Legrand SA (LR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I'd like to thank you for being here with us this year. And I wish you on behalf of the Board of Directors, welcome to this combined general assembly of shareholders. We are very pleased to welcome you, and it's a great pleasure to remind you the [indiscernible] of Legrand. This year, we are celebrating the 160th anniversary of the company, which is in the greatest shape. it's a French global champion proud of its history and of its origins, even though its roots are in the French territory, we have grown in 170 countries. We are present on high profile segment. And while remaining leaders in our historical business, we have positioned ourselves as a key player in digitization, particularly data centers, first, by innovating innovation and via the acquisitions with 200 search acquisitions worldwide since 1950. Legrand has an excellent financial and nonfinancial performance with an integrated strategy while respecting in the interest of all the stakeholders with a capital allocation strategy that is well balanced in an uncertainty and ever-changing world, sticking to our values and consistency, the passion of the Legrand workers, the quality of the management team and the unwavering support of the Board of Directors, which is well united. These are many assets for sustainability and high performance level. Legrand has many promising years ahead, and we're hoping to share those with you. I suggest we start with some information regarding this general assembly. When you arrived, you were given the card as well as a digital tablet so as to vote on the resolutions. On the stage with me, you have Mr. Benoît Coquart, the CEO. Franck Lemery, CFO of the group; as well Emmanuelle Levine, who is the Legal Director of the group, and she's also the General Secretary of this general assembly. This is a public meeting, which is also webcast in French and in English on our website, www.legrandgroup.com. We'll first have look at the composition of the bureau, the scrutineers being the shareholders with the highest number of shares. And if I refer to the list given by the bank, Societe Generale, these are [indiscernible] Thank you. So the two of them with the support of these 2 people, I suggest we appoint Mrs. Emmanuelle Levine as General Secretary for this general assembly. Regarding the quorum, I will ask the secretary to remind us of the enforceable rules. The quorum for a general assembly first call is 20% of the shares with voting rights and for an extraordinary meeting, it's 25%. The provisional quorum is now at 81.18% of the shareholders with voting rights. Consequently, the quorum required by the French law is met, and we may start our session. Based on this, I officially declare open this combined general meeting. Emmanuelle, can you confirm that all the documents have been made available to the shareholders?

Well, indeed, the report of the Board on the social and consolidated account as well as the text of resolution as well as all the documents as per the French law have been made available to the shareholders under the required due times.

I also would like to remind you that we have with us the members of the Board of Directors who are sitting on the first row as well as our statutory auditors. And we're also very pleased to have with us former Legrand Directors who are still very loyal to the company. It is a combined general meeting with extraordinary and ordinary resolutions, which will be detailed later on by Emmanuelle at the end of my presentation, 11 to 13 are the ordinary resolution as well as resolution #17. Extraordinary resolutions are resolutions 14 to 16. We haven't received any suggestions for new resolutions or items to be added to the agenda by the shareholders. We have planned for this meeting to end around 5:00 after the voting on resolution. As per the usual habits I'll spare you the reading of all the reports. You will find all the text of the reports, which have been made available on the website of Legrand as well as the head office of the company. You have the agenda for this afternoon, displayed on screen, Benoît Coquart, the Chief Operating Officer, will present the details of the strategic model of Legrand, Franck Lemery will come to the financial performance. And Virginie Gatin, Head of CSR will present our achievements in nonfinancial results for 2024 as well as our 2025, 2027, CSR roadmap. And then Michel Landel Chair of the -- with our lead administrators will tell us more about the governance. The work, which has been achieved in 2024 before presenting the President of the Remuneration Committee as well as the social accounts for 2024, 2025, Emmanuelle Levine who's the legal officer will present the content of the resolutions, then our statutory auditors will introduce their report. We'll then move on to the Q&A session and eventually will come to the ballots on resolutions. Now I'm giving the floor to Benoît Coquart, our Chief Operating Officer.

