FDJ United (FDJU.PA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the FDJ United Third Quarter '25 Revenue Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to Pascal Chaffard, CFO, Strategy and Performance Leader. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good evening or good afternoon according to your time zone. We have just published the press release commenting our 9 months revenue and our fine-tuned full year outlook. The presentation that I'm going to comment is available online in the Investors section of our corporate website or will be available in the coming minutes. I will cover first Q3 and 9 months 2025 revenue and then our detailed outlook for the end of the year. At the end, we will have a Q&A session. For those who have the slides, we can move directly to the Slide #4. Before deep diving into the figures, let me share the comment of Stephane Pallez, our Chairwoman and CEO, that summarized well our high-level message. She said the change in EBITDA United's revenue at the end of September reflects a prolonged decrease in our online betting and gaming business in certain markets and the impact of higher taxation on gaming, particularly in France since July 1. In this context, the group deepens its transformation and performance plan in 2025 and pursues the operational implementation of its strategy in line with the growth objective of its Play Forward 2028 plan. So this being said, we can now move on Slide 5 and go on the key highlights. So during the third quarter of 2025, our revenue amounted to EUR 864 million, an increase of 29% year-on-year on a reported basis and a decline of 3% at comparable perimeter. But both figures are almost flat, minus 1% at constant gaming taxes. The quarter was particularly impacted by the implementation of gaming tax increase in France on July 1. This is not new. It was known since the beginning of the year, but was implemented beginning of Q3. There was also an increase in Romania taxes on August 1. And in addition to those 2 elements, the tax increase in the Netherlands have been implied in January 1 and still have impact in Q3. You will find in the appendix of this presentation, the detailed rates applicable to the various gaming segments. Taxation thus impacted our revenue by EUR 21 million on the quarter, of which EUR 18 million in France. This wiped out more than 2 points of growth because this taxation is before our revenue. And at constant gaming tax, FDJ United revenue would have been almost flat, as I said previously. On a 9-month basis, at the end of September, our revenue amounted to EUR 2.73 billion, minus 2% versus end of September 2024 restated. We saw good momentum in French Lottery and Retail Sports Betting BU with revenue up 3% to EUR 1.884 billion. Online Betting & Gaming BU revenue was EUR 675 million, down 13% at comparable perimeter. This reflects the fiscal and regulatory impacts in 2025, a high basis for comparison with EURO 2024 and also very unfavorable sporting results for the operator, especially in September. We'll come back to this point later. At the same time, the group is continuing to roll out its proprietary platform as planned and has launched numerous marketing and commercial initiatives in Q3 and more are coming in Q4. I will also come back to this point in more detail. It's a key point as we are now very close to the turnaround. For the full year 2025, revenue is now expected over EUR 3.7 billion with recurring EBITDA of around EUR 900 million and a recurring EBITDA margin rate over 24%. This forecast relies on a Q4 revenue in line with the 9 months one, very slightly down and take into account an amplification of our cost reduction program in 2025. Let's now in the next slide, deep dive on Q3 and 9 months by BU. On this slide, you can see the breakdown of revenue by business unit for the third quarter on the left and at the end of September on the right. I will detail the figures of our 2 main BUs in the 2 next slides. In the meantime, on the other 2 smaller BUs, International Lottery posted revenue of EUR 124 million at the end of September, down 11.5%. This decline is totally attributable to the perimeter impact with the sale of Sporting Group at the end of 2024, while PLI recorded growth, primarily driven by draw games. Payment & Services BU recorded revenue of EUR 47 million. The dynamic of the payment services and bill stays in our point of sale is good as well as the B2B activity. The revenue decrease, minus 1.7% is due to the decline of phone prepaid card sales, not strategic for us and low margin. Let's dive now into our French operations under exclusive rights, namely lottery, both in point of sale and online as well as sports betting in point of sale. We are on Slide #7. In Q3, revenue stands at EUR 595 million, plus 2.1% and 4.5% at constant gaming taxes as the increased levels weighted EUR 14 million on this BU. Lottery revenue amounted to EUR 508 million, up 2.5%, a good performance, driven by both draw games and instant games as well as all distribution channels, point of sales and digital. Revenue of retail sports betting remained stable, which is good as on top of the meaningful impact of increased gaming tax, this activity faced comes with still some euro events in July 2024 and the low margin in September resulting from unfavorable sporting results. At the end of September, what we call, LSF Lottery and Sports Betting Retail BU revenue amounted to EUR 1.884 billion, up 3.1% and even 3.9% at constant gaming taxes with lottery up 4.8% to EUR 1.573 billion. This performance of the lottery is attributable to draw games, which grew by 7.3% and more specifically to Euromillion, which benefited from 27 draws with jackpots exceeding EUR 130 million, including 6 rows with jackpots of EUR 250 million. And also to instant games, which performed well with a 3.2% increase in revenue with the success of, for example, Maxi Astro, Cash Pocket, or Jeu du Fou. All distribution channels are up, plus 3.1% at point of sale and plus 14.1% online. With more than 6 million active players on the 12-month rolling period, online lottery revenue amounted to EUR 238 million, representing now more than 15% of total lottery revenue. Retail sports betting revenue amounted to EUR 311 million, down 4.6%. This variation reflects unfavorable sporting result for the operator with a high number of favorites having won, for example, in France with the very good performance of the [Pega] in Q2 and again in September. In addition, the sporting calendar in 2025 is less attractive. In 2024, we benefit from a euro in football, football being by far the more important sport in the retail. It's 2/3 of the total, far more than the part of the football in the online part of our sports betting activity. If now we move to Slide 8 regarding our online betting and gaming business. Q3 revenue was EUR 209 million, down 15.6% a change reflecting the impact of, firstly, and it's not new, the regulatory hardening