COFACE SA (COFA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the conference call for the presentation of COFACE results for the period ending June 30, 2021. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. Your host for today's call will be Mr. Xavier Durand, CEO; and Carine Pichon, CFO. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Xavier Durand. Sir, you may begin.

Good evening. Thank you very much, and welcome to everybody. Thank you for logging on to this call. We're happy to present our first-half 2021 results tonight. As you all have seen from the publication, our second quarter has been very strong. It's probably actually a record quarter in terms of profit so far in the history of the company. And there are 2 underlying trends I want to stress here. One is we continue to live in a low-claims environment in pretty much all areas around the world. And then second, and I think that's important, COFACE continues to demonstrate a very strong execution in all areas of the business, be it on the growth side, in terms of managing cost, in terms of losses of course, and finally, in terms of developing our adjacencies in line with the Build to Lead plan that we had highlighted back in the beginning of 2020. Just to some highlights on Page 4. Our turnover is up 7.5% at constant FX and perimeter. Notably, the second quarter is up by almost 11%, at 10.8%. Trade Credit Insurance premiums are up 8.5%, as the activity of our clients is recovering as the economy is rebounding post the acute phase of the COVID crisis. Our client retention remains very strong, at 92.4%. We continue to see positive pricing through the half-year. But I would say, notably, the pricing has started to turn negative as, obviously, competitive pressure is building up in the market. Information services is up 11%. Factoring is up almost 11%, at 10.9%. And we see clear acceleration to both of these business lines in the second quarter. In terms of losses, it's another, I would say, benign quarter, with a 36-points drop from last year, at 21.4%. That brings the net combined ratio at 51.9% and 51.0% for the second quarter of '21. The gross losses are down 29.4, to 29.5%, pretty much the same level as the first quarter. And all of this is pretty much the continuation of the story that you've seen and that we've already discussed in the first quarter in terms of claims. The cost ratio is down 0.8 points, to 30.4%. We are continuing to see growing revenues and we are continuing to invest in the business, but the balance is positive in terms of the cost ratio for COFACE. And then lastly, the government schemes that we've already discussed many times on these calls has lowered our pretax profit by EUR 24.9 million for the first half of this year. So that's a pretty significant impact actually on the business, and we all know the story behind this. So that brings our net income for the group to EUR 123.2 million for the first half of the year, of which EUR 66.9 million in the second quarter, bringing our RoATE in line with the first quarter, at 13.5% for the first half of the year. We continue to have strong solvency. You know we publish that number twice a year. We estimate it at 191% in total for the group; 186% if we exclude the government schemes. And that remains well above the target range that we have defined in our Build to Lead plan of 155% to 175%. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Page 5, with a little bit of a few comments on the economy. I mean, clearly, the sequence on the top left-hand side, as we have highlighted, is one of a rebound, which is underway. We expect 5.6% growth in the economy this year. Some of this is catching up from 2020. But we do expect that growth to continue for now into 2022, albeit at a lower pace than this year. As the economy reopens, our clients are in need of support, which leads to the growth in TCI exposures that you can see on the top right-hand side of the chart. We're up 9.8% since the end of last year. We are seeing strong price increases actually in some raw materials, as I'm sure you're all aware, some commodities. So there's some short-term inflation here that is materializing. We are supporting our clients with increased covers where they need it. Our exposures are now close to where they were pre the COVID crisis. I would just mention, though, there's been some significant rotations in terms of either the credit quality of the companies or the sectors to which or the countries to which we are exposed. We do, and I'm sure that's on everybody's mind, we do expect the number of bankruptcies to increase in the future as we exit this sanitary crisis. The sequence of that I think is pretty much still unknown. The governments will eventually withdraw their support to the economy. We're starting to see that actually in the more mature markets that have been most vaccinated. I'm thinking of places like Israel. We still think there's downside, and we're seeing it at play in Europe with the variants coming back strong. The vaccination progressing, but the variants continuing to appear. And so I think we're going to be in this race between medicine and the variants and the virus for some time still. On the bottom left-hand side, you're all aware of the government schemes. I mentioned the cost for us this year. In terms of the totality of these programs, they've cost us about EUR 31 million pretax so far. Most of these schemes have ended as of 30th of June, but they'll continue to play a role in our numbers as, obviously, the vintages are rolling through. Some of the schemes that are still ongoing are not the ones that impact our balance sheet. We're talking about the top-up schemes that have been put in place in France, Slovenia, Israel and Canada, and we expect those to last until the end of the year. So that's really the overall story in terms of the environment. I added a page on Page 6 to talk a little bit about what's been happening in the business as we have been going through this crisis. I mean, clearly, on the trade credit side, we have been