Société BIC SA (BB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. [Foreign Language] It's a big honor for us to welcome you here personally in our headquarters, here in [indiscernible] where it all started for BIC many years ago. And of course, also a warm welcome for those who are joining us online today. For those who do not know me yet, my name is Rob Versloot. And I have the pleasure to lead this company since almost 1 year, if everything goes well today, I hope to celebrate my first anniversary at BIC in exactly 8 days from now. And a bit about my background. I've been working in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. For the last 30 years, and my first job was a salesman. And you will notice today in the presentation that DNA of the salesman has always stayed with me all about commercial execution. I spent the first 15 years of my career in originally a Dutch company called Numico the bankers here maybe remember the deal that Danone did when it acquired Numico many years ago. So spend a couple of years with Danone as well. and then transitioned to a Swiss food company called Hero where I had the pleasure to lead the company as CEO for the last 12 years. And now since 1 year at BIC, and I can tell you, I'm honored. I'm honored as a Dutch man to lead this iconic French company and to contribute to its development. Let me see if this works, it does. So luckily, I'm not alone today, but I'm joined by my wonderful colleagues of our Executive Committee. And this is a new team. This is a team that I have assembled over the last 12 months. And it's a great combination of some long-standing experienced BIC executives, complemented by new hires, mostly in the commercial and financial areas. So today, we have the pleasure to start with -- I have the pleasure to start with sharing our overall strategic ambition. We will then welcome my colleague, David, who will take you through the category strategies of each of our core categories. We're then going to switch and focus on in-market execution, starting with our largest market, North America, that we presented by my colleague, Haven, followed by Alina, who will take you through our in-market execution in our international markets. We then will speak about sustainable development, very important topic for a company like us. Before Greg will take you through the numbers, our transformation, our financial ambition, and I will finish off with a conclusion. So yes, it's really a pleasure to kick off this meeting today and take you through our strategic ambition. But before doing so, I'd like to share with you what I have learned here now 12 months in this wonderful company. And I'd like to take you through some of the key strengths and assets of which we are very proud here at BIC. They are starting with our most important asset, a legendary brand, a legendary brand, a French icon having worked for so many years in fast-moving consumer goods, there are not many brands in this world who can count on the same global awareness as the BIC brands can. So it is really a fantastic asset to build on. Secondly, I mean, I have them here our products, yes. They're absolutely iconic. They are being recognized all over the world the lighter, the pens, the shavers, absolutely iconic design, wonders of industrial design. And this is something we're very, very proud of. And when you think of design and these icons, we really plan to leverage that more and more in the future as well. Thirdly, I spent roughly half my time in markets. I've traveled all over the world to all our important big markets and what I see everywhere is people with a real heart for the company, passionate professionals who want to make things happen, and we'll give it all day by day. Really a fantastic culture with great people. And then manufacturing, I told you already, I'm a commercial guy, but I do know something about supply chain. And the BIC factories are absolutely state-of-the-art. I have not encountered in my professional life such great technical know-how, such fantastic efficiencies. And it's pretty amazing that we, as a company, which are offering relatively affordable products. We can generate gross margins of over 50%, and that is very much driven by a fantastic supply chain and manufacturing footprint on which we are very, very proud as a company. And last but not least, distribution, you can travel basically anywhere in the world, and I guarantee you, you will be able to find BIC products in literally every corner. Stable enough, we still have a lot of opportunity for distribution but we are present in more than 160 countries. So really a fantastic worldwide distribution footprint. This is a lineup of which many companies are jealous. I can tell you this. This is a fantastic basis to build from. But we want to be brutally honest with you also today. And when we look back at our performance, we conclude that we have some issues to fix here at BIC. Today, we are a EUR 2 billion company, and that's not bad. That's great. The problem is, 10 years ago, we were in a EUR 2 billion company. I want to be very clear. We have not been able to grow our business structurally in the last year. We have lost volume, and we have also suffered from declining profitability. Our EBIT margin last year was 13.6%. At the same time, I want to be balanced. I want to be balanced. I want to call out the issues, but I also want to be balanced. The company has remained with a very, very solid financial foundation and structure that has been able to really sustain shareholder returns. I want to be very clear about what is our priority here at BIC. Our #1 priority is to drive organic growth. But before doing so, there is a couple of things that we need to fix. And we are very aware of that. Coming from fast-moving consumer goods industry, what surprised me when I started here at BIC and started to analyze our P&L and look at our commercial activity, we're not investing sufficiently in both brand support and commercial execution. For the elderly people in the room, like me, I remember BIC as a company who used to advertise like crazy, Tour de France, John McEnroe, who remembers [indiscernible] , a famous American Tennis player big was all over in advertising. And I think when we look today, when I go to the socials, when I look at TikTok, together with my daughter, I don't really see us. So we really have an opportunity to improve our brand support. When we benchmark with other companies, we can also clearly see that there is a cap. Second issue, which struck me is I think the company has been busy in the recent years. with acquiring in what I call rather exotic new businesses. So the company made several acquisitions. We're very proud of one acquisition, namely tents, I will talk more about that today. But we also did other acquisitions in categories which were pretty far out of where the DNA and the strength of BIC is. So we acquired several businesses in the beautiful art of skin, temporary tattoos. We bought a company called Rocketbook digital Nopat.We invested in a company called AMI. And in my view, this has led to a lack of the core business. And one of the first decisions the Board and I took -- when I started last year in Q4 was to say goodbye to those businesses. They were not contributing to either growth or profitability and we wanted to make a clean start. And you've seen that last year in Q4 that we took that step. Third point I want to call out is our organization, very, very complex in my view, which surprised me. I think BIC DNA is an entrepreneurial company, a family-owned company, but we saw very many different management layers, a bit unclear on who's accountable for what. So we took a lot of steps in the last 12 months to implement a leader more commercially focused and less complex operating model. And that, of course, caused a lot of change here in this company, but that change was necessary in order to be fit for growth going forward. And I'm convinced that our new commercially-oriented setup will also help to speed up innovation to be much closer to consumers and customers in order to grow the business. So we're very clear on what our issues are, and we're very clear on what we need to fix. The great news is there is so much opportunity still to grow our business. I know some of you are a bit doubtful about the growth profile of some of our categories. But I can tell you, on a global level, all our categories still show growth. And on top of that, our market share is much smaller than I thought when I started to work at BIC. I think the name is bigger. The brand is bigger than the factual market share. And for those of you I know the questions will come, lighters. I just want you to remember this effect. From the 10 lighters sold in the world, only one is BIC, 1 out of 10. So there is a lot of opportunity to capture share, and I'm going to explain to you today how we plan to do that. The point I want to make is we're very clear about our priorities. As I already mentioned, key KPI going forward is organic growth. And in order to trigger that, we know we will need to invest more in our brands and our commercial execution. And in order to enable that, we need to transform the way we are organized. As I mentioned, we took a lot of steps and change our ways of working. We need to change the shape of our P&L in order to drive this company as a true fast-moving consumer goods company. Now when it comes to growth, it's all about execution and growth doesn't come by itself. So we really took the time to make deliberate changes in the way we plan to execute growth. We have developed a model which is based on quite a well-known theory called How Brands Grow of professional [indiscernible] Sharp. And we call it How BIC Grows. So we have been training our organization. We're still in that process to change the way we plan to execute growth. And it's all about penetration. So our strategy will be focused on how can we drive additional penetration. How can we make from 1 out of 10, 2 out of 10 in lighters and there are ample opportunities for additional penetration in this company. And it has to do with, of course, the availability, the physical availability of the product. It has to do with mental availability, and that's why I'm so keen on really driving that brand and mental and brand support going forward. And it also has to do about product and portfolio. I'm going to come back later on this, but we are moving from locally diverse commercial execution to a standardized growth model going forward, which is called How BIC Grows. Now of course, you are very curious to see how we're going to make this all this happen. And before explaining that, I have a video to show you, to give you an idea. [Presentation]