in 2025 in the Netherlands and in the U.K. is still impacting us. No surprise, we continue broadly on Q3 with the same impact that the one we have faced since the beginning of the year, but we will see substantial improvement in Q4 as we will lap the measures that has been taken last year. Secondly, in Q3, the increased gaming tax in France is now implemented, as I said before, from the 1st of July as well as an increase in Romania from August 1. All this, as mentioned earlier, in addition to the increase in the Netherlands from January 1, the total impact on Q3 on this BU is EUR 7 million. Again, please refer to the figures in the appendix for more details. In Q3, the revenue would have been down by 12.7% at constant gaming taxes. In addition to that, we have still demanding comps with Euro 2024, whose last 2 weeks were in July, as I said previously, and sporting results very defavorable for the operators, not only for us, but I guess, for the whole industry in September with more than EUR 10 million impact on this full month. And lastly, we have a few delays in the implementation of some initiatives. However, it's a question of weeks. I will touch upon that a bit more deeper in the coming minutes. At the end of September, the BU revenue amounted to EUR 675 million, down 12.9%, same explanatory factors that the ones on Q3. The decline is mainly attributable to the impact of the regulations, particularly Netherlands and additional taxes. In Netherlands and in the U.K., despite a significant increase in the number of active players, this thing is important. We have more players than we had last year. The question is the ARPU that has fallen. The revenue fell by, respectively, 45.7% in the Netherlands and 22.9% in the U.K., which is a gradual improvement for the latter. Excluding these 2 markets, the revenue rose by 2.5%, thanks to the performance of other countries, particularly France. I will tell more about Q4 in a few minutes, but it's worth mentioning here that the situation will improve a lot in Q4 because we will lap the regulatory decision that caused the main drop in Netherlands in October 2024. At the same time, we are also continuing to roll out our proprietary technology platforms, notably KSP and developing marketing and commercial initiatives, even though we're recording slight delay in some launches or rollout or implementation in Q3. It's a question of a few weeks that will also impact Q4. I will detail our road map in the next slide. The transformation plan of our OBG BU, OBG means online betting and gaming, detailed during our June CMD is very well on track. It's most important and notable pillar is the rollout of our proprietary technology platform, the PAM, player account management system and KSP for online sports betting. On this topic, after the inaugural migration of Unibet Estonia onto KSP and PAM at the end of 2024, we successfully migrated 32Red U.K. in Q1 this year. In France, early February, we finalized the separation of player accounts between lottery under exclusive rights and betting gaming happen to competition. And June 30, we reached an important milestone in France also by very successfully merging ParionsSport and [indiscernible] offering in Romania and in the U.K. were migrated to KSP in September, thus the group's proprietary platform are now fully deployed in the U.K. We are now entering in what I can call the fine-tuning period, getting the full customer base to download the new app and completing the functional coverage to bridge the remaining gap between the previous offer and the new one. Technically, the migration went very well. The new app is far better than the previous one, confirm the iOS rating and very feedback during migration process. Our product is good, improving every week, and we are now very confident that we are in the right direction. We are also pursuing our marketing and commercial initiatives, i.e., in Q3, the launch of 32Red e-casino brand in Romania, late July, the relaunch of relaunch of Otto Casino in Sweden as part of a multi-license strategy in this market in September. This launch has occurred 1 month behind schedule due to delays to obtain the license from the regulator, but now it's done. And across our casino offering, a new unique and exclusive cross-market jackpot successfully launched in 7 countries in September. At the same time, we are implementing measures to meet the increased requirements of regulators. It's in this field also a major step for us in terms of compliance, opening a new chapter, notably in the U.K. with the end of the license review and more broadly, overcoming the compliance issues inherited from the past with a customer operation transformation plan. To end this presentation, I'm now going to provide you a detailed outlook for the end of the year. So you can move to Slide #11. In Q4, FDJ United anticipates a slight decline in revenue in line with the trend for the first 9 months of the financial year with -- for the French Lottery & Sports Betting BU. We expect a high level of revenue with commercial and marketing initiatives through the games portfolio as the launch of a new draw game called Crescendo in November, but with a slight decline compared to the performance of Q4 2024, which benefited from several exceptional events in draw games that we cannot think that it will be the same this year. For the Online Betting & Gaming BU, business is expected virtually stable compared with Q4 '24, given a favorable basis of comparison in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. And thanks to the gradual rollout of commercial and marketing initiatives, even though some record slight delays with the full impact to be recorded by the end of Q4 2025 and not beginning of Q4, such as the multi-licence in Sweden. I said previously that we had a 1-month delay for Otto Casino. We have a 1.5 month delay for Unibet, but it is coming by the end of October and also the end of the license review and KSP full positive impact in the U.K. with an impact -- a full positive impact that will be more in the second part of the Q4 than from the beginning of the Q4. Furthermore, the group is strengthening its action to plan to mitigate the impact of the decline in revenue on its profitability and thus anticipate 2025 cost savings far over the EUR 20 million threshold initially expected. More broadly, we are deepening our performance and transformation plan. We are fully in line with the medium-term prospects presented in June during the CMD as part of our Play Forward 2028 strategic plan. On this basis, FDJ United is now targeting full year 2025 revenue more than EUR 3.7 billion versus EUR 3.78 billion in 2024 restated with a recurring EBITDA of EUR 900 million and a recurring EBITDA margin above 24%. This ends this presentation. So thank you very much for listening, and we are now ready to answer our question, me, as well as [Martine], the IR.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley.

