Accor SA (AC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation] Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. I like the last sentence of that. We want to ask you all to be back as soon as possible. I think I got it maybe 12 months wrong. I'm not going to get it for 6 weeks wrong again, but we all sense that whether it's the 15th of May or the end of May or mid-June, but we're very, very close to being able to continue doing what we're used to doing to the new meeting and seeing people. This is now what we're doing today, as Jean-Jacques, Besma and I, we will be conducting our meeting online as last year. We are alone on this stage. very sad about that. And that decision is one that was taken, I'm sure you will accept that for greater -- your greater safety, not just for shareholders who might have been in attendance, but also of our colleagues and employees who want to be present, but we want this to go as well as possible. So we're strangely alone on this stage, but we will try and put some life into this AGM, which I now declare underway before giving the floor to Besma. Thank you so much, gentlemen.

Dear gentlemen, dear shareholders, welcome to this combined annual meeting, which is being held once again behind closed doors because of the administered measures that limit or forbid groupings for health reasons. So far, it's not possible to bring people together in person. The capacity of our head office and the auditorium does not enable us to manage social distancing as required under regulations. Under these conditions, no entrance cards were issued. You simply exercised your voting rights before the AGM remotely, by mail or by the internet. Live voting or live telephone calls or individual calls are not possible because of the need to identify shareholders. In order to maintain dialogue with our shareholders under these circumstances, and as was the case in 2020, we have made the arrangements necessary to enable you to take part in the following ways: by broadcasting this AGM on video live; by opening a dedicated platform to enable shareholders to submit their questions live in writing. The bureau will devote the last half hour of this AGM to answer questions sent in beforehand by shareholders, all sent in live via the chat. Sebastien Bazin, who is Chairman of the Board of Directors, will chair this AGM. And the tellers will be 2 of the 10 shareholders with the largest number of votes and having accepted these positions, namely Qatar Investment Authority, represented by Natalie Duma; and Kingdom Hotels Europe, represented by David Manfield. I will be acting as secretary for today's Annual General Meeting. All the information required was online and has been online for some time. As the attendance sheet was closed at 3:00 p.m. yesterday, I can now give you the final quorum. which is 76.62% or more than 1/5 of all shares with voting rights for the ordinary part of the AGM and over a quarter for the extraordinary part of this AGM. Now we have reached a quorum and we can conduct our business. This AGM was notified, followed by a modified notification and a convening, all published in the [ Builder Danos ], respectively, on the 19th of March, 31st of March and 12th of April of this year. Notice was also published in the legal gazette called La Loire on the 12th of April this year. All the documents and reports put before the shareholders are required by law -- we put before the shareholders are all -- have been available on the company's website. They are here on the bureau, and we will dispense the bureau from reading them. The documents, in respect of which shareholders are entitled to be received communication, have been at your disposal for the last 2 weeks at the head office. These same documents were also sent to shareholders who so requested them. I'd like to conclude these legal formalities by reminding you of the agenda for today. The various items under the authority of the ordinary Annual General Meeting: approval of the reports and statutory accounts for the period ended December 31, 2020; the approval of the reports and consolidated accounts for the period ended December 31, 2020; appropriation of earnings for the period ended December 31, 2020; approval of the report on compensation of all Executive Directors in respect of the period ended December 31, 2020; approval of the fixed variable and exceptional components of the total compensation of benefits-in-kind paid in the course of the period ended December 31, 2020, all granted in respect of the same financial period to Sebastien Bazin as Chairman and CEO, this is what we call the ex-post say-on-pay; approval of the compensation policy as applicable to the Chairman and CEO for the same period; the ex-post say-on-pay of the policy regarding compensation of directors in respect of the period 2021; again, ex-post say-on-pay; approval of the special report of the statutory auditors on related party agreements; authorization to the Board of Directors to trade in the company's shares; delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to issue equity warrants to be attributed free of charge to shareholders in the event of a public offer on the company's shares and powers for formalities. The following items come under the authority of the extraordinary AGM: authorization to the Board of Directors to reduce the share capital by cancellation of treasury shares; the delegation authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases by issuance with preferential solution rights maintained; the issuance of ordinary shares or securities granting access to the share capital; delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases through issuance without preferential subscription rights, that's the issuance of ordinary shares or securities granting access to the share capital by public offering; delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases through the issuance without preferential substitution rights of ordinary shares or securities granting access to the share capital through an offering under Paragraph 1 of Article L 411-2 of the French Monetary Financial Code; delegation authority to the Board of Directors to increase the number of shares to be issued in the event of a share capital increase with or without and preference on subscription rights; delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases by issuing ordinary shares or securities with a view to compensating contributions in kind granted to the company; delegation authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases by capitalizing reserves, profits or premiums; limitation of the total amount of capital increases that can be carried out under the previous authorizations; delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to carry out capital increases through issuance without -- preferential substitution rights for the profit -- or the benefit, I should say, of members of an employee share ownership program, the issuance being concerning ordinary shares or securities growing access to capital; authorization to the Board of Directors to grant free shares without performance conditions to employees of the group; and finally, amendments to the articles of incorporation. Thank you for your attention. I'll now give the floor to Jean-Jacques Morin.

