Elis SA (ELIS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Elis Full Year 2024 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Xavier Martire, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Elis 2024 annual results presentation. I'm Xavier Martire, CEO of Elis; and I'm here in Paris with our CFO, Louis Guyot. After an overview of the highlights of the year for Elis, I will hand over to Louis. He will detail the 2024 results. I will then come back to provide you with an update on our CSR journey before detailing the new capital allocation strategy that we announced today as well as our outlook for 2025. Finally, we'll have a Q&A session to answer your questions. And after our call, Nicolas Buron, will be available to answer any of your questions off-line. Before we start, please take the time to read the disclaimer. So 2024 was another good vintage for Elis, both operationally and financially, and the group delivered record performance across all financial KPIs. Top line momentum remained very solid with growth of plus 6.1%, of which 5.2% on an organic basis to reach a record of nearly EUR 4.6 billion. EBITDA reached EUR 1.6 billion, up 9.2% and the EBITDA margin was up plus 100 basis points at 35.2%. EBIT was up 7.3% at EUR 733 million, with the EBIT margin up plus 20 bps at 16%. Net income was up 29% to EUR 338 million, and headline net income per share was up 3% reached a record level of EUR 1.76 on a fully diluted basis. Return on capital employed also reached a record level at 14.5%, posting a 60 basis point improvement. Finally, free cash flow reached EUR 346 million, showing a 14% improvement year-on-year, and the financial leverage ratio decreased by 0.2x to 1.85x at the end of December 2024. The remarkable '24 financial achievements are the result of Elis' great commercial and industrial efficiency throughout the year. In particular, our organic performance was achieved through very high service quality standards, resulting in a decrease in churn along with many commercial successes and pricing adjustments to reflect cost base inflation. We also continued to deliver productivity gains on every operating cost line, and you will see later in this presentation that the EBITDA margin improved in all geographies with an especially remarkable performance in Germany, our second largest country. Finally, we pursued our bolt-on M&A strategy to consolidate our existing footprints, and we also further broaden our frontiers as we enter Malaysia, paving the way for future growth opportunities. The next slide provides a bridge between 2023 and 2024 revenue which increased plus 6% year-on-year to a record EUR 4.6 billion. The 5.2% organic revenue growth was driven by the success of the commercial initiatives we put in place across the board, along with the strengthening of our sales force. At the same time, top-notch quality of service, combined with solid commercial relationships, allowed us to lower our churn and to come back to a normative level after a slight blip in 2023. Pricing also contributed to 2024 revenue growth with our pricing policy aiming to offset the inflation of our cost base, which was mainly driven by the increase in salaries. In Hospitality, the picture was slightly disappointing with the Paris Olympics having, as we expected, a negative effect on activity. That said, the end of the year was better oriented. M&A had a plus 1.2% impact on '24 revenue growth corresponding to plus EUR 52 million uplift essentially driven by 2 acquisitions in the Netherlands. Lastly, FX minus 0.3% impact on revenue, mostly due to the negative evolution of the Brazilian real. Moving on to the next slide, our hold net revenue benefited and with continued benefit from positive market trends across our regions. First of all, the COVID pandemic as well as the many safety standards over the last decade, especially in food industry have resulted in a higher demand for hygiene and protective equipment for workers. Secondly, our growth in the health care business has been, and will continue to be, correlated with the hedging of population in both Europe and Latin America. Third, the continued development of tourism directly drives our Hospitality activity, the new trends encompass sustainable tourism -- eco-tourism and responsible travel. Hotel groups are addressing these new clients' needs through modernization of infrastructure and use of circular services such as those proposed by Elis. Fourth, the growing need for traceability of professional Workwear as well as European regulations resulted in a steady development of outsourcing. Last, we see more and more tenders coming with one or several CSR criteria, especially in Central and Northern Europe. Our circular services perfectly address these evolving needs, and it is clearly way more advanced on that front that all its competitors creating a competitive edge and room for growth. These underlying trends, combined with the commercial initiative we put in place, contributed to the many commercial successes we recorded in 2024. At the end of the day, our goal is to replicate the French footprint and service range in other geographies. When the scale and density of our operations is adequate, we can start addressing smaller-sized clients, as we have in Brazil and U.K. with excellent results. Similarly, we also regularly expand our Pest control and Cleanroom offers to new geographies as they continue to benefit from a very favorable post-COVID effect, the increasing need for hygiene in general. These 2 businesses -- similarly, we also regularly spend our Pest control and Cleanroom offers to new geographies as they continue to benefit from a very favorable post-COVID effects with an increasing need for hygiene in general. These 2 businesses delivered combined organic revenue growth of more than 10% in '24 to reach cumulative revenue of close to EUR 330 million. I will provide you with more detail on these 2 businesses on the next slide. Furthermore, we continue to see first time outsourcing some specific industries, such as nursing home in Spain and in the U.K. which were historically very fragmented markets with a lack of professionalization and market standards. Of course, all the opportunities I have just listed don't happen by themselves. We are being proactive by launching dedicated offers and a specific sales force to save them. Moving on to the next slide. 2024 was a very good year on the quality of service fronts, which is, by far, the most important factor for client retention. We monitor client satisfaction using a range of tools, an independent department at a discounted tens of thousands of direct interviews every year. In 2024, we reached a record score close to 90%, a record level. These good results are essential as quality of service and supply reliability are key differentiating factors on the market. It is leveraging strong network density to deliver best-in-class service. Moving on to the next slide. We'd like to provide an update on our Pest control and Cleanroom businesses, which delivered another year of double-digit expansion and significantly contributed to Elis' overall growth. Let's first have a look at our Cleanroom business, which posted 2024 revenue of EUR 255 million, up plus 11% year-on-year. We are, by, far the largest European player in that field with a network of 33 Cleanroom. We offer a large variety of products with the pharmaceutical and microelectronic industries, such as reusable Clean undergarments, cleaning systems, goggles and related contamination control solutions. Our existing client base provides us with many cross-selling opportunities in this very technical and highly profitable markets where the capacity to innovate is a key differentiating factor. Additionally, Wonway is a small acquisition in Malaysia announced in 2024, offers interesting prospects with our international clients and reinforce Elis leadership position in the global Cleanroom market. As far as Pest control is concerned, 2024's revenue came at EUR 75 million, up 24% year-on-year, a large part of that being organic. Pest control is a perfect example of a margin-accretive service that we added into our portfolio. Over time, we have signed many Pest control contracts with existing customers, leveraging our strong customer relationships and second to none network density. Over the last decade, we have developed our Pest control network through small bolt-on acquisitions, helping local platforms able to address more and more clients in our geographies. Today, we propose our pest control services in 10 countries with around 380 specialized technicians. The business unit has, at the same time, worked to develop the innovative traceability and prevention solutions as well