Rexel Stock

Good evening. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Rexel Second Quarter and First Half 2026 sales conference call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Jean Texier, Group CEO of Rexel. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Hello, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Rexel's second quarter sales and first half 2026 Results Call. So as you saw in the figures that we just released, we delivered a strong performance in H1, both in sales and profitability. And beyond the figures, what is particularly satisfactory for us is that those results, the direct results of actions we have taken over the last few years in terms of portfolio positioning, growth initiatives and operational excellence actions. Laurent will cover the financials in detail.

Before that, I will highlight the strategic themes behind the numbers, and I will come back obviously with our concluding remarks and outlook. So shifting to Slide 3, I will share the main messages that summarize our strong first half performance. First, sales reached almost EUR 10 billion for the first time and North America became our biggest platform in the second quarter. Second, same-day sales growth accelerated, up plus 6.7% in Q2. This results from our targeted investment in high-growth segments that are becoming increasingly visible.

Third, sales momentum, productivity and disciplined execution are supporting margin progression with adjusted EBITDA up 40 bps at 6.2% and nonadjusted EBITDA margin at 6.4%, including the one-off gain on copper. And lastly, free cash flow is robust for our first half at close to EUR 250 million, confirming the cash-generating profile of the company.

Moving to Slide 4. It's important to mention that we delivered those robust results in a low cycle and volatile environment with limited visibility and geopolitical tension. Our sales growth in Q2 was above the high end of our guidance, supported by our positioning in high-growth segments, including data centers in North America and electrification in Europe. More specifically, volumes were positive in all geographies for the first time since Q2 2023, and selling price increases were also positive in all regions, driven by raw materials, energy prices.

On profitability, we reached 6.2% adjusted EBITDA margin despite negative product and market mix effects. This performance was supported by higher volumes, increased selling prices that more than offset OpEx inflation and record productivity of 4%, thanks to our optimization programs and AI transformation.

Moving to Slide 5, focusing on electrification in Europe, a major growth driver in the quarter. The external context is clearly supportive. Successive heat ways are increasing the need for cooling solutions, while energy price volatility and energy security concerns are driving customers to invest in efficiency, cash generation and energy independence. This is visible across our HVAC, solar and EV charging businesses. These categories represent 22% of our European sales and grew by a strong 15% in Q2. France and the Netherlands, for example, benefited from the growing demand in HVAC. Switzerland, the Netherlands and France, saw support from EV-related infrastructure, while solar boosted several markets, including Austria, Ireland and Belgium.

Moving to Slide 6 and the data center opportunity in North America, the other major growth pillar in the quarter. This trend is linked to major structural needs around AI, cloud infrastructure, power availability, cooling, connectivity and reliability. These projects require a complex electrical capabilities, strong execution and close customer relationships. We are moving up the value chain and are increasingly supporting our customers with technical capabilities and solutions. In the U.S., our data center activity grew more than 80% in the first half, supported by large project execution, notably in the Mountain Plains area and Southeast regions.

Order intake remains robust with data centers now representing around 25% of our backlog. In this vertical, we continue to gain market share, thanks to our service capabilities and execution reputation. We now anticipate that this segment, which accounts today for 9% of our U.S. sales will grow above 50% in 2026 versus our initial objective of above 20%.

In Canada, we have also built a strong credibility from scratch in less than a year, reaching a 7% exposure to the data center segment. And we are now starting to expand into adjacent areas such as white rooms, fiber optics and cooling systems.

Finally, our latest acquisition, Techno-contact 360 also brings additional solution design expertise.

Moving to Slide 7. On M&A, we had a busy first part of the year with 3 acquisitions executed. We are acquiring capabilities, technical expertise and increased exposure to attractive end markets where Rexel can create additional value. The 3 transactions completed this year will be adding EUR 400 million of sales and strengthen our exposure to industrial automation, advanced services and data center-related applications. Revere Electrical Supply enhances our position in industrial automation and expands our partnership with Rockwell Automation to the attractive Midwest region.

Techno-Contact 360 strengthens our Canadian data center capabilities and supports our move into higher value-added services. And Dee Electronics, our latest acquisition closed on July 10 adds advanced manufacturing capabilities, including cable assemblies and panel solutions for leading OEMs, here again with a sizable exposure to data center. Together, this acquisition increased the share of the portfolio exposed to secular growth trends and support our medium-term ambition. So with that strategic context in mind, I will now hand over to Laurent, who will go through the financial review.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good evening, everyone. On Slide 9, you can see our momentum improved sequentially. We moved from plus 3.4% in Q1 '26 to plus 6.7% in Q2 '26 with a good balance between volume and price contribution. First, volumes contribute for 3.1% in the quarter with all regions in positive territory for the first time since Q2 '23.

Second, selling price contributed positively for 3.6%, including noncable pricing for 1.4% and cable pricing for plus 2.2%, reflecting the higher copper price. Briefly on our 2 main geographies that I will highlight in the next 2 slides, North America, representing 47% of sales accelerated and was up 7.8%; Europe accounting for 46% of sales, posted robust growth of 2.4%, significantly higher than Q1.

Focusing on Asia Pacific, which accounts for 7% of book revenue and grew by 17%. Sales in China and India grew by plus 9% and plus 31%, respectively, supported by industrial automation activity. In Australia, sales growth further accelerated in the quarter at plus 22%, boosted by solar activity. I'll now go more detail on North America and Europe in the next slides.

Starting with North America on Slide 10. Project activities, especially in data centers and industrial automation was the main driver of the sales acceleration. Digital adoption continued to progress rapidly, almost up 400 basis points to 27% of sales, supported by new quote and order entry tools. This is important because it strengthens customer stickiness while also improving productivity. In the United States, same-day grew -- growth reached 7.8% in the second quarter. The performance was driven by very strong data center activity, up more than 100%, continued growth in Industrial Automation, up 15% and positive trends in market such as the space industry, hospitals and water -- wastewater. Canada also delivered solid growth, supported by data center activity and strong performance of our latest acquisition.

As presented on Slide 11, Europe showed a clear sequential improvement in the second quarter, up plus 4.4%, driven by double-digit growth in Energy Transition Solutions. And more specifically, France was notably supported by HVAC, both in the commercial and residential segments. Benelux benefited from HVAC and EV solutions in the Netherlands and solar in Belgium.

The DACH region improved sequentially, notably supported by the solar activity, significantly growing in Austria and returning to close to breakeven in Germany. In addition, sweden also delivered growth, thanks to good strategic execution and improvement in the residential market.

Lastly, the U.K. remains more challenging, but the strong growth in Ireland helped to partly offset that weakness. Moving now to the half year picture. I'll start on Slide 12 with the sales bridge. We delivered H1 '26 sales of almost EUR 10 billion, up plus 2.2% on a reported basis. The organic performance was the main driver with same-day sales growth up plus 5.1%, volumes contribute for 1.9% and pricing added plus 1.3% in noncable and plus 2% in cable.

M&A also contribute meaningfully with acquisition added plus 1.4%. And these positive elements were mitigated by a minus 2.6% currency effect that will reverse in H2 and a minus 1.3% impact from the disposal of our activity in Finland completed in Q3 '25.

Let's now move to profitability and margin performance. On Slide 13, we bridge our adjusted EBITDA margin with the improvement, mainly driven by operating leverage and well-executed action plans. Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 40 basis points at 6.2% despite the more competitive environment, negative product mix and investment for growth.

First, scope and FX were positive, contributing plus 11 basis points from good portfolio management. Second, you see that operating leverage contributed 17 basis points, mainly driven by volume growth in North America and Asia Pac as European volumes turn positive in Q2 '26 only.

Third, the delta inflation. As you know, the gap between selling price increase and OpEx inflation returned to positive territory with a plus 6 basis point effect, mainly driven by Europe. Fourth, Action plans contribute for 22 basis points to the adjusted EBITDA, including a record level of 4% productivity from the gap between sales volume growth and reduced average FTE combined with other cost initiatives. And by geography, the progression was mainly driven by Europe and Asia Pacific.

On Slide 14, we look at the bottom line part of our P&L with a zoom on other income and expense, financial expense, tax rate and recurring net income. Other income and expense stood at minus EUR 8 million, mainly related to acquisition and integration costs as well as restructuring notably in Europe. We anticipate to be closer to EUR 35 million in year '26 as we'll further integrate acquisition and execute turnarounds in some countries.

Financial expense stood at EUR 113 million slightly above last year, reflecting lower cost of debt and higher growth debt. It includes EUR 37 million of interest on lease liabilities. And for '26, we anticipate financial expense of circa EUR 230 million, including EUR 75 million of interest on lease liabilities and EUR 155 million on pure financial expense, excluding one-offs. This assumes current interest rate conditions remain unchanged.

Our tax income tax rate stood at 30.5% due to the impact of the exceptional tax in France, excluding that, the normative tax rate stands at circa 27%. And as a result, our recurring net income stood at EUR 347 million, a growth -- double-digit growth of 13%.

Moving to Slide 15. We generated gross cash flow before interest and tax reaching EUR 247 million, implying a free cash flow conversion rate of 37%. Trade working capital stood at 16.3% versus 15.9% last year, mostly coming from strong sales growth acceleration in Q2 '26. It's worth noting the good management of inventory and receivable with lower days. And lastly, the CapEx to sales ratio stood at 0.7%, similar to last year.

As shown on the next slide, on Slide 16, our capital allocation is well balanced between acquisitions and return to shareholders. Overall, our net debt increased by [ EUR 390 million ], mainly resulting from 2 factors: first, EUR 398 million cash out from net financial investments, mainly from the acquisition of Revere in the U.S., TC 360 in Canada as mentioned earlier by Guillaume. Second, the dividend payment relating to the 2020 to 2025 for EUR 353 million, corresponding to EUR 1.2 per share. All this leads to a net debt of EUR 3.3 billion and an indebtedness ratio of 2.4x.

We also continue to actively manage our financial structure, as shown on Slide 17. We extended our debt maturity profile through EUR 125 million Schuldschein with '29 and 2031 maturities and successfully issued the first convertible bond in May for EUR 400 million with very attractive financial terms, namely 1% coupon and a conversion rate above EUR 50. If you also add in the EUR 1.8 billion liquidity, we have the financial flexibility to execute our strategy and fund growth opportunities. I will now hand back to Guillaume for the outlook and guidance.

Thank you, Laurent.

So let me now turn to the outlook on Slide 19 and share the reasons behind the 2026 guidance upgrade that you saw in our press release. So first, we had a strong start to the year, both in terms of growth momentum and disciplined execution. Second, we are capturing secular growth trends across a more diversified portfolio, particularly in data centers, Electrification and Industrial Automation. Third, our record backlog improves the visibility of our activity for the remainder of the year. .

At the same time, we keep monitoring potential risks, macroeconomic and geopolitical environment are still uncertain with energy price volatility. We are also operating in a competitive market and maintaining and progressing gross margin is the concerned backdrop.

On Slide 20, let's look maybe at our order backlog in North America, which has reached record levels. We have crossed USD 2 billion in the U.S. and CAD 1 billion in Canada. In the U.S., our backlog now represents about 3.1 months of sales. You can see the trajectory on the chart since 2022. After a relatively steady phase, we are clearly moving up from $1.8 billion in Q1 to EUR 2.2 billion in Q2 '26, a sequential increase of plus 25%, mainly driven by several projects in data centers and in the space industry.

In Canada, the momentum is even stronger. The backlog covers roughly 5.5 months of sales with a steady decline since 2024 and a sequential increase of plus 30% in Q2, mainly driven by a large contract won by TC 360 thanks to the increased execution capability brought by the Rexel team. This good start of the year leads us to increase slightly our guidance despite the still uncertain conditions, and I'm now on Slide 21.

We now expect same-day sales growth of around 5% compared to the previous range of between 3% to 5%. We expect current adjusted EBITDA margin of at least 6.2% compared to circa 6.2% initially. And free cash flow conversion still above 65%. Let me now finish with 2 slides projecting ourselves beyond 2026 and using the H1 results to illustrate the key levers that make us confident in our capacity to reach our medium-term target sales growth guidance.

The chart on this slide illustrates how our portfolio is built. And I would stress that these splits are indicative meant to show the balance of our exposure rather than a precise segmentation. So today, roughly 2/3 of our sales are exposed to the traditional construction and economic cycles, split between renovation and new build in Europe and in North America. This gives us a solid, well-diversified base that will also benefit from any economic recovery. The remaining 1/3 of our sales is exposed to structural megatrends such as AI and data infrastructure, the energy transition and industrial modernization.

And as illustrated in recent financial presentations, these markets grow faster than the underlying construction cycle, and this is where our targeted investments are increasingly visible. What is also interesting is how independent from each other, those trends are. You saw in the first half that our good results didn't come only from data centers, but also from energy transition-related trends in Europe and industrial automation throughout the world. This is the kind of balance we have been trying to build over the years, and which is now delivering.

Now on the profitability side, and I know that the markets are very focused on our midterm goals of 7% EBITDA profitability. Let me try to share with you on Slide 23 why we are increasingly confident in our capacity to reach it.

Our Axelerate 28 strategic plan works as a road map as we advance and executed, we progressively validate the different pillars. Please note that the figures on this symbolic bridge are illustrative. They are meant to size the potential of each lever and to explain our reasoning not to give precise guidance brick by brick as not all will materialize at the same speed.

Let me walk you through the main pillars, starting with the drop-through on additional growth. This growth will come both from cyclical recovery and accelerating trends. There are many uncertainties here, but we know that drop-through on additional sales is usually around 5 to 10 bps by additional gross percent on volume. And we see also in this year's results, for example, the order of magnitude of how much electrification trends can bring to the top line.

Second, productivity and automation. Salaries and benefits represent around 10% of our sales and our current initiatives point to a double-digit additional productivity potential. This is where AI is a very significant opportunity for us. That said, this is a calculation one should be very cautious about for many reasons. Firstly, because this is only an initial evaluation. Secondly, because theoretical productivity doesn't always translate into real productivity, especially in parts of our organization with small groups of people.

And thirdly, because in a competitive world where every competitor is working on AI, parts of the benefits may be given back to the customer [ in price ]. But you get the idea, which is that the potential of those initiatives is quite sizable. Third, the turnaround of our least profitable countries. Our 4 least profitable countries represents around 15% of sales. And we think that there is a triple-digit bps profitability improvement potential here. And actually, in H1, we have started to deliver that.

But here again, many caveats, the first one being about execution risks, obviously, and the second one about double counting with other pillars. Fourth, operational excellence, several programs launched under Axelerate 28 in pricing, supply chain, procurement, product mix, carry overall a double-digit bps global EBITDA improvement potential. And finally, portfolio management, adding around as a back-of-envelope calculation adding around 10% of acquired sales with a 200 bps accretive effect, for example, from synergies will generate roughly 20 bps of EBITDA.

So once again, the idea of walking you through this bridge is not to give you guidance but rather to share with you 2 main things. First of all, there are many initiatives taking place. Some will succeed beyond our expectations, and some will to the opposite not realize their full potential. But the fact that there are so many action plans is giving a good degree of comfort. And obviously, the second takeaway is that the sum of all the potential is higher than 80 bps, even if there are double counting, probably overoptimistic assessments and bumps in the road, we feel relatively safe that the path we are taking is leading us to our goals.

So that concludes today's presentation. And in summary, H1 2026 demonstrates that Rexel is delivering profitable growth, transforming its portfolio and improving visibility. We are very pleased with the performance. We -- but we also see it as further evidence that our transformation is gaining momentum. Thank you. Laurent, and I are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question comes from Martin Wilkie of Citi.

It's Martin. Just a couple of questions on your revenue guidance. You've obviously put the guidance to the upper end of the prior range, but it was also a very strong Q2. If you could just talk a little bit about how you see some of the benefits you had in the second quarter continuing, particularly electrification in Europe, obviously, benefited from energy prices and presumably investment in solar, EV, these kind of things. Does that continue into the second half? Or was that really sort of mainly boosting the second quarter? And in terms of pricing, you accelerated quite a decent amount in the quarter. Is most of the pricing from a sequential perspective, now done? Or are you seeing signals that pricing could continue to go up over the course of the year?

So good question, Martin. First of all, on the electrification trends in Europe, it's difficult to predict with certainty. I mean, first of all, it was a little bit unexpected. The turn of events are triggered a high level of interest in electrification. And I can tell that this level of interest continues in July. So this is the first thing I would share with you.

Obviously, energy prices were trigger. Energy prices are still relatively high with a lot of geopolitical uncertainty. So we continue to see a high level of interest into that. One thing on which I'm a little bit less sure for H2 is obviously the high level of interest that we had in June, in particular to air conditioning technologies. That doesn't -- it's not a big proportion of our sales. It's around 2% of our sales in Europe.

But that being said, there was a high level of interest due to the heatwave in Europe. It seems like we are going to continue to have a hot summer. So we may continue to see some of that, but it's not a given -- and it's really a weather dependent. But for the electrification trends at this stage, we continue to see a high level of interest. And I have to say, many customers I'm talking to are realizing that it's not just adapting to the short-term energy valuations, but it's also making sure that they build an energy supply source, which is resilient and risk-free.

So I think probably the market -- there is a little bit of structural in there. But obviously, the price of the -- if the oil price drops down, we may see a little bit of a slowdown here. But at this stage, I don't see that. When it comes to pricing, we have a few price increases happening at the beginning of H2. I don't think it's going to be of the order of magnitude in terms of sequential pricing of what we have seen in H1. But that being said, we have a little bit of sequential pricing coming in. That's what I would say.

The next question is from Akash Gupta from JPMorgan.

I have a question on margin. If you look at historically in normal years, we have a seasonality of H2 margins being ahead of H1 by around 40 to 50 and sometimes 60 basis points. I mean you have not given a precise margin guidance and you were guiding for at least 6.2%. But maybe if you can talk about some of the margin bridge and anything that we should be expecting this year that might be different than what we have seen in normal years in the past? Laurent, do you want to answer this one or...

Yes. I mean, we guide -- on the margin side, there is 2 components. The first one is the gross margin where we -- in the first half, we have -- we are globally flat with 2 balancing acts, a bit of pressure on the commercial margin that will continue all over the year because of product mix. And we have also some inflation, as we just said, that will not be there in the second half. So on the margin side, we'll have a bit more pressure on the second half than in the first half.

And in the OpEx side, in the first half, we are benefiting from the carryover effect of last year action plan, which help us -- which will be less there in the second half. And globally this year, we have also a bit more inflation globally on -- that's why today, we have kind of H2 that has not the usual drop-through that you can expect .

But you're right, Akash, like-for-like H2 margins are usually higher and particularly this year where we have more working days in H2. So that's the basic. But Laurent is right. Laurent is right, there continues to be a little bit of pressure on gross margin, which we are taking into account a little bit also of timing effect in the transformation plans. So it explains a little bit our caution at the bottom end of the guidance. But obviously, we are shooting for higher than that.

And just a more strategic question on HVAC. You had a very strong growth in Netherlands and France. How easy it is to expand this business in other countries where you are not expanding -- you are not having this right now? Is this something that can be done organically? Or do you need more like an acquisition to expand HVAC in other European countries?

Look, I mean, in France, it was done almost organically, but it was done over 20 years. So I think it will come with an acquisition if we were to do it somewhere else. Let me remind you why we picked France and Netherlands to be a little bit more exposed to HVAC. It's for 2 reasons. First of all, those are countries where the 2 trades, HVAC installers, plumbers, let's put it this way and electrical installers are converging more and more. We see common customers. So there is a demand for one-stop shop, and that's the reason why we invested in those 2 countries. .

The second thing is in those 2 countries, there is a strong trend in the direction of electrification of heating through heat points for different reasons, availability of electricity in France, not availability of gas in the Netherlands. So we felt that the combination of those 2 things made it value creative for a company like Rexel to invest in that. Now are we going -- is it our plan to invest in all European countries? No, I don't think so. We may look at opportunities but really strategically and always looking at what is the level of synergy and what is the level of growth above the cyclical market in the countries where we would be interested. So that's a little bit the answer for me. We will continue to be selective.

The next question is from Jonathan Mounsey of BNP Paribas.

A couple if I may. First of all, you mentioned HVAC and obviously, the energy transition technologies. I think all of us in Europe during this quarter has probably looked to maybe buy some HVAC or know someone that has. It's basically all out of stock. I guess you didn't know there was going to be this heat wave. I just wonder, you had this amazing boom in demand. Do you actually have any inventory? Is there likely to be a hangover in Q3 just because even if demand is still you basically sold all of your inventory during Q2.

So I just wonder whether there might be a bit of a bump there. On Asia Pac, Australia, obviously, demand incredibly strong, I think, from memory, 22% growth, boosted by solar, and I think that's government initiatives supporting that. What's the latest news on that? How do you feel that may play out? Were those -- was that support to end?

Yes. 2 good questions. On HVAC and specifically, on air conditioning because there was a strong demand in France and in the Netherlands for air conditioning. We happened for none particularly strategic reasons, but mostly because of correction of past situations. So we happen to have a high level of inventory in the Netherlands. At this stage, I don't know of any particular shortage in France or in the Netherlands.

We have replenished our inventory and we are not going to face shortages in H2, if there is additional demand. Now if there are 5 heatwaves between now and the end of the summer, it may become an issue, but it's going to be -- from a business perspective, it's going to be a good issue. But at this stage, I think we are in pretty good shape, not better, but not worse than any competitor. Now when it comes to Australia specifically, because I think the rest of the growth in APAC is mostly China and India on Industrial Automation.

But you're right. In Australia, part of the growth, a small part of the growth is that the market is doing a little bit better outside of PV, but a big part of the growth is PV and batteries. There has been a program -- plan, the reduction of incentives in Australia. But that being said, I think the reduction of the incentive was 2 months ago, I think, in May. And we have not seen such a sharp slowdown in PV.

I think it's a little bit the same answer I was making to Martin about electrification. Australia understands that overall, they are super dependent on oil, specifically oil coming from the Middle East. The Middle East conflict is not finished. And so from a risk management perspective, it continues to make sense even with slightly lower incentives, which are still at a good level to invest in PV and batteries. So we continue to see a good level of interest, plateauing a little bit. But that being said, still much higher than 1 year ago. I'm not able to predict exactly what's going to happen in the future, but it feels like many economic players or residential homeowners in Australia are continuing to be very interested in photovoltaic technologies.