performing well. We have continued to demonstrate, I think, agility, resilience in the face of a scenario that's very, very hard to actually plan out in a lot of detail. I think we've actually performed well relative to the rest of the market during that time. But we haven't just been managing the crisis. We have been continuing to work on the core infrastructure of the business. And I'll just give you a few things. We've just launched a single worldwide collection tool in 45 countries. It's been a long ongoing project. We think the time is right to do this, as the level of claims is relatively low. But this contributes to a significant continued effort to simplify and digitize our business. And I just wanted to highlight that trend by another benchmark that we've hit: we just passed a milestone for us, which is a 30% reduction in our IT complexity. And the way we define this is that a few years ago we created an index, which is basically the number of applications, multiplied by their weight in kilobytes, multiplied by the number of interfaces that are in place between these applications. And it's interesting to see that since we launched our first restructuring efforts, we've reduced the complexity, the IT complexity of the business, by about 30%, which is quite a bit, as we have on the other hand further expanded the capabilities of those systems. On the right-hand side, I also want to stress that we're not just continuing to invest in Trade Credit Insurance, but we are continuing to grow our select specialties, as we said we would do during our Build to Lead plan. In the last year and this year, we've been investing, continuing to invest in our information business line. Year-to-date, we've increased the headcount in that business by about 38%. We're scaling up our IT capabilities in this space. We've launched a bonding product in Romania. We have started to sign reinsurance treaties out of Switzerland in the area of bonding as well to expand our reach in that business. Our factoring business, as you know, has been turning around for the last 2.5 years, and we're starting to see some nice traction here, with a 31% growth in the second quarter year-on-year, clearly, as we rebound from the pandemic. And then we're launching further products, like a new debt collection offer in Italy which has been growing nicely for us in the first half of this year. So that's pretty much some highlights on the operating story. I want to take some time, which I don't usually do, but on Page 7, to talk about our initiatives as relates to the ESG strategy at COFACE. As you know, we really want to be a responsible and sustainable player in this space for the long term. And I wanted to highlight here some of the things that we've been developing over the course of this pandemic in 3 areas. One, as the responsible player in the TCI industry, we are continuing to develop tools and to put in place targets in terms of enhancing our ESG position. Just a few examples. Our ESG rating of our investment portfolio, we have set a precise target for the improvement of that rating. We are actually a couple of notches better than our investing environment. We are building and we are currently testing a customized tool to assess the environmental impact of our insured buyers. This is something that is a capability we want to put in place in order to be able to give our underwriters both, obviously, the credit risk assessment view of the world, but also to build a tool that allows them to assess through another system the ESG value of the companies and sectors that we write. And then finally, we're building a specific CSR indicator which will be built in our risk appetite indicators by the end of the year in order to continue to move forward on that very important part of our business. In terms of being a responsible employer, you're aware the last year we spent quite a bit of time working on gender pay equality in France, and we've had some really nice results there. We've this year rolled that out globally in every country where we operate. We've set a target of 34% of women in the top 200 jobs at the company, and that's built hard into our collective LTIP targets for the end of 2023. We've signed diversity and inclusion charters in France, mainly around LGBT+ and disabilities at work. And we are continuing to roll out a new initiative, which is about helping people who are from less favored environments access superior education in terms of technology, mathematics and science. And our first step in this area was with a foundation called the Potter Foundation in France. We think this is an important way for us to participate in something that's actually important for the company, which is science, data, technology and the development of the communities in which we participate. And then finally, in terms of our own sustainability, we're setting a reduction target of 3 grams of CO2, in average, for our fleet by the middle of 2022. We're putting in place electric cars in our catalog of eligible cars for every employee that's allowed to have one. We're using outside resources to really measure precisely what our carbon footprint is and to set in place a precise trajectory. We've upgraded our procurement policy. We're developing new work rules in terms of what we've learned from the crisis. We've learned that we could do a lot of things at a distance. We don't need to be in the office, and we're moving ahead in a very resolute way and a very deliberate way to continue with this work-from-home policy, to reduce our real estate consumption, to limit travels and to basically overall reduce our carbon footprint. I think that goes along with as well more productivity, enhanced communications with everybody. And I'll just take a last point here, which is how we've been able to continue to train and to communicate to raise our employees' awareness in terms of many, many things that we do: strategy, where we are in terms of performance, but also training on technical matters and as well their awareness in terms of CSR and diversity. So