Ladies and gentlemen, let's get back to what made us great. And I was talking about growth before the video. And I think it's very important that we are clear about our North Star, who do we actually want to become this growing company. BIC to the future is about becoming the leader in beautiful, better everyday essentials. That's what I'd like this company to be recognized for. Why beautiful? First of all, we have this background of this iconic designs in the company. And through design, through a rejuvenated brand, through great packaging design, we will seduce more consumers in order to increase penetration. And the combination is better and with better is a testimony to the superior product performance that BIC big products deliver. Again, the lighter, I can testify to this personally. Unfortunately, I am still smoking for the last 30 years. There is no better pocket lighter than the BIC lighter. Tangle Teezer, I mean, I invite you to try this. You will never use a different brush again, yes? So we have this combination of really products that really deliver on performance. And what we want to do is we want to beef up the beauty, the attraction of our products. Beautiful, better everyday essentials and that will help us to increase penetration. Now we're announcing our strategic plan today, but it's not that we have been sitting still here in Price in the last 12 months. I already mentioned the decisive action we took in order to refocus the company on what it knows best, our core business, and we have divested or stopped the things that were distracting us. Then I mentioned Tangle Teezer, we are incredibly happy and proud to have single teaser in our portfolio. And you will hear today that the category of brushes will become the official [indiscernible] lack of our company. And why does this fit well with BIC? Again, let's go to beautiful better everyday essentials. Great-looking products fantastic product performance made from plastic hey, which company can produce plastic products like no other. So we have great opportunity for in-sourcing margin expansion. And we can leverage our worldwide distribution footprint. So this is really a perfect match, very happy with Tangle Teezers. And you've seen also in our recent result publications that we have made great progress with integration, but also with acceleration of growth. Then I'm not the only new guy here at BIC. You will meet my team today, which has been renewed for an important part. But also, our Board of Directors has had many changes and we feel incredibly supported by our renewed Board, and we are 100% aligned on the strategy that we are pursuing and explaining to you today I mentioned our operating model. We took decisive action to adjust our organization structure in order to become more agile, to come closer to customers and consumers. And we are pleased. I want to be -- I won't say satisfied, but we are pleased with that we see after a very tough year last year, we see that the momentum is improving at BIC. We had a moderate growth in the first half year and a very high EBIT margin, thanks to a one-off related to the tariff substitution and strong cash flow. So I think we are managing to stabilized the company slightly growing whilst we are preparing for sustained growth going forward. I'd like to keep the things very simple and clear. So on the -- from the category point of view, we've made clear choices. We are going to focus on our traditional 3 core categories, plus brushes because we see an incredible opportunity to develop the brushes category. If you go to the store like I do every week, I invite you to take a look at the brushes section. It's a section where there is no branded leader, and when we look at Tangle Teezer and its performance in the U.K. and in the U.S. are 2 main markets where we invest. We take share with an incredible speed and we did a lot of research on Tangle Teezer and in my career, I have not seen a consumer funnel, which is so strong single these ahead. So the relation between awareness, trial repeat is really fantastic. We're also very clear on the role of each of the categories. And my colleague, David will enlighten you a little bit more about it. But each category has its own role to play in the total BIC mix. On the country side, we have also taken decisive action because as this plan is a lot about commercial excellence, we want to make sure that we are properly set up in our country organization to execute with excellence. And what we have done is we have categorized our markets in 4 different buckets, depending on its development stage or the performance and have adjusted our in-market strategies based on the category of the country type. White spaces. Also important, you will learn despite the worldwide distribution footprint we have, there is an incredible amount of white space still available for our company to capture. Now I showed you where we want to play, both from a category point of view, from a country point of view. Let's now discuss what are now the levers which we can pull in order to improve that organic growth performance at BIC. I'll take you through these one by one, starting with portfolio. The BIC company is in love with SKUs, I have noticed really. There's a deep love for developing as many SKUs as possible. But when we analyze that portfolio, I think we have over 10,000 -- over 10,000 different SKUs. But when we analyze which part of the portfolio is now actually driving our growth, our profitability, it is a very small part. So we really believe we have an incredible opportunity to clean up our house, to reduce the portfolio and focus much more on those products and SKUs that really matters. And that will help our commercial colleagues to be more clear I believe less is more in this particular case. We will not only help our commercial colleagues to improve their focus. It will also benefit our supply chain. You can imagine if you have a smaller portfolio that you have higher production runs on your core SKUs that, that will help efficiency even further. We are at a good level, but we don't want to stop where we are today. We want to increase going forward. This is my favorite one. You know the BIC brands. And what you see here is some early directional work, which we are pursuing at the moment. BIC is a fantastic brand but it's a little bit outdated. It starts to feel like yesterday's big brands. So what we want to do is we want to rejuvenate these wonderful brands. We want to connect with younger consumers. And we are working at this as we're speaking, you see some first directional executions here. The mission is clear, BIC has to become cool again. I don't want my generation to talk about BIC. I want my children to talk about BIC. In school, at the clubs, wherever they are and there is this wonderful basis and great heritage, but it's time for renewal, for reconnection with new consumers, I see a wonderful opportunity to propel this brand into the future. So we are working on the brands. And once we have defined the renewal, that's the time when we're going to start to invest behind it and make the whole world known about the new BIC. You saw in our growth model, it's about portfolio. It's about mental availability and investment in brand support, but it's also about making the product available everywhere. What I've noticed here in my time at BIC is a very strong focus on what I call the traditional super and hypermarket channel. You can -- when you're here in France, you can go to the Carrefour, [indiscernible] share products, et cetera. The point is there is a lot of opportunity in alternative channels. And I can name a couple of examples. Fastest-growing channel in Europe is discounters, BIC is underrepresented. We have to get in there. In stationery, yes, back to school, that is, of course, nice and an important season. But do you know which distribution point we sell the most for colored pens here in France. Disneyland, [ Mala Vale ] next to our factory. We got to go there where the consumer shops, recreate travels. So I see a lot of white space in channel in channel development outside traditional supermarket hypermarkets. The traditional channel, convenience channel, discounters, tourism, leisure, you name it, we have to be there. So an important lever for us in our ambition to increase penetration is to start occupying white spaces in the distribution landscape. And then I mentioned it already, this company was known for great geographical expansion. Our founder, Marcel Bich, LeBaron Bich, travel the world and opened countries 60 years ago, went to Brazil, went to Mexico, and I don't want to compare myself with Marcel Bich, but I do -- we got to take the learnings of what made us great. And when you analyze the geographical footprint of BIC, there is opportunity to increase our presence in emerging markets. No? Talking about imaging markets, we know we want to be selectively. So we have carefully chosen which markets do we already have brand equity, where do we already have the structure? Where do you have the right to win? And we see particularly on the African continent, we see huge opportunities for growth. We have already strong presence in Africa. So it's not that we're now suddenly starting to embark call an African adventure. But we have analyzed that we can really turbocharge our sales through the recruitment of hundreds of new colleagues in sales. And when you look at Africa from a demographic and an economic growth point of view, it is in a great case for growth. Population will double in Africa. Clearly, we see opportunities for geographical expansion for our business. I'm coming to the last lever, which is innovation. Of course, as a fast-moving consumer goods company, we need to renovate and innovate our portfolio. When we talk about renovation, remember the mission, beautiful and better. I want all our products to look outstanding. I want to seduce and attract consumers. And there is so much we can do with decoration and execution, and packaging design and product shapes. So that is where we will focus. And when it comes to innovation, I want to be selective because most innovation fails. Most innovations clutters the portfolio. Most innovation has to be withdrawn from market. So I want to surely innovate, but we will test, we will learn before we roll out. Yes. Those are the 5 levers which we want to pull in order to drive growth. And coming now to some other enablers which will help us to realize what I've just told you about. I think we already spoke about the brands. We have 2 wonderful brands, BIC which needs a renewal and a great Tangle Teezer brand. We spoke about consumer and commercial excellence, the whole focus -- the relentless focus on excellent execution in market, we will continue to nurture our supply chain. We're not going to fix what isn't broken. We have a great supply chain. We're proud of it, we will nurture it. Where we have work to do, and Greg will speak about it later today, is in our digital infrastructure and capability. Clearly, we are not where we want to be. So part of our transformation is also a very deliberate investment to get up to speed in the area of digital capability. We spoke about organization. And as I mentioned, we've taken a lot of decisive steps. And last but not least, our sustainability strategy will be fully focused on circularity. We have, of course, in a company like ours, a duty to think about the end of life of our products. And my colleague, Francois will take you through our thinking how we will try to become a circular company in the future. On organization, I am -- and it's so important in order to help us execute well. I'd like to take you through how we plan to execute commercially. I spoke about that focus on 4 core categories. So we have established a unified category organization. And that part of our organization is responsible for our brands, is responsible to define the right portfolio, is a BIC change versus the past portfolio. It used to be managed locally, responsible for innovation and is also responsible for manufacturing. So this is what we make and how we make. And once we have done that here, once we have rejuvenated redesigned the portfolio, it's being handed over to our commercial leaders who will focus on execution, execution. And Alina and Haven will take you through the plans. So they are all about distribution customers, service levels and local activation of our business. That is the operating model we have implemented here at BIC. And it's a big change for the company. It's really a big change. So I'm coming to the end of my presentation. And as I already mentioned, I'd like to keep things simple. So this is a one-slide summary of what I've been sharing with you this morning. Now I know you now all look at the numbers or probably you have seen them already. Yes, we truly believe organic growth is possible at big. Remember that slide with the market shares, there is so much to be found. So we want to guide you that we will be able to grow around 3%, and maybe I want to include some comments on that on this projected organic net sales growth. It's very broad-based. It's very broad based from both a category point of view, and from a geographical point of view. We believe that all our categories can contribute to growth. We expect double-digit growth in brushes. And if you look at the recent results, you see that it's there, and we -- we are convinced that we can sustain that going forward. And from a country point of view, also there, we have really found a balanced picture. We foresee robust growth in our #1 market of the United States of America. We foresee double-digit growth in the emerging footprints, which we are developing and investing in. Last point I want to make on targets. This is a very important point. We have chosen targets that are ambitious, but credible. I think our company in the past has disappointed investors at times by not delivering upon commitments. This is not my style. This is not my style. I want to make sure, I want to build a trusted relationship with our investors. I do what I say, and I say what I do. That's the style. So these are credible targets. They're ambitious. They are step change versus what we did, but we want to deliver upon them. Last point I want to make before I hand over to my colleague, David, I'm sure you agree. Our strategy is not rocket science. This is -- this model is a proven, fast-moving consumer good model. This is best practice. Its success will depend very simple on execution, execution, execution. That's why I spent at least half of my time with our colleagues in the markets, execution, execution. That's where our focus will be. And Greg will also later show you in our whole transformation. We have focused on how can we ensure execution. How can we make sure we don't go wrong here? As the former salesman that I am, I love execution. I get happy when I'm in the store, and I see the perfect portfolio in a fantastic packaging on a display. This is what we're going to be about. My ambition is to develop BIC, together with my team, into a professional growing and winning fast-moving consumer goods company. We have wonderful heritage here in BIC, but I'm convinced about a great future for this iconic company and look forward to become the leader in beautiful, better everyday essentials. Thank you very much. I'll give the floor to my colleague, David, to talk about our 4 beautiful categories. [Foreign Language]

