. The AI then transcribes the conversation, extracts key findings and automatically matches information against our internal data structures and reporting standards. This transforms how raw voice input -- this transforms raw voice input into structured inspection content.

Importantly, the inspector remains fully in control. The final report is reviewed and validated through a human-in-the-loop process before being issued to the customer. The benefits are tangible as part of our overall performance programs, reducing reporting effort by 10% through accelerating report turnaround times while improving consistency and data quality.

As we look beyond LEAP 28, I would leave you with 3 -- I would like to leave you with 3 key messages: First, we now have the digital backbone in place. We have modernized our platform, strengthened cybersecurity, moved to the cloud, built our AI and data foundations and standardized technology globally. That foundation gives us scalability and productivity benefits today. Second, we are now entering the next phase, accelerating AI impact. The focus shifts to embedding AI into our core operations, whether it's inspectors in the field, laboratory workflow certification processes or knowledge workers, AI becomes a force multiplier. The AI enhances our expertise, improves productivity and increases service quality. And third, the real opportunity lies beyond efficiency.

As AI strengthens and structures our data assets, it opens the door to new technology augmented services, stronger customer outcomes and entirely new sources of revenue growth. The combination of our global expertise, trusted position in assurance and a fully developed digital platform creates a unique advantage. We are combining it to the Bureau Veritas operating model in creating a platform for sustainable value creation well beyond 2028.

In short, the foundation is built, AI impact is accelerating, and we see a clear path to continued growth, productivity and new revenue opportunities in the years ahead.

Thanks for your attention, and I'll hand over to Francois Chabas to update us on finance. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Francois Chabas, Bureau Veritas Chief Financial Officer. I'm very happy to stand in front of you to report on the progresses we've made since the last Capital Market Day.

Before getting into the details, one figure already, which is good. We are 10% more in terms of attendance compared to 2024, which shows some interest into the company. And as you have seen, LEAP 28 is an ambitious program of transformation. It's been mentioned many times, both on the portfolio side, obviously, improving performance. Maria has been very clear on changing the -- transforming the people model. But this plan is not only about words, it's framed obviously by a set of clear and measurable financial commitments and a promise of value creation.

So we are now 2.5 years mid plan, as Hinda put it. And we will see in the next few minutes, 2 things. One has been delivered and how it has been delivered over 2024 and 2026. So a phase we call execute. And thereafter, I'll spend some time to cover the financial perspective over the next coming 2 years, a phase that we're going to call amplify. So for now, who is running the script, you can pause for a second because during the Q&A session, something came to my mind and that with others during the coffee break phase, a thought I wanted to share with you.

And more than a thought it's actually a phrase that is a phrase from a great contributor to the theory of economy that you all know, a man called Smith -- well, not Adam Smith, but Hannibal Smith from the A-Team for the French audience. A man who used to say, I love it when plans go as planned, [Foreign Language] and beyond the joke, this phrase illustrates one of the -- I hope one of the talent that the Bureau Veritas team you've seen here led by Hinda has, which is a passion for execution.

We all love plans, but we value execution. And execution is about adapting to some conditions and the discussion with the analysts were very enlightening. The boxes, I could name a trade war starting in the middle of the plan. I could name energy crisis. I could name some divestments we've done sooner than expected. But what you've seen today and led by Hinda, the team has delivered. And that's what I hope I will be able to demonstrate to you in the coming page.

So the next view is the one you've seen in Hinda's introduction. It's a busy page, right? But it reflects the seriousness and the holistic approach of our plan. Bureau Veritas is delivering on every single commitment we've made in March 2024. Organic growth still within our mid- to high single-digit ambition, 10% plus in '24, 6% plus in '25. Combined with the positive incrementals of our acquisition, we have delivered in line with our ambition in terms of total growth at constant currency.

Margin-wise, there have been a lot of talk around the basis point improvement. We have demonstrated '24, '25 that improvements have been delivered year-on-year and each year. Hinda mentioned it in her introduction speech, Bureau Veritas is a highly cash-generative company. And here again, we've delivered. Our cash conversion has remained well above our 90% ambition, above 100% actually over the last 2 years with a leverage that stay within our commitment of 1 to 2x guidance. Returns, which are measured as EPS increase plus dividend yield, have reached double-digit levels across the period as promised.

So again, execution is not a plan on the paper. It's already reflected in the results. And I will walk you through how we got there and why we are confident in the next phase. So usual bridge on the growth. This is what has been done from 2023 onwards with a projection by the end of 2026 in terms of CAGR. I think numbers are speaking for themselves. Organic growth, we will have delivered 7% to 8% CAGR over the period. But we are not simply growing. We are changing where the growth comes from. And moving to what Marios tell to you at the beginning, at the launch of the plan, we had identified the 3 famous boxes, portfolio categories, Expand Leadership, new strongholds, which were 2 categories where we're expecting the bulk of the growth to come from, and Optimized Value and Impact made of more mature businesses.

So what has happened? I think we hit the target totally on new strongholds. New strongholds, which accounted for 10% of the revenue at the start of the plan, has generated 25% of the growth, fully 100% in line with expectations. And it's particularly remarkable coming from a business that used to represent 10% at the start. Now I need to use sentence to say, well, the main difference compared to our initial assumption lies in the respective contribution of our mature businesses versus our Expand Leadership businesses.

And as you see here, with Expand Leadership, Building & Infrastructure contributed slightly less, especially at the beginning of the plan. We had B&I growing, some of you may remember, around 4%, 5% in the first 1.5 years. Good news, over the last quarter, the last 3 quarters, actually, strengthened by acquisition made in infrastructure, which are now delivering on organic after the usual 12-month period and the ramp-up of the businesses and Ciaran and Renato presented to you, the data center-driven assets, the contribution now is getting stronger and stronger. And over the last 3 quarters, we grew almost 9%.

On the other front, the team eager to execute has phased and has been capable to leverage opportunities within oil and gas and within the second segment of this optimized value, which is marine, we've managed to recruit, staff, address clients in areas which were not initially the #1 in the priority of the company. So we managed here to get outperformance in the first years of the plan, obviously, supported by favorable investment cycle in those 2 markets.

Looking at the inorganic revenue part of this bridge. M&A is a crucial element of our growth engine. We've gone through disciplined acquisition, which have added every year when you deduct acquisition from divestments, 2% to 3% in average CAGR over the duration of the plan. The portfolio rotation, of course, has partially offset the net increase. We have targeted disposals. Some of them have been done a bit earlier than anticipated. I think we shared a few times that the divestment of the food testing business was actually, in our mind, scheduled to happen in '26. We've divested it very early because we found the right way to monetize it with the right partner.

So we've divested a bit ahead of plan so far. And then as most of the portfolio pruning is behind us, we now expect the net M&A contribution to be stronger in the coming years. And finally, FX remained a headwind, especially in '24 and '25. 2026 seems to be a different story. We see it to stabilize. So that overall, the 3 years will have a bit of a headwind effect on the top line. Now I think it's been mentioned a few times, we are moving towards a more interconnected product client-centric model. So it creates a new operating model that simplify growth algorithm, which will be music to the ears of the analysts.

In simple terms, it brings more focus, better scalability, more simplicity. So as a consequence, Veritas has changed its way of reporting. From Q3 onwards, we will publish along those lines. Instead of 6 reporting lines, 21 subsegments, our performance is now articulated around 4 divisions and 10 product lines. No surprise here. This is what has been mentioned before. And I will spend now to share with you some elements which have not been disclosed yet to the market. I will see in the press release, but historical elements regarding the performance of those 4 divisions. What you see here is the same growth bridge, but along those 4 divisions.

So what has not changed? Organic growth remained broad-based. It's not one single division that has brought everything. Industrial & Commodities is our largest contributor with roughly 45% of the organic growth with a CAGR, which is close to 9.5%. It's been driven by services related to investment in energy, typically renewable and gas. It's been driven as well by what we have developed throughout the very first beginning of our plan. Building & Infrastructure, as I mentioned, which is the second division, started somewhat a bit soft until H1 2025. We're now posting way stronger numbers. So some catch-up to come here in the next couple of years.

Business Assurance, third division, had a smaller but yet steady contribution to the top line growth, mainly related to assessment for sustainability-driven purposes, which remains very strong. I think we are still hitting double-digit numbers on that segment, together, of course, with the cybersecurity assurance. Finally, the last division, which is Product Testing and Services contributes at a steady 6%, 6.5% compound annual growth rate over the period.

We will move to the change of portfolio in a second. But as you can already see, the activities planned for exit, which is the tiny box, gray box on the right, which were here for the first 2 years of the plan have contributed only 4% to the total growth, which means they have not been growth accretive at all despite representing roughly 10% of the portfolio. Portfolio rotation on top of organic growth, which is the next pillar, has moved from ambition to execution. So since the announce of the plan, we have signed acquisition worth more than EUR400 million of annualized revenue and divested or exit or about to exit businesses worth EUR800-plus million.

Together, EUR 1.2 billion, I think you've got this number now well in mind of rotation, which represents 21% of the total portfolio rotation from 2023 baseline, which is quite a measurable change. Our capital allocation policy aims at redeploying cash generated by these divestments towards activity with higher growth trajectory and higher return, obviously. We'll come back to that at the end. So now if we combine the simplification of the portfolio, the refocus on growth accretive segments, the M&A contribution Bureau Veritas has changed. I think that's something that has been clearly stated by many speakers here.

First, the exposure to segments where we lead or where the growth trends are stronger has moved from 55%, which is the leadership and new stronghold to 85% as we speak. As a matter of illustration, the current Bureau Veritas portfolio post divestment scope already delivered a growth above historical average. Hinda mentioning in her introduction speech, roughly 60 basis points of additional growth compared to the previous portfolio. And you can measure by this that some of the segments are indeed a very accretive growth trajectory compared to the rest of the group.

Now from a margin profile, same thing. This is the vision of Bureau Veritas by division now. Two divisions have margin ahead of the company average, Business Assurance, Product Testing and Services, while the other 2 are positioned at or slightly below group average. It's an average view for the last closed years, '24, '25. However, overall, our performance improvement program applied to each of the product line within this division, irrespective of the margin level. We believe that the high margin does not represent automatically a floor or max. We've seen a good example of this with the program centered around business assurance. As has been mentioned, we have an ambition to create margin incremental of roughly 150 basis points on a product line, which is historically already at 19%, 18%, 19% of margin.

Moving now to the margin bridge. What have we done over the last -- so 2 years of actual and we took as a landing for 2026, the current consensus. Organically, Veritas has delivered 120 basis points of margin improvement in 3 years. Our performance program have contributed to the tune of 110 basis points. We have implemented several restructuring on top of it, especially in '24 and '25, focused at underperforming units, and those restructuring are now paying off as well.

At the same time, and I think you got it from Philipp presentation, we have engaged into a series of digital-related projects to help streamline our processes and increase -- and to increase the billable time of our teams. And we have had, of course, along the way, our fair share of business disruption of all sorts, naming a few that you know the war here and there and various disruptions. So the key message here is -- we stick to the commitment we made at the start of the plan. We are generating margin incrementals. We reinvest them into improvement of system and processes in order to transform the way Bureau Veritas operates on the long run. These are no quick fix here.

I think we try and make this journey by taking the upside when they are reinvesting them at the right time. So -- and each year through the plan, we are committed to deliver margin incrementals at constant currency. If we move now to the cash aspect of things and to capital allocation. Cash generation remains one of the core strengths of the company. Cash conversion stayed well above the 90% line every year, see it on the left. Our working capital requirements has further improved from 6.3% in 2021 down to 3.7% at the end of last year.

So anticipating questions, I believe we will finish by reaching a floor here at some point, for those of you who have been here for long, we started at 10% plus. But unfortunately or fortunately, our credit management teams are still very eager to break this floor. So we are deploying currently a renewed and digitally enhanced system, collection system, cash collection system that will cover all our legal entities worldwide by the end of '27. We had one but a bit old fashioned. And we will see the results of this for sure in the course of the second half of '27 and early 2028.

Leverage remained within the 1x to 2x guidance. So we are on the lower end, obviously. This gives us real flexibility to fund the next phase of M&A acceleration, as Marios and Hinda mentioned previously. Capital allocation. So our global framework, perhaps we were wrong from the start, is unchanged. So that's the same one you saw in March 2024. The M&A represents an important component. We have here on the page between M&A investment and divestment proceeds. And by the way, when it comes to proceed, the proceeds of divestment of our oil and petroleum activity is not yet there as it planned to arrive in the first quarter of 2026.

CapEx remains targeted at lower end of the 2.5% range. Dividend ratio remained at 65% of adjusted net income, no change on that front. And within that framework, we have recently stepped up M&A, including the acquisition of LotusWorks. Now I think we've mentioned the necessity and the willingness to focus our effort in the next few years on M&A. And I would like to mention that discipline and acceleration are not in conflict. The framework -- this framework is yet built from the start to allow both to happen. A good way to illustrate this is to have a look at the evolution of our return on invested capital. At Bureau Veritas, we like clear slide and simple slide to read. This one has these features.

Capital discipline is translating directly into clear and visible returns. The return on invested capital of the company has risen from roughly 16% in 2017 to almost 25% in 2025, consistently above our roughly 20% through the cycle. The beauty of this chart is that it demonstrates that the LEAP | 28 programs are directly generating higher returns. The company goes through many transformation, many changes. But all along the way, we make sure that on the execution part of it, we keep on delivering year-on-year and improving the return of the company.

Now when we look a bit ahead and what's coming next in terms of Phase 2, we will be kind enough to move to the next page. For the record, there is no more script for the guy and difficulty to follow. Thank you for coming. If you don't move the page, you need to move the page. Good. Phase 2. So we now have the -- say, the full picture on what has happened. where are we going? And I'll spend a second on the next page, which reminds I think what Bureau Veritas has delivered so far, growth compounder, adjusted EPS growth and strong free cash flow. We don't intend to depart from that vision on the contrary. And we stick to the vision we set forth in 2024. That's why in terms of new commitments or updated commitment for the next 2 years of the plan -- next page. We -- 2 elements here, which are very important. We stick to the overall commitment of the plan. However, we precise 2 elements for the next 2 years, '27, '28.

First, we upgrade the guidance in terms of total organic growth at constant currency to double digit. Two, we narrowed down the guidance in terms of leverage. We see that more M&A will come. So we'll be most probably in between the 1.5 to 2x leverage. And we have an ambition to reach by the end of 2030, sorry, EUR 1 billion revenue in AI-driven markets and services from a basis of EUR375 million by the end of 2026. Thank you for your attention, and I hand over to Laurent for the next phase. Thank you, Laurent.

So we have now seen the full picture, portfolio, performance, people, digital and AI. And of course, the financial ambition behind it all is a nice story on . Thank you, Francois. So it's time for the -- for our final Q&A of the morning. So all speakers are available. Please come to join me on the stage. And now that Francois has presented the numbers, everything is fair game. So we'll start with the room before moving again to our online audience.

So we're going to start, Rory, UBS, please.

It's Rory from UBS. My first question was around, I guess, the reinvestments you've been making. If about half of the benefits of the improvement plans are going back into the group, that means each year, you're spending about EUR 30 million already. Where is that going? Is that new greenfield investments? Is it new hiring plans going in to support future growth? But also how much of that is going back into maybe some of these transformation programs and spend that you're discussing?

Yes. Thank you for the question. I'll tag team with Francois on this. The -- a lot of the investments are going into this transformation. I think we were quite clear since this morning saying that the performance programs really need a complete reengineering of our operation systems, right? So that needs to be done. Our technology organization has actually done a lot of efficiency that they realized a lot of efficiency to absorb some of the costs, but we have to be clear. We have 10 product lines to modernize, so we need to invest on that. So a lot of it, if I have to break it down, but maybe Francois has a bit more color on that. It's really the modernization efforts of the operation systems. There are some efforts around new revenue streams. So there, you're really directly investing in the growth and development from -- for certain skills we needed to bring into the company. So that's the 3 kind of groups. Do you want to...

Really from a magnitude point of view, the bulk goes into the operation system. We are coming from a basis where all the foundation system were built now almost 10 years ago, but the operation system remains still a bit discrete. So in terms of magnitude, that's the bulk.

My second question is about the productivity gains that you outlined. What do you find your employees do with the freed up time? For example, if SmartCert freed up capacity by 15% for those engineers, do they have a backlog that they can go and work on more quickly? Do they do more time on innovation? Or do they just spend more time shipping to AI agents?

Yes. So it's a mix of things, right? So the capacity gives us -- the freed up workforce gives us capacity, so we can go after and get more work completed through the backlog that we have. We can spend the time on training as well and bringing the people, the expertise up. I mean those are the main things that, of course, if the work is actually not there, the backlog is not there, we can save some money.

I think the -- just to add to that, thank you, Noor. I think it's really important to understand that we are -- by freeing up time, we're actually rechallenging the workflows we have, and we're only starting, right? What we talked about so far is keeping essentially how we work. We're just making them a little faster, a little clearer, the system is more integrated, et cetera. And this is step one before we go journey-centric where we will completely redo it, meaning we won't have the same steps. We'll deliver the -- whatever the service for the customer, but how the inspector or the auditor is going to work is going to change.

So what you -- the best way to think about this is a complete change of operating model for that particular service. So what work is done in the back office will be changed. So it's not only about the one person, it's about the number of people who participate in a particular operation. So in the SmartCert example, it's very interesting because what you're doing, normally, you do a lot of the scheduling, you have a bunch of people who sit in the background who actually do all those interactions. As you put a SmartCert system in place, they're actually freeing up their time because now the scheduling is becoming a lot more automated. And therefore, these people you can do 2 things. You can potentially redeploy them so they can do customer care and things like that or you might actually decide that you're not going to replace attrition, so you start reducing some workforce there. So it really goes beyond the one person, just to be clear.

François Digard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Maybe a follow-up. Is it fair following what you just said that the direction is that thanks to AI, it will allow you to grow organically at iso-FTE in the future? And connected to that, LEAP | 28 has been designed before AI. And nevertheless, the target on operating margin increment is the same. Is it because it is too early, step one, as you said, or because you are going to reinvest more than you previously thought or maybe that you suffer from or you fear some pressure on price?

Let me answer the second question, and then I'll pass to Maria to answer the first one. It's really important for us to integrate AI in a deep way. And therefore, it's a bit early today to fully account for the impact of AI in our workflows. So we didn't revise our ambition because we are only at the start of this. And you are absolutely right. When we started LEAP | 28, I think we looked -- we mentioned AI once in 2024, okay? So just -- and it's a fact. I think now that we are realizing the potential of the technology is changing our calculus on how we reengineer our workflow.

So yes, it's not there because it's too early, but we're not shy to say that beyond the 2028, we see upside. And a lot of the work of the teams now in the performance team with Noor and Francois is really to look at that potential beyond that. As to the pricing, look, it's early in the journey. We haven't seen really customers talking about pricing yet. What I see and I see customers quite a bit, they're actually asking, can you adopt AI as fast as you can so you can help us with our performance and you can essentially move from being important, but a bit of a hindrance to critical and a performance enabler, which is a completely different conversation for someone in our space. So it's -- we're not there yet, but we are prepared that we need to protect the value, if that's what you were alluding to. Maria?

Yes, sure, sure. On the impact on AI on the workforce, I mean, we don't see AI as a headcount reduction story. We see it as, on one side, augmenting capabilities. On the other one, augmenting the impact of our experts. And then third, actually, it's true that we are hoping -- we are seeing already that we will be decoupling, let's say, the growth from the headcount requirements, right? So it will be decoupling. And we are right now looking at some modeling and assumptions. And it's definitely -- we think that about 75% of the requirements of headcount may be absorbed by AI, but not only AI, also the performance programs that Noor explained earlier.

Francois?

Just on the margin discussion, it's a delicate balance between the level of investment you commit and the output you can really naturally see in your P&L. So we do it a bit in a good old fashioned way by incrementals. We select a couple of, let's say, verticals where here we invest and we can measure rapidly the impact because it's been mentioned, you save time here and there. To give you an example, if you save time of an auditor for, say, 3 hours in a week, you will not be able to do more audits, right? Because those audits are calibrated to last at least 1 day. But if you free half an hour of a new time because now it doesn't need to redo the reporting CF and is done to something else, then he can start to prepare the next audit.

So it's a fine mechanic. That's why we don't commit yet at the moment on incrementals. But I think what Maria mentioned is very true. Decoupling the headcount from the top line is one of the ambition we have. And that's for an inspection company like Bureau Veritas, very important. Two, let's not forget, we -- most of the time, we do not sell man hours or man days. We are selling an opinion. So the client pay for the opinion. It doesn't pay for the volume of work. And I think that's one of the critical factor Khurram, our Head of Sales is repeating all the time that do not sell days, guys, you are seeing opinions. And this is very true in terms of protecting ourselves against price erosion. But we will report later on, on margin incrementals when we have something solid. I think the tradition is to report on stuff when we have measurable elements, and we do so most probably in the coming years.

And perhaps to wrap this up, I think to the question from that side and yours is I think we are at the stage in this industry that the ones to invest to completely remake how we deliver services and essentially the trust that is -- that people need needs to change because the technology is absolutely transformative. And we have the scale to do that very, very quickly. It is a very fragmented market, a lot of small players, some medium ones and very few large ones, as you know. And I think we have the advantage of scale, and we need to leverage it now. So that's why the investment is critical, and it needs to be done now.

Next question is coming from Annelies.

Annelies from Morgan Stanley. Just going back to the AI-driven markets and new services. So that bridge from the EUR 370 million to the EUR 1 billion, how much of that do you think can be delivered organically given the growth in some of those end markets? And then how much through M&A? And as related to that on -- I assume a lot of that work is very margin accretive. So is that also part of your margin expansion?

Sorry, I didn't catch the last part.

I would assume a lot of the AI-related work is margin accretive. Is that right? And therefore, is that also part of your -- it feeds into the margin expansion?

Yes, I'll talk about that. Do you want to cover the market?

On the component of the growth, it's primarily based on the existing set of activities we have, what we call critical assets, both data center and semiconductor and the existing capabilities we have in cybersecurity assurance. There is a component of M&A, but I think the bulk of the plan is organic because I think we've completed that has been demonstrated with the combination of LotusWorks and our pre-existing data center commissioning activities that we have now a good, let's say, platform here to grow. So you could say there is -- there will be some M&A, but nowhere close to explaining the bulk of the growth, not at all.

