Econocom Group SE (ECONB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I am Eric Bazile. I am in charge of Finance and Administration at Econocom. I have also taken over the responsibility for Investor Relations from my colleague, Benjamin Pehau, that you used to see in this moderator role in the previous meetings. I'm very happy to welcome you for this session on this 25th of July. We are going to share with you our figures at the end of H1 and also our good achievements of the first half year 2024, in line with our strategic plan. Before that, as you can see on the agenda on the screen, we will comment -- we will comment, sorry, the government changes that we announced yesterday evening in the press release you saw. And as usual, we will finish this meeting with a Q&A session. To do so, we will have 2 speakers, Jean-Louis Bouchard, our Chairman and Founder; and we will have also Angel Benguigui, our CEO. So thanks again for your presence here, for your participation. And now I leave the floor to Jean-Louis Bouchard for this first part of our meeting. Thanks a lot.

Eric, if you can read very well, I'm operating chairman. What does it mean? I'm not going to retire. So operating means I'm going to be in charge of communication. That's one of the reasons I'm here today. And also of the M&A, which is part of the strategic group, as you know, they are planned, when they're going to come. So acquisition M&A is very important. Angel will give you some details later on. But first, I like it very much. And also, I like communicating and I like traveling. So I'll be around for a while and I'm not going to retire. But if I'm not going to retire, I have a very important announcement to confirm today because you're aware of, which is the nomination of Angel Benguigui as the CEO of the group. Okay. I've read something in the newspaper today say once again a change at the head of the group. Well, also, we work now with a big agency called Havas, and I met with Fox, Mr. Fox, which is the Head of Havas. And we were having coffee together and he said, well, he can't come. You're [indiscernible]. I said, yes, [indiscernible]. Today, it's 50 years that you have created -- yes, you created yourself. Yes. in fact, you are a 50-year-old start-up because you're changing all the time. Well, changing, but we come from 0 to EUR 2.6 million or EUR 2.8 million and 8,500 people. And changing, as you will see and going to face a very strong market ahead of us and having a lot of fun. Why? So I need to explain to you what's happening. We have learned every time in 50 years from our mistakes. So when we don't do mistakes, we grow, and certainly, things happen. It's not as anticipated. The market change, we do some wrong decisions. Then you have a crisis like 2008 -- or first 2003, then 2008, 2012, then we had the COVID, et cetera, et cetera. But still, the company keeps growing, except in the last 5 or 6 years, where it was stable and in spite of all the problems we face, not only the COVID but internal problem, a growing problem, a market problem, Europe being more and more strong in existing. So we -- we have been the last 5 or 6 years working hard, but maintaining our revenue and our profit and fixing a lot of different areas of the group in all areas to make sure that we will be ready to grow again for the next 5 years, and this was announced to you last November here on Brussels. So Angel will discuss with you and show you the numbers and tell you where we are and why we're happy that we are here and why we are very confident that we will achieve our plan. But I need to explain to you what the mistakes we did, I did 5, 6 years ago. And what led me to make the decision today or to propose to the Board yesterday this decision which was accepted in unanimously. And explain you why I'm much more optimistic this time than the -- I still was optimistic 6 years ago, but I did not know the mistakes I was doing and the choice, which were not the good choice if you take into account the state of the group 6 years ago. 6 years ago, I propose to nominate my son here at the first floor, Robert, as CEO of the group. Robert was 47 years at that time. He was already a successful entrepreneur. And -- but he had joined the group very recently, a few months only. So he did not know the way Econocom was operating and he did not have the background of the group, and he did not have the credibility enough to face strong winds. So he joined the group, and he had a group of management. And this management was very new in the group, and as he was. And so what's going to happen did happen. It did not work. It did not work not because of the group, not because of Robert because since then, Robert is still more than ever in the tech industry. He had -- at that time, he had a company that was about 15-year old. He had been managing this company and the company's size was probably EUR 10 million. Today, it's EUR 60 million. In 6 years, he grew that company. He owns the company himself. He has more -- yes, the majority of the capital, that reminds you of something. And the company grow from 20 skilled engineers to more than 200 today, close to 260. So -- how many?

