Brunel International N.V. ($BRNL)

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Brunel Capital Markets Day today. So my name is Sophie Ho, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations and ESG. Now today is a very important moment for Brunel. So we're going to take you through where we stand today and what has changed in our markets and how we're positioning Brunel for the next phase of growth and value creation. But before we get to there, I would like you to introduce you to our speakers today. First of all, I'd like to start with our CEO, Peter de Laat; our CFO, Toine van Doremalen; our Managing Director, Jon Proctor; and our Director, Global IT and Digital, Stefan de Boer. And after the presentation, we'll open the floor for questions. Now I'm happy to hand over to Peter, who will guide you through how Brunel stands today and where we're heading next. Thank you very much. Peter, over to you.

Thank you very much, Sophie. Good afternoon, everybody. And let me start by first welcoming our founder and majority shareholder, Jan Brand. Jan, great that you're here. And his daughter, Laura welcome. And he brought some colleagues of his family office and overhead, Tom Dea and Anko Herold, and Anko will be appointed to our Supervisory Board next week. Welcome to Tom and Anko as well. And I also want a special welcome to the Chairman of our Supervisory Board, Frank van der Vloed. Frank, great that you're here. Let's move on to the agenda for today. Today, we're going to update you on our growth to -- on our path to profitable growth, and we're doing this using this agenda. I will start with the introduction, demonstrating on where we are today and what's ahead of us, then elaborating on the foundation that we have built over all these years. Then Jon Proctor will elaborate more on markets and verticals we operate in. Stefan de Boer will update you on the progress we've made on technology and AI, a key item also in our strategy. Then Toine will close off with the value creation and the financial framework. And after that, there will be room for questions. So please save your questions to the end. Then starting where we are today. Having has stronger foundations, a clear path to growth, ready to scale. For the last 2 years, we have experienced softer markets, especially in the Netherlands, Germany and renewable energy. But at the moment, we see that environment changing. Investments in our core markets are increasing. The energy transition, energy security, the energy infrastructure as well as defense, investments are increasing. But at the same moment, also the shortage of specialist talent is increasing and both trends play to Brunel's strength. But we're not just relying on external circumstances. We've also used the last 2 years to sharpen and reshape the business. First of all, we stopped activities that were not contributing to our long-term strategy. We still operate a car testing center in Germany. We stopped that. We were active in Kazakhstan, but we didn't see any contribution going forward. So we stopped that. Besides that, we adjusted our cost structure, partly based on our investments in technology, becoming more efficient, but also rightsizing to our current activity level. And we made that structure simpler, easier to operate with clear instructions, clearer focus, all focused on what truly adds value to Brunel. And that combining that results in a stronger foundation that's ready to capture the opportunities in the market ahead of us. And that's not just ambition. We already see the first signs of that coming to fruition already. We are making nice progress in the defense industry and in the power and grid industry. In our results, you can see that we are still becoming more efficient. So we are ready to scale our network. And that's all based on a strategy that has 3 focus areas. First of all, strengthening our presence in strong growth verticals, our historical verticals like conventional energy, renewable energy and mining, but also newly added verticals as defense and power and grid. Secondly, make sure that we grow our share of wallet by deepening our client relationship and targeted execution. And then finally, operating more efficiently and scaling our infrastructure. And what will that bring for us? We are -- have a clear path of growth ahead of us. We expect to be able to achieve high single-digit revenue growth and a significant step-up in profitability. And we really look forward to share that journey with you. And I will deep dive a bit more in our path to value creation on the next slide. First of all, our foundation, 50 years of impact. Ever since Jan identified a niche market in the Netherlands of staffing professional engineers in the Dutch market, Brunel kept on identifying new niche markets. After the start in Netherlands turned out to be successful, we moved to Netherlands and Germany with the adjacent markets, we're also successful there. And then Jan started to build this dream of a global network of engineers that will operate in many verticals. And we started to build a network to support the energy industries. And that really took off in 2003, just before the start of the oil and gas boom. And then we kept realizing that we need to diversify and the engineering market is huge. So since that, we also added mining and with the acquisition of Taylor Hopkinson also the renewable market and now recently added power grid and defense to our portfolio. And that's just looking at markets we operate in, what else did we change? [indiscernible] here says that we have built a scalable global operating model. We also updated our cost base. First of all, we upgraded all our applications to the newest technologies. So it's all state-of-the-art now, and it allows us to add AI functionalities really fast to it. We also reshaped our go-to-market strategy for the Netherlands and Germany. We noticed that we were not active in the right markets in those countries. We lost a lot of market share in engineering in the Netherlands, where historically, we always have been strong. So we are refocusing on that part. And in Germany, the automotive industry also always used to be a huge segment of our portfolio, and we're now also adding renewable energy, defense and power and grid to that. I already mentioned the cost rightsizing. We took out over EUR 40 million of cost over the last 2 years, just updating our organization model and focusing on what truly adds value. And ultimately, we also looked at what adds value, so recruitment and sales. We have the right sales force, get the right focus in the right direction so we can benefit from growing markets. And to support our profitability going forward, we also introduced services with higher profit margins, such as statement of work, perm and RPO, recruitment process outsourcing. So after all this reshaping, where does that leave us? So ahead of us is strong growth in our core markets, again, conventional energy, renewable energy and mining. But we also are expanding into defense and power and grid, and Jon will elaborate a bit more on the progress we've made so far. We also added a lot of AI functionality already, and that's really working pretty well, and it's easy to scale globally because of our global IT infrastructure. Also something that we changed. In the past, we always used to be a regional or regionally organized company, adapting to the regional circumstances. But with all the -- especially IT developments, we now acknowledge that there's more room for global standardization and to ensure consistency in our delivery. So we also updated that. And we're scaling our higher value-added services. And where does this leave us? How do we create value? It obviously all starts with our people, that people are in the center of everything we do. It starts with people in our offices that build client relationships and are able to find the right talent for our clients. Those client relationships we use to grow our market share, to win business, to add -- to support them in their projects that helps us to win share and helps them -- help our people help us to stay relevant for our clients because they all want -- they need the flexibility in their workforce and the specialism that we can provide. And we do that altogether in our global infrastructure that we're capable of to scale efficiently. So why Brunel? Why clients use us? Why candidates work for us? Why we feel you should invest in us or continue to invest in us? First of all, we have a unique global network. It's a global infrastructure of offices. Those are all connected in our IT technology, all using the same tools and environments. That allows us to attract high-quality talent for the unique projects our clients are working on. Our clients are doing a lot of big projects at the moment, and they need talent, especially in this market with increasing scarcity. To support us to win market share, we use our data to keep track on what's working, what's not working, where are the activities, where should we walk away. And we all do that in 2 business models. In the past, we tried to present Brunel as one company, but we've now clearly identified that are pretty much 2 business models within Brunel. There's the traditional professional staffing model in Europe, so Netherlands and the DACH area. And we have the global business where we work more towards huge CapEx projects for a small group of clients. And that all based on the discipline to achieve profitable growth that allows us to deliver growth and margin expansion. But the strategy is nice, but it also needs to come with the right culture and culture, the values. And integrity is at the heart of what we do. And integrity is not just compliance with laws and regulations -- and legislation. It's also the way we treat each other and how we deal with candidates and clients, and that's really key. And we've updated our values to make them more dynamic because a lot of things around the balance. So around people, it's the balance between valuing the people but also giving them the maximum challenge. For the entrepreneurship, it's about speed but still alignment with our goals and global targets. And the performance, it's having ambition but still having the discipline to execute that. And to clarify that, we have a video on our values. [Presentation]

