Econocom Group SE (ECONB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] We help them to use this equipment and finance it. So it's quite simple. In other words, we are an RSN but compared with others, we have 2 distinguishing features. We are focused on the equipment and finance the purchase of this equipment. It sounds complicated, but it isn't really. That's our core business here at Econocom. You should raise that the difference, what makes a standout is in terms of technology, apart from the essence, basically, we have R&D centers when it comes to equipment, a lot of expenditure focuses on this area, and we develop software. That's part of the system when you talk about Microsoft and the other big ones, they develop software and do servicing. That's something we don't really do. If you want to understand the development of Econocom, we're far less hectic is much less of an up-and-down system, our 3 core businesses. And of course, there are others of our 3 core businesses are basically fairly resilient and stable. In other words, our leasing contracts usually last for 5 years. So we have a big leasing portfolio. The equipment supply contracts, Philippe here will confirm that our main customers span many years, usually a 5-year period when they choose, for example, given kind of computer, they're going to use it across Europe and it's not for just a couple of months. These are long contracts that last several years, and all our contracts, management contracts sent to last for 5 years, too. So our core business doesn't fluctuate up and down a lot. It's very stable. As an investor, there will be fewer approvals and you can expect much greater continuity, which is quite pleasant when it comes to your management because we have a lot of visibility, although there can be wars in Ukraine and COVID and things like that, a financial crisis in 2008 with the consequences in 2012 and '13 recession. The graph will depict all this. Before I show you the graph, I would like to show your management team because we're talking about all about men and women here. So if you want to come up on the stage, I'd like to call on our management. Staff as the members of the COMEX. Please say a few words in turn. Ladies first.

Hello. Samira Draoua. I fell into leasing and IT about 30 years ago. I worked at the time for a bank and then for a manufacturer for the last 10 years, I've been working for Econocom. And there, I've occupied several different positions up until more recently when I became Executive Managing Director in charge of France.

I've been working on leasing for about 30 years now. I've held very different position starting with banking and then I moved into more digital matters. I'm a bit special because I spent about 14 years working for Econocom, but I'm fairly new because I returned to a Conoco at the end of August. And for me, this is very symbolical, it's very important. It's not the same thing when you join a group or when you go back to work for a group. I've come back to a Econocom because I firmly believe in the power of this company in the team, the men and women, Jean-Louis was saying, I think it's the people who really can't. I'm in charge with the leasing and transverse director. I'm directly in charge of all financing activities when it comes to strategic assets and the refinancing of these assets through refinancing and the overall refinancing activities of the group.

Good morning, everyone. Angel Benguigui. I joined Econocom in 2006. I was in charge of Spain at that time. I had the opportunity to develop acquisitions and develop the 3 core businesses of the group. I'm currently in charge of International Affairs and I'm Executive Managing Director.

Patrick Van Den Berg. I've been working for Econocom since May 2022. I'm in charge as administrative and financial Managing Director. I'm a General Manager, also for the Netherlands. I have 25 years of experience. I began in PWC in the Netherlands, dealing with audits and other services. And then I worked for 16 years in the media group. For 10 years, I was CFO and then I was a call CFO of the group. I'm very pleased to have joined Econocom in 2022. It's a very interesting company with an excellent track record. The team is highly motivated, and we will move forward on a number of projects in the years to come. We'll be discussing them with you today.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Philippe Goullioud. In fact, I began my career in IT and IT products. I've been interested in IT ever since I was very young. But I don't want to give you the date. I'll give you a clue. My first technical report was done on an Apple TC+. Just to give you an idea of where my career began. For the last 15 years, I've been working for Econocom in charge of products and solutions for France. I work in the same similar area to Samira Draoua. Now I'm a member of the COMEX, I coordinate products and solutions across the group. I'm not alone, of course. I'm assisted by Mr. Israel Garcia, who is Deputy International Director and who comes under Mr. Angel Benguigui, who is present here and who deals with international business.

Good morning, everybody. Long Le Xuan. I joined Econocom 5 years ago, work in services, mainly, I'm currently Managing Director of Services France and since, at the beginning of the year I've been dealing with the coordination of services activities within the group. I have 23 years' experience in digital services, first of all, in advisory services, and I also worked for an ESN, top Tier 1 on the market. I had occupied a managing position. I'm very pleased to have joined Econocom in this new stage of its development, and I'm thrilled to be a member of COMEX.