Thank you, Besma. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I'm delighted to be with you this morning to tell you about our financial statements, even though the conditions are somewhat unusual, it's the least we can say. Let's begin with the key figures concerning the business highlights. We've been enduring COVID for the last year, and you'll see that COVID as revenue per room was down 62% over the year. The hotel system continued to grow but slowed to plus 1.9% and the group's revenue was down 55% to EUR 1.621 billion. In this unprecedented pandemic, the group has resisted well and has implemented drastic actions that I would tell you about, with much better resilience than could have been expected, I think. This all led to negative EBITDA of minus EUR 391 million; recurring free cash flow, which was also in negative territory, at minus EUR 727 million. In 2020, one of the group's key priorities was to preserve a strong balance sheet in order to weather the storm in the best possible conditions. To do so, we carried out several endeavors. First of all, the successful issuance of a convertible bond that was oversubscribed over 6x, which is clear evidence of the confidence that investors have in Accor. Then the renegotiation of revolving credit facility, that's an additional credit facility, OCF, and the disposal of -- or the renegotiation, I should say, of covenants up to June 2022 with no testing. This has all been unanimously approved by the banks, which has, again, been clear evidence of the strong confidence that the banks have in us. This -- at the end of the year with a cash of close to EUR 4 billion, enabling us to weather the storm and more. Moving on to what I started to explain regarding the various measures that we took. On this page, sure, you have the synopsis of the support that we've been doing. When we made last June, we told you about the measures we've taken initially and in conventional areas, travel, recruitment. Our CapEx, capital expenditure plan, what we did after that was to completely change the way the group operates. It's a much more strategic vision of -- to take a much more strategic vision of how we should operate. We devised what we call the RESET plan. Given the environment we are operating in, our revenue is, of course, dictated, too, by the pandemic, but we have a whole series of levers at our disposal. Now we've acted on what is controllable. We're controlling the controllable, as we say. To be more specific, we've simplified our organization. We have streamlined resources, reducing head count by about 20%. We have automated systems. We've reduced the number of IT applications by 20%. And of course, we are reducing expenditure, particularly with contractors, which is a very conventional way of attacking the situations. This is a plan that will be delivered very quickly because, by 2022, we will achieve the EUR 200 million in recurring savings. This EUR 200 million compare with a generation of EBITDA of EUR 825 million in 2019. So you can see the actual size of the effects of the RESET plan. So how do we measure whether we've done a good job or not? Well here, we're proposing 2 key indicators that we will now be monitoring. We'll be keeping a very, very close eye on the 2 of these. First of all, the sensitivity of our profitability to revenue. We call the EBITDA sensitivity to RevPAR. Since last March, which was very, very tough, we have improved the sensitivity over time, and we will continue throughout 2021. The other measure concerns our liquidity and our consumption of cash on the balance sheet. Again, on the right-hand side, you'll see how, over time, we have reduced our cash burn, how we've improved and how the group will continue to improve throughout 2021, thanks to various measures we have taken, particularly the RESET plan. As is customary, here is our portfolio of hotels, which grew 1.9%. It's a large system. It's the second growth driver after RevPAR. Now we opened 29,000 rooms last year. which, given the environment we were operating in, is a good result. In fact, very few projects were canceled, which is another indicator of how good our pipeline is, that the pipeline is the hotel that is about to open or remaining to be opened. For the last few years, Asia Pacific has been the largest driver of our system. Of course, China was the country that rebounded most vigorously. A few words about the pipeline, a very good flow of new signings. You see the pipeline, which finished the year at 212,000 rooms, which is up above the figure we have for 2019, which was 208,000. I have a few photographs here to show you what we're doing in the field. You can travel around the world with this one slide, beginning with Korea, the Mondrian Hotel in the South Korea. Then in Bali, we have a beautiful Raffles Hotel and so on and so forth, finishing with the Sofitel in Dubai. So we have operations in over 110 countries with all our brands and very strong development too. Back to the figures again. A few words about revenue. Revenue is down 55% for the group, but the difference between the like-for-like basis and the reported basis is the disposal of the Mövenpick chain, which we disposed of in March 2020. And you remember, as for the various segments, HotelServices saw its revenue down 60%. Nothing surprising. It's perfectly in line with RevPAR, which was down 62% and as for Hotel Assets, we're better, with 46%. We have acquired this chain called the Mantra in Australia. It has done very well on the East Coast of Australia, where the coral reef is to be found. And of course, with the very stringent controls carried out by Australia as regard to pandemic and, of course, the Southern -- the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, we had a very good summer season and the hotels here performed much better than the group as a whole. New Businesses. We have 2 types of new business: travel-related activities, which performed exactly like our hotels; and digital services, such as Edge, which performed better, hence the decline of a mere 43%, which is better than the group's average of 55%. Moving on now to profitability. The same analysis by segment. For HotelServices, EBITDA was a negative EUR 257 million, as expected. In fact, the cost of sales, marketing, distribution are usually aligned with the fees we receive from hotel owners. Well, with COVID, and given the scale of the decline in revenue, these costs were not fully compensated by fees, hence the loss of EUR 257 million or the decline or the negative here. All things being equal elsewhere, we did well. And in terms of profitability, we were -- had a profit of EUR 3 million, not a lot to complain about in Hotel Assets. And again, with New Business, it's the same with the travel-related activities and IT. And of course, the figure for the 2 is rather small. Moving down to P&L. We moved down from EBITDA to net profit. What we find is a loss of almost EUR 2 billion, EUR 1.988 billion. Two main explanations for that. First of all, you will remember that we sold hotels and the related leases to a company called Accorinvest, in which we own a 33% stake. Well, we find that in our income statement, which is through companies accounted for by the equity method, we often call associates. A lot of fixed costs in this area. So Accorinvest was badly hit by the crisis. This is largely the reason that we had this very large loss in Accorinvest associates. Also have a negative EUR 958 million, which was largely due to asset impairments. We conducted impairment tests and with COVID, we had to revalue a number of assets downwards. You'll also see that of these EUR 958 million, there's a restructuring charge for the RESET project as the cost savings plan, but that was also to be anticipated. On the bottom line, for EUR 257 million, this is profit from discontinued operations. This is the proceeds from the disposal of Orbis. Orbis was a key step in our road map, one that we mentioned to you last year. This was successfully completed out -- successfully completed in March of last year. When I talked about results, I mentioned how important it is to have a strong balance sheet, good healthy financial position, particularly in difficult times. But to flesh that out somewhat, we have 2 charts here, one on the left, which shows you the group's debt profile. You see that we have no significant maturity dates before 2023. In February, we redeemed EUR 550 million in bonds, which we refinanced by a convertible bond issue in November of last year. And again, I mentioned that earlier on. The second part of the chart is equally important. See the EUR 4.2 billion in liquidity, which is up on the end of 2019. So we have more liquidity than at the end of 2019 because we have added on an additional facility early this year. Maybe to conclude this, just a quick snapshot about, let's say, our bird's eye view of what happened in the first quarter of this year. On the left-hand side, well, what happened in the first quarter of this year is perfectly in line with what happened in Q4 of last year. RevPAR is down 64% on a like-for-like basis. The system growth is down to 1.4% and revenue down 55%, so very much in line with our performance in the last quarter of 2020. Again, we continue to do what we did well last year. We continue to control the controllable. We confirmed to the market our various operational sensitivities, be it to EBITDA or in terms of cash burn. Final point I'd like to quote a figure on is our liquidity at the end of the first quarter, which is EUR 3.6 billion, still a very substantial amount of liquidity, which gives us leeway to do things the way we want them done. Moving on to the last slide, I want to comment. Here, you see the Accor share price and the SBF 120 Index. Since we met last year in June of 2020, we see that the share price has picked up, as has the sector in general, this is largely due to the various measures we've taken, which improved successful, but also the fact that the market can see the ramp-up of vaccination and are anticipating the opening up of borders. All we're waiting for is for the music to start. We're all waiting impatiently for the borders to open up. That's what I wanted to say about the group's accounts and financial statements. I hope to see you all in person next year. In the meantime, let me give the floor now to Sebastien Bazin.