[indiscernible]

At the end of this year, this company, APL, which is working in Europe and in Africa, is going to be -- so the company is running is about 10x what it was 6 years ago. So this what we faced in 2008 was not due to Robert and his ability to manage and to be a real entrepreneur, it was due to the state of the company. We had grown a lot in the previous 9 years from EUR 700 million revenue to close to EUR 3 billion revenue. We had made 36 acquisitions. Now out of the 36 acquisitions, about 3 of them have failed, and we closed them. The other 35, 15 of them were integrated in the group. The other 15 were sold, which make our debt go down significantly, and Angel will give you much more detail on the state of our debt. So half was sold, half were integrated in the group. So this is done, and this had to be done in 2018. So the situation in 2018 was so that it could not work. So I came back and asked Angel to come with me and Philippe Goullioud, [indiscernible] to help Robert try to straighten the situation, but it was too complicated. So he decided to work on his own company with a lot of success to stay as Vice President of the group. And we started with Philippe, Angel, and [indiscernible] to strengthen everything. So when you see the numbers, the revenue is kind of slowly flat or slightly decreasing. The debt has been going down significantly, as you will see later on. And the operating result is kind of stable. But in the meanwhile, while you don't see and you will see in the next coming months or year, the result of all what has been done to make it work. So why Angel? Angel comes from the banking industry. He joined the group 15 year -- 19 years ago in Spain. And when he joined the group in Spain, we had 10 people of the total number of people 19 years ago. He was, for 19 years, the Manager and Head Manager of Spain. Today, Spain is how many people?

1,700.

Okay, 1,700 people from time, not so bad. Very profitable.

And the most attributable [indiscernible].

Okay. So the choice was easy. So -- and I was very lucky that Angel 10 years ago went at the top of the group met me and say, "I'm ready to help the group." But he was not chosen at the time, which was one of the mistakes in my life. But now he is chosen. And his only challenge is to do at the group level, what he has done in Spain. So we'll meet in 19 years and see all this time. So the choice -- the choice seems to be very easy today. It seems for me because now I see very well. But I would like to thank Robert for what he has done. And he's -- in the last 6 years, he has kept being very strong support of the group. He is the Vice President of the Board, and he's really helping us. And I would like to welcome Angel that will give you the status of the group today, what's going on. And since I'm in charge, activity of communication and M&A, I will answer some of the questions later on about what I see as my job and I'm doing, and he will answer some questions on his part. So Angel, please come and take this on.