What you see on the screen is the last 3 people who have joined COMEX. This is an important turning point in the history of the group. I created the group of 50 years ago, it was called ECS, Europe Computer Systèmes, and I was convinced that Europe and 10 years later, would be fully covered. It took a bit longer to achieve this but I think all French people are now aware of the situation. This is something that is now coming true, thanks to some dramatic events in part we can sense that Europe is really coming together. And in the field for us, Europe is really coming together. We have someone from the Netherlands, is Spaniard, someone from Asia, some from North Africa. Samira and I, myself, was born in Morocco. So Europe is really coming together and gathering strength in our line of business. There are 2 things. The latest strategic plan was called excellence. We were focusing on our 3 main core activities. We thought they should be excellent in order to achieve real synergy. When you're a salesperson, you represent 3 core businesses, if some activities don't work well, then salespeople don't talk about them to the client. We didn't succeed with the right figures at the time. There are several reasons for this. I made some mistakes myself, the market that didn't help us a great deal. But thanks to long this team, the services, which we're lacking behind in terms of quality are now ahead of the game because we are recognized on the market as being one of the best in terms of quality delivery in our main core business, which is outsourcing of workstations and the computers that everyone is using around the world. Maybe too much on occasion. So 2 phenomena for today. First of all, in countries, we have these top quality core activities and people are realizing there's a lot of synergy within countries and customers now we are so good, want us on a European level. So there's strong demand. Samira will talk to you about strategy later on. We are very confident because we've noted this phenomenon. Europe is gathering strength. And within Econocom, there are 3 core activities are achieving much greater synergy. We have on the COMEX, the representatives, the best people today in the 3 key areas: Mathilde is a specialist in leasing and financing. Long, under the old the deals with services, he has addressed the situation and achieves the current success. And Philippe who's a permanent fixture because every year, he manages to do even more. Look what happened with services this year, plus 20% across the board. Now he is the transfer person responsible for transfers business, perhaps we'll achieve this 30% everywhere. I'm just joking. So I'm very proud of the team and at its head, maybe too much to a degree. But in any case, we have a great deal of fund, and we shall continue in the same. Last point. I'll show you a bit of a complicated graph. However, when we showed this to the Board a couple of days ago, it was clearly noted, and we wanted to show it to you. This is the history of Econocom since 2009. [indiscernible] said to me that there was a little trick to get the point we're working. So we can see figures for 2009 to 2024, and the last 2 years being forecast. As you can see in this overall curve, there was initially strong growth, EUR 759 million to nearly EUR 3 billion. Then there was a stabilization period, a slight drop, and growth returned our forecast currently are to achieve EUR 2.850 billion this year and EUR 3.135 billion the following year. So how can we achieve this growth? It's a very important point. As you can see, 181, we've now moved to 179. I'm talking, of course, about our shares. There's been no dilution. In fact, our shareholders have done extremely well. We distributed a dividend of EUR 0.03 in the past. This was gradually increase, and now it's EUR 0.16, look at the dividend. This curve is almost parallel. It mirrors the development, you can see in this graph, we've gone from EUR 29 million to EUR 139 million, without any form of dilution. Most of my competitors, I referred to earlier on, were the founders used a lot of dilution and the founders ended up with 1% or 2% of the capital. I have 50%, and I'm quite happy with that. Another way of growing even faster is to do far more acquisitions and increase capital all the time. But that's not what we indulge in. It's not my main motivation. That's not what really motivates the team. We want to be named at the long term, and you can see this in the curve. At the time when things were a bit stationary, there was a slight doubt on the part of the financial markets. You thought, well, we don't really understand. There are lots of lines of business, and we understand, leasing -- but when we talk about outstanding leases, are there leases that really exist or people just anticipating. The default rate is under 1%. And so the contracts we have in our books are really good ones. The best way to prove this, I looked at this 2 years ago, I said, well, as there is some doubt here, we'll reduce the debt book to 0. And you can see this being done in 2017, there were quite a lot of acquisitions. We sold some of the acquisitions, and we sold, therefore, activity more than reducing actually what were redundant figures and the net debt dropped to 0. Then very cautiously, we started to move up again with these own book contracts. And as Angel will explain to you, we're starting to do more acquisitions. Our track record has shown that we're really good with acquisitions. You'll get all the details later on. I believe that the philosophy of the Econocom Group, which I run is this constant growth over time. It's quite different from the high-tech market, where you have stupendous growth and then total halts and sometimes growth totally disappears. And we want to of riveting careers. We want to keep our managers who have real decision-making power. We want to serve our big customer as well. I believe this graph enables you to understand this position. Thank you very much. And I will now give the floor to Patrick Van Den Berg.