I've got 3, please. First of all, you spoke about this deepening of the transformation and performance plan. You gave a little bit of color at the end there. If we sort of take a step back, obviously, some of the KSP synergies were embedded in Kindred's plan, you then talked to additional bottom-up cost savings within OBG to help offset the impact of taxes over time. This deepening, does that mean further cost savings or just quicker implementation and pulled more into 2025? So -- if so, can you help us quantify how much larger or how much quicker? My second question is on Netherlands and Belgium. One of your peers reported that their volumes have recovered to positive in that market. Are you seeing a similar dynamic? Or how should we think about getting back to flat or getting back to growth across Q4 and Q1 in those 2 markets? And then finally, you've talked about the OBG response or performance being in relation to strict regulatory implementation and tough comps. Your peers have been referring more to sort of a healthy overall performance with particularly challenging sports starts in September. And you clarified it was EUR 10 million, which seems like if you add that EUR 10 million back, you'd be broadly where consensus was. So is that something you recognize? And could you perhaps give us your color on sports versus gaming performance to help us understand the underlying base there?

Thank you, Ed, for your question. First question was relating to what we call deepening transformation plan. There is 2 elements in there. First, we have made additional efforts to meet the target of being at the level of EUR 900 million EBITDA in 2025, even though we are a little bit behind in the revenue. So this is more of a short-term element to meet the objective in Q4 for the full year 2025. This is a good tradition or a good commitment that we always do what is needed to get to our targets and we are continuing to do that in 2025. The other point when we say deepening our transformation plan is that we have now worked very more in detail in the global performance and transformation plan. We are not in a position today to announce that we will go at a number that is over the ones that we commented on. But what we can see is that from the beginning of the year, it was -- now it is going to reality, and we are more and more confident on the fact that we will meet at least those objectives. And we know that it is a game changer for us, this transformation plan. If I just take the 3 main examples in the OBG part of our business. This transformation plan refers to customers' operation transformation, which will, at the same time, lower the cost and make us more able to comply with the different regulation in a better way that is perfect in our business. Second is what we are doing in the marketing automation and getting more efficiency from the marketing with less spends. This is also a big thing that we are working on and that is going to be implemented very soon. And the third one is, as you mentioned it, is KSP. KSP is being rolled out according to plan. And we will be, for sure, in the position to have fully ended those implementation by the end of 2026, getting the full positive impact of this transformation by 2027. And this full impact is not only the savings that we will get from the end of the contract with our third party that we use today. But also the possibility to have a real asset advantage in the product. So we are working on all that. And what has changed from the beginning of the year is our level of confidence and where we are concerning regarding those transformation. And this is only for OBG. There are a lot of other transformation that have been launched in the lottery part of our business to mention 2 or 3 very quickly. One is referring to the commercial sales force organization. We have just ended the first part of this transformation, reinternalizing every sector in France and internalizing also the margin that was given to the third party we used before. And we are entering a new phase that will make it possible to do some more savings in the future, along with a better service to our retailers. There is also a transformation of IT that is ongoing and on the marketing with the same kind of thing that we are doing in OBG. So at the end, if I come back just to 2025, we announced a target of at least EUR 20 million. We are far over this figure. It will be at least over EUR 30 million. You had also a question on the Belgium market. And the second one, you mentioned was...