Good morning to everyone. My name is David Cabero. I'm the Chief Growth Officer, [indiscernible] . My career has been divided in 3 different periods. The first one, 10 years with finance experience in Arthur Andersen and L'Oreal. [indiscernible] years with commercial experience as a general manager in different countries, subregions and regions, the last role that I took was the General Manager of Europe and the last 2 years as category leader, first in stationery and now with the 4 categories in my new role. I'm 22 years at BIC , so I know well this house. Our success has been anchored with simple, functional, desirable, long-lasting accessible products, what we were calling our Better, everyday essentials. Those attributes today do not longer -- are no longer sufficient to grow. So that's why we are adding design to the products to our core range which means that we are turning those products into beautiful, better everyday essential, adding the beautiful part. The ultimate objective of this is twofold. First is to attract new consumers through penetration and some consumers are buying today other brands and other products will buy BIC and generate new purchasing occasions. It's a very important shift in our strategy because it means that we are strengthening the core. It means that we are increasing volumes through penetration. It means that we are increasing margins through mix as those products are more expensive, and we are making a better use of our current manufacturing capabilities with the objective of profitable long-term value generation. So I invite you now to visualize all that through a video. [Presentation]

Growth will come from integrated strategies of those 4 category plans. These frameworks enables us to adapt our play to win in each and every market. So in stationary, there will be a penetration-led volume growth in developing markets as we have plenty of space to grow still. In developed markets, we will double down on animation, with the new ranges that you have seen already before at the entrance of this session and always with a profit-oriented mindset because I want to remind you that stationery is the lowest profitable in percentage category that we are having, the less profitable. Lighters in developed markets where we are already present, the focus will be in visibility on the point of sales. while in developing will be, again, penetration, presence, market presence. We'll increase our brand appeal with renewed decoration, both on the lighter itself and also on the BRS material. In Shavers, we'll double then will grow the core, our base and nonreferable market, while we will do the first steps into the premium ice segment, the refillable market that accounts for 60% of the total marketing where our market share is still very, very low. And we'll gain distribution in the channels, the growth channels where we are still very limited presence. An example is e-commerce in shavers. In brushes, we'll accelerate in the premium segment. we will win through innovation from the tangling, the core of our business. You have seen probably the complete Care range that is outside that James has been showing you a very nice range that is now being sold on the markets as we talk. We targeted geographical expansion to scale the high growth momentum that we are going through. The value creation algorithm where it resides, it resides on giving to each category complementary roles. We're going to invest in Tangle Teezer and we're going to invest in shavers. But in stationary will be much more profitable in mind. So this will be the compensation that we're going to create and the algorithm will come from the sum of all those parts. There are 3 common levers that you'll find across all categories, the 4 categories. First, our way forward is striking an equilibrium in our commercial regional footprint. As developing markets grew double digit year after year till 2030, by 2030, developing markets, developed and NAM will have equal weight. It means that each one of them will have 33% of the net sales of the company, mitigating risk and limiting growth dependencies in only one region. Second, we'll reduce our portfolio between 30% and 50%. We'll focus on the core in the hero products and will eliminate the tails, right? For cash generation, and third, we'll focus on the right channels. Discount and e-commerce which are the fastest-growing channels today in [ FMCG ] but also traditional channel, what we have already 50% of our business is very fragmented at plenty of wet spaces across the world, across the regions. Let's move now category by category. Let's start with stationary. The key feature of stationery is that this is a very fragmented category with a lot of fragmented in terms of competition, with a mature market, that's a mature category, very volume sensitive. It means that the small variances in volumes has significant impacts in our cost of goods and limited technological innovation. It's not each and every day that we change the inks. The value for opportunities for BIC reside at volume in developing markets as we grow in penetration. Value through mix in developed markets, following the architects that we just saw. Entering in new channels, and I will mention gifting, as an example, leisure, tourism. The 4 colors of Eurodisney you sold at a higher -- at a price higher than EUR 8. If you go to back to school in France, as an example, you'll find out less than to -- so it's time 4X the price. It allows us to capture value through increased product desirability and design. It's new consumer occasions that we are entering in. And last but not least, we'll leverage BIC's unique brand, but also scale as we are today a global business. Today's stationary is a category with lower profitability. I just mentioned it before. So we want to turn stationery into a value-creative category to improve cash generation. How we get that through 3 mass win battles. We boost penetration in developing markets with volume growth, leveraging already our current commercial and industrial footprint were already there. We have the infrastructure to do it. We elevate the brand in developed markets. You saw it were shifting on those markets into beautiful, better everyday essentials. Bringing design, bringing attractivity. You saw the Vives probably if you had the time, our new range also in the video range that is attractive and allows us for trade-up and allows us for -- to increase penetration through new consumers that were not buying our products, especially in the young generations and always improving profitability through reducing portfolio complexity and with the launch of higher-margin products. So if we talk about portfolio strategy, we'll bring design into our products, making our products more desirable, launching the Vives, launching 4 colors, with new colors like the mineral tons, pastels, leveraging the trends that are changing each and every year and collaborating with brands like The Stranger Things that you saw that we did in Brazil. [indiscernible] strategy has also a benefit -- some benefit in our P&L. We don't develop products from scratch. We're starting from hero products. This means quicker speed to market to bring animation, but also lower capital requirements as we have already the machines to do it. Secondly, we'll execute with 3 new geographical focus, so developing markets on volume, develop markets on value through mix and with that, what we are doing is we're bringing the developing markets and the center of our strategy, and that's a big shift in the strategy that we are presenting to you today. Increasing penetration through Hero products selling more the crystal is something that we master. We've been doing that for decades, right? It has been the base of our international expansion and has brought predictable returns over time. So this gives us a lot of confidence of how can we do that globally, again. Thirdly, we'll simplify our portfolio, focusing on the core products, cutting the long tail, which is a big part of the portfolio, but it adds very few sales and very few additional consumers, and that's the plan on the portfolio strategy. Let me move now into lighter. That's a very fragmented category. And as mentioned by Rob, only 1 out of 10 products are sold by BIC. So 90% of the products in the market are outside BIC. This means unlimited possibilities of growth independently about the market evolution. The growth pools globally are shifting toward white spaces toward developing towards where population is still growing and growing in developed markets requires an excellent execution on the point of sales. So we have white spaces in one part and an execution very important on the markets that already more mature markets like the developments. The value opportunities for BIC. What we want to do is first to capture those volumes that are outside our hands. That is the first priority. And we'll do that through penetration, physical availability, target group to market and brand investments. There will be some targeted investments in this category. [indiscernible] of course, the U.S. profitability, which is the big part of our profitability today and increase the portfolio desirability. Lighters for BIC is a profitable growth category. Whenever we sell more products, more lighters, we do profits that we have seen that for years, and you know that well. So we'll drive profitable growth through animation and penetration. We want to be seen. We want to be there and we want to be desired. So be seen in developed markets, we are already present. So all the focus is on visibility in the point of sales. Be there in developing markets, we are there but with very limited presence. So here, the question is more on the white spaces on being present and that will be the focus, bringing the products into the shops. Be desired is through increased brand and portfolio preference, product preference. And you will tell me, for a lighter, what does it mean to have a product preference that's very simple. From our consumer insights team, what we know is that 40% of the purchases are impulse-driven. Decisions happens at the point of sale and the attractive decoration is what drives consumer