Ipsos SA (IPS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day and welcome to the Ipsos Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Didier Truchot. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon and a good day, or good morning if some of you are joining us from U.S. So I would like maybe to summarize quickly where we are and how do we see the next few months. So as many other companies, I believe, we had a pretty good start for 2020. And I would say our rate of growth was good until mid of March. And it was true even if, of course, we had to see a kind of a very difficult situation in China. And not as bad as in China, but some also a slowdown in a couple of other Asian market. But now -- so this is what -- where we were until mid of March. If we are looking now at the month of March and how we have changed the -- our activity, if we include the whole of March, so the 4.5 weeks of March, our order -- so the new -- our net sales had decreased by 40% against the same indicator of last year. So the net sales that we had put in our books and which are contracts programs that we will handle before this year, not the sales for the next year, for this year, is down by 40%. And if we are just -- to just exclude the first 2 weeks of the month, the drop is even more, it's 50%. So it's, of course, something that we have not seen in, let's say, the last -- in Ipsos in the last 20 years since we have becoming a public company. That said, this minus 40%, minus 50% does not say the total story because it's a net. So it means that the new orders or the new program, the new contract that we got minus the cancellations and postponements. So the new order also -- have also declined but by a much smaller percentage, it was 20% for the full year -- for the full month of March, and 25% for the last 3 weeks. So in the last 3 weeks of the month, we still have been able, even with the lockdown in many of the markets in which we are operating, we have been able to sell a significant volume of new contracts. But unfortunately, we had also to cancel or to postpone, which, of course, for the time being, is treated in the same way to cancel or to postpone a lot of programs. And it's important for you to understand that the postponements and cancellations altogether they represent 7% of what we had in our, let's say, in our books at mid of March. So as we had already put in our books, around EUR 1 billion of work, which is nearly 50% of what we were targeting for the full year. This -- it means that these postponements or cancellations they represent around EUR 17 million. And of course, this is the reason why our net sales for the month are not EUR 170 million, EUR 180 million, which is the level of sales that we have done -- new sales that we have done, but much less than that. So overall, 40% of what we have recorded in March 2019. So there are different reasons why we are there. Of course, many of our clients are facing a very difficult business situations. And even if they don't represent the majority of our revenue, airline companies, hospitality companies, car manufacturers and some others, have stopped or at least decreased, and in some cases, postponed what they were planning to do with us in March and will they be available? I think we don't know. Maybe some of them will come back later in the year. But as we don't know, of course, as a way to be sure that we are not just dreaming but managing a real business, we have put these programs or these projects out of our sales book. There are also some very direct consequences of the confinement. And the truth is that a significant part of postponement and cancellation are related to the work that we do in a very simple way. So meaning that 1/3 of the Ipsos' turnover, so around 60 -- EUR 600 million are conducted using what we call face-to-face protocol. F2f protocol means that either by interviewing or by visiting or by talking with people in a -- physically, not digital connection, but in a very basic way. We collect some informations, which may be translated into numbers or into ideas, observations, that we do and which help our client better, either measure or understand their consumers. A significant part of this, I would say, face-to-face contracts have been stopped mid of March, and for a very good reason. It's because right now, we go to visit people neither in their offices nor in their home for, let's say, very, very obvious reasons. So all of that has created this unpredictable, I should say, situation, which means that some of this, of course, we are working with our clients to understand. If we can change the way of creating the information, the way to engage people, of course, we have some solutions. We are especially reviewing our digital platforms, social media content and other stuff. But of course, some of these programs are not -- we can't change them easily because they are producing numbers and information, where there is a need for a certain level of accuracy continuity, which means that you cannot change from one day to another, from one method to another method. So for the time being, of course, some discussions are being done, but it's still not formed. Many of these discussions that do not lead to, I would say, a positive output. So it means that we are, of course, in part linked to the end of the containment, and of course, of some, let's say, restrictive measure, which will follow the containment to resume these contracts. We have not logged them, but -- so we have put them out of our book of sales because we don't know when we will be able to resume these contracts. So under all of these conditions, we are -- of course, we had to withdraw what has been in our guidance which was, as you may remember, a guidance where we are supposed to grow on a like-for-like basis between 2% and 4% in 2020. To be very transparent with you, when we made -- when we wrote that in February, we thought that it was a pretty conservative guidance because our activity was significantly higher than that. But already, we have some cautiousness because of what we saw in Asia, even, of course, we are not able to predict the consequences of this pandemic on our global revenue. And then, of course, because we had to stop in a pretty dramatic and a direct way some of these programs, our overall performance for the first quarter, including the last 3 weeks of March, will be not as strong as has been our commercial activity until mid of March. We don't have now any more precision about what will be our final numbers for the first quarter. We will release these numbers in 2 weeks' time. But it's true that we know already that it will not be as good as we thought they would be. Having said so, because fortunately, in some ways, our exposure to China and to the Asian market, we have been able to prepare since the beginning of March and then to materialize after March 15 a lot of different measures, which will help us to adjust our cost base to what will be our overall performance at the top line level for 2020. So first of all, and I believe that many companies have done that. We have now weekly reporting systems with different elements. You may know that we have the same ERP, which is used in all the markets in which we operate. We also have some, let's say, calls with our country managers and the member of the management of Ipsos which we spread all over the world every week. We have started to reduce, let's say, the volume of payroll that we had in our budget and that we have also spent last year. We have stopped our recruitments, I believe, around March 8. So we have said to everybody that we are freezing recruitment, promotions and also salary increase. Many of our directors and executives have spontaneously, I would say -- there's not been a global, I would say, request to reduce their salary by a certain percentage between 10% and 20%. By the way, the 2 people that we will be a part from an Ipsos' perspective in this call, meaning Laurence Stoclet and myself, will reduce our payroll by 20% starting April 1. And of course, we are actively using the different plan, which has been implemented in a certain number of countries and which are helping companies to avoid to, let's say, to develop some staff cut plans. Our bonuses for -- which were linked to 2019 have been paid, but all our variable compensation systems in relation with 2020 have, for the moment, been put on hold. So -- and I think they already have understood that the situation in which we are is not only -- was not predicted but that it's special and that a lot of what will happen depends on, of course, how long the lockdown will last and then what will be the restrictions, which will be put in place by the -- in the different markets in which we operate. We have -- there are a certain number of other measures, which have been put in place already, and including in terms of capital investments, discussion with the landlord and so on. So, yes, we are doing what many companies are doing. But we are doing it, I would say, in a pretty strong way because we know that we need -- at the same time that we are reducing our cost base, we need to keep in place all the programs, the resources, the team that we need to do a good job with our client as soon as, let's say, the life will resume because this life will be maybe different from what it has been before. So we are -- this is where we are. Once again, we are, of course, spending a lot of time with our clients. And they -- and we are, in some ways, help how we are comfortable in doing so because once again, we are -- we see a lot, I would say, activities in terms of not just talking, but building plans, scenarios, programs that we will start, we hope, at the end of the lockdowns. During the lockdowns, we will still work, but of course, at a much lower pace. But they are our clients, whatever they are, public clients or public institutions or private clients, I would say, a lot, a lot of questions to us, a lot of -- and they are right now using -- partly they pay for that but with friendly discussions about what will happen next. And this is what we think for our industry and for Ipsos an opportunity. But it's an opportunity, which will take some time to be -- to materialize. And during this period, we will keep, I would say, our teams in place, most of them. We will train them. We will support them in the activities with the clients. We will, of course, also do more in terms of developing some, I would say, digital solutions. And at the end of the day, we are keep preparing ourselves to provide to our clients what they will absolutely need, which is a comprehensive set of information as soon as it will make sense for them from their business perspective. Okay. So this is what I wanted to say on behalf of the company. And I will let Laurence Stoclet talk to you about maybe just -- talking about what -- how we will communicate in April and then how we will held our shareholder and general assembly in May.