Thank you very much. I hope we'll continue communicating over the next few weeks as well, well before next year. No, we're not here alone. I'd like to thank our sign language interpreter who's here with us. So she's right at our side. Okay. So let's move on to next topics, some very differing topics, 5, 6 slides. I'll be showing you each, touching upon different matters. So what we in front of us now is something hitherto unseen. We've never seen this in the tourist hotel industry before. This is a line which reflects number of international travelers. You can see it starting in 2000, in 2000, 673,000 people traveling worldwide across the border. And then surprisingly enough, over the years, about 5% growth in international travelers per year. Even during health crisis like SARS, the drop was just 0.24%. Then there was economic crisis. It was a deep major crisis in 2008-2009. The drop was only by 4%. Now look at what just happened over the last 12 months in terms of reduction in international travelers. It's a plummet of 74%, minus 74% of international travelers. Borders have been closed. And this is a somewhat deceptive figure because remember, January and February last year 2020, the borders were still open at that juncture. So if you just look at the crisis period itself, the drop was minus more than 90% international travelers. So we're really at a loss to cope with this plummet, complete drop in activity, but I'm always an optimist. So I can say it's a good edge to this. In all likelihood, very soon, we'll come back up to the figure of 2019, 1.4 billion. We don't know if it will take 18 months, 2 years, 3 years. It will vary from segment to segment and region to region. But I can reassure you, we will once again get to that cruising speed at that number of 1.4 billion in international travels per year. Priority 1 -- for 2021, we heard about this briefly just a moment ago. There are 6 priorities. We can see them here. There are quite a mix. They're quite different. The first one, first priority for '21, we have to be ready to hit the ground running. We've got to be able to tap into that rebound, benefit from the rebound, which I do believe will take place before this summertime or during the summertime, and it's going to vary, depending if you're in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America or in Europe, but there will definitely be a rebound. The Accor Group is very much ready today to accommodate this, a very large number of visitors in our various markets and under different brand names. Let's not forget what's happened in the past 12 months. We've -- really, we thought everything we do. We've revamped commissions and functions and changed things. We've had to cut costs. Jean-Jacques talked about this, is what we've called the RESET plan, EUR 200 million in cost cutting sustainable, long-lasting. We've got to complete that plan during 2021. It will be continuing in 2022 as well. We've got a loyalty program. It's very robust called Accor Live Limitless, and we have a very large number of cardholders. This will be tremendous leverage, a real conduit for bringing in partnerships, experience and so forth through the loyalty program. All this was reboosted brilliantly, relaunched in December. Unfortunately, for us, though, we only had 3 months' worth of activity from December to end of February 2020. At long last, this will be able to really come into line in the Accor network. That's the fourth point of our network and this is a phenomenal group in terms of its ability to win people over and open up new hotels worldwide. I myself was surprised. During this year, we had 85% drop in activity. You probably don't realize though, in spite of that, we were able to open 200 hotels in 2020, history. And we will come back to the 1 hotel open per day figure. Once again, it's very important to ensure the density we need and, therefore, service some clients who need to find a home in ibis, Mercure Novotel at many destinations worldwide. We need to also preserve talent. We'll talk about this later in greater depth, preserve talent engagement. This is our major asset, human capital, people that make up this group, around 300,000 employees, many of whom are working in the hotels that you love so much. Lastly, we have commitments, true commitments. We've been committed for over 30 years, they're not recent, commitment to our planet, to environmental, societal responses, to ensure greater inclusion of local communities, and I'll come back to the points later as well. Our strongest assets. We can see them here. They come as no surprise. They've been the same for 40 years. We try to never forget these, some fare better than others, depending on the economic cycle. People, talent, lessons from the past few months would be that we realize how important it is for people to be spontaneous, demanding, creative, talented. We need all these people working within the group in many regions with many different populations. These people have been highly responsive and highly generous, very creative during the pandemic. The brands, there are more and more of them. They're stronger and stronger. They're more and more creative. We'll come back to that point as well, talking specifically about lifestyle and luxury. Distribution and loyalty. We've got a major distribution system, TARS. We've got highly professional teams waiting for one single thing, for things to get going -- get back up again, so loyalty. It means making sure that we can be with you throughout your stay at the hotel. In our network leadership, we're increasing the numbers every year, and it's a good thing. Balance sheet, Jean-Jacques talked to us about this. We're very fortunate, not so lucky during the pandemic, but one great fortune is that we can sleep easily at night. Why is that? We sleep easily because we have the resources, the wherewithal to cover the losses we've had over the past couple of months. We've got cash on hand, substantial reserves, enabling us not only to be generous but, even more importantly, to be able to pay people we owe money to, so to ensure also investments in future years. A lot of companies worldwide weren't in this fortunate position to have that extra cash on hand, that cushion that they could use. Now let's go a little bit slower. Now we're going to really talk about a couple of points with you about how we can try to interpret, understand the world of the future, long-term consumer megatrends. We may make little or big mistakes in looking toward the future. As we see it, there will be 3 main categories. One of them, fairly clear. There's no doubt about it. People are expecting different experiences now. They want something different. For instance, first category, remote living. I don't like all these digital tools, Zoom, Webex, Teams and all that, first of all, because it's tedious to have to connect to these tools 7 to 8 hours a day, but there is a part to all is I like. It means a lot of us are able to be more free in a relationship to the job. We can work from basically anywhere. We could spend 4 days in Biarritz or Saint Malo, working from an Accor hotel, so that way, we get at a couple of days on people. This has been very helpful for the global economy, e-commerce and so forth. And all this, of course, is going to be a plus and sometimes a minus, but a plus in terms of further inclusion and merging of the job life and personal life, pluses and minuses. Anyway, the world is changing with technology and all this remote working that we benefited from so much in the last 14 or so months. We can also say people, and this makes sense, are looking for more meaning, substance, depth, culture, because they have more time in the past few months to think about something else than just their daily professional lives. So people's ways of living are going to change based on age, location and so forth. Leisure is going to become ever more important. Some people aren't going to give up what they've enjoyed in the past 12 months. Probably life's going to be healthier also, healthier living. People want to be out in nature, wanted to get some fresh air, be active, athletic. So for a group such as ours, when we meet with a client, we have to be listening to what they're looking for, the meaning they want from life, so we can help share something with them, share our culture, museum with them and what have you, be at their side to support them in that and maybe be proactive as well. Thinking ahead, I mean, of course, they all have differing requirements and needs and ideas of meaning. Furthermore, we have a connected world. Now I don't know what the right pace is between short time, long time, broad time -- and so forth. We've all got a different relationship to time. A local approach is going to be crucial. It's going to be a local one. This is both a plus and a minus. People are going to be demanding to be in locations where there are fewer tourists, lower density, more to discover. What's wonderful for many of our hotels worldwide might be difficult for some of the really big ones, Pullman, Novotel, Mercure, that are in European capitals that necessarily are highly densely populated. And we accommodate many