The next question comes from Max Yates of Morgan Stanley.

So I just wanted to ask about the sales growth guidance and the sort of step-up of, I guess, 100 basis points from sort of 4 to 5. I mean, it looks like you can get kind of most of that from the step-up in your data center guidance. So I guess I was just kind of curious around some of the parameters that have led you to upgrade the guidance. I remember you talked about kind of copper prices of $11,000 within your prior guidance. Has that changed? Have you changed? You used to quite helpfully kind of break it out between kind of volumes, copper and noncable price? Just trying to understand sort of how you think about those moving parts as we sit here today. And ultimately, was it just data centers or something else that led to the guidance upgrade today?

No, I think there are many things playing into the guidance upgrade on the positive side. There is obviously the data center business and you have seen the backlog. So we feel very comfortable with what we are going to deliver between now and the end of the year. I'm not saying it's in the pocket, but frankly, it's quite secure. Then the second thing is, there may be -- I mean on the full year basis, there is a little bit of electrification effect in Europe. .

And there may continue to be a little bit of a tail end of an electrification effect in Europe. So that's a second part. Thirdly, you're right that there is a little bit of pricing compared to the initial guidance in copper. That's contributing also. But on the opposite side, there are also negatives. The few negatives are that the economy in Europe is not doing better. And to the opposite, you remember that initial -- in the initial guidance, we had integrated a progressive recovery of the economy in Europe.

Given the geopolitical situation, given inflation, given interest rates, I'm not planning on that anymore. And in the U.S., There is also a little bit of a question mark about the economic prospects. If you look at the Q2 sales, if you substract data centers from North America or the U.S., and I think I'm pretty sure that you have done the math. And if you subtract price, you will see that we are probably slightly negative in volume in the U.S. despite automation being up by double digit.

So the real economy in the U.S. is not doing that crazily well. There maybe a little bit of the fact that electrical installers are mostly focused on data centers, so the capability to install other things is reducing. But that being said, it leads us to be a little bit more cautious than what we were at the beginning of the year on the rest of the U.S. economy beyond data centers and industrial automation. So that's a little bit how the guidance is made.

You're right that if take only data centers and copper and electrification, I would get to a higher result than the around 5% but there is also a level of cushion and uncertainty around the macroeconomy.

Okay. And given you as you answered my other question, maybe just one -- I'll ask a slightly different one. Just a one-off on copper that you talk about, is that inventory revaluation? And I guess what I was trying to understand, if you go back to '21 and '22, I think you talked about quite sizable inventory revaluation then and those were kind of included in the underlying numbers. So I guess I'm just trying to understand exactly what was that '21 offering...?

Yes. So I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but let me remind you how it works, which is that the one specifically on copper is the difference between the 6.2% adjusted EBITDA margin and the 6.4% that we usually don't report -- I mean, it's written somewhere in the press release, but we usually don't report on it the first page. So the difference between the 6.2% and the 6.4% is the one-off on copper.

In times in 2021 and 2022, not only -- I mean there was a little bit of inflation on copper. But more importantly, there was inflation on the rest of the price of products. And when there is inflation and therefore, let's call it, inventory one-off effects on the rest, which is not copper, we take it in the EBITDA percentage, adjusted EBITDA margin. That's the way it has been built with Rexel. It's a little bit strange to understand, but copper is outside of the adjusted and the rest of inflation is within the adjusted. And that's the reason why in 2021 and 2022, we disclosed to the market, not only the adjusted, but adjusted without one-offs also. I don't know if I'm clear.

I was just wondering whether there was any noncopper inventory revaluation in the quarter...

There was a little bit in H1, but relatively limited. And remember that there were also the same kind of limited one-offs last year in North America because of the tariffs. So on a like-for-like basis, the evolution is a little bit positive but not that meaningful or else we would have restated it in one-offs.

Next question is from Aron Ceccarelli from Bank of America.

The first one is a follow-up on what you just talked about on the North America growth ex data center industrial automation. Perhaps could you expand a little bit about the -- on the verticals that actually deteriorated a bit and I would like to understand if the deterioration happened really at the beginning of the quarter or towards the end of the quarter, please?

It's difficult to enter into the degree of detail in terms of -- I mean we have seen I don't know the answer to that, Laurent. I mean, do you know?

Well, we pointed out the one that are growing significantly and the one which we are a bit are quite diverse. For example, we are a bit low in the automotive industry, for example, in some region. That's 1 example, yes.

But I wouldn't point that a specific vertical, overall, I mean, growth is still positive. It's volume growth that we're talking about, which would be -- which would be slightly negative. I remember that last year, we had a strong activity in retail. And so maybe there is a negative here. The office space is still not super active. But nothing very dramatic apart from what Laurent was mentioning, which is a little bit of a yes, Laurent, I mean you...

Yes.

Understood . And the other question is on Europe. And probably it's not easy to strip out the impact from energy transition products. But I wanted to have a rough idea of how Europe sequentially did on residential. Did it deteriorated further? Did it improve any stabilization?

Well, the residential was mostly helped by the electrification as we are working mostly in Europe in the renovation side. When outside of renovation, the new construction is still negative. And we don't see any structural improvement overall, but we benefit strongly from this electrification trend that it's flowing into the construction and mostly in residential.

I would say apart from that, if we try to do the math, we had a growth of residential overall of what, 7%, something like that. Out of that, we have 20% of Europe, which is the electrification energy transition-related businesses, which are growing double digit, a little bit more than double digits. So there may be a 3% to 4% contribution of that. So there is still growth in the residential space. There is growth in the residential space, I think, in H1, mostly price, but a little bit of volume, too.

Next question is from Daniela Costa of Goldman Sachs.

I wanted to ask 2 things. First, maybe can you give an update on Germany and U.K. margins? And how are they trending? I guess Germany has turned positive now, is this past breakeven? And then I'll ask the second question.

The answer -- the quick answer is yes. It's doing well. In both countries, we are progressing triple-digit in bps in profitability with good evolution on margin. Our actions are paying off. I mean I'm not -- I'm not declaring victory here because it's a long-term effort and there maybe a little bit of circumstantial. But that being said, yes, it's contributing importantly to our profitability improvement in Europe in this quarter. And this is the reason why we illustrated it in the bridge that we put in the last slide. So yes, absolutely, it's going according to plan. Let's believe this way.

And then just as we start to see some announcements like in France, we saw the announcement of Softbank and data center announcements coming to Europe. Is there any reason why we should think the way that you might or might not benefit from data centers in Europe is different to the U.S.? Is there any structural difference between the businesses? Or should we assume a sort of similar trajectory as we start to see these announcements coming up?

I think overall, we are less exposed to very large projects in Europe than we are in the U.S. By the way the industry is organized, but larger, super large projects are usually a little bit less distributed in Europe than they are in the U.S. It would be a long story to explain why, but that's a little bit the case.

But that being said, what we have seen in the U.S. is that there are the hyperscale data centers, but there are also the colocation data centers, the edge data centers where the opportunity for distribution, including in the white space is much higher. So I think overall, the answer to your question is you're going to see a little bit of less of an exposure to data centers in Europe, but you're still going to see an exposure.

The next question is from Andre Kukhnin, UBS.

Can I start with one on North America margins, the year-on-year kind of flattish evolution with 6% growth where you talked about normal normally, that should generate some operational gearing. Is that the effect of now having larger projects and hence, maybe a bit of margin dilution from that? Or is there anything else for us to bear in mind there?

Good question. There are 3 effects that I will mention. I mean the first one is you're right. I think the very large projects, including data centers, are probably slightly dilutive, not very much on EBITDA, not much because we are quite selective in general and able to compensate the low gross margin through optimized OpEx. But a little bit. So there is a little bit of that. There is a little bit of investing in the future, too.

We are leading transformation programs quite ambitious to optimize our service and cost to build AI capabilities and to position ourselves even better on those fast-growing verticals. So that's consuming a little bit of OpEx on a temporary basis. And last but not least, I mean, we have seen price inflation, that's true. But we have also seen inflation in OpEx, in medical benefits, transportation.

We were overall able to serve higher volumes with stable headcount in North America. But the decrease of OpEx in percentage of sales was not as high as what the perfect sales drop-through situation would have led to. I don't know if I'm clear. And this is because of the inflationary environment, which, on the other side, creates other positive effects in the rest of the P&L. But I think those are the 3 reasons why the margin evolution, the EBITDA margin evolution was not as high as people would have calculated from an outsizing perspective.

That's really helpful. And Second question I wanted to ask was, is it possible to take out just purely that June HVAC boom, thanks to the heat waves out of Europe performance. Would you be able to say what that Europe growth would be if you just take that ONE particularly piece out?

I didn't do the calculation. And Laurent, who is super strong, we'll do it immediately in 5 seconds for 3, 2, 1...

By saying it's not super major, it's helpful, but it doesn't completely change the directional picture in Europe. But unfortunately, Laurent will have to come back to you.

Yes. yes. Inside other segments, heat pump and structural things. Look, I mean, it's -- no, it's not major. It's less than 1%. It's less than even 0.5%, I think.

Okay. So 2.3% could have been, yes. 1.5% or 1-point-something .

yes, yes Something like that.

Okay. Great. If I may, just one more. On the data centers, what is your assumption now for the full year growth for this segment within the 5% group guidance?

It's -- I think I said it at some point, but I said it quickly. We said more than 50% growth of data center vertical. Initially, we were starting the year saying it would be more than 20%. We are now planning for more than 50%.

The next question is from William Mackie of Kepler Cheuvreux.

Also. a couple. I just wanted to go through the bridge on profitability and to give you a chance to call these out. But when I look at the delta on inflation point, I think in the second half of last year, it was somewhat of a challenge. I think there was a headwind of about 19 basis points. And now you've managed to get that to 6 basis points. So could you talk through or throw some color on how you see the price cost evolution into the second half of the year given perhaps some of the pricing and volume momentum you've achieved as you've gone through the second quarter?

Look, I mean, in terms of price/cost inflation -- price/cost delta, I'm a little bit cautious about that for the rest of the year because we are also seeing a little bit of -- we are also seeing that inflation of our cost when it comes to transportation, when it comes to medical benefits and salaries, there is a lag effect from time to time. So I think the best assumption for us is to keep it neutral. Basically, we have taken a little bit of a head start. And we are quite proud of what we have done overall. I mean we have tightened cost everywhere we could. We have renegotiated. We have also passed through fuel shortages in the places where it was justified by the fuel evolution. So I think we have done quite a good job compared to our initial expectation, which was to be slightly dilutive. But that being said, for the rest of the year, I'm a little bit cautious and I would say neutral.

Building on the discussion around the bridge, your action plans are continuing to make a good contribution specifically, but again slowed down a little, I think half-on-half. one, could you talk a little bit about how you see the action plans evolving? I think you redefined the restructuring charges or the onetime charges for the full year now in your earlier statements. So how are we thinking about the action plans evolving and the drop-through into the second half of the year, please?

You remember that there were many action plans initiated during last year, and we knew that the benefits of those [indiscernible] will be front-end loaded. So that's a little bit what it is. But that being said, we are relaunching in a certain number of countries, some additional action plans. And so because of that, I think you're going to have a contribution of the action plans, which is going to be maybe slightly lower but not just much lower, but with a different mix. There's going to be less carryover from last year and a little bit more of new action plans. That's also the reason why Laurent flagged the fact that we would probably have nonoperating costs a little bit higher in H2 than what we had in H1. I think that's how you should see a little bit less contribution but not super material compared to H1.

Super. If you bear with me, last question on pricing relates to maybe some additional color on how you saw the price evolution around some of your major categories. I'm thinking -- I mean you've defined cable as we have done historically, but I'm thinking more like lighting or low-voltage product or some of the specific electrification areas, which, I mean, EV, for example, that was particularly deflationary historically. So some of the trends around pricing around categories, please?

So PV is to starting to be positive again. For the other categories, we have basically, it's relatively homogeneous with price increases across the board between 0% and 5% effect. And lighting is a little weaker, but positive. That's what I would say.

And the final question is from Eric Lemarie of CIC Market Solutions.

Yes. I've got 3 questions, please. So first on M&A, I was looking to your slide on M&A, and I was wondering whether it was me or are you accelerating in services? When I look at the electronic in particular, it looks like it's very exposed to services. So I was wondering if we should expect further acceleration in that field?

Second question on Industrial Automation. You mentioned a 15% sequential growth, sequential growth in Q3, if I'm not wrong. But what about year-on-year growth. And on Data com, maybe you can show with us the performance daily or maybe the datacom business in U.S. in Q2.

Yes, on M&A, it's true that we have a specific focus on services, not on services independently of products. I mean if you look at the electronics, they are selling wire harnesses, for example, not to the automotive industry, but to professional OEMs, including in the data center cooling area. So we are always more interested in those companies, which add specific value to their customers through services.

And we have -- it's one of the main pillars of our Axelerate 28 programs. We strongly feel that to continue to be profitable and to increase our level of profitability, we need to add more value. So we are pushing that organically. But whenever we can, we also acquire companies having this particular capability and we will continue to do that. Now that being said, is it going to be a pure new services pillar disconnected from the product-based activity. It's always complementary with synergies.

When it comes to Industrial Automation, I said plus 15%, but it was a plus 15% year-over-year, Q2 to Q2. So it was not a sequential improvement. So yes, no, no, that's fine. That's fine. Maybe I was not clear. When it comes to datacom, I think the category overall I think, was positive. I'm not sure. But when it comes to [ Talley ], I know the answer. Talley in Q2 was slightly negative in terms of progression compared to a super positive quarter last year, double-digit positive last year. And this was completely expected. We know that Talley is also a little bit dependent on the overall cycles of investment of the big telecom operators in the U.S. We know that we have to be used to valuations.

Overall, we had a very good run, and we continue to have very positive prospects but we have to get used, which is a little bit lumpy. I think if you take the datacom category, it is probably quite positive because it includes a little bit of data center in Canada where we have also experienced strong growth. So I don't have the figure on top of my mind.

Yes, It's positive, absolutely.

Mr. Texier, there is a last-minute registration from Aaron Ceccarelli of Bank of America.

Just again on the guidance on organic growth because really strong momentum in the second quarter. you highlighted the strong backlog in the U.S., also in Canada, some good visibility. So is it just a level of conservatism or you're baking in any kind of potential strong slowdown in Q4. I understand you mentioned some deterioration in Europe and the U.S., but I'd like to have more light around that, how you think about it, please.

I mean, look, I mean, we are not flagging any particular slowdown. Now the second quarter was particularly good, with a good timing of delivery of orders in data centers with the additional effect of the air conditioning, which I'm not sure is going to repeat in H2. And there is, yes, a level of caution in the guidance. We have not gone absolutely all in on the guidance because it's a guidance, and we want to deliver it also.

Texier, back to you, sir, for any closing remarks.

No, no particular closing remarks. As I said in conclusion to my presentation, we are proud of the set of results, both because there are good figures and also because they illustrate the success of what we've done over the last few years. And we hope to continue to deliver a very good year. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, welcome. My name is Agnes Touraine. I'm very happy to have you here as the Head of Rexel's Board of Directors, and we're now having an external meeting for shareholders with Guillaume Texier, General Manager; Laurent Delabarre Laurent, Financial Head of the Group; Isabelle Hoepfner-Leger, General Secretary and Secretary of the Board of Directors.

I now declare the session to be open. First of all, we need to set up the bureau. As Head of the Board of Directors, I'm heading the assembly. The 2 shareholders, in other words, the Rexel S.A. France represented by Madame Isabelle Pain and Rexel Actionnariat Classique International represented by Mr. Peter Aman present and concerning parties are appointed as scrutineers.

Isabelle Hoepfner-Leger will now play the role of Secretary. The KPMG SA and PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors of the company are present. The attendance sheet shows this that we reached a quorum of 1/5 of the shares for the ordinary part and the 1/4 of the shares for the extraordinary part. The shareholders share present, represented or have voted are now owning 247,370,000 shares. In other words, 84.48% of all the shares representing voting rights, I declare this regularly constituted assembly to be set up. And all of the documents stipulated by the law are available at the bureau. Those documents are made available to shareholders at the headquarters, and we're registered online on Rexel's website.

Within due time to make our lives easier, we're not going to read out all of the following reports of the management report of the Board of Directors on the company's business activities and the annual accounts, consolidated accounts for the year 2025, including the corporate governance report and the sustainable report. Board of Directors report on free shares attributed. Now those are the free shares. The Board of Directors report including detailed explanations on the draft resolutions. The auditors will be able to express themselves on their reports. And of course, we will be available to entertain any questions.

Let me just remind you that the general meeting was convened so as to deliberate on the agenda Pages 50 to 51 in the invitation brochure. Finally, the company has got no written questions or no draft resolutions to be included in the agenda from the shareholders. I will now kick it over to Guillaume Texier, General Manager. Guillaume?

Thank you, ma'am, Hello, everybody. I would like to start off by -- and go back to the highlights, highlighting events. I'm here to talk about the highlights in the year '25, and by talking about the objectives which we reached and outperformed the first of all, our growth in 2025 [indiscernible] is plus 2.5% below the initial objective, which had been registered in October, then the EBITDA -- the adjusted EBITDA margin is 6.0% which is quite in line with our objectives, illustrated once again the resilience of our margins in a difficult environment.

Finally, cash generation was quite robust and our conversion rates of cash flow before interest and tax, 76%, way above our 65% objective. Let's now distance ourselves from this and get back to the 2025 context. We could actually label the environment as a somewhat sluggish Europe, especially in the residential area and North America penalized by the tariff-related uncertainties in the Pacific region is now in the [ backer ].

The growth drivers were the data center markets driven by AI as well as the favorable price dynamic in the United States is supported by tariffs. In this uncertain environment, we outperformed and gained market shares on our main segments garnering the very specific results stemming from efforts made on -- in terms of commercial excellence, digital penetration and acceleration of high added value services. We also strengthened our presence in data centers and high -- well, in infrastructures in the United States, capitalizing on our investments and our acquisition of Talley.

Finally, we remained agile in terms of our portfolio management with the 4 acquisitions and 2 divestments. From a geographical standpoint, the performance of the year was driven by our 2 main geographical pillars, North America and Europe where the issue is different from one continent to the other. In North America, our priority was to conciliate growth and profitability. We were able to seize high growth segment opportunities and still be able to manage a tariff impact and maintain strict control over our costs. as reflected by the stability of our headcount. In Europe, the situation was different in a sluggish environment with lower volumes and stable prices.

We acted on cost by deploying adaptation plans which led to the reduction of headcounts amount up to 4% reductions. And this agility contributed to better margin resilience versus the last trough. I would like to go back to the active portfolio management, a key driver in our value creation strategy. 2025 was once again, an actor here with 4 acquisitions and 2 divestments. We strengthened our presence in the United States, thanks to the acquisition of our Warshauer and Schwing. We also strengthened our positions in adjacent activities with Jacmar operations in Canada and Tecno Bi in Italy.

These operations supplemented are situations stemming from the previous year. Since 2021, we acquired about EUR 2.8 billion in terms of turnover or EUR [ 2.0 ] billion without divestments with our 21 acquisitions over the period, about 60% regarding our key businesses, electrical distributions and 40% with adjacent activities where we're able to identify a structural growth potential and high added value opportunities.

We also were quite active in North America with 14 acquisitions representing over 70% of acquired sales. Finally, this external growth strategy shows that it's a value-added strategy. The aggregate multiple is 7x, and post-synergy EBITDA lower than the Rexel [indiscernible] multiple. Those actions reinforce the steadiness of our portfolio and provide enough flexibility so that we can keep investing in growth. Last point, which I'd like to make on those news, we today have a renewed executive committee in line with our organization and the group's strategic priorities here.

I will [indiscernible] as Head of Strategy and Transformation and Antoine Audureau also appointment as the Head of Procurement allows us to reinforce 2 drivers in our strategy, the transformation and performance of our value chain. The Executive Committee has now 9 members. This governance is tightened with all the various functions allowing to carry out our strategy, accelerate our decision-making process and reinforce collective priorities around operational excellence, digitalization and value creation.

The Executive Committee is fully engaged so as to steer the next Rexel development phase in a demanding environment and in a rapid evolution. I'd like to kick it over to Laurent Delabarre who's going to give you further details on our 2025 performance.

Thank you, Guillaume. Hello, everybody. I would like to get back to the nice performance of Rexel in 2025 in the uncertain environment, which was described in the first part. Let's get started with the sales analysis. We generated a EUR 19.4 billion 2025 revenue, 0.7% growth in published data at the organic performance was the main driver with sales growth at a constant day rate plus 2.5%, including 1.3% with volume effects and 0.6% price effects.

The external growth operations, we're also able to contribute it to plus 1.8% earned, outperformed the divestment impact. So those positive elements were partially impacted by external factors. The exchange impact had a negative impact of minus 2.2% mainly related to lower American U.S. dollar and Canadian dollar versus the Euro and the calendar effect was slightly negative.

Let's now have a look at the evolution of the group's profitability so as to better understand the factors allowing us to reach an adjusted EBITDA of 6% in 2025 versus 5.9% published in 2024. In a nutshell, our record productivity more than offset the negative impact of what we call the inflation deviation. In 2025, inflation of our costs was more important than the increased prices with a negative impact labeled as an inflation delta, minus 19 basis points. And globally speaking, the impact of delta inflation and operational lever were more than offset by the positive contribution of portfolio management operations and/or action plans so that we could actually reach a 2.8% record productivity.

Let's now talk about the other items pertaining to our P&L accounts. Other expenses and revenues, EUR 56 million, EUR 41 million of restructuring, mostly in Europe and most especially in the U.K. and in Germany. Furthermore, the financial expenses amounted to EUR 214 million, slightly above last year [indiscernible] offset the cost of debt of [indiscernible] 4.4% last year. Our tax rate is 30.2% because of the extraordinary tax in France.

And this -- hence EUR 609 million of recurrent revenue versus EUR 662 million in 2024.

Finally, our dividend proposal for the year 2025. Rexel is now proposing the maintenance of dividend EUR 1.2 per share for the fourth consecutive year. This represents a distribution rate of 32% of the net recurrent revenue that's in the above portion of our distribution policy. Hence, our confidence on our model's resilience and our great ability to generate cash. This distribution is subject to your approval and is part of the resolutions which are going to be voted in very soon. The payment should be carried out on the 13th of May 2026.