Thank you, Didier. Yes. An important point for all our shareholders is that we have decided to keep the date of our general meeting, which is on May 28. But this meeting will not be held physically. So we are encouraging all you to exercise remotely your rights before the general meeting by post or electronically. And we will held this meeting on closed doors. But we will have a transcription film of this meeting. An important, obviously, aspect for our shareholders is our dividend distribution. And we have decided to cut by half the proposal that we had initially at the end of February. So it is $0.45 per share instead of 89% cents per share -- sorry, $0.89 per share that we will propose to distribute beginning of July. As usual, we will release our Q1 revenue and other indicators numbers on April 23 after the close of the stock exchange. And we will give you, of course, more details than right now about this revenue for Q1. But we thought that it was important to give you some perspective because Q1 is what we have done and already realized. But what is, of course, more important is what we will do in the coming months. Thanks for listening, and it's time for a Q&A session. Both Didier and myself will be happy to answer any of your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Nicolas Langlet of Exane.

I've got 3 questions, please. The first one on China, how the business developed in recent weeks in the country? And did you see clients that canceled or postponed their orders during the lockdown period coming back? And looking at Q1 overall, roughly by how much do you expect sales to decline in China? That's the first question. Second question on the operating cost base. Based on the initiatives you mentioned in the press release, how do you expect OpEx to evolve in 2020? Is it fair to expect year-on-year decline in absolute term? And if yes, by how much? Finally, I understand that the lack of visibility at the moment, but based on available information, what sort of range of organic sales decline do you expect for the full year? And I would say, is it more or less than 10% based on the current information?

Okay. So first of all, I will answer about China because it's an easy question because it's not -- you don't ask me any forecast. So it's far better. So I can answer to that question. Our level of sales in China have been -- so we started the year with a great, what we call, carryforward. So we sold a lot at the end of last year to be executed this year. But as you know, because of the Chinese New Year and so on, there is very little work done in China before February 15, which means that when we were supposed to start to execute these programs, it was already the lockdown in most of China, so we have not been able to start the execution of many of the work that we sold at the end of last year. So then we sold very little in February, less than half of what we sold last year. And in March, we were at minus in terms of sales just for the month of March, probably better than February, but still not at its own, so let's say around minus 30% and so on. But now we know that at the end of March, we also had what we call a pipeline, which is in some ways, the addition of all the discussions, negotiations, projects that we have with our clients. And this pipeline at the end of March is higher than the pipeline that we had at the end of March of 2019, which shows that part of what had not been done in February and in the first week of March, it is in a process to be activated in some ways, to activate it. So we don't know exactly what will be our activity in April. We know that all our offices now are open, except the small one that we have in Wuhan. And Beijing, I think that it's a 50-50 system, meaning that half of our staff can be in the office at the same time, and half of that have to stay at home and so on. But when you have half of your staff in the office, you do a lot. It can do a lot because it's not like there is no one in the offices are empty as they are now in so many cities in which we have offices. So we think that our situation in China, to answer to your question, will improve now rapidly. We believe that the second quarter will be, of course, much better than the first quarter. Will we be at the level of last year? I don't know. But we are pretty optimistic with just a question, which is about the car industry because we do -- let's say, we do, with the current partners in China, a little bit more than 20% of our overall activity. And this part have not been very lively, I would say. But once again, if the car manufacturers are starting to sell cars again in China, they will very quickly also go back to try their consumers to do some -- to ask us to do some Mystery Shopping work and so on and so on. Nissan yesterday, Nissan Motors, they released their Chinese numbers. So March, if I remember where they're at, they're at minus 40% or 44%, which is better than February, where they were probably at minus 90%. But more interestingly, they say that they are seeing, let's say, their sales much better in April. The -- it will take -- we think that it will take another couple of months before we'll be back to, I would say, normal situation. But we should be okay in China this year. Okay. So the second question is probably for -- what is your second question, sorry?

The second question was on the initiative to control the operating costs. And based on what you already announced and implemented, how do you expect the OpEx base to evolve in 2020?