preference. So the solution is very simple. Our to drive growth will improve our decoration designs and the designs of the products that we're going to launch in the next few years. As with the weight of the decor, the decorated lighters growth and particularly those of the premium lighters that we benefit from mix, we benefit from higher sales and margins. As you will understand, the price of a decorated product is much bigger than a classic range lighter. Let's move into Shavers. What are the key features in Shavers. The larger and faster-growing value pool are not outside of the BIC perimeter. Why? Because it's 60% of the market, the refillable market and we have a very small and tiny market share in this category. Female shaver is a pocket of growth. We know that, has been that for a while. And there are new usages and shaving occasions. So the value opportunities for BIC are quite straightforward. We're going to grow in our core, which is the [indiscernible] where we are strong. where we're going to start building our presence in premium. You saw it. We have the full range at the coffee -- close to the coffee machines of the new products that incorporates all premium technology that we have been developing in the last few years. We're going to leverage the female shaving growth with our brand, our franchise, Soleil, very well known, and we'll go to innovate to answer changing consumer needs. And you see in contrast with stationary and lighters, now in Shavers, we're talking about innovation and high brand investments. That's a different complementary role that I was mentioning at the beginning of each and every part of our product portfolio. So what do we want to be? What is our brand positioning in Shavers, but we want to be is the brand of choice for [indiscernible] consumers those that look for great performance at affordable price. That's what we are. That's what BIC is. There will be -- the way of doing it is through 3 mass win battles. The first one is to grow our nonrefillable core. We need to start entering to a refillable market, this is growing, and we are not present. So that's the second. And third, last but not least, is to enlarge our footprint, particularly in developing markets. And in Shavers, in developing markets, this is where our value for money proposal counts the most because that's a great competitive advantage in countries where purchasing power is low. We're going to drive mental availability, increase brand preference, and we're going to convey to our consumers the right messages through the right channels. Leveraging partnerships, we're successfully launching a new advertising campaign, featuring international football players that you might all know, which is Ronaldinho in Brazil with tremendous success. And of course, we'll have to continue securing excellent execution in the point of sales where decisions are taken. Let's move in 2 brushes, which is our fourth and last category before concluding. Tangle Teezer has been an amazing acquisition, a very successful one. with double-digit growth compounding across quarters, quarter after quarters since the moment of the acquisition. Our brand benefits from leading market positions and exceptional brand awareness. We have been delivering through robust execution across markets. Manufacturing and supply chain synergies, as mentioned by Rob, where a plastic company are well on track, and that's helping also this flying will of reducing costs, investing in the brand and growing. We have launched successful media campaigns, supported by key partnerships that adds to the brand and helps the brand like the Devil Wears Prada that you have probably seen and also Kim Kardashian schemes brand. Now what are the features of these category brushes. Firstly, it's a highly fragmented category. This means that today, there is no global leader -- market leader. The value is concentrated in the premium segment. Growth is driven logically by brand desirability and product performance. E-commerce and premier channels are reshaping the market, and they are fast growing compared to the rest. So the value of opportunities for BIC are also very straightforward. We're building leadership in the premium brushes. We're prioritizing e-commerce and premium channels where we want to be and win. We are supporting Tangle Teezer is a unique brand image through those partnerships that I just mentioned, and we're scaling selectively in priority markets growing in the U.S., growing in the U.K. and selecting some other markets, but we want first to become leaders in each and every market that we enter instead of spreading across plenty of different geographies. The ambition is to become a global market leader in brushes. I think you had already imagined it before. Be undisputed global leader. So how we'll execute our ambition, so we're going to extend from the core with innovation, the complete range that you saw at the entrance and also at the video. We're going to drive brand awareness to convert the high-value consumers as we increase our packaging and our launches, we're going to refine the packaging and increased visibility to make clear the difference between the ranges for our consumers and to facilitate their choices, and we're going to prioritize high-growth markets, pockets of growth in very selected markets. We are extending our portfolio through a pipeline of differentiated products with a strong focus design with color trends that change each and every year, as you can see here, that's the last collection with patent protection and there is technology behind and that's why it's a perfect product and great for years. We are currently launching the Complete Care range, a team -- -- sorry, net identified by our -- again, our consumer insights team to complement our detangling range. And we are launching partnerships like the Devil Wears Prada just to reinforce and continue reinforcing our brand. To conclude, we are shifting our strategies. And when we do that, this requires also a change in our operating model for excellent execution. We work as one big categories defined the strategy regions deliver local commercial execution. This new model brings agility. It brings simplicity, very important for us, and it brings a scalability to help growth. Our current commercial and industrial footprint allows for these geolocalized strategies that we're having in across the regions. The ones that now, Haven and Elena are going to present to you. Haven Alina?

It is a pleasure to be with all of you today. Since this is our first time meeting, I figured I'd give all of you a brief introduction to myself, Alina will do the same in just a moment. I'm Haven Cockram, I lead the North American business. And I've been with BIC now for just 5 months longer than Rob. So almost at that 1.5 year mark after a long career in consumer packaged goods. That time has been spent primarily between Procter & Gamble, Heinz and Sanofi, another French-based company, with those early years focused largely on marketing, innovation and selling. More recently, I've spent just over a decade really in senior general management roles, mostly across North America, but also some time in global category roles as well. And in fact, most of that time was spent on businesses that are very much in need of transformation, not all that dissimilar from the North American region for BIC. Alina?

Thank you, Haven. Good morning to everyone. I am Alina Asiminei, and I've been at BIC for almost 1 year, end of September. And I -- I'm serving as Chief Commercial Officer for International Markets. I bring 26 years of experience in consumer goods across Nestle, Phillips and Kimberly Clark, and my journey has taken me from Romania to Portugal to Latin America and United Kingdom now. And across a broad range of responsibilities from sales to marketing, to strategy to general management in both local and global roles. Throughout my career, my focus has been very consistent, driving results, while transforming the business through people, and with people. That is the experience and mindset I bring to BIC, as we unlock the growth potential of our international markets.

So today, we want to show you how both of our regions will contribute to BIC's growth ambition through 2030. We have one, I repeat one, BIC commercial strategy and one common ambition, that is really to grow household penetration, earn our margins and relentlessly simplify our business. Both of our markets are very, very different starting points. And therefore, while our destination is common, our destination is shared, we will create growth in different ways.

Exactly, Haven. So that is a very important point. We are not creating a North America strategy and an international market strategy. We are executing on BIC strategy against different market realities. So in North America, the opportunity is primarily about strengthening an already powerful core and scaling new sources of growth. Across international markets, we have a completely different opportunity, enormous geographic reach, but significant headroom to recruit new consumers. And that leads to 2 different growth equations. And that becomes ever clear when we look at our commercial growth agenda.

So you can see that philosophy here. At the top of this strategy house is our common ambition, as I mentioned, growing penetration, earning our margins and simplifying our business relentlessly. For North America, our role is to strengthen the core, while at the same time, scaling new growth with deliberate choices across countries, channels and our categories.

And for international markets, our role is to scale penetration and recruit new consumers. Our choices as well will be very deliberate across regions, channels, and categories. And underneath both regional models are common big capabilities, supply chain, digital transformation, brand support and innovation talent and commercial capabilities. So I would summarize this house very simply: 1 roof, 1 ambition, 1 set of capabilities different growth equations. Because winning in a market mature like North America and recruiting new consumers in Africa or Asia, requires a different execution, but they are serving exactly the same BIC strategy.