Yes. Just -- and the best way to think about is the EUR 800 million on the AI-driven market is essentially mission-critical and we have a baseline and the growth rate. The EUR200 million is digital assurance and a lot of that is going to require some M&A. We have decent growth on the cyber business at double digit, but we need to really acquire some competencies in AI assurance. So that's really where we're looking. And generally, just to give an idea on the market, those are small outfits. So it will be things that we can -- we just need to move fast on them, but they are small bolt-ons in a way.

Okay. And my second question is also on the margins. You talked about continuing to roll out performance and people programs across all of your new 4 divisions. Where do you -- across those divisions, where do you think the biggest opportunity is to expand margins, again, thinking about your 3 buckets and how those feed into those 4 divisions?

Right. I think we talked about Business Assurance today. Business Assurance is where we're making commitments, not because we don't want to make commitments on the rest is where we have advanced programs in transformation. And the SmartCert example is the operation system. I think what you will see then we talked about inspection, which tends to be very large in our B&I business and very large in our Industrial and Commodities. You can think about it in that order. Business Assurance is probably the first one to see the impact. And then we should -- we already are improving actually margins in B&I. And then I expect that Industrial and Commodities comes after that because we're going really AI native in terms of how we do make that change. Do you want to be more specific...

Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. Just a couple for me, please. Just to follow on, on that margin question. Obviously, your margins at the group level are going to be a combination of mix along with the potential for incremental savings, leverage, et cetera. And looking at your mix in I&C, B&I, you do have margins which are at group average margins or below. And depending on the growth rates, that can change your group mix. So how do you plan to account for that? And maybe do you need to maybe allocate capital in some of these divisions to accelerate the margin expansion potential a bit further faster?

Thank you, Suhasini, for this simple question. Well, it's been the question of the group for ages, right? And before this presentation, we've made the exercise once again with I saying, what is the mix impact from 2023, where we started the plan to today. I put aside the divestment stuff. I'm just taking the businesses which were here in '23 and the businesses which are in '26. The answer is statistically 0. You will be surprised, but it's been like 0 margin impact from pure mix over the 4 years. Not changed the way you put it.

Now taking to your question moving forward, you're right, the 2 largest business of the company have a margin that is, let's say, one of them is below the group average, the other one is just on the group average. I think the answer sits into, one, improving the margin of Business Assurance. That's a very clear commitment has been put here. So a smaller business but highly contributing. And two, engage into a transformation of the inspection model that is very big in B&I and quite strong in industry. So the 2 other buckets, the large divisions have product line which will be really impacted by this.

So performance is meant as being the very first driver. I would not put M&A really as a component here because I mean, I would raise the probability of us buying a company that does for real, not adjusted with 3-year savings, but for real more than 16% margin EBIT. I haven't seen many in all fairness. So -- and we will more probably favor companies doing 10%, 12%, and with cost containment and cost measure that we own that can bring this company to 16%, 17% rapidly with full control. So I would not put M&A as a margin accretive component. It's more, I think, towards more scale, more growth, margin will be a different story. So short answer, performance programs centered around inspection and business assurance.

And my next question is just on incentive program KPIs. Have you made any adjustments in the last 2 years to account for the differences in the portfolio, the changing portfolio structure?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you want to address that? Go ahead, please.

So definitely, I think the evolution in the operating model comes from starting with the organization, the leadership behaviors and then incentives, right? And maybe I can explain this with an example. So we are talking a lot about collaboration, cross-selling, scaling and neutralizing solutions. So you put the organization in place, the multi specialist product line-centric organization. Then you need to also -- in the leadership behaviors, for example, we have one that is called challenge the status quo, seek opportunities.

Another one is drive collaboration, and they have deep meaning on what they mean for us. And then on the incentive, we actually redefined the structure of the incentives not only to put, of course, cross-selling as a KPI, but also we now have all employees that have the annual bonus have a part that is on what they can control, their scope, they call it my contribution and a part of the incentive that is on the team, the level. So you're basically structurally not only with the organization, but then the leadership behaviors and the incentives closing the loop to make that work.

We're going to take a question from the web, and that's on people again. I'm going to read the question. It's a very long question. So thank you for asking that way. So to give a bit of context, so it says that the last CMD, there was a discussion about shortage of skilled labor, not just across the group, but across the industry. Based on the presentation today, it appears that you are addressing that through internal training. So the question is as follows: how much of these internal measures alleviated the shortage of skilled labor and how much of it still remains that cannot be addressed that way?

Yes. I think just before I pass to Maria there, I think we need to step back. In 2024, we had still, particularly in the North American market, massive shortage of every technical capability you can think of at the engineering level. We're not seeing the same thing. We see some shortage for certain electrical engineers, certain AI specialties and so on. So the market of skills is moving as well. In fact, the shortage today is in skilled labor rather where there is a massive buildup. So it's just a point to say that the skills market is moving quite dynamically at the moment, and that's why we need to be in phase or rather aligned with that. But I'll let you comment.

No, I would just say that we're really taking a holistic approach, meaning that we are developing the programs internally. As I mentioned, with the sustainability program, it's not only the people that are participating in the program, how we're activating the entire ecosystem. We're also doing some acquisitions to acquire certain capabilities that we need. So we look at it holistically. And in the end, I think that as you could see, our retention is increasing. And it's a bit of everything. It's also we are getting now our employees have better opportunities to develop -- but not only that, they're participating in projects that are challenging. So we are experts first, meaning the experts, what they want to do is they use their expertise to solve technical complex problems. So we are giving them the opportunity to really have impact in what they do. And I think it's the entire ecosystem that is allowing us also to develop but also to retain capabilities.

Can we move to the next question from the audience?

It's Karl Green from RBC. I've got 2 questions. Firstly, just in terms of digital assurance and the M&A strategy there, how do you go about mitigating for obsolescence risk? I mean, clearly, AI safety is a super hot topic at the moment. The Frontier labs can't agree on what the right move forward is. So how do you go about assessing that risk yourselves? And also, would you consider other models for delivering AI safety, partnering JVs, sell-through, et cetera? That's the first question.

Yes. Thanks, Karl, for the question. Very good question, actually. So yes, I would say yes to both. One is, yes, we need to partner sometimes. To give you an example, we did actually partner with AWS, where we worked on a specific AI assurance methodology for customers of theirs that needed reassurance that as they onboard on their cloud structure, they're actually -- they have a way to be assured and reassured that they are in compliance, particularly with the EU Act. That's one example. The other example is going to be using certain accreditation. So for those of you who will attend the trust in the new trust domain, we actually just received our ISO 42K accreditation.

That's very specific, and we are ramping that up. I think Vincent will talk about that later on. And then the more difficult bit is really acquiring the technical skills so you can assess, to your point, the risks associated with new Agentic AI capabilities, right? And that's really where we will be scouting for either -- and it will be small. It's not going to be massive companies. It's just -- it doesn't exist. It's people who have started putting together some structures where they can do that. Alternatively, we will have to ourselves hire these skills, and that's why the previous question is quite fitting actually because those skills we need to onboard to devise how we will do this kind of assurance. So it's fair to say it's a very, very kind of fast-moving space. But we cannot not develop skills in AI assurance because everything is adopting AI and you cannot stay at the periphery of that, if that makes sense.

Very clear. And my second question for Francois perhaps. Just in terms of the north of 20% ROIC target by 2028, you're clearly doing better than that already. Are you ruling out it dipping below 20% in any given year between now and then? I mean, clearly, there's only 2 years left? Or is that just a kind of through-cycle number, just to clear and clarify what you would accept in terms of potential dilution from a platform acquisition?

Well, thanks. I think the 20% is a good common sense number for a company like Bureau Veritas, and we would not wish to go below. We are not guiding on a precise number, but I think the chart is rather clear. We want to remain high in terms of return on invested capital. That's the way we manage the company. So we could foresee in the next 2 years that we will stay above that level regardless of some acceleration on M&A that usually on the very short term, slightly reduce this number. But I think we show our confidence on being very much committed to remain above 20%.

And perhaps that's an opportunity to clarify something I had a few discussions. The M&A program, as Marios explained quite well, is we have a bolt-on high-speed fast lane. We're going to do bolt-ons to address the -- and that's really the bulk of what we do. And there, we have a lot more control. We have proximity. We generally have the relationships, and it's a size thing. So we have a capacity to have a good exchange with these sellers. And then you have the specific strategic expansion, which will be what we call midsized, but they're not very big. And in fact, you have seen it with LotusWorks, right? So we have the levers in our hands to manage how we deploy capital for M&A, which is why fully supportive, of course, of what Francois just said in terms of our capacity to protect the returns.

Okay. We still have time for one more question, and I know that Victoria was looking for it. So go ahead.

My question is back to certification. So have the rollout of the SmartCert platform actually disrupted growth at all in the short term whilst you've been rolling out the system as first half growth here was a little bit slower. And in terms of the investments you're making in certification, can you give a bit more granularity on where those investments are, whether it's AI, the production system or the specialist headcount, kind of how you're appropriating the spend there?

Noor, do you want to address the rollout?

Yes, I can say a few words about it. So it has not affected the operations across the board. The deployment of the systems are very structured. We have teams that are supporting it globally. We have trainings that are conducted for our employees. It's a very structured program from the development to commercializing the models and then to deploy them in the field. We feel -- we have a good as well feedback from the teams on the ground in terms of how they perceive the system and how they are operating. So in general, I would say there isn't.

There's always, of course, opportunities to continue to improve, and we do that. So with every deployment, we look and see how we have performed, identify ways to get better and reestablish our deployment model and development model and off we go. So yes, I think it's going fairly well, but I wouldn't say it's affected the business in any way. If anything, it's starting to help and is starting to already yield some of the gains that we are trying -- we are -- have talked about.

Victoria, if you meet an inspector of ours or auditor and certification that complain literally initially. But after that, they're very happy with it. So it's just to give you the 2 views. Philipp, do you want to address the investment on SmartCert, roughly how we are managing that.

Yes. So the SmartCert component is like a component operation system, which we launched with LEAP | 28, so like pre-AI as it was highlighted. So right, we did the initial investments in building out this global platform, which is one platform for all countries, for all inspectors around certification. So that's part of the investment. And now we're basically upgrading the system through integrating AI. But the way we're integrating AI is we have this AI platform, which we built internally where we have various large language models that are fit for purpose and we integrate them. So the cost is rather the usage, optimizing the token usage against the functions that we are offering, think about comparing documents, think about processing information faster. So that's how the investments are currently split up, but the initial investment is around the platform and rolling that out globally. And the AI is the upgrade for it.

Okay. So we are at the end of the Q&A, perfectly on time. So thank you for the questions. And let's welcome again, Hinda for closing remarks.

Thank you for your attention and for saying for this few minutes. You have now listened to the team's presentation. You have heard us answer some questions there on the progress of the 3 pillars of the strategy and how we enter the next phase of LEAP | 28. I hope we are -- we have passed the message that we have a clearer portfolio, stronger operations -- operating platform and really increased capacity for us to deploy capital with discipline where it creates the most value.

I will start a bit with LEAP | 28. So just briefly, if we can go to the next slide, please. Our vision is clear. And I want to pause on that because it's really critical that we explain customer intimacy is actually where you can get premium in this sector. So we will continue to put the vision at the center of what we do for customer excellence and sustainability and being that preferred partner. As the risks increase, the complexity increase, the technology increase, that partnership is very, very valuable. We're not -- increasingly, we're going to move in a less transactional role, and I'll come back to that on the AI.

Now this is -- the LEAP | 28 is making Bureau Veritas more focused in where we compete, more scalable in how -- if you can move these in how we operate and more disciplined in how we allocate resources. We are preserving what differentiates us, though, because this is really important, the independence, the expertise, the global reach, the trust while we're strengthening the growth and the performance profile of the company. The model now will deliver high organic growth, will expand margins. And of course, we will continue to pursue the strong cash conversion we talked about. We will invest in performance program.

In fact, I should say we must invest in performance program in AI and technology enablement. It's really critical for us. We will also accelerate the disciplined and value-accretive M&A, and I hope I have convinced you that we are doing that, again, in a very thoughtful way, and we're giving ourselves specific targets on returns so we make sure we stay aligned with what we achieve. As we enter the amplification phase, one accelerator is becoming critically important, and that's AI, both as a market opportunity, and we're committed to that and as an operating lever.

So AI is strategic accelerator, both commercially and operationally. Commercially, it is increasing demand in attractive end markets we already serve. We talked about mission-critical, the data centers, the semiconductors, energy, the other critical infrastructure. Operationally, it is going to really unlock performance, unlock performance a lot faster than just digitalizing and connecting networks. And that's by connecting experts the data and the system so we can deliver the services in a way that becomes performance inducing for our customers. And then strategically, and back to many of your questions, it opens new assurance opportunities. And those are critical because today, a lot of our clients are looking for trusted partners to manage AI-related risk that they themselves are starting to understand, but they need help with governance, they need help with compliance, and that's exactly our profession.

That's why AI for us supports both sides of the equation, the growth, the expansion of revenue and the strengthening of our performance. The ambition of EUR 1 billion by 2030 from a baseline of EUR 375 million is real. It has plans. We will execute and we will report back throughout the coming years.

To conclude, we can go to the next one. The starting point where we are today at this very moment is stronger organic growth driven by higher growth markets, clearer product lines and the scale of our multi-specialist model. M&A is a disciplined accelerator. It will focus on capabilities, on leadership position and on attractive end markets. The performance-led execution program is laser-focused on productivity, on simplification and on AI integration so we can support margin expansion that we will prepare beyond this plan. And because the model is highly cash generative, it gives us the flexibility to reinvest and to fund the value-accretive acquisitions I talked about. But of course, we will maintain the balance sheet discipline, and we'll continue to deliver the return.

That's why we are confirming the mid- to high-single-digit organic growth guidance, and we are targeting the double-digit total revenue growth in the next 2 years, '27, '28. I believe that Bureau Veritas is entering the next phase from a position of strength with the strategy, operating model and the financial flexibility so we can compound value over time.

Thank you very much. I will now hand over to Laurent, who I think will have to go through the agenda for the rest of the day. And for those of you staying, please, we have really a very interesting program, and I'm looking forward to continue the conversation with you later on today. Thank you very much.

Welcome to Bureau Veritas Half Year 2026 Results Presentation. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers Hinda Garbi, Chief Executive Officer; and Francois Chabas, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining us for our half year 2026 results. I'm joined by Francois Chabas, our group CEO.

The first half of '26 demonstrates disciplined execution and the accelerating impact of our LEAP 28 strategy. Operationally, we delivered 5% organic growth in the first half with a sequential acceleration in the second quarter to 5.5% in a complex geopolitical environment.

We also expanded margins, increased adjusted EPS and maintained solid cash generation. Regarding the compliance deviations that we disclosed in April '26, we have completed our review, informed the authorities and stopped the contracting questions.

Based on our current assessment, we recorded a EUR 32 million provision as of June 30, 2026, reflecting our best estimate to date of the full financial impact we may safe. Our portfolio transformation is on track. During the first half of '26, we continued to reshape our portfolio. We announced the acquisition of Fotis Works, a leading specialist in mission-critical assets and signed an agreement to divest our Oil & Petrochemicals and coal ports. We confirmed our decision to exit the legacy Government Services segment.

The exit process is already underway, and it will be almost completed by year-end. This will be done in strict adherence with our contractual commitments to our clients. When sharing our full year 2025 results end of February, we have committed to complete a portfolio rotation of approximately 20% compared to 2023 baseline.

I'm pleased to report that we reached this milestone in the first half. Bureau Veritas is now gearing its portfolio towards high growth, higher margin and more resilient market. As a result of this portfolio rotation and aligning with our organization, our reporting structure will evolve.

Excluding the activity planned for exit, namely the oil and petrochemical and Government Services, our 2026 organic growth outlook is upgraded. We now expect mid- to high single-digit organic revenue growth, and we maintain our commitment to margin improvement and strong cash generation.

Before moving to financial highlights, I would like to thank all our colleagues worldwide for their dedication and contribution to the strong results. Let me start with our financial highlights for the half year. In this first half, we delivered revenues of EUR 3.3 billion with 5% organic growth, growth accelerated in the second quarter to 5.5%. We also delivered margin expansion with adjusted operating margin reaching 15.5% up 29 basis points at constant currency and up 15 basis points on a reported basis.

Adjusted EPS increased by 9.8% at constant currency supporting our objective of delivering double-digit shareholder returns over the LEAP 28 plan period. Cash generation remained healthy and leverage is within our 1 to 2 range even after the early dividend payment was completed this year in Q2 compared to Q3 last year.

Moving now to our revenue performance by business and by geography. In this first half '26, we delivered an acceleration in the second quarter. Organic growth increased 100 basis points to 5.5%, bringing first half organic growth to 5%. This improvement confirms the positive momentum we anticipated and reflects both favorable market trends and disciplined execution across the group.

All regions contributed positively. Asia Pacific remains the fastest-growing region. Mature Europe continued to deliver solid growth, well above GDP, the Americas benefited from sustained investments in energy and digital infrastructure in North America. The Middle East and Africa remains resilient in a challenging geopolitical environment.

Looking at our businesses, we maintained a strong momentum in Marine & Offshore and in Buildings and Infrastructure. Mixed performance were recorded in our commodities activities, reflecting the disruption from the Middle conflict to the oil and petrochemical business. As expected, both Industry and Certification had a slow start this first half and are projected to pick up in the second half.

What is important to keep in mind is that a number of new strongholds in mature subsegments continued to perform above expectations. As you can see on the slide, we delivered double-digit organic revenue growth in data centers, oil and gas CapEx and Metals and Minerals.

When we launched LEAP 28, we committed to actively reshape the portfolio, increasing our exposure to high-growth and high-margin markets while exiting activities with lower strategic relevance. Today, we're doing exactly that. Year-to-date, we completed or announced 5 acquisitions totaling EUR 138 million of revenue and signed an agreement to complete a major disposal. Total divestment amounted to EUR 489 million of revenue. The acquisition of LOTUS Work significantly strengthens our position in mission-critical assets, 1 of the most attractive growth markets.

At the same time, the planned divestment of oil and petrochemicals and coal activities represents a decisive step in optimizing our portfolio. Since the launch of LEAP 28, we have now executed approximately a 20% portfolio rotation. This is accelerating our exposure to businesses with better structural growth prospects and stronger margins.

This planned disposal of oil and petrochemicals and coal activities is fully aligned with our LEAP 28 strategy. This business generated approximately $450 million of revenue in 2025, but operated below the group average in terms of growth rate and profitability. At a natural price value of EUR 470 million and enterprise value to EBIT multiple of 11x, this transaction represents an attractive valuation.

Most importantly, proceeds will be redeployed into high-growth and higher-margin markets. The transaction also reflects a disciplined approach to capital allocation, strengthens our portfolio quality and enhances our growth profile. As mentioned in my third slide, our portfolio and organization are evolving in line with the B-28 strategy.

Our reporting framework is also being adapted accordingly, reducing our reporting lines from 6 to 4. The new structure provides a clearer representation of the group's business mix and strategic focus and aligns our external reporting with our new organization.

From July 1, 2026, our portfolio will be organized around 4 key reporting lines and excludes the activities of oil and petrochemicals and coal and government services. Both of these activities are planned for exit. Industrials and commodities supports the development of economies. It contains energy, minerals and shipping businesses.

Buildings & Infrastructure will benefit from structural trends around urbanization and infrastructure buildup, both physical and digital. Business Assurance will bring together certification solutions and digital assurance. It is a transverse business across all sectors, managing existing risks and emerging digital risks. Product testing and services is centered around products that feed consumption and industrial activities with an increasing focus on technology.

Francois will be providing some more information on this new reporting. Moving now to business highlights. I'm starting with the Marine & Offshore Division. The division delivered a strong performance in the first half with an 8.7% organic growth. New construction remains very strong, benefiting from sustained activity across most vessel categories and an ongoing conversion of our strong backlog of new ships.

In service, ships in service activity or OpEx, also delivered stable growth against challenging comparables, driven by regulatory inspections and increasing demand for decarbonization-related services. In this segment, Market fundamentals remain supportive with a strong order book and continued investments in new and more efficient shifts.

For Agri-Food & Commodities, this business delivered a 3.3% organic growth in Half 1, 2026. Metals & Minerals was the standout performer, growing double digits in the low teens organically supported by higher exploration activities and sustained mining investments, particularly in precious metals and copper. These positive trends were partly offset by weak activity in oil and petrochemicals impacted by the conflict in the Middle East, while agri activities remains soft.

Moving now to Industry. We delivered a slight sequential improvement in quarter 2, resulting in a 1% organic growth in the first half. Growth at constant currency reached 3.3%, supported by the contribution of recent acquisitions in renewables and nuclear. Within the business, we have different growth dynamics by soft selling.

Oil & Gas delivered low single-digit growth overall. CapEx activities remained very strong, however, growing at double digits, reflecting the supportive investment environment. We recorded a strong momentum in North America and resilience in some key projects in the Middle East. Power and Utilities were slightly down overall, continued growth in power distribution, storage and renewable projects in Asia and Europe was more than offset by weak OpEx activities in the Middle East and Latin America.

Industrial Product Certification delivered high single-digit growth, supported by strong demand in transport and logistics and pressure vessels across Europe and the Americas. For buildings and infrastructure, this business was 1 of the group's best-performing businesses, delivering 8.7% organic growth in the first half with a sequential acceleration to 10.2% in the second quarter. Growth was broad-based, reflecting the successful execution of our LEAP 28 strategy in this space. Visiting CapEx delivered double-digit growth led by vision critical assets. Data center activities remained very strong with QA, QC and commissioning services growing by more than 40% supported by continuous investments from hyperscalers and cloud providers.

Other services such as cost compliance and project management continued to grow on par with the divisional growth. OpEx Building achieved mid-single-digit growth driven by demand for building safety, compliance, environment and HSE services. The activity was strong across Europe, supported by regulatory requirements and sustainability-related services.

Infrastructure also grew mid-single digits, benefiting from transportation projects in North America major projects in the Middle East and public infrastructure investments across Southern Europe. Overall, the Building & Infrastructure business continues to benefit from powerful market structural trends, including digital infrastructure buildup urban development and climate programs. In Certification, we had a slow start with 1.9% organic growth in the first half against very challenging comparable. The business recorded a strong momentum in sustainability solutions or transition services as we call them, and digital assurance activities, which achieved high single-digit growth.

Environmental and carbon services remains a key growth driver, supported by increasing demand for decarbonization, carbon footprint assessment and climate-related compliance services. On the digital insurance front, we continue to expand our cybersecurity services and geographical footprint. This reflects growing customer focus on cyber resilience and operational continuity.