We have -- of course, our largest line item is our payroll. So this is what we need to monitor quite carefully because we are talking about a total of, let's say, EUR 800 million per year. We are taking a number of measures already. I think Didier mentioned them. Of course, we have frozen the salary increase for 2020. We have obviously frozen as well recruitment, including replacement. And we are looking, and this time, really country by country on any, I would say, further reduction that we can have so that we match, of course, our payroll with our level of activity. So we are taking, by the way, advantage of some subsidies and some plans that some governments has put in place. It is especially true for our teams who are working on our face-to-face data collection modes because those ones are for the countries which are stopped, in fact. They don't have work to do, so we need to take care about that headcount to keep it live because we have to be ready to resume our work once the confinement measures will be less restricted. Sorry. So this is what we are doing and these are really on a country-by-country basis. And we have not, I would say, the kind of overall plan where I would give you specific numbers, at least not at this stage. Despite the fact that we have asked our top, I would say, executives in most of the market to cut their salaries between 10% to 20% and -- but the point for us is we want to really adapt to exactly the level of activity because it's not because the field work has been eventually suspended that our teams are not still working right now on delivering projects, which were sold earlier in the year or even at the end of last year, and those teams are quite busy. So the fact that people who are working once again on our face-to-face field force, this is approximately 1/3 of the people that we are designating as our operation teams. They represent around 30% of the headcount of Ipsos altogether, with operations team. And 1/3 of them are working on our face-to-face methods. And those are stopped, I would say, in most of the markets. Not in China, we have started again. But in a lot of markets, it is as of today, stopped. And we are doing everything that we can to not to have to pay those teams taking into account those government measures. But for the rest, we are really acting, I would say, on a country-by-country base because we need, of course, to continue to deliver to our clients the old sales and then we'll sell the new sales that we are -- that we have.

Okay. And the last questions is on the organic sales evolution at group level. I know it's very difficult for you to give any precise number, but at least even a broader range would help us a lot. And based on available information, but also the Chinese experience you had so far.

Okay. I understand the question, and you may understand why it's extremely difficult for us to answer. And I would say, for 2 reasons. The first one is all of that is pretty recent. It's -- if we had this call 4 weeks ago, we would not be at all in the situation in which we are now. So it's recent. It's global -- but it's global and we have mentioned China, but there are some other markets, which are less affected -- much less affected than some others. So it means that because it's very recent, it's difficult to answer. And even in China, the lockdown have just ended yesterday. In Wuhan, of course, it wasn't. Before that, some restaurants are opened in Beijing for what I know. But it's still a new. They're just starting to work in some way. So -- and the second reason is because there is no -- I would say there is nothing in the past, which give us an indication on what will happen in the next few months. We know that it will not be as bad in June, July as it is now. But we don't know how long it will take to fully recover. I mean there are a lot of economists writing a lot of documents, and we are looking at all of that. And what we see is a bit like the physicians in France. Each typically has its own views and there are a lot of differences between one to another. So for instance, Bank of America, I will tell you that the last quarter of 2020 will be absolutely fantastic. There is another economists who say that the economy will not recover fully before the end of 2021, not '20. So I don't know. What I know is that we are doing everything that we can to be sure that: one, this company will have the money to operate; and two, that we are -- we are not just keeping -- we are developing the tools and the system, which will give us the possibility to work well with our clients. So will we grow -- will we be -- will the Ipsos revenue be smaller in 2020 than in 2019? The answer, yes, it's probably yes. It will be by 5%, 10%, 15% less, more. At this stage, I don't know. But we will know more, we'll say, in the coming weeks and months. So we'll probably give you more information when we release our Q1 numbers in 2 weeks' time. And we will tell you more when we do our general assembly at the end of May. So please don't worry. We will keep you informed as quickly as we are getting, I would say, a reasonable and safe level of informations.

We will now take our next question from Emmanuel Matot of ODDO.

One question from me and 2 clarifications. First, can you update us on your financial liquidity? What about your debt repayment schedule, risk related to the covenants, the level of undrawn credit lines at the end of March? And about the clarification because I had some questions from investors this morning about that, too. We have to understand from your press release this morning that in the current context, it makes sense to expect a drop in your turnover by around 40% to 50% as long as the situation does not improve at all regarding the epidemic. And the second clarification is about your guidance. You withdraw this morning your guidance for sales this year. Is it also the case for your 10% plus operating margin guidance?

Okay.