as more responsible alternative approach. In some countries, the offering is also now available to individual customers. Over time, Elis Pest controls has also increased its level of professionalism, and we believe our technical knowhow is comparable to what pure Pest control players are offering. Moving on to the next slide. Productivity gains were a significant driver of the margin improvement delivered in '24. And logistics is an area where Elis has been significantly progressing over the last few years, leveraging into non-industrial expertise. Central industrial team defines and updates a set of best practices that are rolled out across our countries, benchmarking every plant to assess efficiency. These results in recurring productivity gains of between 2% and 4% per year in our workshops, all in terms of resource consumption like energy, water or washing products. In '24, we improved the workshop productivity by 2% for both Workwear and flat linen. here, the KPI used are the number of kilogram wash per hour per employee for flat linen and the number of uniforms washed per hour per employee for Workwear. On top of that improvement, we also managed to decrease water and gas consumption by minus 4% and minus 3%, respectively, compared to 2023. Let's now take a look at each of our geographies. For first, where revenue growth was entirely organic at plus 3.3% in 2024 and margin was up 150 bps at the record level of 41.8%. Top line growth was driven by commercial momentum in Workwear, especially for Industry and Trade & Services and by pricing adjustments to offset the inflation of our costs, essentially salary linked. Hospitality activity was subdued due to the production of different headwinds. In June we're impacted by poor weather. June then was impacted by the Olympic preparations in Paris and the generalization with somewhat limited weekend trips. July and August were impacted by the Olympics with professional events such as company seminars reschedule or canceled. However, on a positive note, we noted a rebound in occupancy rate at the end of the year, and the beginning of '25 is satisfactory. The impressive plus 150 bps improvement in the EBITDA margin was driven by further rollout of efficiency road maps on our Industrial and logistics workflows. We also benefited from the lower cost of paper consumable in our washroom business. Move on to the next slide. Central Europe delivered a strong performance, notably due to significant progress recorded in Germany. Revenue growth was strong at plus 12.3%, and the EBITDA margin posted a 180 basis point improvement to 32.3%. Despite adverse macro environment, Elis demonstrated again strong resilience with organic growth of plus 7.5%, driven by good commercial momentum in Workwear across the board. Additionally, the acquisition of Moderna and Wasned in the Netherlands contributed plus 4.3% to the region growth in 2024 and enabled Elis to enter the Dutch Hospitality market. The EBITDA margin showed significant improvement, up plus 180 bps compared to the same period last year at 32.3%. Again, Germany was especially strong with margin improving by an impressive 450 bps, driven by our pricing discipline, productivity gains and better energy purchasing conditions. Let me focus further on this remarkable performance by moving on to the next slide. With revenue slightly above EUR 600 million, Germany is our second largest market after France. And since 2017, a massive workload of integration has been undertaken to merge Elis and Berendsen networks. A part of this integration work -- a part of this integration work, sorry, we have invested in high-quality teams in the field and in better industrial assets, while rationalizing our IT systems. The plus 22% increase in minimum living wage at the end of '22, together with the surge in energy prices, had a significant impact on our margin in '22 and '23. We eventually managed to adjust our prices to offset that, and the significant growth in workwear high-profitability business enable us to reverse the margin curve in 2024. Germany now stands at 29% EBITDA margin, and the country should continue it towards the group's average margin in coming years. Moving on to the next slide. We have been active with bolt-on M&A in Central Europe, and we strengthened our footprint in the Netherlands with 2 very interesting acquisitions. In the first half, we acquired Moderna, EUR 50 million top line business, which provides flat linen, workwear and hygiene and well-being services clients in the Hospitality Industry and Trade & Services industry. Moderna has superb industrial assets with a lot of spare capacity, which we'll use for future development. This first acquisition was complemented in the second half by the acquisition of Wasned, EUR 7 million business whose industrial assets are also particularly upscale. These 2 acquisitions have enhanced Elis network in the Netherlands in the group to address a flat linen market in the country, which was not the case before. As you can imagine, they also bring significant synergies that our teams have been working on extracting since the closing. Moving on to the next slide. Also organic growth and margin in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe are solid. It is the only region where margin declined in 2024. Organic growth was satisfactory at nearly plus 4%, driven by the commercial initiative we implemented to our net outsourcing opportunity in the region, but the EBITDA margin was down 120 bps, also remaining at 35.3%, so a very high level. We noted a tougher competitive environment in Denmark. In addition, pricing negotiations were sometimes more difficult, notably with customers from the public health care sector where contractual indexes were below the actual inflation of our cost base. Finally, Sweden was impacted by the bankruptcy of Northvolt, large clients in our industry end market. Moving on to the next slide. U.K. and Ireland posted further progress in 2024. Organic growth came at plus 4.3% as the reinforcement of our sales team paid off with many successes for both health care and industry clients. Pricing was also a significant top line growth driver in the context of a significant minimum living wage increase in the region. The EBITDA margin delivered 90 basis point improvement to reach 31.6% with a favorable evolution in our energy purchasing conditions as well as continuous positive gains on industrial processes and logistics. Moving on to the next slide. Performance in Latin America was also very satisfactory with organic revenue growth at 8.7%, acting as a real growth engine for the group. Latin America continues to offer many growth prospects with a steady outsourcing trend in Workwear for industry and in flat linen for health care where we continue to see hospitals closing their internal laundries and switching to outsourcing. The EBITDA margin increased another 50 bps to get to nearly 35%, which is remarkable achievements. Bear in mind, we started from 21% 10 years ago. Moving on to the next slide, Southern Europe, delivered organic performance of plus 5.4%, driven by good commercial momentum in Workwear and Pest control and satisfactory activity in Hospitality, both in Spain and in Portugal. EBITDA margin was up plus 180 bps at 32.6% due to the volume uplift, the better purchasing condition of energy and further productivity gain. To the next slide, we also announced the acquisition of Wonway in Malaysia in early July after 1.5 years of discussion with the family-owned Wonway that was founded in the '80s, has around 200 employees and can address the entire management territory, thanks to 3 specialized laundries. We provide reusable garment services in Cleanroom to mainly international groups operating semiconductors, medical devices and chemicals. In 2024, Wonway delivered revenue close to EUR 5 million. It is, therefore, a small acquisition but with interesting prospects going forward, given the very strong momentum of the Cleanroom market in Malaysia. Additionally, this acquisition reinforce Elis leaderships position in the global Cleanroom market. Moving on to the next slide to conclude on M&A. We continued the consolidation of our existing position with 3 new bolt-ons consolidated since the 1st of January. Carsan a EUR 10 million business in the Spanish Hospitality market; Ernst a EUR 19 million business in the German health care and Hospitality markets; and Bodensee, a EUR 27 million business in Switzerland, serving the health care and Hospitality market from 2 plants. These are 3 typical bolt-on acquisitions that constitute a significant value creation lever for the group. Let me now hand over to Louis, he will give you more color on our 2024 financial performance.