So let me kick it over to Guillaume for the presentation of the sales in the first quarter 2026 and annual forecast.

Thank you, Laurent. I'd like to share with you the sales of the first quarter, which we published this morning as well as the 2026 forecast.

Now globally speaking, we -- the beginning of the year is quite sturdy with a progression of 3.4% at a constant day context. Our 3 geographies are in a positive portion and we benefited in the first quarter. We benefited from the higher price increases, higher than expected. It offset the volume weaknesses related to the bad weather conditions in North America and Europe and because of our selection strategy in some countries insofar the geography. The progression in the first quarter was mostly driven by North America, Asia Pacific, whereas Europe is now making gradual headway.

We're now getting back to the -- to the improvement levers in those 3 geographical zones. Europe is now in a positive area. Thanks to the contribution of higher sales prices and the good positions of residential segments in the industry. Furthermore, in the Middle East crisis, we also are observing a better situation so far as electrification solutions, the government of France was quite ambitious with a EUR 10 billion per annum for electrification solutions in Belgium.

We also observed a great growth in terms of solar solutions in the first quarter with the acceleration in the month of March.

Now let's talk about North America. The dynamic is quite strong, mostly driven by data centers with our recent investments and our ability to store. Furthermore, our digital sales in the United States and Canada are also going up and represent about 30% of our businesses in the region. Thanks to the adoption of new digital tools, some of them are based on AI. Finally, 2-digit growth of our order lock in this region provides us with greater visibility in the forthcoming months.

In Asia Pacific, we are -- we registered a greater growth thanks to battery and solar activities and thanks to industrial automated solutions in China.

Let me now also mention the last acquisition, which we finalized Monday Tecno-Contact 360 in Canada. This acquisition will allow us to strengthen our offer in electrical distribution, industrial automated solutions and data centers and services Tecno-Contact is specialized in product management with a good control over design processes down to long-term services that the company generated, a turnover of CAD 85 million last year and has great growth -- great exposure to data centers.

Tecno-Contact will become the central component of a new industrial service platform which we're creating in Canada in addition to companies like Jacmar and Apex which we recently integrated. I'd like to conclude this part by reminding you of our 2026 objectives, which we confirmed this morning. Just as a reminder, we're 3% to 5% constant day growth in current adjusted EBITDA margin of 36.2%. A free cash flow conversion surpassing the 65% bar. Let me just talk about the strategic trajectory of Rexel and tell you how or to what extent this will make it possible to tackle the future with confidence.

Now was already mentioned, and let me get started with this, we reached our objectives in 2025 and we hence consolidated our position at the professional distribution market for electrical equipment. Rexel is #2 worldwide where performance is display reality. Rexel is more robust, agile company and better positioned for sustainable value creation. Now this was not done overnight. This is the fruit of work engaged by Rexel team and has been so for quite a number of years.

We progressively improved our model and adapted it to the transformation of our environments and markets and our client expectations. We reinforced our fundamentals, we focused on value creation and more recently reactivated new growth drivers and those evolutions reinforced our value proposal and our ability to carry out long-term evolution -- improvements. Since 2021, we've also reinforced our performance profile. We improved our profitability quite significantly and reached levels that are going to be surpassing those of the past in a sustainable way. We also were able to maintain sturdy growth, including in more sluggish markets. And this discipline is recognized by markets that value our ability to create value. Now what we also built up changed Rexel from top to bottom.

Our confidence is based on 3 major elements. Structural market dynamics, ability to capture growth and a clear strategy is just to accelerate potential. Let we go back to all 3 points -- of these points. First of all, we are using or harnessing deep and sustainable market dynamics. Movements are going to be really accelerating. Electrification is an example. You got an energy transition on the one hand and the digitalization on the other hand, and those trends generate different figures and electricity demand is going to be going up and surpassing global energy demand.

And this means one essential thing. We're now working on a sustainable -- on a market that expands in the long term. Europe, for example, we're now staying away or walking away from a sluggish era, and we're now witnessing better trends strengthened by tensions on energy prices. Port remains fundamental. The electrification potential in Europe is still very important, a significant portion of energy usages could still be turned into electricity and technologies are now mature and can guide this transition.

We're now seeing the emergence of a market that grows upward in North America, and what we were talking about in the first portion of 2025, the dynamic is more positive and driven mostly by data centers and sustained by strong investment cycles and figures are quite significant. Demand should actually be multiplied by 2 in the next years in data centers and announced industrial investments are also going to be reaching very high levels. And for Rexel, this represents a major opportunity because those dynamics are harnessing segments in which we're quite well positioned.

Now this driving environment is also an opportunity, but the difference actually can be seen in the way we execute things in the last 3 years, we showed our ability to transform those or turn those dynamics into actual growth for the benefit of Rexel we made very clear choices by focusing on a very, very strong areas. In North America, we're positioned on industrial automated solutions, various acquisitions, connectivity and data centers. In Europe, we're well positioned in terms of user electrification, connectivity and industrial automated solutions.

In Asia Pacific, we're quite strong in terms of industrial automated solutions, usage electrification and once again here in connectivity. And this positioning stems from a very [ finite ] analysis of market dynamics in each one of our geographical regions and countries and stringent management of our resources.

Now let's use a very specific example in terms of our data centers in the United States with a accelerating demand. We developed our models so as to acclimate ourselves to this model through the restructuring of a dedicated organization, the strengthening of our logistics capacities and development of very specific expertise to better guard our clients and those adaptations or those investments generated very nice and significant results with over 50% of growth in this segment in 2025 and an expected growth of above 20% in 2026.

Our growth strategy, so external growth strategy also contributes directly to our capacity to capture growth. Talley is a very practical example of this, as I mentioned. This acquisition allowed us to strengthen our positioning on a very strongly growing segment, which is of connectivity solutions, in particular, 5G towers and develop our exposition in North America. This integration was especially successful with significant contribution to the growth of our turnover in the U.S. in '25 and beginning of '26.

With this momentum, we engaged, for Talley, the development of their operations in Canada, so as to capture new development opportunities. We rely also on the evolution of our product offering to capture growth -- product and service offering. Our customers not only look for products, but full solutions. In this context, we strengthened our value proposition through the development of integrated offers, which, for instance, allow us to assist customers in the designing of their installations or help them optimize their performances.

This evolution transforms deeply the relationship with our customers and represents a strong differentiating level. We highlighted 2 essential elements, the structural market dynamics and our capacity to capture growth. To allow this dynamic to be long term, we need a clear road map, which is shared by the whole group. And this is the challenge of the strategic plan that we launched last year and that we are in the middle of. This is a plan that we called Accelerate 2028, and which is within the continuity of the Power Up 2025 plan previously and opens a new creation cycle for Rexel.

And the ambition is to accelerate the priorities, which makes up the foundation of our strategy for the years to come. These priorities cover all of our model and structure our actions. Profitable growth is a fundamental element of our strategy. To reach it, we rely on internal and external levers. Concerning internal levers, data is one of the central pillars. We have today a volume and quality of data, which allows us to significantly improve our sales performance.

This goes by, in practical terms, an increased capacity to anticipate the needs of our customers and personalize our recommendations. Another key pillar, our own brands, which is both a differentiating factor and a vector for growth of margins. We continue the development with a targeted deployment in some geographies and segments which have high value. The objective is simple, capitalizing on our strengths to generate new growth relays.

An important lever of our development also concerns external growth. In the last few years, we structured an acquisition strategy, which is well disciplined. As I said, which makes Rexel reference model in our industry, which relies on a complementary trip to consolidation on our core market of electric distribution, in particular, in fragmented geographies, expansion in adjacent segments that have strong value and differentiation, so as to strengthen our expertise and our value proposition through services.

We deploy our growth strategy in a selective fashion with demanding investment criteria. This discipline is essential and allows us to grow in a targeted way, while preserving quality and coherence of our model.

Operational efficacy now. This is a major element of our strategy and conditions our ability to maintain sustainable growth. We have already conducted significant progress in this respect and are still identifying good potential. We pursue the modernization of our operations through different levers, first of all logistics. With automation and digitalization of our network with deployments that are underway in Belgium, Sweden and the U.S.A.

Next, artificial intelligence, which we tackle as an operational tool, which meets specific needs for our customers. AI allows us to improve, in particular, access to information and making customer pathways more smooth And for our teams, it contributes to automating low value-added tasks and mobilizing more expertise in exchanges.

Let's take a concrete example of the application of AI. By facilitating the treatment of request, preparation of quotations or in putting of orders, we free up time for our 12,000 inside sales with productivity gains of between 10% to 15% depending on activities, which allows them to focus on more value-added tasks, which are closer to needs in a market that is strongly growing, for your reminder.

In this very competitive market, which is quickly evolving, the ability to differentiate relies first and foremost on the quality of experience that we offer our customers. We engage deep-seated work to enrich this experience by developing services that are capable of meeting needs that are more and more specific and complex, alongside which we have strongly invested in our digital platforms, developing more performing solutions that are better integrated and better connected to the systems of our customers.

The combination of services and digital makes up a differentiating lever, which is key and strengthens the loyalty of our customers and positions us as a long-term partner. No strategy can be successful without the men and women that carry it forward. We have therefore placed our teams at the heart of this model with the ambition of strengthening our capacity of execution. Our priorities are clear: developing our competencies, strengthening engagement, making security an absolute priority and pursuing our efforts in terms of diversity. All of these initiatives allow us to build an organization that is more engaged, more competent and fully aligned with our ambitions.

Sustainability is a key element in our strategy as well. We act in practical terms to reduce our footprint and make our offer more sustainable, in particular, through electrification of our fleet and the deployment of tools such as the carbon tracker. We mobilize as well our ecosystem with our suppliers through the program sustainability shapers and our customers through events such as Rexel Expo in France, which brought together over 30,000 participants in October '25.

Finally, we carry forward these subjects in-house and externally for instance, with the training of all of our group executives to sustainability and the participation via [ Codis ] through the working group on electrification in France. This structured approach allows us to accelerate the energy transition in practical terms while creating value. All of these elements allows us to tackle this new development phase with confidence.

We aim an annual growth of sales of between 5% and 8% midterm in EBITDA -- so EBITA, excuse me, margin. So adjusted above 7%, a conversion of -- so mid term free cash flow above 65%. So these are ambitious objectives, well controlled and translates our ability to transform dynamic -- favorable market by dynamics into sustainable performance.

Thank you for your attention. I'm now going to give the floor to Agnes Touraine, who's going to tell you about governance at Rexel and remuneration of its executives.

Thank you very much, Guillaume. As the Chairperson, I'm very happy to present the Board of Directors and its activities. Your Board is so at the level of best practices of the market and the code AFEP-MEDEF makes up -- is made up of 11 members, 7 independent members, 44% women, 4 Directors who are of other nationalities and 2 Directors representing employees administrators so here are in the first row and so the Directors, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them and thank them for their contribution to our work and their value added.

And I can tell you that this is a very engaged, contributive Board, where debates are always constructive and very diverse. And as you see with this table that draws up the skills so that are the most structuring per board. So the different Directors have the skills, competencies and experience that are central to value creation at Rexel from finance to digital, going by different sectors for services, energy and distribution, diversity of skills allows for rich debates and contributions to the Board with the right skills.

And so again, the Directors are engaged so [indiscernible] and contributive. And as you see here, on this table where you see that the Board got together 11 times in 2025, which bears witnessed the commitment of its members to assist the strategic orientations of its group with an average presence rate of 96%, just like every year. One of our meetings took place abroad during the visit of several days. on-site, we went to Vienna to meet with Austrian, German, Switz and Slovenian teams. This year, we will be going to Vancouver to meet with North American teams.

These meetings allowed for covering of all important topics for Rexel, in particular strategy of the group, of course; accounts and results; operations for M&A; risk and conformity, AI, digital and cybersecurity, governance; and finally, CSR and sustainability, of course. Each session of the Board was preceded by a preparatory exchange the day before, will allow Directors to share their prior analyses and prepare the work of the Board efficiently.

The evaluation of the Board led by Barbara Dalibard for 2025 confirms once again the very good functioning of the Board and continuity of progress made in the last few years. It highlights the continuous engagement of Directors, the quality of their preparation and the quality of the dialogue within the Board, just like with the whole executive team. For your reminder, next year in '26, the valuation of the Director -- the Board of Directors will be rendered by an external provider.

Now concerning the conclusions of the Board of Directors, so these committees are also independent and give recommendations to the Directors before decision-making. The presence rate of members of the committees was at 100%. And I'd like to thank especially the shares and members of the committee for their essential and remarkable work. In 2025, the committees, in particular, announced the following subjects: the Committee for Nominations, Governance and CSR so led by Barbara Dalibard worked on the succession plans of the succession of the Board of Directors and was informed of the succession plans for the 4 main executives of the group, the top 150.

The committee also looked into the strategy in terms of CSR and was informed of the state of advancement of the work concerning the CSR team. The committee for remuneration is led by Brigitte, focused especially on several structuring priorities, in particular, the preparation of new, so free shares allocation and locations, so market practices in terms of remuneration in the framework of -- so the renewing of the mandate of the Director General, Guillaume Texier, the committee worked on the updating of the remuneration to make sure it's -- [ coincides ] with the strategy of the group.

Finally, the work on the Audit Committee and the Risk Committee had to do with internal audits following action plans and validation of the risk mapping and internal audit. And we also so examined deeply the cyber risk in the context of growing digitalization and structuring of a dedicated governance. The committee has also examined the financial, so annual and semestrial financial statements of the group and also sales and performances quarterly and work and results linked to the implementation of CSRD.

I'd like now to come back to the examination by the Board of Directors of renewed mandate taking into account the -- so provisions of Article 14 Paragraph 2 of stature of the company, which provides for the renewal. So staggered renewal of Board of Directors by -- of quarter each year. The Board suggests that we ratified the temporary nomination of a new Director. And so I'd like you to ratify the cooptation of Robert Schuchna and renewing by anticipation his mandate for a duration of 4 years as a quality of nonindependent Director.

Robert Schuchna is associated at Cevian Capital Partners Limited and was coopted by the Board of Directors on the 14th of October 2025, replacement of Marcus Alexanderson previously, representing Cevian Capital Partners, who, for your reminder, holds about 22% of the capital. His expertise bears on -- so advice on investment, in particular, so European listed companies as indicated on Page 26 of your brochure and is also the member of the Supervising Board of Bilfinger SE in Germany. And I'm going to let you listen to Robert, who's going to tell you about his experience and track record.

Good morning. Maybe a few words on myself. So my name is Robert Schuchna. I'm Swiss German citizen based in Zurich. My background is in banking and finance and investments. I've studied at the university of Zurich banking and finance, then joined Cevian. For the last 15 years, I've been a partner at this firm, been responsible for investments of, for instance, ABB which is one of the supplier of Rexel as well as I'm nominated to join the Board of AkzoNobel, which is the Dutch Paints and Coatings company. My experience from industrial service comes from building a German industrial service company. And I'm really looking forward to work together with the Board on advancing the company of Rexel further.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Robert. And so we also suggest that we renew the mandate of Director of Barbara Dalibard, who was nominated for the first time in December '21 for a length of 4 years. Barbara, could you stand up, everybody knows you, of course, but just for everybody to see that you're there. The Board of Directors considered that her independence and expertise, in particular, in the fields of digital and CSR and so her -- so very concrete work and the governance of the company is an essential asset for the governance and strategy of the group in the next few year.

And we also suggest the renewal for 3 additional years of -- so the Director of Francois Auque who is nominated for the first time in May 2019. Francois, you have a fan club here. The quality of your implication in your functions as an independent Director, Vice President and President of the Committee for Audits and Risk has knowledge of the company and its governing bodies. His international expertise and financial expertise make Francois Auque an essential asset for Rexel as well and for our work at the Board of Directors.

To conclude, I'd really like to say again, the quality of the governance of your group carried forward by a Board of Directors that's both constructive and on the lookout, assisting a very performing and engaged management team as bears witness the results recorded in '25 and taking this opportunity to thank all the members of the Board for these results that were obtained up until now.

Let's move on now to a topic that you're all expecting, reviewing remuneration of executives. It's always a little bit lengthy. We're going to try to be as short as possible. One of the essential missions of the Board of Directors on recommendation of the Board -- the committee of remuneration is, of course, to determine the remuneration policy applicable to corporate officers at Rexel. The Board sets the remuneration policy applicable to the presidency of the Board, Directors, Director General for the following fiscal year and the framework of the ex ante remuneration policy, in other words, to come. Determination of remuneration paid or attributed to the previous fiscal year to the President of Board of Directors, Directors and General Director, including reaching of performance indicators in the year, so ex post remuneration.

I'm not going to give you the main elements of this remuneration policy. It is detailed in the universal registration document and remunerations that stem from there are subjected to your ex ante -- post and ex ante approval. And so you are going to be asked to approve them later. Resolution 5 to 10 are concerned in addition to which Rexel renews its plan for free shares attribution. And so you're going to be asked to approve Resolution 19. I think it's first important to recall that the remuneration policy as you approved last year is not going to be modified for the whole duration of the mandates underway, in other words, 4 years.

It is based on the strong principles that the Board of Directors holds you to heart. In other words, attracting, motivating, retaining high-quality managers were recognized and experience for your group to be as high performing as possible, aligning to the recommendations of the AFEP-MEDEF code and best practices on the market, as I said, ensuring stability of remuneration during the mandates and of course, aligning with the ambitions of the Rexel Group carried forward by the Accelerate 2028 strategy being focused on performances, short and long term and integrating criteria that are economic, social and environmental at the service of the group and especially engaged on topics of CSR.

Now concerning the Presidency of the Board of Directors, in other words, myself, remuneration '25, the say-on-pay ex post has not changed for an amount of EUR 400,000. This remuneration is -- remains unchanged for 2026. The say-on-pay ex-ante resolution 8 is also of the same amount. Now concerning the policy of remuneration of the Board of Directors, it's also nonchanged, since the 22nd of May 2014.

This is resolution #9. For your reminder, this remuneration makes up -- is made up of a fixed part and variable part linked to attendance to sessions of the Board and committee the overall annual envelope has not changed since 2014 and consumed so the amount of EUR 874,800, which represents about 70% and less actually of this envelope.

Let's continue with the Guillaume Texier Director General and his remuneration for '25, it is the say-on-pay ex post. So Resolution 7. All these pieces of information are again detailed in the universal registration document and the convocation brochure that you received. For memory, the remuneration of Guillaume Texier is not changed again for the whole duration of the mandate; in other words, 4 years from the 29th of April '25 and 29th of April '29. For memory, the year '25 was divided into 2 distinct periods. The first period from the first of January to the 28th of April '25, and made up of a fixed remuneration of EUR 800,000 and targeted variable remuneration, representing 120% of fixed annual remuneration; second period from 29th of April to 31st of December '25, including fixed annual remuneration of EUR 830,000 and variable targeted remuneration representing 130% of annual sales remuneration.

Taking these 2 periods into account for '25, so we have a fixed annual remuneration of EUR 820,227 to Guillaume Texier, so with your approval, of course. And so the -- Guillaume Texier will have variable annual remuneration of EUR 1,112,281, 97,940 performance shares were attributed estimated at EUR 1,859,881. So taking into consideration IFRS 2 of adjusted value of EUR 18.99 the date of attribution in the year, so different perks and pension funds stay stable.

Now let's look at the financial and individual objectives and whether they were reached. Now concerning the modality of determining of variable remuneration of Guillaume Texier for '25. The detail of performance indicators for each one of these objectives is presented in the universal registration document. Again, to summarize, the '25 results, as you saw previously, reflect a very sturdy year that generated value in a political and economic context internationally, that was very complex.

The financial criteria represents 70% of variable remuneration, and we reached 116.1% individual criteria, representing 30% of variable remuneration annually were reached at 85.6%. As a consequence, the Board of Directors determines the overall attaining of variable remuneration criteria at 107% of the target. In other words, an amount for the Director General of EUR 1,112,281. This amount is completely deserved considering the excellent work of Guillaume Texier and his teams and remains subjected to your approval, of course, for 2025.

Now let's move on to the remuneration policy of the Guillaume Texier for 2026. In other words, the say on pay ex-ante, in other words, Resolution 10. Again, and as I've said several times, not changed compared to what you already approved in '25. It is made up -- so of the following elements: repeat, fixed remuneration of EUR 830,000, unchanged again. Variable, targeted remuneration annually fixed at 130% of fixed remuneration with the performance conditions that are demanding and broken down between financial and individual objectives, respectively, 70% and 30% and individual objectives as each year were set according to strategic priorities and operational and strategic strategies of Rexel.

In other words, profitability, transformation growth and strategy, talent and sustainable development, each representing 25%. So pension, so funds and perks is unchanged, variable long-term remuneration, '26-'29 to recognize long-term performance, as described in the following slide. So severance or departure compensation unchanged and you are, therefore, so asked to approve the resolutions 5 to 10 for ex post and ex-ante remuneration of corporate officers of the Rexel Group, considering that all details are in the universal registration document.

Finally, just like every 2 years, we suggest you approve Resolution #19 concerning free shares that were so in the end, a very efficient tool to recruit the best talent, retain them and motivate them, of course. Free shares have been attributed to 1200, 1500 key employees in Rexel. 2 distinct plans, performance plan for senior managers and a presence plan for intermediate levels. This presence plan can only represent so up to 20% of the envelope and cannot bear on more than 900 shares per beneficiary acquisition period of shares over 3 years without a conservation period, not conversation, conservation for all beneficiaries.

Now let's move on to the performance criteria of the plan. The criteria have been decided upon by the Board of Directors according to the strategy and long-term objectives of the company. The performance criteria and their weight are the annual average of growth rates and of EBITA from 40% at the average ratio of the free cash flow before interest and taxes on EBITDoL for 20%, relative performance of the Rexel share compared to so SBF Index 120, so 20%, conducting of ESG index made up of 4 criteria, so in terms of the corporate social responsibility representing 20%.

The performance levels linked to financial and extra financial criteria are appreciated after the period of 3 years. as well as the level of performance relating to the Rexel share. The details of objectives and performance levels are detailed in Paragraph 3 to 15 titled Recap Table of Remuneration Policy for Fiscal Year 2026, say on pay ex-ante in the universal registration document '25.