Again culture and values are key in executing our strategies successfully and linked to our culture is also ESG. We have always been a responsible company. So ESG is also an important part of what we do. And it starts by building a better planet for future professionals. Our contribution to the energy transition is important and helps to do that in a fast and efficient way. At the same time, we're also looking at to build a better future for our current professionals, make sure they are training, they're trained, they keep on developing themselves, but also have a safe work environment. It's essentially key. It's essential. And well, I do want to mention the circumstance in the Middle East, where we have a huge workforce and safety is a key issue -- key area, of course, there. And it's all built around integrity and compliance. So this is for the introduction. Then let's move on to the foundations of the Brunel platform. And first of all, we also decided to reposition Brunel. We want to make it more tangible what our people contribute to because our people contribute to a lot of things that are essential in ordinary life. It's the energy, the power, everything we do. And image demonstrated, and you can also see them around here. But this specific example is a lady working on a wind farm that's ultimately responsible for the power to heat your homes. One client, one specific example of the unique services of Brunel and in this case, an FPSO. And FPSO is a floating production and storage unit for the oil and gas industry. And those projects typically start at the head office of an oil and gas company. Those head offices are typically in the U.S. or Europe. And it all starts with the feasibility study and initial design and engineering. And again, that starts at the head office. We already provide people to the early stages of such a project. After that, a decision is made on who's going to build the FPSO, and EPC company. Examples are SPM and [ MODEC ]. And we also work with those. After the initial design, the project moves to a more sophisticated engineering country such as Japan and Italy. And that means that people that started the project at the head office have to travel to the other location, and we also arrange that. And it's not just the travel, but also the [indiscernible], the work permits, the tax contributions, the housing, everything. So it's not just providing the talent, but also the logistics and requirements to organize it properly. After the design is finished, the actual construction starts and the modules are -- there are separate modules being built on separate yards across the world, typically in Asia and some key areas are China, Korea and Thailand. And that's also where our headcount really increases a lot because in a huge construction project, you need a lot of people, but also a lot of project management. And we mainly provide the project management, but there are quite a lot of managers on such a project because also includes quality controls, health and safety and all those type of things. After the modules are completed, they move to a more specialized yards to be combined and the more specialized yards typically are in Singapore and Dubai. And also there, again, the people travel with the project, and we support the client there. And then when everything is completed, the projects sails away to the final destination, in this case, Guyana and we also support our clients there with commissioning so that becomes operation. So this is the first example on travel support our clients. And I have 2 more -- a video about 2 more business cases on how we support our clients. [Presentation]

So 2 very nice examples on how we work with our clients. The first one is Inscape. I'm really proud of that because it also shows the added value of the combination between [indiscernible] and Brunel. [indiscernible] had the industry expertise, and we had the global infrastructure. And that combined resulted in a unique service offering for our clients. And the other one, Siemens, Siemens is really amazing what they are achieving, they are building the digital twins and that we are able to contribute to that makes me really proud and also that they're happy to contribute to today in sharing their feedback on us. That brings me on how we deliver value for our clients. Roughly, we have 3 types of services. First of all, the biggest still is the Workforce Solutions. And that's basically around finding the right talent for our clients. And the way we deal with that talent for our clients can vary. At the moment, the biggest part is still in contracting. We employ the people and they end up working for our clients. But we also do perm placements. So again, we find the people, but then they're employed by our client directly, and we get a one-off fee. And we also have different options there, for instance, RPO. So that is still by far our biggest service offering. Another service offering is the global mobility services. That's offered pretty much often with workforce solutions, but that's where we take care of moving people around the globe and making sure they can work compliantly and be up and running really fast. But we also offer that as a stand-alone solution. And then finally, a growing part of our business, the statement of work business, the project and consulting solutions, where we take on a bit more responsibility for the work our people do. So for every requirement our client might have, we have a great solution to facilitate that. Then looking at our markets. I already mentioned a couple of times. We keep focusing on growing verticals. The global verticals I've mentioned many times, but these are all verticals where there are a lot of huge CapEx projects ahead of us. And that's also one of the key characteristics of our global business. In Europe, there are additional markets we're looking at. The automotive market, for instance, in Germany continues to be interesting for us and still offers a lot of opportunity. So we have both the global verticals as well as the local verticals, but the common denominator is that most of them are technical by nature. I already mentioned that we decided to identify 2 separate business models. One is global business and the other one is Europe. In Global business, we typically work on the big CapEx multiyear projects where projects travel the world, and we take care of the global mobility. Some key characteristics is that it's high volume, high day rates, moderate margins, but a lot of added value in additional services we do. What we do in Europe is more on an individual basis, built on very close client relationship and supporting them in their needs also in early stages of projects and the R&D phases. There, we see higher margins and slightly less volume with existing clients, but there's still plenty of opportunity in the market. And then you might wonder why do you operate 2 models within one company. But there's a lot of complementary items in the model. It's all about finding the talent, making sure they can work with clients that we find the right clients that we can put them to use. So the underlying basis is pretty similar in both models. So that's why we combine them so we can scale them and get the operating leverage there. And moving more to this market, I would now want to hand over to Jon Proctor, who will elaborate more on the markets we operate in. Sorry, let me get to this first. Yes, of course. The model exists of 45 countries globally, and that may seem a lot. But part of that is caused because our clients need us to have an entity in every country where they work. So we organize that. But if you look through it, we typically really in 17 countries really operational with a full service team with dedicated sales in country and expertise. And the other 26 are only to support our global business. So an entity with hardly any local cost, but just to support our clients globally to be able to execute their projects and the market they operate in. Now Jon, you can take it from here.