QHSE and specialized schemes delivered a low single-digit organic growth. Activity was softer in some developed economies, while demand continued to grow in emerging markets, particularly in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. We're not pleased with the performance of this division, and we have initiated since Q2 sales plans and operations reviews to ensure steady pickup in half 2 of this year.

Lastly, for Consumer Products Services. The division delivered a 5.1% organic growth in the first half, including 5.7% in the second quarter. Performance was led by technology as the subsegment benefits from our strategy diversification. Services were related to product innovation cycles and increasing testing requirements across consumer electronics. Growth was high single digit organically.

Supply chain and sustainability also delivered high single digits, driven by strong demand for supply chain resilient services. Within Softline Midlines employees, growth was low to mid-single digits despite energy supply disruptions across several sourcing markets. Performance was driven by China as major brands and retailers reverted back to the country, leveraging its scale, speed and flexible manufacturing ecosystem.

Overall, the business benefits from 3 structural trends, product innovation, supply chain reconsideration and rising sustainability requirements. I will now hand over to Francois for the financial review.

Thank you, Hinda. Good afternoon to everyone. So let's have a look now a bit more in the detail on our financial performance for the first semester. We have delivered 5% organic growth overall, so it's an acceleration compared to the first quarter. And we continue to expand margins, both at constant currency as well as on a reported basis. .

As you can see, the adjusted operating margin improved by 29 basis points at constant currency. The adjusted EPS increased by almost 10% at constant currency as well. Annual leverage remains comfortably within our target range despite the impact of the early dividend payments in the second quarter compared to the usual third quarter over the last few years.

So taken together, these results confirm that DuoPass remains fully on track to deliver the ambition that we set out for the planned 2028 mid-2028.

Having a look at the revenue -- the group generated EUR 3.2 billion of revenue in the first half. Organic growth reached 5%. Scope was slightly negative as the contribution from acquisition was offset by recent portfolio exits. As a reminder, from obviously the first lots works will be included to the scope onwards, and it will coined to the positive effect, which is not the case yet. We've just closed that deal a few days ago a range.

Foreign exchange impact is improving quarter-to-quarter from 5.2% in the first quarter to minus 0.6% in the second quarter. And even for the first time, I think, for the last 2 years, the month of June in isolation was reporting a slightly accretive amount in term of ethics. So which I think brings us to some more positive outlook for the rest of the year on FX.

Overall, revenue grew 2.1% on a reported basis and 4.8% at constant currency. Again, it's a good demonstration of the resilience of the portfolio and the quality of the underlying market trend. If we zoom on the second quarter, which is on the next page, organic growth improved compared to the first one. So we moved from 4.5% in the first quarter to 5.5% in the second quarter. And this is supported by continued strength in our services related to data centers, energy investments and mining-related activities.

If we take a bit of a closer look by division, as mentioned previously by Hinda, all divisions grew with delivering very strong performance. including scope, 4 businesses posted double-digit growth, reflecting both solid organic trends and the impact of our disciplined M&A execution.

If we go through that briefly, building infrastructure first, together with Marine Offshore where the 2 strongest contributors. Bidding infrastructure, which is the largest segment of the group by the size, grew at 10% in the second quarter. It's again a sequential acceleration versus the first one.

And the 2 main drivers remained sustained strong activity in data center rated services and the sustainability transition services that we offer to our clients more broadly. Marine maintained its growth factory and capitalized again on favorable shipping market dynamic and vessels investments.

Consumer Products delivered solid growth supported by the expected rebound of technology-related activities, especially in Asia and the development of our supply chain diversification throughout the segment. Agri-Food & Commodities, sustained growth momentum, especially in Metal and Minerals, which has got traction over the first semester.

Moving now to Industry. I mentioned before, the growth was somewhat soft due to the impact linked to the Middle East conflict and some weaker OpEx activities, both in that region and in the Americas. Growth at constant currency of 3.3% reflects the positive impact of 2 acquisitions made in Europe in the renewable sector and the nuclear sector, which both are developing as planned and will from most probably a year and Q4 will start to get into the organic development of the business.

If we turn now to the margin bridge, -- so as you can see here, on a reported basis, we delivered 15% -- 15 basis points or of margin improvement. So we closed the half year at 15.5% versus 15.4% at the end of H1, 2025. Organically, it's a 7 basis point improvement. Here it's a combination of the benefit of our 2024 restructuring, tight cost discipline, and it largely offsets some of the Middle East impacts, especially in our Oil & Petroleum division.

Scope had a positive impact of 22 basis points. So it does reflect the portfolio pivot in that I was mentioning, exiting less profitable activities and acquiring more profitable ones. In line with our LIP commitment, we delivered altogether 29 basis points of margin uplift at constant currency compared to the same semester last year.

If we look at the division margin now on the next page, Marine Offshore another strong improvement. It's a story of favorable expansion of our CapEx activities and the end of some low-margin consulting activity that we've decided to stop.

Building & Infrastructure, the margin expansion of 132 basis points on the largest segment of the group. -- is actually a blend of 3 limits: One, the operational leverage, driven by our performance programs, especially in Europe. They have been started at the end of last year and full effective over the first semester this year.

Two, the positive mix effect of our commissioning services related to assets such as data centers; and three, the accretive contribution from M&A, especially the acquisition made now for the last 2 years, which are slowly getting into organic numbers and are here in average, having a higher margin than the average of the division.

So overall, we are pleased with the development of this division, which is the largest again of the group. As far as consumer products is concerned, the margin continues to improve. We will benefit from 2 years of our growth and performance strategy execution. We have expanded the geographical coverage, restructured several sites delivered multiple performance programs, and we now start to see the positive outcome of recent acquisitions, notably in Latin America. So the picture is as well pretty encouraging.

Finally, Agrifood & Commodities & Industry. So Agri-Food & Commodities here, the main adverse impact is a conflict in the Middle East and the contraction of our oil and petrochemical activities. We have deployed several programs to retain staff and preserve margins. We are ready to resume operations when conditions will allow, of course.

And to close, Industry H1 reflects the impact of lower volume from softer activity in the Middle East and delays in the ramp-up of several OpEx contracts. And then finally, this time, Certification experienced temporary pressure on margin led to softer growth in H1 and slower-than-expected ramp-up of recent acquisitions. We expect the revenue to pick up from Q3 and the margin to recover from H2 onwards. Several programs are being put in place, as Linda just mentioned in the first comments.

So overall, as you can see, the company continues to deliver on margin expansion semester after semester, and it reflects indeed mix effect and the result of our performance program at large. If we now have a look into the other financial metrics, -- so bottom line, the adjusted earnings per share continued to grow regularly. It grew 9.8% at constant currency, which is again encouraging and in line with our LEAP 28 trajectory.

Net financial expense remained broadly stable, EUR 55.5 million as the higher cost of refinancing from October 2025 were largely offset by significant lower adverse foreign exchange effect. And on the tax front, the adjusted effective tax rate was broadly stable at 29%. If we turn now to cash flow generation, we delivered another solid cash performance in the first half. Free cash flow amounted to EUR 158 million, up 3.2% organically. is shown on the chart, we maintain a disciplined management of working cap. I

t represents 6.8% of the revenue at the end of June 2026 and reflects what is very important, the sustainability of the efforts we have deployed over the group for a number of years to optimize cash collection and working capital management. So turning now to the new 2026 reporting perimeter. So we put here some numbers to help you manage those changes. So as announced by Linda just a few minutes ago, we are updating our reporting structure. This view provides first a clearer picture of the group in terms of future operating perimeter and obviously, the underlying performance of Bureau Veritas going forward. So it highlights the fact that this new parameter would enhance both the group growth profile, as you can see here and its profitability. So we will concentrate further on businesses with stronger structural growth drivers and higher value-added services.

This change will be effective starting July 1 and will be reflected in our Q3 revenue publication, both on a quarterly and year-to-date basis. So to allow you to update your models, you will find in the appendix in the annex some qualitative and quantitative elements on the few moving pieces from the 6 divisions to the 4 divisions. Obviously, Laurent, Colin and the entire Investment Relations team is here to help you to get your numbers right. It's simple in relative.

And these numbers here give you already an illustrative view on what the new Bureaueritas is looking like once we have taken into account the discontinued activities, which are both government services on the one hand and two, our OLE petrochemical and coal testing activities for which we have announced a few weeks ago that we will divest to a third party. Most probably, we expect this to be completed at the very beginning of 2027 at the latest. I now hand over back to Linda for the outlook for the year.

Thank you, Francois. An update on our outlook. Our first half performance was robust, and demand across our businesses remains healthy. We continue also, as you have seen, to make good progress. Now as we actively reshape our portfolio to increase our exposure to high growth and higher value businesses, we are essentially enhancing the group's growth profile.

Taking out the oil and petrochemical and coal and government services, we have now in new scope. And on this new scope, we are upgrading our full year 2026 outlook as follows. We now expect to have a growth mid- to high single-digit organic revenue growth. We will maintain margin improvement as a guidance, margin improvement at constant currency and we will maintain our strong cash flow generation targets.

In conclusion, we have delivered a solid performance in House '26 -- and as we have forecasted a sequential quarterly acceleration in quarter 2. We also recorded margin improvements at constant currency and on a reported basis. This was achieved in a volatile business environment and with geopolitical uncertainties in key geographies and disruptions in energy markets.

As we have shared earlier, the LEAP 28 strategy is on track. Our portfolio rotation is progressing at pace and we are continuing our M&A programs to meet our portfolio reshaping goals. We remain fully committed to our LEAP 28 ambitions of growth and performance, and we will take the opportunity of the Capital Markets Day update in September to share with you our progress in terms of portfolio, performance and people programs.

We have elected in this busy call not to discuss AI matters as the next phase of development for LEAP 28 will integrate AI, and we will give you then a comprehensive update. Before opening the Q&A session, I wanted to remind you that we will be looking forward to welcoming you to our Capital Markets Day on September 22 in Paris. This will be an opportunity to update you on the next phase of LEAP28 strategy. Thank you. And Francois and I are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley.

I have 2 questions, please. So firstly, on the margin guidance, which is unchanged. -- despite the higher growth guidance and the exit of those lower-margin businesses. So what are the other moving parts within the margin guidance? And I appreciate the wording hasn't changed, but do you actually now perhaps a bit more margin improvement versus before? And then secondly, on certification, where you mentioned you're not happy with the performance, and you're doing in operations review. Could you expand on what that involves? And could that review ultimately end with contract exits or divestments? .

Annelies, could you repeat the second question, please? .

Yes, of course. It was just on certification, where you mentioned you're doing an operations review. Could you expand on what that is expected to evolve? And could that review ultimately end with any contract exits or divestments? Or is it more of a sales program.

Yes. Thank you. I think we -- our margin guidance in general, when you look at since the inception of the LEAP 28 program is based on 2 things. One, on our performance programs. If you recall, we have talked about our operational level programs that includes some process improvement, but also performance management in a very granular and rigorous way and then functional scalability and there are a number of programs there.

And we have also talked about our portfolio reshaping and the mix that we wanted to have at the back end of the strategy. And I think we're doing both and that's what we are executing at this point. The 1 point I want to make, and then I'll pass to Francois on this point. Is that part of our performance programs output was improvements in margin that will allow us to invest in the modernization of our business.

And that's a very important point to keep in mind. And we continue to invest, and you will see when we talk about our update in September, we've been talking about investments in AI, in particular, that will help us accelerate some of those programs. So keep that in mind as you think about the margin, but our guidance indeed didn't change in terms of continuous improvement. And we haven't really given a specific quantum on that. But on the trajectory, we're not reliant. Francois? .

Just to add 1 thing, Andy, we try and that all the size of the 28 to time everything, whether it is the M&A, but what will be what the investment, the growth performance. So that ultimately, we reached the 17% margin kind of while you guys will not see ups and downs during the job. And I think you could recognize that from 2024 onwards. We've managed to put everything together. But year-on-year, you get incrementals in margin. One, we don't see suddenly a big investment in year or 2, and we expect a recovery in your 4. That's not the way we are doing that plan. So just reinforcing the message of Hinda here.

There is a number of investments happening are necessary, and we're going to use whatever room we have from sometimes performance, as we've seen, for example, in DNI for some time, both for reshaping to make sure that at the end of the day, by 2028 as you you have a stronger as well equipped, well structured and capable to sustain its performance for the years to go.

Thanks Francois. On the second question, Annelies the Certification. What we meant by operations review is really around sales efforts. And just to give you a bit more color on that. The mature markets, I talked about mature markets and emerging markets. So in emerging markets, our growth is on track. Can we do better Yes, that is -- we're trying to get the team to capitalize on possible upsides there. On the mature markets, that's where we have seen radio performance that we don't like.

Keeping in mind that mature markets tend to be large in terms of HSE and voluntary, but the traditional themes that we had, and that's where we're pushing the sales efforts we're aggressively doing that in key markets. And across both mature markets and emerging markets, we're pushing new services, in particular, transition services -- that's in the sustainability space, everything from decarbonization solutions to supply chain resilience to life cycle assessment.

So we are going on all fronts, but -- as I said, we weren't pleased with the performance and all hands on deck on this going forward. And we are planning on delivering on that pickup in half.

The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. .

Two for me as well, please. Can I just clarify? I know that at the time of first quarter results, you had indicated that 1Q would the low point on organic growth and that growth should improve through the rest of the year. Clearly, 2Q has delivered on that. Is that still your expectation for 3Q and 4Q?

And specifically maybe on industry, the growth was a little bit weakened first half, do you expect projects to start again in second half and therefore, help with the sequential improvement. My second question is on margins and certification place, which did lag a little bit.

Can you help us understand what changed there beyond just the slowdown in growth? And is part of your portfolio review, et cetera? Is that something that's going to help deliver margin expansion in second half of the year?

Yes, thanks for the question. I'm going to let Francois answer after the margin on sensification, but let me start with the growth side. You're absolutely right. We did expect a to be a low point, certainly in half 1, and we work to make sure with our teams to deliver a sequential improvement in Q2. As you can see with our guidance, of course, we expect half 2 to be a sequential improvement over half 1.

Now I'm not going to give by quarter, we remain in a somewhat complex environment. But what is clear is that we are working on delivering a Health to improvement over half one. Now for industry, I think important support a vital industry to explain the dynamic in half 1.

Half 1, what's important to understand is we actually had a good resilient performance across our CapEx activities, I'm going to say generally like that, both in oil and gas and power and utilities. For the simple reason, these tend to be long-term projects. People don't pull the plug on capital projects for any disruptions, they have to take their time and decide. So -- so very resilient you've seen the oil and gas is growing double digits.

The P&U CapEx also is doing well. Where we have seen indeed a reaction and some of it actually was predating the House 1, particularly in OpEx oil and gas in the Middle East. What we have seen is we have seen 2 dynamics in OpEx. We have seen the Middle East that slowed down in OpEx initially because this requires a lot of people on site and there were concerns on safety and all that.

And then after that, it was a matter of capacity to deploy versus with the flow stopping preserving cash. And if you could delay some of that discretionary spend, you could you would do it. For other parts of the world, what we have seen is people really wanted to rather keep up time. So you don't want to shut down your facilities when you can produce at those kind of prices we've seen for a number of months.

So that dual dynamic there impacted, in particular, our oil and gas but I would say OpEx in general for PMU, for power utilities and oil and gas was slow in our 2 key markets, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Those are the 2 markets where we have seen that.

Now if I look at half 2 for me, industry in house expecting a pickup for 2 things. And the other thing to add for half 1, we're really going against very tough comparables in half, double-digit growth last year. Now as we move to host the comparables are easier for sure, but also there is a pickup, why we believe in that. Our backlog is clear. We have a huge focus on this activity. Our teams on the ground are prepared to execute those backlog. And ultimately, we are not building on our health to an industry, banking on some rebound in activity or rebound from the world. We're building this on existing backlog, existing execution capacity and clear oversight from our managers to deliver on our plans. So that's really our plan for industry. Francois, would you like to comment on that?

Yes. So on margin of certification, so we're not super pleased about it. That said, clearly, I think we should not over-interpret it. 2 things which differ from just being slow in H1 in term of revenue. One, we have a couple of acquisitions that took more time to scale a couple of years ago, we're expecting them to be a higher level -- they are not yet there. And two, we have a couple of operational very localized situation that we need to solve. I think that is very clear on the time that this would be addressing it. So they do not draw a definitive conclusion on this, but a little bit of a accident in good French. So we will recover in H2. .

The next question comes from Geoff Michalet from ODDO BHF. .

Yes. Congratulations for the good set of results. Two questions for me. the first 1 on the exit of government service. You mentioned that you will have ended it by the end of '26 in respect with your contract commitments. Can you elaborate a bit on that? -- since some of your contracts are multiyear contracts with duration above the end is it about, let's say, paying an exit early termination fee or something else? .

The second question is on Marine & Offshore and on the margin, is there a kind of limit on the margin you can reach. Can you come back a bit on what the Roviready? And is it somehow sustainable this kind of margin in marine shore?

Thank you, Geoff, for the questions. On the exit of government services, you are correct that a number of contracts, in fact, most contracts are multiyear contracts, but they also have closes for us to exit contracts at some point, not follow them, but most of them -- and generally, when we're saying strict adherence to customer expectations and contractual expectations, we are essentially working with the customers as we express our desire to exit these activities -- we work with them to make sure that there is business continuity that they have plans with other players that they might onboard the activity themselves.

So it's not a 1 go transaction. You have to engage with the customers, understand the parameters that we'll work with, understand the sensitivity of the activity. But in general, I would say where I sit today and with the plans we have in place by end of 2026, we pretty much would have done most of the contracts. So there's 1 or 2 that might have to flow to early in the year with the understanding that it would be completed and it wouldn't surpass quarter 1 at the latest.

And we have a team, a tough force fully focused on this, working with the regions, working with the countries, working with the customers. We have very clear effort to stay on committee driving this. So we have full visibility on what's happening, and we take the business continuity of our customers very, very seriously.

Francois, you want to comment on the Marine & Offshore margin .

Sure. So you know the company for a while. So you know that the limit for Marine Offshore term of margin has been achieved a couple of years ago at this one. So that's a way to answer your question. The second way to answer your question is to say, I mentioned recognized rapidly the fact that we've stopped some micro consulting businesses that were nice to have and not pretty much value in terms of bottom line. So it does help a little bit here.

I would say that the picture at the end of June, and we'll continue to have the picture at the end of the year. So -- what we try here to balance is the necessary need to recruit engineers, marine engineer to be able to feed the level of service our clients expect. We don't have a specific objective. But I would say, you would expect that this type of margin is the 1 of an MNO business that is in full swing in terms of business cycle and in terms of the deployment of resources. And for the MAX number, I just encourage you to look back at your CAGR when you see you would find it somewhere in 2010 or '11.

The next question comes from Virginia Montorsi from BofA.

I just had 2 quick ones. One is on the margins for Agri-Food & Commodities as the division in I appreciate you're changing the reporting structure, but now that we are considering oil and petrochemicals and government services out of the scope, can you help us understand how to think about the margins for the remaining part of the business for the second half?

And then the last question would be, can you talk a little bit more about your decision to change the reporting structure now? And kind of what are your priorities? And what do you think you can get out of this into the Capital Markets Day and then obviously into the medium term?

Thank you for the questions, Virginia. Francois do you want to cover the margins and how to mobile over.

So I agree margin H1, as I mentioned, have been heavily impacted by our oil and petrochemical activities, which are to make it super simple in terms of impact of the crisis in the Gulf. This is the 1 activity that is the first for obvious reasons, we have leveraged around the coast and they have that their business someone to test on. So you need order to flow the contest, there is no flow. There is not a thing that's very simple to get -- so this activity on driving the margin of agri company H1 a significant plan. .

When we look now on the head, I think, as I mentioned, we have in the appendix, the moving faces from other communities that would go into the industrial -- and you can read here that roughly at the end of H1, we have EUR 250 million of Metals & Minerals and agriculture, which have respectively, a margin of for Metals & Minerals, margin is in line with the agri-food commodity division margin and agriculture a bit below. Those 1 will flow into next year. There is no reason that those 2 subsegments changed dramatically the margin on H2.

So I think with you to have a look at Page 43 and reach out to for more color. But I think that should help you to directionally being able to translate where the remaining part of vehicle food communities are good segment will land in terms of margin over the end of the year, H2.

Thanks Francois. On the second question on why we are changing the reporting. First, why now we are -- as we announced the exit -- the plant exit of oil and petrochemicals and coal and government services, it's a good time. So we have that change. It allows us also to align with the current organization we have -- it's a direct result renew for us as we reshape the portfolio and go from a very broad portfolio to a diversified company with very strong leadership positions in our markets.

We want to reflect that. And that's why Virginia, we -- industrials and commodities also aligns with how we are organized internally, and it focuses on businesses that are very adjacent, energy, minerals and shipping. I will continue to exist as it existed now. Product testing and services as we expand our testing activities and complex products, we are putting together businesses, the consumer side, the technology side and the industrial product Certification side.

And then finally, business assurance is essentially certification as it is. So it's a way for us also to simplify our equity story. Just to give you an idea on the existing reporting, we actually share 2021 subsegments -- and in this new one, it will be 10%. It makes sense. It aligns with the market the market segments we actually cover. So it's really a need for us to make sure that we explain our multi-specialist project is diversified grew much, much better.

The next question comes from Victoria Chang from JPMorgan. .

I have 2, both on the Consumer Products business. So the first 1 is on the China driven growth in softline hardlines and toys that you've mentioned in the press release. So it seems like there's been just outsourcing away from impacting countries towards China. So can I clarify which of these are the impacted countries that you're referring to? And do you see this movement towards China is a trend that can continue despite the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs? .

And the second 1 is on the Technology subdivision. Do you see the higher memory pricing and shortages delaying and slowing down new product introductions in the space? Clearly, the division has grown very strongly in the first half, but curious if you expect any impact from this going forward.

Thanks for the question. So look, in fact, was very interesting late in Q2, the reduction of oil flows from the Middle East impacted very quickly in a number of countries in Southeast Asia and in particularly in South Asia. What is very interesting in that is that the retailers and the brands they quickly were able to move to back to China. And I'm saying back to China because at the start, their sourcing was China centric. And as they started to derisk then goes to Southeast Asia and South Asia. The minute energy became a problem and a bottleneck in the supply chain, they were -- they reverted back. So to me, what I take as a conclusion from that is the amazing flexibility of the China production platform for consumer softline, hardline and toys.