seminars and events, and we do not at all intend to change that. So we'll have to blend some of our products and have a different approach in urban locations versus more rural locations. Intelligent travel, smart moving. Everybody, new generations and all generations, wonder about carbon footprint when they travel. Do they need to take airplanes, they'll be wondering. So probably traveling will be closer to home. Probably longer traveling, people can really discover regions they hadn't known previously. So human contact is going to become ever more important. That's perfect because that's exactly where we excel, where we're so strong and credible and are distinctive versus this technology world that we're in. Think of the U.S. and Chinese companies, tech companies, that have no human contact at all because their interaction all takes place via a machine and a screen. Lifestyle -- I hope, I suspect you've heard of the company called Ennismore, based in London. Ennismore is currently clustering together 13 brands, 13 brands, 2 shareholders, major ones. One is your company, going to take out 2/3 of the Ennismore company. The other one is a partner, a U.K. partner on board with us, who will be providing 2 strong brands, Hoxton and Gleneagles. These weren't for sale, but they wanted this joint venture with this joint company called Ennismore, with 2 Managing Directors, 2 CEOs. Very strong brand names, high identity, with genuine concepts and positioning, lots of know-how and expertise, very distinctive. JO&JOE is not the same as Tribe. Mondrian is not at all like Hyde. So it's very interesting to move in this area. You can see the top diuresis 25% of Accor's pipeline fees. These words, this means commission fees. These are management contracts. This is income from management contracts. Out of the 1,200 hotels, 25% of the revenue will come solely from these 13 brands, which only represent under 6% of current Accor Group royalties. So you can see the huge gap, the leap under 5%. We'll be reaching 25% of the hotels will be opening up the next 3 to 4 years. We could begin feeling this 5, 6 years back -- we confirmed this with our friends in Germany, and SPG in the United States, we confirmed it and went in this direction. So this is nothing new to us. It's just reiterating, reaffirming what we see as a trend for the past 5 to 6 years. We're well advised to do so because probably we're 18 months or so ahead of many of our peers and we're not going to drop it at that. All Heartist, All Heartist Fund, I know you've heard of, we're able to implement this, thanks to all of you who were watching me, listening to me last year. We intended to pay out a dividend of EUR 280 million for fiscal 2019. The Board of Directors representing you decided that due to the context end of March last year, at the very beginning of the pandemic, it didn't make sense. It wasn't even possible, couldn't pay out that dividend. The decision was made back then. Therefore, to move in this direction, the Board decided to send a letter in e-mail and call -- making difficult phone calls, asking all of our owners and all of our hotel managers to please furlough some 280,000 employees worldwide. Why was this? Because we knew on 27 March when the decision is made, our hotels weren't going to be opening back up on April 1, 4 days after receiving a letter. So in sending out the letter, we realized full well that many of our employees being impacted by the furlough measure on 1st of April, they wouldn't have resources to pay for health care, to pay for food on the table for their families. We knew that in those countries, there wouldn't be governmental aids that we had in many of our European countries and in Australia and the U.S. Therefore, we set up this vehicle that we used. We set aside 25% of the dividend, which would have been allocated to you, EUR 70 million. Then 12 months later, and the figure is huge, I hadn't expected this, 74,000 people. 74,000 people worldwide requested a grant just under EUR 25 million. Now you hear these figures, and these are big figures. But to really get a full understanding of what these figures mean, a lot of countries of Asia Pacific, particularly in Southeast Asia, average grant to an employee was around EUR 175 to EUR 300. The pay for the same employees in the world would be under EUR 4 per day. So when you give an employee EUR 300 so they could get access to health care or feed their families, that is a huge amount of money for that employee. Believe you me, we heard a lot of thanks. We know the impact, the decision has had on our people, our talented people, our people worldwide. We're so proud to have assisted people who really needed help. We're not leaving it at that. We don't know if the figure, the EUR 74 million would go much further. Now we're having to deal with real requests from South America for similar reasons as we saw previously in Southeast Asia. Now to talk about corporate social responsibility. There are 4 major commitments we took 12 months ago now, following up on what we've been doing for 25 years. So nothing new. It's just that we're repeating, reiterating, really underscoring several things that we've been working on. Now our carbon strategy, first of all, we've committed to reduce by 46% to group carbon emissions and to reach a net zero by 2050, 20 years down the road. We decided to go with Expedia, UNESCO, to move on to really developing sustainable tourisms that we could bring on with our various communities, local culture and so forth and best respect to the environment, working with the local communities. This made perfect sense. We're in 110 countries, in many different local countries where we're the biggest employer, giving an opportunity to many men and women to work within the Accor Group. Diversity and inclusion, you know that we took a commitment to -- which is coming to an end, it was about 5 years ago with the UN, a commitment, to ensure wage equality, gender wage equality, called Equal Pay within the Accor Group. We made good on that 5 years down the road. The figure is just under 2% gap between pay for men and women, is considered to be nonsignificant by the United Nations. Unfortunately, of course, we hear this in Europe, but it's more difficult to here to this 5% gap in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle Eastern countries, in some instances, in some instances, to the favor of women in Latin America. So we still have our work cut out for us to be sure that anyone who's lagging behind in those regions I mentioned can then catch up and can continue moving in this direction, making the efforts. We've taken a new commitment, therefore, with caring. It's a different type of commitment. It's a very strong one. The idea is gender-based violence. 3 themes here, first of all, to stop any sexism in the company on the job, any sexual harassment halted on the job, any type of negative impact on a man or woman on the job, furthermore, doing everything we can to stop domestic violence, to make this known, provide assistance and bring people on board with us, to have people, men, change their behavior identified and assisted and supported for things to change. So the next 5 years, this will be rolled out, we'll be bringing it forward. We're identifying what's to be done. This is going to be a true value within this group, nothing surprising. And it's very important for us to continue working with the UN on these various points. We're also continuing with -- various other areas and giving opportunity to men and women. So we're thinking of making sure that management decisions are always taken with the same timing and same training for all. We can say that we don't give enough training to some women in this company, precisely so that they can get the same equal opportunity that men do. Now plastic strategy saw it in the film, we talked about 10 million objects. We had to stop samples in your hotel room and so forth. We're talking about, for instance, Q-tips or what have you, plastic cups and so forth, this to put an end all of this. It's not easy. We're committing to, and we're going to adhere to this by the end of 2021, our plastic strategy. And then lastly, last year, we left the CAC 40 for reasons or with because we didn't have any revenue, no activity. Therefore, we have a significant drop in our share price. We hope quickly, we'll come back to the previous valuation of our share, but we did go into a new sort of CAC 40, the ESG CAC 40. We're extremely pleased to be that index and to show our group's values. I won't go through all the points. There are many ratings agencies worldwide that monitor us, and we answer their questionnaires and so forth. You know that the beginning of May, Universal will be taking charge on the sustainability apartment, Universal, sustainable development within the Accor Group, you remember, and we're so pleased indeed that Universal decided to come on board with us on this adventure, benefiting from 45 years of excellent behavior in terms of these commitments. So I'll give the floor back to Besma now to go through some legal formalities and to talk about work that's been done by the Board and their Board committees.

