Thermador Groupe Stock

Good evening. Welcome to all. Welcome to this webinar. We'll be commenting on the publication of our results. And as usual, we're going to talk, first of all, about our wonderful employees. Some of them are still here. A lot of them are on holiday. In terms of staffing levels, we're slightly up, 6.5% increase in volumes, and that reflects the Groupe's need to work on productivity today and the future.

Milestones, geopolitics, of course, with -- for the moment, not much visible impact on Thermador Groupe. But however, things to talk about, a price impact. We've already talked about that with the impact in terms of price rises that we've already passed on to our customers. No impact for the moment on the inflationary effect, but an impact in the future.

And to remind you, the main impact is on polyethylene and aluminum. So maritime transport costs well controlled. And the transport situation is not particularly affected because around 30% of our supplies are coming around the Cape of Good Hope. And so no major change because of these geopolitical events.

Prices then, the measurement that we did at the end of half year is a negative impact of 0.9%. It was minus 0.4% at the end of the first quarter. We see that the second quarter was minus 0.4%, and we'll see for the outlook whether we change our annual forecast.

A word about secondary markets for the construction and 3 dynamic segments in this rather desperate market, air-to-air heat pumps and air-to-water heat pumps and ventilation. Three of our subsidiaries are impacted in a positive way, Thermador and Isocel, which are on these markets for air-to-water in the terms of providing accessories to the manufacturers.

And Axelair, which is on the air-to-air heat pumps because Axelair sells accessories to that market. So Axelair also specialized in ventilation and therefore, benefits too from these 2 positive market trends. And it's a pleasure for us to see that Axelair has gone into a breakeven situation, which is great news.

New builds, new housing, I said, unfortunately, we still got a slight -- well, a slight improvement on building starts. And I say, unfortunately, it's not going very quick, and you'll see the prospects are not great.

Weather, like every year now, a lot of rain in the spring and heat waves quite remarkable levels of heat wave in June -- May, June and July, and that has slightly helped Axelair, which sells mobile compact air conditioning units. It's a very small part of their turnover, but it's substantial in terms of its size.

However, for water -- the watering market, poor levels of sales compared to what we've known in the past. For Jet -- Jetly slightly positive. but at a very -- very low level historically.

A word about Aello, which continues to win market share in the swimming pool market and good news on the legal front also because we have had the verdict from the arbitral court because the former employer of Jerome Chabaudie, who's the CEO of Aello has been attacking us and him for the grant of his appointment with us, and we've won that case.

So DPI management, things are changing. We saw the arrival of new sales director. and very soon, the arrival of the future CEO of DPI, Alexandra Stajura, and she will be there full time from September the 1st. She has got a long history with Thermador Groupe. She arrived as a young woman. She's very young, of course, but she arrived a few years ago at Jetly. She was Administrative Director and Financial Director at Odrea. And now she's taking on the challenge of DPI starting in September. I think she joined in 2008. So a quite normal length of service in Thermador Groupe.

So for the DIY market, Mecafer sold a lot of generators, which is a positive effect on their turnover for the first part of the year. However, for Odrea, continue to have difficulties with pretty brutal delisting from its customers. So Odrea is currently working on diversifying its product range in Spain and also in e-commerce to try and find solutions. And we've already seen progress in that area.

Look at the price and volume effects. And you see this on this slide, slightly negative in terms of the price, 0.9% 5.6% in organic sales growth. And if we add the 2, we get to 6.5% of increase in volumes. If we compare these figures to the last 6 years, we've seen that the current trend is to go towards a positive impact in terms of price and volumes. So that's encouraging.

Patricia, over to you for the figures.

In terms of turnover for the retail channel, turnover down 4.1% and negative price effect of minus 4.3%. So that leads to a diversity between Odrea, Mecafer [indiscernible] the same similar levels, Odrea has seen a negative situation in terms of its turnover.

Concerning the Pro channel, so there, we have the impact of our 2 new subsidiaries in 2025, and that's C2AI and Quilinox. And there we see the EUR 232 million compared to EUR 247 million. So we've got an increase -- 14.3% increase in turnover and to constant scope, that will be 7.6%. So there, we have a price effect as well, which is less.

So we've got increases in volume with the exception of 2 subsidiaries, Syveco and Sectoriel, who have drops in volumes of sales, not too worried about them, but we did comment that on the letter to the shareholders. So it's consolidated turnover of 11.3% up compared to 5.6% to constant scope. And that's the same trend that we had at the end of the first quarter.

Now moving on to results, profit. What does that give in terms of operating and net profit? In terms of operating profit, we are on 7.3% growth, which is greater than the increase in turnover. And we see the same trend on the net profit of 17.6% of profit. Some explanations for that concerning the trend changes to our profitability. It's important to see that the -- we've got in 17.2% we've got an increase in turnover. So we're above 12%, 12.8% with the main element to explain that, the improvement in our margin.

We've got a price effect as well, but we were able to manage these price effects, and we benefited over the first half year of the euro-dollar exchange rate. I remind you that more than 30% of our purchases are in dollars. So that helps our margin.

In terms of charges, when we look at those, they have increased 11.8%. That's in line with the increase in turnover. And the main items are, of course, headcount, personnel. And if we look '25 -- 2025 compared to 2026, we got 13.1% compared to 12.8% in 2025 last year.

But if we take into account for the first half of 2026, we've got the new -- 2 new subsidiaries. And when we reprocess that data, that gives us a more or less stable situation of 12.7% compared to 12.8% last year. Also, we did increase salaries, and we will continue to -- we will need to continue to improve our productivity in order to maintain this momentum.

So then as we continue the analysis, we look at net profit has increased in terms of a percentage of turnover, we've got 9.09%, so that's up compared to last year -- compared to last year. So we've got -- our tax rate has decreased slightly. And we've also got a positive situation with our financial result through the dollar effect and also the investment of our cash, which we invested, and I will comment on the level of cash -- the cash situation a little later.

And we continue on this graph, which gives us the operating profit as a percentage of turnover between 2009 and 2026. I say we're 12.2%, as I mentioned earlier. And if we compare that to 2019, 2020, which are pre-COVID years, we're not quite back to those levels, but we're close to the levels because we were at 12.8% in 2019 and 2020. And the introduction of our 2 new subsidiaries have affected that slightly in a downward direction.

In terms of profitability, Axelair was created in 2013, which for the first half of 2026 has for the first time, published positive results, partly because of the weather effect, and they continue to have with their mobile air conditioning units and its traditional market of ventilation, they continue to have good performance. So we saw that in the first quarter, and that's continued in the second quarter. So we looked at the evolution and we saw the business plan for Axelair, and we expect this level of profitability to continue to the end of the year.

I will focus on the companies that last year were losing money at the end of June 2025, strongly, the DPI first was affected by the amortization of goodwill relating to customer relationships, and that showed a negative result. This year to the end of 2026, that's not the case. So DPA -- DPI is slightly positive in terms of profit.

And then Thermacome work primarily on products in connection with new builds. So we've got a company which continues to be negative in 2026 with also the consolidated effect with the goodwill relating to customer relationships, which also has a negative impact, of course.

Profitability of our new -- 2 new subsidiaries, so C2AI, which is Fluid Information and Control. They've got 4.2% level of profitability compared -- when we talk about that level of 0.2%, we're not quite in line with what we expected in terms of the -- we've lost 4% compared to the business plan. So that's something that they need to work on. And we're hoping for their level of profitability to be improved in the second half year. For Quilinox, they're up exactly where we expect them to be in the business plan at 8.2%.

Our financial structure, so equity, the EUR 414 million, which can be compared to the capitalization of the value of the company of Thermador Groupe's shares, which is favorable. The value of our stock, and this is something that we already observed in March and which is still a question at the end of June with a drop in value in Europe in euros and the drop in 5.6%. And in the number of days of consumption, we have a drop of 28 days from 209 days and we're now at 181 days compared to 209 days last year.

So can we just come back with that on. Okay. for cash. So with stock turning on a downward trend and that has an impact on our working capital requirement, so that has an impact on cash capital. So we've got a cash position of EUR 104 million. So the variation compared to June 2025, we've got an increase in our loans in connection with the loan taken out to purchase Quilinox and that was started at the end of September 2025, that loan repayments.

We also mentioned at the end of December, we had an exceptional level of cash, which was 96.9%, but that continues because we're EUR 104.2 million. So that remains at a high level.

In terms of net cash flow variation, we've got cash flow from operations of EUR 32.1 million, change in working capital requirement with an increase in customer payables, receivables, excuse me, plus [indiscernible] and that gives us WCR of EUR 1.8 million. Drop in stock also on that slightly balances the customer payables.

And in terms of investment flows, that's obviously connected to our constructions that we started in the first half of 2026. We've already spent EUR 4 million on our CapEx investments. And that gives us a free cash flow level of nearly EUR 30 million. And our financing flows, which include dividends and loans, the loan linked to the purchase of DPI of EUR 22.6 million.

So the working capital requirement, which is given in our distribution companies, the value of stock is important, is high, of course. So we have operating working capital to net turnover. We were at 44% at the end of June 2025, and we're at 38.5% at the end of June 2026. So we've got less stock. Customer payables have increased, but compared to June 2025, we had an increase as well. So that's pretty stable.

So that -- and in terms of payables to suppliers, we've also got stock in transit because we've got EUR 33 million of stock on the boats. And we've also got orders that have made orders early to protect themselves against the price -- future price rises. And we've also had negotiations with major purchases to reduce this negative effect.

And there's also, I think, the effect of our good sales. And of course, that means we have to rebuild our stock levels for the second part of the year. And I didn't mention it, but Mecafer and Domac is one of the companies, which had to rebuild its stock levels because they had very high sales during the first half year. So we see that impact on our supplier debt.

I will continue now with the investments. So we started the year with an estimation at EUR 12.3 million, which we reduced because we thought that some of the projects were going to be -- going to be behind schedule. But then we reviewed the situation with our property company and our subsidiaries. And in fact, the level of investment will be at 11.6% or EUR 11.5 million, sorry, for the second half of the year.

For property, I remember that we've got 3 major projects this year. We've got Sferaco with the construction of an extension to the company to the building, and that's on target in terms of timing. That's EUR 2.9 million for the property and EUR 5 million for the automated system. That's over a period of 2 years. So a lot of that is being spent in 2026.

Then we've got C2AI. They were renting a building in Decines, and we decided to bring them closer to us to work in better synergy with our other companies with C2AI in particular. And so that's planned for August that they will come to Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in August. And that's another refurb of a building.

And the third is Distrilabo. We've launched an acquisition through -- on building from purchasing on plans, and that will be -- that will have more of an impact on the second half of 2026. In terms of our subsidiaries, we're working on the digitalization of our logistics. And this is one of the biggest impact. So I think that's all.

I'm going to hand over to Guillaume to talk about our reinvested dividends.

A little quick look at our share price over a period of 12 years, which is available on our website in real time, which compare to the CAC 40 listed companies for approximately a month now, we've seen a rebound in the Thermador share price. But I would ask you to check our analysts, as many as there are 5 of them who follow our share price, and that will give you a better insight into the prospects -- the future prospects for the Thermador Groupe share.