It's just very flexible. It's available. It's extremely gained expertise, exists and we've seen that happen. Now with that say, I think from what we observed, you will always have companies trying to derisk China. They won't pull out completely. It doesn't make sense because that and matched in terms of breadth and depth of what they do, but you will always have a mix.

So -- and again, you're right, the tariffs, the tariff story is that compelling reason why they will always do it. So I expect to see this movement, and I expect to see a mix between China and non-China. On the technology side, look, we haven't seen the chips prices impacting the product innovation yet because a lot of what we do, a significant part of what you do is actually on the -- during the product innovation cycle.

And these projects are still ongoing. In fact, we consider today that the integration of AI capabilities, the concern around cyber are making the product a lot more sophisticated, and there is a lot of innovation in everything from IT products to other electronics to industrial products. So we haven't seen the impact of that on these projects, and you have seen we have a high single-digit growth in technology today, which is very reassuring. And of course, it's a direct result of our diversification of our technology business and the consumer division today.

The next question comes from Neil Tyler from Rothschild and Co Redburn. .

Two questions, please. Firstly, back to the certification and the operations review. I just wanted to perhaps clarify your earlier comments or maybe ask a similar question from a different perspective. Am I right in framing the slowdown that you've witnessed as reflecting I suppose, internal issues and a divergence in your own offering from the market growth. It's not a slowdown in the end market opportunity.

And therefore, if that is the case, it's sort of relatively I don't don't want to use the word easily, but sort of it's within your own hands fixable. And that's the first question. So just if you can sort of help me understand the organic growth dynamics and the differentiation between what's happening in your end markets as you see it and what's happening in your business as you see it?

So look, on certification, I don't think that's a market slowdown. That's not at all what we're talking about here. I think -- and it's not -- you made a comment there on diversion of our own offering from the market. Now, I think we have the offering. We have been developing what we consider high-growth subsegments or strategic priorities for us in the market.

We have an execution challenge, and we are pushing the businesses where we have seen that execution challenge on the sales front on the execution from to recover and to make sure that they were well prepared for the pickup. In fact, if you look at our sustainability and digital business, digital assurance, they're growing high single digits, and we're doing well on that front, and we see that across most markets.

So it's really very specific to our mature markets, meaning mature geography and mature offering where we have seen a bit of a below expectation performance that we quickly converged on and put plans in place to make sure the pickup does occur in the second quarter.

Now the comparables weren't exactly easy half 1 for certification. If you look at last year, I think we had a in quarter 1, we grew 10.9%, and we grew less -- that's around mid-single 6.5% in the second quarter. So there's a bit of that, but I don't want to fully justify by that. And that's why, to me, it's an operational review that zeroed in on where we see that slow down and we have very clear plans on how to recover.

Understood. That's very clear. And then the second question, just coming back to the provision you've taken with relation -- with respect to the issues I mentioned at Q1 -- can you sort of clarify a little bit what that covers? Is that just your best estimate of financial penalties? Is it sort of exit costs, lost profit from exit in the contracts? -- and sort of what you've provided for in that number. .

I think just -- thank you for the question. On this whole matter. I think what's important to keep in mind is that we acted very quickly, transparently and the sizably -- and the review is complete. The provision is recorded. I'll pass to Francois to talk a bit more about that. the exit is underway, and we're strengthening our compliance framework. This is a legacy activity, and we're addressing it with a discipline that you would expect from a company like Gurov. So that provision reflects our best estimate today of the full financial impact. I don't know Francois add anything to that. .

I can't add much more, but that's really the full financial impact. of the whole story. .

The next question comes from Allen Wells from Jefferies. .

Just 2 very quick clarification questions from me, please. Firstly, just on the 22 basis points of margin improvement from scope in the first half .

On the known knowns disposals, contract acting, et cetera, how should we think about that number for the full year, would be my first question. And then secondly, just on the guidance upgrade, the growth guidance upgrade. Can I just check -- my understanding was that that's now obviously on a group excluding the activities exiting and being sold. And -- from memory, I think the part of the downgrade in guidance back at Q1 was the impact of those government services exits.

So I'm just trying to understand how much of the guidance upgrade is kind of the accounting reporting and how much is actually underlying upgrade more broadly? Any clarification there would be great.

Let me start with the guidance upgrade. Look, the guidance upgrade is really coming from -- based on performance, what we believe the business can do. And you're right, it does you have to remove out the oil and petrochemical and coal and government services. You take those businesses out. The remaining scope will perform mid to high single digits. That's the guidance. Why do we think that? We think that based on the performance you have seen the pickup in quarter 2.

We will watch very closely our pipeline and backlog and we have very clear visibility on our execution capacity, and that's how we were able to make that guidance. We -- and we are not -- the guidance doesn't really is not based on some major rebounds from the Middle East, for example. So it's a really well-balanced guidance that shows that our businesses that we have been working to shape for the last 2, 3 years are prepared to or are being prepared to deliver the mid- to high single digit. And I think I gave a few explanations and prior questions on a number of these businesses. On the scope, you want to take that, Francois? .

Yes. So on the scope, there is a simple way to answer, which is the 22 basis points of positive scope effects not at all being driven by anything relative to our fuel business or in Petroleum business, neither our GSIT government services business. So they are here to stay. Regardless of the format, all reporting, new reporting test. That's element number one. Element number two, obviously, you see the current scope, I mean the scope at the end of June, right? So whatever could come acquisitions, et cetera, will help this number per ton.

But if we were in a world that this scope at the end of June would not change, this 20 basis point of improvement easier to stay through the year. So it's something to replicate based on the current.

The next question comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS.

Just last 1 for me, just to clarify, following up from Allen's question. So Slide 29 makes it look like the exit activities will be classified as held for sale. And so excluded from the group organic growth and margin calculations, even if those disposals aren't completed until the start of next year, is that correct? And I kind of follow up with the on, but are we going to get any restated numbers for these new divisions for the past years as well, please? .

So just to make it very simple. IFRS like those 2 activities will be treated as a discontinued activity. And you will see it from reporting Q3 as of first of Jan rate. So you will have the full Q3 and year to Q3 based on this new ore division. -- and treating the 2 activities I've mentioned and the discontinuation mode. That's point 1. And your second half of question was missed this one. .

Just about the could not in comparable .

You already have a nice illustrative H1 picture and the comparable will come together with the actual numbers. .

This concludes the question-and-answer session. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

All right. Thank you, everyone, for attending the call. And I'm looking forward to meeting most of you in the Capital Market Day on September 22 in Paris. Thank you very much, and have a safe and restful summer.

Welcome to the Bureau Veritas Q1 2026 Revenue Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers, Hinda Gharbi, Chief Executive Officer; and Francois Chabas, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. Welcome to Bureau Veritas' First Quarter 2026 Revenue Presentation, and thank you for attending this call. I'm joined by Francois Chabas, our Chief Financial Officer. This quarter, Bureau Veritas delivered a steady performance in a changing macroeconomic environment, reflecting continued momentum in the execution of our LEAP 28 strategy.

I would like to thank our teams worldwide for their commitment and contribution. I would like now to go through our Q1 revenue performance. Revenue reached EUR 1.5 billion. Organic revenue growth stood at 4.5%. While this quarter is slightly below historical organic growth averages, I'm pleased to see that a number of our businesses are delivering on or above expectations, offsetting the impact of project delays and the Middle East disruptions on others.

External growth contributed 1.8% from recent bolt-on acquisitions, largely offset by last year disposals. We expect the recent midsized acquisition LotusWorks to take effect in half 2026. As expected, the appreciation of the euro against most currencies led to a negative currency impact of 5.2% in the quarter. I will elaborate further on our new full year growth guidance at the end of this presentation. I'd like to say, though, that this year is shaped by complex geopolitics and our decision to exit specific contracts in the subsegment Government Services.

Moving now to our revenue performance by business and geographies. From a business perspective, Marine & Offshore and Buildings & Infrastructure delivered the strongest organic growth in the high single-digit to double-digit range. Marine & Offshore delivered 11.2% organic growth, supported by strong new build activity as the global fleet modernization continues. Buildings & Infrastructure grew 7.3%, demonstrating the value of our recent portfolio expansion with data centers up more than 30% year-on-year -- organically year-on-year.

The rest of the portfolio posted low to mid-single-digit growth with the lowest growth in Agri-Food & Commodities and industry, reflecting tougher comparables and disruptions from the Middle East conflict, project delays and disruptions from the Middle East conflict for the last. From a geographical standpoint, Asia Pacific delivered strong growth of 7.9%, driven by solid momentum across the region, primarily in China, Korea and Australia.

The Middle East and Africa delivered a resilient 5.5% while navigating disruptions across operations in the Gulf cooperation countries. Europe continued to outperform GDP with organic growth of 3.4%. In the Americas, growth reached 1.7% with a strong growth in North and Central America, offset by contract delays and end of contracts in Latin America.

I would like now to give you a quick update on the Middle East. We have 10 countries impacted across the region, and I'm pleased to report that our people and their families are safe and our facilities and laboratories did not sustain any damage. These countries account for 6% of group revenue with activities distributed across industry, Agri-Food & Commodities and buildings and infrastructure for the most part.

The security situation varies by country, impacting operations in different ways. We work closely every day with our customers to maintain business continuity in a safe way. I would like now to give you an update on LEAP 28 strategy execution. A few words first on the AI-driven secular trends. The technology race we're witnessing in this age of intelligence will have a profound impact on reindustrialization and urbanization. In addition, the rapid development of AI and the associated needs in computing capacity and data storage are feeding a massive buildup phase for data centers and semiconductor manufacturing.

These dynamics translate into significant CapEx commitments from hyperscalers and others, and chips manufacturers, particularly with a rapid buildup in the Americas and Europe. Just on the right there on the slide, you can see that data center capital expenditure is projected to rise 17% annually from 2023 to 2030 across the world.

Semiconductor manufacturing CapEx spend in the Americas and EMEA is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8% from '24 to '29, highlighting a multiyear investment cycle. Taking that into account and specifically looking at Buildings & Infrastructure, B&I represents 30% of our portfolio today. It's our biggest market and a leading business in our expand leadership stream of the LEAP 28 strategy.

The B&I strategy is built around 3 clear growth areas: building CapEx, building OpEx and infrastructure. I would like to focus on buildings CapEx, which represents 38% of the divisional revenue. Our strategy is to expand our capabilities in code compliance and to increase our position in mission-critical assets. These assets such as data centers, semiconductor fabs and high-performance facilities are complex, highly regulated and have high expectations of operational performance and uptime.

These factors naturally drive higher testing, inspection and certification intensity. With the acquisition of LotusWorks, we significantly reinforced our exposure to these mission-critical segments. So about LotusWorks. LotusWorks brings highly complementary technical expertise that significantly enhances our end-to-end service offering across mission-critical assets from construction phase through to the operations phase.

Together, we are building a platform of around EUR 300 million in revenues, fully dedicated to mission-critical assets such as data centers and semiconductor facility. This platform, when put together, will represent roughly 15% of our B&I revenue and will materially strengthen our positioning in high-growth markets. This acquisition will also support Bureau Veritas organic growth will be accretive to the group's adjusted operating margin and slightly accretive to earnings as early as '26.

I will now pass it on to Francois to share some financials.

Thank you, Hinda. Good afternoon, everyone. So we'll do a bit of a deep dive on the numbers. In the first quarter, as you see on that page, we delivered a revenue of EUR 1.55 billion. Organic growth was robust at 4.5%. Bolt-on acquisition closed in past quarters contributed 1.8% to the growth, mainly in the B&I industry segment, where we have reinforced our positions in Europe, in particular.

Divestments accounted for minus 1.9%. As you may remember, as part of our active portfolio management, we have divested in 2025 our food testing activity business and part of our technical supervision services in China at the end of 2025. So on a net basis, the scope had a marginal impact of minus 0.1% in the first quarter.

Currency, so still a headwind this quarter at minus 5.2%. So it's mainly due to the strength of the euro against the usual suspects, key currency, U.S. dollar, Chinese renminbi, Australian dollar and Canadian dollar. I think the good news is if we assume the current spot rates, we expect the FX drag to ease significantly from Q2 onwards. If you remember, those currencies moved against the euro following the announcement of tariffs 12 months ago. So we are now coming out of this comparison phase. So we expect Q2 and the rest of the year to be much better at current spot rates, of course.

If we have a look now at our business performance in the first quarter, both on organic and scope aspect, so total being constant currency on the right. Marine & Offshore was another very strong quarter, double-digit organic growth, a bit more than 11%, driven in particular by new construction has been mentioned.

Second element, we're happy and pleased to see Buildings & Infrastructure delivering strong growth of 7.3% organically, 8.2% at constant currency. So the revenue growth is led here around 3 or structured around 3 main aspects that will be further developed: one, data center and mission-critical commissioning services; two, an increased demand for infrastructure related services; and three, the contribution from recent acquisitions I mentioned, specifically in Australia and Europe, which are now slowly getting into the organic contribution in terms of revenue guidance.

Consumer Products, 4.3%, driven by the recovery of our technology business. We bottomed out, as, I think, we've told you during our February call. So we are now back into the positive here. Certification with an organic growth of 2.3%. March exit rate was encouraging, reflecting steady demand for assurance and compliance services.

Agri-Food & Commodities delivered 2.1%. And finally, industry growth was limited to 0.7% organically, but we reached almost 3% at constant currency. So it reflects the recent reinforcement of our portfolio offering, in particular, in nuclear-related services and power generation services. Organically, let's face it, we faced tougher comparable in Q1. If you remember, we delivered I believe above 14% growth in Q1 '25 as well as some impact from the Middle East situation. So here, we expect a sequential acceleration throughout the year 2026.

I will now hand over back to Hinda for giving you more elements on the business highlights of the quarter.

Thanks, Francois. Let's start with the Marine & Offshore. So the division continued its strong momentum in quarter 1, '26, delivering 11.2% organic growth, reinforcing the excellent momentum we have seen actually over the last few years. Looking at it by subsegment, new construction once again posted strong double-digit growth, supported by accelerating deliveries and the capacity expansion that we have talked about with the new shipyards coming online.

The order backlog is solid. We have reached 33.6 million gross tons, up essentially 24% year-on-year. Now looking at the OpEx activity or the core in-service activities, as we call them, that grew modestly considering the tough comparables we have. But the fleet continues to expand with some key new wins, as you can see on the slide more recently. The marine sector continues to transform fast, and we are developing solutions to support rapidly digitalizing ships. We have recently partnered with the Hong Kong shipping company to class an augmented ship.

If we look at Agri-Food & Commodities, the business delivered 2.1% organic growth in the first quarter with contrasting dynamics across subsegments. Oil and Petrochemicals faced a challenging environment and delivered a modest organic contraction driven by trade disruptions in the Middle East. The impact was partly offset by volumes redirected through alternative routes and in other markets.

Metals & Minerals continued to perform well, delivering high single-digit organic growth. Activity was sustained in gold and copper, and also, we have seen higher exploration spending. The deployment of new laboratory services on-site laboratory serves also contributed to this performance. The Agri subsegment contracted in the quarter, reflecting volatile global trade workflows.

Moving on to Industry. The division delivered 0.7% organic growth in the quarter, an aggregate performance with different dynamics across the subsegments. Additionally, the Middle East conflict and OpEx project delays were 2 important factors in the performance this quarter. If we look at Oil & Gas, it achieved mid-single-digit organic growth, supported by double-digit growth in the CapEx activities with several important inspection and technical support contracts secured both in the Middle East and Latin America.

OpEx activities were temporarily impacted by conflict-related delays in the Middle East and by reduced activity in Latin America. I would like to add that some of the OpEx delays actually predated the Middle East conflict itself. Power & Utilities delivered low single-digit organic contraction, reflecting the postponements of major inspections in the Middle East.

Solid CapEx momentum is maintained, and we have seen a mid- to high single-digit organic growth there, sustained by spend in renewables and nuclear projects. And as an example, Bureau Veritas was selected to perform quality assurance and regulatory compliance second-party inspections at a major European nuclear fusion project.

In the industrial product certification, we delivered high single-digit organic growth, supported by pressure vessels and increased demand for machinery. I would like to finish this update on industry by saying that customer spend remains robust, driven by growing energy needs and increased concerns around security of supply.

The Middle East conflict provides a catalyst for increased spend across all energy sources in the rest of the world. This quarter should represent the trough of the industry activity, and we expect growth recovery from Q2 onwards.

Moving on to Buildings & Infrastructure. The division was once again among the strongest performers this quarter, delivering 7.3% organic growth in Q1. This performance is a result of portfolio pivots that we have completed over the last 24 months, coupled with a solid backlog and sustained demand for CapEx services. The building CapEx delivered double-digit growth, driven primarily by multiyear data center projects with a strong momentum in the United States.

Buildings OpEx achieved low single-digit growth with a steady growth in our largest market, France, from increased volumes and high demand for energy-efficient services. The U.S. activities were more focused on asset condition assessments. Infrastructure recorded high single-digit growth, supported by government-led programs in Europe, strong momentum across North America and Asia-Pac and continued large-scale projects in the Middle East.

Turning to Certification. The division delivered 2.3% organic growth in the first quarter against challenging comparables with momentum improving in March. Performance was temporarily impacted by some timing effects of schemes and specific contract terminations or scope reductions. Looking at the different subsegments. The QHS&E and specialized schemes posted moderate organic growth, while demand remained robust for customized voluntary and transition-related certification programs.

For sustainability and digital certification, it continued to perform strongly well, delivering high single-digit organic growth driven by rising demand for carbon assessments, ESG services and supply chain-related services as well as a solid momentum in cybersecurity certification in Europe. Overall, certification continues to benefit from strong structural drivers in assurance, sustainability and risk management, supporting a pickup from Q2 onwards. During the quarter, we secured a contract to perform ESG performance and supplier audits for a large European hospitality company.

Lastly, turning to Consumer Products Services. The division delivered 4.3% organic growth in the first quarter. Softlines, Toys and Hardlines demonstrated resilience despite very strong comparables from pull-ins ahead of tariffs last year. Technology Services performed particularly well, delivering double-digit organic growth as the electrical and electronic platforms developed in Eastern Asia from acquisitions we have completed in the last 24 months.

Finally, transition services within this division continued to expand. In the first quarter, we were selected to provide social audit support for a major U.S. retailer. Now prior to talking about the outlook, I would like to come back to the decisions linked to certain activities that we have taken this quarter. Pursuant to internal alerts, the company has conducted investigation that uncovered compliance deviations in the Middle East and Africa region, mostly in Africa and primarily in the Government Services legacy subsegments.

We have proposed several remedial measures needed in the short and medium term to our Board of Directors. And at its meeting on April 21, the Board of Directors supported and approved all of these actions. First, the company took the decision to immediately and voluntarily disclose the situation to the French authorities in the spirit of transparency and cooperation. We will provide an update on the financial consequences of these deviations and disclosure as soon as we can do so.

Furthermore, the company will terminate the contracts in question and will continue the in-depth review of its activities within the Government Services legacy subsegment, which represented EUR 185 million in revenue in '25, to determine the appropriate terms of exit from this subsegment. As a result, we have updated our full 2026 growth outlook.

I would like to say that our existing compliance framework will be reinforced to ensure that all activities fully adhere to the group's ethics and compliance standards. We have implemented disciplinary measures, and Bureau Veritas is committed to implementing all necessary measures to prevent the reoccurrence of such events.

Turning now to the outlook. Complex geopolitics and an uncertain macro environment are shaping 2026. In addition to the launch of an in-depth review of the terms of an exit from the group's Government Services legacy subsegments, as I just explained earlier, in particular, after we have decided to terminate certain contracts in the Middle East and Africa region. We have, therefore, updated the guidance for full year '26 as follows: on the growth side, mid-single-digit organic revenue growth. On the margin side, improvement in adjusted operating margin at constant exchange rates and on the cash side, strong cash flow generation.

The group is fully committed to the LEAP 28 financial guidance, benefiting from favorable market trends and from the sustained execution of LEAP 28 portfolio and performance programs. I would like to close now on this first quarter performance, a number of factors, including project delays in various parts of the world, the conflict in the Middle East and very challenging comparables in key divisions contributed to what we consider a low point in our growth journey.

We have a solid backlog, sound and scalable execution capabilities and ongoing performance programs that will all contribute to what we expect to be a recovery throughout the year. Our business model is resilient with a well-balanced mix of activities. Our portfolio composition continues to evolve, and we have a solid financial position.

On the LEAP 28 strategy front, I'm pleased with the progress achieved so far around our portfolio priorities. The acquisition of LotusWorks is a significant milestone as we accelerate the buildup of our new -- of new platforms for future growth. We have proactively disclosed a compliance event that is triggering certain government services contract termination. Based on that, we have accelerated an in-depth review of this legacy subsegment activities to determine the appropriate terms of exit.

Bureau Veritas is committed to the high standards of ethics and integrity in the conduct of its activities anywhere in the world. I would like to finish by saying that our updated full year 2026 revenue growth guidance is only a temporary step out of our LEAP 28 path. I reiterate our commitment to our 2028 financial ambition.

Thank you for your attention, and Francois and I are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley.

I have 2 questions, please. So firstly, regarding the downgrade to your full year organic guidance, could you elaborate just on how much of the downgrade is more macro driven, i.e., you're seeing slower-than-expected activity in some of your end markets even beyond the Middle East? And how much is simply the exit of those contracts that you referenced? From memory, you typically start the year with the vast majority of your revenues locked in. So I'm just curious as to what has significantly changed in the last couple of months, as I said, beyond the Middle East?

And then secondly, regarding the investigation into the Government Services subsegment, you've mentioned in your remarks, implementing additional compliance controls. So how confident are you that this is an isolated situation within the group? And to that end, are you planning any additional compliance checks or business reviews across the rest of your portfolio?

Thank you, Annelies. Let me start with the second question, and I'll get back to the first one. I think we obviously -- this is still an ongoing investigation. There are a number of things we cannot share. But I would like to say that our actually compliance programs are effective in finding such deviations. And therefore, we have an organic way of finding this, and we have been very clear in our approach to this issue. We investigated. We voluntarily are disclosing to the authorities. And based on our findings, we're stopping some contracts.

So there's no -- this is a clear case of compliance for us. We did what we will do in these cases. Now the fact that we are considering the exit from government services in many ways, is a natural thing. I have mentioned in my prepared remarks that this is a legacy segment. This is a business we had for a very long time. It's low growth. It is subscale. And it's a segment that is -- that fits in our bucket of optimized value and impact.