I can maybe start by the liquidity question. We have -- and we will give specific numbers on the 23rd of April, but we have a reasonably good liquidity position as of today. It is actually a bit better than the position that we had at the end of December, simply because as we had a strong Q4 and a good start of the year in terms of sales, we have obviously got the cash collection from that in the recent, I would say, weeks. So actually, our level of cash is higher than what it was at the end of December. In terms of available credit lines, we had at the end of December more than EUR 500 million of credit lines unused with maturity of more than 1 year. So -- and it is more or less the same today, and we have not used them by definition that we have generated more cash. So we have that. And in terms of maturity of our debt, you have that also in our annual release. We have some amounts which are due this year because we have the repayment to do of the U.S. private placement that we did in 2010. This is around EUR 180 million of debt that we will repay. We will use our available credit line to repay this amount unless -- and this is the maturity in August, unless we can do a refinancing of this U.S. private placement at a better, I would say, cost than the one that is in the current debt because the current debt has a coupon of around 5%. So actually, we are quite happy to be repaying it and to have, I would say, forward lower interest charge. So we had organized the company so -- in a way that we had enough available credit facility to repay our debt for 2020 and 2021, and it's still the case today.

Okay. Then the question is, will we have revenue down by, I don't know, 30%, 40% or 50%? Well, we may have that for a couple of weeks or maybe for months, but we certainly are not planning in any way to have the activity of the company cut by half for the year. This is not the kind of magnitude of a decrease that we are looking for. Once again, you have to understand that even if -- of course, there is this very strong shock like a kind of heart attack, but in the middle of March, we have more proposal than we ever had in history of the company. We have more discussion than we ever had in history of the company. We have more, let's say, new programs, new, I don't know, new protocols, new -- than we ever had in the history of the company. And we have a pretty strong position in many different markets. Having said so, it's true that we are facing in U.S. a situation where most of the people are working from home, which is unprecedented. We are -- I don't know the -- sorry. you know all of that. So -- but what we are not -- once again, we don't think that the world will end in 3 weeks' time even if we believe that there will be a lot of pain and a lot of adjustment to be made. But we are working with many, many different clients. By the way, as usual, at least -- the crisis, have -- there are always some similarities. For instance, our local clients are more active than -- less inactive than our somewhat or some, not all, of our global clients. Because the media companies like Google or Facebook are more active than some car manufacturers and so on and so on. So there are a lot of things going on. But to your question, should we -- are we -- in our scenario planning, do we have a scenario where Ipsos will be down by 50% for 2020? The answer is no.

And maybe to answer your last question, Emmanuel, about our guidance that we have reached on. Obviously, this is true for our top line guidance but as well for our operating profit guidance as there is absolutely no way in this kind of environment, where we don't have visibility on the top line, don't have visibility on the operating profit, which is the difference between the top line and your cost. So we are giving even more visibility on the cost. That's for sure. As we say, the costs are always for sure and the revenues are not. But -- so no, we don't have -- we have, of course, we don't know our guidance for the top line and the bottom line.

We will now take our next question from Conor O'Shea of Kepler Cheuvreux.

First question, Didier, just to clarify, when you were giving the numbers about China for March. Is this order book? Or is this revenues? And can you just -- if it's order book, can you give us a sense of how long it takes for that usually to translate into P&L revenues? And if you could also maybe say something about the other, let's say, emerging markets outside China, where I think the lockdown is happening a bit later but maybe much worse to come. Are you seeing anything outside in those particular markets where you're present? Second question, maybe a question for Laurence. You helpfully gave the number on the payroll of EUR 800 million. Can you have a sense of how big other costs like, say, travel are on a yearly basis in a normal year that could also be reduced significantly, at least until the lockdown eases? And then the third question just on terms of -- you mentioned a few times on the government support to avoid unemployment situation where they -- in some cases, they pay up to 80%. Could you just give an idea of whether in deciding to pay the dividend, even though it's only half what was initially expected, whether, particularly in France, you will still be able to use government assistance in that respect?