Thank you very much. So we're going to switch over to some of the financial results for the financial year 2022. First of all, the group-wide results, then we'll drill down into each of the 3 major key business lines that we have, our legacy business lines. Growth in revenue in 2022 is strong overall, 14.8%, 10% of that is organic and 4% comes from external growth. This outperforms our 5% guidance that we published during the financial year 2022. Our operating profit also increased during this time, an extra EUR 12 million, EUR 127 million up to EUR 130 million and 9% growth year-on-year. We've been able to keep our profitability ratio above 5% during that time. Profitability in 2022 of 5.1% versus 5.4% the previous year. To properly understand these results, it's important to then look at what's behind that. In all of the 3 major business lines that Jean-Louis mentioned. Let's start with products and services, first of all. This is the business line is experiencing the strongest growth. That was the case in 2022, with overall growth of 27% to EUR 1.2 billion in overall revenue with a mix of 15% organic growth and external growth to 12%. This is the business line. This is the activity where you will see the most acquisitions in terms of share over the last 2 years. Angel will be coming back to that in just a minute. This also goes to show that we're able to find the right balance between organic growth and external growth. This growth is, of course, driven by market conditions that are robust and also with the inflationary environment that we had in 2022 and the beginning of the drawdown of our backlog, we had a big buildup of backlog between 2020 and 2022. Now we're starting to see that backlog drop off near the end the end of 2022. Recurring operating profit for that business line, EUR 45 million to EUR 49 million with a profitability ratio still above 4%, but there were some challenges that we experienced during the year. As with many other sectors, we experienced the impacts of the logistics problems, transport. As you all know, in distribution networks, there were some chaotic situations when it comes to getting equipment where it needs to go. We experienced this as well in 2022, and then that had a trickle-down effect on our operations. However, we were able to maintain our profitability ratio as a percentage at 4%, as mentioned. And that's led to the increase in recurring operating profit over the year. For TMF, we also saw excellent growth of 12%, 10% of which comes from organic growth. So most of the growth in this sector this year was in-house. There were some big contracts in 2022 in France, which drove that growth, but also some good contracts signed around the world. Thanks to the support of our sales team. I mentioned that because we started to invest in them heavily 2 years ago to really beef up our sales teams in our TMF departments, and we're really starting to see that bear fruit right now, as you can see in the growth figures of revenue for TMF. Recurring operating profit follows that same trend with profitability beyond 5% and an increase to nearly GBP 50 million recurring operating profit in 2022. The third business line is services. Services is slightly down as part of revenue. Some of the contracts were not renewed. So that's down 1.9%. There were some new contracts that were signed during 2022. So a slight uptick there, but something that you do need to remember is that during the final quarter of 2022, we were back to the positive growth as we expressed in press releases around the third quarter of last year. That Q4 uptick is good news for the coming year. Profitability ratio remains high on this. We're talking at 8%, which, by its rare nature, is higher than the kind of profitability ratio that you'd expect for Product Solutions and TMF. And the rate is supported by a big insistence on cost management and on margin management by the teams. If you look at operating profit, grew wide EUR 139 million, give or take. If you look at those 3 core businesses, we're at about 50-50 for TMF, products and solutions; and then EUR 40 million for services. And that goes to show that across our 3 core businesses, we have significant contribution to our overall revenue. So we mentioned revenue, we've mentioned operating profit. It's also important to talk about net profit. Net profit is also up. However, net profit is up slightly less than what we showed in our operating profit and revenue figures. The reason for that is that in 2022, we had capital gains of about EUR 8 million and divestment, which changes the balance slightly in the comparison between 2021 and 2022 and also a slight increase in some of our operating costs. This is due to some people leaving the company and also M&A acquisitions because we started up that M&A department once again, group-wide, and any cost related to those M&A operations will be included and put against net profit. These are nonrecurring items. So that means that when you get back to our recurring net profit figures, we're at EUR 95.7 million, which is highly satisfactory, as you can see behind me, with EUR 0.53 of profit per share, which is beyond our guidance of EUR 0.50 for 2022. Profit also implies net debt situation. The net debt situation as far as I'm concerned, is fully under control within Econocom. Booked net debt, EUR 67 million in 2021, EUR 143 million in 2022 and here, we have a simplified bridge chart to explain the key components of that shift, mainly and essentially free cash flow. This is basically the fundamental of what's the group's ability to generate cash of EUR 71 million in the last year, 2022, which was higher than what we generated the previous year. We've also grown through external growth. Angel is going to tell us about some of the growth EUR 67 million invested in external growth through acquisitions that were carried out during the year in the financial year 2022 and also some of the other things that happened and that were booked in 2022. EUR 57 million going back to the shareholders at EUR 57 million includes dividends but also share buyback programs because something that you do need to take into account is when we talk about our net accounting debt, you need to include share buybacks. EUR 143 million in net accounting debt at the end of the year is a low leverage leveraging ratio is 0.9x EBITDA, EUR 163 million - so EUR 150 million in EBIT in the previous year, though. And a couple of extra comments on net debt. Within net debt, we are not booking because it's put on our equity. We're not including our share buyback value. If you look at the value of our share buybacks, that would account for about EUR 124 million based on our share price for the last 20 days. That is not integrated into that EUR 143 million in net debt, although you should keep your mind. Another important thing, future cash flow for our self-financed contracts within TMF. These are contracts basically that we self-funded through Econocom and at the end of 2022, that's EUR 284 million worth. That's future cash flow that hasn't been included here, but that should be important in our reports going forward. That is why we have an operating debt definition that we use in-house. We start with our net debt. And then we include the future cash flows from our self-financed contracts, which actually leads to a net positive result for cash flow if you take into account all of these different components. This is at a level that's comparable between 2021 and 2022. And if you look at our self-financed contracts, EUR 284 million in 2022. And we get to about the same EUR 140 million when you do the accounting operations that I just described. The aim behind this, as we're continuing to invest in those self-finance contracts is that we want to be in a situation where our cash access is still in the black and out of the red once we want to do this math. Going back to the shareholders, we mentioned this. EUR 0.16 dividend in 2023 based on our results in 2022. Growth 33% over 2 years. We've gone from 12% in 2021 through 2022 and 2023 up to 16% with a return 5.7% based on our current share price. But to discuss everything, you also need to talk about our nonfinancial performance as a group. First of all, our EcoVadis grading. In 2021, we got a silver rating, and we've put in significant progress on that front. Our score is now 66 out of 100, which goes to show that our performance was good previously and is now solid. Once you push past that 60 out of 100 score threshold we start to be in the advanced category and shows that we are a high-performance group from that perspective and also that we're being responsible in the way we think about the future. We also have our gender equality index. This is relevant for any things related to gender equality, promotions, wages. Also, the top 10 and top 20 rankings within the group and again, we're ahead of the curve with a score of 83 out of 100. I'd like to remind you that when companies are under 75 out of 100 on this score, it is requested of those groups that they get themselves back on track. So we are at 83 out of 100. I think that's a solid performance, and we're also progressing on these indicators as in others. The CO2 emission reduction figure speaks to volumes as well, speaks for itself, 24% reduction since 2019. That shows the kind of investment that we've been putting into this as a group, and I'd like to thank Véronique for her efforts on this front. Angel, so we've talked a lot about growth, but growth is not something that just happened, external growth, especially, and we need our teams to achieve that. So tell us all about it.