Thank you, Xavier. Good morning, everyone. Let me first go through the usual revenue breakdown by activity and market and geography to illustrate the group's high level of diversification, which provides us with a highly resilient model in terms of crisis. Whichever way you look at the graph, you will see that Elis' positioning is well balanced, which contributes significantly to its resilience. In terms of activity, flat linen, Workwear, hygiene and well-being represent 47%, 37% and 16% of revenue, respectively. Our 4 end markets, which all have different growth drivers, have roughly even shares of total revenue, which is a key strength in terms of crisis. In terms of geographies, France represents 30% of our total turnover, and we have a balanced mix with Central Europe and Scandinavia being more mature; Southern Europe, Latin America, offering higher growth prospects. There is good diversification in terms of activity client geographies, does not come about by chance, it is a consequence of a long-term strategy, backed by product innovation, commercial efficiency and M&A. Moving on to the next slide. Let's have a look now at revenue growth and EBITDA margin by geography. As Xavier said, the very solid 6.1% total revenue growth, encompassed 1.2% of M&A with mainly Moderna in the Netherlands and Wonway in Malaysia. ForEx at a minus 0.3% impact with negative evolution of currencies in LatAm. So all in, organic growth was 5.2%. This organic growth embeds some price as wages inflation was still high in several countries in '24. It's worth noting that inflation is now below 5% in LatAm, way below historical levels. In addition, volumes are recovering as the losses of '23 are now behind us in terms of delayed effect, notably, thanks to a very high level of service quality observed and as the efforts put into strengthening our sales force are paying off with significant commercial developments in '24. In Hospitality, the contract signed in '24 are 12% above '23, the major countries being France, Spain, U.K., Germany. In health care, contract signings were also at a record level, notably in Brazil, Mexico and Germany. In Industry & Service, we set a new record for new contracts with Germany, Spain, France, Netherlands, leading the way. In terms of clients activity, the only cyclical part of the business is Hospitality, as you know. And Xavier already explained that the year was a bit subdued with many nonrecurring headwinds like the Olympics and the general elections in France and in the U.K. The other major satisfaction of the year is, of course, the margin with another improvement of 100 bps for EBITDA. The 3 geographies that have historically lagged behind are closing the gap, Central Europe, U.K. Ireland, Southern Europe are above 31% in '24. The benefit from the stronger top line development, continuous progress in productivity and better energy purchasing conditions. Let's now look at the full P&L. Below the EBITDA, depreciation is normalizing around 19.2% of sales after 18.4% in '23. This reflects the return to a normal depreciation quantum, following the decrease in linen CapEx regarding in '20 and '21. As you know, linen is depreciated over 3 years. So in the depreciation '24, we have replaced the '21 linen CapEx by the '24 linen CapEx. This led to an EBIT margin of 16%, up 20 bps year-on-year. The main items between EBIT and operating income are as follows: first, noncurrent operating expenses for EUR 18.5 million. The revolution of earnouts had a negative impact of EUR 49 million in '23, but a plus EUR 9 million positive impact in '24, so a favorable EUR 58 million impact year-on-year. It means that we are circa EUR 20 million per year, which is what you will find in the cash flow. IFRS 2 expenses represent the dilution cost of the LTIPs stable year-on-year. Lastly, intangible amortization is stable as the main part is linked to Berendsen goodwill in '17. Below operating income, you will find the financial result that is EUR 6 million above '23. It encompassed a EUR 13 million higher interest cost due to the new financing, partially offset by a EUR 7 million decrease in the earnout accretion. The last line is corporate tax, which has a normative tax rate of 25.83% on the base corresponding to EBIT minus IFRS 2 expense and earnouts. The EUR 18 million increase is due to a lower '23 base as EUR 15 million of previously unrecognized tax losses were utilized. At the end of the day, '24 net income is 29% above '23 level, the shift in the earnout treatment has, of course, a massive impact and is restated in the headline net income. That's why the headline net income is only 3% above. The 2 limits to the growth were first, the EUR 15 million base effect of the deferred tax '23, and second, the additional EUR 13 million interest cost as all the rest is restated, notably the earnout impact. Moving on to the next slide, ROCE is obviously a KPI we carefully track as it measures the value creation from our investments. We use it daily when making an investment decision, for example, an industrial investment or a big contract, where significant cleaner must be purchased or when contemplating an acquisition. Our pretax ROCE is defined as adjusted EBIT divided by capital employed. A detailed breakdown of the capital employed we use is presented in the appendix, end of '23, it sits at EUR 5 billion, as we restate EUR 1.5 billion of intangible assets recognized in the group's last LBO back in 2007, which have nothing to do with Elis operations. In '24, this pretax ROCE was 14.5%, 60 bps above the '23 level. After normative tax of 26%, '24 