So about the payroll costs and -- but also the other line, the important line item, there are 2 other, I would say, large buckets of costs. You have what we call the direct costs, and those are fully variable. So that's around EUR 700 million. And then we have what we call genex, so general expense, above EUR 220 million. In those genex, the largest line item is linked to our premises, and we are spending there around EUR 76 million. This is more or less fixed, frankly, even though we are in certain markets trying to renegotiate with the landlords for the locations where our teams are working in home office, but I would say that it is more or less fixed. We have other line items which are less fixed in Norway, our communication and marketing costs, so we are spending a bit less than EUR 10 million per year. And our travel and entertainment, where we are spending EUR 30 million per year. And of course, we have spent what we had to spend in, I would say, the first quarter more or a bit less, but those items are frozen for the time being. The other costs frankly are IT cost, telecom costs and things like that and training of our teams that we cannot really reduce and which are totally linked with the number of people that we have or with fixed contracts that we have. So about China and how we see the order book in China and how long before it translates into...

Well, I -- let's say, from an order book perspective, as I said, we started the year with a strong order book. So part of that will be executed starting in April, so it will be a translation in revenue of contracts that we signed before the beginning of the year. So I don't know exactly what will be the impact in April, May, June, but it will be definitely positive because many of that have not been executed so are not in our, let's say, March or Q1 revenue. And then from a new sales perspective, at least for the discussion that we had with our Chinese management, they believe that April will be a very important month, just to repeat what they have said. And they hope that they will be at level at least to match in April -- what they have done last year in April. Which means that then that we have to catch up on what they have not sold in February and March of this year. But if we're really able to -- at least to make the same level of activity as last year in terms of sales, which will be, of course, a great signal. By the way, we have put in place a kind of work stream to look at what is going on in China, Korea and Korea to -- in some -- not necessarily to exactly predict what will happen in the Europe or in U.S. a couple of months after, but at least to learn as much as we can about this mechanism of recovery after this very strange situation. By the way, we do that for ourselves, but we do that also for a couple of clients who are trying -- just trying to have some scenarios on what will happen next. I mean everybody -- well, there are a lot of articles, writings, views, but everybody's confused about what -- how you restart an economy after this kind of stop.

Okay. So the numbers you're giving for China, they are 4 new sales order book. So obviously, very strongly done in March and then come back in April.

No, no, no. Conor, I can give you the order -- the year-to-date order book, which is -- so I say back in March, it was minus 35%. This is for March, okay? The year-to-date order book is at minus 40%.

For China?

For China -- no, no, it's much better for the Ipsos book. So China is at minus 14%, which means that we start the year in a positive territory. And of course, we had some bad sales in January, and really no sales in February, and as I said, difficult, challenging month of March. But once again, with a lot of discussions and a lot of projects which are there, our Chinese team believe that it will be translated into a good level of sales later in the months.

Okay. And on the dividend and the government's assistance, what is the situation there?

Well, in fact, the government has not linked to a -- has much linked the ability for our company. In that case, this is our French subsidiary, which is called Ipsos France, because, of course, you know and you can understand that the measure -- the furlough measures do not apply to the people like Didier and myself working at the parent company level. We are, I would say, working more than we can have been from -- that's a pity, but it's -- by the way, it's fraudulent in France if you try to take advantage of those subsidies if you are actually working. So it's only for people who are out of work truly. And what they have said so far is that we will not put any specific rules. The only rule that has been released, and it was yesterday by our Minister of Economy, was to say that if a large company ask for delaying the payment of its income tax, then it needs to commit not to distribute any dividend in 2020 and not, by the way, to do share buybacks as well. This applies. So only if you are asking to delay the payment of your income tax, and this applies only for companies who employ more than 5,000 people or with revenues in France higher than EUR 1.5 billion. I wish it was higher than EUR 1.5 billion in France, but it's not the case. So in any case, this measure does not apply to Ipsos.

Okay. That's very helpful. And do you think in your 85 countries where you are present, do you have like a rough sense of particularly where you have had to make these furlough measures? What percentage of state aid is there that you could benefit from? I mean is it a significant proportion of those countries offering this type of assistance? Or is it only a few?

No, no, no. It's really more in developed markets. There is almost nothing in other markets. In China, they have allowed companies to postpone the payment of income tax and also social taxes. This is it. But -- so mostly in Europe, you have the kind of furlough. But this is an American term, way to put some of our staff, which is not working into those furlough measures. And you have a number of markets where it is the case in the U.K., in France, in Germany, and to some extent in the U.S. as well. But it does not, in any case, compensate in most of the cases for the full cost of the payroll.

