Alten S.A. (0O1S.IL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everybody. I would like to thank you very much for attending this conference, which is for Alten for the presentation of the activity and the turnover by the end of December 2025. The situations are different according to different geographical sectors. By the end of December '25, the turnover is at EUR 4,143 billion compared to last year, more than EUR 100 million roughly. In France, the activity has -- I'm sorry, I was mixing up with the global level. The activity has increased by 4% out of France with a decrease of 7%. The activity has been reduced by constant change rate by 4%. Our activity has been penalized by less working days than last year. This had an impact that we have estimated by 0.25% of the turnover on internal growth. The organic growth would have been lying at 4.2%. To the contrary of the precedent quarter, the fourth one really is marked by a slowdown of the overall activity. The turnover is at EUR 1.23 billion, a decrease of 35% compared with '24, where it was of EUR 1.26 billion. At constant rate, the activity decreases by 2.4% at the fourth quarter, decreases by 2.4% in France and 2.2% out of France, which is a decreasing rate, a decline which is inferior to half of the precedent decline. We hope that this means at last stability of the activity before starting again in '26. The activity rate is relatively stable. It is -- lies at 91.4% for the last quarter, equally to '24, 91.11% for the whole year, which is identical to the year '24, which was at 91.2%. Our headcount in a decreasing perimeter has decreased less during the last quarter than the one before. However, you will see that by the end of the year, by the end of December '25 year -- by the year of '25, had headcount that has slightly increased where we have a splitting up between engineers and overall employees. Globally, from the 51,000 engineers that Alten had by the end of '25, 8,000 and a little bit more are in France and the rest out of France. At a constant scope since the beginning of the year '25, the engineering part has diminished by 96 people -- 960 person. And on the 1st of January, we had an increase of engineer, which means that we have -- and thanks to the acquisition, we have compensated the decrease of the group. The increase of our activity by the last quarter as contrary to what we had anticipated has generated a supplement of EUR 28 million, 1/3 in France, 1/3 internationally. The spinning up of the activity according to geographies is the following one. In France, the organic flow is of 3.6%. Next slide, please. But only 2.2% compared with the last quarter. The activity is penalized by a decline in the automotive sector, car building activity, which is very important for France. Telecom, minus 20% with 5% of the activity for France and the bank also, which is declining and decreasing by 17% Aerospace on the contrary is booming again. It represents 1/3 of the activity in France, and it has increased by 3.5% year-to-year. The defense sector, 12% of the French turnover, 12% organic growth and rail, 5% organic growth have remained dynamic. At the last quarter, in sequential vision and not year-to-year, the activity has stabilized in the automobile industry, finance bank and growth has increased in aerospace and defense beyond what we had anticipated. For [indiscernible] zone, we have a good growth of 5% for the overall year and 6% by the end of the year, except the automotive sector that represents 6% of the turnover. All the sectors are booming, an increase which is very good by the end of the last quarter. In Italy, the activity has increased by 2.4% and 2.9% for the last quarter after a slowdown during the first quarter. And again, we have an increase of 2.8% with the exception of the telecom sector, all the sectors have increased. Some have been better off than others like aerospace and defense as well as automobile that has increased again. In Germany, year-to-year, we have 13% of the activity. And you will see the rhythm of growth in the appendixes that we have published according to the different quarters. And you will see that by the last quarter, the rhythm of the decline in Germany has slowed down. It moved from 20% by the end of '24 to 90% at the beginning of '25, and it is close to 3% by the time of end of December. Automobile represented almost 4% of the automotive turnover is declining, but the sequential decline has also diminished. So this sector declined until the end of the third quarter, but the activity went up again in the aerospace sector that represents 20% of our turnover. It is an activity which is -- has an organic growth during the last quarter. So year-to-year, but also in sequences. The same for telecoms, 9% of turnover. In Germany, the activity has developed very quickly. In the field of defense, it has increased -- where it has increased considerably, and now it represents 7% of the German turnover. Last quarter that reveals be much more favorable than anticipated also in Germany, even if the activity remains very complicated in this country, which is not over now with all the problems around the automotive sector. In U.K., the activity has declined by 12%. And to the country of other countries, the fourth quarter has not been marked by an improvement. The decline has even increased in the automotive industry. It represents 15% of turnover in U.K. Decline also in aerospace, civil aerospace, 20% of the turnover, minus 6% decline. The same for public sector, which is decreasing by 20% to the country of that, a sector that develops in a significant way is the one of defense with an increase of 11% and represents now almost 10% of the global turnover of the country. Benelux countries, the situation is almost identical to the one