Netherlands.

Was Netherlands. So maybe beginning by Netherlands. In Netherlands, we are lapping currently the regulation -- the measures that have been put in place last year. Just to recall, the measures have impacted us at 2 levels. First, in 1st of October and then second level of impact beginning of the year 2025 when the regulator make it impossible for the players to self-validate their -- when they wanted to go beyond the limits. So we will lap first part of the impact in Q4 and the second part of the impact in the beginning of Q1 next year. What we see is that we are stabilizing globally the situation there. Today, we are not yet in order to go back to growth. The situation is stabilized, as I said. What is reassuring and promising is the fact that we continue to have more active players than we had before. For us, it's a positive thing. And now the job that we have to do is to continue to recruit new players. It's working. We are doing that. And to work on the ARPU because we have a drop by 50% of the average ARPU of our customers, and this is huge. And we are continuing to work on how it is possible to grow a little bit this ARPU in the respect of the current regulation. This is globally the situation in the Netherlands. In Belgium, yes, the situation is getting better, and we soon think that we will be able to be back to growth in Belgium. And you had a third question concerning. Yes, it was the impact of sports betting in September. In September, and I think it is the case for all the operators in Europe, we had 2 weeks, very, very bad weeks with the results really defavorable to the operators. I don't think we are the only one to have that because we -- in the group, we saw that at the same level in the retail sports betting in France and also in the broader OBG BU activity. So this is specific to September. What we think is that it is not possible to get back those millions by the end of the year or maybe, but it's not really a high probability to get that. So we factor that in our full year outlook. And yes, in September, this is globally the element -- the big element that has not been totally in line with our forecast.