So if we could advance the slide, please. So I'd like to start by giving just a little bit of context on the North American region for those who are less familiar. So North America is our second biggest region after Europe with around 35% of our net sales. This region consists of 2 countries only, 2 large countries, including the U.S., which is by far BIC's largest market. And when we think about our market share position across North America, we are #1 in Lighters, still with additional upside. We are #2 in stationary. We are #3 in hair brushes and #4 in Shavers, also tremendous upside across all of these categories. While the region is large, the problem is that net sales has been decreasing significantly over the past 3 years. And this is impacted by several reasons. In Lighters, we know the driver. The driver has been Asian imports, counterfeits, declining cigarette smoking uses. In stationery, drivers are different. Ball Pen segment, which is the segment where we're most heavily developed has been declining faster than the market. And then on Shavers, we've seen fierce competition in the Shavers business, particularly on the women's side of the business. And on top of that, as you heard David mention earlier, there's a very large portion of the segment of the market where we simply don't have presence and that large segment is actually premium refillables, which is growing. So we're very clear on what has caused the decline in the past. However, importantly, we're also now very clear on what needs to be done differently to stabilize this region and return it to growth. And in fact, in 2026, we're already seeing early signs of achieving this transformation with stability in the first half of the year. Here's how we're going to proceed because going forward requires us to not only stabilize but maintain the stability we've achieved thus far and accelerate even more going forward. We have a very clear road map. Our ambition is to transform North America into a penetration-focused growth engine for BIC. And our approach is to strengthen the core while establishing these new platforms of growth. Importantly, these -- the development of each of these new growth platforms is already well in progress. You might argue that transforming North America is one of the biggest challenges of the company, and you're about right. However, our initial actions are already having the positive effect with growth in the first half. I want to reiterate that. Here's what it's going to take to sustain that growth going forward through our 2030 time horizon. First, on Stationery, Protect the core. This means increasing penetration in our strongest and our growing segments. Our growing strong segments, our mechanical pencil, correction, and ball point, thank you very much. We have successful results in Western Europe already. And that -- the results in Western Europe have come largely by premiumizing this category. So all the idea of premiumizing our business is not new to us as a company. it is new to the North American region. This is an established model that's proven in Western Europe. Our opportunity in North America is to recreate and leverage this proven model across the region. So the path forward to transforming the stationary business is well defined. David mentioned the unlock in stationary is unlocking new premium channels such as museums, bookstores, amusement park, again, proven. On Lighters, our #1 priority in the U.S. is to stabilize this business, and we've managed to successfully do so in the first half. However, beyond stabilizing the business, we will build from here to reach new consumers in emerging channels. We'll increase brand desirability, as David mentioned, to many of the design opportunities and improve our profitability. And in fact, in just 2 slides, I'll give you an even deeper view on the strategy that is already starting to deliver the sustainable improvement that we need to deliver on this business. On Shavers. Our recently launched product range is Soleil and Flex are continuing to deliver solid results around the world. We'll continue to accelerate the rollout of these products in the U.S. We will not stop there. Since we currently do not address 65% of the market, the growing segment of the market, we will move into that space in the future. And quite frankly, we now have best-in-class technology that rivals industry leaders to allow us to better compete in that space. This will allow us to compete with the full product offering in the shave category, creating potential for BIC in the North American region that we've never before experienced. Brushes, the model that we're executing in the North American region for brushes already worked super well. This is not a fix. This is not a restart. This is continuing to expand our points of purchase driving in-store and online visibility and continuing to innovate to maintain the momentum that's already healthy and already established on the brushes business. We have a key differentiated brand with solid awareness and consumer sentiment, and we will continue to invest behind the Tangle Teezer brand. So as we think about our road to 2030, we are a well-penetrated company across North America that as many of us have said around the globe and especially in North America, we have significant upside. We still have white spaces that we do not address today, and it's time to unlock this potential. So our way forward is already defined. First, scale growth in new channels, I've mentioned some of them already for stationary and there are more for lighters. Secondly, consumer insight-led innovation. This is a discipline that we are using now across all of our categories. Thirdly, leveraging more iconic products. You've heard several speakers before me. refer to the need to streamline our assortment and increase efficiency and focus on those SKUs that are most productive in market. And lastly, we are well on our journey to implementing a new leadership structure in North America. And in fact, we have established new capabilities across sales, marketing and even supply chain with new leadership across each of those. Our plan for the U.S. Lighter business is important. So I want to focus on U.S. lighters for just one slide here because U.S. Lighters has been a bit of a pain point for the company over the past several years. First, while this business experienced significant decline in 2025, we believe our plans are right and moving in the right direction, given the improvement that we've already seen, the stability that we've already seen in the first half on the U.S. Lighter business. And importantly, it's well positioned for continued growth going forward. So let me give you a hint of the strategy to reinvigorate growth and profitability on this business going first -- going forward. First, we do have a safe harbor already, and that safe harbor shall really rely on defending and strengthening key elements. First, we have a leading position and very, very strong market share already across the North American region, okay? The second safe harbor is continued to support and enable our efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chain. So these are never going to change. First and last items on this slide. However, as we think about unlocking growth, new growth opportunities, those really come from activating weapons that we've really not leverage aggressively up to this point in time. First, David mentioned growth through design and innovation. This winning innovation is key for unlocking growth in white space, growing segments and large retailers where we're currently underrepresented. Secondly, we see the unmeasured channels as a significant opportunity of growth. While we have roughly an 80% market share in measured channels, our recent estimates show that we're significantly underdeveloped in unmeasured channels. And when we refer to unmeasured channels in the North American region, Think of rapidly growing and emerging outlets, those outlets like smoke shops and dispensaries. So big opportunity for the U.S. To unlock opportunities in unmeasured channels, we are working to enhance selling and in-store execution with a focus on improving visibility through significantly more disruptive in-store display execution. Rob and David both mentioned, visibility, improving visibility is the key in these channels. Lastly, we must recommit to counterfeit defense on this business. While certainly committing to counterfeit defense has the ability to protect our revenue single most important reason for committing to counterfeit defense is because we have an obligation to protect our brand, our brand image and also consumer safety. Those are the most important reasons for us to double down as a new leadership team in protecting the business via counterfeit defense. So returning NAM to growth is not only dependent on the Lighter business. U.S. Lighters is an incredibly high priority for us in the North American region, but it will not be our only focus going forward. We also want to reignite growth on our other categories. and we'll adopt a dedicated mindset that's unique to each of them. On stationary, our focus is all about improving profitability by elevating and simplifying the portfolio, very consistent with the global strategy. We're doing the same in specifically in North America. We're rationalizing our portfolio. Simplifying the tail SKUs and driving increased desirability through animation. Lighters. I just told you about Lighters, and how we're chasing profitable growth in new, faster-growing emerging channels and segments and white space. Ultimately, we'll be driving visibility in these emerging faster-growing channels while defending our safe harbors. And then on Shavers, Shavers is the opportunity to crack into premium, refillable, the premium refillable segment and innovate on our core business. We have to keep the core fresh, both on the Soleil brand and the Flex business. And then lastly, on brushes. In brushes, we will invest to grow and continue accelerating this business. We have a fantastic asset and investing in brand support as a priority as it allows us to accelerate distribution gains fueled by innovation and partnerships. So I hope this gives you a sense for the overall direction in North America. And now I will turn it over to Alina, who give a similar overview for international markets. Alina?