So let's talk about outlook. So in terms of new homes on the following curve, you'll see slightly positive trend in spite of ups and downs in terms of building starts, but it's pretty slow. However, that's the orange line. And on the blue line, you see that building permits are stabilized. And again, it's pretty chaotic and there's no net upward trend. And unfortunately, the increase in interest rates won't help that market.

A little word about summer comfort because as you can imagine, something important. I talked about it a little earlier on. exceptional month of June, and we'll see this in practical terms on 2 curves. CODIS, the chart for CODIS, who monitor the distribution of sanitation heating and also of wholesalers in France. And you see this peak in activity in June, which is primarily due to this very high level of activity on air-to-air heat pumps and ventilation and air conditioning.

Now we mustn't expect that level to be maintained, of course, because it's linked to the situation and the stocks are low. So it's very probable that this level will go down sharply in the months ahead.

There's a similar but lesser impact in the retail sector, and that's the chart of INOHA, which we see on the screen. And you see this peak in June of 5.4%, also helped by air conditioning demand. And again, we have to be prudent because this is really linked to the current situation with the climate.

Okay. The water cycle. I talk about this every quarter because I think it's a future market for Thermador Groupe. The water and rarity of water will increase water prices in France -- for water in France, and that's inevitable. And in Jetly, we have all the solutions. You might need to process, redistribute DPI for networks. for drinking water, and we're talking about that reuse of water of gray water.

And when we look at the different activities at Jetly, we see that the reuse of water is the most dynamic part of their business with a second quarter, which is better than the first for Jetly.

I'd also like to underline how we saw earlier with Aello, but also Sferaco, who have L'Essor for example, with the specialist of water distribution in France, and they continue to take market share.

A little word on another activity, which is parallel in terms of the product, but not in terms of the water cycle. And that subject is the electrification in France and Europe. When we talk about electrification, that means electrical networks and dry networks, and those are polyethylene networks. And those the same producers for the wet and dry networks, and that could help DPI. And they are one of those companies that were involved in the water cycle market in the Thermador Groupe.

Industry next, a quick focus on the general context. as the PMI index gives the general situation in France on the left and in Europe on the right. So we see it slightly above 50%. So it's slightly in progression, but also a few points also for the industry sector linked to geopolitics, the public authorities, whether European or France or indeed throughout the world, they're increasing their storage of strategic storage of hydrocarbons, and that can present interesting opportunities for the Groupe. Valves, for example, there are products destined for oil and gas industries.

We also have opportunities in the field of climate engineering. You might say we're talking about industry, but [indiscernible] in climate engineering, and I give the example of deep geothermals. We have industrial valves for that market. And that means having this dual use of these valves is an opportunity for the Groupe.

A little look at staff now. We're going to -- we're going to focus on the holdings staff and their IT team. Just to tell you, we are planning to increase the -- strengthen this team to answer the demands of our subsidiaries. There were 9 people in the IT department in 2021. I hope that there'll be 2024 and 2026. And by 2030, there will be 33 employees working for the Groupe and also to increase cybersecurity, of course, in the Groupe.

A word about prices. So it's going to be a difficult forecasting exercise at the beginning of the year, I said there will be a 2% positive price impact. But given what we've seen in the first half of the year, I think that for the third quarter will be better, will be more positive in terms of price. But I would review -- revise my forecast downwards with a price impact of between 1% and 2%.

A few words about international, the international sector with diverse fortunes. There what's most difficult is for Odrea in Spain and as well as the delisting of certain clients from some of their clients. They have -- they're trying to identify new channels and also new product ranges and developing e-commerce in Spain, and that's one of the projects that started in the first half, and that will continue in the second half. Thank you, Patricia, for that bit of information about Spain.

In Europe -- sorry, still in Spain, Quilinox is following good momentum since the beginning of the year. These are activities, which are buoyant, particularly the agro-food sector.

Good dynamic in Europe generally with excellent first half year of Sferaco. It's celebrated its 20th anniversary and we'll be finishing this year with a record turnover. And also, it would be worth underlining their profitability rate, which has increased by 2%. But they're -- not only are they increasing turnover, but they're also increasing their profit margin.

Sodeco in Belgium, a slight decline in the first quarter in terms of turnover. But there's a number of projects, which could allow them to get back to more positive fortunes. And I would remind you, on the 1st September, we've got the arrival of a person who is 100% dedicated to searching for new companies for potential purchase acquisition in Europe to accelerate our external growth in Europe.

A word about geopolitics. Unfortunately, the global wars currently going on having an impact on the international economy and of course, on the French economy, too. And there's no real signs of an end to these conflicts. And we are imagining long-term effects, especially on interest rates, in particular, in terms of the price of polyethylene and the price of aluminum and of course, later on transport costs, the maritime transport costs.

So we have a level of hedging, which allows us to take us through to the beginning of 2027. But if the situation continues, these wars continue, we will have to pass on increases in prices on these maritime shipping costs.

So in terms of the outlook, there's a question which has come in concerning DPI. Can you give us a color -- and the trend for DPI for the future. Can we help -- hope for a sustainable return to growth and 2023's turnover rate of EUR 42 million.

Yes, potential is certainly there to get to that level, even though there have been ups and downs, it's quite possible for DPI to get back to that level.

This is -- we're going through a transition, of course, a change in the general management and the sales department. And some of the teams have been renewed. It will take time for things to settle down, but we're very confident that they will return to those levels. Given that, as I said to you earlier, DPI is on certain markets, in particular, electrification, which are buoyant and promising markets for the future.

Polyethylene prices will have an impact. I hardly dare to talk about the price impact, but it will obviously increase our turnover. And the increase in price of polyethylene are up to 45%, but it goes up so quickly because it's linked to the oil price. So I'm pretty cautious about talking about that. If the prices of polyethylene increase too high, then that will block the market. So it's not necessarily always a positive thing.

But when we had the EUR 43 million turnover, there was a more positive effect of price increases at the time. And subsequently, there were the reverse effect, where the prices went down and therefore, a drop in price in turnover.

So the last graph to look over the last 6 years in terms of organic growth per quarter. You see the first 2 quarters, the base effect of the second part of the year will be less favorable because in terms of organic growth, we were plus 2.2% on the third quarter of 2025 and minus 1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025. So second part of the year will certainly be more complicated than the first half of the year for Thermador Groupe.

So I finished. We're now going to answer your questions. And I'm going to go immediately to see if there are any questions up for us already. So no questions on the English side.

You talked about the drop in price, but do you have a drop in raw material prices?

Yes, of course, we do have. I talked about polyethylene. It goes up and goes down very quickly. At the moment, the drop that we've recorded since the moment when the Hormuz Strait opened temporarily and the prices dropped, well, it's going up again now.

In terms of metals, there's a long-term upward trend, and we don't see except occasional drops in prices, we don't see any possibility of reduced -- reductions in raw material prices and [indiscernible]. And we have no hedging for that. And that's the question we get asked. We have hedging for the dollars, but not for raw materials because the manufacturers who [ organize themselves ] to cover that risk.

So for the dollar and the impact of the dollar on Thermador Groupe, and I will comment, even though it's extremely difficult to predict anything in this field. You can see that the Fed who was supposed to be having a more aggressive position and at least that was Mr. Trump's wishes. We see that the new governor of the Fed is very cautious because of inflation in the U.S.

So interest rates, at least the long-term American interest rate is not going down because inflation is present. And so that can have an impact on the dollar, not necessarily favorable to the dollar, but also an effect on interest rates in a more general sense. So we have to keep a close eye on that, even though it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen.

Maybe, Patricia, you can give us a reminder of how we treat this euro-dollar exchange rate.

Yes, we do long term -- we work to the IFRS accounting rules. So we do long-term purchasing on $25 million in our portfolio to pay for the supply debts that we have in the second half of the year. That won't cover all of them, but we are looking at repurchasing these forward rate -- at these forward rates because we think that the rate will be less favorable. It will be beyond 1.15 at the rate of 1.15. So we do forward purchasing up to 6-month rates for the moment. We [ don't go ] further than 6 months.

I see no new questions in the chat. Two hypothesis, either we've been very, very clear in everything we've said and you've got no questions or you're all exhausted by this first part of the year and ready to get off on holiday.

I've got on the English side, we've got a question, England -- [ Anglo-Saxon ] waking up. So [indiscernible] who asks, could you discuss the outlook for additional acquisitions a bit more, particularly on the international side?

It's true that when we look at our turnover internationally, we're still around 18.9% because we've got the arrival of Quilinox. As we specified in our strategy, our objective is to rebalance France and internationally and to focus acquisitions on industry and water cycle because when we see the capitalization of the companies, we see that we've got more added value and maybe more synergy with companies in the water cycle and valves. So for the moment, we have no new news to tell you -- to talk to you about.

We've got no projects internationally, which are sufficiently advanced or sufficiently detailed to be able to talk to you about that now. But that's why we decided to appoint this person who will work on that full time in order to have -- to permanently have ideas, possibilities, opportunities and be able to react to these potential operations at the level of the Groupe.

We did have one opportunity at the beginning of the year, but the company in question is going to be sold much more expensively, much more -- at a much higher level than we had proposed because we need to ensure a good return on investment and in particular for our shareholders. So of course, we will remain active, but not just any price. We, of course, as usual, are prudent with your money.

Okay. So for the moment, I don't have any other questions. You know that Patricia and I, you know we are having holidays in August. We are always happy to answer your questions. If you want to -- from sector onwards, if you want to talk to us, we are available to speak to you, webinar or video or whatever, whatever.

And if we have no more questions, we'll wind up this webinar. Thanking you all very much for your attention and wishing you all a very lovely summer. Thank you for joining us today, and have a great summer. Bye-bye.

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

So good evening, good evening, all of you, and welcome to this webinar, where we're going to explain to you the turnover for the first quarter. So I remind you it's going to happen. We've got a webinar, which will be in French and a webinar at the same time, simultaneously in English for our English-speaking investors.

So a few rules. You can ask questions on the questions tab or you can chat between you on the chat area of the platform for the webinar. So this presentation will last about 25 minutes. So don't hesitate to put in your questions as soon as you're ready to do so. And we're going to respect 1 hour maximum for this webinar.

You undoubtedly received the letter to shareholders, Number 1, 2, 3, where we give a full breakdown of the quarter's results. First of all, a word about our workforce. We've had a very good first quarter of 2026 because as you saw in our letter to shareholders, turnover is up. The growth of our turnover is greater than the growth -- the very modest growth in our headcount, which is up 1.4%. And as we'll see -- later on, we'll see that the turnover is much higher and that we continue to respect that ratio that we keep an eye on all the time in the medium and long term. So analyzing these figures, we've been able to identify a number of positions in the group, which were doubled up because of early recruitments made in preparation of certain departures.

So in terms of business activity, as you'll see in the letter, 17 of our 21 subsidiaries are in growth. That's a very good sign. And in particular, 6 of them had growth over 10% in turnover, which is really important. So Mecafer, Domac, Isocel, Aello, Axelair and Distrilabo, and you see that these companies all work in different fields in retail, construction industry and the water cycle.