ROCE will be at 11%. You can see that if we exclude 2 years of pandemic, Elis ROCE has been showing steady improvements since '18, on its way to our target of 15%. That's a clear signal of value creation on the back of the successful integration of the major deals of '17 Indusal, Lavebras, Berendsen. Moving on to the next slide. Let's now look at the '24 headline net income per share. The main items were stated as the usual. PPA depreciation, noncash IFRS 2 expense or pre-share plan, noncurrent operating income and expense; mostly corresponding to the revaluation of the earnout related to the Mexican acquisition as well as the corresponding accretion expense impact on the financial results. So in headline net income stands at EUR 446.3 million, up 3% year-on-year, which corresponds to an EPS of EUR 1.76 on a fully diluted basis, up 3.1% year-on-year. The fully diluted number of factors is the potential diluted effect from the free share plan and the convertible bond, in which case, we restate the interest expense accordingly. Moving on the next slide, you can see that Elis' fully diluted headline EPS is now more than 60% above '19 level. We expect this trend to continue going forward with EPS growth every year as has always been the historically, with the exception of the pandemic years. Over on the next slide, Elis generated a record free cash flow of EUR 346.4 million in '24, up 14% year-on-year, which represents an improvement of EUR 41 million. Let me take a detailed look at the cash flow statement. CapEx stands at 19.2%, just above '23 on normative level due to catch-up in industrial projects with many European improvement initiatives coming to life. In '23, change of working capital requirement was negative at minus EUR 7 million, approximately -- minus EUR 6 million in '23. The average payment time was 52 days end of '24, which is one of the best ever. The net interest paid reflects the higher cost of the new refinancings. For example, the bond we issued in March to repay a 1% bond came at 3.75%. Corporate tax paid amounts to EUR 125 million, similar to '23, both corresponds to the normalized level of 21% rate of EBIT minus net interest paid, minus cash nonrecurring. But with a small minus in '23 and a small bonus in '24, but due to calendar of prepayment in France and in Sweden. Below, please note that following a change of turnouts, the payment of lease and liabilities now includes the interest part of the lease. '23 has been restated accordingly to be comparable. We are speaking of circa EUR 20 million of shift between the line, net interest paid on the line lease. So the increase of EUR 20 million of lease in '24 is a real one, and is mainly linked to the electrification of our vehicle fleets. All in, free cash flow was EUR 346.4 million, a record level for Elis. Below free cash flow, we saw 2 main cash outs. First, acquisition and 2 lines with the debt acquired. In '24, the big deal was Moderna in Netherlands, and you have also in acquisitions, the second Mexican earn out. As a reminder, there will be a final earn out paid in '25 for EUR 20 million. Second, the dividend paid in June, fully in cash. As a reminder, dividend paid in '23 for the fiscal year '22 came with a scrip option, so the cash component was much lower in '23. In the line other, you have noncash items, which relates to accounting impact and debt or cash at banks. Only EUR 5 million are recurrent linked to the depreciation of the financing fees, EUR 9 million are linked to the convertible bond treatment and will disappear at the end of said bonds. EUR 12 million are linked to the Latin American currencies, which impacted negatively our cash at bank in Brazil, Mexico. This is, of course, a one-off. And last, EUR 25 million are linked to the impact of the dollar revolution on our USPPs. This has no impact on our real debt as all the future flows are covered by some cross-currency swaps, but those swaps are accounted for in another line than debt in the balance sheet. At the end of the day, net financial debt increased by around EUR 13 million in '24 to EUR 3.38 billion, which corresponds to a leverage ratio of 1.85 at the end of December, so the 2 decrease compared to the previous year. Moving on to the next slide. Let's look at the debt in detail. As you can check, our strategy has always been to have a well-spread debt which spans between '25 and '35 and mostly at a fixed rate. In terms of rating, in November '24, Moody's raised the group's long-term credit from Ba1 to Baa3 with a stable outlook. This investment-grade rating awarded the financial strength of the group on the robustness of its business model for profitable growth. Elis now has investment-grade ratings with S&P, Moody's and DBRS. Earlier last year in March '24, we issued a 6-year EUR 400 million bond at 3.75% coupon. End of '24, we had EUR 1.5 billion liquidity available. So the repayment of the '25 bond, which is due in April, is already taken care of. Going forward, we will remain opportunistic, but potential financings in view of the '26 reimbursement. To conclude this section, overall finance is very strong in '24 with record level for all financial KPIs. In particular, EBITDA margin was up 1 point, with all geographies now in a smaller range. The steady growth in return of capital employed highlights our selective approach to capital deployment, be it for acquisitions, industrial CapEx or Linen purchase for new contracts. Finally, net financial leverage reached an all-time low in '24 at 1.85. I will now hand back to Xavier, who will give you an update on our CSR achievements in '24.