Thank you, Haven. So now let me take you inside the international markets growth equation. BIC has an extraordinary geographic reach. We are present, as Rob was mentioning as well in more than 160 countries with iconic products, strong brand recognition and leading position across many markets. But when I look at international markets, what excites me most is not only the scale that we have today. It's the headroom that we still have ahead of us. Across our markets, there are millions of consumers we can still recruit and that is the opportunity at the heart of our strategy. Turn our geographic scale into consumer scale. Put BIC into hands of more consumers and do it through a more focused, repeatable and profitable growth model. So our international growth equation starts with penetration. So quite simply, right, more consumers buying big, but to recruit those consumers we need to win on 3 fundamentals: availability, affordability and visibility. We need to be where consumers buy. We need to offer the right products at the right price point that they can afford. And when they are ready to buy, BIC needs to be visible and easy to choose. But penetration alone is not enough. We need to create penetration that brings sustainable volume-led growth. we need margin resilient growth through mix, pricing and portfolio quality. And we need execution excellence. Many times mentioned here by Rob. So superior availability, service -- customer service, superior customer service and forecast accuracy. So while the growth philosophy is coming, the way we activate this equation naturally defers by category, and I will start with stationery. So here, it's all about simplification, David was already mentioning, portfolio tiering and pricing power. In Lighter, again, David mentioned, it's about focusing on market share through affordability and visibility. And in Shavers, it's all about brand building, geographical expansion and portfolio tiering. Last but not least, in brushes, it's again about penetration through brand visibility and focused innovation. So again, one, growth equation, different category place. But to capture this opportunity, we need to change how we operate. Today, International markets is characterized by very different growth profiles across countries. Execution has been historically very country-led and very siloed. And our portfolio became too complex. So this makes it very, very difficult to constantly translate our strength of BIC into scalable growth. By 2030, we won the model to look very different. So we are moving towards scalable, repeatable growth engines, simpler execution and greater leverage of our iconic products. So basically, in other words, we are moving from individual countries growth stories to growth model that we can understand, we can repeat and we can scale. That is a fundamental change in how we manage international markets. So now the question is where we are going to deploy those growth engines. International markets is clearly not 1 homogeneous market. So that's why we are not going to apply one formula everywhere. We have organized our markets in clear archetypes. So let's look here. Africa is fundamentally a penetration engine. Asia, it's a white spaces where we need to unlock it. Mexico, it's a turnaround where we need to rebuild the fundamentals. Europe, it's a combination of developed and developing markets where we need to scale and optimize as much as we need to do it in Oceania. And Central and South America, it's all about scaling up. So different starting points, different plays, one growth philosophy. And across these different plays, the commercial levers become increasingly coming. We have 6 commercial levers in international markets. We need to win in the growth channels. We need to strengthen our route to market to win traditional trade. We need to reinforce our brand and pricing power, and we need to simplify our portfolio. The 5th one is about building strong value retailer proposition, what matters for our customers. And last but not least, we need to create innovation that drives incrementality. So this is the way we are going to create repeatability without pretending every market is the same. And most importantly, this is not only the strategy for the future. We already have evidence that this model works. Brazil is one powerful example. Look at what happened in Shavers since 2019. Market penetration increased by 5 percentage points. Big penetration increased by around 16 percentage points. And our volume doubled. We didn't simply participate in category growth. We recruited consumer materially faster than the category and penetration translated into volume. And if you think back to the growth equation I showed you earlier. The ingredients are quite familiar, availability, affordability, strong brand and products and disciplined execution. Brazil matters, not because we want to copy Brazil everywhere. It matters because it proves that the underlying principle of the model can work. So now imagine applying those principles where the penetration headroom is significantly greater. We need to create more Brazil in international markets. in markets where millions of consumers have yet to enter our category and by BIC. And that is why developing markets represents such an exciting part of our 2030 opportunity. We have millions more consumers to recruit at scale. And we see potential for double-digit growth in many markets by 2030. But population alone doesn't create growth. We have to unlock it. And we are going to do so, focusing on 3 pillars: expand availability. So basically, be where consumers buy. This means expanding go-to-market, strengthening our traditional trade execution and putting more feet on the ground. Secondly, increased affordability. So win the first purchase with the right entry price points with smaller packs and formats and where appropriate local sourcing and manufacturing. And the third one is about scaling execution. So basically build repeatable engines through reliable supply chain, stronger distribution capabilities, sales force automation. So when you talk about recruiting millions more consumers, this is not an abstract ambition. We know what drives penetration. We have evidence that it works, and we are building capabilities to replicate it at scale. International is already a business with extraordinary geographic reach. Our opportunity now is to turn this geographic reach into consumer reach across different categories, across different geographies with different growth plays but one growth philosophy, recruit new consumers, scale what works and turn penetration in sustainable and profitable growth. [Foreign Language] I will now turn it over to Francois.

Good morning. You all know this product. We have sold 50 billion of them in more than 160 countries. It is one of the most iconic object this company has made. Engineering the every day to deliver up to 3,000 flame safely and at a price per flame that almost everyone on earth can afford. But what happens after the last flame of this product? Many think this product went out of flame worth exactly 0. This is -- there is a name, and it's known as orphan product. Those products are those that are too small to be collected that are melting different raw materials, plastic and metals together. And as such, there's no recycle stream, which is accepting them. I would like you today to take a fresh look at that. My name is Francois Clement-Grandcourt. I'm serving BIC for 26 years. Before BIC, worked in marketing for Coca-Cola and Danone. And I have 20 years in BIC of general management position, first in distribution and second in industry. In the last 10 years, I took over and was responsible for the Lighter division. After Francois Bich, Francois Bich was very fond of rules. It was a founder of lighter and basically define the proper way to do it to be safe. But it was regularly reminding the fact that at some point in time, the rules need to change. And he was taking very often the example of Marcel Bich changing the rules of the Americas cup. This is the whole point of this presentation. our future lies in changing the rules to create new value pools. As BIC entered this new phase of transformation, sustainability is becoming an even more important part of our journey and our long-term value creation as well, and I will be insisting on that. Today, we'll be focusing on BIC sustainable development program to 2030, which is based on 3 pillars: first one, circularity, second, climate third, people. But even more specifically today, I will be talking to you about circularity. In 2015, every expert we consulted told us that recycling lighters was technically impossible. And the others who were adding that with a product with 19 parts like these, all this, it was not only in [indiscernible] disassemble, but it was financially absurd. For a simple reason, not enough raw materials to pay for everything to get back and to disassemble. That was a consensus. It was not unreasonable at the time, it was the state of the art of the knowledge at that time, no more today. So why didn't we walk away? Because of what this company is, it's always engineer the every day. Since the start of the company, BIC has done one thing better than anyone in the world, take an Avida object and solve through manufacturing excellence problem. Everyone else considers impossible or not worth solving. For example, having pen for a few cents. So we did not treat circularity as a communication nor as a corporate social responsibility program. But as what it is really about an industrial challenge. And industrial problems are precisely what this company was built to solve. So the group gave us 3 things that are rare in a large company. The first one, the freedom to try. The second one, the patience to let us learn and onset work the full weight of industrial power of the company. I assure that as well that the initial momentum was provided 20 years ago by Mary maybe before and that drove a lot of what we have today. So what I'm about to describe is what BIC culture of innovation is all about. So what did it take? It took building every link of a chain, which basically was not existing collecting millions of small objects that have never been collected a way to sort what comes back, a way to take a part, an object that honestly believe me, we spend years to make sure that nobody could dismantle. And that allows at the end, having spent decades on this -- we have a way to get recovered material, metal and plastic back into production at our own quality standard. None of that existed. Our team built it after more than 10 years of R&D, the engineers and operators of the Lighter division did it. Today, used lighters are collected, sorted, dismantled and recycled. That is a world first. No one anywhere as every recycled later. Let's give a step back. Big industrial strengths are unique, strong vertical integration. Applied R&D, tool rooms, mechanical engineering and integrated automation departments, fitting shops, production workshops, obviously, backed with deep operational raw material, material expertise. This unique capability built over the last 80 years, allows to disassemble industrially high volumes of small parts with high precision. And I'm insisting on each of these words because that defines precisely the know-how which was developed. And it allows to get 100% purity of raw materials and allowing us well to recover parts. Basically engineer the every day up to product end of life. Along the way, we learned the most important lesson of all. An orphan product is not worth zero. The day it runs out of flame this product still has value. Our last production allowed to produce lighters recycled with 80% of the non-consumable lighter value. It works. Don't make me wrong, when approach as industrial discipline, not as communication exercise, circularity is financially sound. The end of life of our products has stopped being a dead end, leveraging what was supposed to be our weakness, 1.5 billion units of a tiny complex object. And industrially, it has become a source of value that we control and a value creation lever for the group. So part of the plan to 2030, circularity is a strong focus of BIC road map. A few years ago, I presented to you at our general assembly, our very first disassembly machine. That was the first building block. Now we have 6 machines in line. We are ready to launch the first ramp-up phase, bringing the lighter program at scale in France by '27 and the start of other pilots in other geographies to be ready for further expansion from 2029. And after 10 years of debugging lighters, as this is working, we want to build and expand the same principle to the other categories. Here, you have what a crystal look like with all the tiny parts, which you may not see precisely. Here, you have a full 4 colors, other kind of [indiscernible] and we are preparing the first machine for these products. The question is, can pen, shaver and brushes end of life become as well a value pool. And this matters now because the world is catching up with this subject fast. European regulators are turning a tiny paragraph in a report into mandatory legal obligation. Major retailers are now ranking their own suppliers based on circularity and we stand already among the pioneers. Last, raw materials and their accessibility are a challenge, they will remain volatile as far as anyone can see for today. So for our whole industry, the end of life of product is becoming a cost. BIC has turned it into a capability years before the market demands it. Today, that capability serves big product in big plans for big customers, but the problem it solves small everyday product with no end of life exist far beyond us. What I take away from these years is pretty simple. This company still does exactly what BIC started 8 years ago. It takes a native problem, the world considers impossible and it is engineering the every day that's BIC DNA. It was true of writing and of all big product categories. It is now true for all the products beyond the last flame, the last line, the last shave and the last brush. Thank you. I now turn it over to Gregory, who will go over our transformation initiatives and financial ambition. Thank you.