And the fact that we had to stop these contracts because of this particular case, I've mentioned, really, in a way, accelerated the review that we would have got to at some point. So there is no major drama here. This is us acting on that information we have found. And I'm quite confident that as we learn from this investigation, we will plan to implement the necessary measures to ensure such events do not reoccur.

On the first one, we're -- obviously, again, because we are in the middle of this and also because the contract terminations will take a certain time that we are not able to tell you right now, because the key thing that Bureau Veritas focuses on is business continuity for our customers and finding an orderly and professional way to exit these contracts or terminate them. It's really very hard to give you an exact number there. I think at this point, we'll just stay on that, Annelies.

Okay. But the change in the guidance is those exits. It's not that you're seeing slower activity elsewhere in the business?

No, actually I think the change on guidance, there is the impact of these contracts, absolutely. And there is, of course, the fact that we have a very uncertain situation around the world. And I've mentioned a few times in my prepared remarks that we have project delays. These project delays are a bit everywhere, and we wanted to make sure that we take that into account as we revisited our plans for the year.

The next question comes from Will Kirkness from Bernstein.

I've got 3 questions, please. I just wonder if I could follow up on the Government Services and just ask if you could give us the revenue number for what you've exited and whether the margin profile is different for Government Services as a whole versus group. The second thing was just looking at group organic growth, if you could give a split of price versus volume.

And then finally, just thinking about M&A and optionality and news flow we've had recently. I just wonder how the Board thinks about deals and whether potentially revisiting discussions from late '24 or early '25 would ever come back on the table.

Thank you for the questions. I'm going to let Francois take the first one. Go ahead, Francois.

Yes. Thanks for the question. So to frame this a little bit, the Government Services, we disclosed it is 3% of the group revenue, EUR 185 million. It's a subsegment. As a matter of fact, we do not disclose margin by subsegment or for any subsegment, in particular, in this business where the competition landscape is super restrictive. The overall impact is captured in the guidance. And you've seen we haven't changed guidance on margins.

So that to reassure you. And then when it comes to making that very clear when it comes to the process to review various exit options at that stage, we take a cautious look at it with due respect to our clients and employees. So that's why we have a broader guidance, whether it's revenue or margin that encapsulates various options for which today, we don't have certainty, but which are broad enough that we know we'll be able to stick to those guidance as we speak.

When it comes to the price volume, so we start to see a bit of discussion about inflation coming back, not that easy though for various reasons to elaborate, if you wish. But at that stage, we haven't changed our plans for the year, meaning 1/3 inflation, 2/3 volumes on a full year basis, I mean, really on a full year basis. That's where we are. Again, if you want to further elaborate on mission we be happy to do so.

All right. On the third question on the M&A and optionality, I think we've been clear, and it's very important to reiterate that. We have 2 streams in our M&A. We have the bolt-on stream, which we will continue to do very opportunistically based on the gaps we have, be it on capabilities or in terms of geographies on different businesses that will continue, and it's a very well-oiled machine in terms of -- the other stream we had is midsized acquisitions and we tended to, essentially, put that between EUR 100 million and EUR 500 million, mostly to build new platforms.

The LotusWorks acquisition fits exactly into that. We have, at this point, no plan to change that approach. But of course, we're watching very carefully what's happening today in the market. But as to coming back to cases in '24, that's not the case.

The next question comes from James Rolland-Clark from Barclays.

So just looking back at the first quarter, you slowed down by 2 percentage points in terms of organic growth from Q4. Can you try to split out the drag of that slowdown between the Iran conflict and anything else you think is important to flag? Or perhaps could you give us the trend up until the conflict and the organic trend for March?

Secondly, on certification, there's a bit of slowdown here. Can you provide the sort of current trend there maybe and what is actually sustainable because obviously there was a timing impact in certification. And then finally, you mentioned in your presentation the industry should recover in the second quarter. The situation in Iran is still not resolved. So I just wonder what gives you the confidence in that commentary?

Yes, the line is really very bad. So I will attempt my understanding is what is the -- I guess, the sequential dynamic there between Q4 and Q1, if I heard you well. And what's happening in Q1. So a couple of things. As I mentioned earlier, I think it's very important to mention that -- there is true the conflict in the Middle East, which impacted some of the industry and some of our oil and petrochemical activity.

But that is -- some of it is linked to the conflict delays linked to that. But there are a number of project delays that predated the conflict that were actually in play as well, particularly for industry. And you can see industry in Q4 grew 4.9% and then it grew 0.7% in Q1.

It's very important to mention that last year, Industry in Q1 '25 grew 14.3%. So we are against very, very tough comparable. The same for certification. Certification in Q1 last year grew 10.9%. So you're dealing here with tough comparables, project delays in general because some of them are not only in the Middle East, plus the conflict in the Middle East.

Now why am I confident that the industry in quarter 2 should recover a number of things. We have projects that will start in different parts. I talked about some of the wins we have had. We can't, of course, predict too much what will happen in the Middle East, considering the fluidity of the situation there, but we have a backlog that we work with.

A number of the OpEx projects should recover and should restart. So we have, I would say, reasonable and good reasons to think that we can -- industry will recover. Certification actually is a clearer story there. Tough comparables, it's true, but we exited the quarter with 5% growth in certification in March. So we are starting to recover. And we are -- and we expect to -- again, some -- there were some timing effects we talked about with some of the schemes, we expect those to go away. So again, certification should recover. So there are very, very tangible things there that James, that we have taken into account in our views of Q2.

The next question comes from Geoffroy Michalet from ODDO BHF.

I have 3 quick ones. First one, we see 5.5% organic growth in Middle East, which is quite impressive. Do you have an idea of how much growth you left on the table because of Middle East disruption in your view or let's say, versus your previous budget before Middle East disruption? Second question, when you did the full year '25 call, you mentioned your willingness to double the portfolio rotation versus what was done the last 2 years.

At this stage, had you already the government services in mind in your portfolio rotation? And did you already know or had the alert of potential wrongdoing in this division? And can you also reassure us on the financial impact, meaning that you will assess only the potential exit and not any accounting fraud that might trigger, let's say, a treasury impact? And the third point and last question on your new guidance on sales this new mid-single-digit target, is it including government service that will be exited or runoff? Or will it be stripped out?

Sorry, Geoffroy, could you repeat the last question? I didn't hear that properly.

Yes. Yes. On the mid-single-digit new target that you have, is it including the Government Service business within your portfolio? Or will it be stripped out of your portfolio?

On the Middle East impact, so we are talking about the impact in March. I think in the big scheme of things, we have a bit of an impact on the industry segment and to a lesser extent on the B&I segment, as well as on the oil and petroleum testing within Agri-Food & Commodities. I think the bulk of the impact in March has been led to disruption in industry and Agri-Food & Commodities. What we see today is the activity is getting back, I would not say to normal in April, but with less disruptions in the industry field where we can go and visit refineries and such locations.

The fuel testing business remains subdued. So how much we've left, I think we know by the end of June, a little bit, but not a vast amount at that stage. I think what we indicate when it comes to Middle East disruption is more for the year to come is more broader disruptions in the global economy because most of what we have technically left on the table in Q1 OpEx-related services that will have to happen in the year and setting of petrochemicals flows, which we move if not from the Middle East and somewhere else.

So this we would recoup anyhow notably in Q2, Q3 or Q4. But the broader disruption is something which is more difficult to assess and as related with the global economy here. So that's answer the first point. The second was on -- so just precision on the financial impact and accounting flow just for everyone to be very clear on this. The financial impact -- provide you an update on the financial consequences of these combined events as soon as we can do so. But for the time being, it's way too early to make any comment to answer bluntly to your question, there is no accounting problems.

All right. Thanks, Francois. On the third question, the question is whether Government Services is included in the numbers, it's removed from the numbers. Just to be clear, I couldn't hear the question properly.

To be clear on the question, I think, Geoffroy, you asked if the new guidance was including the -- as Hinda mentioned, the existing of the contract. And the answer is yes, it does include the exiting of the contract.

So it is removed.

So that means we're going to remove -- we don't have a final number. There will be no such numbers, but it's part of the guidance. In case of doubt, you can channel your further questions to Laurent. We'll be happy to answer them with all level of detail. So it's within but being removed.

The next question comes from Virginia Montorsi from Bank of America.

Just a quick one on Industry. If I think about the sequential dynamics for Q2 and onwards, obviously, comps get easier, but I would assume that Q1 only had the effect of Middle East-related disruptions in March. If the conflict being ongoing, Q2 will likely book an impact from April onwards. Are you still confident that the impact from the easier comp kind of offsets the Middle East disruption? Or how should we think about industry essentially with these key 2 moving pieces into Q2 and then the remainder of the year?

Yes. Thank you, Virginia, for the question. Look, Q2, first of all, the comps are a little easier, but last year, industry grew 10%. So we are confident that we will have a pickup in Q2 versus what we have seen in Q1 in terms of growth. The impact, as we said, was 1 month in Q1. And it's not only the conflict itself, but project delays in the region. So we tend to talk about the Middle East, but there are 2 dynamics. There are project delays and then there is some of the impact of the conflict specifically to it, but 2 different dynamics here.

And we've seen this project delays mostly in OpEx, both in oil and gas and in Power & Utilities, meaning non-oil and gas energy sources. The CapEx is growing nicely. So -- so again, we've also seen project delays in Q1 in other parts of the world that will recover in quarter 2. So when we take that, we take the backlog we have, we are confident that in Q2, we'll see recovery of our Industry division.

The next question comes from Victoria Chang from JPMorgan.

I have 3 questions, please. Firstly, on growth by region. In the Americas, you posted 1.7% organic growth despite a 6.8% organic increase in North and Central America. So can you talk about what the offset to that was, please? Was it driven by weakness in the LATAM region perhaps? Secondly, if I remember correctly, at the full year results, you saw project delays in industry and had a negative effect on your margins.

Would you expect a similar impact on first half margins this year given that the project delays have continued? Or was that more of a one-off timing effect in 2025? And then my last question is on Certification. At full year results last year, you talked about rolling out a new production system. And how has this been progressing? And did the rollout of that new production system impact growth at all in certification?

Thanks for the questions, Victoria. So on the Americas, Latin America has a combination of project delays and some nonrenewal of contracts. And that's really impacted the growth this quarter. We continue to work very hard on the sales front, on the pipeline on the sales front, and we secured some new contracts there in industry. That was really some of the industry, some of the B&I. So that's really what was driving that lower performance in Latin America. So we expect to see that starting to move.

The project delays in Industry, the second question you mentioned is whether there was -- can you please clarify the -- it's mostly on one-offs. We have -- yes, that was last year, we have done some -- we stopped some contracts because we were managing -- we were looking for more of the commercial and profitability of these contracts. That was last year. We're not -- we don't have that this year. This year, we have continued project delays that we explained and some nonrenewal of contracts that occurred.

But there is no voluntary stoppage of contracts. And then on certification, we have a SmartCert platform that we have been deploying, and that's ongoing. We have deployed it in a number of countries so we have been able to see some really good feedback from our teams around the world. And we should be completing probably the deployment by mid next year because we have some very big regions that need a bit more adaptation during the implementation of that. But all in all, it's going according to plan.

Okay. I understand. I mean just a follow-up on my second question actually on the margins. So just to clarify, will your first half margins be unaffected by the project delays in that case?

I think the simple answer is not materially if it is. I mean we do not guide on margin by semester, by segment, but we do not expect any material drop in margin for Industry in...

The next question comes from Francois Digard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Sorry to come back to this, but I still feel I do not understand the nature of the misconduct. This is not an accounting fraud. So what exactly is it corruption? If so, why notify the French authorities rather than the local authorities? And to your best knowledge, when these deviations have started?

Yes. Thank you for the question, Francois. As you can understand, this is an ongoing investigation, and we are disclosing to the authorities. So there are limited things that I can share on a public call. So at this point, all what I can say it's a compliance event that we have investigated and continue to investigate. We are talking to the authorities and the investigation will take its course in the hands of these competent authorities. I really cannot say more than that. It impacts the Middle East and Africa region, mostly in Africa, and it does impact government services, as we have explained. That's all what I can tell you at this point.

But as you understand, the answers sound lawyer driven, and they are clearly not sufficient for investors with the share price down 13% today, mainly because of that. So when do you plan to share more details?

I think as soon as we can disclose more, we will, of course, disclose more to investors, absolutely.

The next question comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS.

It's Rory here. Just one follow-up on the margin, please. So as discussed, you haven't changed the wording of the margin guidance despite the lowering of growth guidance and a slower Q1. Can you just talk about your cost actions you've taken as a result of any of these project delays and your attitude towards cost management, what's proving a tricky year in general? And also related to that, if you can't talk about subsegment profitability, could you please commit to disclosing the margin impact of any contract exits as that happens over time?

Rory, just on the margin guidance, I think we have enough means within our variable cost structure to be able to adapt in a very agile way as soon as there is a little bit of a slowdown. I think we have as well to put that on the wider context. Moving from mid- to high to mid remains something that is pretty much manageable in a service-based company. So as you know, we have a good chunk of our business that is run through contractors that enables us to adapt to the ups and downs.

And the company is used to manage its cost structure in a very, I would say, rapid and efficient manner. So no big drama here for us. Two, interesting, we are talking about 3% of the business. So if you want me to disclose each and every contract, we're going to stop in terms of margins, to get ready for a long night, my friends, because that will be a long list. So I think the company is managing its portfolio. We have -- if you remember, last year, end of 2024, we divested our food testing business in trenches, not in one go.

And I think it's been well managed from a guidance point of view, well managed in terms of making sure everyone is involved and knows what's happening. We do the same thing here. And I think that should make everyone comfortable that our guidance is well proportionate and that we know how to navigate this. Again, let's put that into consideration. We're talking about 3% of the revenue of the company.

And by the way, just as it's as we say in French, but we end up having LotusWorks coming with broadly almost the same size. So we are in the transformation of the portfolio with -- and this is true. This is quite unique in this sector. Not many companies in the sector are shaping the portfolio the way Hinda is doing it. And I think we have some credential in being successful on this.

Yes. And I think, look, I mean, obviously, it's -- we haven't discussed government services. We consider it a mature legacy business that at some point, we will deal with it in terms of portfolio pivoting. But it just so happened that we had to do it now. I think it's very important to -- for us to execute that with an eye to business continuity for the customers, which we have done with our food business will continue to do so.

We are, of course, managing the whole, the announcement and its impact on our employees. And we will make sure that as this investigation progresses, we -- and when we can, we'll give you more information on that. There is full transparency on this matter, but I hope you understand that there are some limitations to what we can disclose at this point. And with that, I think we don't have, yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. And again, with that, I think we are coming to the end of the call. Thank you all very much for joining our call, and have a good day.

The live conference is now over. You may now disconnect.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 results. I'm joined by Francois Chabas, our Group CFO. In keeping with our solid plan execution, 2025 delivered sector-leading organic growth and strong margin progression. In the second year of our LEAP 28 strategy, we delivered results fully aligned with our ambition to accelerate growth and enhance returns.

During the year, we implemented our new organization, which is now accelerating strategy execution across our geographic platforms and product lines. Our results reflect the strengthened portfolio, the tangible impact of our performance programs and efficient capital allocation. I'm proud of our leaders and their team's contributions across the world and of the consistency in delivery in a fast-changing market.

Let me start with our financial highlights for the year. 2025 was the second year of our LEAP 28 strategy, and we continue to gain traction across all pillars. We delivered 6.5% organic revenue growth, including 6.3% in the last quarter of the year. Adjusted operating margin of 16.3%, up 32 basis points year-on-year and 51 basis points at constant currency. Adjusted earnings per share is up 2.8% on a reported basis and 9.2% at constant currency. Free cash flow of EUR 824 million with a very strong 107% cash conversion.

At constant currency, we delivered double-digit shareholder returns. For 2025, we will propose a cash dividend of EUR 0.92 per share, up 2% versus last year. It is fully in line with our 65% payout ratio. Finally, as we have done in the last 2 years, we will be issuing a new EUR 200 million share buyback program to increase shareholder returns. Moving now to our revenue performance by business and geography. Across the portfolio, our organic growth was supported by strong momentum in energy, the continued buildup of digital infrastructure and rising demand for corporate and risk -- enterprise risk assessment solutions.

This sector-leading growth reflects the attractive mix of our strengthened portfolio. Industry, Certification and Marine & Offshore delivered the strongest performance, growing from high single digit to double digit organically. The rest of the portfolio grew in the mid-single-digit range with some activities benefiting from very powerful structural drivers. In B&I and Infrastructure, data centers were up 30% organically year-on-year. In Industry, energy-related activities were up 13.9%. In Commodities, Metals & Minerals were up 9.2%.

From a geographical perspective, strong organic growth across all regions. The Americas grew by 4%, supported by sustained energy spend and expanding data centers. Our momentum in Europe continues with 4.1% organic growth, largely above GDP growth. Asia Pacific reported 8.2% organic growth with broad-based expansion across Asia and Australasia. And our fastest-growing region was the Middle East and Africa, up 16.6%, benefiting from major infrastructure programs and sustained energy investments. I would like to report now on the progress of CSR -- of our CSR programs.

In health and safety, continuous prevention programs further reduced our accident rate versus last year. On decarbonization, we further reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 7% year-on-year. This is fully in line with our science-based target initiative expectations. For gender diversity, steady progress with our ongoing program. In 2025, we improved or maintained all our major nonfinancial ratings, confirming Bureau Veritas's leadership. We raised our EcoVadis score to 80 out of 100 and obtained the top 5% distinction in the S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook 2026. Let's now move to the business highlights. I will start with Marine & Offshore. The division delivered a very strong performance in '25 with 14.3% organic growth.

This marks the third year in a row of double-digit organic revenue growth. These results were driven by the ongoing renewal and modernization of the global fleet and the expansion of specialized vessels. Looking at it by segment, new construction delivered high double-digit growth from accelerated shipyard deliveries and capacity expansion, particularly in China and Korea. In 2025, we secured 14.4 million gross tons of new orders, bringing the backlog to 33.5 million gross tons, up 23% year-on-year. Core In-service achieved mid- to high single-digit growth, largely driven by increased volumes and some pricing.

At year-end, we serviced more than 12,300 ships. Marine & Offshore continues to invest in new solutions to support our clients' energy transition. In Qatar, we opened a global gas center of excellence, supporting LNG projects worldwide through our global technical network. Looking at our Agri-Food & Commodities. This business delivered 3.7% organic growth this year. In Oil and Petrochemicals, performance remained resilient in challenging market conditions. Non-trade activities grew strongly, supported by increased demand for biofuels, marine fuels and sustainable aviation fuel and also from new lab capabilities. Metals & Minerals delivered high single-digit organic growth, driven by increasing projects in copper and gold and by the expansion of our lab network, specifically in Chile.

In Agri-Food, we are completing the pivot of our portfolio with the sale of our food testing business in 2025. This divestment will be accretive to the divisional margin on a 12-month basis. In Industry, the division delivered 8.9% organic growth in 2025. We are a key player in the industry segment, a [ EUR 1.4 billion ] division, predominantly exposed to energy and energy adjacent sectors. This performance reflects robust market dynamics, supported by strong energy sector investments as countries continue to secure energy supply, decarbonize and transform their energy mix. The evolution of the portfolio is ongoing with acquisitions supporting the new strongholds of renewable and low-carbon energy services.

By segment, Oil & Gas delivered double-digit organic growth, driven by new projects, particularly in gas and in major resource holding regions. Geographically, the Middle East, Africa and Asia have sustained investments in new oil and gas fields. Power & Utilities maintained double-digit growth. This was supported by investments in renewables and nuclear as electricity demand accelerates on the back of data center expansions and national electrification programs.

Geographically, strong momentum across North America, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. In terms of transition services and green objects revenue streams, in the Middle East, we entered into a memorandum of understanding with Masdar, an Abu Dhabi clean energy company to help shape renewables and green energy standards in the region. We were also awarded a contract to support a client's first renewable energy project, combining solar generation and battery energy storage in the United States. Moving on to Buildings & Infrastructure. We delivered 5.2% organic growth in 2025, including a strong 8% in the fourth quarter.

Today, B&I represents EUR 2 billion in revenue, a clear leader in the sector. 2025 was a strong year for our portfolio expansion with successful integrations, particularly the APP Group in Australia and further portfolio streamlining, including the divestment of noncore construction technical supervision business in China. Growth for B&I at constant currency was at a high 11.6%. Our CapEx activities delivered high single-digit growth, fueled by data center commissioning projects across the U.S., Europe and Asia and supported by recent acquisitions that are already accelerating organic growth. OpEx activities remained resilient, underpinned by the structural need for environmental measurements and energy efficiency audits. Infrastructure delivered steady growth.

It now represents 20% of the divisional revenue. This was supported by government-led spending in Europe and major rail and terminal programs in North America. Major infrastructure investments are also ongoing in Asia Pacific and the Middle East. We are expanding our services for green objects in B&I. We secured a multiyear contract for a new battery gigafactory in Spain. In transition services for this division, we delivered a large-scale decarbonization program for a European fitness chain. Moving to Certification. In this division, we delivered a strong performance in 2025 with 7.9% organic growth for the year, with an acceleration at 8.4% in the fourth quarter.

The certification business benefits from increased needs for assurance, decarbonization, supply chain resilience and cybersecurity solutions. This business represents many opportunities to innovate and create new schemes for customers as they pursue their own business plans. A number of acquisitions were completed in the last 18 months are expanding this portfolio in sustainability and cyber. Growth at constant currency in certification was up double digit. Looking by segment, QHSE, quality, health, safety and the environment and Specialized schemes grew at a high single-digit rate, supported by robust activity in most regions and very strong demand for food safety certifications. Sustainability and digital certification recorded double-digit organic growth.

This was fueled by rising demand for carbon and greenhouse gas verification, supply chain ESG audits and upcoming regulatory requirements such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. During the year, we secured several important transition services contracts ranging from large-scale ESG audits for a global aerospace manufacturer to a decarbonization road map for a major Middle Eastern energy company. We also secured a contract to support the cybersecurity work stream for autonomous military land vehicles for the European Commission. Lastly, looking at Consumer Products Services.

The division delivered 3.7% organic growth in 2025, including 2.6% in the fourth quarter against very tough comparable. Performance was supported by accelerated sourcing shifts away from China with South and Southeast Asia leading growth, while Latin and Central America began to benefit from recent investments. This division is navigating a diversification strategy for the last 2 years, culminating in the acquisition of 9 companies.