Thank you, Louis. Elis denoted embodies a long-term commitment to deliver circular services that work for hygiene, well-being and protection, everywhere, every day in a sustainable way. The services offered by Elis are sustainable alternative to the simple purchase or use of products of disposable products and enable our clients to avoid CO2 emissions and contribute to a reduction of their own emissions. At the end of the day, the business model based on the circular economy is one of the Elis greatest assets. Moving on to the next slide, let me provide you with a quick update on our different objectives set for '25. Overall, the 2024 performance showcased good progress on a large part of them. We notably continue to deliver some impressive results regarding our water and gas consumption and pursue the rollout of our electric vehicle fleet. We are also very satisfied with a 30% decrease in accident frequency recorded over the last 2 years as this KPI is of the utmost importance to us. We also continued to increase the percentage of our textiles that are recycled. On that front, our Workwear towards that project aims at manufacturing new garments using old textile articles and is emblematic of the group's strong commitment. Moving on to the next slide. We announced our climate strategy in 2023, validated by SBTi. Our objective for Scopes 1 and 2 is to achieve a reduction of 47.5% of our emissions between 2019 and 2030. To do so, we will further optimize our energy use in our laundries, increase the consumption of renewable energy and reduce the environmental footprint of our logistics fleet by optimizing delivery routes and accelerating the transition towards alternative vehicles. For Scope 3, we aim to reduce our absolute emissions by 28% by optimizing our linen management. For example, through reduction of textile losses or reusing and repairing even more. We will also work on reducing the environmental footprint of our product and reduce impact of transportation, both upstream and by supporting our employees in the transition towards less positive modes of transport. The 2019 -- 2024 check points show that the reduced of Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 20% and Scope 3 emission by 4.3%. We look forward working with all stakeholders to achieve these ambitious objectives and contribute to the global effort required. Moving on to the next slide. For the first time, Elis is reporting its share of revenue that is aligned with a new taxonomy circular economy objectives. The outcome is quite striking, for Elis, the lion's share of revenue comes to 69%, while Bloomberg study in January found an average of 10% for 2,000 assets companies that communicated in 2023. The very high number achieved by Elis demonstrates, once again, the very sustainable pattern of its business model. Moving on to the next slide. The group's engagement and actions continue to be rewarded by several CSR rating agencies and our already high grades keep progressing. We can see this with EcoVadis, Sustainalytics, MSCI or more recently with CDP, where we obtain an A rating in the climate questionnaire joining the recognized CDP A-list. The distinction awarded to the top 2% of the 24,800 companies assessed worldwide in 2024 highlights the benefits of our circular economy business model in addressing current environmental challenges. It's also a recognition of our commitment and the daily efforts of our team members in the first -- in the fight against climate change. Let's now turn to our strategy and outlook. The very solid performance delivered by Elis in recent years is the result of a sound strategy that we have been applying for more than a decade. This strategy relies on 4 pillars: Development of sustainable services and promotion of the circular economy, which has always been at the heart of our business model; second, our industrial and commercial excellence to generate continuous productivity improvement and create valuable costing relationship with our customers; third, the consolidation of current positions, which leads to network density and create both a key competitive advantage for us and a high barrier to entry for other competitors; and lastly, the expansion of our network, which, over time, has led to a more balanced geographical and end market mix. Moving on to the next slide. Let's take a look at this graph that we like to present regularly. There, you see the evolution of top line and margin performance over the last 2 decades. And it is fair to say that the last few years have clearly demonstrated the resilience of our business model and our strong pricing power. The backbone of our resilience is twofold: First, the diversified geographical footprint we already touched on, with France representing less than 1/3 of our business; and second, the diversified portfolio of clients in terms of size and end markets. It is worth noting that its resilience as well as the organic growth profile of the group improve further with the expansion in Latin America and the acquisition of Berendsen. Consequently, you can see on the graph that margin has remained consistently at high levels within a narrow range, regardless of external events and taken into consideration the impact of IFRS 16 from 2019 onwards. On top of that, one very interesting characteristic of our business that we saw in 2020 that linen investments come on in on with top line growth. That means that conversely, they mechanically go down during bad top line years with a favorable impact on cash generation. The cash generation trajectory has been impressive over the last 5 years with free cash flow increasing from EUR 174 million in 2019 to nearly EUR 350 million in 2024, and we expect this trajectory to continue in the coming years. Moving on to the next slide. The group net financial leverage ratio has significantly decreased in 2020 to reach 1.85x at the end of December, down 0.2x year-on-year in line with our objective. This marked decrease reflects the strong EBITDA growth in recent years, along with net debt reduction. As a reminder, the pandemic has a negative impact on the 2020 ratio. But since then, deleveraging has accelerated, and we have reached 1.85x at the end of '24. Last November, Moody's raised the group's long-term credit rating to Baa3, which means Elis now has investment-grade rating with all 3 rating agencies that follow us. Moving on to the next slide. It is fair to say that our stock price evolution has, unfortunately, not reflected the regular operational and financial performance delivered by the group over the last years. This is quite striking, looking at the graph, comparing Elis' valuation multiple with a selection of peers, the valuation differential has really reached a level that is hard to understand them. So here is a comparison of Elis key financial indicators between 2019 and 2024. Revenue is up nearly 40%. The EBITDA margin is up 160 basis points. The EBIT margin is up more than 200 basis points. Headline EPS is up nearly 60%. Return on capital employed is up 5 percentage points. Free cash flow has doubled. The financial leverage ratio decreased from above 3x to below 2x. And yet our stock price is below its 2019 level, meaning our valuation multiples collapsed over the period. Our EBITDA multiple and PE ratio are both at 9.6x, down nearly 4x compared to 2019. While, over this period, the group continued to diversify geographical exposure and demonstrated quite clearly its improved organic growth profile, its resilience, its pricing power and its capacity to generate a high level of free cash flow, including in several deteriorated economic environment. In this context, Elis today presents a new cash allocation policy, aiming at improving shareholder return. Elis will continue to make bolt-on acquisition with an envelope between EUR 50 million to EUR 150 million per year. Elis will retain its investment rate taking and further decrease its financial leverage ratio, but will limit the efforts to circa 0.1x per year. The remaining cash will mainly be used to improve shareholder return through dividends or share buybacks. In the context of the immediate application of this new policy and based on my previous comment that Elis current valuation does not fully reflect the group strength and potential, Elis, today announced the implementation of a EUR 150 million share buyback program for the current year. This will come on -- this will come on top of the proposed dividend of EUR 0.45 per share for the 2024 financial year, up plus 5% year-on-year at the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. This dividend will represent a total of around EUR 105 million. The first portion of this repurchased shares will be assigned to be -- to the delivery of maturing LTIPs as well as matching contribution in the employee share ownership plan, a second portion of repurchase shares to higher amount will be canceled. Now let's talk about our 2025 outlook. Starting with organic growth that we expect slightly below 4%, factoring in a circa 0.3% negative calendar impact. Adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EBIT margin, fully diluted headline net income per share and free cash flow are all expected to be slightly up, while the financial leverage ratio is expected to be down 0.1x as a result of the new capital allocation policy I just described. So this concludes this presentation. And before moving to the Q&A, let me remind you that we will be hosting an Investor Day in London on the 27th of May. This will be the occasion to give you more color on many aspects of our very interesting and technical business, so I'm looking forward seeing you there. Invitation will be sent in the coming days. I thank you all for your attention, and we can now move on to the Q&A. Operator, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question coming from the line of Louise Wiseur is from UBS.