Yes. Thank you, Sebastien. To start with the composition of the Board of Directors. This year, no appointment nor renewal of a Director is up for vote by your AGM. Therefore, our composition of the Board of Directors remains unchanged, with 12 Directors, 2 directors are representing employees, 6 Directors are women, 6 Directors are independent. That complies with the IFRS of course -- Miss [ Chantal Otto's ] German office and Director of sitting employees, came up last January 11. Madam Christine Serre is replacing her as of January 27, 2021, for a 3-year period. I propose now that we -- give a summary overview of the work done by the Board and the committees. Now pertaining to the Board of Directors work itself, I'm not going to go through everything in detail. I will just say the Board met 17 times in all, attendance rate, on average, 96.57%. During this highly exceptional year, the Board of Directors carefully tracked the impact of the health crisis on the group's activity, and we need to specify on that point the Board met many times, once per week, during the first few months of the health crisis. Now on to work by the committees. There are 4 Board committees. To begin with, the audit, risk and compliance committee met 5 times, average attendance rate, 93%. This committee, among other things, prepared deliberations for the Board of Directors pertaining to examination of the half yearly and annual financial statements as well as the crafting of an internal charter on related party agreements for the group. It also tracked assignments done by the All Heartist Fund as well as the implementation of the compliance program. Now the Commitments Committee meetings, open to all Directors, met 8 times and reviewed the various acquisition or divestment projects, some under its remit, [ Interalia ], divestment of Orbis which, as I mentioned, as well as the acquisition of SPEs asset light. Average attendance rate was 97%. Now on to the International Strategy Committee. It met once, 100% attendance. During that meeting, the committee looked at current topical international issues, such as the impact of the global health crisis on geopolitics and, most importantly, on international business for this group. Lastly, the Appointment Compensation and CSR Committee met 7 times during the period. Average attendance was 94%. It's chaired by Ms. Sophie Gasperment, she recorded a video to outline for you the committee's work on compensation. Thank you for your attention. [Presentation]