Okay. And sorry, just to check on the other emerging markets. Has that -- like in Lat Am and so on, has that slowed in line with the group that you've already seen? Or is that maybe something that could slow with a couple of weeks' delay compared with some of the other territories?

Yes. I think that the slowdown is really linked to the lockdown. But, there is some kind of slowdown anyway because you have a couple of clients who have -- and I will not give their name, shame on them. They have decided to stop any marketing activity, not market research, marketing activity globally and so on. So they are totally unthoughtful. They have organized their own marketing lockdown, which is up to them. That is their business and their decision. But beyond that, it's clear -- the lockdown has triggered a huge slowdown of the business, which means that we hope that the end of the lockdown will help us to go back to a better business. We have an experience, by the way, which is not the financial crisis, but which is September 11 in U.S. Because when there was a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in September of 2001, the U.S. society stopped, and there was a travel ban for everybody. So we had some of our staff who were 2,000 kilometers from their home and were to stay where they were for, I think, if I remember well, 10 days. And the whole market, the whole country but overall market was closed for more than 3 weeks. So we lost the whole of September 2001. But then when the country restart, our activity restart too. So I'm not saying that this is the same. This one is global. It's longer, by the way. And unfortunately, as all of us know, the cost of down player will not be, let's go back to the normal life. We'll have a lot of restrictions for a certain period of time, and nobody knows for how long. So it's testing. So -- but it depends on our institutions in Latin America. In Latin America, it's true that probably we can abate the beginning of the slow of -- of our slowdown more in the fourth and 5 weeks than in the third week of March, and it has been in France or in other European market or U.S. market. So it's a bit -- maybe there are some delays. But once again, the same situation is bringing the same consequences. If there is a full lockdown or nearly full lockdown as to one that we are experiencing right now in France, it's -- the business is going down very much, and we expect it to go back, not necessarily at full speed, but to go back as soon as the lockdown -- the full lockdown will be -- will end.

We do have one more question. This question comes from Thibault Moureu of Metropole Gestion.

I want to -- I had a question on the face-to-face protocol activities that represent most of the lost revenues. You mentioned, if I got it correctly, that part of it can be adapted to some digital platform protocols. Is it possible to quantify how much of it can be adapted? And out of the minus 40% or minus 50% loss revenues in March, how much do you think can be recouped later in the year and maybe more postponement? And how much is done forever in your view?

Okay. So if you listen our team, they will tell you that most of what has been postponed/canceled is postponed and not canceled. Then you can -- it's more a little bit not as close to the business as they are. You can question part of this assessment because there may be some work, which will be not necessarily canceled, but the time that we are losing now will be difficult to recover or meaning that the money that we are losing now will be difficult to recover. So that will be difficult. In U.K., we have an activity, which is to recruit and to maintain panels for media measurements. So there are several contracts, one for television, one for radio, one for print and so on, and Ipsos owns these contracts. So we interview people, and then we recruit them and then they are part of panel, which are like Médiamétrie in France using some devices to record what they are doing, for instance, when they are watching television. These recruitments are done based on a very sophisticated sampling technique using face-to-face protocols which means that our interviewers are going to a very specific set of households to build panels which are -- which then will be representative of the total population in U.K. So it's pretty, let's say, it's typically strong. These contracts are stopped. They are stopped because if we are not able to go to visit in a random way people in their home, the method that we are using are not -- can't apply. And of course, you can understand that in this situation, we cannot choose, I would say, easily digital panels because there are still in U.K. as everywhere else, some people who are not on a daily base linked to Internet or social media or whatsoever. So -- but then there are some methods that you can use as a substitution to face-to-face consult. And the first that you have in mind, generally in mind, is to use techy -- telephone interviewing, mixing long lines and mobile. And we know how to do that. And we know how to create sample with the same level of rigor than using face-to-face methodologies. Except that the clients, which are some committee, professional committees and so on, they are both face-to-face and not telephone interviewing and -- okay. So if the lockdown last for 2 months in U.K. and if we can resume face-to-face field work after, let's say, another month, then I believe that these committees will decide to go back to keep the current methodology because they are more comfortable by -- doing what they have decided to do some years ago and so on. And then we will get the revenue not for the 12 months, maybe not for the 9 months where -- if we have stopped for 3 months, not for 9 months, but maybe for more than that because in some ways -- and it's already, can we say, globally agreed. The clients understand that they have to pay for part of the work which has not been done during, let's say, the 3 months because they are in some ways to maintain and we have to maintain this field force, this face-to-face field work itself. So there are some negotiations. There might be some negotiations. If the lockdown lasts for more than 2 months or if we cannot resume face-to-face field work after 3 months, then, of course, there will be a change in the protocols, and we're seeing that the client will accept to go to a methodology that we can implement and use. But there's still negotiations that just started because, once again, the problem that -- the big challenge that we are facing is that there are a lot of uncertainty about the length and the depth of the restrictions that -- not just us and the industry, but that overall, the business, the different businesses are facing.