In the area of heat pumps, there is a positive trend, both in France and Europe. We're mostly involved in the market in France and New Zealand with Isocel who supply heat pump manufacturers in France and the figures for Thermador who supply heat pump accessories who have seen their turnover down over recent months, but has now come to a more stable position over December and the first quarter. And that's very important for Thermador and its range of products, accessories for the heat pump market, slightly in growth.

New homes -- newbuilds of new homes. We've had some exciting announcements from the French government. They intend to build up to 400,000 housing units per year by 2030. Just as a reminder, in France in 2025, we only built 275,000. So there's quite a gap. Even though this -- even if that's a good news, we've got no signs for the moment of that coming into practice.

So in the retail sector, we've got 4 major players dominating this market. They represent more than 80% of the market overall. And the trend that we've seen and that's confirmed in those players that they're investing in e-commerce, but also, they're taking interest in Pro products, so selling to trade, which could be beneficial to us in the future for those product ranges because we already have Pro ranges, of course, already.

In industry, a similar trend to what we saw at the end of last year. So a positive trend. You'll see in the letter 1, 2, 3, all the companies from Sferaco downwards are in growth, and that reflects good performance of those companies on that sector and even gains in market share.

So in terms of milestones, we've got price impact. The price impact remains negative at minus 1.4%, which is a bit of a surprise because we're expecting to move into positive territory fairly quickly this year. And we'll see that this will -- that will probably come through by the end of this year.

Heavy rainfall, so very rainy weather, which had a negative impact for our water markets, Jetly and Odrea, but also for our sometimes, direct customers and the public works sector. As you can imagine, when we have too much rainwater, it's very difficult to work on a public works project. So that has impacted DPI and Jetly. So it's difficult to ignore the geopolitical situation at the moment for this first part of this year. No impact on our turnover for the moment from this war in the Middle East.

And we have signed up transport costs -- contracts -- transport contracts, sorry, for 2026. So the impact is under control. However, there have been major raises -- increases in prices for products such as polyethylene and PVC. And that, of course, affects DPI who deliver directly from -- directly to the -- from the sites. So we're receiving some alerts from the manufacturers of polyethylene and PVC of a big impact and even possible shortages.

We announced at the AGM, separation of the roles of Chairman and CEO. And the day after that meeting, it was decided at the Board meeting on the 8th of April to name Olivier de la Clergerie as Chairman, and myself as CEO.

Patricia, over to you.

So just a mention of the AGM. It took place on the 7th of April and 205 shareholders joined us at the meeting. We had 1,000 (sic) [ 1,300 ] voters and 78.9% of voting rights were accounted for. So thank you to all of you for this -- you accompanying us in this event. The resolutions were voted between 88% and 99.99%, so a very good result in terms of governance. The resolutions were well accepted. The only one that was -- the closest one was the distribution of dividends, which only 88% in favor. There was also resolution 21, which was rejected, but that was in line with the advice of the Board of Directors.

So I'm going to move on to our results. Guillaume started talking about a number of milestones. And this allows us to link up the news, if you like, with the figures for the first quarter. So we've had a decline in the retail market of minus 1.2%. On the one hand, a drop in turnover with Odrea in France and Spain, which was partially and mostly compensated for by Mecafer and Domac and their great performance in the first quarter.

In terms of the Pro channel, that covers industry, water cycle and construction, of course. So in those activities, we had the help of two new subsidiaries, of course, C2AI and Quilinox, which -- they arrived at their expected levels, should we say, of turnover, as was more or less the case for the last part of 2025 because we've already integrated at that point.

Concerning turnover, industry where it's up and construction, which is up, and that's commented on by Guillaume already. So 5.4% increase on the Pro channel, up. Overall increase, 9.6% over the quarter and plus 4.2% to constant scope. So that's due to good volumes and good performance from our subsidiaries.

So in terms of the profitability level for Axelair, work in ventilation, was created in 2014 and has had losses over the last 11 years, and they've seen growth in their turnover. And there were some cases of that also in 2025. So this continued at the beginning of 2026. And so we see that they are over the breakeven position for the period January to March and worth noting.

So financial structure. We have, of course, historically a solid finance structure. A new record in terms of cash. We have EUR 105 million.

And then in terms of debt, we've got EUR 40.2 million of debt. That's all debt with fixed rates and over 7 years. We have no new loans in that area. So it gives a positive net situation, taking off the EUR 19.3 million paid on April 17. So we've got a EUR 45.6 million net positive cash position. That allows us to have flexibility in terms of our investments from our own funds and maintain our independence and be able to look at external growth opportunities. And that's -- of course, we will look carefully at all options.

Another word about stock. Because these are questions we've had in the past. In our meeting in Paris, we had a meeting of our shareholders after the AGM in Lyon. A number of shareholders were worried about our stock levels. The stock represents 176 days, and we've already moved down from the level of December. And we feel that is compatible with our activities. Quite a bit of problem with the New Year -- Chinese New Year. And we see that our subsidiaries are [ starting ] to purchase and that allows us to continue to supply our customers satisfactorily.

So I talked about funding from our own funds, from our own equity. We've got EUR 12.3 million of forecast investments, with EUR 6 million for the property part. And there are two major projects, which concerns Sferaco. So automation and extension over 2026, 2027. That's actually started. And of course, the automation of the logistics side, that will be going ahead over 2026, 2027.

The other project, which contains Distrilabo in Alsace. And this subsidiary, we've just signed the first contracts for the new building for them. And we're pretty sure now that will be delayed to 2027. So it gives us an investment forecast -- readjusted forecast of EUR 9.5 million. And that all continues -- allows us to continue to invest from own equity.

So digitalization will continue within the group with electronic invoicing as well and digitalization in the different companies of the group.

Concerning the value of the share price, so the return on reinvested dividends for the Thermador Groupe share, it's a pretty solid performance. This runs from -- this graph runs from 2016 to 2026, that is from last Friday. And we're very close to the performance of the CAC 40 Index, and that confirms that it's a long-term share investment, and it reflects our dividend policy because we continue to issue dividends, and that dividend rate has never gone down.

Of course, we are sensitive to short-term events, and you know that the geopolitical situation is very -- has a big impact on the stock exchange in general. And so for Thermador in particular, we don't -- we're not spared by the effects of the uncontrolled declarations of the American President. You saw on Friday afternoon, a very strong growth on the stock exchange and a drop again today after the opening and closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

So if you remove cash from the company, of course, that reduces the price of the share. So the prospects are obviously very dependent on the geopolitical situation. And I want to really insist on that point because the questions we get from you is what is the impact of this war in the Middle East on the group in terms of new homes.

We see there's a risk of an increase in mortgage rates, of interest rates in general. And if this happens, obviously, that will affect mortgage rates and it could well bring an end -- an early end to this beginning of the promising cycle in the new homes, newbuilds that we've seen over recent months.

Coming up now at energy renovation, seeing the first question coming in. Government, very encouraging announcement from government. But I'd like to measure those a little, this compared to the geopolitical situation. The public authorities want to double the amount dedicated to electrification in France. So replacing fossil energies by electrical energy by 2030.

But when you asked the question of how this doubling is going to happen, we know that, that will -- won't come from the state's budget because there's no money available. And therefore, all eyes turn to the energy savings certificate, the CEE, financed by the energy providers.

Okay, that works really well when energy is inexpensive. So at the moment, as you know, energy prices are going up and in particular, the price of petrol at the pump. So this funding from the energy savings certificate may well be compromised by this increase in energy prices, fossil energy prices in the medium to long term. So good intentions from the public authorities, but be aware in terms of the real impacts that they will have because when financing will have to be found outside of the state's budget.

The public authorities were very precise with this announcement, which is, of course, good news for us because the Prime Minister wanted us to install in new and non-new buildings, 1 million heat pumps per year by 2030. So that is a multiple of 6 where we are today. And that could, of course, benefit groups like Thermador because the equipment dedicated to heat pumps in terms of value are greater than the accessories that we supply to the gas boiler market. So it will be beneficial for us.

And there's another major announcement was that the end of boiler installation is due at the end of 2026, so a very short timeline. And that includes hybrid, so gas but also hybrid by the end of the year. So no more boilers to be installed in new buildings. They're to be replaced, of course, by heat pumps. So I've already answered the question that we've had on the chat.

These, of course -- they're promising, but there are obviously question marks about whether they're achievable. So the Pro markets that we have for February, don't even indicate any major improvements. So waiting for the figures for March. We don't have those yet. We'll have those this week. So it's stable in terms of B2B customers, for the wholesalers for new works and plumbing accessories.

We keep an eye, of course, on the PMI Index. This index -- you know this index because when they are above 50, that shows that this market is growing from one month to the next. So on the left-hand side is the curve for French, and on the right, for Europe. And we see there's been very little impact of this geopolitical crisis on industrial activity in France and in Europe. But it's obviously very likely that this impact will be very marked if the crisis continues. And in particular for industries like chemical and petroleum industry to whom, of course, we sell.

So a much less favorable market environment because we are attempting to gain market share. And if the market contracts, it's more difficult to increase turnover mechanically.

In retail, then no indication of a restart of this market. But in spite of the opportunities that were taken up by Domac and Mecafer at the beginning of the year, no real prospects because -- the budgets dedicated to energy renovation are because -- sorry, French people's disposable income is decreasing, so difficult for it to imagine people investing in the DIY market. So a negative tendency for -- sorry, for April, which, of course, we can't -- we don't see that yet on these results. So we're hoping that will turn around a bit.

So in terms of e-commerce, talking about the different players on the market, you've got the pure players like Amazon who stock and deliver equipment, but also on the marketplaces, in particular, with one that has a really strategic position in France is called Leroy Merlin. And Castorama, one of its competitors, is also showing -- being very active on that market. But also there's an opportunity for us to sell directly to the end user, especially on aftersales service. And of course, with always the objective of making those products last longer. So that's a good option.

I would like to emphasize that in France, it's not very good for this market, the saving -- the tendency towards saving is on the up, which is in line with the anxiety rate in France.

So in the water cycle, we've appointed Alexandra Statula, who is currently Administrative Director at Odrea and will progressively take over the management of DPI. She'll be there in September. She's already there part time, but she'll be there full time from September until the end of 2027. And that's the date at which Gregory Urpi, according to the agreements we have together, he'll be leaving at the end of 2027. And DPI's sales departments are also being restructured.

And in particular, we're working on the water cycle for a range of solutions in the gray water, the reuse of gray water and the processing of water -- the treatment of water. And we joined a new association, which is called [ FGWRS ]. That's the French alliance for gray water recycling. It's a grouping of companies that are working on these solutions. You know that water, even though it may not be the case of late, it will become rare and expensive in Europe, and it's a market that we're working on for the future.

Internationally, a strategic appointment in progress. We're looking for a full-time employee to identify opportunities for acquisitions. And that answers one of the questions that was asked. This is a question we haven't yet -- we haven't identified any opportunity that we can talk about to you at the moment. Of course, we are keeping an eye on different options, but of course, as usual, we will only start talking about those options when a letter of intent has been signed, and that's not the case today.