Thank you, Patrick. So Patrick told us about the figures, the strong growth within the group in 2022. So I'm here to tell you about the means for that growth. Acquisitions, first of all. So external growth and also the drivers of our organic growth on our core legacy businesses. 3 major acquisitions in 2022, adding about EUR 100 million or so to our revenue in 2022. So that was booked for 2022. As you know, the group undertook a lot of acquisitions up until 2018 until the first half of 2018. And since 2018, the first acquisition was in the summer 2021, we purchased a British company called Trams with a revenue of about EUR 80 million with good profitability and good outlook. In 2022, we carried out 3 acquisitions, the first of which is called SEMIC. SEMIC is at EUR 95 million revenue for a full year. This is a distribution company with services. They're based in Spain. 350 people work for them. They have a deployment across the Iberian Peninsula, and they have integrated well since they were included in our books in June 2022, and we have seen good improvements in profitability. We also have a second acquisition called Lydis. Lydis is a specialist distribution company for audiovisual products. We're going to be coming back to this in a minute. EUR 30 million or so in revenue for a full year, an excellent way to round out our audiovisual capabilities in the Netherlands and group-wide. And thirdly, a strategic acquisition for us, SOFI Groupe. They are specialists in equipment renovation, about EUR 30 million in revenue. And we're going to be coming back to that refurbishment business in a second as well because refurbishment and audiovisual are going to be important parts of our growth for the group in the coming years. Okay. So how do we go about these acquisitions? Well, first of all, we look to identify targets that are in our 3 main core businesses: services, distribution with added value services, or also leasing. Secondly, we pursue high potential business lines, and we'll be talking about refurbishment and audio visual. Thirdly, as you know, the group has significant experience in acquisitions, foundational acquisitions such as ECS in 2010 or Osiatis in 2013. From 2014 to 2018, now have 35 acquisitions, and a large proportion of those were very successful. Since then, we've sold a dozen or so for various reasons but right now, those 23 companies that remained within the group contribute EUR 830 million in revenue to the group that was in 2022 and EUR 50-or-so million in operating profit to the group. So we know how to do this. We've got the experience. We've got the know-how. We've got the skill set. And first and foremost, we've learned how to integrate new companies. Regarding hiring, 2,342 new hires carried out in 2022. The huge minority of these hires were in services, of course. We've got 5,000 people in services more than 5,000 people, in fact, in services group-wide. 1,000 of these hires were in services in France with a churn rate of about 18%, which is significantly under the market average in France, which is something about 23%, 24%, I think. So a big push to strengthen other business lines and other countries as well, which means that our organic growth because this is an investment. Our organic growth also was improved, thanks to these new hires. We especially leaned into the hiring of salespeople for our 3 major businesses, and we mentioned this during the previous meeting, especially with TMF. As you know, TMF is mainly organically driven growth business, and we have seen a little bit of a slowdown there. So back in 2021, we set up a business development plan to strengthen and to increase the TMF sales force group-wide. And that means that for organic growth, as you've been able to see, we achieved an organic growth figure of more than 10% over 2022. There you go. I'm going to give the floor now to Samira Draoua, who's going to tell us about outlook for the group. Samira.