Thank you Angeles, Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening, even though it's a bit dark. It's not the evening. Dear shareholders, I'm very pleased to meet you today. I will be presenting our business model. I know that many of you are quite familiar with this model. And if you have any questions, of course, I will answer your questions. We have a unique range of products. We have 300,000 SKUs in our catalogs and 200,000 customized SKUs. So that's 0.5 million products covering the whole range of needs in a building with a tertiary data center or residential housing. You have a few examples here. The traditional products, these are the control electrical installations, the cables in building as well devices, which may reduce energy consumption in a data center. So we have a full-fledged range. I think it is the most complete on the market with a balanced exposure across geographies, 40% Europe, 20% rest of the world, 40% North America. And for the markets, many people see us as a residential market operator, our historical business, of course, in your houses or apartments, you must have sockets of Legrand. It's still 35% of our revenue, but there are non residential that is offices, hospitals, universities, et cetera, account for 45% and data centers in 2024 accounting for 20%. And it will probably between 20% and 25% for 2025. We are uniquely positioned in this industry. We are the only sizable pure player in this business with two profiles of competitors. SMEs, which would have a turnover of some hundred thousand euros with a single market and a single range of products. And these are very dynamic because they have the best knowledge of their customers in the local market but they do not necessarily have the size and know how to expand beyond their domestic markets, and they're often the targets of acquisitions. And then you are dealing with very big companies, conglomerates with different ranges of products and services. And Legrand is somewhere in the middle, uniquely positioned a large size with EUR 9 billion sales revenue this year. So we are a global operator. And on the other side, we have this -- the agility, the specialization, the rapid development like SMEs. And this is making Legrand unique, and it also explains for its success. Now the assets of Legrand is innovation to start with. Over this long period of time, we spent some 5% of our sales in R&D it's a ratio above the industry standards every year. We may launch up to 10 product innovation. You have a few examples on the right-hand side. The Nexpand server racks for the white rooms of data centers with very small footprint allowing to gain space in the data centers and allowing for an easy cold and hot air circulation. And that's very important for data centers. We have the new Celiane range. I don't know whether some of you have had the opportunity or the fortune to refurbish your house or if you have a forthcoming such project, I will encourage you to have a look at this range of products, which has been designed and manufactured in France with a very nice design with a very interesting innovation for the electricians and for the dwellers of these houses. In addition, we have a whole range of solutions to mitigate climate change. Many solutions for that 23% will allow to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. We have the connected thermostat for your heating system so as to your energy bill will go down, 1 degree or one Celsius degrees is 8% less on your annual energy bill. So if you have such solutions allowing you to decrease the your temperature by 1 or 2 Celsius degrees with such thermostats with centralized smart systems, you can make a significant savings up to EUR 500 per year. So that's conventional products for residential. For commercial buildings, it will rather be lighting, according to the present or not in the building or depending on the natural light coming in the building or the -- and here again, you can make significant savings up to the data centers with cooling systems, which will help to significantly reduce the PEE that is energy consumption of data centers with the cooling systems, which are closer to the racks and with less energy waste. So these are some innovative solutions helping to save energy, and they're quite successful. And on top of that, we also communicate on the impact of products on their life cycle. And this is very useful information for engineering studies in order to eco-design buildings, which will consume less power with a higher efficiency. 75% of our sales are made with eco-responsible products, as we call them, with a full life cycle impact considered. Another asset are our customers. We have a long selling chain. We sell to wholesalers who, in turn, will sell to electricians, SMEs or individual electricians based on the requirements of architects, for instance, and they will end up putting these devices in your working environment or at home or in the data centers. And we want to meet our customers' objectives and satisfaction. And here, we measure the satisfaction of our customers, these are non-friendly word, but that's the way it is measured. There are two main parameters: the CSAT, customer satisfaction of clients. We interview customers to try and see if they're happy or not. We have an 80% rate, which is on the rise. And the second is NPS, the Net Promoter Score, where we check the difference between those clients that are very satisfied or those who are very unsatisfied and 30 is considered as a satisfactory percentage, and it has been on the rise since 2022. And it's not mundane activity. We've interviewed 400 customers in 170 countries. These customers will report their concerns and their request and country by country, we work with these customers, and we try to improve the product. And we've realized that we've done a lot of progress on technical support, training of our employees, et cetera. Another asset is our capacity to integrate more software in our activity. We have a connected range that's for 15% of our sales, more than 40 connected families out of 100. And the percentage of what is dedicated to software was barely 5% in 2010, is now 22% and will be 25% in 2030. So that's a high amount of our R&D headcount dedicated to this software development. Now pricing, of course, customers might consider that it is expensive. But as a shareholder, you might be very happy that we are regularly increasing our prices. In 2022, 2023, even though there was a high inflation rate, we've tried not to push too much on the prices to remain competitive on the market. But our capacity to increase our price every year is an asset in the long run. It's a 2% average per year and not by increasing the prices every year, it's know how that we have in-house and in all the countries where we operate, while acting on all the other levers because we have high-quality available, easy to maintain products that the face value of our product is acceptable to our customers. So as qualified here, it is a sustainable strategic asset. Acquisitions, mergers and acquisitions that as the Chairman of the Board has reminded us, we have done quite a high number of acquisitions, 26 since 2020, with EUR 3 billion invested for all geographic areas, North America, Europe, the rest of the world. That's true for all the infrastructure essential products but also new segments where we've heavily invested mainly in data centers. 