of U.K., a decline of activity, which has been accentuated during the last quarter, carrying all the problems of this zone at minus 2%. Belgium represents 40% of Benelux has a decline of global activities by 9% because of automobile and tertiary activities. Netherlands, 60% of the zone, the activity has declined by 13% because of sectors out of industrial and energy. They do represent 40% of the turnover. Semiconductors, which is the best known in the -- for the Netherlands is very stable. In Eastern Europe, the activity remained very stable with a growth of 3.5%. Romania represent -- has a decline of 10% because of the automotive and bank and finance sector in the Nordics, the global activity has declined by almost 20% and the rhythm of decline has slowed down in Sweden that represents 30% of the overall turnover. Difficulties in the automobile and truck activity. In Finland, the decline is of 12%. But in the field of tooling machines, the development is good. If we move from the Atlantic to the Northern -- Northern America, the activity has a decline of 6%. The growth has almost -- has also slowed down. We have a sequential slowdown. In the U.S., 60% of the zone. Automobile, life science and retail have declined, but are stable, progressively stable by the fourth quarter. Canada, the activity has increased by 5%, thanks to automobile, aerospace, bank and finances. For Asia Pacific, we have a slight decline, 0.7% and the activity is globally stable for the second half year. The chemical activity is increasing. All the sectors are increasing apart from telecom. In India, we have a decline of 3% because of automobile and offices. The other sectors are increasing. Japan, 23% of the zones, an increase of 12%, thanks to the automobile industry and also offices development. Korea is declining strongly because of automobile and also because of the loss of an important customer. Now let's have a look at the activity as we usually do per sector as a percentage of revenue. You see that the automobile industry has globally declined by 7% for the same scope and change situation for a decline of 12% for the builders and for equipment providers, 27% decline. As you know, it is the strongest decline in Germany, which is really accounting for this very strong decline for the OEM industry. This is due to Germany. This decline is now, I think, over. We have -- we have figures for the fourth -- third and fourth quarter that reflect upon progressive and by and by a stabilization of the activity. Rail is stable. It should develop for '26 if we listen to our customers. Aerospace activities represents 15.5% of the activity is again on a good trend for organic growth during the fourth quarter, the decline is at 2%. And even the space activities, which were strongly impacted is growing again. We had communicated around organic growth for '26, but in fact that started already during the last quarter '25. Defense & Security, naval as well as naval represent 8.8% of the turnover have increased by 4%. The growth rhythm may reach -- has reached 16% by the end of the year. Energy, 11.9% of turnover has grown, thanks to nuclear activities as well as energy. Oil and gas is stable. Life Sciences, a decline -- a decline of 1.2% only for the fourth quarter. Medical equipment, pharma sector is declining by 2%. The activity in absolute value tends to reach a certain stability in a sequential way. The industrial equipment, semiconductors and electronics is declining by 1.1% -- similar to other activities. We have an activity that has started to stabilize in the field of electronic and conductors, and it has deteriorated in other fields of the industries. Telecoms are declining by 8.8%. The activity has decreased by 10% for equipment providers and 7.5% for providers. It is still marked on year-to-year, but the absolute value is supposed to stabilize around 4% -- and then bank finance and insurance remained stable. It decreased by the first half year, but the activity gained back in stability during the third and the fourth quarter. The situation improved everywhere in the world during the last quarter of '25 and mainly in Southern Europe and Canada, it is only in those countries where -- and regions where the growth is really important. Then we have retail services and public sector, a decrease of 7.7% with a stability, which is remarkable for the fourth quarter. As to M&A, Alten has acquired 4 companies this year. The 3 first ones between -- between July and December have been communicated about -- no, sorry, between July and September have been communicated in October. A last one in the field Life Sciences has been acquired during the fourth quarter, a company where the turnover is estimated at EUR 20.4 million with an important growth rate. So to sum up the perspective, this is the year '25 and the perspective '26, even if '25 has a global decline by 4.5%, it seems that the last quarter really indicated that stabilization is possible like for aerospace, like bank finances and insurance businesses. As always, by the end of the fourth quarter, the activity following the end of the year celebrations is always a little bit slow, but we will have to wait until the end of the first quarter to get an idea about the dynamism of '26. Supplementary working days are limited to 1 for the year '26. And of course, the decline does not mean that we observed for the year '25 does not mean that the decline is going to happen for and hold on for '26. The last quarter '25, which is better than anticipated, helped us to generate more turnover, which is going to be accounting for the operational results. We had indicated an expectation of 8.2% for -- by the end of '25, but it will be higher than that, and we will talk about it when publishing the results on the 25th of February.