These additions contributed to the expansion of our services in new geographies, in new sectors and with new services, helping essentially pivot the portfolio circa 10% towards higher growth elements. In January, we completed the acquisition of SPIN360 in Italy, strengthening our sustainability, testing and certification capabilities for luxury brands. By segment, Softlines, Hardlines & Toys delivered low to mid-single-digit organic growth with a front-loaded first half of the year and a normalized half 2 as sourcing shifts gradually took place.

Supply Chain and Sustainability Services achieved double-digit organic growth, driven by strong demand for supply chain resilience services and social audits amid sourcing changes in Asia. For the Technology segment, it delivered stable organic growth, supported by diversification with contribution from acquired companies offsetting softer wireless and automotive activities. On the electrical consumer goods and appliances front, sourcing shifts enabled growth in our Central and South American business, contributing to a robust performance. Finally, transition services continued to expand as we supported client sustainability programs, including full decarbonization support for a leading sportswear brand and a large-scale social audit program for a global technology company, therefore, reinforcing transparent and responsible supply chains.

I will now hand over to Francois for the financial review. Francois?

Thank you, Hinda. Thank you very much. Good afternoon to everyone. So let me now turn to our financial performance and to the sustained momentum we delivered in growth and in returns. So as it has been already briefly presented to you, 2025 was once again a solid year for the group, marked by robust and broad-based organic revenue growth, 6.5% across the year. This growth translated into strong profitability with a reported adjusted operating margin of 16.3%, up 32 basis points in a reported manner.

At constant currency, we expanded our adjusted operating margin by 51 basis points. We take the advantage of higher operating leverage programs and continued progress on functional scalability initiatives. Bottom line, the adjusted EPS reached EUR 1.42, up 9.2% at constant currency. The company will propose as a consequence, a further increase in its dividend at EUR 0.92. It is payable in full in cash as usual. Turning to cash generation. Free cash flow amounted to EUR 824 million. It includes a couple of one-off effects linked to the disposal of our food testing business, notably the tax cash out on the capital gain. Excluding this transaction, free cash flow increased even by close to 4% year-on-year.

On the next page, we sum up a little bit the last few years when it comes to -- since the start of our plan. So as you've seen, we continue to deliver consistently on the long-term objective. For several years in a row, we have delivered consistently at or above high single-digit revenue growth at constant currency each and every year. This is a mix of organic growth and a positive net scope effect from acquisition and divestment together. It reflects our commitment to active portfolio management. Since the start of the plan, we have rotated almost 10% of our portfolio, taking into account both acquisition and divestment combined.

In terms of profitability, the ongoing execution of our program produced measurable improvement in operating leverage and functional scalability. This led to meeting expectations for both reported adjusted operating margin as well as constant currency margins. On the cash front, right below, cash conversion exceeded expectations, reaching 107% this year, mainly driven by a further reduction of working capital as a percentage of revenue by another 100 basis points compared to 2024.

And as you see, we've delivered 3.7% at the end of '25. Returns now expressed at constant currency, including dividends, adjusted earnings per share and the benefit coming from the EUR 200 million share buyback program have met or exceeded projections each and every year. Including negative foreign exchange impact, returns were maintained at high single-digit level. Let me now deep dive into the revenue for '25. We delivered almost EUR 6.5 billion in '25, corresponding to a 3.6% growth on a reported basis.

Organic stood at 6.5%, supported by strong business fundamentals and increased demand in energy, digital infrastructure and risk assessment solutions. Bolt-on acquisition closed in past quarters contributed 2.9%, almost 3% to the growth. This was partially offset by the divestment of the food testing business as part of our active portfolio management. Factoring in those M&A component together, the net scope effect was 0.8% on a full year basis.

Currency fluctuations negatively impacted revenue by 3.7%, mainly due to the euro strength against most currency, especially U.S. dollar, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar and the renminbi. Now if we take a closer look at our business and how they perform in '25, you see here both the organic growth and the scope component of the growth.

All divisions grew well with several delivering very strong performance. Including scope effect, 4 businesses posted double-digit growth, reflecting both solid organic traction and the impact of our disciplined M&A bolt-on executions. Let me briefly walk through those segments. M&O, Marine Offshore delivered double-digit organic revenue growth. Industry grew high single digits, powered by strong global demand for energy solutions.

Oil and gas, renewable, nuclear all delivered double-digit growth in 2025. Building & Infrastructure and Certification also reached double-digit growth at constant currency, boosted by last year and this year acquisitions in sustainability, cybersecurity and infrastructure, which contributed, respectively, 6% and 3% to the growth of each segment. Consumer Products, we just touched upon, delivered mid-single-digit growth at constant currency with a solid organic performance of 3.7% and a scope contribution at 1.7%.

Finally, Agri-Food & Commodities posted low to mid-single-digit organic growth, mainly driven by Metals & Minerals, partially offset by the divestment of our food testing activity, which is now fully completed. So overall, this broad-based performance highlights the strength and the active pivoting of our portfolio.

It's part and parcel of our LEAP 28 strategy and commitment to the investors. If we now turn to the margin bridge, -- before going to the basis points and the percentage, let me share with you that for the first time in [ Veritas ] history, we crossed the EUR 1 billion adjusted operating profit mark, which we are all very proud collectively. On a reported basis, we delivered a strong 32 basis point margin improvement, closing the year at 16.3%. It is another year of disciplined execution and operational leverage. Organically, we delivered a strong 74 basis point improvement, driven by operating leverage, the benefit of our 2024 restructuring and tight cost discipline. Scope had a negative impact of 23 basis points, reflecting the investment made to scale our newly acquired businesses.

At constant currency, our 51% margin uplift is very solid. Aligned with our LEAP commitment, we aim at delivering consistent margin progression year-on-year. If we look now at our divisional margin performance for the year '25, -- starting with Marine & Offshore. We held a strong margin at 23.4%, essentially stable year-on-year with organic improvement bringing 67 basis points of improvement and offset by currency headwinds. Agri-Food & Commodities delivered a notable uplift to 15.1% of margin, up more than 100 basis points, driven essentially by very strong organic improvement, plus 122 basis points and the continued dynamic of our Metals & Minerals segment.

Scope-wise, we expect the full benefit of the food testing divestment to positively impact 2026 as this actually divestment took place throughout the year 2025 in different momentum. Building & Infrastructure posted a strong increase to 13.6%, up 81 basis points. Robust organic leverage, plus 138 and the first sign of our performance programs are starting here to materialize. On the same note, Consumer Products continued to strengthen, reaching 22.4% of margin, here again, supported by 55 basis points of improvement on an organic manner.

On the other side, Certification ended at 18.2%, down 138 basis points, reflecting investment to scale our sustainability and cybersecurity acquisitions. Organically, however, margins remained broadly stable. And finally, Industry closed at 13.9%, down 52 basis points, with organic decline limited to 21 basis points. So it is mainly driven by a change of mix due to project delays at year-end. Looking now at other financial metrics. On the bottom line, our adjusted earnings per share continued to grow regularly. It was up 9% at constant currency.

This evolution has been driven by the incremental operating profit, up 11.2% at constant currency as well. Net financial expenses increased year-on-year, reaching EUR 116 million in '25 compared to roughly EUR 70 million in the prior year. This evolution is mainly driven by lower income on cash and cash equivalents, reflecting the change in cash levels and decrease in interest rates versus 2024. On the tax front, our adjusted effective tax rate continues to normalize downwards.

We closed the year now at 30%, 50 basis points below last year despite for the specialist, the exceptional [ French ] corporate tax contribution that we've supported in '25. Turning to cash generation. Another year of reduction of our working capital needs of our revenue, as you can see on the chart on the right-hand side, [ Veritas ] is now well set below the 5% threshold. Let's remember that not so long ago, the working cap of our revenue used to be at 9% and above.

So it reflects our constant attention to free cash generation and to cash discipline in general. Overall, free cash flow amounted to EUR 824 million, slightly below the record level achieved last year. It takes into account some one-off effects linked to the disposal of the food testing business, notably the tax cash out and the capital gain. As I mentioned in introduction, this -- excluding this transaction, free cash increased by close to 4% year-on-year.

Now I would like to summarize for you what we have done in terms of capital allocation in '25. First, on M&A, we've invested EUR 162 million in 9 acquisitions and completed 2 divestments in line with our strategy to optimize the [ Veritas ] portfolio. Year-to-date, 2026 this time, we have already added 3 more acquisitions. On CapEx, we stayed very disciplined with a ratio of 2% of our revenue. In 2026, we expect to remain within the LEAP 2028 range and get somewhat closer to the 2.5% to 3% that we had announced during the Capital Market Day. Our leverage is at 1.1x at the low end of our guidance, as you can see. We have significant headroom to accelerate our M&A agenda while returning cash to shareholders at the same time.

Speaking of returns, after completing our EUR 200 million share buyback in '25, we are now launching a new EUR 200 million program. This reflects both our confidence in the prospects of the company and the resilience of the business model of Bureau Veritas. So overall, [ Veritas ] delivered another year of strong financial results, and I want to thank all our team for their continued commitment and performance quarter after quarter.

With that, I'll hand it over back to Hinda for an update on our LEAP 28 strategy.

Thank you, Francois. I'll start with a few highlights on the major secular trends shaping our markets. From early on in this decade, megatrends included urbanization. We talked about connectivity and digitalization, energy transition, increased ESG compliance expectations and the gradual evolution at the time of supply chains following the COVID shock. You fast forward to last year, 2025, the picture has evolved. The technology race we are witnessing in this age of intelligence will have a profound impact on reindustrialization and urbanization.

In addition, the rapid development of AI and the associated needs in computing capacity and data storage are feeding a massive buildup phase for data centers and all related ships and equipment to take a few examples. This is also creating an unprecedented demand for electrical power. Therefore, energy supply worries are mounting, driving developments of all energy sources from fossil fuels to new forms of energy. Finally, we are seeing a shift for organizations, both private and public, from a compliance-driven approach to sustainability to a risk-based approach that aims to protect their reputation, their brand and their competitive advantage.

I believe that these developing trends support a consistently growing and accessible market for our services and solutions. Now from a LEAP 28 strategy execution angle, looking at the portfolio. If you recall, our portfolio strategy is about refocusing on key leadership markets, both existing ones and future ones. It is about an active portfolio management approach. Here, we are gaining traction. Since the start of the plan in '24, we have acquired businesses totaling EUR 279 million in annualized revenue and divested EUR 202 million of noncore activities.

These transactions are progressively reshaping our revenue stream. Overall, and Francois mentioned it, after 2 years, we have pivoted circa 10% of our original portfolio mix. From a mix perspective, new strongholds is leading the growth with 19.8% revenue growth at constant currency, supported by both organic momentum and targeted M&A. We're scaling capabilities in renewables and cybersecurity. Second, our expand leadership stream covering our activities in Certification and B&I delivered 9.4% growth at constant currency since we onboarded significant acquisitions in B&I and some in certification as well.

Finally, as expected, the optimized value and impact businesses are growing at an aggregate rate of 3.1% at constant currency, reflecting the divestment of our noncore food testing activities. These businesses continue to constitute half of our portfolio today and are essential to our cash generation and baseline growth. Turning now to the performance. And on the performance-led execution side, our performance programs are progressing well, both in terms of creating operating leverage and getting some functional scalability.

In line with LEAP 28 road map, our margins have continuously improved over the last 2 years, both at constant currency and as reported. In '24, we improved our adjusted operating margin by 38 basis points. And in '25, we improved again with an additional 51 basis points, both at constant currency. This steady year-on-year improvement is also enabling investments in new production systems and digitalization programs. So in summary, we're pleased with the progress with our performance -- of our performance programs, and we intend to continue on this structural margin improvement path.

A third update I would like to share is about our new operating model implementation that is essentially taking -- took place early this year from January 2026. This organization intends to simplify our operating model through the rationalization of our geographical platforms. It will also integrate and connect product lines into the regions. The intention is very clear. It is to better leverage our client proximity to maximize our sales as we consistently scale our product line services and solution.

This new structure will allow us to take advantage of our company scale, both from a geographical and expertise perspective. We will also speed up decision-making, capturing additional opportunities and accelerating innovations. We intend to make a step change in growth and performance through increased cross-selling and global coordination of opportunities. To ensure the success of this organization, we have also introduced a new short-term incentive package for managers that formalizes common objectives between different parts of the new operating model. I would like now to spend some time exploring our approach to AI.

The role of a third-party independent and impartial organization like Bureau Veritas remains critical to secure trust in any commercial or trade transaction. Bureau Veritas builds on its equity of almost 200 years of trust brokerage. The value proposition of our company resides in its ability to assess physical assets to test actual products in accredited labs and to certify projects and systems with no interference. This is achieved through qualified and accredited experts within a regulatory or quality infrastructure framework. Now we believe AI represents multiple opportunities for the company. We look at them in 2 ways. On the one hand, there are opportunities in existing services.

On the other hand, others exist through our new ways of working and new services. First, let me start with the existing services and markets. The buildup of the infrastructure ecosystem to feed AI needs is spurring unprecedented investments in data centers and specialized manufacturing. Bureau Veritas is uniquely positioned to benefit from these investments. We have established a leadership position in data center commissioning and quality assurance and control, working with leading hyperscalers and other growing data center players around the world. The insatiable need for electrical power from data centers is triggering increased investments in all types of energy sources and energy infrastructure.

We will benefit from this trend as we build on our unmatched global footprint and capabilities in oil and gas and other forms and expand it into renewables and low-carbon energy. This AI dynamic is also contributing to the development of new supply chains that need to be deployed fast and that must be assessed to manage and mitigate risks. Bureau Veritas has robust expertise in supporting customers as they shift their sourcing and redesign their supply chain. Let me now to the second part and where we see the opportunities. And those are in our ways of working and in creating new services.

First, the rapidly developing capabilities of LLM models and Agentic AI are opening new possibilities to transform our ways of working, creating substantial gains in efficiency and productivity. Additionally, these technologies will impact customer service quality, profoundly changing their experience and increasing the stickiness of our services. In Bureau Veritas, we are accelerating the implementation of such technologies. We have been rolling out a new production system and certification since mid-2025. This will be the first product line to be transformed. Second, the integration of AI into customer workflows and organizations requires them to verify and validate that these AI models are fully aligned with their values and policies, compliant with their legal frameworks and respond to their customers and other stakeholders' expectation.

Bureau Veritas today is building capabilities for AI assurance to address these needs, especially as the regulatory landscape around AI assurance evolves every day. Finally, Bureau Veritas conducts over 10,000 inspections or assessment of assets, products, projects or systems every single day, generating hundreds of terabytes of data per year. In addition, our experts have a full understanding of our customers' equipment, workflows and assets life cycle. Through this knowledge, we believe there is an opportunity to help them impact their performance.

As an example, for our industrial customers, maximizing the uptime of their operating facilities is a major challenge. They manage equipment from different manufacturers and juggle with maintenance priorities. They must optimize the fully integrated system. In combining our deep knowledge of their facilities with the data collected, we can integrate AI technologies to pinpoint vulnerabilities that can then optimize their uptime and their facility performance. This is an exciting journey for us, one we are starting with a sense of positive urgency, and we will be reporting on our progress regularly. Moving now to the outlook and looking ahead to 2026. We entered the third year of LEAP 28 with confidence.

Our markets are strong, supported by increased energy investments, rapidly urbanizing countries and a massive digital infrastructure buildup. The ongoing technology and defense race and increasing risk management and mitigation needs are acceleration factors. Continuing our sector-leading trajectory of growth, we expect to deliver in 2026 mid- to high single-digit organic revenue growth, continued adjusted margin improvement at constant currency. As usual, we remain committed to a strong cash flow generation while we deploy our capital allocation program. We will be expanding our capabilities through acquisitions. We will accelerate the integration of AI in our workflows, and we will deploy CapEx in growth markets. Moving to summarize. 2025, our second year of LEAP 28, shows the impact of our strategy and the consistent execution of our plans.

We delivered sector-leading growth and strong margin expansion, underpinned by structural performance programs and the ongoing transformation of our portfolio. The secular trends I have discussed earlier are structurally supporting our served markets growth. The energy sector massive transformation, the ongoing and rapidly moving urbanization, the AI-driven buildup of the intelligence infrastructure and the evolving supply chains are feeding sustained demand for our services in this period of rapid change. Our portfolio rotation is also accelerating. Since the start of the plan, we have already rotated around 10% of the portfolio.

And in line with our LEAP 28 strategy, we intend to double that in the next 12 months. This is a shift toward businesses with higher growth, higher margin and stronger strategic relevance while exiting noncore activities with limited potential. At the same time, we continue to invest in innovation and in capabilities that enhance differentiation and enable long-term growth. Finally, we remain committed to superior shareholder returns with the dividend increase and the launch of our third share buyback since the start of the plan, we are demonstrating both confidence in our strategy and efficient capital allocation. Before opening the queue for the Q&A session. I wanted to share that we will be looking forward to welcoming you to our Capital Market Day on September 22 in Paris. We will update you on the next phase of our LEAP 28 strategy.

Thank you. And now Francois and I are actually are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Annelies Vermeulen of Morgan Stanley.

I have 2 questions, please. So firstly, on data centers, which I think saw a strong acceleration in Q4. Was that mainly in the U.S.? Or was it relatively broad-based? And perhaps could you talk a little bit about how you estimate your market share of new data center commissioning? Do you think you have a #1 position in most of your end markets? And how your expectations for data center growth are shaping your growth outlook for B&I in 2026, i.e., can we expect further acceleration? And then second question was just on AI.

So thank you for the additional color on AI for Bureau Veritas. I was just wondering if we could put some numbers around this. So when you look at Slide 21, for example, when you talk about performance improvements, where do you think that, that comes through? Do you think it means you can keep headcount flat while continuing to grow mid- to high single-digit organic through productivity improvements? And if you could talk about which divisions or sort of service lines you see the biggest opportunity for those efficiency gains driven by AI, that would be helpful.

Thank you, Annelies. Thank you for the questions. Look, the data centers, the market itself, the spend, if you look at the spend of the hyperscalers and others, is actually growing double digit in the low teens. We have been growing, and we made no secret about it, double digit, a strong or a high double digit. So the growth has been actually global. The U.S., of course, there's a major spend in the U.S. Europe is also growing. Asia Pacific is also growing. So I would say those are the key top regions with the U.S., of course, having the lion's share of the growth.

So data center expectation that it will continue to grow, I would say, double digit on the high end, really high double digit. And I'm expecting that, of course, that will carry part of the growth in B&I. Now B&I, it's no surprise that data centers are boosting the growth in B&I. We were very explicit in LEAP28 strategy, and we made it very clear that part of our expansion of portfolio is to develop capabilities in essentially activities in complex buildings like data centers, like other specialized manufacturing. So it's not a surprise that a lot of that growth is carried by those, and we continue to hunt for such activities. So B&I will continue to benefit from that. But there are also other growth areas for B&I. Infrastructure is growing healthily.

We are growing geographically in newer regions, what we call -- what we tend to call emerging markets. The United States is also growing in different activities. And there is a dynamic between the different regions that is contributing to the B&I growth. On the AI side, sorry, you had also another question there. You have multiple questions in the first one, at least. So on the commissioning position, look, we are -- there are very few specialists commissioning and doing QA/QC on data centers. We are the largest player. There are, of course, others who in-source the work, very few and tend to be some EPCs mostly. Very few really data center owners do that because they really need the expertise.

So I would say, conservatively say we're the top player in the specialists serving the market. The second question is on AI. Look, we really are very, very, very committed to implement AI and benefit from the efficiency and productivity gain. We think this is -- these are use cases that are very clear. It's a matter of implementing them and scaling them consistently, and I would say, quickly. So in terms of performance improvement, I'm not going to be able to give you specifically right now the numbers, but this is something we are looking at and working on very closely. And the reason we are very, in a way, strong and bullish about the value is the fact that today, we're seeing many use cases that are very clear, right?

On a baseline level of AI, you can automate so many tasks that our people spend time on. That's gains in personal productivity. It's also gains in full-on productivity and that can actually benefit the customer in terms of turnaround time on their request or on their service. So the productivity and the efficiency we are envisaging today could apply to many businesses. I gave you an example of certification only because it's a business that we have profound -- we're profoundly changing how we will work there by massively investing in a new production system and reviewing systematically all the workflows and automating them.

We are, for example, today, we have a very, I would say, near-term to midterm target to have over half of our certification admin work essentially automated, right? So there are many, many things we're working on. But certification is an example. I can give you many others. Inspection services is a great example where we can use AI for efficiency and productivity. And the intention here is because we're pursuing growth, -- this is about doing more with our people. It's really about freeing our people so they can spend more of their time on productive tasks so we can grow our business, grow our volumes very, very efficiently.

[Operator Instructions] We'll now move to Suhasini Varanasi of Goldman Sachs.

Just a couple for me, please. One is on margins. Given that you've completed the disposal of the food business, can you help us understand the scale of the margin benefit in that particular division for 2026? And similarly, when we think about the drag from M&A scope effect in certification, how should we think about the drag from that scope effect in '26? When does it, let's say, fall away the effects in that particular division? That would be the first one. And I think just on your Marine division, -- can you help us understand what your expectations are for 2026, please? You've obviously had a very strong double-digit growth year in '25. I know we've talked a lot about normalization of growth. Just wanted to get the latest sense here.

Good to hear from you, Suhasini. I'm going to let Francois comment on the margins, and then I'll answer you on Marine.

Suhasini, so on the food testing that we've divested, so this business was having a margin lower than the group average. I could answer to you very simply, but actually, the answer is a bit more tricky. We've divested this business in tranches. We've had actually 11 different divestments, 11 different countries, to speak plainly that we sold between December '24 and August '25. So the exact number will be tough to assess, but one, it is positive to group margin, and we could say a couple of basis points, a bit more at group margin level for 2026.

So not a step change. It is more positive on the division, of course, group-wise, a few basis points. When it comes to the second question on the M&A dilutive or the scope dilutive contribution to certification, I think it's important to come back to what we said in March '24. The LEAP plan is not only a plan of a pure financial performance is financial performance and investment at the same time.

And in this segment, certification, what we are building, we are building solution we are supposed to and capable to scale beyond the domestic market. So we've made a couple of acquisitions with strong position in their native market, home market, and we actually grow them outside their comfort zone to be within a wider area, whether it is Europe for one or all of the U.S. for the other. And this come with a cost, and I think we make no mystery that we are investing. So this is what is happening in 2025 that will resolve in 2026, of course, as it will be payback time.