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon. My name is Jon Proctor, Managing Director of Operations at Brunel. And today, I will be speaking to you about our verticals, our markets and business models as well as some future opportunities for growth. So first, let's look at long-term demand drivers. On the left, you'll see our global business, which has 3 clear and key demand drivers: investment in energy security and energy transition, investment in infrastructure and digital modernization and a continued need for engineering talent. In Europe, we see a similar picture with significant investment in our core markets, energy, power and grid and defense as well as continued demand for high skilled local talent. This is all supported by long-term embedded client relationships. So building on these demand drivers, the next step is to look at how Brunel is positioned within these markets. If you look on this slide, you can see that this translates well into our market positioning with a high focus on high-growth engineering-intensive verticals where talent scarcity is at its highest and project complexity continues to increase. At the same time, there is a shortage of technical talent globally and locally with sustained project pipelines driving long-term demand and aging workforce with very limited new supply, all really driving the need for increased specialized talent. And this is exactly the environment where Brunel can differentiate itself by connecting scarce talent to complex projects across markets and leveraging our global talent network and global mobility. So next, let's zoom into our core verticals, conventional energy, renewables and mining. In conventional, investment remains very strong, driven by energy security and investment in LNG, carbon capture and digitalization of energy operations. If we look in renewables, much of the drive and investment is in energy transition as well as the need for large-scale project execution. In mining, demand is driven by automation and sustainability requirements, which are needed when mining critical resources. Across all 3 of these, there's a common theme, and that is the need for specialized engineering talent. Clients require a wide range of profiles from engineers to technicians, to data specialists to field teams. And our ability to mobilize all of these talents at scale is part of Brunel primary value proposition and a key driver in our positioning in these markets. So building on the core verticals, we are also expanding into 2 very important adjacent verticals, power and grid and defense. So these are structurally attractive markets with strong underlying demand and increasing complexity. In power and grid, demand is driven by grid expansion, electrification and grid modernization. And this really creates a need for grid engineers, field technicians as well as energy specialists. In defense, the demand is driven by rising security needs and investments in cybersecurity, AI and aerospace. Also in this space, there is a high demand for technically qualified specialist engineers. Important to note that we are not starting these markets from scratch, and they are not new to Brunell. They are already closely adjacent capabilities that we have in-house. And this means that we can scale in this space by leveraging our existing client relationships, talent pools and delivery infrastructure to build from here. So global business and long-cycle markets. So if we look at conventional energy, renewables, mining and increasingly in power and grid and defense, these are all long-cycle CapEx-driven markets, which are within our global business model. What these markets all have in common is that they're all large, they're complex, they're project-driven, and they have long investment cycles. This provides greater visibility on demand and also supports long-term revenue generation for Brunel. At the same time, these markets are also characterized by the scarcity of engineering talent combined with increasing project complexity and regulatory requirements, particularly in areas such as compliancy and global mobility. This combination plays directly into the core strengths of Brunel's global business. And moving on. So why do we win in these markets? So our right to win in these markets are built on a number of clear strengths. We have a proven track record in delivering large-scale complex projects, and this is supported by scalable global mobility and compliance, which is absolutely critical when delivering and executing this type of global work. We also benefit from strong Tier 1 client relationships, giving us access to long-cycle investment programs and visibility on future demand. Importantly, we also have access to large global talent pools, which allow us to mobilize the right expertise at scale for the right projects globally. And this is where the global platform really creates an advantage. So at the same time, we're sharpening how we execute commercially. We're becoming more driven on how we target demand using CapEx and project data to identify opportunities early in their cycles. And this improves pipeline visibility and also allows us to resource more effectively from across different projects and clients. We're also expanding, as I mentioned, into adjacent verticals by leveraging existing client relationships and transferable talent pools. The combination of a strong right to win and a more focused commercial approach positions us well to capture market growth and new opportunities. The European business. So our other model is the European business, which is focused on high-value specialist segments. These include industrials and technology, infrastructure, future mobility and increasingly, power and grid and defense. Across these markets, demand is driven by the need for technical specialists, combined with increased regulatory and organizational complexity. At the same time, clients require more locally embedded expertise to navigate this complexity and deliver their projects. This plays directly into Brunel's core strengths of local talent delivery and also providing specialist talent. The key point here is that the European business is focused on higher value, higher-margin growth rather than volume. And how do we win in Europe? So the European business is the right to win is really built on strong local positioning. We have deep, long-standing client relationships, which drive repeat business as well as unlock cross-selling potential. And this is supported by strong local recruitment networks, which are critical in these local markets. At the same time, we are also sharpening how we execute commercially. So we're actively steering the portfolio towards higher quality, higher-margin work while strengthening our position as a preferred supplier with these key clients. In parallel, we're also driving tighter commercial discipline with a clear focus on conversion and margin quality. The combination allows us to deliver more consistent, higher value growth in our European business. So now let's look at some of the early traction that we have in Power and Grid and Defense, which you've heard both Peter and I mentioned earlier. So we're making good progress, as you can see on the slide, and we're expanding into these adjacent verticals. It's important to note again that we are not starting from 0. We already have an existing and clear measurable traction and activity. In defense, particularly, we've built a meaningful client base with placements already in place, supported by a growing number of priority accounts and existing client relationships. The same really applies for power and grid, where we're building momentum on the back of identifiable demand as well as expanding client bases. A key enabler here is the transferability of our talent pools. So we're able to leverage our capabilities from other adjacent markets such as energy, high-tech, automotive, infrastructure into these new markets. And at the same time, we've already established a local presence in key geographies where this activity takes place, which really allows us to build and scale within these locations. I think it's important to note a unique complexity related to defense, which is really about the onboarding of specialists. So because of the nature of the defense industry, there is a particular data security clearances that are required when onboarding new specialists. While this complexity sounds complex, we believe that it caters well to Brunell's global mobility and onboarding expertise, and we think it will set us apart in the market moving forward. So look, as we scale further, technology and data will play an increasingly important role in the way that we operate and the way that we deliver. So with that, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Stefan de Boer, Director of Global IT and Digital, who will take you through the technology and AI platform in more detail. Thank you.