I've got 3, please. The first one is you have announced today your new capital allocation policy with the positive news on the share buyback. If you end up not doing the targeted bolt-ons in a specific year, would you do more buyback dividend to reach the target leverage? The second question is with regards to volume price. What was the split of volume and price in 2024? And what do you expect for 2025 in terms of, again, volume and price? And the last one is with regards to your guidance on adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBIT. Where you said it's going to be slightly higher than in 2024? Could you discuss how you see the evolution of your costs next year? I think you should still benefit from energy hedging, and as you discussed in the past, but how do you see the evolution of other costs, i.e., labor? And what do you expect the impact to be from the new budget in France?

Okay. Thank you for your question. So first one, I think that the capital allocation policy is quite clear. And of course, if we have less M&A, if during the year, we have no bolt-on or a very small amount of bolt-on, as we want to stick to a decrease of the leverage of 0.1x, that means that we will have much more money to give back to the shareholders, and then we'll see what is the best way to give back this money depending on the market condition, whether exceptional dividend or share buyback program. For the split between volume and price in '24, '25. So '24 more price than volume, of course, because we still had some huge inflation of our cost base. It will be more balanced in '25, where it will be quite comparable. So around the same level of price and volume in '25, perhaps slightly more price, but you can take an assumption, same level of volume and price in '25. Other cost and -- in '25 in the guidance, so yes, we still have the benefit of our energy hedging policy, and we will save around EUR 30 million again in '25 in the total cost of energy. On the same time, we still see some increase of the level of salaries. I think that all in, at the group level, we can expect something close to plus 4% as an increase of the cost of wages in the group. And the last question you had was the impact of the budget in France. It is mainly an impact in tax. So in cash -- corporate tax.