60% of the acquired sales are related to energy and digital transition. And here again, it's because of this unique positioning as a specialist of an average size in its segment that we are attractive. The companies that are joining Legrand are not joining a huge conglomerates with many different actives, we are identified as a pure player in this sector, which will help these companies to grow. Their success story is just extraordinary because they have grown since they've joined Legrand. Now let's move on to the forthcoming trends. As you will certainly understand there is the environmental urgency, everything that is related to data and societal changes. Now for the first one, environmental changes, we may regret that this is not on the agenda anymore as opposed to 5 years ago. But Legrand, we still see it as something vital for our societies. And for the company, that is the share of electricity in the global energy mix will go from 20% to 41% mainly based on renewables and it is also the fact that there is this need to reduce the energy consumption of building. So if you want to reduce the global energy consumption of our societies. 30% of the energy consumption comes from the buildings. The second issue is the data everywhere with a booming growth with the need to invest heavily in energy infrastructures to support this. Now if you've read the papers recently, you've seen that there has been some statements when one operator would reduce some capacity, was postponing its investment, et cetera. But as far as we're concerned, we think that the data centers is a business, which will keep on growing massively in the forthcoming years. In the short term, it will be separated by the backlog by the orders, which is robust, which is securing our revenue for the forthcoming years. And the artificial intelligence, which will be present in all business sectors and the cloud storage, everything that is interconnected gaming, now, you had a console, it's online. Health and you have connected health. All this will translate in a booming of data and, therefore, of data centers. For those of you who are concerned you may be reassured that this business will keep on growing. And the growth in the population, the emergence of a certain number of middle class countries and the aging of the population. This will provide certain opportunities for Legrand because we have a full range of offers, assistance for autonomy health products. And this has led the group to keep investing in essential infrastructure products. Those you know of well, these are the signatures of Legrand, the switches and plugs. Since a few years, we have invested in all these solutions to support this transition. So these are data centers I talked about this, 20% of the group's total sales, the energy transition and all that is related to digital lifestyles. I will get back to this. So the essential infrastructure products, this is in building and construction. We're not doing that well but we hope that it will recover in the coming years. And of these products, 47% of the digital transition, it's drawn by these major trends that will allow us to develop and develop our activities. As for our offers, sorry for these slides, they are quite barbarian. You can find them on the Internet site, and you can go in the details of all this if you're interested. So here you have a visual aid on the solutions for the data centers. We have white rooms, server rooms, those are the white rooms and the gray rooms. We are the major players for infrastructures for those white rooms. And we have a full offering from the transformer, low-voltage, high-voltage and the racks, and then energy transition, where we have three segments, the products that allows us to distribute to protect electricity, the circuit breakers, the products that allow us to reduce the consumption of energy and the products that allow us to adapt to the new uses related to electrification. And thirdly, the digital modes of living that is smart homes and automation for hotels. And we have completed this offering with the connected health and this is EUR 200 million of sales. And here, you have projects the necklaces to help people if they are fall, et cetera, and connected software to manage the relations between the patient and the health care system. So this is a new segment of activity. We'll keep making acquisitions, and we hope that we will record some significant growth in those sectors. And then you have all the rest. And I insist, we are very proud of these products, and we are investing in these segments, R&D, essential infrastructure, systems devices, the components of the buildings, the boxes, the lighting, audio, video, et cetera, that represents more than half of our turnover. So I'll really use this slide at the end of our meeting, we'll give you a tablet to vote. And when you give us the tablet, in exchange of this tablet we'll give you a small gift, which is a deep lit, which is a multiplug system, multi-socket, you have USB-A, USB-C connections and you will be able to charge your smartphone on this. You can put your smartphone on the top and connect it from the bottom. So it's called a deep lit. I hope you like it. It's come out straight from our design office. Now why it is not the deep lit but why the strategy? Well, we have ambitions for 2030, as you can see, which are very strong but they're realistic, we have a plan to reach them total sales between EUR 12 billion and EUR 15 billion, of course, we have organized ourselves to reach the EUR 15 billion rather than the EUR 12 billion. That's the group strategy, want to keep being profitable, more profitable than the average in the industry. 20% of sales, free cash flow, around EUR 10 billion, and half of this free cash flow will be used for acquisitions. Between 2025 and 2030, we will spend EUR 5 billion in acquisitions that will create more value, and we will have a good distribution of dividends, 50% of net income payout. Very proud of this data at Legrand. We have some former directors here in the room. We'd like to reassure them. Since the IPO of Legrand, the initial IPO in the '70s, the dividend never went down. It was stable or it progressed. So for the 55th year we can boast a dividend that is stable or going up. So this year, it is stable or going up and Franck Lemery the financial manager will talk about this. So these are the financial indicators. We are very dynamic for all that is nonfinancial, 1/3 of the key management positions will be held by women, and Virginie Gatin will say it isn't just to be responsible player, we will have a better performance than what we have today. Our objectives are ambitious to reduce our carbon footprint, Scopes 1, 2 and 3. You have the figures here. We want to keep working on the circular economy by phasing out the use of single use plastic in our packaging of our products. And by saving energy, we will allow our customers to reduce 70 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, which is a lot for the group. And 80% of our sales will be responsible in the cross sales product I'm now going to show you a quick video showing you some video innovations that have come out since your last General Assembly meeting. Thank you. [Presentation]