As Jon just highlighted, as we scale the business further, technology and data become increasingly important in how we operate and deliver. In this part of the presentation, I will talk you through how we are building and leveraging our technology and AI platform to support that. We will look at how technology strength our global platform, improves productivity, enables more scale and consistent delivery across markets. And importantly, how this translates into better outcomes for our clients and for Brunel. AI is reshaping talent delivery. Technology and AI are fundamentally reshaping the talent delivery market. First, we see a shift in demand. Certain tasks are being automated, while demand is moving towards more specialized, higher skill and AI-enabled roles. Second, we increasingly see competition. AI native players are lowering barriers to entry in more standardized segments, operating faster and more efficiently. At the same time, this creates significant opportunity. AI can materially improve productivity across recruitment and delivery, enabling faster and more scalable talent deployment. Our view is therefore balance. AI is both a disruptor and an enabler. The key is not AI on its own, but how effectively it is combined with specialist expertise, strong client relationship and high-quality delivery. That is where Brunel has a clear advantage. AI disruption is limited in Brunel's core markets. While AI is reshaping the market, it's important to understand how this affects Brunel's core markets. In our core markets such as mining, conventional energy and renewables, the risk of full automation and full AI replacement remains relatively low. The work we deliver in these environments is complex, highly embedded and often linked to physical assets, safety requirements and regulatory compliance. It requires human judgment under real world constraints and deep specialist expertise. In addition, mobility and compliance requirements mean that delivery must take place locally and it's not easy to be automated or centralized. AI will therefore play a role in improving productivity, but not in replacing these roles. By contrast, in more standardized and repeatable segments, the exposure to automation is higher. These are typically roles with less complexity and less differentiation from mobility and delivery. This is exactly why our focus matters. We concentrate on segments where human expertise remains critical by using AI to enhance productivity rather than to replace it. Brunel's unified platform enables global AI at scale. AI is not only reshaping demand, it is also a tool that we use to strengthen our platform. Our unified global IT platform is a key enabler of our strategy and a clear differentiator for Brunel. Over the last period, we have significantly modernized this platform, creating a standardized and scalable infrastructure across all our markets. At the core of this is a unified data layer with more than 1 million specialist profiles consolidated across our global operations and continuously enriched through placement and interactions. This gives us a unique and scalable data foundation. On top of that, we are building our own in-house AI capabilities from matching algorithms to workflow automations. We do this deliberately. We invest in in-house AI because it strengthen our expertise and enables more tailored solutions for our clients. The combination of a unified platform, and harmonized data set and in-house AI allows us to deploy new solutions quickly and consistently across the organization. It enables us to scale AI globally while continuously improving performance through data and usage or as we say, we buy the muscle, but we build the brain. And importantly, every interaction strengthens our people and improves our models over time. [ Neo ] Brunel's own AI recruitment platform. and it will be rolled out globally in 2026. At the core of [ Neo ] is a fully redesigned recruitment process. We have broken the process down into modular steps from lead generation through to placement and after care. This allows us to apply and scale AI quickly across each part of the process. In practice, this means that the client vacancies enters the system, AI matching it against our global talent pool and outreach is triggered automatically and consultants validate and enrich the outcome before submission. Because everything runs on our unified platform, we can deploy these capabilities consistently across countries and ongoingly improve them over time. The system has been live in production since 2025, and we are now scaling towards a full global deployment in 2026. The key point is that it's already delivering measurable improvements in productivity and matching quality and will increasingly support scalable growth and margin improvement. With that, I would like to hand it over to Toine van Doremalen, our CFO, who will take you through how these developments translate into our financial performance and outlook.