That will be close to EUR 7 million, probably one-off cash to '25.

And super limited impact on EBITDA will decrease a little, so increase the level of social charges but it is quite marginal for the group. We are talking about something a couple of millions of euros, so quite margin impact for us.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank.

Yes. 3 questions for me, please. Firstly, on Slide 44, there's a footnote that talks about the execution of strategic opportunities within geographic areas where you already operate. Can you just clarify, does that mean that a U.S. acquisition would not be in line with this updated capital allocation policy? And second question also on the capital allocation policy. When you talk about the EUR 50 million to EUR 150 million range of bolt-ons, are you referring to the purchase price or the annualized bolt-on revenue target? And then a kind of third question talking about investments in the business. Again, this year, CapEx has grown faster than sales. And in the second half of the year, in particular, the volume growth has been below 2%. Can you talk about what's driving that CapEx growth given at the H1 stage, I think Xavier, you mentioned, should volume growth be slower, there might be some upside to the free cash flow. And then when you think about 2025, do you expect that a slower volume growth environment should result in slower CapEx growth this year? And when you talk about FCF slightly higher, APV slightly conservative there. That's it for me.

So let's start with the key elephants in the room, as always. So U.S. and so on. I think that we already said everything regarding U.S. in October when we explained the reason why we have decided to stop any kind of negotiation. So we have today, nothing more to add. Generally speaking, we have today, absolutely no discussion with anybody anywhere for a super big acquisition, to be clear. Nevertheless, you saw that the fourth pillar of the strategy for over more than 10 years now is to regularly open some new geographies. So that means that if one day, we have one big opportunity somewhere in Asia, in Europe or in U.S. or in LatAm, what is important to keep in mind is the fact that we respect the 2 key criteria to make such kind of big acquisition. The first one is to keep the investment grade rating. And second one, it is an acquisition that is super favorable for the shareholders and never against the shareholders. And by the way, I think that we have demonstrated last year with the U.S. negotiation that we have a super strict discipline in our M&A policy, and we are perfectly able to stop a negotiation or discussion when we see that we are not able to reach those 2 criteria. For bolt-on, the range of EUR 50 million to EUR 150 million, is enterprise value and not a turnover even if at the end of the turnover is not far from enterprise value in average. For volume and CapEx. So 19% -- around 19% is probably the new policy, is what we expect for -- also for the year '25. We have developed massively Workwear, and it is fair to say also that all the program linked to CO2 road map has a small impact on CapEx. So of course, we have the payback and it helps in EBITDA because when we invest in materials to make some savings in energy consumption, it can imply some CapEx, but some productivity gains also.

We will now take the next question from the line of Sabrina Blanc from Bernstein.

Yes. I have 3 questions from my part. The first one is regarding the German market on which you have strongly improved in the same time the top line and the margin. Would like to understand if there are further capacity to improve, taking into account that the price evolution could slow down somewhat. And behind that, do you see further opportunities of bolt-on acquisition in this market? The second question is regarding the Malaysia acquisition. Can you provide some colors, if you see some further opportunities in Asia? And the last question is regarding your guidance in terms of EBITDA or EBIT margin. You are mentioning a slight increase compared to 2024. But that means that we could expect improvement as big as the one that we have seen in '24? Or shall we expect perhaps, I don't know, 20 to 30 basis point improvement?