We now propose that you watch the video of Jean-Christophe Goudard from Ernst & Young, who, on behalf of the college of auditors, will present you all the various reports put before the AGM. [Presentation]

I'm now going to take you through the resolutions put before you for approval and the results of the votes we received yesterday because the voting ended yesterday at 3 p.m. We'll then take questions and answers. Before that, let me give you the attendance at today's AGM. 3,815 shareholders voted in correspondence in over 2.2 million out of the 271 million shares. I'm rounding these figures down with voting rights. As indicated, the final quorum was 74.62% by number of shares. As you know, registered shares that have been registered for over 2 years have double voting rights. I should also remind you that since 2019, abstentions and blank or canceled votes are excluded from the accounting. Finally, we are proposing that the bureau be dispensed with reading each resolution in -- given the fact that the full text of these resolutions is available on site and it's also available in the Board of Directors' reports. The first resolution concerns the approval of the statutory accounts for 2020. The resolution was approved. The second resolution concerns approval of the consolidated accounts for 2020, and this resolution was adopted. The third resolution concerns the appropriation of earnings for 2020 to retain these earnings, to appropriate these profits to retained earnings, as no dividend will be paid. This resolution was adopted. Fourth resolution proposes to submit to you, approve -- your approval, the report on the compensation of all Executive Directors, including members of the Board for the period ended December 31, as presented in the universal registration document for 2020. The resolution was approved. The fifth resolution asks you to approve the fixed variable and exceptional components of the total compensation of benefits and kind of all sorts paid or attributed in respect of 2020 to Sebastien Bazin. The resolution was approved. In the sixth resolution, you are asked to approve the compensation policy applicable to the Chairman and CEO, in respect to 2021. The resolution was approved. The seventh resolution asks you to approve the compensation policy for Directors for 2020, and this resolution was also approved. The eighth resolution concerns approval of the auditor's special report on related party agreements, resolution approved. The ninth resolution asked you to renew the authorization that you give every year to the Board of Directors to trade in the company's shares within the limit of 10% of the share capital and at a maximum unit price of EUR 70 per share. The resolution was carried. The tenth resolution authorizes a reduction of the share capital by cancellation of the treasury shares, again, within the limit of 10% of share capital. Tenth resolution was approved. The 11th resolution asks you to authorize the Board of Directors to issue shares or securities granting access to the share capital with preferential subscription rights maintained. The 11th resolution was approved. The 12th resolution asks you to authorize the Board of Directors to carry out share or security issues, securities granting access to share capital without preferential subscription rights by way of public offering. This resolution was approved. The 13th resolution proposes that you authorize the Board of Directors to issue shares or securities granting access to the share capital without preferential subscription rights through an offering under Article L 411-2 article -- or Paragraph 1 of the French Monetary Financial Code, approved. The 14th resolution concerns the number of shares to be issued, the event of oversubscription for a capital share or share capital increase with or without share capital preferential submission rights. Under any 1 of the 3 previous resolutions, that was approved. The 15th resolution asks you to authorize the Board of Directors to issue shares or securities to compensate contributions in kind. This was approved. The 16th resolution concerns capital increases by incorporating reserves, premiums or profits. Resolution was approved. The 17th resolution sets the overall limits applicable to the aforementioned capital increases. This resolution was also approved. The 18th resolution proposes that to authorize the Board of Directors to issue shares or securities granting access to the share capital, with preferential subscription rights -- without preferential subscription rights for the benefit of members of an employee share ownership plan, approved. 19th resolution concerns the attribution of free shares without performance criteria for Group Accor employees only, excluding corporate officers. Approved. The 20th resolution proposes that you amend Article 1 of the company's articles in corporation to update references to the commercial code mentioned below. The resolution was approved. 21st resolution proposes that you authorized the Board of Directors to issue equity warrants to be attributed free of charge to shareholders in the event of a public offering on the company's shares. Resolution approved. Finally, the 22nd resolution concerns powers for formalities and was also approved. As all the resolutions were therefore approved, that's it, and I'd like to thank you for your attention, and I propose you watch a video on all safe. [Presentation]

Thank you. I was thinking of the person who really should be thanked for this all safe program -- Franck Gervais. As you know, Franck has left the group and he's now in charge of Pierre & Vacances. Anyhow, Franck really was the man who rolled this out alongside -- in digital, the people you saw on this film are -- 80% of them are employees of the group. The 2 regions that were most involved that made all safe a real commitment with -- were, on the one hand, India; on the other hand, Brazil, These are 2 countries that we're really keen to roll out all safe, alongside Bureau Veritas here in France and -- and in the larger countries of the world. So thank you very much all of those who voted in favor of our resolutions. It's an important set of resolutions for the Board of Directors and for the group as a whole.