And now I'm going to hand over to our participants. If you could open up the conference to help the questions to pop up. We have Nicolas David.

Two questions. As regards the fourth quarter, it's a little bit better than expected. Do we have to consider that customers have just finished their budgets because they were a little bit late. They hadn't been -- they hadn't consumed it all? Or is it more fundamental than that? So -- this is the first question. The second one is the decline. If you look at the first quarter of the year '25, it had been decreasing strongly.

So Sorry, we are losing Mr. David. We can't hear Mr. David anymore. Sorry, Nicolas, your second question can't be understood. I don't know what happens with the network. It holds on. So okay, let's try to understand. As regards to the first question and the fourth quarter, it's not only about spending the budget, be it for public sector or elsewhere that could have generated an overgrow of activity or surplus of activity. There is indeed a recovery. More projects were released in the field of aerospace, for instance, a certain number of projects had been postponed from one quarter to another. And then all of a sudden, it started, not only in France, but also in Germany, and it participates to the improvement of the situation in Germany. an increase also of aerospace activities in Spain -- so I believe that this is a reincrease of activities for Airbus in particular, like what had been announced. And these projects are spread over a certain number of months. And so it will really reveal the full potential in '26. As regards the second question, extremely difficult. Indeed, from a mathematical point of view, it's okay. Is it possible to envisage 0% of organic growth year-to-year in '26, if I got it right from your question. It means that we will have to compensate the embarked decline of '25. It's not impossible. If things go on like that, we have the up-ramping of a certain number of activities already. So -- if we -- if it gets -- if it reaches stability, we will have an increase by the end of the first quarter. And then it will be possible to imagine reaching 0 for the whole year. But it's a little bit too early to do that because if you look at the activity before the end of March, it's difficult to have a very clear vision of what the dynamism of activity will be for the year. We have a few periods, key periods, end of February, beginning of March and then end of September, beginning of October. Okay. I had the feeling that we could even reach that in May or June. We will see. It is not my assumption. If this is a question, it's not my assumption. We start the year with a certain number of projects, which are less important than the end of '25. We have to remember that. So I mean, we are by the end of January right now and we haven't caught up the delay we had. So I don't really understand how it could be possible. And we have a question from Laurent Daure. You may raise your question, Laurent Daure.

Bruno, can you hear me?

Yes, very well. Sorry, we still have the echo, a little bit for everyone.

First question, it's a little bit early in this year. But as regards recruitment headcount, what are the guidelines which were given to the teams? Is it a wait-and-see attitude? Simon was -- Germany is almost stable. It is extremely difficult to hear Mr. Daure. What about degradation of Germany? And then could you make a comment on that?