I will, therefore, suggest that you approve this resolution. Thank you for your attention. And I'm now going to give the floor to the statutory officers who are going to present their report.

Thank you, Ms. Chairwoman. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, hello. I'd like to talk on behalf of the auditors commissioners, KPMG and PwC, which I represent. I'd like to talk about our mission in 2025, and I would like to make a presentation of our reports, which we established for your benefit and for the purpose of the ordinary and extraordinary general meeting.

Let us earlier recap the terms of our reports as we usually do the objective of our mission. Let me just remind you, is to provide you with the reasonable assurance that the consolidated accounts and annual accounts of the company taken as a whole, do not contain any significant anomalies and that the accounting methods are appropriate and that the assessment of risks, significant risks made by management are reasonable and that the tax and enforce laws are complied with.

We would like to remind you that the consolidated accounts were prepared on the basis of the IFRS accounting referential and the annual accounts were done on the basis of the French accounting rules. Our approach is adapted to the organization and the activities of our group, and we'd like to place a great premium on current and extraordinary activities, such as acquisitions, divestments, restructurings and financial operations. We're taking into account. Our conclusions are represented in a report sent to the Audit Committee and the Risk Committee as well as the Board of Directors on the 10th and 11th of February 2026, respectively.

Now we'd like to inform you of the other key points, which were identified on the basis of various factors. First of all, the relative weight in the accounts, the complexity of their evaluations, the importance of judgment carried out by management. And so far as the consolidated accounts, this is the evaluation of the recoverable values of goodwill and supplier discount evaluation. And so far as annual accounts, this is the evaluation of participation of shares or interest-sharing procedures. We also carried out a specific verifications pursuant to law and we can verify the Board of Directors management report and checked out the annual accounts and consolidated accounts presentations on the basis of the SEF. In conclusion of our work, we guarantee -- well, we certify the annual accounts without any reserves on the basis of the first and second resolutions. As an information, we'd like to make an observation on the accounting method change related to the first application of the ANC 2022 06 rule.

Related to the presentation of the account, we'd like to certify the consolidated accounts without any reservations in relation to the second resolution. And so far as our report on regulated conventions, we observed that none were authorized throughout the year.

Let's now go on to sustainability. In 2025, the company publishes its or included in its managed report information regarding sustainability for the second year. The pursuant to the provisions of the directive, our report was made on a limited assurance regarding the compliance of the elements. So 3 natures here, the compliance of the process, so the double materiality process as well as the compliance of information regarding ESRS sustainability.

Number three, the compliance to taxonomy related regulations and so forth. The work we did, we did not identify any mistakes in issuance, or inconsistencies of great importance. Finally, to conclude on a very special reports on the resolutions subject to your extraordinary general meeting. I'd like to make it simple here. Those resolutions -- The resolutions proposed in this extraordinary part are between 16 and 20 resolutions. We've got 4 reports reminded in this slide and the next slide.

Those reports are related to the reduction of capital to the cancellation of bought shares, the emission of ordinary shares and the emission of free shares. The described modalities in the report of the Board of Directors related to the mentioned operations do not require any remarks or observations from our part unless later exams are made in the contrary direction would then actually produce an additional report, which will include or would include the exam of the emission price determination conditions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much. I would like to kick it over to those who would like to be vocal. And for that purpose, all you got to do is raise your hand, and hostess will actually give you a microphone.

Of course, as always, you made forecasts, which makes a lot of sense for next year. But given the fact that things are now happening today in the world, how are you able to make those very specific forecast? I'm talking about the situation, for example.

So far as future supply and the increased oil prices Guillaume Texier will answer the question, and I would like to then talk about the work done by the Board.

Yes, of course, now those forecasts represent a range, so you got some uncertainty in our forecast included the fact that the international contract is subject to changes. And we maintain those forecasts, as you may have observed, we're now leaving the call and the results of the first quarter, and we maintain those forecasts as we define them.

When having a look at the recent evolution of the international crisis and what is happening in the Middle East, what kind of impacts can we talk about and so far as Rexel works out?

There are different types of impact. Our product prices might increase. Our products when manufacturing the products and the products we sell, well, for example, our suppliers include energy, power, PVC, aluminum and the prices are impacted by geopolitical -- international geopolitical tensions. This is probably going to give way to further price increases, which would then actually be -- have a positive impact on our revenues, but we would like to have to transfer those price increases onto our customers. That's the first point.

Another point which also represents an impact this Middle Eastern crisis is a negative impact in our costs. For example, the operational costs, 10% of those costs are related to power. In other words, our transportation costs, the fuel component or the heating part of our buildings and the heating related prices. And of course, we'll have to make -- or do 2 things. We'll have to work to really try to really cut our expenses and so forth, energy sources and to some extent, also transfer some of those price increases or cost increases onto our customers because transportation will be affected.

The third effect, which we can actually identify in the Middle Eastern crisis, a more sluggish economic or macroeconomic situation. If economic uncertainty remains and inflation is important for example, people might actually be slow in the decision-making process, and this could have an impact on our market with a negative impact. But on the other hand, something which you can always already identify in Europe. For example, people are more attentive to the electrification process because one of the ways for non oil-producing countries is defend themselves against price increases is to transfer usages and focus on electrification, for example, nuclear electricity, renewable electricity could be used.

Local productions and less variable and less impacted by geopolitical situations. And we can see the premises here. For example, the electrification plan presented by the French government goes in that direction, but we also witnessed in Belgium, for example, in March, a very strong interest based on photovoltaic panels. And same thing happened in Australia for the same reasons. So there are positive and negative impacts and at the end of the day, it doesn't really make that many changes because we don't really know how they're going to be offsetting one another, but they're really going to head into different directions and that's how we actually define our forecast and update those forecasts throughout the year.

But as far as the Middle Eastern crisis is concerned, it's difficult to say whether this is a positive or a negative factor because all those different effects are going into different directions. I hope my answer was as close as passable, just to answer your question.

Thank you, Guillaume, and your question. Yes, go ahead.

And your question actually is an exact reflection of the work carried out by the Board, of course, the Directors are asking those questions. And there is a 3-year plan. This is the accelerated plan in every year in the budget each time and the Board convenes, we're really scratching our heads over the various challenges and impacts. And that's the reason why this work is highly constructive and a permanent dialogue with Guillaume Texier and management. Thank you.

Any other questions? No. Well, listen, in that case, I see no -- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sir -- sir/ma'am I'm sorry, I cannot see you very well.

Yes, I had a question with regards to American tariffs and the Supreme Court confirmed these tariffs imposed by President Trump. Are you able or would you like to wish for reimbursement from the American government?

The answer is very simple. We do not pay those tariffs directly. Where we're affected by tariffs because our suppliers in some cases, had to pay those tariffs for components included in the production of their products. But on our side, we do not pay any tariffs. And most of the products we sell in North America are produced in the United States or Canada, generally speaking. And so this is irrelevant as far as we're concerned. It could be relevant among our suppliers or our suppliers, suppliers but on our side, we're not going to scratch our head over this issue.

Thank you. Do you have any further questions? I see no further questions. I'm going to now kick it over to madame Hoepfner-Leger so that we can carry out the voting of the resolutions. Thanks for your attention.

Hello, everybody. My name is Isabelle Hoepfner-Leger, General Secretary and Secretary of the Board of Directors, Rexel's Board of Directors, and we're now going to vote for the resolutions. Let me just tell you that the final quorum is 84.9%, thus 247,387.48 shares represented here or voting by proxy. You can see the various modalities as to carry out the vote of those resolutions. I hope that we are clear, and we're now going to vote for resolution #1.

First resolution. Regarding the approval of the social accounts with a benefit of EUR 367,697,972.45. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is adopted.

Resolution #2, regarding the approval of consolidated accounts generating a profit of EUR 591.4 million. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is adopted. Let's carry on with resolution #3, with the allocation of revenues generated in 2025 and the distribution of a dividend of EUR 1.20 per share. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. Resolution #4, regarding the approval of regulated agreements pursuant to Article L.225-38 of the commercial code. That the vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is adopted.

Resolution #5. Now this is the approval of the information mentioned in the 3.2.2 of the 2025 universal registration document compensation of corporate offices for the year 2025 ex post. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. Resolution #6. The approval of fixed variable and extraordinary components related to total compensation and all the various advantages paid out in 2025, Agnes Touraine, Head of the Board of Directors ex post. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is adopted.

Resolution #7. The approval of fixed variable and extraordinary items pertaining to total compensation and various advantages paid out or attributed in the fiscal year 2025 to Guillaume Texier, General Manager, this is the ex post vote. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.

Resolution #8. This is the compensation policy applicable to the head of the Board of Directors for fiscal year 2026. And this is the ex-ante vote. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. And the resolution is adopted. Resolution 9 related to the remuneration policy for directors fiscal year 2026, same thing, ex-ante. The vote is open.

[Voting]

The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. Tenth resolution relating to the remuneration policy applicable to the Director General for the fiscal year 2026 ex-ante vote also. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

Moving on to the 11th resolution relating to the ratification of co-opting of Robert Schuchna as a director. The voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The resolution is adopted. In the same line of thought, moving on to the 12th resolution relating to the renewal of the mandate as a Director of Robert Schuchna for the next 4 years. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

13th resolution, relating to renewal of the Director of mandate of Barbara Dalibard for a duration of 4 years. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

14th resolution relating to the renewal of the Director's mandate of Francois Auque for a duration of 4 years. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

15th resolution, the objective of which is the authorization given to the Board of Directors to operate on the shares of the company.

Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

16th resolution, the objective of which is to allow the Board of Directors to reduce equity with the canceling of shares. Opening of the vote.

[Voting]

The voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

17th resolution, allowing the Board of Directors to issue with canceling of the preferential right to subscribe to the benefit to members with a savings plan.

Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

18th resolution, allowing the Board of Directors to conduct issuing with the canceling of preferential subscription right reserved to certain categories of beneficiaries to allow the conducting of employee shareholder operations. Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Resolution adopted.

Moving on to the 19th resolution, allowing the Board of Directors to attribute free shares to members of salaried employees and to corporate officers of the company and its subsidiaries.

Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is adopted.

20th resolution, allowing the Board of Directors to attribute free shares to members of salaried employees and to corporate officers of the company and subsidiaries, which sign into an employee shareholder plan with Rexel Group.

Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution adopted.

We are now going to move on to the last resolution, 21st resolution, giving powers for legal formalities.

Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The resolution is adopted.

Thank you. Thank you, Isabelle. Now the agenda -- all the items on the agenda have been covered. Thank you for your votes and your attention. And so thanks to all shareholders. I'm now going to consider the session closed and wishing you a very good rest of your day.

Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining Rexel First Quarter 2026 Sales Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Texier, Group CEO of Rexel. Please go ahead, sir.

Yes, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2026 sales presentation. I appreciate you making the time to be with us this morning. As always, I'm joined by Laurent Delabarre, our Group CFO, who will walk you through the detailed sales figures in just a few minutes. First, I'd like to take a look at the key highlights of the quarter, and then I will conclude this presentation by sharing how our strategy and ongoing transformation continues to support our performance while navigating an uncertain macro environment. With that, let's get started. I'm on slide three, and I could summarize the first quarter as follows. A solid start to the year with all three geographies in clear positive territory for the first time in the last 11 quarters.

As you know, the quarter was also marked by the Middle East crisis, with some impacts, albeit still limited. I will return in my concluding remarks to the potential risks and opportunities that could emerge if the conflict were to last. Overall, compared to our initial expectations, we benefited in the quarter from a better pricing contribution, offsetting temporary volume softness, mainly due to weather effects, project timing, and business selectivity in some countries. The better selling prices reflected our capacity to pass through price increases in the context of higher raw materials prices, including the recent rise in energy prices. The sales progression was driven by high growth segments in North America, such as data centers and booming solar activity in Australia, while Europe moved to positive territory. In Europe, the electrification rebound is a potential additional tailwind against the backdrop of the Middle East crisis.

With that, let me now hand over to Laurent, who will take you through the details of our first quarter numbers. Laurent.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to all of you. Let's start on slide 5. With the different building blocks of our Q1 '26 revenue performance. Our sales stood at EUR 4.7 billion, up 3.4% on a same-day basis. This growth was mainly driven by a sequential improvement in selling prices, both cable and non-cable, contributing to 280 basis points, while volumes grew at a more moderate pace, contributing 60 basis points. More specifically, on the selling price increase, cable prices benefited from a good pass-through of higher copper price above USD 12,500 per ton in Q1 '26, and non-cable products benefited from higher commodity price, with US piping now back to positive territory. A few additional considerations. First, the scope effect was stable as the impact of the 2025 acquisitions of Warshauer, Schwing, Jacmar, and TECNO-BI was offset by the disposal of our business in Finland.

Second, our calendar effects stood at minus 0.9% and will reverse in Q3 and Q4 this year. Third, the currency effect was a negative 4.3% in the first quarter, mainly from the U.S. dollar's significant depreciation. We expect this effect to ease in the remainder of the year, assuming unchanged spot rates, and we anticipate a circa minus 1.5% impact for the full year of '26.

On Slide 6, you see the breakdown of our sales evolution by geography. As mentioned by Guillaume, Q1 '26 growth was driven by North America and Asia-Pacific, with Europe now in positive territory. Let me add that adjusted for solar, same-day sales in Europe would have been up 1.2%. More specifically, APAC posted very strong growth, plus 11.4%, mainly driven by Australia and Asia, to a lesser extent.

In Australia, sales were up plus 16.7%, boosted by our capacity to better capture trends in solar activity, supported by battery subsidies. In Asia, sales in China increased by 4.4%, and sales in India grew by 14.7%, with both countries supported by industrial automation activity. I will detail Europe and North America in the next two slides. Moving now to slide 7 on Europe. Same-day sales were up plus 0.6% in the quarter, improving sequentially from broadly stable sales in Q4 '25. Volumes remained negative in a market that was still soft and was also impacted by some temporary effects, including weather impact on business selectivity, while pricing continued to improve sequentially. It was also interesting to see growing demand in energy efficiency solutions at the end of the quarter, as illustrated by Wasco in the Netherlands.

Detailed information by countries provided on this slide, but let me highlight the main country dynamics. France benefited from strong demand in HVAC and solar activity, mainly from small commercial projects. The DACH region remained impacted by trends in solar, but improved sequentially, mainly thanks to Germany and Switzerland. Let me add that industry in Germany remained positive in Q1. Benelux was up plus 3.9%, driven by both Netherlands and Belgium. The U.K. was still impacted by a difficult macro environment and continued business selectivity. Finally, Sweden was broadly stable. Also, momentum improved month after month. On slide 8, we move to North America, which remained the group's main growth engine in the quarter. All three markets were positively oriented in the quarter, with non-residential remaining the main contributor.

Digital sales continued to accelerate, up more than 500 basis points, reaching 28% of sales, thanks to the adoption of digital tools. Concerning the United States specifically, first, growth continued to be driven by data centers, with a material contribution in the quarter. The non-residential segment also grew in such segments as hospital, mining, or water, wastewater. Second, industrial automation was up plus 3%, confirming the positive trend that we have started to see in recent quarters. Third, backlog was strong, up in double digits compared to the end of December '25. Turning to Canada, sales grew 9.1%, supported by data center projects and industrial automation. With this, let me now hand back to Guillaume for some concluding remarks on our outlook.

Thank you, Laurent. I am now on slide 10. As said in my introduction, the conflict in the Middle East started at the end of February and had a limited impact in the first quarter. Even though we have low visibility on the evolution of the conflict, let's assess what could be the consequences and how we could turn risks into opportunities. First, while higher energy prices could impact the overall macroeconomic outlook, it could also bring business opportunities, potentially spurring renewed interest in energy efficiency and electrification solutions. I will share more details in the next slide. At the same time, we are increasingly leveraging AI tools to optimize our sales efficiency, and that should support further market share gain. Second, we are navigating in a higher energy price environment, combined with already high prices for copper, silver, and other commodities.

This could raise potential additional price increases by our suppliers, and we have demonstrated our capacity to pass them through to customers. Finally, we are taking actions to offset the impact of higher energy prices, which account for circa 1% of our sales, mainly in our transportation and building costs. These actions include adding fuel surcharges when possible, increasing the use of green energy across our operations, and maintaining strong discipline on gross margin and SG&A. Let me provide a few illustrations on slide 11 of some encouraging signs we are seeing in electrification across some of our markets. First, in France, the government recently announced a new plan aiming at accelerating electrification and reducing the country's dependency on oil and gas. The program plans to double support to around EUR 10 billion per year, with investments notably focused on heat pumps and electric vehicles. Obviously, it's a positive.

Second, in Belgium, we are seeing a strong rebound in solar demand. Belgium is a country where energy price fluctuations have an immediate impact on the energy bill of households and businesses, and this is driving immediate reaction and rapid investment in more efficient solutions. As a result, for example, solar was up around 50% in the first quarter, with a strong acceleration in March. Finally, in Australia, the focus on energy independence continues to support a strong momentum in solar and batteries. Thanks to subsidies supporting batteries investments, solar now represents around 50% of our sales and is expecting to grow by more than 50% in full year '26. Those are just three examples showing how our positioning on different adjacent activities reinforces our resilience to economic cycles. Turning now to slide 12, which illustrates the strong momentum in data centers across North America.

Let me start with the U.S. Data centers now represent around 7% of our sales in the country, and they continue to benefit from strong investment activity. This reflects both the strength of underlying demand, obviously, and also the capability that we have built over the last few years. In particular, we are leveraging the additional storage capacity we recently added to ensure product availability in what remains a very constrained environment. We have also implemented a new organization to offer a unique value proposition to our customers. We support at every stage of their project, from the initial purchase phase through to MRO parts and services. As a result, we confirm our growth ambition for data centers of above 20% in 2026, with Q1 actually showing even stronger momentum. Turning to Canada, trends are also very positive.

Data center activity now represents around 10% of sales and grew rapidly in the first quarter. The business benefits from a well-balanced mix between domestic colocation contracts and also export activities from OEMs to U.S. hyperscalers. We also built a solid backlog and will benefit from additional expertise brought by the recent Techno-Contact 360 acquisition announced today that I will present on the next slide. Overall, data centers continue to be a strong growth driver for Rexel in North America. Let me now turn to slide 13 on our very recent acquisition of Techno-Contact 360 in Canada, which we closed on Monday. This acquisition strengthens our presence in Quebec while expanding our capabilities in electrical distribution, industrial automation, and services. The company also brings strong end-to-end project management capabilities from the design phase all the way to long-term service, which complements nicely our existing offer.

Techno-Contact 360 generates sales of around CAD 85 million and has significant exposure to data centers, which are expected to represent more than half of its sales over the next couple of years. From a strategic perspective, this transaction is fully aligned with our M&A approach. We continue to execute targeted bolt-on acquisitions while expanding into adjacencies and higher value-added service business. Finally, it also contributes to building an industrial services platform in Canada alongside the companies that we have recently integrated, including Jacmar from two years ago and Apex. With that, let me turn to our slide 14 to confirm our full year 2026 guidance. The first quarter showed positive momentum with solid growth across all regions and continued pricing discipline.

In the context that remains uncertain, marked by geopolitical tensions and continued volatility in energy and raw material prices, we are confirming our full year 2026 guidance, namely same-day sales growth between 3% and 5%, current adjusted EBITDA margin of around 6.2%, and free cash flow conversion above 65%. Thank you for your attention. Laurent and I are now, like always, happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Akash Gupta of JPMorgan.

I got a couple. The first one is on the weather impact that you had in Q1. Is there any way to quantify how big headwind it was to volumes? Maybe a follow-up to that then, can you also comment the exit rate in month of March, given some of the growth in electrification seems to have accelerated after the war. Maybe any comment on exit rate in March. Second question I have is on U.S., where you had strong double-digit increase in your backlog versus end of year last year. How much of this is seasonal and how much of this is showing acceleration in demand? Can you also comment on margin quality of this backlog? Thank you.

Okay. Many questions, Akash. I will try to take them all without forgetting any. Weather impact in Q1, it's always difficult to quantify exactly the weather impact, but it's true that we lost a few days in North America and also to some extent in Europe. The best estimate that I would have, and once again, very difficult to quantify, would be 0.5% approximately. A little bit more than that in North America, because North America was quite impacted, a little bit less than that in Europe. But that's the best estimate that we have at this stage. That's one thing. Exit rate in March. You're right, in the second part of March, we saw an acceleration in electrification trends in some countries. Not in all countries, but in some countries like, as we mentioned, Australia, Belgium, for example.

On the other hand, there was a little bit compensating that. There was a little bit of a wait-and-see situation because of the conflict in some markets. At the end of the day, I would say the exit rate in March was very consistent with the quarter. No particular either acceleration or slowdown at the end of March. The double-digit increase in backlog. That's a little bit unusual. It's not seasonal. There is a little bit of seasonality in the backlog, but not to that extent. It's mostly about the fact that, as you know, we have an increasing proportion of our business, especially in North America, which is dedicated to data centers. That has a tendency to enter a little bit more in the backlog.

Today we have in the U.S. approximately 2.5 months of backlog at the end of March, which is an increase compared to the end of December. In Canada, we are up to a little bit more than four months of backlog. Now, what is the quality of this backlog in terms of margin? I think it's relatively homogeneous to what we have in North America. There is no particular thing to say in terms of being relative or dilutive, and it's going to execute mostly in the rest of the year. Some of it may be pushed to next year, but I think it's a minority of the backlog. Most of it is going to be delivered in the second part of the year.

We are very happy with the increase of backlog, which is showing that our penetration in those important segments is progressing.

If I may ask a follow-up on the supply chain in the U.S. related to your data center business. I think a few weeks back, we had some headlines saying that there is some supply chain issues with some other components going in data centers. Have you seen anything in your scope when it comes to your data center offering? Thank you.

Look, there are lead times which are starting to lengthen a little bit, but I think most of the issues that you're talking about are specific products or objects which have a tendency to go direct from suppliers to data centers. It's not affecting that much the distributed part of the business, or at least not to my knowledge.

Next question is from Daniela Costa of Goldman Sachs.