I think a lot is going on in the space. I think the point I want to stress is, it's important. We're doing things, and we haven't just managed the crisis here. We're working on all these agendas which are important for the long term for the company. That being said, and I've been a bit longer than I usually am on this part, I'll run you quickly through the following pages, which you're all very familiar with because they're always the same, so it makes it simple. On Page 9, talk about the growth. You can see the growth in our premiums, 7.4%. I've already mentioned this, all things equal. Trade Credit Insurance, 8.5%. Service revenues, up 2.5% at constant FX and perimeter. Information sales, up almost 14% in the second quarter. So we're seeing a nice pickup in momentum there. Factoring, up 10.9% for the half-year; 31% in the second quarter. Clearly, we're comparing ourselves to the first quarter of the pandemic last year. So that's helping, but there is momentum in the business. We're also seeing fees, which had been more challenging last year because the limits were lower, improve, and they were flat in Q2 versus a negative performance for the last few quarters. On Page 10, you see the growth story detailed by region. I'm not going to go through every one in detail, but you can see, clearly, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Med & Africa continuing to pick up momentum at 7% to 9% or 10% almost for the German part of the business. Central Europe, on the back of this, is growing again - it is continuing to grow. Sorry. Actually, Central Europe did pretty well through this whole crisis. North America is starting to see some momentum. Asia Pacific, continuing to grow. Latin America, still same story on the back of international contracts. I mean, I think in all of these markets you're seeing some of the same phenomenons at play: new business that continues to be good, a good retention level, strong activity from the recovery in the economy, better services. At the same time, we're starting to see more pressure on price. And you can see that on Page 11, where new business, at EUR 72 million for the first half, is about 11% better than it was in '19 and a little bit less than last year, but last year I think we had exceptional circumstances. Retention rates, pretty close to our record, but we are starting to see a little bit more pressure in both competition and self-insurance from companies that probably have decided to allocate differently their cost in the face of the pandemic. Price effect remains positive. As I mentioned before, the market has quickly returned to pre-COVID trends, and we're [ spotting ] significant pressures again on the price side in Q2. Volume effect, very strong. Clearly, the rebound is at play here from the economy. It was expected. It's happening. So I think that's very much in line with what we expected. Page 12, talking about losses. So for once, this is one where there's actually not that much news. You can see on the top left-hand side of the chart, 29.5% for the year. And just to the right side of that, it's really pretty much the same story in Q1 and Q2: 29.5%, 29.6%. And the same thing that I said last quarter is still true: no large losses and a decrease in frequency pretty much around the world. You can see our policy per opening is pretty much unchanged, 75%. We still think claims will pick up at some point. But we are also seeing recoveries from prior vintages that are pretty strong, at 48%, leading to the 27% loss ratio before reinsurance and excluding claims handling expenses at the bottom right-hand side of the chart. If I go to Page 13 and 14, these describe by region our losses. And I would say, for once, I'm not going to spend that much time on it. Because as you can see from Page 13, every region is below 30%, pretty much. And if you move to Page 14, you see that the quarterly sequence is actually pretty much benign as well. Not much to say. I mean, Asia was at a record-low 1% loss in Q1. So I guess there's not that much room to go further down. But whether they are big markets, small markets or emerging, we are seeing absolutely great loss lines here on Page 14. A little bit more time maybe on Page 15, where we talk about costs. So we hit a low point in terms of the cost structure last year as the pandemic hit. We stopped traveling. Obviously, bonuses and compensation were hurt, as the business was tougher. And that led to a decrease in cost. You can see that quarter-on-quarter at Q2 this year we're up 11.5%. Obviously, all those trends that I mentioned before have reversed themselves. So we expect through much stronger performance people to get paid this year, actually, which I think is a good thing. And we're continuing to invest. The company is continuing to invest in its technology, continuing to invest in its sales force, continuing to invest in growth initiatives. You can see the cost ratio better before reinsurance, from 34.1% to 33.7%. And I just want to highlight on the bottom right-hand side of the chart the difference between 2020 and 2021. You see that starting from 33.9% last year, we decreased to 33.2%. But the way that happened was that we had fewer premiums, which is a negative, and we had better internal overheads as we saved money on internal costs and we had slightly better external acquisition costs. So the reduction was caused by savings, internal savings. This year, it's pretty much the opposite. Our premiums are better, which is the good guy on the cost ratio. Our internal overheads are up, and we just explained why. External acquisition costs are higher on better volumes. Still, we are seeing a decrease of 0.7% of our net cost ratio. So I think despite all of the volatility in the different phases in the crisis, COFACE continues to deliver improved productivity and continues to invest in its core operation. So that's the message I just wanted to share. And with this, I am going to turn it over to Carine, as we usually do at that page, and she's going to take us through the rest of this presentation.