Thank you, Francois and good morning, everyone. My name is Gregory Lambertie. Today is my 8-month anniversary at BIC, and I'm delighted to celebrate it with you. I've joined BIC because I saw it as an incredible opportunity to revive what has been a story of entrepreneurship, growth, performance and emotional connection with the consumer. Before that, I spent 25 years in finance internationally in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., West Africa, South Africa. First, as an adviser, then as an investor, in consumer companies, and family companies. Finally, in the corporate world, first leading strategy, M&A, public affairs and then as a CFO. You now heard how we intend to grow across our categories and markets. Let me show you how this translates into BIC's financial algorithm. There are 3 things I'd like you to remember. First, we're targeting balanced growth, supported by both volume growth and price and mix with the right contribution depending on each category. Second, this growth will create operating leverage, meaning that the profit will grow faster than sales as execution improves and the transformation takes effect. And third, that we will fund that transformation while strengthening cash generation and growing shareholder returns with a disciplined capital allocation approach. Now what does this mean in terms of value creation. We're starting from a financially sound business with a number of actions already started and yielding some early results, as you saw in our H1 publication. Our plan is a combination of an investment plan on the one hand and a transformation plan. We will invest in BIC's key assets, manufacturing, commercial capabilities, distribution and, of course, the brand. And we will make targeted investments in processes, digital and IT transformation with clear returns, leading to growth acceleration and improved profitability and cash generation. So it's about investing in the priorities with the clearest returns and making sure that the transformation delivers productivity gains and savings. So what does it mean in terms of financial terms? If we turn to our 2030 ambition on the next slide. By 2030, we are targeting 3 clear financial outcomes, supporting a capital allocation framework. First, organic sales CAGR of around 3% between '26 and '30. Second, operating leverage, together with the benefits of the transformation will drive around 200 basis points of margin expansion versus 2025 for adjusted EBIT reaching more than 15.5% in 2030. And thirdly, those profits will translate into cash, meaning free cash flow of more than EUR 250 million by 2030, and cumulative free cash flow over '27,'28,'29 and 2030 of EUR 900 million to EUR 950 million. This is a self-funded investment plan that still maintains a clear framework for shareholder remuneration with a growing dividend and a payout ratio of 40% to 50% of adjusted EPS. The logic is clear. growth supports operating leverage transformation supports productivity and cost savings. Moving on to Slide -- to the next slide. Our 3% organic sales growth ambition is broad-based, as you've heard many times this morning. All 4 categories will be contributing. What matters financially is the quality and the breadth of the growth they create. Overall, we should expect growth to be balanced across volume as well as price and mix. Volumes remain important particularly where we have the opportunity to increase penetration and improve availability, as you've heard from Alina. Price and mix will also contribute through portfolio premiumization in Brussels, for example, and targeted innovation. So the plan does not rely on a single lever. This results in a healthier model, reaching more consumer, improving portfolio value and translating category momentum into sustainable growth. Let's now look at the sources of growth. The first building block is strengthening and growing our core operations, as you've heard from Rob this morning. About 1/3 of our overall growth is expected to come from strengthening the core, so stationery, lighters, shavers. We already have significant scale. We have a strong brand. We have top-notch manufacturing and broad distribution in our existing business. The opportunity is to get more from these assets through better execution. This means increasing penetration and availability, strengthening our go-to-market execution and implementing the category road maps you've heard about today. In developed markets, it's about -- it's more about protecting our strong positions, while improving channels, particularly as you've heard from convenience, from e-com and from e-commerce as well and discount channel, as well as improving the mix and the execution. In developing markets, it's recruiting more consumers through better availability, affordability and route to market. So financially, this gives us a much broader and resilient base for growth. On the next slide, on top of that stronger growth in the core, the second building block is new growth avenues. Those are expected to represent 2/3 of the growth ambition. They are concentrated in 3 areas: the continued scaling of brushes, which we expect to carry on growing double digit, greater penetration in developing markets, as Alina mentioned, and selective expansion in higher-valued area like refillable shavers. And here, we're not starting from scratch. We're leveraging existing assets brand manufacturing, distribution and our consumer proposition, which we all know. Second, we're applying a measured risk-reward approach. For example, if I take developing markets, this is not about taking crazy risk in new countries. It's about taking advantage of the fact that were already in 166 countries and that we intend to selectively turn the dial on some of those where we know the market, we have good partners, and we see the most attractive risk reward. [indiscernible] sum up. The core gives us the foundation. These focused growth avenues give us the acceleration. And that combination underpins our net sales growth trajectory to 2030. In order to deliver that acceleration we will invest around EUR 100 million in one-off OpEx, the majority in the first 2 years and those costs are fully reflected in the plan. We will need to invest in the capabilities, the systems and the execution discipline we need to change that. We've already done the bulk of the first part organization. We're now focusing on improving productivity, unlocking efficiencies and strengthening execution discipline across the group. We will also increase CapEx in the early years, before reducing it slightly thereafter, while remaining broadly around 4% of sales throughout the plan. The phasing is deliberate. We want to invest early so that the benefits can build throughout the second half of the plan. On the next slide, you'll see that the transformation is concentrated around 4 clear operating priorities. First, manufacturing, where we intend to improve productivity, ensure the appropriate investment in AI capabilities, predictive maintenance, for example, and choose the right balance between internal and external production through the appropriate use of OEMs. Second, in supply chain and planning, we will be moving to next-gen supply chain management systems, providing us better visibility and allow us allowing better route planning and savings. Third, on commercial unification. It's about standardizing part of our field sales effectiveness and tooling while reducing portfolio complexity. Fourth, on digital and systems, it's really about improving corporate function productivity. In total, the current road map comprises more than 100 initiatives expected to generate around EUR 80 million of savings, annual recurring savings by 2030, supporting our margin expansion ambition. You could say this is all very nice. But it will not happen by chance. And you would be right. To ensure disciplined execution, a dedicated transformation office will monitor the program, track implementation and the benefits delivery, and reinforce accountability with the right incentives aligned with the delivery. This covenant is new. It will be critical to maintain pace, prioritize the highest impact initiatives and ensure that we deliver the recurring savings. So what does this do to the shape of our P&L? Our ambition, as you heard earlier, is to move closer to the economics of a traditional fast-moving consumer goods model. First, OpEx come down as a percentage of sales, supported by the EUR 80 million of recurring savings I just described. Second, we reinvest part of those savings behind the business. with higher and more targeted brand support to drive penetration and visibility. And third, that investment, that reinvestment increases adjusted EBIT, driving approximately the 200 basis points of margin expansion between the end of 25% last year and 2030, as we said earlier. So this is not simply a cost reduction program. We're changing the shape of the P&L, taking cost out and reinvesting selectively behind growth, expanding margins at the same time. Moving on. Let me now bring this to life in terms of margin progression. Adjusted EBIT will grow faster than sales, taking margin to 15.5% by 2030 with steady progression across the period and categories contributing evenly to the uplift. Importantly, that EBIT expansion has 2 engines, around 60% comes from the business itself, growth, mix, operating leverage and 40% comes from transformation net of the reinvestment. So productivity, simplification and targeted savings. That balance is important. We are relying both on growth and cost reduction. Now on free cash flow. Cash generation is central to the plan. We're building a profitable growth model that can self-fund the transformation plan while still growing free cash flow over time. The core business provides the first source of cash generation. We then invest in transformation, which generates savings and helps us fund the new growth avenues. And as those scale, they add further free cash flow contribution. Here, the phasing matters. It is important to bear in mind that we invest early, particularly in '27 and '28. And as those investments begin to deliver, free cash flow accelerates from 2028 and to reach more than EUR 250 million in 2030. This supports our ambition to generate between EUR 900 million and EUR 950 million of free cash flow over the next 4 years to 2030. In other words, the plan is designed to strengthen the business while increasing cash generation throughout the period. This leads us to our capital allocation policy. On the net, our approach here is guided by one simple principle: discipline with flexibility, growing shareholder returns, our cornerstone of that framework. The foundation is a growing dividend within a payout range of 40% to 50% of adjusted EPS. But beyond dividends, buybacks remain an available tool subject to share price evolution and market conditions. And we will deploy any remaining capacity where it creates the most value, whether through external growth, or additional opportunistic returns. So let me conclude with the financial commitments at the heart of this plan, around 3% organic sales growth, margin reaching more than 15.5% by 2030 and EUR 900 million to EUR 950 million of free cash flow over the next 4 years with the final year above EUR 250 million. That is the financial outcome of sharper portfolio choices, stronger execution, disciplined reinvestment and ambitious transformation creating the capacity to support growing shareholder returns. Thank you for your attention. I now turn it over to Rob for the conclusion before we go into a Q&A session. Thank you.