Thank you, Stefan. And great to see how IT and technology is already driving speed and productivity in our business. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Toine van Doremalen, CFO, of Brunel. In this next section, I will guide you through our value creation framework and our financial framework. And I will piece together the elements that my colleagues already spoken about. Peter has spoken about the foundation of Brunel, Jon about the growth markets that we're in and our right to win and Stefan has spoken about our technology and how that is helping in terms of speed and productivity. And that together will basically drive profitable growth in the future. But first, let's take a step back and reflect on our performance over the last couple of years. What you can see here is financial performance in terms of revenue, gross profit and profitability over the last 6 years, and we split this between the global business and the European business. In yellow, the global business; in gray, the European business. After a good run after COVID, where we increased our revenue and profitability to about EUR 1.4 billion in revenue and about [ EUR 16 million ] in profitability, we entered a more difficult year in late 2024 and for sure, 2025. And I just want to make clear that we have used that time to drive improvements, and I will talk about that in a minute. But let's -- what is important, I think, to understand is that from our global business, which is in yellow, that in typical downturns, we did see a significant drop-off. And what we have seen in 2025, we did see a slight drop-off in revenue. But the good news is here that we've been able to maintain our margins and also maintain our profitability. And that basically improved to a little bit over 4% during that time frame. And with that platform, we're able to capture the next upturn in the business. We did see a good quarter 1, and we're very optimistic that our pipeline, we can grow that further. I will touch base on the Middle East in a few slides from now as that is obviously a topic that we will address as well. Then the European business, again, that's in gray. We had more challenging market circumstances there over the last 2 years. But in fairness, it was also our internal performance, which was not good enough. And we have addressed that, and we are positive that we can improve the much more significantly our performance than what we've shown over the last 2 years. Revenue dropped, margins dropped. Also, that is something we need to make sure we address in our continuous drive for cost improvements. And with that, we should also be able to get our profitability back up. But I wanted to share this backdrop. Of course, DACH, very specifically the automotive market. Peter already mentioned that, that was one of the reasons we're diversifying there, and we're optimistic with the new verticals that we can step on the growth again. And in the Netherlands, also here, difficult market circumstances, but also the regulatory environment. Freelancers for the last few years has been a more difficult topic to hire those and place those with our customers. So that is something that is in the numbers -- and then the other part is equal pay, whereby that combined with the changes in pension cost and cost of living or the central labor agreements that we're structurally at a higher cost level for our customers and a bit less attractive. So we need to make sure we improve our business performance to compensate for that moving forward. And if I then share with you what we have done, Peter has spoken about quite a few of those. It's about cost efficiency. It's about sharpened focus on our key markets, and it's about performance discipline and better execution. Cost efficiency, we took out EUR 20 million in 2024, another EUR 20 million in 2025 to rightsize the business, but also to leverage the IT platform that we have implemented -- and of course, AI is the next step, as Stefan shared, there's lots of opportunity there to further improve productivity and most importantly, also be faster towards our customer and increase the number of placements. Then from a shared service center perspective, we are already organized in hubs. And there, we see as a next step to also go to global shared services. We have started that, and we will further build that out in the quarters and years to come to also drive productivity moving forward. The sharpened focus in key markets. Melon and DACH have been discussed. Specifically here, we're further splitting sales and our talent acquisition activities to create bigger focus with our specialists, be faster to our customers, also be faster to our candidates and drive growth. And that takes more client focus -- and in addition, we have invested in business development and talent acquisition in the Netherlands and DACH, but also in other markets and regions. We see great opportunities, of course, in the new verticals, but also in the existing verticals, and we've invested in different regions to capture a bigger share of the customer wallet. And then it all comes together in terms of better execution and the performance discipline. We have made big steps over the last sort of 12 to 24 months. It's the global steering that also Peter introduced. Regions used to be more independent, and we've put a layer on top of that to drive global steering, functional excellence, shared KPIs and faster execution and deployment of our best practices. And of course, that also comes with the leadership shift and culture shift as we've spoken about. Shortly, the Middle East, as I mentioned, this is the same that we shared last Friday in our Q1 call, and we could describe this as a short-term disruption, but also it gives in our business also some long-term growth opportunities. Of course, in the short term, it's -- and again, the team has done a fantastic job in the Middle East to make sure that so far, people are safe, our candidates are safe, but also customers are still being supported, and that's also why you have seen so far a limited impact in the Middle East, but we will see a slowdown of growth. New projects obviously are being delayed. and all focus with our customers and also with our specialists is on keeping the current facilities open, restarting those, rebuilding those where needed and that will come at the expense of the short-term growth. And then there's the risk of spillover into other markets, industry heavy markets like Germany. The long-term impact, given our proximity to our customers and the fact that we've helped often in building those facilities, we think we're well positioned supporting them and rebuilding and restarting and making sure that they get up to speed as soon as possible, which will generate business. And then in general, not only for the Middle East, but also for other regions, the energy security and the defense investments that will come as a result of that. Also there, we're well positioned moving forward. So then how we create value. This is basically also what Peter shared earlier in the presentation. It's about staying close to our clients and being relevant. It's about winning share, and it's about scaling efficiency and of course, doing that with our teams at the specialists as well as our own organization. If we peel back the onion here a little bit and go driver by driver, it's the exposure to the growing markets. Jon alluded to this. It's being part of the CapEx cycles. It's being targeted together with our customers and getting our fair share. It's about the expansion in power and grid. We have some first assets there, and we're well positioned to further build on that. I've shared with you the global business has been delivering pretty well over the last couple of years despite the short-term challenge in 2025, and we're well positioned there for the next upturn. DACH has been a challenge. We have applied a lot of self-help there and restructure the business and drive efficiency. And we have seen in quarter 1, the first signs of recovery with growth in our top and our bottom line. And in terms of the Dutch market, we're a little bit behind there compared to the DACH market. The challenges started there a little bit later. We need to stabilize there the market. We need to stabilize our business. We have intervened there, and we need to improve our performance during this year. That together will drive growth and operating leverage. Then position to gain market share. Again, this is being very specific on targeting the right pipelines. It's the go-to-market changes that we implemented in DACH and the Netherlands and be close to the customer. It's about the investments in business development and sales and recruitment. And also, it's about selective expansion in the higher-margin services like [indiscernible], it's the RPO and it's the perm as we have shared before. And that will increase our share of wallet with our customers and also improve the quality of revenue and margin. Then the next one is efficient execution. I shared quite a few elements here. It's about the rightsizing that has been implemented in many of our markets. It's about leveraging technology and AI, for example, in our recruitment cycle that Stefan shared. It's about the standardized operating model, the efficiency gains that can be delivered by leveraging our automation. It's the central steering, which is an important one. It's the culture change and efficiency and performance discipline that we're driving throughout the organization. This will support productivity, conversion and an improvement of our direct and indirect ratio. And then last but not least, strategic M&A. We have not been active for the last couple of years also to make sure that we first deal with the market circumstances that we have at hand and improve our internal performance. But we would like to also grow inorganically, which is then most specifically in higher value-add services. It's in the new verticals where the opportunity is available, also gaining scale in our current core verticals. And then if we add that all together, where does it leave us for our targets for 2029? And what you can see here is that we are targeting high single-digit growth, which is a combination of the market growth. It's the new verticals that we enter, it's the market share gains that we're targeting with our investments in business development and that execution. And then from an EBIT margin perspective, it's over 5%. That takes into account the reality where we're coming from out of 2025 with 3%. At the same time, it's also the lower margins that we see in some of our markets. At the same time, it gives a lot of opportunity to improve our EBIT. If you would combine these together between the revenue growth and the EBIT percentage over the next 3 years, we should be able to double our EBIT in absolute amount. So that's what we're targeting for the years to come. And then obviously, it's not only about the financials, it starts with the customer. We have had excellent Net Promoter Scores from our customers over the last few years. We would like to maintain that or even improve that because that is where we differentiate compared to some of our competitors of a score of more than 50%. This is for total Brunel. If you then split that down between the 2 businesses that we've spoken about, the global business and the European business. Then the global business, we are well positioned. And what we see in the market, we expect we can achieve a growth of low double digits over the years to come with an EBIT margin of about 5% -- the revenue growth is against the backdrop of the reduction in 2025. But again, I've explained that we're well positioned and have very strong assets to grow there. And the EBIT percentage is a step-up compared to the low 4% we have seen over the last couple of years. And that is driven by our productivity improvements as well as the scale that we will further achieve in this business. Then Europe. Europe had more challenging years, as I explained, starting '24, but then continuing in '25. So we need -- we have done and still need to do much more there to get that back on track. We do expect we can get that back on track to high single-digit growth over the years to come. It's also our internal performance. So it's not only being dependent on the market. It's also our internal performance and getting the right -- our fair share of the market back. And we're investing there also in our engineering capabilities. And from a profitability perspective, the 9% is the number we're at in prior years. We're now at lower margin levels, but with all the productivity improvements and the platforms that we have invested in, we feel strong that we should be able to get back to that high single digit or about 9% in profitability over the years to come. So this builds together the value creation case. Obviously, it's also about how do we deal with our capital allocation. And there, I would first like to look at what did we do over the last few years. This is our capital allocation and cash generation over the last 3 years, 2023 up to Q1 this year. We had a very solid net cash position of EUR 77 million at the start of '23. We generated cash of about EUR 130 million over the last few years from operating cash flow, and this includes also taxes and interest expenses and all elements. And then how we spend that was partly on working capital in terms of growth. It was partly on acquisitions. And as you can see here, we did very little acquisitions over the last few years. We spent a fair amount of money on CapEx, which is specifically IT and AI infrastructure. And then we allocated back to our shareholders about EUR 88 million, which was about close to 100% of our net profit for those years. And then we had a little bit of rounding with currency, and we still have a net cash balance at the end of this quarter. Then moving forward, how do we plan to allocate this? It still starts with having a strong and robust balance sheet. Starting with our net cash position, we do have always borrowing capacity available also in case of acquisitions, and we do expect a strong cash flow generation moving forward. How to allocate that? Obviously, first thing is to support growth, working capital where needed. Majority of that is in accounts receivable and work in progress. We're keeping that as low, but there will always be some additional working capital needed. And then the platform investments, our overall IT platform has been, by and large, upgraded, but AI most likely will continue to consume some CapEx moving forward. Then the dividend policy, we maintain it at 60% to 100% I already mentioned, we were at the high end of that range for the last few years. As we want to also embark on acquisition in the future, that percentage might come down dependent on when we do those acquisitions. And then M&A, I just explained also what our strategy is there. Then if I bring this all together, we're well positioned to grow and improve profitability. It's about the value creation cycle on the left-hand side. And then we have 3 converging forces that create inflection points that we spoke about. It's the reset of the foundations. We've strengthened our platform and our business. We are positioned in structurally growing markets, and we're expanding in terms of the markets that we're active in. and we have built a scalable model where we can accelerate and grow without adding too much additional cost, and it's about disciplined execution. And that should then lead to the financial ambition for 2029, high single-digit revenue growth, at least 5% EBIT margin and a robust balance sheet and capital allocation. That's what I want to share with you. I'm now going to hand back over to Peter for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Tom. Like Toine said, this concludes our update. But an overall summary, Brunel is a uniquely positioned company with a global infrastructure supported by global technology that has a huge capability to find talent everywhere in the world for our clients that are operating in attractive end markets. And invest is really well positioned on a path forward towards profitable growth. And Toine elaborated on what that would look like in '29. And now we are very happy to take your questions. And I would like to invite my colleagues to support me in answering those.