Thank you very much, Xavier, and good evening, everyone. So usually, I will start commenting on reinsurance. The reinsurance reflects low loss activity and public schemes. You know that the government schemes which are in force since last year have had a negative impact of around EUR 25 million for the first 6 months of the year. Knowing that even if these schemes, mainly proportional ones, have ended at the end of June of this year, we are expecting significant impact on future reserve movements because [ I too ] may see that the claims cession rate is around 62.7%, so far above the premium cession rate, because we have high cession of statistical results attached to current underwriting year. Having said that, in any case, [indiscernible] is also high because of low loss activity globally, a part of public schemes, which is not a surprise because it impacts how reinsurance is working. Continuing on to Slide 17. So net combined ratio is quite very good, I would say a record one, 51.9% for the first 6 months of the year, with an improvement on cost ratio by 0.8 points, also an improvement on net loss ratio, we already have commented. And even on a quarterly basis, Q2 '21 is at 51%. So quite similar to Q1 '21 of this year, with a decrease of the cost ratio compared with last year and also a very low loss ratio. So all in, very good performance from a combined ratio point of view. And Page 18, we are used to show you what would have been the combined ratio without the schemes, because when they will completely be over in our financial statements, we will have a pro forma, which will be 61.5%, which is still good because it's 31% of net loss ratio and 30.4% of net cost ratio. And that will be the basis for a comparison for the years to come. In terms of financial portfolio, which is Slide 19, you know our aim is clearly to stabilize investment income as much as possible. Last year when we decided to increase the share of cash because we were anticipating an increase in claims, which finally didn't happen, so we decided to reinvest this excess of cash in our financial portfolio. Having said that, we are still in a very low yield environment, knowing that you know that most of our assets are located in Europe, but we have been able to keep the same accounting yield on average investment portfolio without realized gains. You see the last line on the right chart at 0.66%, with this movement. Page 20 is related to the net income. So net income, EUR 123.2 million. It is clearly higher than last year, multiplied by 5. But I think what is most important is to compare with the pre-COVID crisis results; so as of H1 '19. And you see that we have increased by 57%. So a huge increase of net income compared with '19. Our tax rate is still good in Q2, with 21%. We did 24% for the period, mainly linked to the fact that we also have been able to use some deferred past tax [ clauses ] and with the good results we have, which helps to have a very low tax rate. From an equity point of view, Page 21, quite stable, a little less than EUR 2 billion. You know that we have distributed a dividend to shareholders and that thanks to the net income of this period we are stable. And the return on average tangible equity is at 13.5%; so far above the average return we planned to have in the framework of Build to Lead. And the improvement is without any surprise by 8.4 points of percentage improvement on the combined ratio, cost loss plus turnover. So clearly, operational performance. So that was the P&L. And you know that we are used also to update you on what is our capital position at the end of June. So first, I think Page 23 just will remind you that we came back with the same rating from Fitch, Moody's and AM Best than before the crisis with the same stable outlook. So that's just also a confirmation of the way we entered and we finished this first phase of the crisis a very good position. And that's exactly also a very solid and robust Solvency II position we have on Page 24. So looking at the left, you see in green our position at the end of H1 2021; so 191%. So a ratio which is far above our comfort scale; I remind, between 155% and 175%. If we exclude government schemes because they will disappear, we are at 186%. And so quite similar to the same period of H1 '20, a little lower than end of '20, mainly linked to the fact that we have increased our exposure to support our clients in the economic rebound. But globally, very good. And you may see that also on the right, where all in, I will say, even if this ratio will be shocked with some crisis scenario, we will be at a very good position from a solvency point of view. Page 25, you have more information in terms of the computation of this ratio. Eligible own funds, meaning the capital we have amounted, at EUR 2.264 billion of euro; so quite high. And the solvency required capital at 1.2%. As I told you, it increased mainly the non-life underwriting risk because it's where we have the assessment of the capital for exposures we are granting. It's a very good solvency position. And now I will let Xavier for key takeaways and outlook.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Carine. So look, as I said on last page, I think we are at a record here in Q2 '21, on the back of 2 key things. One is, yes, there are low bankruptcies at this stage as we start to exit this crisis. And the company is demonstrating strong operational performance. I've been trying to convey, I guess, during this call that we're focused on risk, we're focused on operations, but we're also focused on growth. We're also focused on adjacencies. We're continuing to invest to make our business better, to enhance our technology. We're very focused on clients, making sure that we are helpful as they, too, get out of this crisis. Our exposures at Q2 are up 7.2%. We're close to where we were pre COVID. But we, again, have 2 things that are different. One, we have higher premiums. Our premiums are about 6.8% higher than we were in '19. And second, we have significant sectorial shifts that have taken place. The government schemes are weighing on our profits, even though they're high, by 24 million. Obviously, if we didn't have these schemes, it's pretty easy to see that our profitability would be much higher. We do expect bankruptcies to rise. I mean, clearly, we are going to exit this sanitary crisis. We are going to see governments retrench. We are going to see withdrawal of support actions to the economy. We just don't know when, at which rhythm, where. Again, this is our game. This is what we do. We need agility. We need to follow this next phase of the story as it develops. So we're aware of the risks that remain in the economy. But I would just say that as we continue to move through this crisis we are confident that our culture, the values we put in place, the systems, the operating mechanism that we have will allow us to adapt to whatever the world's got to offer for us. And if we are not able to bank 100% on one given scenario, I think we stand ready to manage what the world will offer us. So that's what I wanted to say. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to the Operator for questions, as we usually do at this stage in the presentation. Thanks, everyone.