This will be lead to questions and answers. We have 3 written questions, and you will find the answer in writing on the website, so you can check those questions and answers out straight away. However, we have also taken 4 further questions submitted by the employee shareholders advisory body because we give them the floor for our AGM. I'm going to read these questions to you. I won't read the answer in front of my eyes. I never read the answers put in front of me. But I'll give you the questions anyway, and I will answer orally without taking up too much of your time. I'd like to leave a little bit of time for others who have been submitting questions on the chat over the last. Sebastien Valentin will be presenting your questions. Our first question received from the advisory body, the shareholders of advisory body is as follows. The pick up of the economy after the crisis will be slow, probably spending about 3 years, but most cultural populations will reestablish their producing power more rapidly and probably the upscale will benefit from this pickup globally kind of going to pick up much quicker. What's your investment capacity in the upscale over the next 3 years? Is the current situation of your assets sufficient? Well, our strategy in upscale has been in existence for over 5 years. You will probably have seen that the group has evolved over the last 10 years or so. We're in a much balanced situation than we were back then. We were a highly European group back then, really in the economy and mid-scale segments. Now premium and luxury account for just a fraction under 25% of our total number of rooms, but almost 45% of the management fees that we receive, 10 years ago, it was less than 10%. So minus 10% is now close to 45%. And future fees -- that's for new hotels that have been signed up and either being constructed or refurbished, that will be over 55% of those will be in the premium and upscale segments. This strategy has been confirmed precisely because the clientele is increasingly present. These are middle classes, the middle classes. And in fact, this strategy has been accelerated by another segment beyond the luxury and upscale segments because in a small, you also have brands like Tribe, others who this and Ennismore adventure is a continuity of what we have done through Fairmont, Orient Express, Raffles and many other brands like Mövenpick. The idea is to have a brand concept and an experience that is are very different to what you will find in Fairmont, Raffles or others. I'm not saying they're better or worse, but they're very different and, of course, appeal to a much broader population. Now as for whether that is enough to tackle the -- or to handle the recovery, we'll see. But to our friends in the Advisory Board, I'd like to say you've got it slightly wrong because the recovery will be in the economic and mid-scale segments before the upscale and luxury segments, which require that borders open up. That's not yet the case. As we saw in September and October, brands like ibis, Novotel, Mercure meet the needs that we will have in this recovery. So all our brands will contribute to this recovery. Question number two, Advisory Board from the shareholders. Through its Chairman, Sebastien Bazin, has publicly -- at the very start the crisis committed to solving accommodation price crisis caused by COVID, including isolation and quarantine. I get the impression that the civic-minded measure was not very successful and not sufficiently esteemed. What is the in-house or situation since then was more and more talk about CSR or corporate social responsibility? Well, we will have our own reading of the situation. But very clearly, all the initiatives taken over and beyond my own taking the floor, all these decisions, were not taken with a view to recognition or image. These are very spontaneous -- extraordinarily spontaneous decisions taken by employees at all echelons of the group, very often with very underprivileged populations, particularly people in the front line, like doctors and nurses, aimed at protecting people who are, unfortunately, either affected or directly or members of their families with detected -- affected by COVID. Look, we did what we did. We were present when we needed to be present. All Heartist, it's probably not what we can be most proud of. But I think over time, All Heartist will continue because there's still a need. In fact, it's probably what brings us together most of all. At management and Board levels, we've decided that All Heartist will also pursue its endeavors in other categories, one of these being the ability to provide more access to Group Accor for apprentices and their trainees. A lot of young people that we would like to take on, young graduates or nongraduates, to give them the opportunity to spend 3, 6, 12 months in the group, but as we didn't have any in our hotels, we couldn't take these people on. We could now, but we haven't got the funding. We haven't got any business to base that on. So the ALL Heartist Fund will also help a new category. There are over 2,500 trainee-ships granted by this group throughout the world and that figure has dropped from over 2,500 to less than 100 over the last year. So the pandemic has had a huge impact. So in terms of corporate social responsibility, we will continue our endeavors. We don't need the fund for that purpose, but we will continue to beef up our undertakings. Third question, for medical assistance to its clients, Accor acts in agreement to AXA Partners, has it been successful? Have you planned any other partnerships of this type? The answer is it's too early to say. We're proud to have worked with AXA. Over 30,000 doctors in the world are available within less than 7 hours in our different hotels. Not far off, 75% of these hotels have signed up those to enable their guests to benefit from medical assistance, if need be. We'll be able to tell you how successful that is within the next year. It's hard to know because our hotels have been closed. Our hotel managers have welcomed that. The owners have really -- a very warm welcome. In all events, I think it's a great way of helping people with health issues. So we're very happy with that. And finally, the fourth question, Accor has considerably developed its co-working space for the needs of new companies. What is the situation at the moment? Well, within Accor, we have another company called WOJO, which is 1 of the 3 co-working companies in France, 12 different destinations, 70,000 square meters of shared office space for a lot of small- and medium-sized companies. It's doing well. WOJO has spread its wings and enabled its clients to take advantage of 700 spots in 300 towns in France, so over and beyond the various locations where we have office space that you can rent by the day, by the month or by the year. In these 300 destinations are also possibilities to spend 2, 4 hours or even 2 days. So this is being rolled out. The question is very relevant. And I have no doubt that there will be a whole new industry shaping up. It has been taking place for the last 4 or 5 years, but the rollout will be multiplied by 5, 10 or 100 maybe. The way we work, the relevance of digital tools are going to substantially change the dealings between employers and employees. Employees throughout the world, irrespective of the sector they work in, will be asking not to return to the office 5 days a week. They will want to either stay home or work on a pneumatic basis, or work remotely, while being in touch 1, 2, 3 days a week. And I can't see many companies not accepting that because that is part of, I think, what you have to offer your employees in the years to come if you want to retain them. This is all going to happen. We're going to have to do this with method. You need a number of tools, destinations that are in line with the group's values. So yes, the person who asked this question is quite right. Co-working space is just as important as the space that we use in tourism that are also very related to Accor has every intention of playing a role in this area, either through WOJO or in some other way that will set us apart, but there's no ignoring co-working, and we will be jumping in the deep end one way or another. Now moving on to questions that we received and that we haven't heard about just yet. These are questions that we received over the last hour on the chat.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. So far, we've received 4 questions. We'll begin with something by -- [ Mr. Daniel de Bugeouis ], Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Mutual Fund SAP SE representing shareholder employees. A couple of questions, number one. For the sake of clarity, first question, what do you think about the current composition of capital? Particularly, 0.75% of capital is held by employees and then the requisite voting rights versus the large shareholders.

Thank you for that question. We've made huge progress already. We'll probably bringing it up from 0.75 to 20, thanks to the bonus shares, the free shares that will be reserved only for group employees, which means we've already, in advance, taken into account that request via our resolution. I think it is pointless to compare employee shareholders versus big shareholders -- there is no such thing as small size versus a big shareholder. There are people with the same self-ambition in the company, side by side, no one is scorned due to size. So yes, every year, if we could increase the number of employees that held shares, we would all be in favor of that. We just need to take the time that it takes to set that up.

Second question from [ Daniel ] is on paying the dividend. You say to suspend paying ordinary dividend to maintain group liquidity, whereas it's a sound situation according to all of your financials, what are the other criteria you're factoring into this and making a decision?

It's called caution. Being cautious, [ Daniel ] knows this full well. When the decision was made, I said earlier, that was towards the end of March last year. We made the decision on the dividend, which was 4, 5 days after basically certainty that the epidemic will become a global pandemic and difficult to stop. So at the time the decision was made, not only did it make perfect sense, but it was intelligent and necessary. In no event was it designed to just add cash to cash. And abundance of caution is still something uppermost in our mind in all discussions with the Board of Directors. That point being made, I would say, very quickly, we'll start paying out an ordinary dividend. You know well, precisely because we had cash on-hand cash, Accor has made no commitment whatsoever. We haven't asked for any government-backed loan or what have you. Accor has kept a free hand, complete freedom of action to make decisions. And we will pay out a dividend as soon as possible once all the prerequisites are met.

Question three, on strategy. How do you make up for issues relating to the slow start-up of MICE, which is convention seminars?