Innovation, one of the two drivers of the group. Now I'd like to invite Franck Lemery, who's the Financial Manager of the group, and he's going to talk about the financial performance of the group.

Thank you, Angeles. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to be here to talk about the financial performance of the group. This performance will be described in three parts, what we've done in '24, '25, which is very promising. And the relations with the shareholders, therefore, between you and the company. Let's begin. And let's look back in time, let's look at 2024. And let's begin with our net sales. '24 was a successful year. It was successful in terms of activities, you're all aware of the market in which we operated in '24. It was a complex building market, which was slowing down. And in spite of that, the group recorded growth, if we combine organic growth with the growth through our acquisitions, plus 4%, and this was positive. So within this context, this was a major achievement. Now if we look at organic growth, we can see 2 things. First, the geographical situation. Where does this 1% of organic growth come from? The building sector was going through a slump. It came through North and Central America. The macroeconomics was more favorable compared to other developed countries. And our data center offer is highly present there. It also comes from the rest of the world with a plus 1.3% growth. So here all the countries, all the major geographies in the rest of the world are recording growth apart from China, which was slightly behind and Europe for Legrand really withstood and recorded a drop of only 2%. Once again, the building sector was undergoing a slight slump. So this is the geographical situation. Now if we look at the different sectors, the verticals in the group, the entire growth of the group came from the data centers. The data centers account for 20% of our activity. The data centers grew by 15% last year in organic terms over the full year. Now the second reason to be satisfied the second success of Legrand last year after our growth. In our net sales, this is profitability. You know the group well. You know that on an average, the group's profitability is around 20% in terms of the adjusted operating margin. Look at 2 figures here, the one on the top, 21%, the one at the bottom, 20.5%. You have the last 2 full years of Legrand, '24, '25, these are the 2 years -- sorry, '23 and '24, these are 2 record years for the group, 21%, 20.5% and two achievements from which we can learn two things. First, it truly validates the group's strategic model, the choices we've made in terms of market orientation. The orientation of our verticals. And it has also demonstrated the resilience of the group in a market that remained very complex in '24. Therefore growth, profitability, value creation in general. Let's look at the bottom of the net sales. So here, in terms of value, EUR 1.2 billion 13.5% of the sales. This is a remarkable figure. And these net sales was very well converted into generation of cash and generating cash is very important. EUR 1.3 million of free cash flow, nearly 15% of sales and the conversion rate, cash generation above 100%. So that's for 2024, nice growth, nice profitability, nice value creation and nice cash generation. Now if we look back, and if we look at this year over a longer period of time, in the past 5 years, let's look at the figures. And first, we must remember the number of crises, the environment in which we operated in the last 5 years between 2020 and '24. There was the COVID, post-COVID hyperinflation, the war between Russia and Ukraine, the supply chains, you remember, they were totally disrupted and all kinds of other things. The list is very long. We're living in a world where there are so many crises, multiple crisis as described by analysts. So what did the group do during these years. First, we posted growth plus 31% in terms of our sales. That's the first characteristic of the group. Secondly, profitability 20.3% of operating margin on an average, and our net sales increased by 42%. Then generation of cash, these are the three ingredients for our financial success, 15.3% of cash generation, and what did we do with this cash? How did we allot this capital? We allotted it in a very smart way and in a very disciplined way. First, we paid out dividends to our shareholders, a very attractive dividend, a permanent growth in our dividends, that is roughly 50% of the group's results that were paid out to our shareholders. Secondly, we invested for the future, we bought companies. Roughly half of the cash generation of the group over 5 years was dedicated to acquire new companies that will make up our future growth. And all this was done by maintaining a very robust balance sheet. Here, financially, we're talking about net debt over EBITDA ratio. And last year, this ratio was at 1.5, and the cash available accounted for EUR 2 billion. So over 5 years, just as over 1 year, the financial metrics were very satisfactory, very sound in a very complex environment. Now if we take some more hindsight, I suggest, just look at the slide that we share each and every year with you. This is how we share the added value that Legrand creates within the various stakeholders. The definition of this added value is what our customers give us the net sales minus what we pay to our suppliers. And this is a figure, and this figure is then allotted by Legrand roughly 50% to our employees in terms of wages, bonuses, 1/4 actions to develop. So we are preparing for the future. This is industrial investment, R&D, acquisitions and another quarter for the other stakeholders and the other stakeholders, 14% goes to the shareholders. So in this breakdown of our added value, there are two majors pillar that make up the DNA of the group. First of all, it is very balanced, 50% and 2 quarters over long periods, over 15 years, over 10 years, we have the same metrics. And the second characteristic is a great coherent stability of this breakdown of this added value over a long period of time. Now 2024, as I've just said, we shared this with a few figures. It was a very successful year in terms of our figures. You have not only the figures what I like to look at is the way in which we did this. 2024, there was a lot of strategic execution. I'd like to share with you 4 very restructuring initiatives that echo Benoît's presentation. First, the growth in our data centers. Last year, the data centers in terms of organic growth represented a growth of 15%. Over a longer period of time, it is nearly 20% growth. If we combine acquisition organic growth, 13% organic growth. So this is a very powerful vertical in terms of growth. And this figure is validating our strategy and is showing that Legrand's positioning is that of a leader of a champion in data centers. Now the second initiative, or strategy, which illustrated our road map in 2024 is that we use 5% of our net sales to innovate. Here you see multiple innovations, innovations in the growth segments, we talk about energy transition, digital transition and innovations in essential infrastructure. And this is one of the characteristics of the group. Even for our simple projects, we are always capable of innovating to benefit our clients. And so that is the second major strategic innovation for 2024 after the execution of our strategic road map. And the third major lever of our strategic road map, as Angeles said, and Benoît, these are our acquisitions. And this is an industrial activity. In 2024, you can see it was a vintage year in terms of figures, 9 acquisitions carried out in '24, EUR 430 million of acquisitions in 2024. And there's the quantity but there's quality too. Quality, we can find it acquisitions in data centers. Of course acquisitions in the digital lifestyle and especially connected health, which is a very promising segment. And you have acquisitions in a more traditional sector, essential infrastructures acquisitions that we have realized in Australia and in New Zealand, and acquisitions and the strategic benefits are very good here because overnight with these acquisitions, we nearly doubled our presence over this continent. Imagine the change in scale, the investment capacity, the quality of our relations with our distributors, the power of and the striking force of Legrand after these acquisitions in these geographies. The fourth lever for growth in 2024 is very traditional. We always mention that at our general assembly, these are all the productivity initiatives and the best way to do that is to share this with a video. [Presentation]