Thank you, Jean-Louis. Thank you, everybody, for being here in this presentation, the ones that are here physically with us. And of course, the ones that are assisting through video. First of all, of course, I want to thank Jean-Louis Bouchard and the Board of the Econocom Group for my nomination as the Chief Executive Officer. What I can tell you is that I will do the best efforts in order that the One Econocom strategic plan will be a great success. So this is my main concern from now on. And then we will be speaking about the H1 results and the achievements and the outlook. First of all, I'm glad to tell that the results in H1 are in line with our expectations for this 2024 because we are starting the strategic plan, and we already explained in November when we disclosed the plan. And in February, when we presented the results of 2023 and the outlook for 2024, which were our main objectives for this year. So in that sense -- globally, you have all the figures in the press release. Globally, we have grew 3% in the first half of the year. Global growth equal to organic growth because there were no significant differences in the perimeter of the continued activities, 3% globally pushed by the 3 activities for the first time in many quarters. And compared to 2.6% growth in Q1, so an acceleration in Q2, that it's quite good to see. And that operating margin that you see there is not for us a surprise. It is a consequence of the decisions we made because we decided to invest. And we already said that we were investing in 2024 in order to be able to get the 70% organic growth that we want to reach for the whole strategic plan of the group. So remember, we want to go from EUR 2.8 billion turnover to EUR 4 billion turnover, 70% organic growth and 30% acquisitions. And then in order to be able to get this 70% organic growth, we have also to invest. And we are investing in sales, in agents, in all the activities, in IT, in security, among others. So in the first half of the year, we invested around EUR 6 million. So this is in order to compare with the previous year results. And also to compare with the previous results, in '24, we had EUR 1 million more expenses and factoring costs that are included in the upper '18 margin, as you know. So the increase in volume is coming with also an increasing in operating margin, okay? And then if we go through the different activities in Products & Solutions, slight upside but we are back to growth after some quarters where we had the problems because the environment, because of the market. You know that the distribution market in the B2B in Europe, around the workplace mainly is not good. It was expected that it would be improving during the year, but the bigger players of the market are already saying that they will be not reaching the objectives they had for this year. Competitors like Bechtle or Computacenter or some other ones. So we are happy to be back to growth in this environment because it means that we are getting some market shares in some countries. And compared to the first quarter, where we were minus 2.5%. So we consider it's a good result in that sense. And with an operating margin that's all for -- from the one we had last year for the reasons I already told you. In the TMF, activity is a completely different situation. We keep on growing strongly. The growth in '23, I remember, was 10% compared to the previous year. And 6% this first half of the year compared to the first half of 2023. We consider it as a good continued growth with main investments done because in TMF, you know that we will be targeting very ambitious numbers in the strategic plan, but 100% organic. So we are not planning to buy -- to acquire TMF companies because we think that we have the business model that is the best one in Europe. So we don't have to look for TMF companies. So we have to invest in order to grow. If we grow, it's because we are hiring a lot of sales, because we are hiring a lot of agents, because we are investing in tools. And in tools, I have to say that Kantar, that is -- that will be in the new [ promexa ] of the group was in charge of the global tech at group level and is finalizing -- the teams of Kantar are finalizing a very important upside on the TMF tools. Then at the end of this year, we will have the same tools all over the group for the TMF activity, which was not the case since 2010 when Econocom bought ECS. So we had separate tools obsolete and so on. Now the tools are organized and upgraded and modern tools, and it will be a pleasure because we will be able to do international deals and to get much more information about KPIs, about sales performance. So this is a very good news. For the service activity, we have a moderate growth, but we keep on growing. So it's activity that is keep on growing in the last quarters. And we have a 4% profitability rate that is not bad. Of course, you know that 1 of the main objectives of the strategic plan is to improve our profitability rate. I remember that if in terms of revenue, we were speaking about going from EUR 2.8 billion to EUR 4 billion. In terms of profitability, we are speaking about doubling the net result from 2024 to 2028. And this is something that we can only achieve by and improving in the profitability rate of all the activities. So it's not a bad profitability rate, but it has to be improved. So here, you are with the P&L of the group. So 3% continued growth, all the activities contributing operating margin driven by the investments that we decided to do. The operating margin would be higher than the 1 last year without these investments. And operating profit that demonstrates that all the other expenses are under control. So expenses under control, investments decided. And on the net profit, not very far from the 1 we had last year. We are benefiting for EUR 7.5 million capital gain of the selling of the subsidiary Les Abeilles. If compared with last year, we had also discontinued activities a capital gain of 4.5% of another subsidiary. So the EUR 3 million upside explains what we are very near from the net profit from last year. We also show the simplified income statement with the EBITDA and EBIT that are aggregates that are very used by the financial community in order to make evaluations of companies. So if you speak about EBITDA, we are better than last year. And the EBIT is not so far. So this is just for you to know and for information to be shared. And if you want to have exactly the aggregates definitions and overall, we are all in the same page. I think that you have the footnotes and the -- on the booklets you have. So we spoke about the P&L. Now we will be speaking about the balance sheet. In the balance sheet, we are very happy because the impressive decrease in -- net financial debt is more than EUR 140 million, thanks mainly to the selling of Les Abeilles and also because of a very big improvement in the free cash flow generation. So you see EUR 88 million improvement compared to EUR 11 million last year. So impressive decreasing in net financial debt, we love it. We don't like that, just for very good investments. The breakdown of this net financial debt at the end of the year, we had EUR 260 million of cash. We had EUR 200 million about our [ Sulchine ], EUR 118 million medium term with recourse contracts of TMF deals on booked and the EUR 46 million credit lines in the short term and EUR 76 million on the other corporate financing, meaning medium-term lines. Also, you always ask for the factoring and refactoring. We are at EUR 210 million at the end of June. So just EUR 18 million more than last year, the same date. These are the 10 last years, in net financial debt at the end of June. And we see that in June 24, we are at the lowest level for the last 10 years. So the trend is good. Now we will be speaking about the nonfinancial indicators. We improved 2 points on the Ecovadis rating. The SBTi organization validated in June '24 our targets for carbon footprint reduction. And we improved in 8 points, our gender equality index in France. France is more than half of the employees of the group. And we also improved in 4 points on the rate of disability. You know that we have important commitments in the strategic plan about the ESG indicators. Achievements and outlook '24. So first of all, a reminder of the 2024 targets. This is a slide that we showed in February this year. So the first block is on an M&A. We said we would divest on nonstrategic subsidiaries and activities and that we would keep on having a pipe of targeted companies all over Europe to be acquired. And then the plan will be funded by our sellings. In the second block, we have related to the organic growth objectives, a clear ambitions for accelerating recruitments in the key regions, recruitment of sales, recruitment of agents, recruitment of managers because we are not able to have a plan with a 70% organic growth if we don't recruit a lot good people and at the beginning of the plan. Also to deploy new and integrated offerings, what we are doing. And finally, we said the guideline for this year would be growth in terms of revenue between 3% and 5%. On the first block, we finalized in June the closing of the selling of Les Abeilles. And you see with an impact in the reducing of the debt of EUR 108 million. I want to underline that this is a company where the selling is bringing us EUR 108 million, but we are just losing around EUR 20 million revenue and EUR 1 million EBIT. So we think that we can invest this EUR 108 million, buying companies that would fit with our strategy and that would be much more profitable. But it's not because it's not a good company. It's a very nice company, but it's not a services company. And this is like property. The boats are valued and the boats are -- had a very good value. So the one who is buying is the one who is in the industry, specialized in that. And it's a Spanish group that is already working in France and had already a subsidiary in France, and it's a good business for everybody. But for us, it's a very good one because it's not in our strategy. So we get a lot of money, and we lose just a few millions in terms of revenue and EBIT. This is more than half -- of the EUR 180 million we said was our estimation on the divestments that we were doing for fund our strategic plan in terms of acquisitions. So the result of the deal is very good for the company. Second, on the first -- on the second block, and organic growth. We invest in this first half of the year in European campaign for hiring agents, sales, including a communication campaign, including hiring many headhunters all over the group in different countries, including LinkedIn actions and so on. At the end, if you see the pipe of applications, we started from scratch in January, and we are in June at EUR 420 million with a net result of 28 new sales and 16 new agents hired and onboarded in H1 '24. So this is also an investment, but we really think that it's a good investment and the necessary investment for the strategic plan. And then third action, we are implementing a long-term incentive program for the main key executive managers of the group. This long-term incentive project that we are putting in place will be driven by the strategic plan. So the performance criteria will be related exactly with the objectives of our financial trajectory and the strategic plan from ' 24 to ' 28. And it will -- we think encourage the share value of the group because the incentive is based on the value of the share at the end. So we will finalize with the confirmation of the guidance. In terms of revenue, we will be between 3% and 5%. And the trend is good because we were at 2.6% first quarter, 3% first half of the year. We think that the market conditions will allow us to be between 3% and 5%. And we confirm a new guidance on net financial debt because we want to be very serious and very strict in terms of debt. We don't want to increase the debt. We want to reduce the debt, and we will only have debt for investments in new acquisitions, meaning that our new guidance and net financial debt is that we will be close to 0 within the next 12 months outside of new acquisitions. Okay? And that's all on my side. Now we are very happy to be at your disposal for the Q&A session. And we have a lot of time for that. So I think that the questions is the most important because you have the numbers. So the questions is the most important.