Yes. Thanks, Francois. On the Marine division, Suhasini, on the growth, you're absolutely correct. We had expectation that the growth would have moderated probably from last year, simply on the assumption that the shipyards would have taken longer time to reach basically maximum, I would say, throughput. Usually, when you -- particularly if you open shipyards that were mothballed for a while, it does take time for them to come up to speed. And the capacity was building up gradually for the last few years, right?

Actually, we were pleasantly surprised that they were much, much better at ramping up than in past, if you like, in past times or in past years. And therefore, the throughput was much faster. And that's really where that growth came in. It really came for the new construction, very, very good cadence that allowed us to convert our backlog very quickly. Now -- as we look forward, first of all, our backlog, I mentioned earlier, is 35 -- over 30 million gross tons, 23% year-on-year growth. We have a very comfortable and solid backlog. We have a very good team in place that has been doing all these great work. Really, we have everything with us and the shipyards are progressing, but we have reached that capacity.

Now I am not necessarily able to say will there be many new shipyards that can open and come up to speed very quickly or not. And therefore, with everything we know today, we think there will be moderation of the growth from -- essentially from the 14% you have seen to something in the high single digit. This is how we think about mid- to high single digit. It all depends whether the shipyards can move much faster or can be much more productive than what we thought. But today, that's the, I guess, the limited visibility we have. It's the one time that I will say, I hope I'm wrong on this one, but we'll see.

We'll now go to Geoffroy Michalet of ODDO BHF.

Congratulations for those very nice results. Three questions for me. First one would be for Francois maybe. What is your unspeakable target for working cap since it is always improving now. You haven't set a formal threshold you would like to reach or flow, let's say. The second question is on your M&A pipeline. Do you have confidence it could accelerate on, let's say, larger transaction? And the third question is on AI again, but maybe on another angle, the angle of potential threat or newcomers or new solutions that you are seeing on the market?

Absolutely. Thank you, Geoffroy. Francois, do you want to address the working capital.

Geoffroy, it's a difficult question. Just to remind everyone, you don't come from a 10% working cap of revenue to 3.4% with magic. It's been done the good old way, just making sure our clients are paying on time. And from a situation that where somewhat -- somehow the cash element was a bit less considered, less regretted as what it should have been. So we've put back the discipline in place each and every year. I'm very pleased with having gone below the 4% leverage threshold. I'm not -- I will not commit to a further downside.

We still have options, by the way, we still have the option to further improve. But I would say, I think it's no mystery. We are getting very close to some kind of natural threshold the bulk of our business, 70% of our business is inspection related. So by definition, you work a week or 2 or 3 and then you invoice. So contrary to our lab segment of our business, which operate on a daily basis and where working cap can go as low as 0% inspection, you reach a threshold. So I would say I would be very happy if we stay for the coming year around the 4% working cap of revenue. We have ammunition to go a bit below, but it's too early to commit. I'll let you know perhaps more when we cross the June line on how we progress.

Thanks, Francois. On the second question, Geoffroy, on the M&A. Look, the M&A pipeline is there. We have several multiple midsized or bigger than the bolt-ons you have seen recently targets that we are follow looking at in very specific markets that are of interest to us. So it's not an issue of pipeline. It's a matter of finding the right target that can be not only response to our strategic needs, but also can be integrated and scaled in an optimum way, allowing us to actually deliver the returns we want.

So it's an equation that needs to balance all that. And that's why we could say with confidence that within 12 months, we'll be able to continue to rotate the portfolio. I think our M&A program is going in a way, is addressing what we need. There are a number of things we would have liked to do slightly faster, but not at any price. And that's very important that we have that balance between delivering what we need for the portfolio so we can progress with our growth agenda, but also making sure that our returns fit within the parameters that we have fixed for ourselves.

So no concerns there in terms of availability of targets. Now looking at the AI question, look, I think 2 things. I think it's very important to step back and say, and that's something I tried to address earlier in my remarks on the AI, what do we do and why we are needed. I am not concerned today that we will be completely replaced by AI for a very simple reason. We have we are necessary for that trust. And what does it mean? It means that you have an entity, a structure that can actually be in the loop to, in a way, assess whatever decision or whatever transaction or whatever asset is being built or reconstructed and needs to validate that.

That will require a human in the loop, a human in the lead. Now that is not a license to be complacent and not do anything. I think the biggest threat today for us is to essentially be too slow to adopt AI. I think the urgency, and I tried to say it earlier, is to adopt AI very quickly because that is the catalyst, the turbo factor, if you will, to be able to grow faster. And I think with the technology movement, with the cadence of innovation, you cannot adopt this technology in the way we have -- we may have adopted other technologies before.

So urgency is important. We believe strongly that our brand, the fact that you need the human judgment on many, many of the decisions we actually participate in to support customers and to protect them, to protect their risks and their liabilities gives us that moat today. But again, not a license for complacency. It's very important that we adopt the technologies very quickly. Now you mentioned whether there are newcomers and others. There will always be players who would want to find space like the TIC sector where you have lots of people and lots of data.

But what a lot of these natives miss is that there is domain expertise and there is the brand that is actually necessary for our customers to secure their risk and to secure themselves against liabilities and show that there is actually a third party who has confirmed what they're doing and has assessed what they're doing. So I hope that answers your question. But I think the key thing probably to retain is we need to remain paranoid, so we can move very fast. And we'll come back to you with progress in the coming publications.

Next question will be coming from Virginia Montorsi of Bank of America.

I just had 2 quick ones. On the margin side, could you help us understand a little bit how to think about industry margins specifically into next year? I think we've touched on all other divisions, but this one. And then just one last question on AI. What are -- I think one of the questions we get sometimes from investors is the ability of testers to maintain pricing power as you guys adopt AI and whether or not customers could potentially ask to be charged less as they know you incorporate AI. So I just wanted to ask how do you think you can leverage your kind of organization and maintain good pricing? And how should we think about that?

Thank you, Virginia. Francois, do you want to comment on this.

Yes, sure. So industry, if you again, contextualize a little bit, we had a couple of years with a good momentum from a margin point of view on industry. 2025 have been somewhat a bit disappointing if you look at it on a full year basis. I made some comment about it, but the last -- the second half of the year, we had a bit of a change of mix of service because some of the contracts we were expected to render or to deliver, sorry, in H2 have been moved to Q1 and Q2 2026. These are big shutdowns without going into details. But to give you an idea, if you are running a refinery, you need to shut down your refinery for 2, 3 weeks to make the necessary checks, during which we sent 70 to 100 people.

And obviously, the decision on when these shutdowns happen is in the hands of the customers. To some extent, you have ranges during which they can do it. And we were actually expecting more of them to be done in H2. It happens that it will be more in H1 2026 instead. So we do not consider the 2025 margin as a normative one. We should see incremental in 2026 on that segment. I don't know if that answer your question.

All right. Thanks, Francois. Look, on the AI implementation and the so-called deflationary risk, I think it's very important to step back and think about what is really our business model and how we operate. The bulk of our businesses are service fee models. Yes, of course, there are people doing the work, but it's a service fee model. And the way we think about AI integration into our workflows and into our work is it's very important that we articulate the value for the customer from efficiency. If efficiency is only about reducing people, that's not really a value proposition for the customer.

So we consider that the integration of AI not only will bring in that efficiency in how people work, but it also will add value to the customer. I'll give you a couple of very specific examples. If you go to high-risk environments, when you send people to high-risk environments, you're actually creating a burden for your customer, whether it's a mining site, an oil and gas [indiscernible], a ship, anywhere there are risks, you're requesting logistics, you're requesting actually -- this is an exposure of people in their facilities, it's time it takes and so on.

So less time is actually value for customers. And that's very, very important to be clear on. So we consider that because the bulk of our work is actually in service fee model, we will price differently as we progress. We will have to think of pricing in a different way and really value price. Of course, it's a massive change management in our -- in an industry that is used in a very specific way to price, but that's how we think about it. We don't think it's a fatal kind of risk.

We think it's a risk if we don't act on it and we don't really value price, but we think it's manageable. Now of course, there is a small piece that is billable hour. And when you have billable hour, the customer will be even more insistent that they want you to reduce their price. And this is where service quality, customer experience will come in. You have to flip the equation, if you will. You have to make sure that you're not actually only focusing on that number of people that you're going to pull out. You have to think about how you're doing the work and what does it mean for the customer in terms of essentially service quality, turnaround time, whatever parameter will be valuable for them in their own sector and their own circumstance.

Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, we have time for one question. And the last question today will be coming from Allen Wells of Jefferies.

Three quick ones from me, please. Firstly, just on the balance sheet and capital allocation. Obviously, balance sheet leverage is in a good place at the lower end of your 1 to 2x range. Free cash flow was strong. The buyback was obviously in line with what you announced last year. But how should we read into this in relation to capital allocation? How should we think about the cadence and size of bolt-ons versus the potential for further buybacks over the next year or 2?

That's my first question. Second question, just circling back on AI. But from the other side, how do we think about the level of investment that's going on internally at [ BVI ]? How should we think about that from a CapEx and OpEx perspective and where we may start to see that in the numbers? And then finally, and apologies if I missed it, just on the consumer margins were strong, up 55 bps, I think, organically in the year. Just looking for a little bit more detail about what's driving that and how we should think about the cadence of further margin progression on the consumer product business into 2026?

Right. Thank you, Allen. Francois, you want to address the margins for...

So for consumer, I think you're right to point out, it's been -- you had good incrementals. I think this is coming -- first, it's here to stay. It's not a one-off or any exceptional event. And it's based on 2 very deliberate action we've led now for 2 years, one which is rather visible. I mean, I think in that mentioned this division, Consumer Products has today -- is operating today 10% of its revenue coming from a totally new business compared to what it was at the end of 2023. So we have -- here, we have made very little divestment. Here, we have made add-on, and we've purchased 10% of the current revenue compared to where it stands.

So -- and obviously, we've made some bets in terms of acquisition, which are paying off with good margins, good incrementals. So the M&A or the portfolio reshape again -- and actually, to be very fair and transparent with you, this has started even before we announced the plan. We went to the market in March 2024. We had designed the plan with the -- our consumer product team in the if I remember, was back in Hong Kong somewhere in September '23. So this -- they are a bit ahead of the game, I would say, in terms of deploying capital to reshape the portfolio. So that's one to say, a good half of the explanation.

The second half of the explanation is we have been working over the last 2 years to in practical term, exit, reduce, limit our exposure to some distressed segment of the tech part. So you remember, you have the consumer -- the traditional product testing, [ softlines ] like toys, 2/3 of the business and 1/3 is tech. In this tech division, subdivision, we had some weak parts there that we discontinued. So I think some of you have noticed that the top line momentum in '23 -- in '24, '20 and early '25 was somewhat weak on tech. It is as well because of those actions we took. And obviously, when those businesses are out, then the margin is back up. And that's why I'm saying it's a sustainable improvement, and we expect this improvement to continue in 2026.

Thanks, Francois. On the balance sheet, Allen, I mean, we have headroom in the balance sheet is very clear. You mentioned it. For us, as we said, we're very clear on what we need. We're monitoring the market. We have pipelines we're working on, and we will balance when we buy. And when we buy, we have that room in the balance sheet, which means that any consideration for additional shareholder return, we'll have to take that into account.

Of course, it's very important that we continue to execute our portfolio agenda, growth agenda, and that entails continuing to do bolt-ons, but also very specific M&As in very specific sectors. We have the room. And then when the time is right and we can also do shareholder share buybacks, we will consider that. And that's really what we just did this year, just now when we announced it today.

On the -- and the other thing I think is very important to mention is -- the -- I mentioned earlier, we mentioned it a few times. We said we have rotated already circa 10% of our portfolio, and we will double that in the next 12 months. I think that gives you an indication that we have a number of things we will be working on -- we are working on for the next 12 months.

All right. The third question is on AI. The investments. Look, we said investments will be between 2.5% and 3% in 2026. We were below that in 2025, as mentioned by Francois. And we have already slotted in investments for AI. And digital, I would say we have a program ongoing, which was always part of our performance programs from the get-go that part of our operating leverage and functional scalability gain will be reinvested in the business as we modernize our product line. So do you want to give anything else on the investments?

On the investment, I think today, we maintain what we've said during the Capital Market Day in terms of CapEx intensity, anywhere between 2.5% and 3%. That's where we intend to stay. However, as Hinda mentioned, it's somewhat of an increase compared to the very disciplined approach we had in the first 2 years of the plan. But we don't derail from this. There may be, however, some -- indeed some need in the next year within this range.

Absolutely. All right. I hope that answers your question, Allen. I understand this was the last question. So just a few things to say prior to closing. First of all, I'm very, very pleased with the results that our team have delivered in 2025. It has been, I would say, quite an interesting year to say the least, 2025, but the team have delivered very well. It's fully in line with our LEAP 28. 2026 is our third year. We're looking to accelerate a number of programs. And I think our guidance give you confidence that we have very solid plans to support our growth and performance ambitions. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Welcome to the Bureau Veritas Q3 2025 Revenue. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers Hinda Gharbi, Chief Executive Officer; and Francois Chabas, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Good evening to everyone. Welcome to Bureau Veritas' Third Quarter 2025 Revenue Presentation. Thank you for participating today through the webcast or the conference call. I'm joined by Francois Chabas, our Chief Financial Officer.

Bureau Veritas has demonstrated another robust performance this quarter. We have continued to make significant progress in implementing our LEAP | 28 strategic framework, leveraging Bureau Veritas diversified and resilient business portfolio and geographical footprint. I'd like to thank our colleagues around the world whose commitment and efforts have contributed to our strong results.

Starting with our revenue performance. Our revenue in the third quarter reached EUR 1.6 billion. Our organic revenue growth demonstrated remarkable resilience progressing by a healthy 6.3% against challenging comparables. This performance demonstrates the effectiveness of our strategy and highlights our team's strong execution capabilities. Additionally, we continue to execute our LEAP | 28 active portfolio strategy through targeted acquisitions, accounting for 3.1% of the growth and net of divestments contributing 0.8% to our revenue. These acquisitions are aligned with our portfolio objectives and contribute to further focus our portfolio. As anticipated, the euro strength against most currencies resulted in a negative currency impact of 4.8% for the quarter. Based on our robust year-to-date performance and taking into account our consistent strategy execution, we confirm our 2025 financial outlook.

If we look at our mix, there are several key elements I would like to highlight. All geographies and activities demonstrated resilient growth. Three of our core businesses representing 61% of our portfolio, including Building & Infrastructure, Industry and Certification grew mid- to high single digit organically, while Marine & Offshore grew a strong double digits. Geographically, Africa and the Middle East, once again posted a strong organic growth of 15.7%, driven by energy projects and by building an infrastructure activity in the Middle East, specifically. In Asia Pacific, we achieved an 8.6% organic growth with strong performance in South and Southeast Asia. Our performance in China recovered with a high single-digit expansion. Our European operations delivered an organic growth of 5.2%, led by activities in France and Southern Europe. Finally, the Americas region recorded a 1.9% organic growth. Our activities around Buildings & Infrastructure and energy achieved very high growth offsetting softness in Brazil. Excluding Brazil, our growth was over 10%.

Let me now update you on our LEAP | 28 strategy and the evolution of our largest business. We have been executing the strategic shift in our B&I portfolio development strategy, which is articulated in three fold. First, geographically, we used to have 3 main growth platforms: Europe, the United States and China. Our Europe platform is well established, mature outperforming the market, thanks to our resilient portfolio activity, predominantly geared towards the OpEx business. The U.S. is doing well in all subsegments, and we are building on this momentum to keep growing organically and to expand our capabilities inorganically. To offset China that continues to struggle from a lack of public investment, we are assessing new markets around the world. We identified growing opportunities in emerging markets in countries such as Australia, Indonesia or the Middle East. These are growing markets where a buildup of infrastructure and urban facility is ongoing and where we want to continue to expand our services organically and through M&A.

Second, we are working on evolving our mix of services by increasing our exposure to infrastructure. One strategic move that perfectly illustrates our growth approach, the acquisition of the APP Group in Australia last year. This transaction expands our geographical presence and enhances our capabilities, gaining critical expertise in project and construction management.

Third, we are boosting our digital capabilities. The recent acquisition of IDP in Spain is a good example of what we are currently doing. This company provides building information modeling, project management assistance and digital twin services for public and private companies. Finally, we consider that evolving market trends in the Buildings & Infrastructure space favor specific strategic and high complexity assets that represents an opportunity for growth.

Looking at some of these strategic assets, we would like to share with you the progress we have made with our data centers business. The data center construction market is growing significantly at double digits. The overall need for data centers is driven, of course, by increasing demand for cloud services and the rapid AI technology and rapid AI technologies adoption.

We are a key player for commissioning and QA/QC, quality assurance, quality control services around the electrical, mechanical, plumbing and control systems that support data centers. The aim of these services is to ensure that the facility delivered the expected performance and required uptime. Our strong technical expertise comes from the acquisition we completed late 2017. We have since multiplied our organic revenue by more than 7x, growing at a CAGR of 28.6%.

Over the period, we expanded from 2 to 35 countries. Clients wise, we are expanding from the hyperscalers to Tier 1, 2 and 3 clients. As we look forward, we expect this business to become a critical driver of growth for B&I. I also would like to say that we are looking very closely at such strategic assets as we consider that these are very important markets and target markets for us to expand our B&I activities.

Looking now at our inorganic growth across the overall -- the portfolio overall. We are showing good progress on the M&A front with 8 transactions signed or closed this year, representing an annualized revenue of EUR 92 million. As you can see, we have been focused on the new strongholds and the expand leadership streams in line with our LEAP | 28 portfolio plans. Since the beginning of the plan in 2024, we have closed 18 acquisitions, adding over EUR 270 million of annualized revenue.

In October 2025, we signed 2 acquisition agreements. The first one, London Building Control, will help us strengthen our market leadership in close compliance in Building & Infrastructure CapEx operations in the U.K. It is a leading Registered Building Control Approver, adding EUR 14 million of revenue. Sólida, a company specialized in technical advisory and project management assistance, grid connections, mainly for wind and solar assets, will help us strengthen our capabilities in the fast-growing renewables market. This addition to our portfolio will create a global end-to-end CapEx platform serving our clients. This company generated EUR 18 million in 2024.

I will now hand over to Francois for the financial review for our Q3 revenue.

Thank you, Hinda. Good afternoon to everyone. Starting with the revenue bridge on the slide. As you can see, we delivered above EUR 1.58 billion in the third quarter, with an organic growth of 6.3%. The scope part of the growth added 0.8% on a net basis. It reflects the impact of the bolt-on acquisition on the one hand, those ones revised in the past few quarters. We're looking here about roughly plus 3.1% in accretion in terms of revenue. And second, the offset or the partial offset by the disposal of our Food testing business, which has been initiated at the end of last year, as you may remember, and that we have now completed in July this year. ForEx represents a drag of minus 4.8%. This is mainly attributed to the strength of the euro versus most currencies. In line with what we had already indicated in July to you on the call, we can model that the full year FX impact for 2025 should be negative by around 4%. So no major or any changes on that front. Overall, in the quarter, we posted a total growth of 2.3% on a net reported basis.

If we take a step back now on the first 9 months of the year, we delivered robust organic growth for the period at 6.6%, reinforcing our commitment to consistent expansion across the markets. On a reported basis, the growth achieved 4.5%. And again, here, taking into account on the scope part, on the one hand, the acquisition, which have contributed 3.2% and the partial offset by disposal at minus 2.1%. So the net is the one you see on the page at 1.1% plus for the first 9 months of the year.

If we look now at the growth by business, both on an organic point of view and a scope point of view. Four divisions delivered double-digit growth at constant currency. We demonstrate the relevance and good execution of our strategy roadmap. Two, I would like to focus on 2 main divisions here. First, the growth of our Building & Infrastructure division, it's particularly noteworthy, and it fully highlights the combined effect of -- on the one hand, a solid earning growth momentum, coupled with the positive impact of our recent acquisitions. As highlighted earlier by Hinda, we delivered 10.8% growth, scope and organic in the first 9 months, constant currency. So it starts to be the materialization of the change of portfolio mix when it comes to Building & Infrastructure.

The second element I would like to draw your attention upon is the Agri-Food & Commodities division, which is in contraction at constant currency. The organic reflects the now fully completed divestment of our food testing activity. Organic aggregates growth is 4.2% in the first 9 months, and it reflects different dynamic of processes. Here again, we see the pivot between Building & Infrastructure on one hand and Agri-Food and Commodities on the other hand. So these 2 examples illustrates our active portfolio management success so far. This dynamic will continue as we execute our inorganic plan.

On a side note, to support this M&A strategy, we have just completed a structuring financial operation. As at the end of September, we issued a bond for EUR 700 million, leveraging on our A3 Moody's rating to face attractive market conditions at the time.

I'll now hand over back to Hinda for the portfolio business highlights of the quarter.

Thanks, Francois. Starting with Marine & Offshore, our top performing division with 16.2% organic growth in the third quarter. The market remains strong, enabled by the modernization of the global maritime fleet. This growth dynamic is reflected in our year-to-date new orders reaching 12.3 million gross tons and expanding our order book to 32 million gross tons for the year, a significant 19.3% increase year-to-date versus last year.

By segment, we have achieved a double-digit growth in new construction, primarily driven by accelerated delivery in key Asian markets, specifically here, China and Korea. Core in-service activities or OpEx activities have also shown robust growth, delivering high single-digit expansion from both volumes and pricing benefits. In our commitment to sustainable maritime innovation, we were selected to classify and certify 6 dual fuel utilizing LNG container ships for a major French shipping company, and we also secured 4 LNG carriers with dual fuel systems for a Greek shipowner.

Moving to the Agri-Food & Commodities segment. It delivered a low single-digit organic growth at 2.5% this quarter with contracting trends among subsegments. Oil & Petrochemicals showed low single-digit growth with European markets gradually recovering, and marine fuel assessments providing additional growth momentum. The Metals & Minerals, however, continued to deliver high single-digit expansion driven by strong precious metals and laboratory volumes -- homesite laboratory volume increases across the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

With the recent acquisition of GeoAssay in Chile and with our existing network, we're strategically positioned to capitalize on the copper market fast growth. Agri activities experienced organic revenue contraction impacted by underperforming activities in Latin America and operational disruptions linked to the war in Ukraine. Government Services achieved mid-single-digit organic growth through contract ramp-ups in Africa and Asia. Finally, I'm pleased to report, as Francois was mentioning, that the divestment of our food testing activities is now complete. On the green object front, we have successfully secured an on-site laboratory outsourcing project for a sustainable aviation fuel producer in the United States.