These are images that were like when you are interested in industrial production. Now let's turn to 2025. As we've said, it will be a promising year. Now the Q1 figures here again are displaying two things. The figures are showing that we are on the rise. 11.3% trend increase comparing the 2 quarters, if you compare organic -- if we take together organic growth and acquisitions, so 5.6% for organic growth. So it's quite robust. The second important financial indicator is our profitability. It has improved here again on the first quarter in 2025 compared with the first quarter of 2024. In terms of margin and net profit plus 6% for the net profit. And here again, we find all the ingredients that are driving the success of our strategic road map. The data center market is buoyant. In 2024, we said that the figures have grown in 15% of organic growth in the full year. For the last quarter, of 2024, the growth was 30%. In the first quarter of '20 to '25, it's even higher than 30%. Second, strong aspect in our strategy, and we'll talk about it again. And again, are the acquisitions since the beginning of the year, we have already announced 2 acquisitions and over 12 rolling months, it's about 10 companies that have been acquired for a total sales revenue close to EUR 500 million worth of acquisitions. So that's a very good starting point, 2025, a very promising starting point. So 2025 should also be a very good year. These are the targets for the group in terms of sales to start with combining organic growth and acquisitions, it's always important to have both together 6% to 10%. You'll remember that's 11% for the first quarter and adjusted operating margin, which will be stable compared with 2024. And of course, this implies a sticking to our CSR objectives, 100% achievement rate is our objective for our next road map. So these are the figures for 2024 and the figures for 2025. Now let's talk about the relation with you shareholders, starting with the yield of the Legrand share, you have two sets of data here. CAC 40 versus the Legrand shares, of course, usually, figures will end in December but we have gone for up to April but it's more than 450% in reality, if we consider up to April and an annual return with reinvested dividends of 11%. And it's even closer to 12% today as we're here. So these are good figures and good news for the returns for our shareholders. Now if we consider the dividend, the proposed dividend per share is growing by 5%. This is in line with the capital allocation that is 50% of the net profit and if we take a bit of a hindsight over 5 years, as I said, the sales have grown by 31% over 5 years. The earnings per share have also increased as well as the payout. Now still talking about our relations with our shareholders, we pay great attention to the quality of our relation with our shareholders, which is not based on figures but another qualitative aspect, let's say, good practices are shown here. I will remember from this list three of those the quarterly comprehensive information, we are one of few operator on the stock exchange in Paris, providing every quarter, all the figures with the cash generation, the P&L, et cetera. Second, many initiatives aimed at communicating with you. There is the letters to the shareholders. There is the website invitations to visit our sites. And lastly, on the right-hand side, also the fact that in our road map and in our strategy for CSR we are interviewing our stakeholders, our shareholders, who think it's important. So that's for the financial part of this general meeting. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Franck Lemery . As you know that the financial and nonfinancial performance will go hand in hand at Legrand and Virginie Gatin the head of our environmental and societal responsibility, will give you an update on all this.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Angeles. So I'll be talking about the CSR performance of the group, but to start with, there is a key message to convey, which was already mentioned by Benoît. Our CSR is really a driver for the overall performance of the group. It's important to mention this because it is a key element of the success of the group on a par with the financial performance. Now it allows us with our customers to be more relevant. We've talked about customer satisfaction earlier. Focusing on customer satisfaction with right indicators and clear objectives and targets will drive us to be better to improve the satisfaction of our customers who are helping these customers to achieve their objectives by providing the energy efficiency products because those customers are searching for these type of products but also want more information about the product and more products that are based on eco-design. It makes us a more attractive employer. We see that our employees are more loyal to us and they want to stay with us. It's also helping us to be more attractive, to attract more talent in the company. We want to use also the CSR drivers to attract new talents and train them, and it helps to unite the employees and to develop and foster a strong corporate culture. And finally, it helps us to be more efficient. We are still reducing the -- in a significant fashion, the cost of our energy consumption on our sites but also we have health and safety policies that are aiming at reducing the number of accidents, industrial accidents. And we constantly aim for improvement to be more efficient. And all this helps the group to be more efficient in terms of CSR. Now if we consider the non-financial aspect, it was the 2023-2024 road map. We have an achievement rate of 113%. We are very proud because our objectives were quite ambitious. The four pillars for diversity inclusion, we ended at 2024 at 122% for the carbon footprint in climate, 136%, for circular economy, we knew it would be the most difficult and the newest pillar in our road map for this period, 2020 to 2024. Our objectives were very ambitious. Our teams have been mobilized on this topic. We ended up the year at an 85% achievement rate and as a responsible business, we ended up at 108%. All in all, we're quite satisfactory with these results. Now what does that mean for the group? A few examples. Starting with diversity and inclusion. We closed 2024 with Hay Grade 14+ that is an executive position for women, 30.5%. A very interesting increase is 94% of our employees are working now in entities that are GEEIS diversity labeled that is various types of diversities that are considered, including gender diversity. And we have had close to 4,300 new opportunities for providers for early-in-careers fixed-term contracts, non-fixed term contracts, interns, et cetera. Carbon footprint very interesting result. We've reduced by 53% of direct and indirect carbon emissions, Scopes 1 and 2 over the 3 years. Our objective is to be at minus 30%. So we're very pleased. So thank you to all the teams for the work done on that 330 key suppliers have been committed in this undertaking so that they would reduce also their CO2 emissions by 2030 and therefore, helping us to reduce our own emission for a circular economy. As I said, it's a new pillar. It's important because it's about collecting material, recycling material, eco-design. But it is also meeting some of our customers' expectation. At the end of 2024, there were 10% of recycle plastics and 44% of recycled metals, and 75% of our sales were made with product sustainability profiles, including the PEPS or product environmental profile, providing our customers information as to the environmental footprint of the product they buy. And finally, as a responsible business, 96% of our employees were trained at least 7 hours in 2024. Our objective, of course, is to improve this. And when it comes to health and safety at work, we have decreased by 26% the TF2 that is the workplace accident rate with and without lost time over the 3 years of our road map. And for our business ethics, we are at 98% achievement in 2025. Another very important thing we are -- have become shareholders in Circul'R, a French company specializing in circular economy expertise and consulting. Now for 2022, 2024, we've had good results. But if we consider the last 5 years, we realized that the reduction of the carbon emission in Scope 1 and 2 was on the previous road maps as well, not only on the '22 2024 road map. So it's 61%, 5 years accumulated, plus 30% of women holding managing position in the group at the end of 2024. So that's plus 30% over 5 years, 30.5% in total in 2024. For the TF2 to frequency rate to minus 32% over 5 years, and we have also helped our customers to avoid some CO2 emissions, thanks to our energy efficiency solutions, 20 million tonnes of CO2 are saved. Now on March '25 this year, we have launched our new road map, which was presented to the financial community with the same pillars. Of course, the idea is to carry on with the initiatives that had been started. But we wanted to put the customer at the heart of our services. Now we have a fifth pillar in our road map, which is entitled serving our customers. And in order to present this, let's have a look at the short video. [Presentation]