Yes. So thank you, gentlemen, for presenting the presentation. So we're now open for the questions. And I already see that the mic is already passed on. So please. So for our online viewers, would you mind to share your name and where you're from? Thank you.

This is Konrad Zomer, ABN AMRO ODDO. I'd like to challenge you a little bit on your prospects for 2029. I think what the company has done really well in the last 5 years is you've reduced your dependency on conventional energy. You've expanded in verticals that have given you a broader platform. At the same time, what you've done really well is that you've made all your regions profitable, which took you quite a few years. However, at the same time, you've not been able to structurally improve your margins. And it's going to be very difficult to both accelerate growth and improve margins at the same time. So my first question on that goal is if you have to choose between either growth or margin improvement, which one would you like to choose? And the follow-up on that is, I get the impression that you need a very good market from here to get to the 5% EBIT margin and to achieve high single-digit revenue growth. What proportion of that direction is self-inflicted and do you have under certain control, especially given the fact you already cut out EUR 40 million of costs. If you had not done that, you would have been loss-making today.

Allow me to do the first response. And then responding to your last item where you said self-inflicted, I would like to use the word self-help. If you look at our global business, they've consistently been improving profitability. Like you mentioned before, they all return to profitability. And with the continued operating leverage, there's plenty of upside there to go to the 5% that we're targeting for '29. The biggest challenge will be in our European markets where we see some clear margin pressure. But we also see Germany, who is slightly ahead of the Netherlands, improving profitability really fast already, close to 6% in Q1. So we know there's a new reality where margins will be lower, but we can operate more efficiently using our leverage and our updated model. to still achieve the profitability in Europe that we've seen in the past. Yes, we need the operating leverage this growth to achieve the targets. But looking at our end markets, we're confident that the growth will be there.

Maybe to add there, Peter, let's see if this is working. To add there, it's also the entry of some of the new verticals, so Power and Energy and defense, where there's higher margin to be gained than, for example, automotive. Purchasing power is much higher there and there's much more commoditization. But it's also what Peter mentioned, we need to deal also with some of the lower margins. We should look for the higher margin, but also make sure that from a productivity perspective, leveraging our systems that we can deal with the lower margins. We're making significant steps there, still a few to make. But I think that the margins that we're making in Germany or in the Netherlands should still allow us to get to a high single-digit profitability.

And maybe just one more for me, please. On the Dutch performance, we spoke about it at the Q1 trading update last week, referring to the card branch, let's say, proposition. If your revenues were down like 24%, EBIT was down 75%, new management has started. Would you consider just getting rid of some of the activities in order to increase your focus maybe just on engineering like in Germany or on fewer businesses like get rid of financial services, which might be replaced by AI? Or any thoughts on the drastic nature of your decisions you might have to take?

We certainly consider that. But at the moment, we still have a strong presence in those markets. And we think that at the moment, we can invest more in the engineering markets and still be successful in the other markets and without a conflict there. But I also mentioned that our new management has a card lunch and she just started 4 weeks ago, and she will join us for drinks afterwards. So if you want to meet her, she will be there. But we need to find the ideal setup to make it work.

The next question, anyone? Yes, please.

Simon, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on the rollout of your AI platform. Could you please elaborate how far along you are with the rollout of your platform, which countries still need to go online? And could you also please elaborate how that allowed you to win in the marketplace versus competitors by sharing a tangible use case? You also mentioned 2 levers to get to your 5% EBIT margin, namely positioned to gain market share and efficient execution at scale. You would suspect that the AI platform contributes to both of that. So yes, any insights on your platform and how far your competitors are along with this?

If we talk about the system implementation in general for sales and recruitment, we have finalized that part. That also gives us the opportunity to implement all the AI functionality there. So AI is already embedded within the systems for all our end users globally. If we talk about the recruitment platform, Neo specifically, we have it live for 2 big customers in the DACH region at this moment in time. It's not a proof of concept anymore. It's really the operating model that we use for these clients. And it gives us a very big advantage in the speed. So that's why we are faster. The candidates are very good. The quality is good. The response time of the client significantly dropped. That's why we are able to create more placement just being faster with the right candidate at the moment in time. This setup, which is now there, we are rolling out to our other bigger clients, which have high volume with our 1 million talent in the talent pool, we are sure that it brings even more efficiency to all our big clients with high volume.