So thanks, Angel. We have mics in the room. So if you have...

Thank you. So David Vagman from ING. I have lots of questions. I'll try to control myself. Maybe on the -- first, to start with the last guidance on the net debt. So you said, okay, in the next 12 months, now the net debt going to [ 20 ], excluding investment. Can you reconfirm, let's say, what you could spend on investment on acquisitions in the -- I know the timing, of course, can shift, et cetera, but maybe ballpark figure in general, maybe not with a super precise timing of the M&A?

We said EUR 200 million in the strategic plan. And what we want to say through this new guide is that we prefer to keep on divesting before acquiring or at least acquiring a significant target. So we still have a 2 medium-sized company that we want to sell, and we are working in that. So we would prefer first to sell. And after that, to acquire. But of course, if we find a very good acquisition possibility, we will do it. This is the reason why we say we have a target of reducing the debt, but we will not be avoiding, and if we find a very good opportunity for acquiring, we will not avoid in it.

Yes. I can add some comment even so you don't have -- didn't ask these questions. But as -- as you see that Patrick Van Den Berg, which was co-manager of the group for 2 years, is not here anymore because he resigned. First, I'd like to thank him for what he has done in the group, a very good contribution, especially in the Netherlands because I thought it was smart on my part when -- since he was such that he would go to the Netherlands to help Chantal De Vrieze on the first row here that was struggling with Belgium and the Netherlands. We had a very difficult contract going on in the Netherlands. She had fixed it with arrangement, but Patrick took over. And he discovered the group with all its specialty. And in 2 years, he made it so that now all the numbers in the Netherlands, in all activities are positive and back on track and growing significantly. So thank you, Patrick. But Patrick joined the group 2 years ago. You might remember that at that time, we had thought that we had -- we would ask for an external investor to buy shares of the group, minority or majority, but we would be managed by an external fund. And he came from the audio industry, and he had worked with PAI. Difficult this morning. Anyway, still awake. And he has a very good souvenir of this way of operating, and this one of the possible plan that existed 2 years ago. So he went to the Netherlands to run the group, but it happened that the share price went down. Our debt went down. So we were able to buy shares, buy shares, thinking that if someday some investors would come someday, we would sell those shares and put some money in the group. But it did not happen. And after 2 years, this did not correspond to Patrick's expectations. So he told Angel and I that he would prefer to leave the group and to start again with a company that was property of an external investor instead of being some kind of family company. That's why he left. So this is what happened. So what Angel did not say that concerning the mistakes that were done 6 years ago, the team that was gathered by Robert was not seasoned people from Econocom. Some of them were very young in Econocom. Today, Angel will give you a few words of how it's going to operate. Angel? Can you...