Just wanted to ask one question actually, but just you had a higher price than you had expected. You're still talking about suppliers putting price further. Actually, I wonder how much do you think they will put price further, if you can comment on that. Why didn't you change your margin guidance? I guess, does that reflect a fundamentally weaker volume picture going forward? Or, because it sounds like some of the weaker volume was exceptional factors, I guess like weather. Can you kind of explain those ups and downs on the bridge and how it changes versus where we were three months ago?

Yes, no, absolutely, Daniela. First of all, we have a tendency not to change our guidance in Q1, except when we have very strong impressions about what the rest of the year is going to be like. You can understand that in the current context with the uncertainties which are linked to the Middle East conflict, including uncertainties on the macro economy, we prefer not to do that at this stage. It's really not particularly an indication of anything but the fact that we are still cautious. I mean, for us, to get further visibility into what the year is going to be like, we usually wait until H1 to be able to do that.

When it comes to price increases, yes, it's true that we have seen second round of price increases, with indications being around 3% or 3% to 5% additional round of price increases for many suppliers, for example, in North America. Now, we are at the beginning of that. We are at the beginning of the implementation of that. There is still a level of uncertainty linked to what's going to happen in the Middle East. I think that some of it is going to go through to the market for sure. Now, what is the proportion exactly which is going to stick? That's something which is a little bit difficult to say at this stage. That's a little bit what I would say. In positive, you're right. When you think about the margin, the positive is the price increases.

The negative could be the volume slowdown if the conflict has an impact on macro economy and on investment decisions. As I was mentioning to Akash, we have seen during March, a certain level of wait and see attitude from some customers. Hopefully, we see an end to the conflict and that disappears, but we prefer to be cautious at this stage.

Next question is from Aron Ceccarelli of BAML.

My question -sorry, I have one on the backlogs. You've mentioned 2.8 months at the end of March in North America. Would you be able to quantify what this number is in Europe, please? When it comes to pricing as well, can you help us understand how do you think about pricing going to offset potential volume losses in Europe, especially in the second half? Thank you.

I'm not sure I understand your second question, Aron.

Yes, I'm wondering if you think that additional price increase could potentially put more pressure on volumes in the second half.

Oh, Yes. I think, first of all, backlog in Europe, in our business, we tend to be much more exposed to large projects in North America than in Europe, which means that the backlog in Europe, it's usually minimal. We don't even count it. We have a very low visibility, and that's due to the structure of our business between North America and Europe. You can say basically that the backlog in Europe is nonexistent. When it comes to pricing and the impact of pricing and volume, what we usually say is that price of electrical materials in the balance, in the economics of a larger construction project, for example, has a minimal effect on the decision, on the go, no-go decision, because it's small compared to other materials and compared to labor.

It tends to have, especially in times of energy price, it tends to have a payback. Each time you invest in electrical materials, you tend to save energy. So at the end of the day, we have never witnessed, even in times of super inflation after COVID, we have not seen evidence of the price of electrical materials being a hurdle to the decision-making in terms of projects. So no, I don't think it's going to have an impact. Now, could there be here and there construction projects, not because of the price of electrical materials, but because of the price of materials and the cost of completion of the projects being delayed? That's possible, but that's really not the generality that we are seeing.

Just a follow-up on that, I saw that on your press release, you mentioned residential turning positive in Europe. Can you provide more color, please?

Laurent, do you want to give a little bit more color?

Yes, there are a couple of countries where people invest more with variable mortgage rates, and we start to see some light at the end of the tunnel also boosted by some solar investment, like in Belgium. We start to see a small pickup in resi. For example, I would say Belgium, Netherlands, and Sweden.

Yes, to be precise, I think first of all, the statement is impacted also by the electrification categories, you're right, by solar and by the pickup of solar and by other categories like heat pumps and EV charging. The second thing is, what the positive trends that we are seeing are more on the renovation side rather than on the new construction side. I think the new construction is going to take time to pick up, because renovation tends to be more impacted and quicker by interest rates evolution. That's the color that we can give. Perfect. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Eric Lemarie of CIC Market Solutions.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got a question on market share. Do you see any change in Europe or in North America, and in particular, notably in North America for the data centers market? Do you see any new competitors wanting to grab a share of this very dynamic market?

Yes, thank you for the question, Eric. In Europe, no, I don't think that there is anything specific to mention. I think market share, to the best of my knowledge, are relatively stable. I don't identify a country where we would gain a lot of market share or lose a lot of market share. Laurent mentioned several times during his comments what we call business selectivity, which means that especially in times of price increases, we tend to be very focused on pass-through, which means that even in the countries where we gain market share over the last few quarters, we have stabilized, I think, because of our attention to margin. That's one thing. To come to your question about North America, North America, those are countries where we don't have any official measurement of market share, so it's difficult to answer.

What I can say is that when it comes to new entrants wanting to penetrate the data center space in terms of distribution, I think for the kind of services that we provide to electrical contractors operating in data centers, they really want to be aligned with well-established and nationwide distributors, which means that there are four or 5 players in this game. What is very important is to have a proven track record of delivering those services. Because, as you can understand, what is really the name of the game is to be able to save time, to give assurance that things are going to be there and things are going to be done in time. Time is of essence in the construction of the data centers.

For those kind of services, being a new entrant and trying to shave a few dollars from the total bill is. I shouldn't say that, but it's probably going to be difficult because what really counts is a track record of services and of delivering. That's my answer. To answer more precisely, no, we have not seen new entrants.

The final question, sir, is from George Featherstone of Barclays.

I just wanted to come back to the margin guide. You were talking about an inflation gap before, but clearly the message is a little bit better on price. I just wondered if you could give us an update on what you're thinking there and whether or not you were run rating with an inflation gap in the first quarter. Thank you.

Look, because it's not a margin call, I'm not going to answer precisely on that. What we have seen is both, obviously, a higher than what we had budgeted price increase on the product side. We have seen a little bit more inflation on the other side, which is the cost side. I mentioned in my comments that we have seen an increase in the cost of transportation. We have seen an increase in the cost of heating our buildings. Even though those two costs represent, what, 10% of our OpEx, something like that, so it's not major. We have seen, in proportion, important increases there. I will update you a little bit. We will wait for the dust to settle on all of that, and I will update you a little bit more on all of that at H1. You have two moving parts.

The price of the product is not the only moving part from this perspective. That's all the details I'm ready to give you at this point, and you will have to wait for H1 to get a little bit more balance on that.

Sir, I apologize. There's another question registered from Martin Wilkie of Citi.

I will take the additional question from Martin.

Thank you.

It's Martin at Citi. The question I just had was coming back to electrification, and you've given some details already. One thing we saw last time back in 2022 was quite a big pricing effect from solar as well. I know that the pricing that you see is not necessarily what we track with polysilicon and all the rest of it. Are there signs that this can be both a sort of volume and a pricing element inside solar? Perhaps it's just too early to tell, given that a lot of this hasn't quite come through yet.

That's a great question, Martin. What we had seen, even before the conflict in the Middle East, was the price of solar turning positive. I think it's turning positive since one or two quarters. Laurent?

Yes, on panels.

On panels.

Still a bit of deflation on batteries.

Yes. We have started to see that on panels, especially because of raw materials and the situation in China. Yes, we may see that also in batteries if the volumes start to be high enough so that there are supply shortages. We are not there yet. We are seeing a level of interest in some countries, but we are not seeing the equivalent of what we had seen in 2022 at the start of the Ukraine war. That being said, we know how it works, which is that people are now thinking, it's the second time in 5 years that people are facing big increases in their energy bills. At the end of the day, it becomes a risk management topic rather than anything else.

That's interesting because those categories, electrification categories in Europe, which were very much pushed by sustainability topics, sustainability concerns in the past, are now very much reviving because of energy independence concerns, and that's exactly the case in France, for example. The government in France, as a priority during a few days after the Middle East crisis, decided to get out a plan about electrification specifically. The angle was a little bit sustainability, but very much also protection of the businesses and of the end users against the future variations of the price of energy. We think that's going to be a wake-up call from this perspective. We'll see what it translates into in terms of business. For example, once again, only green shoots, but interested by this evolution.

Sir, there are no further questions registered at this time. Back to you for any closing remarks.

No, no particular closing remarks. We're going to talk again in H1 for the full P&L this time, including margin. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over and you may disconnect your telephones.

Good evening. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Rexel Fourth Quarter Sales and Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Texier, CEO of Rexel. Please go ahead, sir.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our full year 2025 results presentation. I'm with Laurent Delabarre, our Group CFO, who will take you through the financials and the detailed numbers in a few minutes.

And before that, let me briefly set the scene and share the key messages. 2025 was another year of market outperformance and margin resilience, and this is a particularly remarkable outcome as it was delivered in a mixed environment. It also clearly demonstrates the transformation of Rexel's model that is underway and gathering pace.

Beyond the results, an additional element of satisfaction is that behind the scenes, we continue to take initiatives to strengthen the group for the next phase. Building momentum in high-growth verticals such as data centers, actively managing the portfolio and accelerating our transformation through digital, AI and productivity initiatives, which supports our confidence in our midterm ambition.

With that, let's get started. And let me begin with a quick overview of the key highlights of the year. First of all, as I mentioned, our sales and margin performance offers an important proof point that Rexel's transformed business model is working, not only in favorable macro conditions, but also in a more mixed environment.

Second, we adapted quickly to a very different environment in Europe and North America. As conditions evolved through the year, we stayed close to our customers, and we accelerated execution progressively, adjusting priorities and protecting performance.

And third, as I said, we stepped up self-help actions through our Axelerate28 strategic plan. These initiatives are very operational and concrete, strengthening discipline, improving efficiency and ensuring we continue to build the foundations for future performance. So overall, resilient results today, rapid adaptation throughout the year and action plans that support the next steps of our journey to reach our midterm ambition.

With that, let's move on and take a look at the year in more detail. And turning to our full year achievements on Slide 4. We met or exceeded the guidance we set for the year on all KPIs. First, on top line. We achieved plus 2.5% same-day sales growth, above the initial guidance that we had raised in October. Second, profitability remains very solid. We delivered a current adjusted EBITA margin of 6%, fully in line with our guidance, again, illustrating the resilience of our margins in a challenging environment. And third, cash generation was strong. Our free cash flow conversion before interest and tax reached 76%, well above our guidance of above 65% when excluding the impact of the EUR 124 million French anti-trust fine. So overall, we delivered growth, we maintained margin and generated strong cash, providing a solid base as we move into the next year and execute our priorities.

Let me then take a step back on the backdrop. It was not a particularly easy environment. Europe stayed weak, notably in residential, North America was impacted by uncertainty and a delayed recovery in industrial automation. And Asia Pacific remained subdued. The clear area of strength was AI-driven data center investment and favorable pricing in the U.S., supported by trade tariffs.

In that context, Rexel did what we set out to do. We outperformed and gained share across our key markets. We are seeing a real payoff from the work we've been doing over the last several years on sales force excellence, higher digital penetration and the ramp-up of advanced services. We also leaned into data centers and broadband infrastructure, particularly in the U.S. with dedicated teams and branches, and we further strengthened our position in the telecom space with Talley acquisition. In addition, we stayed agile on the portfolio with 5 acquisitions and 2 disposals. Overall, top markets but strong execution, and we've continued to build momentum in the right growth areas.

From a geographical standpoint, the year really comes down to how we manage the 2 main engines of the group, North America and Europe. In North America, the focus was on managing profitable growth. We captured the trends in higher growth segments. And at the same time, we managed the tariff situation in a disciplined way. And importantly, we kept tight control of the cost base, delivering growth while operating with a broadly similar FTE level. In Europe, the environment was more muted with negative volumes and flat pricing. So we moved fast on costs. We rapidly implemented adaptation plans, leading to a workforce reduction of around 4%, about 600 FTEs in 2025, while keeping a strong focus on margins. Taken together, this is what drove improved margin resilience versus previous cycle downturns.

Let me now focus on data centers in North America on Slide 7. What began 3 years ago as a targeted initiative is now achieving scale to become one of our most attractive growth platforms.

In the U.S., we are reinforcing our position. We continue to significantly outperform the market with very strong momentum in Q4 and across the year, and data center already represents a meaningful share of our sales. To support that growth, we expanded our footprint and capabilities close to project sites, adding, for example, around 200,000 square feet of storage capacity in key locations like Atlanta, Mesa and Reno, with further potential to scale. Our model is simple, local branches and resources backed by national coordination. That allows us to be close to customers on execution while still bringing the breadth of Rexel expertise, availability and consistency across multiple sites. We also broadened our offering into new product categories that matter for data centers built, and we are continuing to add dedicated resources and expertise to capture the next wave of projects.

In Canada, also, we are off to a promising start. Here, the activity for us is concentrated in the Western region. We are active in the gray room offering from UPS to panels and datacom accessories. And we have a strong backlog that supports continued momentum for 2026.

So the key takeaways here is that our scale, logistics capabilities and technical expertise give us a clear advantage in this segment. We are well positioned with strong momentum ahead of us.

I'm now on Slide 8. Portfolio management remains a key lever of our strategy. 2025 was another year of active portfolio management with 4 acquisitions completed and 2 disposals, further sharpening the group's footprint and profitability profile.

We've strengthened our footprint through the additions of Warshauer and Schwing in the U.S. In Canada and Italy, we've expanded into adjacent higher-margin businesses with Jacmar [Technical Difficulty] while completing around EUR 2 billion net of disposals. And in total, we've closed 21 acquisitions over that period, including 4 in 2025.

And what I would like to stress is the quality and the direction of this M&A. Around 60% is in our core electrical distribution business, around 40% in adjacencies where we see attractive structural growth and higher value-added opportunities. We have been particularly focused on North America with 14 acquisitions, representing more than 70% of acquired sales, including about EUR 0.5 billion in adjacencies. And this is clear value creation.

On average, we see value creation from year 2, earlier than initially targeted. And our combined 2025 performance imply roughly 7x EV to EBITDA multiple after synergies below Rexel valuation multiple. And we also move forward on the other side of the portfolio with 2 targeted divestments completed in 2025, and these actions reinforce the robustness of our balance sheet and provide flexibility to continue investing in growth.

Moving to Slide 9. Digital is a very tangible differentiator for Rexel and it continues to gain traction. Today, we are a B2B leader in digital with more than 1/3 of our sales going through digital channels, and this is not slowing down. Digital penetration has been progressing by between 200 and 300 basis points per year over the last 15 years. What's driving it is a mix of constant improvement in the customer experience with more tailor-made features, including AI-powered capabilities, plus continuous data enrichment and also, frankly, a generational shift in how customers want to buy and interact.

The benefits of these long-term efforts are very concrete. And I believe this is one also of the explanation of our good set of results recently. Digital increased its customer stickiness and share of wallet. It widens the service gap versus smaller competitors who have increasing difficulties following the pace of the race to more data and more features. And finally, it also improves the efficiency and productivity of our teams, which is critical to our business model. All in all, it's a key engine of differentiation and performance for Rexel.

Beyond the short-term environment, we are accelerating a set of deeper transformation to pave the way for future performance as shown on Slide 10. First, we are boosting sales force productivity through organizational changes and increasing adoption of AI-based tools to help our teams spend more time selling and improve the quality of execution.

Second, we're optimizing the supply chain through more automation, stronger internal synergies and AI, improving service levels while taking structural costs out.

Third, we are resetting parts of the cost base in lower profitability countries. This is about staying disciplined, adapting the model to the reality of the market and protecting margins.

Fourth, we are leveraging our full offering, expanding in adjacent product categories and services where we can create more value for customers and capture more of their spend.

And finally, we continue to roll out smart pricing programs that leverage data to improve consistency and value capture. Those OpEx are not only to Rexel obviously as we constantly strive to improve, but 2025 was a year of clear acceleration. First of all, because the business environment pushed us to move faster and sometimes think out of the box. And secondly, because we launched our new strategic plan, Axelerate28. And most of those plans we are talking about are multiyear efforts, which means that you will see them progressively delivering benefits to our P&L.

Focusing on next slide on AI. AI is another area where we are moving fast. And it's not just -- I'm on Slide 11, and it's not just running pilots, but now scaling real use cases into day-to-day operations. On the left of the slide, you see the main areas where we had identified clear AI opportunities, tools to speed up RFQs, smart automation for order entry, automatic data enrichment and internal category expert capability, customer-facing chatbots. And on the right, you see where we are today, not in terms of shiny proof-of-concept demos but in terms of reduction by the teams and real-life industrial live tools.

In the U.S., more than 50% of the quoting teams, for example, are already using the new quotation tools. In France, around 25% of e-mails quotes are handled through AI tools. And on order entry, we now have over 65% of U.S. teams and more than 70% of French teams using AI-powered tools. We are also rolling out internal expert capabilities by categories, deploying customer-facing chatbots across additional countries.

So the message here is simple. AI is already improving speed, quality and productivity, and we are scaling it pragmatically use case by use case.

And Slide 12 is about productivity, a major KPI for us. The message here is that over the last 5 years, we have lifted the baseline of what we are able to deliver in terms of productivity every year. What differentiates this cycle from previous downturns is the speed and depth of our cost adaptation. Through workforce adjustments, productivity initiatives, tighter cost control, we protected margins despite lower volumes, reinforcing the resilience of our operating model.

Historically, between 2016 and 2021, our productivity ratio averaged around 0.9%. Over the last few years, it has stepped up and in 2025, it reached 2.8%. This improvement is not coming from one single level. It's a combination of structural initiatives that I just presented, including the ramp-up of digital and the early impact of AI tools, together with rapid cost adaptations in more challenging markets.

So 2025 was another demonstration of Rexel's resilience at the bottom of the cycle. The key takeaway is that we are not just managing through the cycle, we are structurally improving how efficiently the group operates, which supports margin readiness and future performance.

With that, let me now hand over to Laurent, who will take you through the detailed 2025 numbers, and I will come back for the guidance.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to all of you. Evening. Good evening, sorry. On Slide 14, you can see how momentum improved throughout the year '24 and '25. With the quarterly same-day sales growth trend at group level and the regional breakdown, we moved from minus 4.6% in Q1 '24 to a progressively better trend quarter after quarter, and we closed 2025 with plus 3.8% in Q4. That's a very clear reflection of better momentum, disciplined execution in the field and better pricing management.

First, selling prices contributed positively in Q4 '25 by 1.7%, improving compared to Q3 '25. And more specifically, non-cable pricing were unshaded in Q4 '25 at 0.9%, with improving trends in North America, mainly offset by China. Selling price on cable improved to plus 0.8%, notably thanks to Europe.

And briefly on geography that I will highlight in the next 2 slides. North America remains the main growth engine. Growth accelerated through the year and ended it at plus 7.9% in Q4 '25. And Europe remained difficult, but the trend improved sequentially, and we are back to flat sales evolution in Q4 '25. And more specifically for Asia Pacific accounting for 6% of group revenue. China was up 3.1%, supported by industrial automation project in a better environment while selling price were just back to flat in Q4 '25. In Australia, sales growth accelerated in the quarter, notably boosted by solar activity, further supported by subsidies on batteries. Lastly, India, which is small, but sales increased by plus 16.9%, driven by strong growth in our industrial automation activity.

I'll now go into more detail in the next 2 slides on Europe and North America. So moving to Slide 15. Europe remained impacted by muted construction environment and delayed electrification trends. Despite this, Rexel gained market share in its most important countries and delivered a resilient performance.

Same-day sales in Europe were flat in Q4, improving from minus 0.5% in Q3. Volumes were broadly stable despite the political and macro uncertainties. And we also saw a sequential improvement in pricing in Q4 versus Q3, mainly driven by cable. And to put the underlying trend in perspective, our growth excluding solar, which represents about 4% of our sales in Europe, was up plus 0.5%.

By end market, residential was flat, excluding solar, with first sign of recovery in a few countries, notably Sweden and the Netherlands. Non-residential was broadly flat and we saw a slight improvement in industry.

Let me highlight the main country dynamics in the quarter. France was up plus 3% despite a challenging environment with broad-based market share gains and strong HVAC contribution.

Benelux was up plus 2.6%, driven by electrical distribution activity in the Netherlands, and the acceleration of solar growth in Belgium.

DACH was a key offset, deteriorating sequentially on business selectivity in a difficult macro environment. Also, we continue to take market share in Austria.

Sweden was flat with a sequential improvement driven by industrial segment and supported by a smaller drag from solar in Q4 compared to Q3.

And finally, U.K./Ireland was down minus 6.7%. Ireland remained positive with a favorable industrial market. But the U.K. market stayed tough with London showing the first sign of our recent investment.

So overall, still a soft market, but improving trends from Q4 and continued market share gains in several countries. In this context, productivity initiatives helped mitigate the impact of lower activity. And this positioned well to benefit from any market recovery, particularly as leading indicators in some countries begin to stabilize.

On Slide 16, we turn to North America, which remains the growth engine in Q4, driven by both volume and pricing where we saw improvement in non-cable, mainly driven by piping and conduit families. First, same-day sales were up strongly in the quarter with Canada driving the acceleration versus Q3 '25, specifically in data center project as presented by Guillaume. We also benefited from strong continued market share gains and positive contribution in datacom. And second, the U.S. continues to be driven by high-growth verticals, particularly data center and broadband infrastructure, which represents more than 55% of the growth in the quarter. We also saw strong activity in solar and EV charging. By end markets, all 3 markets were positive, with non-residential clearly driving the acceleration and the industrial automation up 8%. Lastly, the backlog remains solid, representing 2.7 months of activity at the end of December.

Moving now to the full year picture. I'll start on Slide 17 with the bridge of our full year sales, showing how growth was built between scope organic, FX and calendar. We delivered full year '25 sales of EUR 19.4 billion, up 0.7% on a reported basis. Organic performance was the main driver. As we saw, same-day sales growth was plus 2.5% for the year, with volume contributing plus 1.2% and pricing adding plus 0.6% in non-cable and plus 0.7% in cable. So a solid volume contribution plus disciplined pricing across both cable and non-cable. M&A also contributed meaningfully. Acquisition added plus 1.8% more than offsetting the minus 0.9% impact from disposals.

These positives were partly offset by external factors. First, the FX was a headwind of minus 2.2%, mainly from weakening of the U.S. and Canadian dollar as well as a calendar impact of minus 0.5%. That was the sales bridge for the year and we'll now move to profitability and margin performance.