And how many of your countries are currently online on the platform?

On the global platform, it was a prerequisite to have everybody on the sales and recruitment platform. That's been done. At this moment, in the DACH region, we are fully implemented. We are working now in the Netherlands, and we are working now in the Asia region to get clients connected to it.

Then maybe another question on M&A.

[indiscernible] on Neo. But it also taught us Neo needs more data to do the matches. So with bringing Neo life, there's more attention to build a talent pool and to make sure you have to up-to-date information from all your candidates. So it's not replacing manual recruitment, but we are acting earlier. We have to look further ahead to engage with the talent so that they're readily available when the request comes in.

And is it not more like playing devil's advocate here, a [ hygiene ] kind of measure that you need to take in order to stay ahead of the competition? Do you have a view on where your competition is at with implementing these AI solutions?

In the end, I think it will be a [ hygiene ] matter because everybody will get to the same situation at some stage. But at the moment, I think we are ahead of many of our competitors.

M&A. You mentioned that at some point, you also consider doing M&A again. Which verticals would you like to pursue? And what, let's say, point do you need to achieve to consider doing M&A again? What kind of market conditions?

Yes. It's what I mentioned, it's a couple of topics that we're looking at. It's the new verticals. We want to make sure currently, we're organically in those markets. If we can make a material step change through M&A, that will be very helpful to gain in competencies and scale. It's in some of the new higher-value services, whether its statement work, RPO, perm. And for our core business, it's more in specific markets like in Europe or the U.S. Currently, we're looking at it a bit more opportunistically. We're very focused on fixing some of our business and putting the foundation in, but we're getting ready for also more proactive M&A moving forward.

And do you also need M&A to get to your revenue targets that you laid out?

The targets that we laid out were without any material M&A.

Marc Zwartsenburg, ING. First, to get to your targets because you have a group target of more than 5% EBIT margin and a high single-digit top line. But if you look at the underlying segments, you don't need to be a mathematician to understand that actually, it's a bit higher. Basically, I think if you work back the mix a bit, then you come back to the old targets of 20 were laid out for 2027, if I am correct, of at least 6.5%. Why is it now 5% if the underlying businesses have different margin and growth targets?

Yes. Maybe one thing that to highlight here, we also have a line item unallocated, which is about negative 1% of revenue. So that brings the total down. And we do see some reduction compared to the numbers that we had in '22 -- CMD 2023 for 2027. It's partly mix. It's also partly the starting point and making sure that we get to a target of more than 5% in 2029.

If I understand it correctly, there's a bit more in the overhead now that is not allocated to the business anymore, and that's why the business...

Yes, that's about 1% of revenue.

If we can significantly grow the European business over the global business, then the mix will change. But at the moment, that doesn't seem feasible for the next couple of years.

And then maybe on your growth organically or inorganically. Did you consider maybe even scrapping the dividend or going to a very low payout to really boost the growth because at some point, you come to a size and a level and a scale that particularly in the Netherlands, but also in Germany in defense and in grid, you need more cloud to win market share. Have you ever considered to move more aggressively either by just organically putting up new sales offices and recruiting people from the business and just moving forward very fast or by M&A or whatever, by maybe reducing a bit of dividend and go fully for growth?

We, of course, consider those options. But unfortunately, we haven't found the right M&A target yet and our borrowing facilities are sufficient to facilitate huge acquisitions still. But in case we need it, then we would consider to reduce the dividend, obviously.

Yes, because at some point, you want to have a bit more skill and also in the Netherlands, also in engineering. You need to maybe look at IL or whatever, just think big because at some point, you become quite small. That's my issue.

Fair point. And that's also one of the items we're looking at.

And then lastly, on the AI platform, Neo, you mentioned it will make us more productive, et cetera. That's clear on what AI can do. How much more can you grow your business without growing your cost base then if you want to reach 9% margins again in Europe, for instance?

That will be the name of the game, not only AI, but technology in general and the way we operate the best practices that we need to achieve that growth without adding internal people. should see far higher conversion rates at some point.

That's correct. Also, if you look at our conversion rates today, those are much lower than they were in the past. So we definitely need to return to the levels of the past and technology should allow us to get there.

And is Neo already at that level that you can grow to, let's say, at least [ 30% ].

It's not Neo. Just our recruitment and sales platform also includes a lot of AI functionality. But Neo is just a setup where it's all connected and it only works with high-volume clients.

And Neo is very specifically focused on our talent acquisition. Of course, we also have back office functions, which we need to make sure we don't grow as we grow the business. So make sure we're more efficient in the way we deal with our invoicing and collections and accounting and operations, et cetera. So it's beyond Neo, leverage the platform and grow without adding cost.

Okay. So for online viewers, if you have any questions, you are also allowed to put it in the chat. Okay.

Maarten Verbeek, The Idea. I'm just looking at your statement in your capital allocation about the strong balance sheet that you say on one hand, I want to have a net cash position, fine. But on the other hand, also a significant commitment borrowing debt capacity. If you take on board a huge amount of debt, you won't have this net cash position anymore. So I'm a bit puzzled about those 2 statements in one line.

It's the starting point of a net cash position. It's not that our ambition is moving forward, but we start with a strong net cash position. We do have borrowing capacity available if we would encounter material M&A. So it's the combination where we're saying we have quite some runway ahead of us to also be active in the M&A space.

If you will start to borrow a substantial amount of money, what will be your leverage ratio you target or the maximum leverage ratio?

Well, the maximum that you currently have is 2.75x EBITDA versus debt -- net debt. So we have still quite some runway there. We don't want to get there, obviously, but that is the covenant that we currently have, which is also public knowledge.

Not too long ago, there was a company, if I say, Atlas NextWave, I do believe. I think you do know the company. Why haven't you showed any appetite for that business?

We looked at that business and we know the business quite well. And we actually also looked at NextWave before Atlas bought it. And at the end, there were 2 challenges there. It's close to impossible to integrate that in our existing renewable business, the NextWave part of this. And the other part is the Atlas part is really crewing business, which is not specialist enough for us.

And then I would like to add that they did a great job getting it ready to be sold, and they got a nice price for it, but it doesn't fit our strategy.

And you mentioned you want to put a lot of focus on your Power and Grid and Defense as a segment, will you also start to report on those 2 segments?