We are having discussions in France -- with a company in France, and -- but that's not far long enough to be able to talk to you about that today either. So the role of this new employee will be to look at all the opportunities right across Europe, which correspond to the strategy, i.e., distribution in industry, but also in the water cycle, make contacts, keeping contact with the directors of those companies, the owners of the companies and be able to contact them quickly if those companies became available in the market.

The price impact for 2026, it's clear that this impact will increase fairly quickly because we've already received notification of price increases from our suppliers, and we've already talked to our customers about those increases in prices. We're expecting that to come into force in June 2026. And we are feeling the price effect at the moment is minus 1.4% as we saw earlier on, but we're expecting that to be above 2% on average for the 2026.

To close, just a few words of optimism because we're looking at the last slide, which is organic growth by quarter over a period of about 5 years. So we have moved out of this negative phase that you see over a period of almost 2 years. But we have to modulate, of course, that with the possibilities of the current crisis. If that geopolitical event that we are currently expecting, the crisis in the Middle East, we'll probably see that curve continuing in the upward direction.

So now we finished with our presentation, which gives us some time to answer your questions.

I've already answered to the question about the government measures on heat pumps, but be aware of the financing. We've also had a word from Rodolphe who wants to understand why the public authorities hadn't taken more interest in the construction of new building in the last 2 years, which I have no answer to that because, of course, there's a real need for it in France and the problems are ahead of us now. And we've got behind in terms of capacities.

Do you have any acquisition targets, especially outside France?

Yes, we do. Projects that are far enough along for us to be able to talk to you about it, well, no.

And what was the increase in volumes in Q1?

They're obviously bigger in terms of volume because there was, of course, a negative price impact of minus 1.5% -- 1.4%.

There was a bit of a problem with the English part, but I have an English question. So this is a French question, sorry. In terms of electronic invoicing, will this -- will we see any savings?

We're starting to work on productivity gains where we'll be able to receive invoices from our suppliers electronically. So we're hoping to get some productivity gains, and we're going to work on that. Another element is that any invoice is sent via platform. And that, of course, implies a cost. But we've already worked a lot on sending our invoices via e-mail and so forth to dematerialize factors -- paperless invoicing. So we're already fairly well along the way for that.

Victor wants to know what percentage of turnover is gained from heat pumps?

We don't actually give that figure. And we're sure that some of our competitors will be interested in this information. So we don't talk about it. But we've got some detail per subsidiary. But as I said earlier on, the variations that you may be seeing in our subsidiary, Isocel or Thermador, positive variation, but negative in the past, would suggest that there is an impact -- a positive impact on the heat pump market. There were two key events which helped Thermador, the increase in the sales of accessories for heat pumps, but also the increase in sales of thermal heat panels. So the decline in the turnover for Thermador is a lack of funding. So I can't give you any more precise figures than that because I don't want to provide too much data for our competitors, which is obvious internal data.

Do you mix commercial commerce and e-commerce?

Yes, in Aello, for example, there's a very substantial part of turnover from an e-commerce platform. So actually, it's not pure e-commerce. It's a natural order placing platform. So it's open to professionals and the technical solutions are progressively being rolled out throughout the group. The percentages of turnover from e-commerce platforms remains confidential, too. The sales that we make directly to users via e-commerce platforms are really small in terms of percentage of turnover because it primarily concerns only aftersales. And we have some sales in DIY superstores for SAV products.

There's a question about Axelair saying that they arrived at the breakeven point. So the question is for Thermacome and DPI, when are we going to get into positive territory with them?

And we've seen that DPI and Thermacome are losing money. It's important to understand that we've only just acquired and there's an amortization of the goodwill. So the customer relation thing, to be exact. That means that DPI without amortization was profitable, and Thermacome is the same case, made them very close to the breakeven point. The idea is it's not an operating loss. It's just we got the amortizations. And why do we do that is to avoid having to depreciate assets a few years after the acquisition. So it's use of the customer relations, which we call goodwill.

Jean-Pierre asked a question about managerial transition at DPI. Maybe I didn't express it properly. The departure of Gregory Urpi is planned for the end of 2027. So there is -- these two will be working together from September. So at the end of 2027 is exactly 5 years after the acquisition as planned. It was planned that Gregory should leave at the end of 2027, just to be precise for Jean-Pierre.

So we're finished with your questions. No questions on the English side. Sorry about the technical problem that we had on the English side. The replay is in English, but you won't be able to ask any questions, of course. So don't hesitate to ask us any of your questions by e-mail.

So another question. So it's about Odrea and the results of Odrea in relation to its trend to a decline in turnover. So plus 4% for [ Q1 2026 ]. That's a pretty brutal question. Shouldn't you imagine restructuring the subsidiary to take into account the persistent decline in turnover.

So it's a bit brutal. That would indicate reducing headcount. It's true that the budget for Odrea is not positive for 2026. So we're likely to see a decline in turnover and a decline in profitability. So we're working on it for recovery at the beginning of 2027 through investments in the distribution channels other than the traditional DIY channels. There's also the Spanish side. Work started on that last year and it continues this year to be able to find new developments, new customers. And of course, that takes time because it's referencing with different stores because they're negotiated on an annual basis, of course, but of course, it will take time.

So Romain, you're making things look worse than they are. You're talking about the decline in turnover for Odrea. Odrea did manage to maintain its profitability. And that's why I want to reassure you for 2026. And the manager of Odrea has not planned for a loss in profit for 2026. But we're working with certain customers at the moment. And we're going to be putting in place certain measures towards the recovery of Odrea, but certainly no plan for restructuring at Odrea. You know that in the Thermador Groupe, we have a long-term vision. And that's why we're resistant during difficult times like we're experiencing at the moment.

Are there any other questions?

We're pretty satisfied with this first quarter because it's a long time that we haven't been able to announce a net increase in turnover and so many companies with growth around 6%, with over 10% but we remain cautious about the future and the short -- the medium and short term -- the short and medium term because of the situation, the geopolitical situation and will have -- certainly have an impact in France and in the world and Europe, sorry. Many companies like us are going to suffer certainly from all this instability in the world.

So it's obviously an advantage for us to have a wide range of different activities. And you see that our subsidiaries continue to resist. And we hear people saying, you've lost turnover, you keep your employees in place. But we know how valuable our brands are, and we -- that's why we invest in them and stand by them.

And with those investments, I talked to you about EUR 9.5 million. That shows that we are intending to invest in our warehouses and so forth. So we remain -- we continue to have a positive outlook.

And for our salespeople as well, we're happy to see the results of their work as our turnover increasing. So thank you for your -- we're being thanked for our efforts during this difficult period. So I want to thank you for your support and our wonderful AGM. And it was a great satisfaction for us to be so close to 79%, which is a remarkable participation rate at our AGM. And of course, you used all the tools available to you to vote, for example, with ACCESS voting, all that. So thank you to all of you for your support.

Since you have no more questions, we're not going to stay connected just for the pleasure of it. We're going to see you, unless anything drastic happens, in the middle of July, when we'll return, we'll talk about mid-July for the results for the end -- for the first half year and at the end of July for the end of the second quarter. Good evening, all of you.

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

Good evening, everybody. Good evening. So welcome to this annual appointment, because annually -- because we're going to present the results for 2025 during this webinar, and it's going to last 1 hour. So it's primarily for institutional investors, which is disseminated in French and in English because we have [ Neil ] who is here to translate simultaneously into English. And there also English language PowerPoint slides. We've also got [ Batiste ] on the chat to help you. So don't hesitate to ask questions either in English or in French and we'll try to answer those questions in the second part.

You certainly received both the letter to shareholders, #122, in digital format and maybe even on paper and the universal registration document, which went online yesterday and is therefore available to you already. And we're one of those companies that publishes the results in the same time as the AGM to give us the chance to talk to them with you about it.

So 903 people in our workforce reflects stability to constant scope, even though it is an increase in numbers, but we've received two new companies, Quilinox and C2AI that represents a difference of 72 people who've joined us. So thanks to all our employees who've worked hard in what continues to be a difficult context. And we thank you for their commitment and their efficiency and professionalism in their work for the group.

So milestones for the year in building, this is -- represents about 41% of our turnover overall. We suffered from the funding of energy renovation in the market that is funded partly by the public authorities with the MaPrimeRénov' scheme, which has been going down and down over recent years, particularly in 2025. And for a period in '25, the actual funding was blocked for a time. So it makes things very difficult for energy renovation to -- and those companies involved in innovation to progress.

So in terms of new housing, which is maybe 10% of our total turnover, we have not observed any real recovery in the new housing market. We'll see what happens in 2026 which looks a little more positive. In terms of the water cycle and our businesses involved there, we've had companies declined in turnover. Others are the opposite. Jetly which is involved in water harvesting and watering systems and treatment of wastewater, a slight decline in turnover. DPI also saw its turnover down. Pipe for water, both in terms of reductions in volumes and reduction in prices.

However, our company who works in the swimming pool market did very well, Aello with an increase in turnover. Some substantial gain to market share. And for Sferaco too, which had a good year in the water cycle market, supplying Suez and Veolia, the big specialists involved in water in France.

In terms of industry, all the companies that you see in the letter to our shareholders #1 to 2 on the first page. This is a complete table of all the companies of the group. And all the companies which are from Sferaco down, they have a level of resilience in terms of turnover growth or slight growth or stability. You see that all our companies working in this sector have done it well again this year in 2025 where market shares are still available, of course, to our companies.

Internationally, variety again with a good achievement for companies like Syveco and Sferaco and more difficult times for the subsidiary of Odrea in Spain, which lost quite a bit of turnover, in particular, for bathroom taps, [indiscernible], also decline for FGinox.

Globally, internationally, growth continues, because the share of international sales -- as a share of the group has increased from 16.3% to 17.3% this year. The retail that's where the retail segment, that's where we had the most trouble, with the decline in turnover for our two subsidiaries involved in those markets, but particularly Odrea has also faced delisting for outlets, retail outlets in Spain.

Okay. The price impact is negative, slightly negative at minus 1.4%. We'll talk about that in outlook, and we talk about the outlook later on. We've got the acquisition of two companies, C2AI and Quilinox. This is on the commercial side in terms of our business. So regulation of fluids and instruments for the regulation of fluids. Specialized in temperature probes and this company in 2025, did around EUR 10 million, that's C2AI. And the other company that we acquired, Quilinox based in Spain, well, who deliver stainless steel equipment to a Pharmacy industry and Agrifoods and Chemical industry and Cosmetics. And they do approximately EUR 50 million turnover per year. So they join us on the 1st of October. For information, more detail about those acquisitions that you'll be able to find that in URD.

In terms of governance, we decided to, at the end of the year, and we communicated about this at the beginning of 2026. We'd like to separate the roles of Chairman and CEO. And the last two sections on social and environment, we'll be talking about that in more detail a little later on Social and Economic Governance.

So overall, when we look at turnover in terms of distribution channels, so Retail and Pro, it's clearly in the retail channel that we've lost substantially minus 10.9%, whereas in the Pro channel. We've showed better resilience with a drop in 1.1% to constant scope, and that gives an overall decline to constant scope of 2.9%, 1.4%, which is DPS.