So this is the summary of our sixth CSR road map. I'm going to show you the objective. But as you could see in the video, we have indicators, we have targets and this gives a real meaning to the actions of our employees to meet our customer expectations and stakeholder expectations. So 25% of the management positions will be held by women by 2027. 100% of our headcount working in diversity label organization, GEEIS diversity, et cetera. 4,000 positions offered to early-in-careers. Here we're talking about interns, apprentices, those who have fixed term contracts. We're going to keep working with our suppliers. 100 new businesses will be developed and will be developed with suppliers committed to diversity and inclusion. We do pursue our efforts to mitigate climate change. The objective is to reduce by 10% our Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions by '27 versus '24. We will keep working with our suppliers. The objective is to reduce by 30% the emissions in the operations of our suppliers by 2030. That is 70% of all the purchased goods emissions. so we're going to cover the emissions of our suppliers, and we're going to ask them to commit to themselves to reduce these emissions by 30%. As for our circular economy, eco-design is the heart of our innovation, 50% of new and redesigned projects, meeting Legrand's Eco-Design index criteria. We're going to pursue the group's Eco-design. We're going to work on recycled material. More than 1/3 of the materials will be sustainable in our products by 2027. And we will keep reducing plastics packaging, we want to reduce this by 80%. Serve our customers. This is a new pillar. It is important to recall that our customers are at the core of all our actions we're going to have a reduction of 20 million tonnes of CO2 emissions on our road map. As Benoît said, we want to maintain our customer satisfaction at 80% and a Net Promoter Score at 50, and we want to cover 72% of our annual revenue with the product sustainability profile and be a responsible business. This is a new topic because regularly, we carry our materiality surveys with our stakeholders, and you are part of them. And human rights is very important in our CSR. So we've introduced this new objective for human rights and our suppliers and the objective is to reach 100% of our major suppliers will be committed. Committed means they will have signed the code of conduct of Legrand, and they have to be over 45 points in terms of EcoVadis, and 100% will have to sign the suppliers' contracts and we have an objective of 100% for training and the compliance of all our entities. We're going to introduce a new accident rate, the TF2 and this is the accidents with time and without lost time, this includes people who are temporary workers, temporary workers. So the objective is to reduce this TF2T by 20% between '24 and '27. So it's important to have this in large scope. And we will keep training our employees. I don't know if you remember but our objective is that 85% would be our aim. But now it is 90% will have to be trained for 10 hours by 2027. So we will keep working on the skills of all our employees. So all this work, our CSR road maps pay off in terms of our rating. We have a good recognition from our rating agencies. We have integrated List A for climate change, we are noted gold by EcoVadis. We have the AA MSCI. So all this work is recognized by all these external bodies, and we are very happy about that.