At some point, we will. But I don't like to report when it's 1% or 2%.

And what would be the threshold? Any thoughts?

We'll start to report on it soon.

So any questions from the public? Okay. No. Then I'd like to take a question from an online viewer. So we have here from [indiscernible]. So the question is, if I hear you correctly, you see the biggest growth opportunity in your global business. So while your European business, for example, the Netherlands and the DACH face margin pressure. So how do you see your margin progressing over time when your lower-margin business is growing faster than your higher-margin business?

That's also what Marc already mentioned. Yes, in the end, it's a combination of both. But we believe that we can improve our EBIT margins also in the European business when we start growing again, and we can even increase our gross margin in the Netherlands because that's really affected by all the cost increases we've seen over the last couple of years.

And maybe also to add here that our global business and it is operating at lower margin. It's also a different type of business. It's a big project. It's more people at once. Also our cost to serve is much lower. So in the end, it's also about EBIT, and that balance is good in the global business.

Yes, we have a question from the public.

Compliments for this. My name is [indiscernible]. My compliments for this presentation. I think you prove yourself that there is a market in the future for your business. I'm a little bit puzzled. I feel somehow you're also a victim of AI when you look at your business, for example, here in the Netherlands. And so with financial institutions taking less of your people. And of course, I saw how you quickly made a turnaround in Germany, but I'm still a little bit puzzled when you see there a downturn. And I think that also continues, how you were able to make -- and it's a big vertical the Dutch business. So how you're able to -- I mean probably you will need still a lot of reorganization to make it possible. And that's also why I understood previous questions about are you going forward with that business because you're very -- it's a very AI business. So will that kind of business still be there in 5 years from now? So...

Yes, very valid point. And one of the reasons that we managed to turn around Germany pretty fast is because we already had an engineering focus in Germany. And then it's much easier to look at other engineering markets. In the Netherlands, we missed the engineering focus in the last couple of years. So it will be a harder transition that requires additional investment and hopefully some targeted M&A. But for now, we think there's still a decent contribution from the financial services industry. I fully agree that 5 years from now, what we can do with that industry will look completely different. But to get there, that might mean or that probably will mean that there will be some additional work before it will go down again.

But that means that you will probably not be able to grow in the Netherlands because that's a build business, and that is different from niche business.

But it is our ambition to make engineering. If you look at the size of our engineering business in Netherlands at the moment, there is a lot of room to grow, and we need to make sure that we achieve that.

Anyone else would like to ask a question? We have Konrad and Simon.

Konrad Zomer again. Two more questions. The first one on management remuneration. Have your new 2029 targets been embedded as well in the proposed management remuneration as your variable bonus schemes going forward? And my second question is on the mobility of your staff. One of the great features of your conventional energy business has always been the geographical mobility of your people from Aberdeen to Houston to Singapore to wherever they need to go. Is that likely to change if you expand more in power and grid, defense, the other verticals that you're expanding in? And obviously, my thought will then be how important is it to have a global platform that you've just built?

I can start with the mobility piece. So thank you very much for the compliments, and we certainly pride ourselves on our mobility capability that's really grown from the conventional energy and renewable space. Much of the power and grid and defense focus and shift into these new markets will actually start here in Europe. So it will be leveraging this experience that we have globally in Houston, Singapore, Dubai, et cetera, to bring that knowledge into the European markets. I think for the longest time, just the way the business has been run, it's all been very domestic, and we've not actually performed a lot of mobility into Europe for our existing clients here. So absolutely, a very key focus is leveraging this global experience to move personnel into the European markets for power and grid and defense. Another important market for both of those verticals is also Australia, and we have a unique position there to bring foreign talent into Australia, which we're doing now with a range of clients, including defense customers.

Long-term incentives, of course, our management or wider management is also incentivized in line with the strategy and the plans for '29. And part of the incentive is around our relative share price -- share performance compared to some peers or benchmark. And the other part is achieving their targets for '29. So it is aligned with the plans we presented today.

Next one, Simon.

Simon Van Oppen, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question on -- you laid out 3 of your service offerings, Workforce Solutions, Mobility Solutions and Consulting. Given your margin target of 5%, have you considered expanding, for example, more into consulting solutions or statement of work offerings that allows you to expand your margin over time? Would you consider investing in consulting solutions more at the expense of other service offerings?

Absolutely. And we're already doing -- the statement of work is part of the project and consultancy business we do, which is still pretty small, and we would like to accelerate that by doing targeted M&A in that area.

And which verticals do you do the most consulting solutions at this moment?

In Germany, it's pretty much around automotive still, but also defense. And in Netherlands, it's also automotive and defense and some wider IT services.

Yes. We have one more question here.

Maarten Verbeek, the IDEA! Maybe not question, but mining is something which you do outside of Europe, obviously. But if we -- not obviously, because if we look in Europe, a lot of mining projects are being established in Portugal, lithium, Germany, lithium as well, antimony in Slovenia. France just made a statement that they want to become independent from China. Will it become a new focus area for you because you have the global network, you have the expertise in Europe, hardly anything. So how do you position yourself in that respect?

We position ourselves as a global mining player, and we have a vertical leader that's looking at all the opportunities. And we also saw the opportunities in Europe, but there are probably some other opportunities that are at the moment are a bit closer to what we actually do. So that involves opportunities around South America, those type of areas, where it's more around the global mobility piece of what we do because that differentiates us from competitors in that industry.

And then another one from my side. You mentioned the equal pay, which is now being implemented is affecting your business materially. Could you give some more color to that and how much this is impacting your business?

Yes. So we -- equal pay has already been there for a long time, and we also always applied that. But what has changed since the 1st of January that it's now included in the collective labor agreement, and it now also includes the pension part. And that's where it's impacting us most and especially since our pension scheme for industry has also been increased significantly. So first of all, we need to contribute to our own pension scheme and there the cost went up from 8% on average to 18%. So that's a 10% increase. But we also need to match the pension schemes of our clients. And we have some clients that have very, yes, rich pension scheme with even 40% contribution. So there, on 1st of January, we all of a sudden had to bridge the gap between 8% and 32% -- 40%, so an increase of 32%. But on average, our costs, and it's mainly the pension part, so went up with 10%.

All right. Any other questions? No? Okay.

I would like to thank you all for your attention, for joining us today. And then I would like to invite you to join us for drinks in our bar next door in our Bruno office. Once again, thank you all for coming in. Thank you. Look forward to catch up during drinks.