Thank you, Angel. Well, together with Patrick, we've been talking about results so far in 2022. And it's a great pleasure now to talk about prospects, outlook for the future of the group. I'll share our overall thoughts with you and tell you how far we've gone in that respect. First point, of course, we intend to strengthen our core businesses. We're talking about financing for TMF products and solutions, sale and distribution of equipment in the area of IT, and then the services component. When we talk about services, we're talking about infra and in place. Econocom has always been well known, not for these developments necessarily, but for the structuring of this development. Development has always been based on supporting our customers. We've always listened to the needs of our customers, and we have always set up in any event, we have structured the company in order to meet the customers' expectations. Our main customers currently want quality. I think you've heard about what we've done to achieve the expected level of quality for the sake of our major customers. They want us to be close to them, too, and they want an all-in-one solution. That's what the market currently wants. Now when we talk about continuing our organic growth and crosscutting developments, this is something we have done in order to better to meet the expectations of our main customers. So things are crosscutting. I'd like to underscore this word even if people talk about it all the time, people say, "Oh, transverse cross-cutting. We've been talking about this for the past 20 years." But in Econocom, we'll go about this differently. It's not a team that's in charge of this area. It's the P&L and the managers who are in charge of this cost-cutting approach. It's a different focus. In other words, we provide huge support. Given the recruitment, we have made in the P&L managers who specialize in each line of business, we're trying to specialize in terms of multi-annual contracts, but cross-country and across activity. We think in Econocom about all sorts of different countries and above all synergy between our various lines of activity. Econocom is also well known thanks to its external growth. Mr. Bouchard talked about that to you. There have been a whole host of acquisitions in the past. And 2023.No, we're not going to change our stance. Our aim is to continue to achieve external growth. An important point, all our activities continue to follow a similar line. We've been talking about the circular economy. We've been talking about being environmentally friendly, and we intend to abide by our commitments in terms of what we offer, in terms of our choices, and our employment possibilities. We talked about our 3 main core businesses. We've explained the results achieved. We shall be structuring, and we began this in 2022. The official launch will be 2023. We will be setting up 2 new forms of activity. First of all, the audio visual field. You're familiar with this, no doubt, just to shed some light on what we mean by the audio visual field and Econocom this photo is Schiphol airport. I may not have pronounced Schiphol very well, but I know perhaps many people don't know about Schiphol is Amsterdam Airport. It's one of the biggest hubs in Europe. Not the biggest one. Well, in any event, this photo illustrates what. It illustrates things we know extremely well. You're looking for your flight, where it's leaving from the gate. In Schiphol, the screens are operated by Econocom and our subsidiary acquired in 2017 called Belux. Over and above this, Econocom has a lot of know-how, global know-how because, of course, we have looked very closely at what's on offer, and we realized that audiovisual offers exist in all countries under the name PNS. That's part of the general sales drive and it involves the sale of equipment as well. Our decision was to structure these activities within -- under a single audiovisual name. And why are we doing this? Here, again, customers want something simple. It's a market which involves being close to people. You set up a screen in an airport or in a meeting room. You don't just send this by mail; so to speak, you install it. So it's a local market, you're close to your customer, and we have big clients in this area as well. They have multi-country contracts, but they want when you have to equip, for example, a big car dealer, they want us to be just around the corner. So we work on the go-to market. Currently, the idea is to speed up when it comes to the audiovisual market and our offering. What's important is that this is a highly fragmented market. We're talking about very small structures. We have grouped together our activity, EUR 350 million in revenue in the audio visual field. And with the EUR 350 million, we rank amongst the top 5 in Europe. So, we truly want to speed up this process. There's a second line of business, which