[Operator Instructions] We have one first question from Mr. Michael Huttner, from Berenberg.

So I had 3 questions. The first one is PYD, 48%, which seems amazing. And which years does it relate to? In other words, is there still -- how much fat is there from maybe last year? Or have you started using up what was reserved in 2020? The second is a slight -- Europe seems to have a slightly higher loss ratio, Northern Europe, 34%, Q2. Q1 was 19-point-something percent. I just wondered if there's anything there. And then the real question is, you're running at such a high level of profitability, how are you going to manage it when you're going to have to say, "Oh, results were not quite this good this quarter?" I mean, I suppose what I'm really asking is, how do you expect this to normalize? Is it a glide path where every quarter reduces and the quarters trend to this 9.5% target figure? Or will there be a kind of really bad quarter and then the average is 9.5%? That's it.

Thanks, Michael. Well, I'm going to let Carine prepare the answer for Question #1. And #2, I don't think, by the way, on #2, I don't think there's anything to read in those numbers. I mean, they are low numbers. But on question number 3, if I had a crystal ball and I knew what the answer was, I guess I'd be rich, right? And unfortunately, Michael, we're not going to break our rule, which is we're not going to make any forward-looking statements. But more generally, I would say we are all conscious that a loss ratio at 25%, or whatever the number is, is not where this business will be in the long term, right? I think the competitive pressures, pressures from brokers, from clients, from the industry would just normalize that pretty quickly to something new. So I think nothing that we said in our Build to Lead plan or anything like this is changed by the fact that we're where we are. And I think this through-the-cycle notion is very well understood by the market. Carine, do you want to answer the first 2 questions?

Okay. [indiscernible], Xavier was already saying it. I mean, there is nothing to look at the quarterly basis. Sometimes you may have just based on statistical methods some changes. But globally, when you look at the trend on Page 13, H1 2021 is 27% for Northern Europe. It was 37% last year; and the year before, 41%; and even the year before this one, 49%. So clearly, we have a very good trend. You see the group is at 29.5%; and Northern Europe, at 27%. So I would say nothing specific to add and no change in the trend, no change in the underlying trend. On the recovery level, which is your question, it's clear it's a level we have never seen. I agree with you: [ 48.1 points ]. If you look at Page 12, what we have before, nothing to do. I mean, up to now, we are on the 28th of July, the situation is still very good in terms of loss ratio. And so we will have to see how it will evolve. We have opened Underwriting Year 2021 at 75.1%. So quite similar than the year before. We will see a [indiscernible] and it's a question of, looking forward, what will be the increase of plan, when it will be, what will be the pattern. And we don't know, we don't know. So that's something we will see in the next quarter.