Yes. We are building a new committed direction that we will be announcing in September -- the end of September. But I can already tell you that [indiscernible] Bouchard will be in the new committed direction as a General Manager, Global Group Tech, meaning all the tech of the group and the strategy of the Tech of the group. I can also tell you that Israel Garcia, that is Managing Director on the business development at group level, will be in the COMEX. Philippe Goullioud is already in the COMEX. So you know, Philippe, that is in charge of the services and the distribution in France. And we will have some very top newcomers coming in September and October. So this is the reason why we will be disclosing the new organization at the end of September, I think that it will be able to do it. I can tell you also, and it's very important that we have an instance of governance at a group level that we call the Group Management Committee. Group management committee were about 15 people in the group, the main [ P&L ] managers of the group. So the ones you are calling at the end of the month saying how much, okay? So how much in Germany, how much in Spain, how much, Philippe, how much? And this how much are 15 around the group, very good managers. We'll improve our communication, I think, internally in order to give in our website information about these managers because it's very important you to know that we have a very good country manager in Italy, a very good country manager in Germany, a very good country manager, of course, in Belgium because you know Chantal, a very good country manager in -- the Netherlands because Patrick will be replaced. And we have a very good [ P&L ] managers in France, of course, Philippe and also Mathilde. So this group of 15 people is -- the management of the commercial activity and the commercial strategy of the group. So these 2 levels of management, we have a strategic committed direction and very operational group management committee.

To answer -- try to answer completely your question is the following. Remember that our strategic plan is twofold: First, organic growth, significant organic growth and acquisitions. So it's both of them. What we have launched since 9 months now with [ Elena, Lori Delom ] and her team [indiscernible], where we are hiring 100 new agents. And so far, we are on track for this year. We already hired 16 agents, I think.

Yes, 16. And we have a target of about 30 for the year, and we think that we will get it.

I personally follow this plan with Elena. I have a meeting with her every 15 days. And she is very active in every country. So keep in mind that one agent -- a normal salesman in Econocom brings a revenue between EUR 6 million and EUR 7 million per year. An agent is more like EUR 9 million to EUR 10 million. So 100 agents is between EUR 900 million and -- if they were all successful and EUR 1 billion when they are full speed. So the growth of the organic growth will not the only agent, but you see this number should participate very significantly. I have difficult to make it today, but I will make it. And this way a part of it. The other part is acquisitions. Patrick was in charge of acquisition, but he was so busy in the Netherlands, so busy in the group that the acquisition -- also, he was M&A, M&A, which is also deficient. So he also helped and his team to sell the Les Abeilles and to start selling the other subsidiaries that we are selling. So that was -- so we did not acquire any company in the last 12 months. But we will start again. And Angel later on in September will come here to present you his new committee executive or committed direction. [ CoDir ], we say in France, the committed direction. This CoDir made of very seasoned managers, but one of them is coming from outside. He is somebody 53 years old, very seasoned in M&A. He has a very good track. He was -- he already has signed his onboarding on Econocom. And his task will be not to finish what Patrick had started, which is to serving the 3 last subsidiaries that we want to sell, which will be done within 12 months for sure. And also to start to build the pipe of new acquisitions. And I will be touring with Angel and him in September in the different countries to restart the search for very strategic acquisitions for Econocom. The total investment we want to do is EUR 200 million roughly. I think we -- if we do this, we could borrow about EUR 300 million for specific acquisition. And the total volume could be bought in 5 years could be close to EUR 1 billion. And -- and the market is improving for us because it's not improving for our share price, which is always going down, which is -- which is good when we buy shares, but it's not so good for the shareholder that sell their shares. But for acquisitions, the price of the companies used to be more like 6x, 7x, 8x the EBITDA. Now it's down to 5x or 6x. So we see the prices improving for the people acquiring and so that will make some acquisitions much more possible than it was a year or 2 years ago.