So maybe to give you a bit more precise numbers. When we say that 1/3 of our business is done using face-to-face methodologies, actually, this is around 21% using interviews that we are doing at home or in control locations and it's 12% which is in relation with consumer focused groups where we put for our qualitative methodologies, people together in the same room to discuss and to do some in depth, I would say, insight and brainstorming. Usually, the first type, which is our face-to-face survey, there is a certain ability in, I would say, some emerging markets to switch to online what we were doing previously face-to-face or to, let's say, accelerate in some cases the switch to online because in emerging markets, this face-to-face still represents 40% of what Ipsos is doing, but it is much less in the developed markets. And it is why in total for the group, this face-to-face surveys are 20% -- 21%, sorry, of our business. And so in the case of some face-to-face -- and this is what Didier was describing face-to-face service that we have kept in the developed part of the world, this part is usually still face-to-face because there are pretty good reasons for that to be face-to-face. So it's not something that you can switch very frequent. So that's for our, I would say, face-to-face service. When it comes to our physical focus group, which is the other type of face-to-face methodology, we have, I would say, more ability to switch that to online workshops. We are doing it. Actually, today, online workshops represent -- well, the online part is 2% of what we do, and we do 12% face-to-face. So yes on that, there is a certain ability to switch part of this 12% done in physical focus groups to online focus groups as it is less in a way problematic, if you like, to -- for this type of strategy. But of course, it takes time because it -- those are changes in methodologies. And usually, our clients, they are like us, technicians, and they don't like to change very fast their methodology. So it's not that we could not do it. It's more that we need also to convince the client to do it.

As soon as the client will see that there is a need for them to get more information about consumers, they will be more open to new methodologies. And like any deep crisis, this one will accelerate some changes, which nevertheless should have happened earlier. My message there is just to say that we have 2 important, let's say, competitive advantage. One, we have all the tools which make our clients able to switch if they want -- if they agree to switch, so we don't have to develop things which -- that we don't have. We have in the last couple of years developed a lot of systems and tools, which give us the possibility to do it, to do this switch. And two, as we are operating with many different clients and the clients know, in some way, they are also doing what other clients are doing, we are pretty confident that we will find quickly clients which will give us the opportunity to do more with these new systems and protocols, meaning that the other clients repeat -- the most conservative clients will be much easier to convince. But if they need information, they will need information. So one way or another, they will have to. If we cannot go face-to-face, they will have to accept it. We hope and we expect that we will be able to resume our face-to-face work in Europe at the latest in -- before the end of the year, of course. And it's not we are not in really developed market. The market in which these face-to-face methodologies are less used right now is U.S. So the impact on our U.S. business about the difficulties to go and visit people at home will not impact too much our U.S. business.

And there are no further questions at this time.

So if there is no more questions, I would like, of course, to thank you very much for your attention and for your questions. I believe that, like me, you are discovering something that you have never experienced before. But know we -- once again, we think that if we are -- if we know, let's say, our market and we think that we know our market, we do believe that we will find ways to make our clients comfortable and our company successful. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

That concludes the call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.