Just to follow up.

Is it okay for you?

Yes. I appreciate all that detail. Just on that, very last one. I know you've moved away from talking to stakes, but could you give any idea of volume growth or perhaps, as I said before, perhaps the split roughly between what your sports and your gaming performance look like, just to give us an idea of what the underlying might have looked like on OBG on a GGR level?

Okay. I will say, joker, as we have those figures, I don't have them just here. Maybe we can -- maybe during the call, we will find them because they are not very far. As you are right, they exist. We don't look at them first, but they exist. So we will maybe give you an answer before the end of this call.

The next question comes from Estelle Weingrod from JPM.

I've got 3 questions as well. On your cost reduction efforts, specifically, just to clarify the incremental EUR 10 million cost savings for this year, is the one coming from what you said, the 3 components, IT transformation, marketing and sales force internalization? Also on French Lottery and Retail Sports Betting. So far, the momentum has been relatively okay in France. Are you noticing any changes at the moment regarding the French consumer on the back of the political uncertainty and so on? And the third one, do you have an idea of where consensus was positioned for this year EBITDA?

Okay. So first question on the cost savings. To make it very clear, we have a transformation and performance program that is a 3-year program, is a real program to improve our performance. And we have measures of cost cutting that we took to be at the level where we had to be in 2025. So the additional measures that have an impact in 2025 are short-term measures. This is clear. But it doesn't mean that we are not in a position -- we will not be in a position to show you that in the medium term, we'll have a positive also outlook on that. But clearly, on the short term, we announced more cost reduction, it's more cost cutting than transformation. The transformation is well ongoing and is well on track, and we are quite happy on the fact that everything is going as planned, but it's more a medium-term impact. The short-term impact is cost cutting short-term. Second question was around the potential impact on the -- on our customers of the political uncertainty, and this is a [euphemism] to say uncertainty in France. We don't see an impact to date. We always -- we still always be cautious because we -- it's -- we cannot commit totally on the fact that whatever the environment can be, we will never have an impact. But we don't see anything in August or September that would be linked to the political situation or to the fact that the French people are globally worried of what is going on in this country. It's not a surprise for us as for the last 30 years, we have never noticed an impact of the economic environment on our activity nor a positive impact if the economy is going very well and the political situation is very stable nor a negative impact in the other case. 2 years ago, we had also this -- the uncertainty was this inflation problem that we have faced in France and in other countries in Europe. And same answer, we have monitored the impact of inflation on our customers and didn't see any change in their habits. This is one of the strengths of our activity being at cyclical globally. We are depending more on our own offering, the level of the jackpots on lottery, on the results of the outcome of the sporting events on the sports betting side. Also depending highly on the tax and regulation measures for sure. But happily not so far, we didn't see that on the political environment. Your third question was...

It's regarding the EBITDA consensus? As of today, if we are looking at either visible alpha or relative to smart estimates, we are in the water around EUR 910 million for 2025.

The next question comes from Jaafar Mestari from BNP Paribas Exane.

I got 3 questions, if that's okay. The first one is just on the change to guidance. If we could simplify it to the maximum, please. You said a few times no surprise on any of the tax impact. So it sounds like a little bit of extra taxation outside of France and the Netherlands and some negative sports results in France that would walk you from the EUR 3.8 billion to above EUR 3.7 billion. Would that be fair? Is there anything more fundamental? And if it's mostly sports results, it sounds a bit high just sports results, just keen to get a bridge if possible. And then on your assumptions for Q4, flat group revenue before the tax changes. Can you help us with a bit more direction on lottery? Are we talking low growth or slightly negative given the comps. And on sports betting, once it exits the regulatory review and the regulatory comps are easier, are we talking less negative? Or could it approach flat towards the end of the year? And just lastly, related to that lottery point on comps in Q4. On a full year basis, do you think in '25, the number of long cycles you had is sustainable? Because you've relaunched those games a couple of years ago, the mechanics are better. The engineer more frequent large jackpots. It's all what you wanted. So is there no problem growing on the 2025 base? Or is it a particularly big year and we should expect '26 to have a little bit of normalization in that number of long cycles?