Thank you very much. It is time to talk about governance and compensation. I'll ask Michel Landel, who is our Lead Director, to speak about this.

Thank you, Angeles. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So as you know, your company is deeply attached to maintain high demand in terms of governance. And this is translated with separate corporate governance structure. Our Board is following the best practices in compliance with the recommendations of the Afep-MEDEF code, a strong involvement of all the members of the Board. You see that the attendance rate is close to 97% and a whole set of very complementary expertise. Now as for the composition of the Board, I'd like to recall our objectives, we have 5 objectives to maintain the number of directors between 10 and 12 members. Our independents must be greater than 70%. We have to keep promoting parity, quality between men and women, keep acquiring relevant skills considering the group's strategy and make our company more international and make our directors more international. So you will have to decide about the appointment of a new director, Mrs. Stephane Pallez, and thanks for your experience as a Director. She will be very useful in the work of your Board. Unfortunately she couldn't attend today but she has prepared a very short video and I suggest we listen to her.

[Foreign Language]

And today, you will have to decide about the renewal as Director of Patrick Koller. And if you approve, he will be a member of the Compensation and Governance committee. You would have to pronounce on the renewal of the terms of office of Florent Menegaux, and if you approve he will be the member of the audit committee. So therefore, after this combined general meeting, and if you approve it, your board will be made up of 82% of independent directors, which is greater than the 50% recommended by the Afep-MEDEF code, 55% women and 7 different nationalities. And your Board will have great diversity in terms of skills and complementary experience and we will use all this experience for our work. As for my role as a Lead Director, this year, I worked with the appointments committee on the succession plan of the directors work on the assessment of the Board, which was done in-house, and there is a good operation of your Board. Manage meetings of the nonexecutive directors and dialogue with a certain number of investors from our group during a governance roadshow. And on the next slide, you can see that the Board's activity was quite intense and rich with an attendance rate, which was close to 100%. And I'll let you discover on this last slide, the composition of the committees after today's general meeting, so long as you approve the appointments and the renewal of all the directors presented here. And that is it for me in terms of the governance.

Thank you, Michel. Before talking about compensation, I would like to pay tribute to two directors who are going to leave today after having served at the Board of Legrand several years. Ned Gilhuly and Olivier Bazil, Ed came back to the Legrand Board in 2018 after having served here for the first term between 2003 and 2011. He was a pillar at the Board, and he was very astute in terms of all the acquisitions we carried out, and he has a great knowledge of North America. Olivier Bazil is a real institution for our company. He joined Legrand in '73. He had a brilliant career. He became the Vice President and appoints joint delegate manager and he keeps serving the group at the Board, and he spent 52 years of his life at Legrand. His attachment for the group, the deep knowledge of the different businesses and his industrial and financial skills are very useful to us all these years. I'd like to have a round of applause for Ned and Olivier.

And now we're going to talk about the compensation of all our corporate officers. As for our policy, it is simple, transparent and responsible and it is built on a certain number of principles. The first, as for the Chair of the Board, the policy does not plan for any annual variable compensation or long-term compensation nor any compensation as a director. As for the Chief Executive Officer, the structure of the compensation is aligned with the interest of the stakeholders and the company's objectives, notably in line with the midterm corporate strategy and the performance conditions are very demanding. And as for the directors, the variable portion of the compensation is predominant. As for the Chair of the Board, as you can see in '24, her compensation was EUR 625,000, and for 2025, the Board proposes to maintain this unchanged. As for the CEO in '24, his total compensation was EUR 900,000. The variable compensation was reached at 117.7% and the variable long-term compensation that can reach 200% of the fixed compensation was evaluated by an independent expert by EUR 1,800,000. And for 2025, the total compensation, if you approve it, will remain the same as in 2024. However, as for the variable compensation for the long-term variable compensation, we have changed the performance criteria to align them with the 2030 ambitions of the group which were announced during the Investor Day in '24. Now to summarize, you can observe here on this slide that '25 just as in '24, the compensation structure of the CEO is based by 25% of the variable share, 50% for the long term compensation and 25% for the annual variable compensation to the fixed annual compensation only accounts for 25% of the total compensation. And here on this slide, you can also see the CSR component, which is a major part of the compensation because it accounts for 17.5% of the target value for the total annual compensation. And as for the compensation of the directors in 2025, the Board suggests to maintain it unchanged at the level of '24, which is a total of EUR 1,106,000. I have finished. Thank you for your attention, I am going to give the floor back to the Chairperson of the Board. Thank you.