In this Slide 18, we bridge our adjusted EBITA margin year-on-year and the key message is simple. Record productivity more than compensates what we call the delta inflation headwind. Adjusted EBITA margin increased from 5.9% in full year '24 to 6% in full year '25. First, portfolio and FX were positive, contributing 11 basis points, while the calendar effect was a drag of minus 5 basis points.

Second, you see the operating leverage, slightly negative because due -- mainly due to the new European environment and the underabsorption of fixed costs, notably in underperforming countries, mitigated by positive operating leverage in North America.

Third, the main headwinds in the year was what we call the delta inflation, which represent the gap between selling price increase and OpEx inflation, 19 basis point headwind, in line with our expectations. Cost inflation was around plus 2.2% in full year '25, while selling price increase were up 1.3%.

And these headwinds was more than offset by the 2 following actions: first, the gross margin improvement adding 9 basis points, supported by pricing initiatives; and second, our action plan delivered a further 33 basis points, in line with the expectation and already illustrated by Guillaume in the slide dedicated to productivity.

Let me remind you that FTEs was down 2.3%, while volume contribution to sales were up 0.7% in actual days. But operating discipline is what allow us to protect and slightly expand despite inflationary pressure. Lastly, and we are further investing in the business notably through digital and footprint investment that impact our EBITA margin by 11 basis points.

On Slide 19, we look at the bottom-line part of our P&L., with a zoom on other income and expense, financial expense, tax rate and recurring net income. Other income and expense stood at EUR 56 million, notably including minus EUR 41.1 million in restructuring, mainly in Europe, more than last year in order to accelerate adaptation to a tougher environment, notably in U.K. and Germany. EUR 36 million of capital gains on disposal. Minus EUR 29.7 million in asset impairment in the U.K. Minus EUR 20 million in others, including integration costs and pension settlement in Canada. Financial expense stood at EUR 214 million, slightly above last year with a rise in gross debt, offsetting the lower cost of debt now at 4% versus 4.4% last year. It includes EUR 72 million of interest on lease liabilities and pure financial cost of EUR 142 million. And for '26, we anticipate financial expense of circa EUR 250 million, including less than EUR 70 million of interest on lease liabilities and around EUR 145 million plus of pure financial expense, excluding one-off. And assuming current interest rate continues, condition remain unchanged.

Our income tax rate stood at 30.2% due to the impact of the exceptional tax in France. And going forward, we anticipate the tax rate to be at circa 30% in '26, take into consideration the additional tax in France that will apply for the second year. And for '27 onwards, we anticipate then the tax rate to go back to circa 27% in the absence of exceptional tax renewal in France.

And as a result, net income increased by 73% and recurring net income stood at EUR 308 million, up 2.4%.

Moving to slide 20. We generated robust cash flow before interest and tax, reaching a high level of EUR 938 million, implying a free cash flow conversion rate of 76%, well above last 4 years' above average, that stood at 69%. This is excluding the EUR 124 million fine imposed by French tax authorities and paid in April '25.

The trade working capital as a percentage of the last 12 months of sales increased to 15% versus 14.6% last year, mainly related to the sales growth acceleration in H2 and mainly Q4. In a number of days, embedding the last 3 months of sales, both inventory and receivables improved and were partially offset by lower payables.

Indeed, the DOI and DSO decreased by respectively, 1.5 and 1 days and DPO was down 2 days. Non-trade working capital was an inflow of EUR 24 million on an outflow of EUR 100 million, including the payment of the EUR 124 million fine. CapEx remained disciplined at EUR 136 million, with growth CapEx representing 0.7% of sales, stable versus last year. So overall, we converted earnings into cash at a very strong rate, supported by tight working capital and disciplined investment levels.

On Slide 21, I want to come back to free cash flow conversion profile over the last 5 years, a key proof point of the quality of our execution. As you can see, we delivered a record level again, above 70% for the third consecutive year. [ 7.6% ] conversion rate is at the top end of what we have delivered in recent years and clearly above our full year guidance of above 65% in our midterm ambition. And this performance is a result of two very disciplined execution. First, a well-balanced investment approach with roughly 55% of our CapEx in digital and about 45% in network and supply chain modernization. Second, active working capital management as we have seen, especially the quality and structure of inventory and receivables. So overall, this strong cash generation built on repeatable levels support our financial flexibility going forward.

As shown on Slide 24, our capital allocation focus on both acquisition and return to shareholders. Overall, net debt slightly increased by EUR 147 million, mainly resulting from 2 factors. First, the EUR 227 million impact from net financial investments, mainly the acquisition of Warshauer, Schwing, Jacmar and TECNO BI mentioned earlier by Guillaume. Second, the dividend payment related to the 2024 performance for EUR 355 million, corresponding to EUR 1.20 per share. Lastly, we also bought back shares for EUR 100 million, in line with our midterm objectives. And since mid-2022, we bought back EUR 400 million and reduced the number of outstanding shares to 296 million. All this leads to net debt close to EUR 2.6 billion, including earnout for circa EUR 30 million, and the indebtedness ratio stands at 2x, representing a strong achievement.

In short, we continue to invest in value-creating growth while maintaining a healthy balance sheet and a consistent return to shareholders.

Let's turn now on Slide 23 to the breakdown of our main debt maturity and liquidity. 2024 was a very active year in terms of refinancing. In addition to all operations presented in H1, the second half was also intense, and we further extended our debt maturity profile.

As a reminder, we have first issued a new EUR 100 million Schuldschein in July with a '29 maturity. Second issued EUR 400 million senior notes with 4% coupons maturing in 2030 but extended 2 securitization programs for more than EUR 800 million from '25 to '28. And finally, we increased our senior credit agreement by EUR 200 million to EUR 900 million and extended it to 2031.

Overall, we have a well-balanced funding structure, extending maturities and comfortable liquidity, and we can stay focused on executing the strategy. As always, we are evaluating market opportunities in the volatile debt market environment.

Moving to the next slide, we summarize our shareholder returns through the dividend. For the year, the Board will propose a dividend of EUR 1.20 per share, maintaining our strong track record. This implied payout ratio of 52%, which is at the high end of our guidance and reflect our confidence in the resilience of the business model and in our cash generation. Subject to the general assembly approval in April 22, 2026, the dividend will be payable in cash on May 13.

So overall, we remain fully committed to a disciplined capital allocation policy, combining value creation growth investments and an attractive return to shareholders.

Let me hand back to Guillaume before we move on to your questions.

Thank you, Laurent. And let me now turn to our outlook for 2026, and let me go to Slide 26. It's a busy slide, but it illustrates also well the way we see the short-term future. Many moving parts, a good level of uncertainty, but probably overall, more encouraging trends than the opposite. Starting with North America, prospects are clearer and we continue to expect further growth. Of course, there are still macro uncertainties, including around tariffs, and we see less traction in some electrification solutions. But structurally, the key growth engines remain in place. We expect continued progression in data centers, and we are also seeing more positive signals in industrial automation, supported by reshoring and the One Beautiful Bill.

In Europe, the environment is still challenging. Construction remains near the trough and confidence is not yet back. That said, we see more and more encouraging early indicators, and we do expect improving trends, especially in the back part of the year. The comparison base becomes easier for electrification. The lower interest rate environment is starting to improve. And as I said, we see leading indicators in residential improving. And in Germany, finally, the infrastructure plan could begin to materialize later in the year.

On pricing and inflation, we still expect OpEx inflation to remain slightly higher than selling price increases. At the same time, we should benefit from the carryover of 2025 pricing in the U.S. We may also see additional price increases reflecting the recent rise in copper and silver, but it is a little bit too early to tell with certainty.

And finally, self-help remains a very important part of the equation. We will benefit from the carryover of actions already launched, and we have also new initiatives to implement in 2026.

So overall, North America should remain solid and supportive. Europe should gradually improve. And in all cases, we stay focused on execution and self-help to deliver in an uncertain environment, which brings us to our full year 2026 guidance on Slide 27. On the top line, we expect same-day sales growth of 3% to 5%. On profitability, we guide for a current adjusted EBITA margin of around 6.2%.

At this stage, we still expect a slightly negative inflation gap with cost inflation running ahead of selling price increases although improving compared to 2025. And that will be offset by a clear set of cost and productivity initiatives, including the continued rollout of digital and AI tools.

In addition, copper price rose sharply recently. Of course, as a distributor, we will pass the price increases from suppliers. We don't know yet how much price increase will be passed by those suppliers. And we believe that the situation may vary by country, by suppliers, leading to progressive price increases. We prefer to be cautious that it is very early in the year, which means that we took the equivalent in terms of copper of $11,000 per tonne price of copper to design this guidance. And we will adjust during the year depending on the evolution of the situation.

And finally, on cash, we are guiding for free cash flow conversion now above 65%, reflecting our disciplined CapEx policy and continued focus on working capital.

So overall, our 2026 guidance reflects continued growth, resilient margins through self-help and strong cash generation in a global environment that remains marked by a little bit of uncertainty.

Turning to Slide 28. Before we conclude, I think it's worth taking a step back to consider how Rexel's ongoing transformation has taken roots over time and is still ramping up. Building on foundations laid in 2010 to 2019, particularly when it comes to digital penetration, we have been broadening and accelerating our transformation since 2020 to more dimensions of our operating model. We have raised the bar on operational excellence with more standardization, automation, discipline and execution.

We have also made portfolio management much more active using bolt-on M&A and selective disposals to improve the quality of the group. In parallel, we have scaled advanced services and focus more on the market where we see structural acceleration, electrification, energy efficiency and of course, data centers and datacom. And now we're entering a new phase where AI-boosted tools are becoming a real game changer in customer experience and productivity level, not a concept. What matters is that these levels reinforce each other, stronger digital, better operations, a sharper portfolio, more value-added services and higher productivity.

So when we talk about Axelerate2028 and our medium-term ambitions, it's the continuation and acceleration of the transformation that has been underway for years. The Axelerate2028 plan is now fully underway. And as I said at the beginning of the presentation, 2025 was a very busy year in a number of new initiatives launched. This gives us great confidence in our ability to deliver on our midterm ambitions, even in a less supportive market environment.

And I'm now on Slide 29. Since 2024, when we issued our midterm guidance at our Capital Markets Day, what has first changed is the market backdrop. The macro cycle recovery has been delayed. We faced a delta inflation headwind in 2024 and 2025 and electrification market in Europe has been a little bit more muted than expected. But on the other hand, several factors have moved in the right direction with some of them, many of them being in our control. So first, we are leaning even more into high-growth verticals, especially data centers. Second, the adoption of GenAI is accelerating faster than we initially anticipated, and this will prove clearly beneficial to our business model. Third, we have reinforced our focus on cost initiatives and productivity across the group. And finally, pricing is more supportive in '25 and '26 with higher selling price increases coming from U.S. tariffs, pricing programs and potential impact from copper.

So when you put all of that together, there are pluses and minuses, but the combination of that allows us to confirm our medium-term objectives, sales growth of 5% to 8%, including 2% to 3% from acquisitions, an adjusted EBITA margin above 7% and cash conversion of 65%.

In other words, the market is certainly not giving us a free ride, but the strategy and the self-help levers are stronger and this is why we are confident in our midterm ambition.

And in a way, the fact that we now rely more and more on our own efforts on what is in our hands than on the market is an element of security that is good news for the future.

So let me close this presentation with 4 key messages before we open the call for Q&A. First, 2025 was another clear demonstration of Rexel's resilience through the bottom of the cycle, proof that our transformed model is working.

Second, the momentum we saw in Q4 in both Europe and North America, that we continue to see in January, has carried into early 2026, which gives us a very good starting point.

Third, with the launch of Axelerate2028, we are accelerating transformational change across the group from productivity and cost efficiency to digital and AI adoption to unlock our next phase of performance. And despite slightly less market support, we are keeping a high level of ambition, and we remain fully committed to reaching our midterm guidance.

Finally, I'd like to finish by saying, our teams have once again shown remarkable commitment and agility in 2025. And with that, I would like to thank our employees, customers and partners for their continued trust. Thank you for your time and attention. And now Laurent and I are happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] First question is from Daniela Costa, Goldman Sachs.

I have 2 questions, if possible. I'll ask them one at a time. But the first one is regarding the free cash flow. As you mentioned on the presentation, you've beaten your targets on free cash flow for a few years there. But you're once again guiding for around 65% on the conversion. Can you talk why you don't upgrade that target? And what would drive you back down to a weaker cash conversion than what you have had, for example, this year, excluding the charge? That's number one. And then I'll ask the other one.

Okay. Thank you very much, Daniela. And thank you, first of all, to recognize the important effort that we make to optimize free cash flow and to deliver good performance. Now we have upgraded in reality, the free cash flow guidance. You have probably noticed that, but we went to around 65% and then to above 65%, which is the guidance that we are giving. So it's progressing.

Now on this one, we prefer to be cautious because, as you know, the free cash flow delivery depends very much on the shape of the last part of the year. In a year of acceleration, which we experienced in Q4 2025, that's always a little bit favorable to free cash flow. And to the opposite, and we have seen that during COVID, for example, in a year of a deceleration, the free cash flow in terms of transformation is always a little bit more challenged because of working capital at the end of the year.

So there are many things in the free cash flow delivery that we master, inventory and number of days throughout the years in average is something that we control well. CapEx is something we control very well. But when it comes to payables and receivables, because of this uncertainty, we prefer to be cautious. But you're right, over the last 3 years, we have systematically delivered more than 70%. And in the last 2 years, more than 75%. I mean I don't know, Laurent, if you want to add anything to that.

Maybe on the CapEx side, we had years of more important logistic investment in the past where we were below this 70%. That's why I think the above 65% is a reasonable target.

If the question is, does it hide anything in terms of additional expenses or additional CapEx that you will have in mind, no, not really. I mean we feel that 2026 is going to be the same kind of profile in terms of CapEx as 2025. So no, no, no particular -- I don't know if it was your question, but I'm answering it.

Great. And then just on this AI productivity benefits that you talked about. I was wondering if -- when you planned your targets in 2024, was this what you were already foreseeing would happen in '25? Or should we look at this sort of productivity improvements as over and above what you were expecting back then? And once the market comes, what should be the incremental upside to margin from these extra initiatives or extra productivity that you find if this is extra?

So directionally, I think you're absolutely right. This was not completely in our minds, not to this extent when we did our initial midterm guidance in 2024. So the benefits of that, which is double digit in terms of productivity will come on top and above that. We have productivity targets. But clearly, GenAI potentialities are probably adding a layer to those productivity targets.

But to the opposite, as we showed on our Slide 29, there are a few things which are probably temporary. I mean when we're talking about delayed cycle recovery, that's probably something, which you're right, in the long term is going to come back. And the same thing about delta inflation headwind.

But -- so at some point, it will come over and above. So if you're talking about the absolute potential of Rexel, mid-cycle potential of Rexel, maybe that -- which is going to be an additional benefit to what we guided to in 2024, but I'm very focused on what we call midterm, which was 3 to 5 years. And in this time frame, I think this may be something which will help us offset potential macro delays. That's what we are saying.

Next question is from Akash Gupta, JPMorgan.

I have 2 as well. My first one is on copper prices dynamics because when I look at movement in copper price in Q4, we had roughly a 20% increase in U.S. We had 9% on LME. And when I look at your copper price, in Q4 of 0.8%, that looks a bit lower than implied by changes in copper prices. So maybe if you can talk about why it is not yet reflected in your growth rates?

And then when it comes to the outlook, and thanks for specifying that your guidance is on $11,000 per copper. So if we assume that the current level of $13,000 stay for rest of the year, is it fair to assume that we need to add probably 200 basis points annualized to your growth rates?

Laurent?

Yes. First, I mean, the copper is not as mechanical as you see. What we guided in the past is that a $500 increase in copper would drive around 0.4% of top line growth. But with this sharp increase in copper recently and in the current environment, and there are also FX components into that, what we see today is that the supplier, they are lagging effect to pass through the copper improvement into the cable price increase. And we turn also our inventory in 2 months, so there is also this lag. That's why at the end, it will gradually come into our performance into '26, and that the effect in Q4 is slightly lower than what you were calculating.

Yes. The wild card is really very much what the manufacturers, what the cable manufacturers and also what the other materials manufacturers, which include copper, are going to do with that. And in the follow-up, I'd say, I understand that it was very automatic. It's been a little bit less the case in the recent past because of strong variations. And so we'll see what happens there.

And as far as if things were completely automatic, what would it mean in terms of top line? I think your ballpark calculation is probably approximately right, maybe slightly high because Laurent said that it's a 5:4 ratio, but we are not that precise anyway. So yes...

And my follow-up is on the growth guidance. So at midpoint, you're guiding 4% organic same-day growth. And can you break it down into what sort of volume assumptions you have assumed in that calculation?

And when we look at the margin drop-through, is the margin drop through of additional 1 percentage point growth from volume versus price? Is there any difference on the drop-through on margins, like, let's say, if we have 1% higher growth from volume, would that have any different drop-through than 1% higher pricing?

Yes. I mean Laurent, do you want to answer on that. I mean first, I will answer the easy part of the question, which is that the assumption is half-half. Now Laurent, for the more difficult part, which is drop-through volume versus drop-through on price, et cetera.

No, that mechanically, the drop-through on price is a bit higher because you have less variable costs. You have just the commission of the salespeople and some bonuses whereas a drop-through on volume will include transportation costs and other cost, inventory cost. But again, it's -- yes, the drop-through on price is a bit higher.

But that's not exactly the way we calculate our bridge. I mean we look at the drop-through on volume. And if we look at -- if we try to do a back-of-the-envelope math, if we look at 2025 to 2026, we look at, let's say, 2% volume, we say, the drop-through on this volume is approximately 20 bps, so that's beneficial. Then you have additional action plans.

But on the other hand, as I mentioned in my comments, we also think that our inflation, which should be around -- inflation of our costs, I mean, which should be around 2.5% is going to be higher than the inflation that we assume in our gross margin and in our products, the price content of the gross margin, which is going to be around 2%.

So those 2 blocks should offset more or less each other. And that's the reason why, at the end of the day, and the drop-through on price is included in this calculation, in the second calculation between inflation of gross margin and inflation of cost. So that's the reason why at the end of the day, we are guiding for around 20 bps of improvement.

And to be specific, on the bridge '24 to '25 that I presented to the point of Guillaume on the operating leverage, we had a lot with op volume only. The pricing part is in the delta inflation of that, yes. That's the way we do it. So yes.

Next question is from William Mackie, Kepler Cheuvreux.

A couple actually, maybe looking at the bridge again. Last year, well, in '24, you made great progress with your action plans in dropping out cost. In '25, I think you've called it out as 33 basis points. Could you put some color or financial color around the expectations for how the action plans in '26 should play out, obviously partly contingent on the market development?

Laurent, do you want to take this one?

Yes, it was quite heavier, and you have seen it in the restructuring cost that we have factored in '25 For '26, we expect to have a bit less restructuring costs more in the EUR 20 million range. So meaning that we will have at the end a bit less benefits in terms of cost savings. We have additional initiatives plus the carryover of the initiatives that we implemented in the second half. The carryover is a bit less than 10 basis points, and we'll have additional action next year, but we are in a year which we will grow on the top line. So the productivity will more come from the volume than by the reduction of cost.

So I mean the answer is approximately half of what we had last year. We did a lot of the heavy lifting last year. And I think we have now a lean cost structure ready for growth. But still around 10, 15 bps of cost savings. 15 bps.

The follow-up would be related to the portfolio or the capital allocation more broadly, 2x net debt after a very positive year of free cash generation. And you've made great progress over 4 years with the portfolio development on acquisitions and disposals. But at this sort of level of leverage and with the portfolio today, is there much that could leave after Finland? And what is the sort of target opportunity looking like?

Look, I mean, I will give you -- I will not answer your question, but I will give you a very general and worthy answer, which is that everything is under review all the time. Whenever we are in a situation where we think that we can improve a country or a business to our goals, even if we have to invest, even if it takes some time, we do it.

But in some cases, and it was the case in most of the divestments that we have made in Spain, in New Zealand, in Norway and in Finland. There are situations where we feel that either we will not get to it because of the competitive situation of the country or the business or that there is a very attractive offer on the table from somebody who wanted to buy the business. And then we are very pragmatic in terms of value creation.

But our preference is to improve organically what we have in general. So which means that, no, we don't have immediate plans of selling something. But then everything is reviewed every year based on those criteria. One, are we able -- do we have a credible plan to the Rexel goals -- to contribute to the Rexel midterm goals? And two, is there a super attractive value creation offer on the table? So that's what we do. But at this stage, we have nothing in preparation in the next few months.

And on the buy side, how do you see the sort of valuation range and range of opportunities?

On the buy side, we will continue to be active in terms of acquisitions. We have a pipeline which is healthy those days. So you may see a little bit of that. We are talking small and midsized acquisitions. We are talking the same focus as we had in the previous years, which is mostly in North America and mostly focused on the most value-added parts of the business if we can, which are services, et cetera, but not neglecting the potential to do a synergistic consolidation, acquisition.

So I think you will see acquisitions in 2025 -- in 2026. If I had to bet, but it's always difficult to bet before the acquisitions are done, I would say that you're going to see slightly more than what we have done in 2025.

And in terms of multiple environment, look, I mean, the multiple environment is relatively rich. I mean there is competition out there when it comes to acquisitions.

But as you have seen over the last few years, and I think this is in the slides that Laurent mentioned, or in the slides that I commented in terms of acquisitions because we are able usually to add a sizable amount of synergies, we were able, and that's not a forward-looking, but that's a backward-looking calculation. We were able to deliver an average multiple, which is around 7x, which compared to our current multiple, which fortunately at the same time, has increased also to 10x, is a good value creation. So we will continue to be disciplined in that to make sure that we continue to build this track record.

Next question is from George Featherstone, Barclays.

I just wanted to come back to the price versus cost dynamic that you flagged. I mean it sounds like demand is getting better. Are you still flagging this headwind for 2026. So I just wondered what the main reason is that you're unable to sort of match the cost inflation with prices? Or is it simply just a timing? That would be the first question, please.

No. I mean let me be clear. When we are talking about that, we are not taking the price versus cost inflation. That's not exactly what we mean. On one hand, we have the price increases from our suppliers. And usually, we are very good because it's our core business, passing through those price increases to the market. Here, the pass-through is extremely good or if not perfect.