Thank you, Jaafar. So to touch upon your first point, which is what is the bridge globally from the initial guidance to the more than EUR 3.7 billion. We have a small impact on the lottery and sports betting in France, mostly on the sports betting part because we will be slightly below 0 at the end of the year on sports betting retail. And it's a small impact compared to what we had in our forecast. And this impact is mostly due to the fact that we have a more important level of payout. And globally, on the lottery, in the full year, there is no change over our outlook. This means that when we say that we forecast a slight decrease in lottery and sports betting in the second -- in the last quarter, it's true. It was forecasted like that from the beginning. It's not new for us. Last year at the same -- in the same quarter, we had the concentration of most of our long cycles that we had in 2024. And it's -- I will touch upon the other question, but I can just now answer to the question. Is it sustainable to have this level of high jackpot for sure, it will -- 2026 will not be exactly as 2025, as we had most of those jackpots concentrated end of Q1, end of Q2 and beginning of August. Next year, I cannot promise that it will be at the same moment in the year. But when we look at the year globally, we are not in -- we are in a good year compared to some years that where we were behind the average level, but we are not in that exceptional year. So it's a good year, not that exceptional, but it will -- we will have some elements that will change in the different quarters in 2026. Another element on that, and it's a little bit too soon to say too much about that, but we are working on the relaunch of Euromillion that will occur not in 2026, but in 2027, to continue -- to drive more growth on this product because you have -- you raised a fair point is how do we continue with European community to drive growth on this product, and we have relaunched Euromillion in 2020. And now it's time to relaunch it again to get another step ahead on this product. For example, with a new ceiling on the maximum jackpot that will not be 250, but more than 250 and other changes in the game that will drive more capacity of growing and more capacity also of adding [same ID], or more jackpots at a very high level. Now to -- I've not answered completely to your question on the change to guidance. So we have a small impact on LSF, mainly on sports betting. We have a small impact globally on our smaller BUs mainly because we had a payout issue in PLI in Q1. We are recovering from this issue, but in the full year, we'll be a little bit behind our outlook, even if we are back to the level of the forecast -- of the initial forecast of the budget from Q2. But the impact that we had in Q1 is hard to totally compensate on 1 year. But no problem going forward on that. And the main drop that we have -- that explains why we are not exactly at the level that has been forecasted is on OBG. And OBG, we have complementary tax issues that have been -- have occurred notably in Romania, as you know. We are a little bit behind what we thought we would be in France, but we now are stabilizing the situation. And thirdly, what I explained, but I can be clearer on that, is that all the initiatives that we have put in place to be -- to occur in Q3 and Q4 are there. We are doing that, but with some weeks of delays, and it has an impact in the last part of the year. I took during my speech some example, but to be very clear on that, multi-license on Sweden on the brand Unibet, we get the okay from the regulator 1.5 months after the time that was forecasted. So we'll launch it by the end of October, but it should have been launched by the beginning of September. So we have some weeks of delay. It doesn't change anything in our forecast medium term, even 2026, but it's some weeks of delay. Regarding the KSP launch in the U.K. It was a really good launch and I know that part of you have seen that directly looking at the Unibet app. We have still some elements to complement -- to have a full coverage on the functionality that was there in -- with [Cambie], notably in play. And it will be fully -- the gap will be fully closed by the -- in the coming weeks, but it's not totally fully closed. So we have a little bit delay here. And lastly, we said that we would be able to at the end of the license review by the end of September, we are coming to the end, and there will be probably by next week, a communication that will at the end of this license review. The time for us to make some adaptations to our system, we will be able to meet the industry code more by beginning of December than before. It means that it's a 2-month delay versus our forecast. So you see there is a number of things that are not -- it's not catastrophic. There are some weeks, but as it is referring to a quarter, it is important. And the last point is what happened in the sports betting area in September, which is quite material also. Does it make it clearer for you?

Well, it makes it clear that it's about [EUR 70 million] million worth. Yes. I think it makes it clear that it's about EUR 70 million worth, but it's 7 things. There isn't one big thing.