Thank you, Gregory. Thank you for your patience for coming to the conclusion. I'll promise to wrap it up shortly. It went so well with the slides today. Now my last slide refuses to appear. There it is. Okay, good. Last slide of today, before we go into Q&A, First, a big thanks to all my colleagues for fantastic presentations today. And I hope that you agree with me after having seen this new strategy being presented today that our path is crystal clear. We're going to focus, we're going to execute we're going to transform, and we're going to grow and deliver . We will focus on our 4 beautiful everyday essential categories. We will grow through investments in a cool and rejuvenated brands. And we will dial up on innovation and selective geographical expansion as Alina has showed you. Most importantly, we're going to execute with commercial excellence in every markets. And thanks to Greg and all the colleagues, we're going to transform this company. We will become simpler, leader and more efficient. And that will lead to a situation where we will deliver sustainable cash generation, shareholder returns and long-term value creation. That is the new BIC. Focused, build to grow and positioned to create value for years to come. Thank you very much for your attention. [Foreign Language] Please bear with us a minute while we set up for the Q&A, we're very happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your attention. Before we start the Q&A session, just a quick reminder, that questions are reserved for analysts and investors in the room. When asking your question, could you please just state your name and the name of your institution. Thank you.

Jarden from BNP Paribas. I would have 3 questions, please. The first one is related to the cadence of the organic revenue growth targets. Should we expect the growth to be steady over the plan or should we expect to have any kind of acceleration towards the end of the plan? So just to get your thoughts on the cadence of the organic growth rates. The second question is related to the margin expansions. A bit the same questions. You expect 200 bps of margin expansion compared to 2025. That means about 40 bps per year. Should we expect steady margin expansion? Or again, should we expect to have further acceleration towards the end of the plan? And the last question is related to the brushes, which is now the new category for the company. Keen to get your thoughts on where the growth should come from in terms of geographies I think you said you would expect double-digit growth rates over the period. So if you could also remind us what would the revenue achieved by Tangle Tweezer in 2025 and maybe also the margins of the campaign.

Thank you, Joe, for your questions. I will answer your question on growth and then Greg will talk about margin. So on growth, if we put the things in perspective, we come from an organic -- negative organic growth performance last year of minus EUR 4.7 million. For this year, you know our guidance, we're guiding for slight organic growth. And we aim to subsequently increase organic growth going forward step by step. So there is some acceleration towards the later years in the plan. So that's concerning growth.

And on the margins, as you heard, we're going to front-end the investments. So there is the one-off OpEx on the one hand, but there is also initial OpEx in new feet on the ground in some brand support that is part of our cost base that will weigh on margins initially. So I would also expect some -- I would expect some acceleration in the growth increase versus 2025 throughout the plan.

I think the last question was concerning Tangle Tweezer's growth. Yes. So for single season, we -- from a geographical point of view, we expect continued double-digit growth in our key markets, especially in our largest market, the U.S. fueled by innovation as the complete care launch and also increased brand support.

And we will progressively deploy new geographies along the plan right now, it's more U.K. and U.S.

Correct.

Christoph Chaput from ODDO. I have 3 questions, please. The first 1 is a kind of follow-up regarding the free cash flow. So obviously, it will be very strong in 2030 above EUR 250 million. But I'm sure there is a phasing effect as well. So concerning 2027, I know it's probably too early to give that guidance, but would you say it will be above EUR 200 million. The second one is about Brazil on Page 55. You gave a lot of insight regarding the volume and the penetration improvement since 2019. could you give us as well the profitability evolution, probably not some precise figure, but rough, let's say, one could be great. And the last one, if I may, is that on Shavers. So you share with us the ambition to develop into the refillable segment -- so my question is that what is the risk that the leader react, let's say, negatively to that ambition, let's say? And do you have already some indicators to help us to understand what could it be or your early success, let's say, in that field?

So on your first question around free cash flow, as we mentioned, the investments in the EUR 100 million of transformation costs, one-off OpEx, will be front loaded -- so more in '27 and '28, where we expect to spend the majority of this EUR 100 million. As a result, the free cash flow will really accelerate throughout the period with 2027 being the lower point. And on whether it should be above or below EUR 200 million, I would say that we would expect '27 to be kind of in line with what we'll post for '26. The next question was on Brazil with volume penetration and profitability. I don't know if you want to take the volume and penetration and I'll come and profitability. We do not comment per country. What I can tell you is that the Shavers business that we just show with increased volume, increased penetration showed a better profitability. I will not go into country-by-country profitability detail.

Yes. I think it's -- and it's through the mix is to work in our own portfolio. We have a strong brand in Brazil. So it's a combination of factors that enable us a healthy equation in Brazil.

Yes. And your third question was concerning a potential competitive reaction in Shavers. I think you even asked if they would like it. I'm pretty sure they will not like it. But if we look globally at Shavers, we all know who the market leader in premium Shavers is Gillette. Chile has been very successfully challenged not to their success, but by the challenges, for instance, in the U.S. by a brand called Harry's. And actually, it has been losing market share steadily and consistently. So this proves to me that it's not impossible to challenge a market leader. I think it is all about how we execute, how we dare to be different. And that's why we're working on our brand so much. And we will be -- and that is maybe also a change for since the past. With innovation, we will not suddenly deployed at everywhere. We will launch customer by customer. We will check progress, and we will only roll out once we have proven success and we are already quite for in preparation for that.

Marie-Line Fort from Bernstein. I've got 3 questions as well. In terms of SKU reduction, could you come back on this pillar which is a usual topic for the strategic plan for BIC. I would like to know what is the division more exposed and why -- what is the time and reason to execute this strategy? And also, do you expect any impact on sales in the first years of the execution of the plan? Second question is about your transformation plan and the EUR 100 million of cost. Could you elaborate a bit on what kind of investment you are going to do split between brand support cost savings, OpEx reduction whatever? And last question is about M&A. You don't mention M&A as part of allocation plan. Does it mean that you would not consider any project would be interesting to have your view.

Great. Thank you for the questions. I will answer your first and your last question and Greg will take the second one. David will maybe help me on the first one. So your question was which category is most exposed for portfolio simplification. That category is stationary. And in fact, if you look more in details in our stationary category, there is actually a very profitable core, our key SKUs but we have a very long tail of smaller products, which we aim to rationalize. There are also opportunities in the other categories, but not to the extent as is in stationery. I really like your second question because, of course, this is also what our sales teams are asking, will we not lose sales in this process. It's all about executing it together with your sales forces and customers. My experience is that it leads to increased sales is a bit counterintuitive. But if you simply offer a shelf space to product that have a much higher rotation instead of occupying that by products that actually nobody wants to buy. So -- but of course, it has to do with a careful synchronization and together with customers and the sales force. So we will be very deliberate in the way we execute.

In terms of the EUR 100 million investment, it's really in the 4 pillars I mentioned, we will be investing in the manufacturing on the one hand. For example, I mentioned predictive maintenance and this sort of thing. We will be investing in the supply chain to ensure that we optimize our routes and our order total in full, so meaning the accuracy of our delivery and therefore increase revenues. We will be investing in the commercial area with a number of investments in RGM, in pricing, in feet on the street, as we mentioned. And we will be investing in IT, of course, to ensure that we take the best -- make the best use of AI for our G&A spend.

I would like to complement on what Rob said on the SKU rationalization rights to give you some additional numbers and this, 1,000 SKUs, only 2% of our net sales. So at the end, what happens is that as all in operator world that we are living, the more sales are concentrated in few SKUs. There are plenty of SKUs not generating math sales, not generating additional penetration consumers and to the point, rotation in the ponds is very small. If we don't deplete it, will be our customer doing that for us. So we need to anticipate that. And the -- those products generate cost less agility, less flexibility on the -- in our industrial footprint and a lot of stock. So it consumes cash flow. So very limited sales downside on the contrary. We need to execute with the process. We have been building a process now with the commercial teams. So there is a portfolio strategy. We apply that per regions. We work with the commercial teams to avoid some mistakes, right, when you do that centrally. So it's a collaborative process where that we believe will bring not only more sales but now much better cost and cash over time.