So I look at turnover and profit over the next 10 years. If we look at the post COVID period, we see that we've got good resistance in those -- this transitional year of 2025, both for turnover and profit, you see compared to 2024. In terms of organic growth by quarter, we are still waiting to switch to the other side of 0, the breakeven point. We were disappointed by the last quarter with minus 1.7%. And we're hoping that for the first quarter of 2026, we'll see that go above the line, the 0 line.

So for this volume from 2021 to 2025, I draw attention particularly to the orange bars. And if you look at '21, '22, '23, we had strong inflation, 4.3%, 10.8% and 5.9%. And then 2 years of price drops. And over that whole period, however, there's an increase in 17.5%. So there again, we'll be taking -- we'll be having a word later about the price effect for 2026. So over to Patricia to talk about profitability.

So looking at profitability between '24 and '25 -- and we know we've got stability in terms of turnover and stability in terms of profit. So at the end of the first semester of 2025. We were slightly behind, but we worked substantially in the second semester, and we're able to catch up the commercial margin, we're able to defend that pretty well over the year, and we benefited from a dollar impact, which helped us, which represent 32% of our sales are in dollars. So that had an impact on our profit and loss account. And of course, our commercial margin.

So with the work of the salespeople and the purchasing teams, we were able to work very efficiently to defend our margins. So between the Pro channel and the Retail channel -- so stabilization in the pro channel, but in the retail channel, more exposed to purchase from Asia and a great effect -- a greater benefit from the dollar effect.

So expenses as a percentage of net turnover is over now 25%, so 25.2%. The biggest expense is personnel, of course. And as Guillaume said, we've maintained our headcount in 2025 by 2024. So we increased -- also increased salaries by 20.4%. So that led to an increase in personnel expenses, which now represents over 13% of our turnover in terms of operating profit of the impact of Quilinox and C2AI, who had a slightly higher level of charge personnel expenses as a percentage of turnover.

So if we look first at the five subsidiaries represent more than 83% of our total turnover. Three historic subsidiaries, Sodeco, Sferaco and Thermador. And now there's also Sectoriel and Syveco who are now have got to a critical size and levels of profitability, which have really contributing to operating profit of the group.

DPI, Mecafer and Thermacome, which are companies that are losing money. Thermacome drop in new builds, exposed to new housing market. So a 9.2% decrease in turnover and charges, which been -- were kept at the same level, so that didn't help. So I didn't compensate for the drop in turnover. So this is -- there's also an effect of the of an attribution to the customer receivables, which has also affected the result.

DPI turnover down also in terms of the consolidation, they were down in terms of turnover. And then C2AI and Quilinox. So 6 months of results for C2AI, which is approximately the level we expected. But Quilinox in terms of operating profit, we had to make a provision -- a 100% provision for fraud, which was affected against the CEO of the company to a total of EUR 398,000. So we decided to provision that to a level of 100%. And that took away all the profit of the company. So we're not sure whether we'd be able to recover those amounts. So as a measure of prudence, we decided to make a 100% provision for it, which took away their -- all of their profitability.

So [indiscernible] we're looking now at the operating profit from ordinary business, which is the impact -- can be explained the financial result, which dropped slightly compared to last year, that's mostly due to a drop in the interest rates. We've got high levels of cash in 2025, but we weren't able to compensate for the financial charges and the repayments through this level of -- we also had new -- two new loans. Also the tax effect because we benefited from a tax credit linked to what we call the [Foreign Language], which is for the families and there's an increase in products, which allowed us to benefit from this credit tax, which explains the bigger drop than the operating result.

And then going on to the key indicators, which are return on production and return on capital used -- employed, sorry. So the ROP over turnover is maintained at 11.8%. And if you look at the ROCE, 16.4% compared to 16.7% last year, with the impact of [ CATA ] and the new companies, C2AI and Quilinox in terms of assets. We recognize in the books their assets. And because we had part of the profits from the year, that explains this drop from 16.7% to 16.4%.

Financial structure. Next, in terms of the -- our stock is the highest value we have in our assets, EUR 175 million, which is down both in terms of value and number of days of consumption, which are now at 203 days, which is the work of our stock valuation teams and adaptation to changes to the quantities actually sold. So better management.

So about the impact of C2AI and Quilinox, the drop would have been more without that. So the picture at the end of December, taking into account the supplies that we've got on the boats. And so this year, we've got EUR 18 million worth of stock on boats compared to EUR 24 million worth of stocks on boats coming from China. The Chinese New Year was later than the previous year. So that helped us a little bit.

In terms of cash, so a record year in terms of cash at 96.9% -- EUR 96.9 million. And we have subsidiaries who are able to invest, of course, with this cash and that generates financial earnings. So borrowings in terms of borrowings and financial debt, we've got two new loans for a value of EUR 20 million for C2AI and Quilinox. So we've got fixed interest rate loans with no guarantees over a period of 7 years. So with a positive net debt position.

Equity. So that's thanks to our allocation to dividends and our profits, which allowed us to increase slightly there, as you see. So the generation of cash flow for the cash flow statement, we've generated EUR 36.7 million of net cash flow. That's made up of results, which, of course, is converted into cash, cash excess with investments are EUR 5.1 million.

The most important impact there is the stock levels. So we used stack our cash to fund investments to a value of EUR 5.1 million had announced EUR 9.1 million in investments. But because of delays to certain projects, those -- that expenditure has been delayed to a later date. So we've got the EUR 17.3 million is the net cash flow from changes in the scope from the two new subsidiaries. So that gives us EUR 46.9 million in free cash flow.

We paid out EUR 19.1 million in dividends. We talked about the loan subscriptions, the EUR 20 million that we talked about and then repayment of our existing loans for EUR 7.8 million the DPI investment is for the first time, accounted over a whole of the year, first time we've paid back the DPI loan over a whole year. And the other element concerns IFRS 16 financing flows, those IFRS financing accounting rules, which represent a cash burn for us of EUR 3.3 million. That concerns subsidiaries like Thermador because of rental activities.

So moving on to investments. So over 2026 will be at an maximum of EUR 2.3 million, and we estimate -- so it will be somewhere between EUR 9.6 million and EUR 12.3 million. So got major real estate products for about EUR 6 million, we already talked about Sferaco and there's also an automation for the logistics for an extension to an existing building for those logistics needs. Sferaco will have the most advanced warehouse of the group. So we've started to pay some of those investments in 19 -- in 2025. And the construction will start for good in Tréal in September.

So it's a factor. This was a building we built for Sferaco in Alès and the work was started in the last quarter. And then the difference between the investments and the real estate investments, the difference concerns investments which are paid for by our subsidiary directly. And there are many investments in the digitalization, and that's mostly for our warehouses and that concerns invoicing -- electronic invoicing and investments that we'll need to make to be able to gain -- achieve productivity gains in 2026 and 2027. And so I'm going to hand back over to Guillaume for sustainability.

So we had an achievement rate of 102% achievement rate of our 19 objectives. So you'll find all those indicators on Page 21 of our URD. And if any of those indicators require any more explanations do not hesitate to ask us.

So for the second year ending, we put together a sustainability result for CSRD, which was read by the AMF, the financial authorities, and they made a few remarks about it, but we managed to complete this -- respect this requirement with great results, thanks to our teams who worked on that. And we hope they will continue to publish in order to conform with these regulations. And they are required for companies over 1,000 employees, and we will benefit from the new simplifications brought in by the Omnibus Directive.

And of course, moving on to reporting in terms of progression in this area and particularly in terms of environment, the expenditure on salaries of people, the time dedicated to work on the sustainability questions was EUR 686,000, slightly down on the previous year, but because we've done so much work in the first year.

So one of our -- 19 objectives and a big one for us is the decrease in absenteeism. Because it's a coloration between -- there is a correlation between absenteeism and productivity. So we've come down from a peak from 2024, but we're still a long way off our objective, which is to get below 4%. We believe that is quite possible because many of our subsidiaries are under 4%. So we're going to work with the subsidiaries, which are reporting higher levels in order to meet this objectives. And we -- today, we have -- believe we have all the elements we need to do that.

Next on the agenda, 32% of women on the management committee in terms of conformity, in terms of sustainability. 32% on the extended management committee, which is represented by -- which is comprised of 34 people. So all the Corporate Officers of the group and the Head of Sustainable Development.

96.4% of our emissions are due to our products. So they are not products we manufacture, but the products that we distribute. So you see that we has to do have to do will be done over the long term with our suppliers.

This year, we followed a very strict process to establish and materialize a carbon trajectory. And this call -- this process is called ACT step by step. It is one that's validated by the ADEME, which is the French Environment Agency, which allow gives us a reference on this carbon trajectory, which we've modelized in a fairly precise way, and that allows us to act upon it and control it and react to any drops or increases.

Finally, a drop in our carbon emissions in absolute values, 328 kilotonnes of equivalent CO2. This is partly due to our drop in turnover and a slight drop in volumes. But in terms of the indicator on Page 21, you see an increase because this indicator refers to emissions, carbon emissions per tonne of products sold. So because of our product mix, we have two different results on that part.

We talk about active products, which use energy once they've been installed, for example, heat pumps or ventilators with VMCs, mechanical ventilators.

So a few words about outlook. So in terms of new homes, we'll see the situation should be improving. The French authorities have understood the challenge of new homes with an objective, which is going to be clearly difficult to achieve. But their idea is to build 2 million new homes by 2030. And even though that only represents 10% of the group's activities, that will help our subsidiaries like Thermacome in the last part of 2027, but more likely in 2026, but more likely in 2027. So energy renovation, MaPrimeRénov' which is reduced with approximately EUR 1.9 billion allocated to energy renovation for 2026.

And in terms of the energy savings certificates, the CEEs, this could help us too, there'll be EUR 5.2 billion. That's a 5-year plan. And that starts in 2026. So these are -- this is Phase 6 of the CEE. These certificates are funded by the private sector. So all of those involved in selling and producing energy, of course. So it's more stable than the government mechanism, a prime. And as you know, the French government is seeking to achieve budget reductions.

Industry. There's a new tax which will impact us substantially. The prices that we will be able to sell at. It's called the NATF, which in English is the CBAM and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will impact a certain number of our products. And it will total several hundreds of thousands of euros, and these will be passed on, of course, in prices in 2026. So I don't think there should be any directive on our margins, but there will be an impact on our prices.

So in terms of the industry segment, we remain positive in the medium term. Market shares are low enough for us to hope to get growth in terms of market share in the future. Retail, no great positivity for 2026. On the water cycle, modestly optimistic for '26. We talked about Aello and Sferaco. We think that we'll be able to find -- recover growth in those areas.

Internationally. The companies we talked about earlier, present internationally, we'll continue to work in national industry markets, 2026, 2027. And in 2026, '27, we'll be looking to maybe add a new subsidiary in the area of water cycle, the water cycle industry internationally. The price impact, we believe it's going to be between 1% and 2% in 2026, but we will report on that quarter-by-quarter.

There's a question that's been asked on the chat concerning. People -- our feelings about the beginning of 2026. I'd say that we are reasonably optimistic, which corresponds to the budget that's been put together by the subsidiary CEOs except the retail sector, which we assume is going to continue to be difficult.