Okay. So German market, it is not the end of the story of improvement because if and if we are quite happy with the development of the year '24 with more than 4 points of margin improvement, we are still below 30%. And when I see all the fundamentals of the market and now the strength of the Elis asset there, we expect another improvement in '25 and the year after. Bolt-on, yes, we have some targets on the pipe for bolt-on in Germany. So it is clearly a market where we still have a lot of family business and opportunities for further consolidation in Germany. Malaysia, so it's a small move to start in Asia in a nice Cleanroom end market. And of course, the goal of the group is not to stay only with one small position in Malaysia. And so for the years to come, it's highly probable that we will have some another small acquisition to consolidate and to prepare the expansion in Asia. But as we said, it is for the very long term of the company and nothing big for the short term to come in Asia. Guidance margin, what is important is to highlight that -- and we started to explain at the end of last year that the pricing negotiation are less easy this year than in '23 and '24. So that's why we have decided to be more cautious and to, more or less, integrate in our balance of inflation, the positive evolution of the cost of energy for Elis. And so to summarize, we'll more or less give back to the customer the EUR 30 million of savings of the year. So it is the reason why you cannot expect in '25 the same kind of improvement of the margin that we saw in '24. And it is the reason why we guide for a small improvement of all the financial KPIs in '25.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question from the line of Karin So from JPMorgan.

Just 2 left on my end. The first one is on Hospitality. You mentioned that there are better trends towards the end of the year. Just curious how should we think about the seasonal impact from Christmas? And if you could just elaborate a bit more on the trends you're seeing so far year-to-date? And the second one is on the rollout to smaller clients that you mentioned. Maybe could you remind us where you're sitting in terms of penetration by country? Because I remember it was like 10 countries maybe by H1 last year. So curious where that is sitting now. And if you could elaborate on any color on the impact this rollout has on margin, that would be great.

Okay. So Hospitality, yes, we are quite happy with the evolution of the trend. The end of the year was better, mainly in France. And the beginning of the year, after 2 months now, we have a solid growth in Paris, solid growth also in Spain, and beginning of the year that is not so bad in U.K. So it's a small month, January, February, small month in the year. So we are still very cautious. But nevertheless, we can expect normally a good year. So comparison will be easy in summer due to the impact of the Olympics in Paris in '24. So it shall be a good year. It could be a super good year in Hospitality. We'll see. But it's clear that the beginning of the year is quite promising. For small customer, it depends on the level of density of the network because you cannot be profitable if you don't have the density to justify routes with more than 40, 50 stops in the same route. So that's why, of course, we have developed this in the historical countries of Elis in France, in Portugal, in Spain. We have now been able to launch this initiative also in the U.K., as I said, in Brazil, in some city of Brazil, of course, where we have the density, so for instance, Sao Paulo and in Ireland. So we are super, super happy with the development of this initiative in the new countries. And it's part of the growth of U.K. now in the ICS business. In terms of market penetration, it is super, super low because it is a total virgin market, and it is a job of Elis to just open the market and convince a very, very small customer to outsource for the needs of textile. So workwear mainly, we are talking about contracts per customer that are around perhaps in a range of EUR 150, EUR 200 per month, not more. So you imagine that here, the market does not exist really, and we open the market. So as a conclusion, that means that we have no limit at this stage regarding the future growth in this business of a small customer, but you can see also that the total number of countries where we are able to deliver a service for small customers is less than 1/3 of the total number of countries in our portfolio. And it is the reason why we consider that we have all this opportunity of regular organic growth for the future because more and more, we'll open such kind of service in all the countries of our portfolio in line with the evolution of the density of our footprint.

We will now take the next question from the line of Christoph Greulich from Berenberg.

It's 2 follow-ups from my side, please. The first one, just with what you mentioned regarding the smaller clients and especially where you haven't addressed them before. Could you give us an idea of how meaningful that was in terms of the contribution to the group's organic growth? And if you expect that contribution to further increase this year? And then also on Asia, just wondering if, for now, you want to remain focused on the Cleanroom activities. So if you're also looking into expanding into other activities there in the near and medium term?

So first question for small customers, we can say that the additional growth when we open such kind of service in U.K. or Brazil, it's still absolutely limited, probably less than 10 bps at the group level, the impact of additional growth. But as always, in our industry and with our business model, it is a sum of a lot, a lot, a lot of small initiatives to push the growth that allow us to marginally improve the profile of organic growth. And it is when we -- you analyze the evolution of the group. So 10 years ago, we had a profile where we delivered more or less between 2.5% and 3% organic growth on a regular basis. And now we expect 4% on a regular basis. And it is a sum of all these initiatives. We have a better geographical mix. And of course, it helps. It is the reason why we have invested in LatAm, Southern Europe and so on. So with some better profile of organic growth, more outsourcing potential. And we have developed some new services in some countries like Pest control. We have developed also some new markets like elderly care in U.K., Spain and some initiative with a small customer. It is a sum of all these initiatives that has allowed us to increase by around 1 point, the long-term growth profile. So specifically small customers, it is, of course, limited. For Asia, we are not stick to Cleanroom. It was an easy entry point because thanks to the platform of international customers that we have, it's easy to leverage this platform and to have an easy start in Asia. So that means that the other small acquisitions that we are targeting now and the discussion we can have are with people and companies operating not only in Cleanroom.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand back over to Xavier Martire for closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you. So thank you for being there this morning. I know that you had a lot of other companies that published this morning, and I look forward to have some additional meeting and Q&A session with you. Enjoy the rest of the day. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.