And if I can complete, Jean-Louis, speaking about the debt, we have to say that if we are speaking about EUR 180 million of net financial debt at the end of June. We are not speaking about the EUR 210 million of leasing deals that we have in the balance sheet. And that could have to be seen has operational debt. So we have in the balance sheet in the asset, EUR 207 million of rents that have to come directly from clients. If we compare that with the EUR 180 million of net financial debt, we would have a surplus of EUR 30 million.

Did we answer your question?

Yes, more than my question, you anticipate that on a few -- excellent. Yes, if I may, maybe just 1 or 2. On the investment in the sales force, the IT tools, I understand it's mostly about leasing, is that correct? And the impact we saw in H1 on the profitability, the profit margin. It's -- so the EUR 6 million you talked about, it's -- the impact, this is correct. It's mainly leasing?

EUR 6 million. We have a EUR 4 million related at new recruitments and EUR 2 million related to IT and security investments, and we can calculate that in the second part of the year, it will be more or less the same amount.

Okay. And all in leasing, the...

Sorry? And -- we did not understood the...

A new CoDir member will answer your question.

Hello. Certainly in leasing, we started 3 years ago, and we are financing the plan. ETS activity, whether in France, in Belgium, or Germany, we started this year as well, and this is the first year of -- for this project that are smaller than the leasing project. And IT security, sorry. This is the first full year of the old security department that we put in place with the SOC management with many solutions to strengthen the security of the group. And this is the first full year of this OpEx impact that we have.

Okay. And so if I need to think in terms of normalized profitability of the 3 activities for this year, what could we expect if we put aside, let's say, these growth investments? So this organic growth investment.

5 or 4 and 3. 5 in TMF, 4 in Services and 3 in P&S.

Okay. That's very clear.

And this is what we have to improve along the strategic plan. This is the reason why we have a very important meeting and managers in the beginning of October, one of the main issues, 220 managers meeting. One of the main issues will be the improvement of the operating margin.

And -- thanks. So that's super clear. For the coming years, I have the impression that you need to continue to invest, in particular, in leasing, given you're saying you won't do M&A in leasing. You want to achieve all of the growth organically. Is that correct that we should see more of these, let's say, this impact in gross investment in, let's say, in 2025, 2026, et cetera. Or should they come down and so actually help your margin going forward?

As [ Kantar ] was explained in the investments in terms of tools for TMF are almost finalized. So the new investments will be keep on being mainly for sales.

Okay. So mainly for sales. So there should still be some investment?

Yes. But what we want to do is to invest in sales at the beginning of the plan, not at the end of the plan because if we invest in the end of the plan, the results will not be there. So if we invest in '24 and '25 in sales and agents, we will have the results in '26 and '27 and '28.

Okay. That's clear. So this year, let's say, you have EUR 12 million of growth investments still, let's say, coming down a bit, probably in 2025. And then yes, gradually, yes, they're declining basically over the course of the plan.

Yes.

So we have other questions online. First, concerning the market trends for Econocom at the moment. Angel, how do you see these trends for 3 businesses? And how do you see the growth Q2 versus Q1 and then for the rest of the year? That's 1 of the questions.

I will ask Israel to tell you about that because he is the one following the strategic plan and the specialist for the business development and the strategy on the market.

Okay. I'll introduce your brand new member of the CoDir, Israel Garcia.

But not so new for Econocom.

How many years now?

From 2018.

You know why we're coming back up.

Well, regarding the trends of the market, when we study the trends of the market, I think we are in a good month for that. We have to review 2 parts for me. One is the short term and the other one is the medium, long term. In the short term, I think Angel already explained that we saw in the market many news that the situation of the market is bad. It's not really bad. The products is delaying a bit. I'm sorry, you don't hear -- now it's better? So the situation of the market that I was saying is companies, as Angel explained -- explained that they are not going to grow, but Econocom is quite resilient on this. So you saw that we grew a lot on that. For the future, the market is going to grow, and we're going to be there. That's the situation.

Thank you very much.

Why is the market going to grow?

There are 3 main points to make the market grow. First of all is Windows. You know that Windows 10 is going to Windows 11. Second one is that we have many barriers for the AI. And the third point is the change from the COVID. So these 3 main points are going to change.

Maybe we can bounce back on this question of the AI because it is also one of the questions we have from the participants online. What are the expectations from the development of AI for Econocom?