So how do we deal with this issue, possibly a structural drop in conventions and seminars. Well, we'll have to be creative to tackle this. It's highly likely if there's one activity that's going to be the slowest to recover, it will be their activity of big events, seminars and conferences because these require travel and additional costs for major corporations. Honestly speaking, I do believe this is all going to normalize but probably not within 18 months. So we'll be creative and smart. We can say that during the exact same period, about the next 18 months instead of having seminars with 1,000 participants in Paris or Frankfurt, you'll have in the same company probably small groups of 20, 40, 50, 60 people meeting on the same subject, same subjects for the seminar, maybe over noontime and so forth, if time differences. So they have clusters of employees who will be meeting to talk about topics and we need these clusters of 0 to 60 people at hundreds of Accor Group hotels. For that matter, we signed a contract with Microsoft. It's a hybrid technology that can be used specifically to pool in all group hotels worldwide this community with people who aren't physically present, but who are meeting, this is what will be done in the next 18, 24 months. We're going to be adapting.

Another question, a different segment. What about individual leisure clients, sort of Airbnb-esque, how are you going to move in that area?

Well, by being present, by being human, by proposing a distinctive experience, by supporting them, by surprising these customers. That's what we'll do. We're doing the opposite of Airbnb. Airbnb gives them a website, a great website but it's highly unlikely anyone's going to be actually out there in the field, supporting them to open that front door with the key. So we have our website, and we've got people on site to support them and be kind to them. So we're going to be different and probably better in supporting leisure travelers. We've already been doing this for the 10 years Airbnb has been around. It's certainly no time to panic today, precisely the opposite.

Question about employees. Employees at HQ and hotels are in difficult psychological situations. Are you aware of this? When will you bring together your human capital, especially if you're thinking of RESET?

Precisely by doing as we have, [ Daniel ], representing DFO and [ Daniel's ] right to bring up the point, by being together, togetherness, discussion, by talking about the challenges, talking things through, talking about the difficult things to be done. And I realize digital tools, they're awful to some degree. They make us dependent, they make us tired. This absence of human togetherness has been a problem for everyone. So if you're aware of these difficulties, we have to be able to talk things through as quickly as possible. We have to be able to meet in face again. But let's not move ahead too hastily in making criticism. We've also signed agreements together with all the trade organizations just a week ago, precisely on job evolutions in Accor Group. We're empowering everyone in their specific positions. So we're not denying anything. We've weathered the storm together, and we will also be together during the recovery. Is that good?

Yes. Next question from a shareholder, international UFA. How are you going to go beyond plastics? And what's your CSR policy more broadly?

We've already made the commitment. We're not going to give up on it. So how do we go beyond plastic? We'll have to do this by being clever and make available to our customers what they've liked with straws and plastic cups but using something that's not plastic, another way of drinking water and so forth. Bamboo is -- served to this. There are various different measures. Think of water bottles with Accor Limitless logo we give to people. We're ahead of the loop. We're inventive, and we are very much working on nonplastic projects.

What about CSR strategy broadly?

Yes, yes. There's the Planet 21 project, which was rolled out very well by [ Arnot ] and other teams over the past 10 years. We have a new plan that's going to be established we'll be sharing with you on this probably in October. This will be a plan with 4 communities, owners, governments, employees and community -- local communities, very focused on food waste and energy. So the 4 sort of pillars, 2 themes. And you'll know a lot more as -- after the summertime.

Next question. Mr. Saint-Germain asked agreement with the Paris Saint-Germain, have you reviewed it considering the health situation, particularly absence of fans in the stadiums?

It was reviewed. It was discussed between Accor Group and Paris Saint-Germain. We met our contractual obligations and legal applications. But the Paris Saint-Germain club is giving us more rights and more options we can activate and so that we can use Paris Saint-Germain name and players. So yes, certainly, we tailor adapted much of this in the past couple of months.

Next question. The cost-cutting plan, how do you gauge the feasibility of the cost-cutting plan, EUR 200 million? What do you think is the likelihood you'll achieve the targets? What are the main risks involved in this in your view?

Well, Jean-Jacques is responsible for all the risks.

So well, on the RESET program, highly likely, we'll meet the targets. I never like to say 100%, but I do think 100% we're -- going to do it. We've done very accurate specific work. We spent 6 months before launching the program, working on this. So we didn't just put together in some makeshift fashion. We met with everybody all along the hierarchy so we could analyze the 7,000 tasks involved in all of endeavors at Accor. It's a highly granular plan. Everyone knows exactly what they're expected to do. So it's highly likely we will achieve this. At any rate, like every time, we've got little extras, little pockets, little plan Bs that we can move on if we need to. So highly likely we'll meet the targets.

Next question from [ Serie Shardow ]. Are you considering tokens as loyalty opportunities?

I don't know. I've never really understood what cryptocurrency was all about. Maybe -- I hope somebody in-house does. I hope so, thinks something clever on these tokens. Honestly, I have no idea. But I'm sure somebody in our company is working on this. I don't know if somebody on my side knows about this. But if [ Serie ] -- has some answers because he's very knowledgeable, then he should tell us.

We just received a question from Mr. [ Uglequest ] -- follow-up. What about the ALL Visa card? When is it going to be developed elsewhere in Europe and worldwide?

In France, that will rolled out this summer; the rest of Europe, 6 months later. At the same time, during France, we'll be developing Australia, Canada at the same time as Northern Europe. So over the next 12 to 18 months, we'll be stepping this up in a big way, faster rollout. It's good because we couldn't do this while the hotels were closed and clients weren't present. So this will all be done within the next 6 to 18 months. Thank you.

No further questions so far.

Okay. Well, then, thank you very much. Thank you, one and all, for being online with us and seeing what it to the end, I hope. Next year will be, I hope, meeting in person. Between now and then, shareholders will be only too welcome to come to the HQ as soon as lockdown's over. Sophie Gasperment is entirely right in initial comments and conclusions. The most important thing is for all of you to be in good health, to be doing well, to be protecting your loved ones. Shareholders in the Accor Group, we are working very hard. And stay safe, everyone. Thank you, everyone. Bye-bye.