But that being said, we cannot -- if there is a price increase of 4% by supplier A, we cannot say to the market that the price increase is going to be 6%. We do not have this ability because those price increases are usually well-known in the industry. Now so that's one thing. This is a price effect that we get mostly by decisions of our suppliers about how they are going to go to the market.

And then there is the second part, which is completely separated, which is our own cost equation. In our SG&A, 2/3 of our costs are salaries. The rest is occupation costs with leases, et cetera. And that we also try to optimize, but we are also bound by different arrays of constraints, which are basically the average salary increase in the given country. We always try to optimize, but that's a little bit what it is.

And what we are saying, for example, for next year is that we think that our OpEx inflation, salaries, rents, et cetera, transportation costs, is going to increase around 2.5%. And that as far as we see today, based on what we see from our suppliers, but it's the early beginning of the year, and it may change.

We think that the price increases, which is the price component of the gross margin is going to be around 2%. So to be clear, what we are saying is certainly not that we are not able to pass the price to the market, which is what I heard a little bit in your sentence, but more than this particular equation, sometimes it's very favorable when there is a strong inflation in the industry because, for example, of shortages. And in this case, the salaries continue to increase with general inflation and the price of product is increasing by 5%. It happened to us in the past.

And sometimes in other years, the price increases passed by the suppliers are a little bit more shy because they want to protect their market shares. And in this case, we have to work on our self-help action plans, productivity, et cetera, to offset that. That's a little bit the way it works and the way we try to explain it. I hope I was clear.

No, that's perfect. That's makes total sense. Then maybe just a question on the backlog in the U.S. I just wondered how much of this is data center versus projects in other end markets? And just whether you can comment at all on how that backlog has evolved sort of data center versus non-data center, if it is split like that?

Look, you're asking a question to which I was not prepared, unfortunately. I think -- I don't know. I don't know in the backlog, how much is data center, how much is the rest. What I know is that overall, the backlog remains at the North American level, very stable, higher than the historical average, with maybe Canada increasing a little bit which may be the effects of data centers and the U.S. being a little bit lower than Q3, but very incrementally.

Now what I can tell qualitatively is that in data centers, we have a good degree of confidence that we will continue to deliver a good growth rate. And when I say the growth rate, you saw that our data center growth was more than 50% for the year and more than that in Q4. We think that we -- you can safely say that our data center growth next year is going to be at least north of 20%.

Next question is from Andre Kukhnin, UBS.

I'll just go one at a time. Firstly, on pricing, just to clarify what you said, if you talk about non-cable pricing specifically, and kind of low voltage and automation products, we've seen evidence of price increase letters being sent to customers by major suppliers in China. But your comments suggest that this hasn't happened in European countries or in the U.S. Is that the case?

Can you repeat your last sentence, our comments?

Yes. We've seen there was press that kind of published letters to customers announcing price increases by major international and local vendors in the voltage and industrial automation in China. And from your comments, it sounds like this hasn't happened in France, Germany, Netherlands, U.K. or the U.S. So I just wondered if that's the case, if I've got the right reading of that.

I mean first of all, we think that we are going to see price increases during the year. We talk to suppliers, and we feel that they are willing to increase price. Now what we don't know is the extent of that and by how much it's going to be proportional to the copper evolution when it comes to cable, et cetera. So that's what we are saying. We're not saying that suppliers are not going to increase price.

And as we said, we have an hypothesis of price increase for next year, which is around 2%.

Now what I would say also is that the dynamics between the Chinese market and the other markets is totally different in terms of price. Price, especially when it comes to -- I mean, China, especially when it comes to industrial automation, has experienced a price war around -- during the last 2 years, which is coming down in the second part of 2025.

And it's not a surprise that the suppliers would want to catch up and to increase price. So no, I want to be clear. If my comments were read as, we don't see suppliers wanting to increase price. It's not what I wanted to say. We think that there are going to be price increases very clearly. We have evidence -- I don't know if the letters were sent, but we have evidence of suppliers telling us that they will increase the price very clearly. Now the uncertainty is really about the quantum.

Got it. Got it. And then the other question I had is along the lines of a couple of sort of questions on the delta inflation or the inflation gap. I'm just trying to think about a macro sort of external scenario where you could have your margins expanding like really meaningfully by, say, 30, 50 basis points in the year. What would you need to see for that to happen? Does it just need faster growth than 3% to 5% for that to take place?

Look, I mean, that's very easy. If you look at the guidance for next year, we are guiding for 20 bps of drop-through improvement in volume on a reasonable year, which is a 2% growth year. I think a 2% growth year is a reasonable average year. So that's one thing. And we are guiding also to, as I said, 15 bps of cost savings improvement. So that's already 35 bps if you are in a balanced situation, which is going to happen on a given cycle between those 2 inflation figures.

So right there, on a year like 2026, you're delivering -- I mean, it's not done. I mean we have to deliver it, but you're delivering 35 bps of improvement. If you have a little bit more growth, which is not crazy to think of when you think about all the prospects of data centers, electrification, et cetera, and the recovery in Europe. If you have a little bit more growth, you're going to easily get to 50 bps. So I think it's not crazy to imagine a scenario like that because what I should say is that when I look at the 15 bps of cost savings, I am quite confident that this is something which is sustainable on a yearly basis.

You have seen our figures about productivity evolution. We are quite proud of what we have done in terms of setting the bar higher in terms of productivity. And when we come to cost savings, productivity is a good proxy of what we are doing. And we will continue to do that. And AI is a potential help in that.

So yes, absolutely. I mean that's a good question because when you look at the 20 bps improvement between '25 and '26, you may think, okay, 7% is far away. But in reality, when we look at the prospects of a recovery in Europe or the prospects of having a normalization of this effect of differential between our cost inflation and the rest, we are quite confident. And when we look also at the acceleration of our action plans, we are quite confident about that.

That's really helpful. If I may, just a very quick one. You mentioned solar and EV charging sort of prebuy in the U.S., I think, is what the comments implied ahead of some regulation change. Is that something we need to -- could you quantify that?

Mostly on solar. I mean overall, solar, if I look at the solar business, the solar business in the U.S. grew by 4.2% in Q4 2025, which is the first time that we had -- I mean, no, I mean, I think it's at a group level, it grew by 4.2%, which is the first time in many quarters that it grew, and that's because of this U.S. effect.

Now in the U.S., the situation is that there is on one hand some of the federal subsidies, which are going to disappear at some point during the year. So there is a little bit of to pre-buy to qualify the project, and it will be going to continue to go on for commercial projects during the year. And there is a fact also that there is also a lot of regulations which happen at state level and a bulk of our business is done in California, which means that on the other hand, I think California wants to try to offset that and to push solar.

So we see where it goes. But at the end of the day, we got good figures in solar in Q4 '25 and positive figures. Now that being said, you know that solar today in our mix of businesses represents approximately 3.5% of our total sales. A few years ago, it used to be at 6% when there was a boom in Europe. We continue to see -- we will continue to see growth in the future. Is it going to come back to 6%, I don't think so. Not anytime soon, but that's a little bit the situation.

[Operator Instructions] Next question is from Aron Ceccarelli, Bank of America.

I have 2, please. The first one is on Europe, in the presentation, you called out market share gains in a challenging market in France, but also in Austria. I was wondering if you can expand a little bit about how you think about the sustainability of these market share gains as we enter 2026, please?

Look, I mean, first of all, I'm always quite cautious about market share gains. Now what I feel comfortable with is that those gains were not acquired by price. And you have seen that, and we have been able to be quite disciplined in terms of margin overall at group level. But I can tell you that in France and in Austria, we didn't buy market share. We gained market share through better service and competition, through better value add that we bring to our customers.

And you have to understand that our B2B customers, they are obviously focused on the price of the products. But they are very interested in the value that we can add and in the value that they can lose if the distributor is not providing the right level of expertise, service, et cetera.

So because of that, I'm quite encouraged by that to the fact that it's going to be durable. Is it going to last forever? Certainly not. We have good competitors. They will do their homework. And at some point, in the midterm, they will rebalance things probably.

But right now, I think we are on the momentum, which is going to last for a few more quarters, I hope. And I have a good degree of confidence because of the way we have gained market share.

Got it. My second question is on your opening remarks. You mentioned several times, good momentum in industrial automation in different countries. Could you perhaps expand a little bit on this topic and how you see industrial automation at the moment for you?

Look, I mean, first of all, I should give you an exposure to where we are big in industrial automation. We are big in industrial automation in the U.S., in Canada, a little bit in Europe, in China and in India.

And I can also give you figures, our industrial automation business in Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 in the U.S., which is the most important country, was minus 4%, 1%, 3%, 8%. We saw a clear acceleration during the year of industrial automation, which is due to the fact that when you look at the recent publications, the [ ISM ] is now, for the first time, significantly above 50, which is a good sign. You have the clear effect starting to kick in of the tariffs, which is triggering reshoring.

We flagged since the beginning, the fact that at some point, it would happen. When I look at the prospects of the industrial automation suppliers, they seem to be quite encouraging also. So at the end of the day, what is happening is not a surprise. And because we are big in industrial automation in the U.S., we benefit from that.

When it comes to other countries, I think we commented a little bit on China and on the price effect in the second part of the year. Now that being said, in terms of volume, it continues to be relatively subdued, and let's put it this way. India is good, but it's small. And in Europe, the topic is the overall industrial investment, which is not great, the level of confidence in many countries in Europe, including in Germany and in France, which are 2 big countries where we have industrial automation is not yet mid-cycle to say the at least. So there is potential in there.

If I may, just a clarification on pricing. So you -- am I correct saying you mentioned 2% is coming from the suppliers so the cable one, and then the remaining is going to be flat? Is that the guidance for the year?

No. We said 2% overall average, including copper, including suppliers, including all suppliers. We think that there is going to be price in almost all categories. It's going to depend once again on the specific category, supplier/country situation, but we think there's going to be price a little bit everywhere.

Last question is from Eric Lemarie, CIC Market Solutions.

I've got 2. The first one, you mentioned at the last strategic update. You said roughly that 10% of the data centers market is addressable by distributors? Is it still the case today? Or is it now more than 10%?

And my second question regarding the so-called acceleration businesses you presented at the last Capital Markets Day this time. Could you tell us the growth generated by these businesses in 2025 and maybe the weight in the sales from acceleration businesses?

Yes. So I don't remember saying 10% of the market of data centers was addressable by distribution. And if said it, it was more order of magnitude. I don't think that I had in mind precise studies saying that.

What I can tell you is that, first of all, the proportion of data centers in our business is growing. When you look at North America, when you look at the U.S., I think it's North America, we are now at 7% of our business, which is data centers. So it's starting to be sizable. I mean a few quarters ago, we were talking about 3%. We are now at 7%.

The second thing I would say is that the range of products that we supply to the data centers industry is expanding. We started with -- and it may be particular to Rexel. Some other competitors may be more advanced than us, but I think we are catching up fast. We started with cable, and now we get a little bit more into more advanced things, like switch gear, et cetera.

Now we are staying in the gray part of the data centers. I don't think it's going to be easy for us to enter into the white part of the data center, which is very much going direct or through specialized players.

But we are expanding the proportion that we were able to address and we're expanding that quarter after quarter, which I mean, first of all, the opportunity is growing fast and our ability to grab a bigger part of this opportunity is also progressing.

I think on the acceleration businesses, I can give you the figure for Q4 because I have it under my eyes. I don't have the full year, maybe I'll find it back for the next opportunity.

Basically, the total business accelerators, including solar, HVAC, EV, industrial automation, datacom, utilities, is representing in Q4, 30% of our mix, and it's growing at 3.9% which is very slightly above the overall growth of the group in Q4 2025, which was 3.8%.

And so the fact is that data centers are not included in that. The datacom part is included in that, but data centers because we try to be consistent with what we have given you in 2024 is not included in that. If I was to add data centers, obviously, we would add 3% at group level, and we would add a 3%, which grew in Q4 at north of 50%. So it would improve a little bit the accelerating part of it.

And I think that's the beauty also of those acceleration businesses. There are years where things are accelerating in solar. And then the next year it's going to be less good in solar, but it's going to be good in data centers, et cetera. And the good thing is because there is not one trend, but 5 or 10 trends supporting the acceleration of our business, we're always going to see the benefit of that. I hope I gave sufficient answer even if I didn't find the full year results.

Can I ask a follow-up one?

Sure.

Yes. Could you -- you mentioned that your range of products are expanding for data centers, but could you tell us whether Rexel will be well placed in your view for the future deployment of 800 VDC solution within data centers. Is it something that you will be able to?

Can I come back to you later on that because I don't have the answer to that. I need to talk with my teams.

Mr. Texier, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Look, I mean, thank you very much for your questions and your interest in Rexel. As you can tell, we had solid results in 2025. We are proud of those results. And we think that we're entering 2026 with good momentum, both on the market side and also on our internal momentum side, so we have confidence in the future. And we'll talk to you for the Q1 sales in April. Thank you very much, and have a good evening. Bye-bye.

Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Rexel's Third Quarter 2025 Sales Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Texier, Group CEO of Rexel. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our Third Quarter 2025 Sales Presentation. I appreciate you making the time to be with us so early. As always, I'm joined by Laurent Delabarre, our Group CFO, who will walk you through the detailed sales figure in just a few minutes. But first, I'd like to take a look at the key highlights of the quarter and share how our transformation continues to support our growth and performance, even in a complex and evolving environment. So let's get started.

We delivered solid top line momentum with Q3 '25 being the 6th consecutive quarter of sequential improvement. We are also maintaining rigorous pricing and we keep investing with discipline where demand is strongest. At the same time, we are progressing on our Axelerate 2028 road map, raising digital adoption, deploying AI to improve speed and accuracy across commercial and operations and reinforcing the balance sheet. You saw in our press release that we delivered EUR 4.8 billion of sales in Q3 '25, up 3% on a same-day basis, with North America continuing to be our primary growth engine. Three key highlights to keep in mind. First, the momentum is driven by high-growth segments where we are investing with success. Data centers and broadband infrastructure represent 12.5% of U.S. sales and contributed for more than half of our Q3 growth.

We are scaling to support this demand, including the opening of a new 80,000 square foot distribution center in Reno to better serve the Western U.S. Second, on pricing, notably in the U.S., we maintained strong discipline with effective pass-through of tariff-related increases in the competitive market. And lastly, in Europe, despite a softer backdrop, we saw sequential improvement notably driven by an acceleration in France, Benelux and DACH region with market share gains in key markets. Overall, Europe was positive in the quarter if you exclude solar, reflecting the strength of our diversified footprint.

Turning now to Slide 4. Let me take a moment to discuss our capital allocation strategy. Our Axelerate 2028 road map continues to pass important milestones. First, the digital penetration stood at 33% of sales in Q3 2025, reflecting sustained adoption of our e-commerce and omnichannel tools. Second, we are accelerating initiatives to harness AI across pricing, sales enablement, customer service procurement and logistics, improving speed, accuracy and the customer experience. Third, we remain disciplined in our capital allocation. We completed the disposal of our activities in Finland in September, issued a new EUR 400 million senior notes due 2030 to optimize our debt profile and deployed EUR 50 million in share buybacks since the beginning of the year. These actions clearly strengthen our operating model and sharpen our portfolio.

On Slide 5, let me spend some time to update you on our ComEx -- Executive Committee. As you know, we are a decentralized model with the country CEO being owners of their business under common best practices and governance. As you can see, the leadership team is very close knit, which helps us to be both agile and fully aligned to accelerate our transformation. And let me comment on the recent changes. As you know, we have reinforced the cluster organization to favor best practices sharing between countries. So Thomas Moreau has extended his responsibility and is now in charge of a Europe and cluster, including France, U.K., the Netherlands and Italy. Thomas Stadlhofer is currently CEO for Austria and will lead the DACH cluster in January 2026, replacing Robert Pfarrwaller who is retiring after having done a great job for Rexel.

Roger Little is still in charge of North America; and Pierre Benoît who hand over the cluster to Thomas, is our CEO for Belgium until he retires at the end of the year. Isabelle Hoepfner has also taken on HR in addition to her previous responsibilities as General Secretary. And Julien Neuschwander is now in charge of Digital. He was at Rexel, France and replaces Guillaume Dubrule, who is now in charge of Germany. And of course, Laurent maintain his remit as Group CFO as well as leading on China and India.

And talking about Laurent, with that, let me now hand over to Laurent, who will take you through the detailed numbers for the third quarter.

Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to all. Let's start on Slide 7 with the different building blocks of our Q3 '25 sales performance. Our sales of EUR 4.8 billion were stable on a reported basis with organic and M&A, our 2 main pillars, both at work, but offset by currency effects. Indeed, while the organic growth stood at plus 2.7% on an actual day basis, our acquisition strategy contribute to plus 0.5% net of both New Zealand and Finland disposals. And we have closed the disposal of Finland in September, which has been excluded from our scope as of September 1. The scope impact includes the positive contribution of Itesa in France, TECNO-BI in Italy as well as Schwing and Warshauer in the Northeast region of the U.S. and Jacmar in Canada.

For full year '25, we anticipate the scope effect to be close to 0.9% based on already completed acquisitions and the 2 disposals I mentioned. The currency effect stood at minus 3.3% in Q3 '25, mainly due to the depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the euro. Assuming unchanged spot rates until year-end, we now anticipate a currency impact of minus 2.3% for the full year '25.

On Slide 8, you see the selling price impact and the breakdown of our sales evolution by geography. Our trajectory is clearly improving with 6 consecutive quarters of better same-day sales growth. And at group level, we progressed regularly from minus 4.6% in Q1 '24 to plus 3% in Q3 '25, demonstrating consistent execution and pricing discipline. And first, on pricing, selling prices contributed to plus 1.4% to the sales growth in the quarter, including cable and non-cable, a similar effect compared to Q2 '25. Non-cable selling price were up plus 0.9%, mainly driven by the tariff in the U.S. We still have 2 product families that are deflationary. Solar products with an effect broadly similar to Q2 '25 and steel conduits in the U.S. sequentially improving with the second wave of tariff on steel and aluminum.

Cable pricing contributed for plus 0.5% in the quarter, similar to Q2 '25. And by geography, we saw North America remaining the main growth engine, up plus 7.4%. Europe stood at minus 0.5% and APAC improved sequentially, now close to breakeven. I will detail Europe and North America in the next slide and more specifically on Asia Pacific, accounting for 6% of group revenues. China was down minus 4.1% in a still challenging industrial market environment with export activities facing headwinds following the introduction of the U.S. tariff. The sequential improvement versus Q2 '25 is supported by a slightly better volume and easier base effect from last year.

In Australia, sales were close to breakeven, improving compared to Q2 '25, thanks to residential and nonresidential markets, boosted by solar activity supported by the introduction of subsidies on batteries. And lastly, India, which is small but grew very significantly with sales up 26% as we capture the growth in Industrial Automation.

The next slide, Slide 9, focused on our performance in Europe. Our Q3 '25 same-day sales stood at minus 0.5%, a resilient performance driven by market share gains in an environment that remains soft. As Guillaume said, this performance is positive, up plus 0.6%, excluding the solar segment. As a reminder, Q2 '25 was down 3%. The sequential improvement is mainly explained by better trends in residential, excluding solar, in several countries like Sweden, France, Netherlands, Austria and Germany. And more specifically, let me highlight the key change in the quarter. France continued to progress, supported by strong demand from small contractor, especially air conditioning, plus further market share gains and a favorable base effect since summer '24 was impacted by the Olympic Games. Benelux returned to positive territory, helped by air conditioning in the Netherlands and solar business in Belgium. The DACH region remains negative, but improved sequentially, thanks to Switzerland and Austria, while Germany stayed soft, mainly due to the difficult environment plus the selectivity strategy implemented to protect profitability.

Sweden was broadly stable, excluding solar and restated from September '24 one-off as we benefited last year from a cyber attack affecting one of our competitor. Lastly, the U.K. was still impacted by a tough market, along with business selectivity and branch closure.

On Slide 10, we turn to our performance in North America, where same-day sales were up a robust 7.4% with similar trends in both countries. While projects activity continued to be the main growth driver of the quarter in Canada, it was interesting to see the proximity business above projects in the U.S. The level of backlog remains overall at a good level, representing 2.3 months of sales at the end of September, very similar to the level at the end of June. And let's summarize the key highlights for our 2 countries. In the U.S., same-day sales growth stood at plus 7.4%, driven by nonresidential demand and continued strength in high-growth segments with data center and broadband infrastructure up almost 50%. Selling price, excluding piping, were up mid-single digit in the quarter. The pricing of steel conduit product is still negative, but improved sequentially. Canada saw same-day sales growth of 7.5%, a very strong performance, still driven by nonresidential and industrial projects, and we saw datacom accelerating, boosting by our commercial initiatives.

And let me now hand back to Guillaume before we move to our questions.

Thank you, Laurent. Before continuing to the guidance, let me give you a bit more color on our data center business because it was an important topic of discussion during our latest roadshows, obviously. I'm on Slide 12. Data centers are a major growth engine in which Rexel's scale and capabilities give us a clear advantage. 3 years after launching the initiative with the major acquisition and a dedicated national account team, data centers now represent about 5% of our U.S. sales and are growing rapidly, up more than 50% over the first 9 months of 2025 with double-digit sequential growth in Q3 versus Q2. Our value proposition there combines national coverage, strong product availability and deep expertise in gray space and power distribution, offering a complete portfolio with cable, busbar, gear, conduits and more.

We are adding logistics capability in Atlanta and Reno to further boost product availability and customer service. And as you can see on the map, our DC network is well positioned to serve leading data center markets. Lastly, the demand that was initially concentrated in the Eastern U.S. is spreading to Texas and California, giving us confidence in continued momentum and share gains in these high-growth segments.

Moving to Slide 14. We have confirmed our 2025 guidance. On sales guidance, we have narrowed the range with a 2.1% same-day sales growth in the first 9 months of the year, we are now targeting slightly positive same-day sales growth for full year 2025. As you know, we benefited in the U.S. from good momentum in high-growth segments and the higher selling prices that resulted from tariffs. On profitability, we have confirmed the 6% adjusted EBITA margin target. This represents a strong achievement as it compares with the 4.2% reached at the low point of previous cycles. Overall, while we are clearly benefiting from the tariffs in the U.S., the competitive environment remains intense. We are, therefore, maintaining our strong focus on cost initiative and productivity to be much leaner and agile compared to the past and reach our guidance. And lastly, we continue to target a free cash flow conversion of approximately 65%, excluding the EUR 125 million [ fine ] mentioned earlier.