Recruitment only if necessary and just in case we do not have the competent the internal skills to do and to work on the projects. So we have no, we have no objectives in terms of recruitment, The activity has not started again. What is important is to have a terrestrial activities -- we lost Mr. Benoliel for a few seconds. If the activity grows and goes on growing, then we will recruit. Now for Germany, from a global point of view, the activity has increased in the field of aerospace, telecom, defense activities, they start to -- they start to recover. However, automotive industry still represents 40%. And in the automotive sector, the situation has not changed fundamentally, which means that the call for tenders that we receive are still extremely demanding. They also require systematically offshore activities. And so we will need to balance out the projects for the big projects. The Germans are increasing in terms of outsourcing of engineering, thanks to -- or because -- and yes, thanks to their suppliers in a much more rapid and massive way than the French did 10 years ago. And if we -- if we look at the German P&L, the automotive sector is -- will go on declining. I have no specific figures, but -- and then it will probably stabilize a little bit more during the year and then -- but the P&L of the car industry will remain negative in terms of contribution. Today, we have projects and our offshore activity obliges us to consider that at the beginning of the project, which is in a deficit situation at the beginning of the month. So there is no major change of paradigm, except that globally because of Germany, we have an automotive contribution, which is lower. The growth is going to slow down because you know that for OEMs, it is extremely difficult to do something. And this is true for Germany, but not only. It's also true for all the European car builders. Since the commission set new rules and in a certain way, the Horizon has lit up for the all electrical by '35. We had a certain number of automobile builders who were waiting for that and instructions to stop -- to define the final strategy. And this really contributed to enroll us in a certain number of projects. A certain number of projects are also going to be reduced. So I think the activity is going to stabilize from a turnover point of view, even if globally the offshore contributes within the mix to reduce the generation of turnover for a certain number of projects. However, I can't imagine that Germany is going to make money in this field in '26. But the increase of defense, as we said before, aerospace, et cetera, will hopefully compensate. And we should have an overall improvement of the situation in Germany by '26. So you can see that today, we've got 10 companies, not major companies. Most of them have perhaps several hundred people, some consultants, maybe 1,000 consultants in Europe, all the countries if we group all the countries together in North America, in South America equally, principally in Brazil in order to support European manufacturers in Asia, equally, India, China. So it's a fairly dynamic market, but there are no major targets at the moment. But it was an activity that dried up at the end of 2024, but I think it's bounced back quite nicely. And since we're talking about mergers and acquisitions, the 4 companies acquired in 2025 and you can see them in the communicate, the press release, they consolidated as of the 1st of January 2026. But nothing has been consolidated up until now. No, no. It will be the -- as of the 1st of January 2025?

No. Could I ask something, please? If you take the hypothesis that this business is going to stabilize, can we have a rough idea how we're going to manage the cost base. And given this hypothesis that the activity is going to stabilize, what can we expect in terms of margin? Do we have to rework the sequential turnover?

No, there will be a margin in 2025, which will be slightly up on the one announced because we have a cost structure which is very similar. It's equivalent. So this means, of course, that we're going to have to look at the margin, which will be okay in 2026. Perhaps we should wait a bit before we ask this question. But if the activity stabilizes, then we should have a similar structure. We have a slight appreciation on the margin. If the activity kicks off again, -- if we have to increase the structure, there's going to be a positive effect on the margin in 2025 as well.

Now we have a question from Derric Marcon.

Hope you can hear me? I have 4 questions. Can you hear me? The first question is, can you give us an idea on the importance of quantifying this passage from December to January in terms of the staff members that we've lost projects we've got an idea of the rhythm. Do you think you're going to be able to pull these figures back up? Is it going to be comparable to previous years, where you have a situation on the 1st of January in 2026, which might be better than anticipated? And the second question is in the -- is related to what you're talking about in Germany, major references -- the automotive industry has had a huge impact on our margins. Can you talk about the flows? Can you talk about the possible impact on turnover in terms of financing, if you look further, where can we go if we take BMW, Volkswagen, if we take them as customers? Can you give us an idea? Does this multiply the turnover that you might have just now? Or is it 20% more if everything goes well, obviously? And the third question, in fact, I've only got 3, says the gentlemen. The third question, when we look at constant OpEx, you talked about EUR 30 million of a delta compared to what you thought. So that's like 50, 60 base points on margin like that, we must look at things, I think, this upcoming year.