isn't new, of course, the refurbishment. We've been doing leasing for 50 years. And when you lease things out, obviously, you have the right to retain ownership of the equipment even if it's leased out to a customer. In other words, for the past 50 years, we have been taking into account the refurbishment of this equipment once it's returned to us. We then sell it on fully refurbished. And we outsourced this activity. We work within a virtuous ecosystem. Up until now, we have been fully satisfied with it. Once again, I'd like to talk about customers again, what the customers want. They want quality of refurbished equipment, but they want people to be available at the same time. In terms of availability, you have to think about volumes as well. In order to meet these expectations on the part of our customers, we asked a very hard question. We found an answer. We can't depend on external ecosystems that will in-source the value chain. So we decided to invest. And we found the best in class, which is SOFI Group, which we call the Econocom factory, but the name may change because we're thinking about that possibility together with Jean-Louis Bouchard. So Econocom factor is the name currently. I would be tempted to say currently, that we have really scored a goal. We have ensured that this acquisition -- having now acquired it in-house, this has contributed a lot of industrial know-how when it comes to refurbishing of the equipment. This is a virtuous circle. And over and above being virtuous in terms of the circular economy, this setup also meets customer expectations. Our decision is, therefore, to replicate the model. And here, it's not just a question of green washing. Econocom could have bought equipment in China, refurbished it in Montpellier and sold it elsewhere. But no, we decided to replicate the model on a purely local basis. In each country where we have TMF, there we're going to be fully local. We want to ensure this virtuous circle -- so refurbishing entails its own go-to-market setup. All these activities, which we carry out and the launching, of course, these 2 latest lines of activity, which have existed within the group. The idea was to structure them in such a way as to launch them properly, make them truly dynamic. This will be part and parcel of the group's strategic plan. Econocom has grown, thanks to its strategic plans that have been implemented 2023. We'll be drafting a new strategic plan. I'm talking about just drafting it. The plan will be launched in 2024. But I could share with you at this juncture, the 4 pillars of this plan. The first pillar is ambition, which I'll talk about later on. The second pillar, which I touched on already is this idea of being cross cutting. -- operating across countries and across businesses. The third pillar is coverage. Why do we talk about coverage? There are some countries where we don't have the 3 or 5 core businesses, acquisitions and forthcoming acquisitions will help us to cover these gaps or these holes in our racket, if I can put things in this manner. And finally, a sizable pillar, our DNA as entrepreneurs, which will be very much present in our strategic plan. Now what I'd like to say at this juncture with you is that we are truly ambitious. This plan will cover a 5-year period. The idea is to achieve a revenue of EUR 5 billion based on our 5 core activities. It's an ambitious plan. The first step at 3 years because 5 years is quite a long time, but it's not all that long. And in the second sense of the word, the first step will be 3 years. The aim is to achieve EUR 4 billion in revenue. Now how do we intend to achieve EUR 5 billion or even EUR 4 billion, we will do as we always have, we will focus on internal growth and also external growth. As we have said, and I would like to underscore this, we have any number of ways to achieve organic growth and also external growth. We have our track record. First of all, we are a group that is able to invest, acquire, integrate, and as I have said, these are the figures you saw for 2022. But there were EUR 900 million due to acquisitions made. So our track record is quite outstanding. Second point, in terms of means we have the availability of the various lines. We have more than EUR 400 million available to invest in acquisitions and then we also have our own treasury shares. I would be tempted to say, therefore, that it's a beautiful challenge. It's a wonderful ambition that we have defined. We have the means to achieve our goals. We have the human resources and the financial resources necessary plus the market, which will help us to attain our aims. When it comes to guidance, 2023, we have the strategic plan, which will be presented in detail in Q3. Revenue growth should be 5%, and we are aiming at an improvement in net consolidated profit. That brings me to the end of my statement. Thank you very much.