Turning to Industry. We have achieved a robust 6.9% organic growth in the third quarter against what I would consider very soft comparable at over 20% with our 9 months organic performance, reaching 10.4%. In our Oil & Gas segment, we have delivered consistent double-digit organic growth. Our CapEx activities have shown strong performance with a solid backlog conversion of projects mostly in the Middle East and Asia.

The Power & Utilities segment recorded double-digit organic revenue expansion. Our services for the renewable energy sector have been particularly strong in the North American and Asian markets. Nuclear power subsegment has delivered also robust organic results with emerging opportunities, especially as we progress in onboarding our new business, the Dornier Hinneburg acquisition we completed last quarter for decommissioning-related services.

For Industrial Product Certification, we posted high single-digit organic growth. This performance was powered by strong momentum in European and U.S. markets and the rollout of innovative digital tools for machinery or machine safety. For green objects, we were selected for -- by a construction management services contract for -- sorry, for construction management services contract for a renewable energy developer delivering 125-megawatt solar and 280-megawatt battery energy storage system in California. Additionally, we were awarded a 3-year contract to help a Spanish energy company detect, quantify and set up fugitive emission reduction plans.

Moving on to Buildings & Infrastructure. This business was among the strongest performing ones within the portfolio this quarter, reaching an organic growth of 7.1% and achieving 4.1% growth in the first 9 months. By subsegments, our CapEx Building segment delivered high single-digit organic revenue increase. The U.S. platform was a critical growth driver in the quarter with strong growth in data center commissioning from the ongoing buildup of AI infrastructure. The U.S. activity was further strengthened by increased permitting for new buildings, positively lifting the code compliance activity. The Asia Pacific region also delivered strong organic growth through increased code compliance activities in Northeast Asia, namely Japan, from favorable new buildings control regulations.

On the OpEx Building services segment side, performance was solid overall, up mid-single digits organically in the third quarter. France contributed significantly to growth through an increased volume of services, favorable pricing programs and increased activity from energy efficiency-related projects. In the U.S., real estate transaction-related services performed very well, driven by a pickup in commercial real estate transactions.

Lastly, Business & Infrastructure delivered high single-digit organic revenue increase in the quarter. Strong growth in Europe from sustained projects in Italy, where we have seen the government sustain their investments there. In the Middle East region, we also recorded very strong organic growth across key markets with the developments of numerous large-scale projects. Lastly, we're building a good basis for sustained organic growth with the APP Group in Australia, where we secured in Q3, a major multiyear project management services contract with the Department of Defense. In transition services, we are partnering with the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group to expand resilient verification services globally.

Our Certification division delivered solid results in Q3, achieving 5.9% organic growth despite tough comparables and a strong 7.7% growth year-to-date. This performance reflects the solid trends underlying assurance services, risk management and mitigation imperatives are driving many services, specifically supply chain resilience activity and overall specialized schemes are growing.

Breaking down our different subsegments' revenue growth. For the Quality, Health, Safety and the Environment & Specialized Schemes, growth was high single digit on an organic basis, driven by customized certification programs and robust public sector contracts, particularly in food safety inspections. Sustainability & Digital Solutions delivered double-digit growth to a high demand for greenhouse gas verification, forestry services, ESG audits and cybersecurity services. We also continue to expand our customer base in cyber. So recently, we secured a cybersecurity contract with a major social media company in the United States.

In transition services, we secured a substantial Life Cycle Assessment contract with a major energy company in the Middle East. We also won a sustainability reporting contract for a large for an international pharma company, providing specialized consulting on Scope 3 emissions and data management.

Finally, our Consumer Products Services division posted a solid 3.5% organic growth in Q3 against very tough comparable, leading to a 4.1% year-to-date performance. By subsegments, Softlines, Hardlines and Toys recorded low single-digit growth driven by South and Southeast Asia as Western companies gradually shift their sourcing from China mostly.

Our Healthcare, Beauty & Household delivered double-digit growth, driven by favorable dynamics in the United States and a strong performance in the Chinese domestic market. Supply Chain & Sustainability services recorded high single-digit growth with CSR audits, benefiting from increased demand for new supply qualification as the sourcing shift progresses across Asia.

Technology remained stable with mixed performance, facing challenges in wireless and mobility products, but benefiting from favorable trends in the electrical consumer area. The ongoing diversification of this business is progressing well, as recent acquisitions start to contribute to organic growth. On the transition services front, we won -- in Q3, we had a strategic global partnership and the commitment to supply chain. We secured a significant contract with a multinational clothing retailer for supplier data management. We also won an eco-design and Life Cycle Assessment verification project with a global industrial technology leader.

Turning now to the outlook. Considering our robust 9-month performance, the solid backlog and taking into account the strong underlying market fundamentals and again, in line with the LEAP | 28 financial ambition, we confirm our full year 2025 outlook and expect to deliver mid- to high single-digit organic revenue growth, improvement in adjusted operating margin at constant exchange rates and a strong cash flow with cash conversion above 90%.

Coming to the end of this prepared remarks and to conclude, this is another quarter we're delivering an excellent operational performance while navigating complex market dynamics and with challenging comparables versus last year. This performance is a testament to the consistent and reliable execution led by our teams and to the clear strategic priorities for the whole organization. I'm also pleased on the strategy execution front as we progress with our portfolio pivots, while also modernizing our ways of working and while building a differentiated people model. We're also fully committed to progressing on our portfolio transformation in the coming months and year as we accelerate our M&A program. Finally, we'll continue to navigate an evolving macro and market conditions. We remain confident as to the strength of our market fundamentals, the superior capabilities of our people and teams and the resilience of our portfolio.

Thank you for your attention. Francois and I are now ready to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley.

Hinda and Francois, I have 3 questions, please. So 3 questions, please. Just firstly, on the structural reorganization you announced at the H1, it sounds like that is progressing, but any comments there on how that has progressed in the quarter? I think previously you spoke about starting to see some payback on that in the first half of '26. So just curious if that's still the case. Secondly, on B&I, it sounds like it was a fairly broad-based recovery. But are there any particular end markets or geographies that you would call out in terms of driving that very significant sequential improvement, such as data centers? And are there any one-offs that boosted that growth in Q3 in particular? And then lastly, just on China, just what you're seeing on the ground across your divisions in China, if you're seeing anything sequentially improve or deteriorate relative to the first half?

All right. Thank you, Annelies. Yes, thank you for the question on the reorg. It's -- as always mentioned, in July, we launched the first phase of the reorganization in June. So that was for our executive committee. The team is in place. We launched the Phase 2 for the next player in September, and that team is basically in place. We work through the summer. That team is in place and working on Phase 3. What's really good is there is clear alignment across the organization as to the value of this organization. Just to remind you, it's about scale, structure and speed. It's about our capacity to make sure that we can actually execute even faster our organization. It's about making sure we boost our cross-selling, our global sales, we scale faster new businesses and we integrate better as we are in this dynamic of acquisition and portfolio pivoting. So far, I would say, so good. And we'll continue to monitor how that progresses.

I think the payback is, as I said, actually, last time I believe you asked me that question. This wasn't a new program. This is something we have thought through since we were building the strategy and we have baked in the fact that we'll have this organization done in 2025. And therefore, we consider that the impact is within the commitments and ambitions of LEAP | 28.

Going to B&I, we're very pleased with the performance of B&I in Q3. You're right, it's a great recovery. I would say, first of all, I think the North American market has delivered really nicely. And you have seen, right, it's a high single-digit growth in CapEx overall, and we've seen good performance on the infrastructure and also a very decent performance on the OpEx. The North American market has done very well. We have seen growth across all subsegments. Data center is doing great. The market is growing double digits, and we're growing with the market. Code compliance started to recover now with the interest rates starting to come down. Commercial transactions picked up. And we have, I would say, overall, there is a good momentum on the B&I side in the United States.

China is finally hitting a trough. As you recall, we have been suffering from contraction -- ongoing contraction of that market. So finally, China now were starting to stabilize. And at the same time, we have the emerging markets. I talked about picking up great performance in our Middle East business. Southeast Asia, some countries there as well. So we're seeing a very nice emerging markets growth.

And then finally, the mature business of Europe is actually doing well as well. As I mentioned earlier, good volumes, reasonable pricing in some parts of it, particularly France and some good projects on the energy management. So I would say across, it's a broad performance. And not a surprise, Annelies, for us because we predicted this for the simple reason that we are executing our strategy on the B&I side and expecting to see this. And what's even nicer is now, if I look at -- if I take the organic growth and the scope, we are basically growing 10.8% at constant currency, and that really is going to be a very nice foundation for growth going forward. I'm going to ask Francois to comment on China.

Yes. Annelies, on China, I think, as you know, we are exposed when it comes to most of our product or business lines, so Certification and Industry, Marine & Offshore, Consumer Products and B&I. From a sequential point of view, I think we are quite positive and optimistic about China. It used to be growing in H1 around mid-single. It now contributes in Q3 between mid to high. So we are actually seeing an acceleration of growth overall as a geography, point one. Point two, very important to us the solvability of clients is as good as it has been. So meaning we don't see any cash restriction whatsoever coming from our client base, which is a very important element to us when it comes to operating in this country.

The dynamic by segment, very rapidly, the -- you have obviously an outlier, which is the Marine & Offshore division, which the fact that the shipyards are concentrating in China is actually -- if I said double digit, it's almost an understatement. So it's very good. The Certification business as well is very solid. Industry in which we are very much exposed to renewable energy is -- remains very, very strong. And I think overall, what we see is the B&I China remains a drag, but less and less as time goes by. And our Consumer Product business, despite all what you can read on the newspaper from supply chain shift and so on, maintains a good growth on a year-to-date basis. So overall, I think we see China very positive.

The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs.

A few for me, please. I think the Q3 number, given the tougher comps, was actually a very strong print and you're having easier competitors going into Q4. Is there any reason to suggest that the underlying momentum that you've seen year-to-date should not continue over the next quarter? And maybe specifically on Marine & Offshore, it continues to surprise on the upside. Order book also continues to grow double digits. Can you maybe help us understand what has surprised you positively? Because I think previously, you have been talking about a potential slowdown. Is that getting pushed out further and further basically?

Yes. Thanks, Suhasini. You're absolutely right. I think this was a strong performance in Q3, considering that last year, we grew 13% in Q3. And let's remember as well, Q4, we grew 10%. So very, very strong performance lately. So the comparables are quite tough. Having said that, I think we're confirming our outlook because we think we have a solid basis with our backlog, with our projects with the visibility on our execution and with the team that we expect that to -- we're reasonably confident on that. Of course, I cannot be very specific on the current trend, but we had a good exit of September. We have good visibility on the project. So we expect that Q4 will deliver and confirm the outlook for the year, considering again, that 10% growth last year. So I would say we don't expect surprises on that front.

On the M&O side, look, it has been a good performance, very good performance. Maybe a little bit beyond what we expected because we were modeling that the performance of the shipyards was not going to be as strong as what we expected, what we actually -- what turned out to be. And that's why we've always modeled that we will see some moderation because at some point, 2 things will work against you, one, the capacity, you're not going to keep converting. You don't have that capacity. And two, your comparables are getting tougher, right? And -- but actually, the performance of the shipyard has been very good to the point that the conversion was much faster than what we predicted.

Now a few times, I said I'll expect it to happen in the next quarter, and it didn't materialize. So I would say now we're sitting in a space where we think that probably won't be the same level of growth, but we will have to watch how the shipyards perform. We also are monitoring whether there will be some capacity additions for the shipyards in China. And if that's the case, then we could see some reasonable momentum maintained. I wouldn't commit to exactly the same performance you've seen in Q3, but some reasonable momentum. It all depends how many hours are added, how quickly they come up to speed, and that's really extremely hard to predict. But look, great performance this year for -- from our M&O teams and the backlog, as I said, is 32 million gross tons. So it's not going to go anywhere when we expect it to be executed at some point. All the [indiscernible].

The next question comes from Geoffroy Michalet from ODDO BHF.

Yes. Congratulations for the strong results. Three for me. The first one is on your Consumer business. The tech division is rather subdued for quite a while now. My question is, when do you expect the turnaround? Do you think it will take more than 1 year? That was the first question. The second question is on certification and notably the other solutions, including training that we are negative this quarter. Could you elaborate a bit on that? And the third question is on capital allocation and the pipeline. We still haven't seen mid- to large M&A deals. So do you feel more pressure to bring back cash to shareholders with the new share buyback?

Yes. Thank you, Geoffroy, for the questions. Look, CPS tech, I think we've been extremely clear that we had a portfolio that was misaligned with the trends of the market. And if you recall, we talked about the fact that the wireless and automotive side or the mobility side, as we call it, were really -- they were suffering from their own market conditions and the demand has fallen. And what we -- as we examine that and worked on the portfolio, we knew that we needed to do a few things. One, diversify geographically because we were quite heavy on the kind of Asia mix. And two, we needed to diversify and ensure that we expand our capabilities in the electrical appliances side, specifically around the world. Which is what we have been doing is, we made an acquisition in Mexico. We have made an acquisition more recently in Brazil. We have acquisitions in Korea and we have acquisitions in India.

So all these are coming together. And my expectations on the turnaround, I think a good 12 months is probably a reasonable time line to really work through and as all these businesses get onboarded, integrated and we start seeing some impact. But it's true, it has been a drag on the overall performance of CPS, of our Consumer Product Services division, and we're watching that very, very closely. Look, on -- Francois, do you want to take certification...

You had a very good high year. Let's say, training -- to make your life simple, training grew mid-single. And the other section that we mentioned, represents the contraction of EUR 2.8 million out of EUR 1.6 billion business. So we guarantee you a one-to-one with Laurent Brunelle so that you have a full extent explanation of this slight contraction. I would not overread it, if you see what I mean.

All right. Thanks, Francois. Look, on the capital allocation side and M&A, and thank you for that question. I think it's a very important one. As you have seen on the bolt-on side, we're not into a number game. We're really into a quality of target game where we have very, very specific gaps, both geographically and from a capabilities perspective, and we are filling in these gaps very carefully and very deliberately. So the bolt-on track, if you will, is working, and we're pleased with the acquisitions we're making. And see, the key thing with this small bolt-ons is the scaling across the group because that, for me, is a very important dynamic for us to profoundly change how the portfolio is working and to make sure we deliver on our commitment. So that's the first track.

The second track of the midsized ones, the 100 to 500. The pipeline is good. There are opportunities we're very focused on. We have engagements ongoing, and we have discussions ongoing. Now there are a couple of things to keep in mind when we talk about these targets, obviously dealing -- it is a very rich private equity space. So the pace and the -- I guess, the exit of these deals may vary, may take some time. And that's really what we are working on. So you have seen us right, Francois talks about the EUR 700 million bond we issued recently. We're preparing ourselves for the ongoing discussion to make sure that as they materialize, we're very well prepared to finance that.

So I think a good description of where we are today is slight I would say, sure about what we're doing on the bolt-ons, and we're working really to focus their integration and scaling. On the midsize, we are preparing ourselves, and we're engaging with a number of targets. And as I said, in the coming months and year, we expect that we will materialize.

And all this -- very important to mention, these are very important pivots we're making with some of these midsized acquisitions we're working on, so we can prepare our portfolio to be future-facing. So this is absolutely about remaking a portfolio that will be resilient in the future, building our new strongholds, be it in the renewable space, be it in low carbon, I would say, be it in very strategic space in the B&I, I talked about strategic assets before, be it in cyber, be it in sustainability. This is really what we're looking at or consumers have potentially.

So these are the kind of things we're focused on. So there is no confusion as to what we want to do. And we've always also said, just to come back on the share buyback and the shareholder returns, that when the time is right, we will consider share buybacks. And just for kind of clarity, we have done 2 share buybacks in the last 18 months, I think it was 18 months. And those are the only 2 share buybacks the companies have ever made. So I think there is no shyness from our perspective to consider that, but we want to make sure that we're really at this point, privileging the M&A because [indiscernible] finally remake the portfolio.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from François Digard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Congratulations for the figures. Sorry to just point on the only negative points, that is Brazil. It has been a drag on your performance in the Americas. Is this primarily driven by macro factors? Or are there company-specific issues that play here?

Thank you, François, for the question. It's a fair question. Look, Brazil is a very important country in our portfolio. There are a number of dynamics. There are some operational issues we had specifically on our agri activity. Market is good, really operational issues. And the second one were more project delays. And this is very important because on the sales front, we're doing well. We're securing deals, and we're working on these deals, and that goes from B&I to Industry. But on the execution side, customers for a variety of reasons, they have projects being a little delayed. I don't think it's a trend overall in the market. We haven't seen major economic concerns at this point, but we're seeing some of these delays. And we are, of course, working on mitigating, looking at other revenue streams and trying to make sure we are managing all this. So I would say a bit of a disappointment for us, I have to say, this quarter, but an area we are extremely focused on, and we have a number of actions to address that.

The next question comes from Arnaud Palliez from CIC Market Solutions.

Yes. I have, in fact, just last specific one. Regarding the nuclear segment that you mentioned as a solid performer in power and utilities. So I would like to know, what is your exposure to this business? And in which countries you have some presence and how much of your total revenue does it represent? Because it's a sector that is seeing a revival. And I think it's interesting to get your real exposure to this trend.

Yes. Thank you for that question. I think you're absolutely right. I think the nuclear space is a bit of in a revival. Now what's nice about our portfolio, we have quite a broad portfolio in nuclear. And of course, we have a very nice anchor of our portfolio in France, right? We've been a long-term player in France, and that helped us build very nice capabilities. Now what we're seeing here, what's important, though, to keep in mind, it's a long cycle business. And today, it just it represents circa 1% of the group. So it's not massive yet in scale. But definitely, we're watching very carefully the pipeline that is being built up. And we have already worked with other European countries. U.K. is one of them to mention.

What's nice now is because of the needs in terms of energy and power and because of the concerns around decarbonization, nuclear is a bit in vogue at the moment. So there are a number of countries that are building up plans. There are a number of companies that are coming up with the investment proposals, and we are really engaging with all of these. So our idea here is, one, is to scale the capabilities we have in France; and two, to expand our capabilities.

So the first move we've made was the acquisition of the Dornier Hinneburg company in Germany, which gives us access to the decommissioning market. Very nice market in places like Germany and certainly others as we go forward. It also has capabilities in training. And we are now looking geographically how do we expand. So Eastern European countries, there's some South Indian continent countries. There are also capabilities probably we can do in the U.S. So it's -- I guess, it's a long game, but it's a business we're very interested in.

And in a way, if I step back a little bit, nuclear is just part of the puzzle of energy that we're trying to build. We have a strong position in oil and gas. We have strong position -- we are building a strong position in renewables, nuclear's part of it, and we're really expanding that. So it's not a surprise in a way. It's going to take a while, though. I'm trying to be cautious in terms of time because these deals take from 5 to 10 years, I would say, rather than 5.

The next question comes from James Rowland Clark from Barclays.

My first question is, once again, you sort of flagged some of the price opportunities that you put through in a couple of segments. So I just wondered if you could talk more broadly about price versus volume trends in the third quarter and how that compares year-to-date. And what the opportunity looks like for pushing more price through on to clients in the near term? Secondly, on consumer, you mentioned that in Softline, Hardline and Toys, supply chain shifts have been a bit of a headwind to your growth. A key peer to you is saying that it's actually a tailwind for them. So I just wondered what it is about your mix that makes it a headwind for you? And then finally, just on data centers, thanks very much for the color there. I just wondered if data center work is accretive to your B&I margin.

Yes, yes. So look, let me start with the data centers. So data centers for us are really what we call machine-critical assets, right? These are beyond all the hype on the AI. It's basically objects that need very high performance specifications. And therefore, the kind of services we do and the specialization we have developed in services with commissioning are very high-tick intensity businesses. So we're not peripheral to the data centers. We're at the core of the performance delivery of these constructions. So it's a very important business. It's high barriers to entry, very complex and very specific expertise and therefore, highly accretive to the group margin not only to B&I. So very, very good business there.

On the CPS side, on the consumer side, just to clarify, I think I might have -- maybe it wasn't clear, that the supply chain is rather a tailwind for us because we see the sourcing shift as an opportunity to requalify suppliers. And we had a lot of engagements with customers who actually see it as an opportunity to question some of their practices, some of their suppliers, some of their choices. So I would say it's not a headwind for us. And in fact, the growth was high single digit on the supply chain side.

Where we had lower growth was on the actual testing activity in terms of Softlines, Hardlines & Toys. And there, first of all, the comparables are very, very difficult versus last year. That was one. And we were quite -- we're not surprised by the performance there. We expect it to be in the kind of low single digit there this quarter. But no, we don't consider supply chain as a headwind. It's rather a tailwind at this time.

And the other thing to keep in mind is we have actually done some of these moves in the past, and we're quite well practiced to do them. We've done that in 2018 with the first Trump administration. With the sourcing shifts, we were able to build a learning curve there on how to quickly come up to speed. We're expanding today our capabilities in Southeast Asia seeing that sourcing shift happening. We're diversifying our services as well in the supply chain, so we can help beyond the traditional kind of basic audits you do.

So it's really -- it's a normative performance, I would say, on CPS. But I expect it to be a good foundation for us as we build momentum and as we increase -- as we actually develop our portfolio. And just to be clear, we have been also acquiring companies. And year-to-date, the growth of consumer products at constant currency, including acquisitions is 6.4%. I'm going to pass -- Francois is going to talk about the price versus volume clarity.

James, from the price volume front, I would say, by and large, very limited change compared to the H1 situation. Primarily, the growth is driven by volume to 1/3 of it, 1/3 is being priced, very limited contribution of high inflation in various geographies. So 2/3, 1/3 remains where we sit at the end of September year-to-date. When it comes to further pricing and the adjustment or pricing opportunities, I think the situation is now well ingrained into our European and American operation when it comes to being able to pass inflation.

But we are currently developing or let's say, running out pricing programs by segments or by division, by [indiscernible] if you prefer. We did it 2 years ago in Marine & Offshore with good successes. We are now entering the game for Building & Infrastructure. So whether it compensates for lower incretion at some point in 1 or 2 years or whether it creates moment on the top line, it's too early to say at this stage. But we are not giving up on being able to have a pricing component that is part and parcel of our growth trajectory.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for closing remarks.

Right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for your time and questions. I think we delivered a very robust performance against very challenging comparables. I hope we shared with you -- what we shared with you show that we are actively working on transforming our portfolio, and we are really in the middle of that. And I hope you understand now better how we are shaping this new portfolio and how we are building businesses that are resilient and will be future-facing. And that, we will be in the coming months and year coming back with more clarity on that as we accelerate our M&A. Thank you very much.