I'm going to begin by the last question. When you have extra turnover, the top line doesn't go down immediately. You have costs between the 2. Salaries, for example. So automatically, you can't have 50, 60 points more on EBIT. Well, salaries, yes, but you already have them considered. You don't do that with employees. I'm afraid the sound is very poor. I can hardly hear the gentleman. You have to look at cost of sales. We don't -- we're not working with luxury gross margins. We mustn't wait for the margins to go up to that degree. It will be better. It will be substantially better, but perhaps not as well as you think it might be. When you look at the gross margin, we have to look also at performance. Performance has been better, perhaps there will be more commissions taken. There's a rob between EBIT and turnover, which must be taken into account. Now with regard referencing the articles, this is a question perhaps which is slightly more complicated. We have won new references. But we can see through the calls for tender that there's a real concentration, particularly in Germany, which is going to have an impact on several players because if you don't have any offshore, then we -- we can participate freely in the calls for tender. These calls for tenders are used for a volume of activity. And these volumes of activity may or may not be assured. There's going to be status of work and purchase orders, which come into play. Then you have technical services direction, the calls for tender at the heart of these references and volumes of activity, which could account for tens of millions of euro with production objectives in place, then it have to be considered project by project. So currently, we can't see any significant increase even as there are calls for tender in place, we can't see any significant increase in turnover related to that with the car manufacturers in Germany, not in the way we might imagine the turnover improving with 10% to 20% with some activities next year. Perhaps that will happen. But today, we don't have any real concrete element which allow us to forecast that accurately. What we do know is that we are consulted frequently. We're going to win a set number of projects, a set number of tenders -- so we're going to see that the costs are going to have an impact on the bottom line. Others we're going to do better more quickly. This is a change, and it's a significant change in the way we operate business in the automotive industry in Germany. This has been about 1 and 1.5 years. We received calls for tender with the average price of EUR 50 to EUR 60 per hour. And now we're talking EUR 30 to EUR 35 per hour with this demand to be close at hand for the technical interfaces with the clients. That meant we couldn't outsource everything we wanted to do, obviously, because you have to be close at hand, you can't outsource elsewhere. So that means we have competitors who are 100% German. We don't know if this will work or not, but they are 100% German. Others like us who are French perhaps, but have to assume the ramp-up cost in the initial period. An idea by the end of the year. Well, every year, we are going to pay 1,300 and 1,500 engineers. We have projects that was through this year, last year. It was less at the end of June. We got a bit of an identical phenomena. We could had recovery -- we're in a progressive recovery. And that's why I indicated that we have to wait for the end of the third quarter to see how much time we need to recover fully because afterwards, that's when we're going to regenerate growth in the interim period, and that's why I explained to Nicolas, of course, that I didn't believe organic -- positive organic growth as early as June because we've got -- we've still got a dip in January and February. However, as opposed to last year, if you had to compare the 2, that's what I've done, the recuperation, the recovery phase is going to be quicker this year.

Well, that's what I wanted to ask. I believe he's talking about framework agreements. Can you quantify what that represents in terms of challenge, are we talking about EUR 150 million, EUR 100 million a year? Can you give us an idea of what it represents?

I know this is hypothetical. No, no, actually, no, I can't because we don't have any indications, not operational ones, which are specific enough, which would allow us then to have this kind of projection.

Now we have a question from Aditya Buddhavarapu...