Well, it's hard to take the floor after Samira. Benjamin will help us out with the questions. I hope that everyone can hear the English translation, Good. So we're not going to have to speak English. Otherwise, I thought we could hold a Q&A in English, but it won't be necessary. So thank you for having restored the technical means for the translation to come across. [Operator Instructions]

We have Véronique also, the operational debt, we have our specialists sitting in the room here. Who would like to get the ball rolling? On the fourth row here. Please go ahead.

Thank you for this presentation. The EUR 4 billion in revenue at 3 years, you mean 3 years as of 2022.

No, first -- as of 1st January 2024, 24 25, 26 in other words.

2 points of detail. You talked about your profits in the audiovisual field. What about reconditioning? How much does that account for in your profits?

Well, the percentage is lower for the time being but the team is currently replicating the know-how acquired in Montpellier in Spain. We're moving ahead fast in Holland, in the Netherlands, too, no doubt in Germany. So for the time being, it won't be the driving force behind our profits, but it will help us to meet demand and to submit tenders where you -- people call for about 20% reconditioned refurbished equipment. Otherwise, we'll have to make purchases abroad, mainly China, for example, because the move is for telephony in any event. We're talking about 2,800,000 secondhand phones were sold last year. The numbers are growing, most come from China. In fact, they were refurbished in China and bought in the U.S. So we're talking about our market that goes from the U.S. to China and then back to France, and we intend to corner share of this market. The EUR 4 billion, that's not a fundamental issue. It's really what counts is the quality of our offer and the demand, which is there on the part of our customers.

The audiovisual market, EUR 350 million was what you mentioned during the top 5 in Europe. What is the target market currently?

We have a specialist in audiovisual matters here. Who knows Schiphol by heart, and I think I'll give him the floor, and he can give you a much better answer than I could. He's just spent 15 years in the audiovisual field. So, he's very familiar with the market. Patrick, over to you.

We're present in Benelux, France, and Spain, mainly on this market. There's a lot of potential for growth, external growth. Of course, we're aiming at Germany, the U.K. We want to ramp up our presence in Europe. And there are many calls for tenders. -- relations with our customers are developing, thanks to this European approach. Big groups have local requirements, and they want a similar offer across the board, whatever the country. So we have this tremendous potential here. The market is an excellent CAGR as we have said, and I think the leaders on the market can go far beyond this kind of growth because they will be in a position to continue small local players as this is more, which is very fragmented. There are a lot of small players in each country. While these major players will be able to make the best offers and the ramp-up growth across Europe. There are 2 other groups with a similar concept, and there's tremendous potential when it comes to accelerating this international activity.

How much is the market worth currently? EUR 350 million, EUR 1 billion, EUR 10 billion?

Well, the global market, EUR 265 billion, currently, EUR 350 million in 4 years' time probably. What about the 6% CAGR, which we mentioned on the slide. Well, this is a global approach, but we've been monitoring equivalent trends in the U.S. and in Europe. Growth rates are comparable.

And what are the other names ahead of you? Who are your main competitors?

Kinley, for example, is a major player. They're very present already in Europe. If we add our revenue in this activity within Econocom, our revenue is similar to this competitor. So we have tremendous potential. It's a wonderful discovery we made in-house last year. A few months ago, there aren't that many opportunities. We already have well-established relations in countries where these other competitors aren't fully established. There are many local structures across the board in the area of refurbishment. We're very present locally in the Netherlands and elsewhere. So we're in contact with any number of companies. Some we may seek to acquire, but also we'll be looking for strategic partnerships in order to develop our offer for the years to come.

I have 2 questions. One is financial. Provisions, the amounts that aside are quite considerable. Now what are they intended for? And my second question Well, for the past 10 or 15 years, I've been monitoring the group. I have grown to understand it quite well, not perfectly. I'd like to understand the business about the interest rates at one point in time, interest rates were very low. That's normal in leasing. Is this positive when it comes to your line of business? And what about profitability? Is there a sort of an on boarded profitability aspect, which plays a big part.

Well, our intention is to group together all these activities within a single company. And perhaps the Dutch company mainly buys into other activities, ideas to group everything together to have a single unit with its own operating accounts and then perhaps onboard other partners within this single unit. We want to make it a really stand-alone entity. Possibilities for growth. We're talking about EUR 350 million. At 5 years, we're talking about at least EUR 800 million or more. The intention is to double activity within the next few years. Well, things will depend on acquisitions, but there is tremendous potential of 6% per year. That's the market rate, and manufacturers themselves are asking for players like us. We talk about a big car dealer, you want to request hundreds of dealers in Europe, people prefer to have a single supplier rather than having suppliers, different suppliers in each country and having to renegotiate each time. In the audiovisual field, as Samira said earlier on, you have the screen, you have the delivery, the assembly, but also behind that, there's a lot of software cables, networks, and there's a lot of security. So in this overall line of activity, have a security component, which represents almost half of our profits. We don't really want in Schiphol someone to be able to mess around with what it pays on the screen. Are there any other questions, I'll give the floor back to Patrick, perhaps, -- there were some exceptional items we referred to.