And the second question comes to recruitment. I don't think we're going to be recruiting massively in 2026. I don't think that our subsidiaries will be in this state of mind, but we'll certainly be reinforcing our IT teams. Simply because we believe that if we keep our staff levels as they were in the past. That means that we will be able to ramp more quickly when the recovery of the market comes.

Some market elements for new housing in France. We see that the blue curve on this chart shows building permits granted but we see a slight increase, a slight improvement in housing starts, which is the orange line. So it looks as if we come out of the worst of that -- the bottom that obviously, situation has bottomed out and the curve is looking more positive now. Coédis next gives us information from the distributors of sanitation heating and equipment. So professional activity, good month of December at plus 5.1%, but then bad news again in January. So it's around about 0 but it seems to fluctuate between positive and negative results.

INOA represents the retail market, the DIY market. And there, you see that we're slightly negative in 0.4% and rather negative outlook for the year ahead. In terms of industry, we look at this PMI index in France and in Europe. It's all pretty close to 50, which means that the market is 50. We're we are not in markets like aviation or arms. But we do have opportunities in data centers, for example, which -- but there won't be major beneficial impacts for Thermador Groupe, but the market shares we have do suggest that we can grow in the future.

I look into our growth targets. So this concerns just turnover. I would ask you to read Pages 10 and 11 of the URD, which give the 10-year objective and our strategy to achieve those objectives. And you slightly see in terms of our current turnover we're behind, but we can still make acquisitions in the future, which will help us to get closer to the top of that blue line. And we'll also -- we're expecting an increase in slight increase in prices, which a slight inflationary effect, which will, of course, increase the turnover as well.

Looking at our capital now. The overall number of shareholders increases. That's great for us to see that the number of shareholders increase. It's also great to see that private shareholders are still present with a distribution between private and institutional investors, which is more or less the same.

9,817 private shareholders and institutional investors, which are private investors. The highest -- the biggest shareholder of the group with 9% is a German guy who has moved out of the institutional side into the private investor side. Amongst the institutional investors, you see Fidelity, which was present last year has increased its share to 7.6%. Credit equity, which is stable at 6.9% of capital. And the pleasure to see Amundi going above the 2% holding level. You see that the number of direct shareholders, all those holding shares through the SEP Thermador Groupe Trust Fund represents 6.9%, which is a record. It's just increase an increase. And that it's a long-term objective to increase employee shareholding.

So share liquidity has increased, as satisfactory. As you see, 1.91 to 2.12. For you, it's probably doesn't look enough. But over the long term, it's a progression, and that's a good thing. In terms of resolution is now the dividend, which is going up a little, we never decreased dividend, and we want to keep up that promise. It's reasonable distribution. 43% of dividend of the profit distributed to our shareholders.

We have decided in the Board, to separate the roles of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, primarily because of best practices, which the proxy advisers are backing. So you know them very well. We're expecting greater -- a high level of acceptance of our resolutions. That was the first reason that we decided on that. And the second was to free up our executives for more operational work in the 4 years ahead.

There's a question that's come on the chat. Why would we choose Olivier de la Clergerie as the new Chairman of the group?

So we put a number of scenarios on the table to know whether we kept the same person with two different mandates or two separate roles, two separate people for the two roles. So we decided to separate those roles. So that meant we needed to find somebody. And we have that person within the Board and that person was a candidate and a member of -- among the Independent Board members, and he was perfect for the job we thought because he knows Thermador Groupe so well because he's been a Board member so long. As you know, he works for a distribution company. And that's a listed company. So a lot of advantages in terms of this profile. And more importantly, we get on very well with him. And I think that will be a great pairing between him and me because we do get on so well and that will help Thermador Groupe for the next 4 years. But that's a few explanations, but you kind of ask him the question.

Two new candidates -- so two renewals -- so it's Bertrand Chevalier as Employee Director and the shareholder of the group. And he's already been with us for 4 years on the Board, and he wants to continue for another 4 years.

Myself. I'm setting forward for a new mandate of 4 years. That's 16 years that I've been a Board member in Thermador Groupe. And if you decide to entrust with your confidence, I will be a candidate for the role of CEO of the group. And that will be decided on the Board at the meeting, which will be held the day after the AGM.

Two candidates for new mandates, Claire Sido, who would be an employee director, representing as a shareholder, replacing Marion Granger, who is stepping down. And Jean-Philippe Paul, CEO of FGinox, who will be there to bring us some knowledge from the field. We want to keep people -- CEOs from the subsidiaries so that we have a good unnesting what's going on in the field. So Jean-Philippe will be accompanied by Laure Ombrouck, she will take his place next year. So they will alternate. So the assembly in the AGM will be on the 7th of April at 5 p.m. on Emlyon Campus.

I look at the share price -- so it's just one more resolution, was an amendment to the company's bylaws. You talked about the notion of representatives of shareholder employees. So we have to modify our bylaws to be able to appoint these candidates. And then from the SEP Fund. We have completed that with an election process for our shareholder employees who are direct owners of shares in the company.

So a second resolution concerning the change of the company's bylaws, where we have to ask for this -- we need to -- we're asking for this resolution to be rejected, because we're expecting to go over the 1,000 employee level in the next 2 years. And that will mean we will have to have a second employee shareholder on the Board. So those are the changes to the bylaws.

So a quick look at the share price and dividends. And then look at the return on our share over a long period of -- from 2016 to 2025. This was before the dip last year, day before yesterday. But structurally, over the period, we've got the same level, slightly higher level than the CAC 40 on the return on our share.

So I'm going to now look at the questions that are coming in. I'll answer the first three, Edward asked us if we can still improve our working capital requirement in 2026. Possibly, yes, we might be able to stock is mostly where we can act. We still have some improvements that we can make but you have to be careful because when you have low rotation stocks, it takes a lot of time to work on those. And I think we've done most of the work on managing our stocks. And in our letter to shareholders, we talk about a percentage of working capital as a proportion of turnover.

We've gone down below 40%. So the normative Working Capital Requirement, WCR, will be 35%. So we're at 40%. And those -- that will be applied to slightly different activities. But we haven't got that major change any made -- there's no major change to our sources of suppliers. So there's -- it's about 1/3 from Europe, 2/3 from China, the suppliers. So it's only really the managing of our stock level, as Guillaume was saying, that could affect the working capital requirement.

So we've been working with some of the subsidiaries on customer payables and we've found improvements, but we don't expect any major change to that figure.

So that 35% mark remains -- is achievable. But the second question what is the impact of your Ukrainian and Iranian problems on the group's deliveries?

Maybe we'll have impact in terms of delivery times because there are -- there's traffic jams in the circuit in the system. So containers, we're going all the way around Africa to get to Europe to the problems or the first with the Ukraine war, but in general terms, there will be -- you could imagine there'll be some unsettlement in the logistics -- in the supply chain.

In terms of cost, I think we've done some good work in terms of costs. That's what we mentioned when made the call fines last year. We decided to co contract with three transporters. And we've renewed this covert tenders for 2026, and we're going to choose two from those three. So we're going to maintain our costs, control our costs basically. But we have to be fair -- we have to have good foresight in order to be able to manage our fixed costs. I think they've given that they've done that I think we're going to pilot that question very, very clearly. But we've got well negotiated costs for containers. And that's 30% of our purchases.

Thierry asked if there is a company which is similar in Europe with which Thermador might be able to merge.

I don't think so. Certainly, there are companies which may be similar to our subsidiaries, which might be able to come and join us, but certainly no group like ours.

Okay. So this question is have you, in 2026, are you noting any gains in purchasing prices from your Chinese or Indian suppliers who may be having difficulty in saying their products to the U.S. because of the tariffs, but the answer is no, not really.

The price of oil is increasing. Plastic of course, that we purchased a lot of polyethylene, so the price of oil is going to affect that. So that's going to lead to increase in prices. But certainly what you mentioned there was more true in 2025 than in 2026.

A question from Jean-Francois. A word about the weather conditions in January and February in France. How does this weather impacted Thermador's business?

So we had a few coal days, which helped us. When it's cold, of course, we use heating units, maybe heat pumps, for example. That helps us a little bit. But we didn't have sufficient a period of freezing temperatures which meant it would have a substantial impact on equipment in the home, which might need to be replaced. So not a great impact.

There is one exception is with all the floods that happened, the -- we were able to sell a larger number of generators for pumping water and for providing electricity to the -- house that were flooded. And so also in those flooded areas, we have seen an increase in sales of pumps, for example, to pump water out of flooded areas. And that can help Megafair, for example, with the generators.

And Jean-Francois says he was thinking about the flooding. And yes, I will give -- we'll give you more detailed information at the end of the first quarter.

So the [indiscernible] sorry, I should apologize for those to our friends in [ Besançon ]. We had a 2- or 3-day period where it was difficult to delivering product because of the floods but we managed to control that.

So are there anybody else in French or in English, who wants to ask us a question?

So the ERD is online, as we mentioned, in French, it takes a bit longer in English. It's true that with automatic translation that everybody uses today, you can have access to the Document in French and translate it quickly by artificial intelligence, so you can keep up to date, but we will be also putting this presentation online, and you can, of course, consult us for that.

And just to say that we did a letter to shareholders in Spanish. And so we have employees from Quilinox, we started to translate things into Spanish for our Spanish people.

Any questions? Any other questions for tonight? Or are we finished for today. Okay. Well, we'll close there.

Just one, says Arlette. So she's the CEO of Opaline. So Opaline is our communications agency and they accompany for this webinar and for the creation of the URD. So it's a collective work that we do with them keeps us busy in January for -- so last year, it was available on the 14th of March 2025, and we should do better this year. That's just the message from Arlette. So we haven't got any questions? Okay.

Okay. Well, just like to wish you a nice evening and see you at the AGM. You could log in and follow it online if you're not in Lyon. And of course, you can follow the AGM online. And of course, we can speak before Patricia and I are present on many investor forums. And we're very happy to set up meetings with you, if you would like. So thank you to all of you, and good evening.

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

Good evening. As planned, Patricia and I are going to be commenting on turnover at the end of the third quarter. There are 250 people registered for this evening's webinar. 103 present on the French part. And in -- on English side, 17 English speakers. So that will be translated in live by myself, Neil. So welcome to all of you to private shareholders, institutional investors, employees of the group directors, former directors, but also customers, suppliers and even -- and also journalists and one competitor as well who will be attending this webinar this evening.

So welcome to all of you. And as usual, we'll talk about the workforce, the greatest value of the group. And you'll see on this slide that there's now 911 of us. We've gone over the 900 mark, and that's mostly due to the arrival of C2AI and Quilinox, which represents 85 new people in the group. So apart from these 2 new companies, our staffing levels are constant and our directors have done all they can to maintain staffing levels in spite of the difficult climate and in -- with the prospect of recovery.

So a few milestones in terms of our business. First, DIY markets and public works, both down. So DIY concerns Mecafer, Domac and Odrea, 3 subsidiaries, particularly Odrea who is exposed in the spring to the watering market, which was poor in the spring. And then DPI for public works, that has faced another drop in the third quarter.

Better in the building sector and in professional watering. So for building, the historic subsidiary, Thermador had a positive quarter. And in terms of watering for professionals. Jetly is the subsidiary involved there, which has made up for the losses in the earlier parts of the year. As is the -- as has been the case since the beginning of the year, the swimming pool market has been steady industry. A lot of our companies involved in that sector, and that's gone well too.