But the 48%, does it come from the -- I call it fat, but it's not the right word, but from the reserves which relate to the 2020 underwriting year or previous year?

Part of it is 2020, and a part of it from the other ones. But 2020, clearly, you know is the one we are [indiscernible] based on the very low loss ratio. So yes.

Next question is from Mr. Benoit Valleaux from ODDO BHF.

[indiscernible] Maybe first, regarding business information. You have enjoyed still a very strong revenue growth; I see almost 13% in Q2. I know that you have a strong ambition on this business line. But can you share with us what you see in terms of potential growth for the next few years? And do you believe that you should be able to maintain this kind of growth? And what could be the earnings contribution in a few years from this business line? Second question is regarding maybe competition. You're mentioning a stronger competition in Q2. You can see it in terms of pricing, in terms also on new production. I could assume also that maybe there could be lower demand from COVID from your customers. And at the same time, you have had a strong growth in your exposure. So you do believe that your growth in exposure should reduce, going forward, due to this, I would say, stronger competitive environment? And maybe third question is related to solvency. I know that there have been some strong growth in exposure, which would explain the decrease in the solvency margin, excluding government schemes. But I would also assume that you may have benefited from the low loss ratio or the [indiscernible] loss ratio in Q2. So can you just comment on this? I mean, did you have some positive impact from this? Or are you only suffered from the [indiscernible], being impacted, I would say, from the growth in exposure?

Okay. Benoit, on this last question, and Carine can probably complement this, but the impact, the major impact, the one that matters, is the exposures, right? Because the 5-point drop in solvency is exactly what we have grown in terms of exposures, and that's really how we measure risk actually. So there's really not that much more to understand. But Carine will be able to comment a bit later on this. In terms of business information, yes, it's something we've mentioned in Build to Lead. So what you're seeing here is just what we said we would do, right? I mean, we do not make forward-looking statements. So I'm unfortunately going to be frustrating in terms of giving you the forecast here. First of all, I don't know the number. And second, we do not make forward-looking statements. But we said during the Build to Lead plan that we expected our adjacencies, as we've called them, to grow faster than credit insurance. And I think it should not be a surprise that you're actually seeing some momentum and some pickup in these business lines; particularly, information, where we've been actually spending quite a bit of time. So yes, we are seeing momentum. I think it's a good business line that's very complementary to what we do. And that's very much in line with everything we've said so far and the expectations we've set in the market for growth in this space. In terms of competition, well, clearly, as you expect, losses are better, the environment is more benign, you see increased demand from brokers, from clients, and you see more competition from different types of players in the industry. So nothing here that I would call abnormal. This is the game. This is what happens in this industry. It moves quickly from one stance to another stance. And I think in COFACE, we're quite agile, and I think that's really what matters. But I'm not sure if I've answered your question. Carine, do you want to say a word more on solvency?

Yes, maybe. I mean, you're right, Benoit, normally we have 2 phenomenon. Increasing exposure, which will require capital. I mean, it's obvious because we are growing. But you also can benefit from lower loss ratio. But I mean, it was already the case, I would say, the previous quarter. And I will say the speed of increase in exposure compared with the decrease of cost ratio makes that, all in, we have an increase in solvency capital requirement. So you have the 2 effects, but the effect of exposure, particularly the steadiness, is most important.

We have another question from Mr. Michael Huttner from Berenberg.

Just 2 numbers. The tax loss, what is there left to use up? I know it's maybe not an obvious because it probably doesn't fit exactly where the profits are. And then given the reinsurers are making so much money, I know you showed a figure of EUR 88 million. Is it EUR 88 million? So I suppose the question here is, how much of that is actually the government? And then if all the EUR 88 million is reinsurance, how much do you think you can cut your reinsurance costs, going forward?

I like your question.

At least it's a direct question, Carine. I think Michael is going to -- I'm going to ask Michael to set the target for you for the performance for next year.

Okay. I cannot [ say that specifically ] because you were mentioning [indiscernible], Michael. You know that we had in some parts of the world some tax loses in the past. And we have a quite prudent way of activate them. So some of them were not activated. And now that we are profitable everywhere, we can use them. So that's what I was mentioning in some parts of the globe. For our reinsurance, it EUR 84.3 million, which is a cost. You have, among that, EUR 24.9 million precisely for the government. So you make the difference, and then you have the cost for the cost. The margins on the reinsurance, so you see -- I think we will have interesting discussion in the [ virtual ] Monte Carlo, Michael, to make it simple.