And lastly, on Slide 15, you'll be hearing for those who participate more from us tomorrow during our strategic update from the Rexel Expo in Paris. So a few words about that. We'll take the opportunity to reaffirm our midterm ambition and showcase Rexel's transformation across energy efficiency and transition technologies, services, innovation and digital offerings. With 25,000 expected visitors and more than 200 exhibitors, Rexel Expo offers a unique opportunity to engage our customers and partners and to show them Axelerate '28 in action. We'll be delighted to welcome those of you who are able to join us during the Paris Expo, a major event in our calendar.

And thank you for your attention for this short sales presentation. And Laurent and I will now take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from Martin Wilkie of Citi.

It's Martin from Citi. The question I had was just coming back on pricing, particularly in the U.S. You talked about mid-single-digit pricing excluding piping. But when we think about the pattern going into the fourth quarter, I think you previously said that piping could be close to flat year-on-year, just given the comp from last year. Is that still the case? And also just to clarify on the tariff benefit in the quarter, should we see some incremental benefit of that, particularly from Section 232 in Q4, so we can expect non-cable pricing higher both on the comp from piping, but also incremental tariff?

Yes. So in terms of piping, it's true that as the year progresses and the comparison base becomes a little bit easier and as the sequential pricing of piping is slightly going up, you will see improving figures on the piping category, which is one of the main detractors to the price figures in the U.S. Is it going to be positive? I don't think so in Q4, based on our calculations, it's still going to be slightly negative.

Slightly negative, but improving to Q3.

Slightly negative, but improving. Now when it comes to tariff benefits, what we are seeing is a full quarter effect of the price increases, which have been implemented. So we are still seeing an appreciation of pricing, but not that much in reality. So you will see a sequential improvement, a slight sequential improvement, I think, of pricing in the U.S. based on those 2 elements in Q4. Is it going to be super meaningful? I'm not sure. So I don't know, Laurent, if you want to add anything to that?

No, no. I mean we have this improvement in the piping, but the rest will remain overall flat between Q3 and flat or slightly positive as we have the full effect of the recent price increases. Now is there any additional price increases based on the recent events in terms of tariffs, not at this stage.

That's really helpful. And if I could just clarify also, you talked about intense competition in certain markets. Is that just in certain categories? And is that more intense competition earlier in the year? Or has that been a comment?

No, look, maybe the word intense was a little bit too intense. There is competition. It's something that we have flagged since the beginning of the year. So there is pressure, which leads us to carefully select the business that we are doing to maintain gross margin at the right level. But no sequential change compared to what we have seen earlier in the year. So it's not a signaling that anything specific is happening there. And this competition level is true for all businesses. It's true, especially in Europe, obviously, as the volumes being low, everybody is eager for volume. And it's also true to some extent in the U.S., where even though we have much better figures, there is competition in all spaces, including data centers. But once again, Martin, no particular change compared to what we have experienced in H1 and in last year.

The next question is from Daniela Costa of Goldman Sachs.

I have 2 questions. One, more on the short term and the other one more on the medium term. I'll start with a shorter-term one. I mean we've seen during pandemic that you have great data with weekly trends and so on. And France seems to have been very strong on the quarter. But given all the political things, can you talk a little bit of what you are seeing sort of like in your data throughout the quarter and towards the end of it? That's the first one, and then I'll ask the second one after.

Look, I mean, first of all, you've seen the figures for France in the third quarter. They were quite good at 3.8%, if I remember well. They were boosted by a specific demand in air conditioning during the summer. But that being said, still, those are good figures compared to other European countries. I think it's also due to the fact that we are gaining market share, as we said previously. Now are the recent political changes going to change anything? Look, Daniela, it's -- unfortunately, we've been living in this environment since 1 year with limited duration government, difficulties to have a budget and frozen initiatives, economic initiatives a little bit everywhere.

So I'm not sure the new evolution of politics in France is changing anything to the business environment. And as we are looking at our order intake, it continues to be very good and in line with what we have seen in Q3. That being said, I should say also that we are in the middle of what we saw in the last slide, which is Rexel Expo which is usually a short-term booster to the activity. So I'm not sure it's -- we have enough data to say that something is going to change in either direction. I would say that the political recent evolutions are uneven for France in terms of business.

Got it. And then just more -- you're doing some investments organically in data centers in the U.S. I guess there's a lot of talk about data center growth also spreading more globally into Europe. Is there -- how do you view sort of the need for CapEx and for more reinvestment to fulfill that growth potential in the U.S. and more broadly organically and inorganically going forward?

I mean, look, as we have explained, we are investing a little bit in there, but investing means constituting a team of centrally dedicated people. I think we have no more than 10 people and investing also in distribution centers, but those distribution centers are midsized distribution centers. And for the moment, we have done one in Atlanta and one in Reno. So you're not talking big CapEx, nothing which would change the overall trends in terms of the CapEx of Rexel in percentage of sales, even at the North American level. So you're talking relatively limited investment at the end of the day.

The next question is from William Mackie of Kepler Cheuvreux.

A couple of questions. One, about the DC business generally in terms of how you grow it. Could you maybe just describe a little bit about how your data center business differs from your proximity business with regard to your obligations to carry working capital and fulfill -- maybe that leads on to the second area of the questioning, which is the composition of backlog. Maybe just to talk a little bit more about how the backlog has been developing and how you see that evolving into the second half, fourth quarter?

No, absolutely. So the distribution centers business doesn't differ that much in terms of working capital requirement. I think -- I mean, Laurent, do you want to explain?

Your question -- it's on data center?

Yes.

Yes. Well, it's similar to large projects, meaning that we don't use the footprint. Sometimes it goes direct. Sometimes we may use for specific project, small dedicated warehouses to serve our DC customer. Usually, at the end, the gross margin is slightly lower than the one of the proximity, but the cost to serve is lower as well. So the EBITA contribution is very close.

But I think that William's question was probably more about working capital. And in terms of working capital, yes, we have distribution centers dedicated to that. But the way it works is that we stage all the material which is necessary for the data center job. This material usually is paid for and bought and is owned by the customer which means that in terms of working capital profile, it doesn't change much to what we are doing. So you will not see any particular evolution of the working capital profile based on data centers.

What was your second question again?

Backlog.

Backlog. Backlog evolution in the U.S. Backlog evolution in the U.S. is relatively stable. It's at 2.6 months of sales, similar to what we had in Q2 '25. So no particular evolution. We are executing the backlog, but in the same time, we are replenishing it with data centers, but not only with data centers with a little bit of everything, including commercial and infrastructure jobs. So it's a relatively healthy business at this stage with good order intake and good quoting activity also. So at this stage, the question is about Q4. I don't see any particular signal of that slowing down. I have no concerns about any evolution of this kind for Q4. It's stable. That's the only thing I can say.

And just a small follow-up with regard to your activity levels in M&A, which have been very high this year with 5 successful acquisitions and 2 disposals. Could you throw a little more color on your thoughts or what we should expect in the next 3 or 4 months with regard to your pipeline for additional M&A or perhaps your view on the rest of the portfolio and if there are further assets or businesses which may be noncore?

Okay. So in terms of further acquisitions, we have a pipeline which is not extremely full. So I don't think that you're going to see anything meaningful in the -- during the rest of the year. You're going to maybe see small or midsized acquisitions, but you're not going to see any -- I mean, small acquisitions, but certainly not anything meaningful at your level. When it comes to disposals, yes, since the beginning of the year, we have disposed Finland and earlier New Zealand. Now at this stage, we have no process taking place, but it's always part of the strategic levers at some point, if needed. But at this stage, I would say that we have no particular plans to divest anything.

The next question is from George Featherstone of Barclays.

Just wanted to touch on India. It's been a pretty good bright spot for you guys in the third quarter. Just wonder if you have some plans to expand at all in the region in line with the plans from some of your suppliers.

Look, I mean, in India, first of all, we have made the decision several years ago for India and China to be fully dedicated to industrial automation. So when it comes to construction, commercial buildings, et cetera, you're not going to see us anytime soon getting into this space, which is a complex space in those countries where the credit management topics is difficult. And sometimes the compliance topic can be difficult, too. So we will continue to stay focused on Industrial Automation. You're right that we had a very good evolution over the last few years in India with good success in progressing this industrial automation business. And I think you will see us continuing to build on that organically and maybe through acquisitions if need be.

That being said, it's a small business, and it will continue to remain relatively small. So you're not going to see it expanding and growing 10x because we are -- once again, because we are -- we have no plans in entering those big volumes activities, which are construction-related businesses. So you will see the kind of growth rates that you are seeing in India, which is very often double-digit growth rate. So we are happy with that. We will try to expand on it, but no plans to change the profile of our business and to go into construction.

Okay. And then just a second one on restructuring plans. You've been doing some FTE reduction through the year and as well last year. But clearly, now some of the volume trends are looking a little bit more encouraging. Do you think you've done the right level of restructuring now and we shouldn't expect any more plans in the year ahead?

I mean there is always -- I mean, we are in the middle of -- we are in continuous transformation, and we always try to optimize. It's true that the bulk of the adaptation that we needed, especially in the U.K. and in Germany is now behind us. You're going to see a little bit of that during the rest of the year, but less in proportion to what we have seen before. Laurent?

Yes. And in terms of restructuring costs, we said around EUR 25 million in H1 for the full year. And we have no very big plan. But at the end of the year, I will be -- because of phasing, we have accelerated some measure in some countries. I would be a bit north of EUR 30 million.

The next question is from Delphine Brault of ODDO BHF.

I have 2 and will ask them one at a time. First, can you be a bit more specific on the electrification segment by segment, so heat pumps, solar and EV and how this has evolved in the recent months?

Yes. So in recent months, what we have seen in terms of electrification is -- I mean, Laurent, maybe you can take the question.

Yes. I mean in global electrification is slightly up 3.8% overall with a very different mix of activity. So solar is still negative, around minus 7%. And where we are booming is the HVAC, especially in France and Netherlands, as we pointed out. Datacom also, this is the tally case. This is the 2 big fish. Industrial Automation is still mute, progressing, but in the around zero line so far. So that's the big bucket.

And then from what we see, Europe as -- well, has not really started to rebound on the residential segment. What is your central scenario as regard to the timing of the recovery in the residential market in Europe? I know that in some countries, it has started, but some are still lagging behind.

Look, it's a little bit early to talk about scenarios for 2026. What we can say is that, as you just mentioned, when we look at the residential part of our business, we see that especially if you exclude solar, which is troubling a little bit the figures. In Q3, we were positive in France, in Belgium, in the Benelux, let's put it this way, and in Sweden and in Switzerland. So we are starting to see positive evolutions compared to last year, which is a good sign. When we look at leading indicators, in several countries and some of them being the same one that I mentioned, we see also positive trends when it comes to transaction in housing and in terms of housing starts. So all of that is pointing in the direction of a progressive recovery. We are quite cautious about that, especially when it comes to our figures in Q3.

As you know, they were also a little bit impacted by the summer and by the air conditioning demand, et cetera. So we shouldn't read too much into that. But when we look at those figures, it allows us to be cautiously optimistic about a progressive recovery in Europe. Now when it comes to the scenario, I would prefer to wait until the end of the year to wait until we have budget discussions with the countries and to give you the guidance in February.

The next question is from Andre Kukhnin of UBS.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you okay.

Okay. Great. Can I just come back to the non-cable pricing and that kind of sequentially flat evolution versus Q2 in terms of the year-on-year growth. Could you talk about the moving parts in that? Because we thought that you should get some sequential improvement or step up from the 0.9% that you saw in Q2 already, at least with the full effect of U.S. tariffs. Was this something that moved negatively? And maybe in the context of that, could you comment on what's happening in pricing in China Industrial Automation?

Laurent, do you want to get a little bit more into that?

Yes. First, in China, the pricing between Q2 and Q3 is very similar, slightly positive. What impact us in China is mostly the improvement in volume, not that much that the market improved, but there was a base effect last year. In North America, the evolution of the non-cable pricing, if we exclude the conduit is up 4.4% in Q3, and it is slightly better than in Q2. We were expecting a bit more inflation. But in fact, what has been passed through on the market with the competitive environment has been a bit lower on that. And for Q4, we expect that it should slightly improve, but not that much.

Very helpful. And just one more question. On the U.S. performance ex data centers, I think it implies that you grew about 4%. Was there a meaningful difference between the industrial versus commercial activity?

Actually, can you repeat the question, please?

And just looking at the U.S. growth ex data centers and broadband, I think it implies it's about 4% growth, if you said half came from data center broadband. So I just wanted to check if that's similar between the Industrial Automation versus the rest of the commercial? Or was there a meaningful difference?

Industrial Automation is positive. It's a little bit lower than the rest, but it's positive, which is a progress compared to the beginning of the year, and that's what I would say.

And the rest is non-resi activity and a bit of resi, but only in the Northwest of the U.S.

The next question is from Ben Uglow of OxCap.

I had a couple. First of all, Guillaume, on the cluster, the organizational changes, can you just sort of explain some of that a bit more? I just wanted to understand what's the strategic rationale? And how is it different? How is it going to be different in practice from how you've operated before? That was my first one.

No. I guess, Ben, first of all, this cluster organization is in place since 2 years. So we have changed a little bit the breakdown of countries between clusters. But the whole idea behind that is that the countries are still managed on a country-by-country basis. So the P&L is owned by the country CEOs. But that being said, what we wanted to do is to push a little bit more the synergies on some interesting topics like services, like also supply chain, procurement, et cetera. In most of those countries, there is a possibility to gain additional efficiency by doing more intense best practices sharing between countries. And really, what our experience is that it's better done in a small group of countries. So that's a little bit what we are doing here.

So those clusters are not going to be managed as one country, for example. I mean, we're not going to manage Ireland and France together for sure. But that being said, the intensity of best practices sharing between those countries, you're going to see it increase, and you're going to see more scale effect when it comes, for example, once again to purchasing, when it comes to services development, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a little bit the spirit behind that. We are not changing the relatively decentralized way we are operating, but we are adding a layer of harvesting the scale effect of Rexel.

Understood. And then on the, let's call it, the go-to-market or the approach with data centers. At the moment, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but really, what we're doing is essentially selling cables and busbars sort of ad hoc into data centers, that's what you're doing. Is there scope to change that product offering? Is there scope to broaden the range beyond there I say, standard products into gray space?

Yes. Look, I mean, I think what you're going to -- first of all, you have to understand that our progression in data centers has been starting from not much at the beginning because we were organized in a very regional way for historical reasons, which had the effect of making it difficult for national contractors to deal with us because they obviously want one price list, one logistics organization, et cetera. We changed that 2 years ago, and we are seeing very positive effects on that. And I would say that we are -- in terms of service offering on this particular part of the data center needs. I think we are on par with competition or in some cases, better in terms of the service levels.

So we have done that. Now you're right that we are mostly in the gray space. I think, frankly, that we are going to probably in the near future, stay in the gray space. Now there are opportunities within the gray space to enrich what we are doing -- and we are already seeing that. I mean, initially, we were mostly selling cable. And now we are enriching that to a little bit more switchgear, a little bit more complex materials, et cetera, as we are gaining credibility in the data center space. Now are we going to get into the white room? I'm not so sure in the short-term basis. It's not part of our plans. We have ample opportunities to gain market share without doing that.

The next question is from Miguel Borrega of BNP Paribas Exane.

The first one, just wondering with everything that is going on with aluminum and copper tariffs in the U.S., can you share how much was cable pricing specifically in the U.S. during Q3, please? I know it was 0.5% at the group level, but just wondering in the U.S. And then on non-cable pricing, I remember last quarter, you mentioning that some suppliers were pushing price between mid-single digit and some ranging to 20%. You don't seem that excited about pricing anymore. Do you also see suppliers not pushing for pricing that much after all?

And then one last question, just following up on data centers. If we take a step back, obviously, this is a segment that is booming. Everyone wants a slice of it. Can you just broadly comment on your competitive environment here? You just mentioned that you are at par or even slightly better than competition. How is the competitive environment here?

Okay. So in terms of cable pricing, which is in the U.S., mid-single digit in Q3. So it's still positive. You're right that there are many moving parts. There were tariff announcements at the end of July, followed by reduction of tariff announcements, followed by price increases in copper at the end of the quarter because of mine issues throughout the world. In all of that, the cable pricing saw a hike at the initial tariff announcement. and stayed there more or less during the quarter, which is a consequence of the pricing policies of the manufacturers. So that's a little bit where we are today, and we have a strong positive pricing in cable in the U.S.

Secondly, in terms of tariffs and the consequences of tariffs, you're right, Miguel, that compared to our initial expectations in Q2 or in Q1, we have seen a more, I would say, I don't know if it's reasonable or more modest price increase policies of manufacturers. I think manufacturers are trying to be as sensible as possible and to push price increases when the tariff situation is certain and trying to absorb a little bit of it in their margin. So because it's an environment which is good in the U.S. but which is not absolutely booming, which means that people want to pay attention to the way they push price. We still have healthy price increases, as we have said. But that being said, it's nothing in the range of the 20% that we probably were seeing in the initial announcement at the beginning.

So the reality is that we are in the mid-single-digit range. It will probably continue to progress a little bit as we see the full effect of tariffs. Is it going to get to 10% or 20% in some categories? I don't think that. But that's okay because you know that there are 2 parts to this equation. On one hand, we tend to like price increases. On the other hand, it's always a hurdle to the volumes, et cetera. So I think we are in this situation. And no change compared to what we were seeing at the end of H1, by the way. At the end of H1, we had already the same question and the same discussion about the fact that tariff price increases were probably more reasonable than what we had anticipated at the beginning.

Data centers and data center competitive situation, look, I mean, it's difficult for me to comment too much on that. I think we are not the leader in terms of data centers. If you look at the proportion of data centers that we have in our U.S. business, we are at 5%. And I think some competitors are probably north of 10%, very clearly because of previous acquisitions, because of historical presence in this space. It's obviously a negative in a way and a positive because the positive being that we have ample room to gain market share in this space once again. And it's all about the competition environment, obviously, like in any big opportunity is, is a disputed competition environment. I mean there is nothing where you wouldn't see competition with the big players, big national players, data centers are usually installed by national contractors, which means that they pay a lot of attention to having a national offering, which means that smaller regional players have more difficulties to play in this space. So that's one thing.

So the competition is limited to the big nationals. And in this environment of the big nationals, are we better, are we worse? I would say we are starting from a situation where 2 years ago, we were probably at a disadvantage compared to other national competitors. As I mentioned in my previous answer, I think that now we are in terms of the quality of service perceived by those contractors that we are talking to. From the feedback I get from them, it feels like we are on par or maybe slightly better depending on who you're talking to. It's difficult to give any more color to that, but I think we are in a good place, and we have the opportunity to continue to gain a little bit of market share in this fast-growing segment.

The last question is from Eric Lemarie of CIC Market Solutions.

I got a question on data centers. You mentioned this very strong growth of more than 50% for the 9 months in the U.S. in data centers. Could you tell us how do you see Q4 sales in data center in the U.S. Still in data centers, is there a possibility for Rexel to expand in data centers, but beyond the U.S.? And the last question on these 2 segments, data center and datacom. I understand why data centers are very dynamic, and I understand the megatrends behind. But regarding datacom and broadband infrastructure, is there any specific megatrends which could possibly explain the very strong growth in sales in datacom?

Yes. So first of all, in terms of data centers, we have a good backlog, and we will continue to enjoy a strong double-digit growth in Q4. I'm not going to give a precise forecast because it always depends on the timing of the projects. But you're going to see us continuing to see those very high growth rates in the foreseeable future and especially in Q4. So that's one thing. The second question was about opportunities in other regions. Obviously, I mean, the data center and the artificial intelligence business is much bigger in the U.S. than it is in other parts of the world. But it's true also that this business is also developing in other parts of the world right now.

So we have opportunities, and we will have opportunities probably in Europe at some point. Now with one element, which is that in Europe, as you know, large projects tend a little bit more than in the U.S. to go direct from manufacturer directly to the job site, which means that the participation of distribution in large projects is usually a little bit lower than what you would see in the U.S. because of the organization of the industry in Europe compared to the U.S. basically.

Now -- so which means that for hyperscaler equivalent in Europe, I don't think that distribution is going to participate a lot. Now when it comes to colocation data centers, when it comes to smaller edge data centers, which are also going to be part of the equation. I think I'm fully convinced of that at some point. Then you're going to see a little bit more business going through distribution. And so yes, it's going to be an opportunity. Is it going to be short term? I don't think so. But you're going to see that as an additional opportunity in Europe in the midterm, I think that's for sure.

Now your third question was about datacom. I don't know if you -- yes, we're going to have the opportunity tomorrow to talk about that and to expand specifically on the Talley acquisition. Now I would say in this call that globally, it's -- I mean, there are several reasons why we are growing so fast in the broadband infrastructure space. Some of them are linked specifically to the way we are integrating Talley. Some of them have to do with the specific strengths of Talley in their market, but some of them have to do with megatrends because if you think about it, the equipment in broad -- I mean, artificial intelligence, there needs to be computing capabilities.

And here, we are talking about data centers, obviously. But there needs also to be broadband network to make sure that people who are using artificial intelligence on their mobile are able to access it, which means that the requirement for additional bandwidth is continuous in the U.S. and accelerating. And the equipment, the 5G equipment was more of 4G plus equipment in most parts of the U.S. And so you're going to continue to see investment in the infrastructure by telecom operators to address those trends. So it's -- in general, it's a trend about more data, which is also a little bit linked to artificial intelligence and the promises of artificial intelligence because you need a terminal to be able to use artificial intelligence in the end.

Mr. Texier, there are no more questions registered at this time.

So thank you very much. For many of you, I'll see -- I mean, for the sell-side analysts, I think I'll see many of you tomorrow in Rexel Expo, and I'm looking forward to the discussion about how we make the midterm goals concrete in terms of day-to-day actions. And so hopefully, you're going to see an interest in those discussions. And for the rest of the participants to the call, next time we'll see you is going to be the full year results and the guidance for 2026. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones. Thank you.