I got a question from one of our private investors about data centers. What are the opportunities for Thermador Group. Yes, there's motorized valves, connectors, chilled water circuits and water circuits generally in data centers. Those are all obvious markets for Sferaco, Distrilabo and FGinox, for example. But of course, we can't give you any precise figures at the moment, but there's certainly opportunities there.

So a word about Quilinox finally, because we've been working on for several months on this acquisition. So it's a company based in Spain, but is also operating in Portugal, which reported EUR 40.6 million turnover in 2024 and with 40 people that's involved in agri foods, pharmacy, cosmetics and microelectronics. So a lot of -- stainless steel practically only stainless steel products like pumps, valves, flow meters, agitators to regulate control and measure the circulation of fluids in those different industries.

So Patricia, for the financial element of the acquisition, what can you tell us?

Yes, we always communicate the price of an acquisition like this. So we purchased 100% of the shares, EUR 10 million for the shares. And we also bought a plot of land for EUR 900,000 in the same industrial area, in the same industrial zone where Quilinox is based. And so Quilinox had plans to build on this land. So to ensure the development of the subsidiary, we've decided to buy the land as well. As usual, we've taken out a loan to finance this acquisition. It was the case for C2AI as well. So we've got -- working with our normal partners, CIC Lyonnaise is the bank and Societe Generale. And again, these are 7-year fixed rate loans without guarantees. So that's the financial aspect in terms of management.

There are 2 shareholders who will stay in the company. Francisco Quiles and Fernando Mari and Lionel Monroe will represent Thermador Groupe as Chairman, and he will be joining them tomorrow. So they started to -- on this integration process. So we're very happy, I would say. So it's an opportunity for us to welcome the 40 employees from -- and directors from this company. I'm sure I have a fantastic future in Thermador Groupe. So welcome to all of you.

So now look at the different distribution channels is complete. You're familiar with this chart. And just to show you where these 2 new companies sit in these -- in this configuration, you see the Quilinox and CDIRI -- C2AI, both in the industrial market and the international markets, which corresponds to our strategy, our long-term strategy, which is based on industry and export. So a quick look at the price effect because the negative price effect at the end of the third quarter has not changed compared to the second quarter. You see on the orange bars on this chart. It shows you the price effect. Remember that between '21, 2022 and 2023, we've got -- we've reported -- we passed on prices beyond 20% increases to our customers.

So this adjustment we're seeing now is completely natural and fairly moderate to the increases just after COVID. So new housing in France with a slightly more detailed curve than usual with housing starts and permits, building permits granted month by month. It really seems that we are -- we've gone past that low point, especially in terms of building starts. We'll keep an eye over the coming months. But for those who are watching for the first time, I would just remind you that new housing in France impacts only 10% of our consolidated turnover in France, and that will be PBtub subsidiaries and Thermacome. So looking at the wholesalers, in electrical equipment and sanitary solutions. [indiscernible], that's the next slide. And you'll see for the first time for a long while, there's a positive figure for September, 1.5%. However, on the DIY side, it's slightly downbeat again, and it continues. There was a little spike in May, as you can see on the positive line, but it has not followed through to the end of the year for DIY.

So I look at industry indicators index. This is the PMI index, which certainly industry will be the major part of our turnover next year with the arrival of these new companies. And you'll see that these indicators that we see in front of us now for France on the left-hand side and on the right-hand side for Europe are around 50%. And that means that the market is stable in the manufacturing industry. And that will help our companies working in the industry. A few words about turnover.

As we said, in retail, we've got not very good results. So in terms of turnover for our subsidiaries involved in the resale markets, we've got a drop of 9.4%. And if we look at the professional channel, that includes subsidiaries involved in public works, swimming pools, industry and construction. So those subsidiaries showing -- reporting minus 1.9%. But I think it's interesting to look at the third quarter because we communicated a recovery effect on the second quarter. And indeed, we've seen an improvement through -- and we see this with 13 of our subsidiaries have actually shown growth in terms of turnover in the third quarter in spite of the price effect of minus 1.5%.

So this is fairly encouraging, I would say, for this third quarter both for construction, watering and industry, of course. And then the other elements, you'll see that there's a notion of constant scope for the columns 2025 and '25 constant scope.

Basically, there are 2 subsidiaries that have brought in EUR 5 million turnover, which is Alto Metering and C2AI, and they were bought -- which is bought 30th of June, and Alto Metering was the third quarter of last year. So you see that that's EUR 5 million, you'll see that in the constant -- has gone from the constant scope at 315. So overall, if we look at the Q3, we've got plus 2.2% to constant scope.

Now the impact on our financial structure. So it remains very solid because we have equity, which is above EUR 384 million. That's a result of our capital and the accumulation of profits. So that goes along hand in hand with the capitalization of the stock market value of the company. And we regularly communicate on the value of our share because that shows our management of our WCR.

We're talking about stock here. So we've got EUR 165 million stock compared to EUR 134.9 million at the end of Q3 2024. We got the indicator of a number of days of stock, which is to compare to the days of sales. At the end of September, we had 196 days of stock compared to 190 days last year. So we've got a slight increase in stock. I should remind you the delivery times are about 3 weeks longer for our shipments coming from Asia. And that means we have to have a bigger buffer stock in our subsidiaries. And that explains part of that difference. And we think there's also an improvement to be found in terms of number of days, and we'll communicate on those stock values at the end of December. So we're able to report a very positive net cash position, plus EUR 85 million compared to EUR 46.8 million this time last year. So increasing cash position. We're coming out of the watering and the swimming pool season. Those companies have not yet bought their new stock for next season. So at the end of September, there's a favorable position. And so it's what we could call a high position in terms of cash. But this is really whatever -- it's still a record level, that thanks to our buyers, in particular, in the subsidiaries, but also accountants who keep an eye on customer payables and work regularly with them to have this low risk position with the customers.

In terms of loans, I mentioned the 2 new loans for the shares in C2AI and Quilinox. So EUR 47.6 million compared to EUR 32.6 million through those new loans, and we've continued to reimburse our existing loans according to the installment repayment schedules. We also wanted to make a comment on customer receivables. I think everybody has heard about the increase in number of bankruptcies and so forth. So we're very vigilant about that. And we have risks which are -- risks are considered as low and controlled.

And the next slide shows you the development in cash position, which the white bars show the end of December position for those previous 10 years. But you can see that it is a very high level at EUR 85 million, but that's in relation with our investments. We planned EUR 9.3 million investments at the beginning of the year. At the end of the -- end of June, we decided to go down to EUR 6.6 million, that's simply because those projects, the difference of EUR 2.7 million, those will be projects which have been delayed to next year. We've also got projects that will be paid for before the end of the year. The major ones would include property, which is EUR 2.4 million. And we will maintain that amount for 2025 and in major investments in terms of CapEx. There's the automation project for logistics, that's Sferaco and that's EUR 4.7 million, and that will be paid by -- before the end of December for that automation project.

We've also got projects for buildings next -- for next year in Alsace for the purchase of plot of land for Distrilabo and an extension project for Sferaco to accommodate the new automated solutions. Those will be CapEx investments for next year.

And then that should move us on to our share price. In the short term, it's fairly rational. In the long term, it's pretty irrational, let's be honest. But if we take it over a long period, and this is over a period of 10 years, and you can see that every day on our website in real time, day after day. This is from yesterday. And that shows an overall return for Thermador group at 10.3% compared to 8.6% for the CAC 40 in general.

A few words about the prospects, and then we're going to -- moving on to fairly short-term solutions given the political -- unstable political situation in France in terms of the government, which will -- is obviously not going to help some of our businesses, in particular, new housing. So these outlooks are fairly prudent for the next few months because we've got no certainty about what's going to happen.

It could, for example, have an impact on the morale of the households and reduce their spending, for example, in terms of spending on housing, new housing. So for the grants, MaPrimeRenov and the CEE grant schemes. MaPrimeRenov is really in -- at its lowest point, and we think that it won't have -- it won't have any great effect on the work -- of the activities of the group in the longer term.

However, the energy saving certificates which is a mechanism financed by the energy providers and therefore paid for by consumers. This measure will certainly be extended from January 1, 2026, because we're going to be moving into the sixth period of these energy saving programs in France. And this period will begin in 2026 and finish in 2030. However, we are still waiting for the decree concerning that energy renovation program. It was expected for autumn, in the autumn of 2025, we still haven't got it yet. It's true that autumn is not yet over. But things have slowed that down, especially in the government.

In terms of DIY, our customers say that footfall in their shops, DIY shops is not good. Morale of the French people -- the French spender is low. So our retail activities are -- have no real outlook for the immediate future. Public Works. Unfortunately, it's the same sort of trend -- the political context in France is not encouraging public work projects generally financed by state funds and the upcoming municipal actions are not helping that either because things tend to grind to a halt at those -- during those periods. So no great shakes for the fourth quarter. However, for industry more positive, because our market shares are low. So we continue to find organic growth through new products, new markets, new customers.

Moving on to acquisitions. There's nothing significant or sufficiently advanced to talk to you about today. But in general terms, we are, of course, oriented towards opportunities with European companies preferably in the area of industry or the water cycle markets. And that answers one of the questions we've already had on the webinar because we're asked if these acquisitions could be made in China or -- and the answer to that is no. We've got enough to do in Europe, not to go to any other continents for the moment.

The second question concerns acquisitions. [Thierry] who asked -- is wondering if that allows the group to find new customers in the agri foods business.

Okay, we will obviously improve our position in Spain. But in France, we already supplies to the agri foods business. But for products that Quilinox don't necessary already have and vice versa. So there are synergies to be in found with products like pumps that we already sell in France. And these are resilient industries. So there'll be work to be done there.

In terms of the price effect, going back to my slide, it should stabilize at close to minus 1.5%. For the second semester, but next year, it's pretty sure we'll be moving towards slight inflation, but most of our suppliers in Europe, 2/3 of our suppliers are already talking about increases in prices in 2026.

Staff, finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, and I'm going to talk about it again with Patricia, who will give us more additional information. You know that we are particularly attentive to the absenteeism rate, which has increased in the last few years. We're hoping to have an impact on that. We are not going to lie down and accept it. It's been the case in many countries, this increase in many companies in the country. We've got to be careful to introduce equitable measures. So the people who are 100% that work all the time don't suffer from the absenteeism of people who are maybe taking advantage of the very secure French system. But there'll also be measures to accompany our employees to encourage more presence in our companies.

Yes, we're talking -- we're operating preventative actions and recent -- we've got the quality of life and working conditions survey, which is every 3 years, and this is -- we're up to the third version that gives rise to a number of actions in terms of working conditions. So that's a really good tool that helps us -- helps our employees to express their thoughts. Any dissatisfaction they feel and any suggestions for improvement. That's the first tool. The second was to work on MST, musculoskeletal disorders. So a lot of our people work in logistics, of course. And so people who have been with us a very long time.