And this tax ratio of below 25%, how long can it continue?

You asked me once again forward-looking statement. I mean, usually sure that when we have high profit, the tax rate is lower than when we have lower profits, which can [indiscernible] if it's spread everywhere in the world, the profitability, then we can use [indiscernible] that we're mentioning, which helps us. So that's what I can tell you. So if there is some change, well, that's where. That's the kind of pattern we may have, but now it will depend clearly on where the profit is located.

Next question is from Mr. Hadley Cohen from Deutsche Bank.

Just a very quick question. Actually, I think Michael has covered most of them. But I mean, I'm just wondering how you're thinking about these new Chinese regulations on tech companies and how that could impact the business, if you feel at all.

Well, I mean, it's pretty generic, my answer, Hadley. It's 2 things. In terms of direct impact on us, I don't expect any, quite frankly. In terms of impact on our clients or our counterparties, that's something that we need to watch closely. Right now, what we're seeing is a crackdown on some sectors, education and things like this, which we're typically not very exposed to. It's creating a pretty intense reaction in the stock market. Probably some of this stuff actually might be healthy. I mean, in the long term, having a proper education offering, making sure that the quality is there for the money that people spend on it is probably healthy. But I think the impact for us at this stage seems like very much indirect and quite limited.

[Operator Instructions] Next question comes from Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just to come back on the ESG part of the presentation, I was wondering how you take the kind of -- well, the ESG of your own clients into account. So are you concerned by ESG ratings of your own clients and the turnover of those clients might be generating to COFACE? Or is that not yet or not a focus for COFACE? Just wanted to understand. I mean, I'm asking because we see more and more banks trying to limit basically exposure to certain sectors, and I was wondering if this is a subject for you at COFACE. And then just to come back on the end of the government support in Q3, you mentioned some future reserve movements. Are we going to see any accounting/P&L impact of the end of the public schemes in the third quarter? Or anything special to be expected there?

Well, I'll start with that last question. I mean, as you know, it's a reinsurance scheme, right, pretty much. So it works like the rest of our business. Once the vintage is booked, part of the premiums and part of the losses are ceded to government. So that carries through as the vintage rolls off, right? There's no specific accounting thing happening any time in particular. It's just the natural roll-off of the vintage with, in this case, it's a public reinsurer versus the private market that we usually go to. In terms of the ESG question, it's interesting. I mean, as you know, we pretty much follow the banking, I would say, trend, because we're regulated as well and we've been living in that world for quite some time, of progressively relooking at some of our underwriting policy. So things we don't do today: clearly, offensive weaponry; land mines; certain coal industries where developing new projects that are very carbon-intensive is what they do; tobacco companies that would have more than x percent of their business in that line of business. These are things we won't do. And what I mentioned in my -- and that's true for, if you will, that's true for our clients. In terms of our counterparties, so the clients of our clients, that's the tool that we're building. So actually, our ESG approach really encompasses the whole spectrum, if you will, looking progressively first at our clients and then to the clients of our clients.

Next question is from Mr. Michael Huttner from Berenberg.

Sorry. Last question. [indiscernible]. On inflation, so the impression I have is inflation is a positive for you?

Say that again, Michael. I couldn't hear you.

I beg your pardon. Inflation, in broad terms, inflation of goods and stuff, is that a positive for you?

Well, I would say inflation, in that it raises the turnover, right, immediately of our clients, so it's a positive on the top line. Obviously, if it translates into wage inflation and then cost inflation, then that translates into our cost line as well. And then, ultimately, it translates into bigger claims. But I would say it's a progressive impact, right, that impacts our business with a bit of a timing difference. It also depends which parts of the economy it concerns, right? So that's hard to say.

Thank you. Sir, we have no other questions.

Okay. Well, I mean, what time is it? It's, like, 18:52. It's been a brief but intense call, now that Michael is back with us. He's had 3 go's at questions. Thank you. If there's no other questions, I'd just suggest we leave it here. We'll be reporting our Q3 numbers in October, I don't know the date by heart, but a story to be followed at that date. Thank you, everyone, and thanks for being with us tonight.

Thank you, everyone. Bye.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.