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Just a couple of points I wanted to clarify. So on 2026, can you just clarify what you are saying in terms of the trajectory of growth during the year? Are you saying that Q1 and maybe Q2 will still be negative and you might only see a return to positive growth by the end of Q2 and maybe flat for the full year? Is that sort of based on the embedded projects you have for this year? That's the first question on the growth for 2026. Second, also, could you just clarify on the margins for 2026? How should we think about it if growth is stable or maybe growth is slightly positive? How should we think about the margin outlook for the year overall?

So first of all, regarding the growth for 2026, as I explained, we don't give any guidance at this stage for 2 reasons. The first one is that we know what is the embedded decline because it's not any more embedded growth because of what happened in '24 and '25 for the coming year. So it's minus 2% roughly. On top of that, each end of semester, we are losing projects because projects are ending. And also, we are facing people leaving the company. okay? That's the way it works. So end of '25, we roughly lost 1,400 people for the [indiscernible]. I mean, whether internal or external, but that's the fact. And we have to offset that loss by hiring people, and we can hire people only if we win new projects. Of course, customers having projects ending end of December will relaunch new projects independently of their global budget portfolio. They will relaunch new projects during January, February or March. So for us, it is very important to wait until we have offset that loss to know when we are back to the situation we faced at the end of the previous semester. Will it be mid-February, end of March or later. In '25, for example, we never succeeded in offsetting that loss because of the global, I mean, economic decline within our industry. And this is why we today cannot know if we will breach that threshold and above all when. Accordingly, we are unlikely to post organic growth, meaning that we will have not only offset that loss at the end of the year, but also the embedded decline of the company at the end of Q1. I mean it's almost impossible when we had positive growth in Q1 during the years -- the previous years before '24, it was because we had generated sufficient positive embedded growth to offset the people leaving the company at the end of December and building in a very positive growth, we had customers launching many new projects in February and March. Unfortunately, we will not be in that situation in '26, even though the situation is probably better than the one we are facing Q1 '25. And to be honest, I cannot tell if and when Alten will post a positive organic growth in '26. What we just saw is that the activity seems stabilizing globally if we think on a sequential basis, I mean, comparing Q4 and Q3 in terms of revenue. And we today have some sectors growing, I mean, from an organic standpoint, which are aerospace, making and finance, defense and naval mainly and nuclear activity among the energy field, okay? So the picture is globally better than it was 1 year ago, but still we are not back to positive growth. Regarding the margins, of course, we will release the margin end of February, and it's much too early to talk about the margin for '26. And we never give any guidance in February when we release the numbers because it is linked, as you know, with the assumptions in terms of growth okay, because we have to deal with the bench and also with the cost base. And we wait normally until April when we know better about what will happen in H1. And we know the mood of the customer, so we can make some assumptions for H2 before we need any guidance. We give any guidance. But for sure, the margin for '25 will be above the estimation because we were guiding to a minus 5% organic growth. And at the end, it was minus 4.5% -- so automatically, since the cost base is the same, we will slightly improve our margins compared with the guidance we gave in October. And we will see in April where we expect that the margins could -- what the margin could reach in '26, but we need 2 to 3 months more to have a better view...

We have no other questions. Would anybody else like to say anything? We have another question from Mr. Marcon.

Bruno, just to be sure, I think you've already responded to the question. But the consolidation date for the fourth is the 1st of January 2026, because I'm not in India and the United States, it might not be the same.

No, no. No, it's 1st of January 2026, but you're right to highlight this because we had the forecast a consolidation in October 2025. But when it came to management and accounting, it was very poorly organized. So the Indian colleagues were not able to respect that deadline. It's very marginal because this is a company that has EUR 7 million in turnover. It doesn't really change very much. But you did well to ask the question because we had to kind of move their first consolidation because of the state of affairs in the company. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Well, I think that was our last question. Okay. If you have no further questions then, I'd like to thank you all for having participated in this conference on our 2025 fiscal year. We will have the results in just over 3 weeks. I wish you all a great evening. And if you do have any other questions, you know how to reach me. So I would say thank you very much, and hope to see you soon. Good evening. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]