So as they get older, of course, the MST is more difficult as they approach retirement. So we're accompanying them on that particular aspect of posture in particular. We've been doing that for 2 years now, and it's pretty -- working pretty well. It's called a MATVISIO. And it includes -- it also includes people who are on the phones in the offices, not just the people in the warehouses. Those profiles have joined the program. And that's been financed mostly by Groupama, which is our insurance company, which works our health insurance program.

We're also working on inner soles, sort of correcting -- orthopedic correction for inners in working shoes, additional comfort for people who have to work -- who have to wear safety equipment, PPI and -- PPE, sorry, and therefore, including -- that includes safety shoes. We are working with the works doctor and with work psychologists to help people with well-being at work. And that means that, in some cases, we can offer support to our employees in the work environment, and that's a plus, of course.

And there's another project that I wanted to tell you about which we've been working on for more than 18 months. And that is to run medical checkups, and we're doing that with a clinic in [ Leon ] and potentially in Bourgoin-Jallieu, which is nearer to us. So this is for employees over 50 and based here in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier. I think in 2 days, all the slots were filled.

So 7 employees -- 17 employees will be having a full medical checkup for prevention in terms of different illnesses, and that's obviously a big thing. And given the interest that people are showing that we'll be continuing with that in 2026, opening up new slots for employees in those. Those are all about prevention, of course, and to allow our employees to feel good at work. And for those that are not so -- not feeling so good to feel better physically or mentally.

In terms of prevention, of course, diagnosis and tests are particularly oriented towards cardiovascular and of course, cancers as well. So what we want to try and do is to do prevention to avoid accidents, health accidents -- serious health accidents of that sort. And I also would like to mention that we were involved in October for Pink October, so the fight against breast cancer. And we've broadened that scope throughout the group, to support the [Foreign Language] or the league against cancer, and there were running races to help with that. And we're going to finish with outlook looking towards the past.

You can see on this slide, organic growth by quarter. Each bar shows growth per quarter. And you'll see that this is the first positive quarter for a couple of years. I don't want to -- I'm not going to extrapolate and suggest that the fourth quarter will be plus 4%. We -- of course, we're hoping for a recovery but I think it's going to be very progressive, and we have to be cautious with those predictions. So we finished with our predictions on the -- end our slides. And the first questions are coming in.

So [ Thierry ] would like to know, "what the impact of the variation of the dollar or the increasing strength of the Europe is having on transport?" So 3 questions there. You start with the dollar, Patricia.

Just to remind you, we paid 30% of our purchase in dollars, and we hedged in spots. So it's not very exotic, but it allows us good visibility to our subsidiaries to monitor their purchases in dollars. So we've seen an improvement in the rate, of course. And this improvement started because we've had about 6 months of stock. We're starting to make -- to see a benefit now. So on the -- in the second half of the year. And the indicator will be the commercial margin, of course, the profit margin and in particular, subsidiaries that are in involved in DIY. Because those subsidiaries, which buy from Asia. We spend EUR 130 million a year and 30%. I was just wondering why you ask me the question again. It's 30% and the total value is EUR 130 million a year from Asia.

And transport for Asia. So 30% of our purchases from the first of March. We've signed contracts with 2 transporters for -- to have fixed prices. And so that will help us in terms of purchasing, in terms of value, but also better monitoring and so better quality. These new people have a more structured approach to this. So we're improving our costs. And hopefully, we're not able to communicate on the gain that we've made to the end of June, but we are expecting to see a gain there, we'll communicate on that later.

So no impact of the tariffs because we buy practically nothing from the U.S., but there are indirect impacts, of course, because as you know, suppliers -- Chinese suppliers are particularly offensive, and they're looking to recover volumes in Europe they have lost in the U.S. and some of our suppliers are suppliers to the U.S.A. as well.

I've got a question from [ Cornelis ], so do you have a cash pooling in place? We bought -- yes, for the French part, we are also -- for France, we have put it in place. For Spain, we're going to put it in place. And that's what we are planning. And that allows us to increase the cash position for the whole of Thermador Groupe and have investments on a consolidated basis. And we remunerate our subsidiaries if -- when they have a profit -- when they have, sorry, a positive cash position, so they earn a commission on positive cash position.

There is a question. What are you planning to do with this strong cash position between now and the end of the year?

Okay. So of course, we have some cash to pay our dividends for the -- in April next year. I may -- remember that the Thermador Groupe is one of the few companies that has never reduced the absolute value of its dividend. So I think that's going to take a substantial part. Any ideas Patricia for the rest?

We'll finance our investments, our capital investments. Sorry, beyond the question was besides CapEx. So next year, there will be investments, of course, and the working cash requirements, so WCR. Growth is coming back. Stocks have been rebuilt. Subsidiaries will need cash for stocks. And of course, we're obviously very cautious, but we'll continue to invest that money. So to balance out the cost of our borrowings that comes out level. So we had a positive balance of EUR 1 million in terms of net profit last year.

A question from [ Jean-Pierre ], I think to treasury -- to cash? So the question is -- sorry, I missed the question. So the question of a possible increase in capital. Patricia will answer that later. But for an acquisition, an increase in capital is something we've never done before to get -- to raise cash. We could do it, of course. And I see that [ Jean-Pierre ] would sign up for that if we thought it was useful to do that. But for the moment, that's not one of our options. In terms of use of cash for acquisitions? I think you've answered that partly.

And I think I should say that whilst the interest rates are good, and there's no guarantees on the loans and there are fairly low rates over 7-year periods for fixed rates. I think it's something that we have. We should use that tool. We have access to it. And I should remind you, last year, we made 2 acquisitions last year, which were financed from equity for EUR 3.4 million. Sodeco acquisition too was from its own equity. Of course, this will all depend on how interest rates changes in our relationship with some of our banks. So it's also an opportunity to work with our banks and show them that we are loyal to them.

What about an acquisition in the U.K. When I mentioned Europe, in my heart, the U.K. is still part of Europe. Yes. So we've got -- we work with the U.K. with Syveco. We've also -- if we do see an opportunity for an acquisition in the U.K., we would happily -- we would happily jump on it. And of course, Neil, our interpreter will be happy with that. Question from [ Thierry ], "with the group growing every year, is there reorganization work for logistics in the warehouses?" Not particularly linked to the size of the group, it depends on the size -- the number of companies. Logistics problems are handled inside each subsidiary Syveco, Odrea, the bigger companies with a large number of people in their warehouses and in Thermador too, but for the moment, besides the automation project, Syveco that Patricia talked about before. There's no major change, no different working times. We hope to serve our customers in the best possible way in a working day rather than in 2 or 3 shifts. So for the moment no change -- no major change. Is there anything you would like to say?

So an industry, our trading allows our customers -- all our customers who are at the end of their business days means that we receive their orders the next morning. And because we're well organized, we can prepare during the day and the customer can be delivered within 48 hours. So if we had quicker logistics, we could go quicker, but that costs money, of course. That's not what the customer wants, but in our trading system, allows us to close the switchboard at 5:00 p.m. And this software, this e-commerce allows us to carry on working through the night basically.

[ Thierry ] is asking us if we are present at Investor Day? No, we decided not to go to investor day this year for budgetary reasons because the cost of the group was EUR 55,000. And in difficult years, the like -- the one we're having at the moment. Of course, that's all relative, of course, but we wanted to limit our expenditure and that's why this year we decided not to attend. That doesn't mean we'll never go again. But for this year, we're not. Of course, it's unfortunate that for a company of a medium size like our own. It's quite -- it's a big amount of investment, EUR 55,000, whereas of course, for a big company, it's nothing really.

So are you thinking about buying back shares in the Anglo-Saxon way? No. We don't. What do you mean in the Anglo-Saxon way, I should say. That's the way I understand it. That means we buy back shares to destroy them and therefore, increase the value of our shares. We're not going to do that because that would where -- our objective is really to promote the liquidity of the share, i.e., the volume of transactions. The lack of shares on the market would be -- wouldn't be an advantage to us, which is more for that to be of any advantage to us.

[ Jean-Francois ], what is the impact of AI on the group?

The creation of [indiscernible] company that's working on AI in our processes and the first process that was worked on was order capturing, the OCR, isolation of orders. That means recognition -- character recognition. So we wanted to increase this proportion using AI to capture these orders automatically. So we are working with an ERP publisher to integrate AI. That's the first project that we've adopted. And then the knowledge of our sales teams, technical teams and the sales teams. So our technical data sheets, this is a subject which is of interest to us to work on and to secure, of course, AI always raises a question of security. We've chosen to have solutions in-house.

And we've set up what we call an AI permit to train our employees in the use of AI to ensure they understand the rules to be respected. Now we developed that with the young lady who's introduced this AI permit, which has been used by 140 of employees. So we're going step by step with AI. We're measuring the return on investment. And in particular, we want it to be a tool for our employees to allow them to work on certain tasks using AI. So there's lots of IT involved, of course, but not only.

So operational teams will be increasingly called upon.

So productivity gains? Probably, yes. To answer your question, [ Jean-Francois ], but we can't measure that for the moment. We've taken all these initiatives because we believe that AI will be part of our lives, of course as was Internet before.

But we've already integrated AI because we've been working on sourcing module, which is used by 6 of our subsidiaries, which is a sales forecast -- sales forecasting tool, but you need to feed the machine. They have to feed the beast. So that will continue. That's part of the work we plan to go back to, and we're planning that at the moment.

[ Jean Louis ] wondering if there's a plan to change the stock market in the medium term. No, no. Thermador will stay on the existing stock market, which, of course, is restrictive in terms of regulations and accounting standards. But it does give us an easy vision to get through the next stages of our development. It's true that we do suffer from the regulations, the excessive regulations. But we're -- as we are already organized to respond to those requirements, we believe that we should continue on that in that same way and maybe ask the regulators to be more moderate and slacken a bit their regulations. And that's why I've decided -- we decided to stay there.

So [ Thierry ] asking about cyber-attacks? In terms of confidentiality, we never address these questions with investors. So I won't talk about that, but just to say that we have people inside Thermador working on these topics, and they work internally on cybersecurity because we're really aware of the danger. Don't worry, it's a risk that has been identified and controlled.

I have no more questions for the moment. It's 06:49 p.m. [ Jean Francois ], the impact on the future tax policy. I will -- I'm very -- I'm very familiar with [ Jean-Francois ]. I really don't know what the tax policy will be in the future. What is sure is that the shareholders are particularly solicited because it can put them in a bad mood, but apart from that, I think that the corporation tax will be changed in a major way. And because Thermador has never sought to optimize its operations fiscally, I don't think that we will be facing any changes from a tax point of view.

This morning, we looked at the next finance law for 2026, the budget. So about the CVAE tax. That's all, we will gain from that. We're not taxed in terms of exceptional contributions, so there's very little impact at our level. But those are subjects we keep an eye on, of course, and we were monitoring that only this morning. There's no impact for the moment.

So no holding planned to be set up in the Cayman Islands for Thermador Groupe, no major impact. So with a few minutes left, if you have any more questions. But if it's not the case, we're going to bring this webinar to close. I'm sorry. So thanks to all of you for your loyalty, your presence and your questions and your interest in Thermador Groupe. And I wish you all an excellent evening.

The next webinar will be in a few months in January to report on the full year 2025.

Thank you to you. Good evening.

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