Yes, in terms of the audiovisual market, at the beginning of the month, we had an interesting example. We were talking to -- we met a lot of the manufacturers in this area to a big trade fair in Barcelona, and we presented our plans and our ambition in this field. The feedback was excellent on the part of suppliers. They want us to be more present. There are lots of different distributors in a whole host of different countries. The idea is to have a single entity, a single team that can cover the whole of Europe. For them as well, it's very important. This will help them to accelerate in turn and be much more efficient in terms of implementation. So, there may be key financial advantages that stand behind this model as well, both for them and for us. So, the feedback was extremely positive. And that explains our ambition in this area. Exceptional items, and then there was a further question, we'll go back to provisions. Yes, the figure is quite high. I don't have the exact numbers in mind, EUR 130 million. That's provisions for retirement and the other half is linked to risks and overheads. On the slide, you saw that. It's mainly linked to other operating overheads that were booked in 2022. We added to our provisions, in particular, there are outstanding months from customers. And there, we set aside a bigger provisions for 2022. That explains this increase that you see under this heading between 2021 and 2022.

In general, in terms of exceptional items, there are 2 parts, the one you've just covered and then the reductions due to COVID. There were some premises which ceased to be occupied during the pandemic -- and that was one of the exceptional items that entered into play.

We're talking about EUR 2 million or EUR 3 million linked to that. It's not the bulk of the operating expenses. But from a business set, this is quite important. A lot of companies are becoming reorganized in the post-COVID period. They are thinking along different lines as to how to organize their team. There is working from home, working from the office. I think that the pandemic accelerated this idea of working from home. Now we're in the post-COVID period. The idea is to optimize certain costs, particularly within big groups, groups where there are a lot of different sites in the country like Econocom here in France. At the same time, this is an opportunity to refocus central premises. You have the cost of buildings, which are no longer being used. So people are tending to refocus and that's an important move for companies and for our team.

And there's another important point. You have the disputes. The amount for potential legal disputes depends on the country. It was about EUR 60 million last year. We've lowered the amount we've gone from 62% to about 40 currently.

There were more provisions for customer bad debt. Yes, the customers. And as we've mentioned, there are all these other additional items…

Is it because there are more and more claims?

Well... When we have a new administrative and Financial Director on the whole, when he's like, you respect them and comply with the figures in your account. So all this has been approved by management and the main manager, of course. We're aiming at the long term. We don't want to keep certain legal disputes on the books for too long.

Does this have an impact on profitability, for example?

Well, I'd like to call on Mathilde, who is very familiar with these matters. She is familiar with the rates, which have gone up and down. She knows how things work in this area.

When it comes to leasing, an increase in interest rates is a real opportunity. It's an opportunity to build up margin. I started in leasing about 30 years ago, the interest rate was 10%, and our margin was much higher than what we currently have. It's much easier to do a markup or to have a spread of 5 is the rate is 5% as opposed to a rate at nearly 0. So, it's a huge opportunity. We have to manage this cultural transition for our sales staff, of course, but it's a true opportunity for us. It enables us to boost our margin.

That is almost a godsend.

No, I wouldn't say that it was just built in godsend. It's really a transition that we have moved into. It's a cultural shift. We're reverting to a more normal situation because the market in the past has been very atypical.

So the interest rate isn't just a godsend you have the value of equipment at the end of a contract during a period of inflation, the value is higher than when rates are stable. Manufacturers, Apple increased its prices by 12%, all of a sudden in about 12 -- 2 months ago and across the world. So, that's good for Apple's revenue. It's good for the residual value of our telephones at the end of a contract. There's another phenomenon, which is very positive as well. When money is practically free and widely available, people take out loans less often. Now the situation is changing because rates are going up. Bankers, of course, are reducing the availability of loans to a degree and people who had a lot of cash available are attending to call on borrowing and financing much more so than when money was free. Thank you very much for all these questions. And I hope there may be more or else we've been giving you such complete answers. You may feel satisfied. If there are no more questions in the room. Sorry, Please go ahead. We'll give you a microphone.