There isn't one big thing. Just a combination of several small delays and the fact that has all been piling up at the end of the year. So that's why you have this.

And what makes us not worried is that there is nothing when you see all the elements that have commented that are substantially structural. The question of -- it is coming, a question of a week.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Matthew E. Spiegelman from LWC.

I guess my question is sort of a bigger picture question, which is ever since we did the acquisition, we run into a lot of pressure, pressure from taxes, pressure from sort of getting the operations in line. And a lot of these issues that you cited, they appear to be sort of matters of weeks, and that's kind of how you describe them. I guess what we'd like to do is get to a point where we've sort of turned the corner. And you talk about the fourth quarter getting to revenue almost or roughly flat in OBG. So my first question is, can you give us the bridge and your sort of confidence that we get there given that the OBG number this quarter is actually a steeper decline than last quarter? And then my second question beyond that bridge to the fourth quarter is, as you look to 2026, you guys gave some growth figures at the Capital Markets Day. Help us understand how you think about growth for OBG looking ahead, at least in general terms.

Yes. If I have well understood your question is how can we give you some comfort in the fact that we will actually be at something like close to flat in the OBG side of our activity in Q4. I think the first major element is the lapping of the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, globally, we are, as I said in the speech, something like 45% behind. The measure that has been taken in the Netherlands has begun to impact us the 1st of October. So this is for sure. This is mathematically sure that we will have a better comp. It's also the case in the U.K., even if it will be gradually better as we are implementing the different measures that I told -- that I touched upon. And if you recall what I said during the speech, if you look at the OBG without U.K. and Netherlands, we are -- we are growing. So if we -- is the problems that we had in the U.K. and the Netherlands [are left] and we get better on those 2 countries, it is quite obvious that we will be able to be in the Q4 at 0. So globally, it's the sum of a comp that will be far better in Q4 and the result of the continuing improvements that we are making and the launch of the different things that we are doing. Last thing is the continuous success and positive performance of our offering in France, which is also having a positive impact driving up the whole OBG. So when you take all those elements, you are coming to the same conclusion as the one that I'm presenting you in that we will have something that will be on par -- broadly on par by Q4. So what will happen in 2026? In 2026, we will continue to implement our new functionalities, our new offer, et cetera. So as we will have lapped all those elements, we will be able to be back to growth in the OBG world. What I can say, it's a little bit too early to draw a precise 2026 guidance. But I can reiterate clearly what we said during the CMD is that on the OBG world begin 2025 to 2028 on average, it's a yearly high single-digit growth. And we are completely in line with that, and we are continuing to believe that we will be able to achieve that when we will have passed our last moments -- difficult moment that we -- so for that, we have not changed, and there is no reason for us to change our mind. Everything is structurally, we are doing all what we think is good to get back to this growth and to be able to benefit from also the market growth because in average, what we said is that in this period, the average market growth in the market that we are in is more than 6%. So what we aim is high single digits to do a little bit more than this average growth as natural growth of the market, but it's not [3x] the level of the market growth. So for us, no change on our medium-term prospects. And again, we are doing all the in-depth work to be able to deliver that.

Okay. So it sounds like 4Q should be back to flat, and we should look forward to growth next year. I appreciate it.

We have one last question. Please, can you identify yourself.

It's Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank. Just one quick question, please. I think in your half year, you guided to net debt down EUR 150 million by the end of the year. So clearly, you're guiding EBITDA down by about EUR 10 million. I was just wondering, is that -- is there anything else we should be thinking about in terms of net debt forecast this year? Are there -- would there be any further savings? Or is now essentially your guidance that net debt will be down at EUR 140 million?

Well, let's assume that if there's any changes to this reduction in the full year debt, it will not be a really material -- no reason to think that the overall, I would say, big picture regarding this point is changing.

Yes, no material change.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Okay. Thank you very much for having joined us today. Our next scheduled financial communication will be for our full year '25 results scheduled Tuesday, 19th of February before trading. So goodbye, and have a good end of day.