Thank you. It is time now to read the resolutions that will be submitted to your poll. I'm going to give the floor to Emmanuelle Levine.

Thank you, Angeles. The first 3 resolutions presented to the combined general meetings are related to the financial statements and the allotment of the income. We will have a payout of EUR 2.20 per share, which will be taken from the distributable income. In case of a favorable vote, the date of the payout of the dividend will be the 20th of May 2025 and the dividend will be paid out to the shareholders on the 2nd of June 2025. The fourth resolution concerns the ex-post general vote on the information on the compensation of all the corporate officers in 2024 or allocated in the same fiscal year according to Articles L.22-10 34 1 of the French Commercial Code. The fifth and sixth resolution, this is the ex-post Say-on-Pay. This is for the compensation of the Chairperson of the Board and the CEO based on the 2024 fiscal year. The seventh and ninth resolutions, this is the Say-on-Pay ex-ante. You are invited to pronounce yourselves on the compensation policy for 2025, applicable to the Chair of the Board, the CEO and the directors. The 10th, 11th and 12th resolutions. This is for the appointment of Stephane Pallez as a director and the renewal of Patrick Koller and Florent Menegaux for a duration of 3 years. And these terms of office would take and at the end of the general meeting in 2028 after closing the accounts at the 31st of December 2027. And the tenth resolution, this is to carry out all the formalities required according to the regulations after holding the general meeting. The 13th resolution, which is an ordinary resolution. This is to renew the Board with a buyback of shares. This is the maximum price per share that would be EUR 150. The 14th resolution, which is an extraordinary resolution. This is to allow the Board to proceed to reduce the share capital by canceling the treasury shares within the share buyback program. In case of a favorable vote of Resolutions 13 and 14, the Board will be able to proceed to buy back the shares of the company and reduce the share capital according to conditions in compliance with the marketplace conditions. The 15th resolution, this is to authorize the Board to issue free shares within a limit of 1.5% of the share capital over 38 months. The 16th resolution, this is to amend Article 9.5 of the company's Articles of Association to reflect legislative changes on the organization of the Board of Directors.

Thank you very much, Emmanuelle. Now we're going to give the floor to our statutory auditors, and it is [indiscernible], we will speak on behalf of the statutory auditors.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. On behalf of the statutory shareholders for [indiscernible] and PwC that I represent. I have the pleasure to tell you about the execution of our mission for the fiscal year 2024. I suggest I not read exhaustively all our different reports on our work. But to summarize the major points and our conclusions. Our work on our accounts, well, the objective according to the professional standards was to obtain a reasonable assurance that the accounts presented are true and fair by checking the absence of any material misstatements and make sure that all the tax and laws are complied with. We've coordinated audit reports everywhere in the world, our approach and our diligence were adapted to the Legrand organization to its specificities and the risk identified based on quantitative and qualitative criteria. We realized this on the accounts and on the internal control processes and we covered the current operations as well as the specific events of that particular fiscal year. All our work and our detailed conclusions were shared regularly with the management with the Audit Committee and the Board. Our report on the consolidated accounts highlights two key points of our audit, and the most important elements required specific attention from us considering the relative weight in the accounts as well as the high degree of evaluation and judgment required to determine the hypothesis needed to assess them. The first is on the recoverable value of the goodwill and the indefinite marks that account for EUR 8.3 billion that is half of the consolidated balance sheet at the 31st of December 2024. The second is on the evolution of the litigations and eventual liabilities. Legrand itself, the point of the audit is the utility of the participation securities in our balance sheet, EUR 6.2 million. For each of these key points, on the consolidated accounts and annual accounts, we particularly appreciated the reasonable characteristic of the main judgments and assessments of management, underpinning their evaluation and their sensitivity to the structuring hypothesis retained. And the notes to the accounts gave appropriate information. Our work consisted in examining all the accounts as well as the quality of the financial information and checking the exactness of all the information given in the managerial report, especially those related to the corporate governance and the remuneration and compensation and benefits paid to the corporate officers. And we have formed our opinion, and we can certify without any reservation the consolidated accounts and the annual accounts of Legrand. Legrand has prepared for the first time in 2024 the duration conditions, and this is the transposition in France of the CSRD resolution from the EU. They are in our report. We have limited clarity on this, on the compliance with the new ESRS standards and the taxonomy standards, the processes used by Legrand to determine the information published. Some elements were given particular attention from us. Based on the verifications we carried out, we issued a conclusion without any reservations and have not identified any errors, omissions or any inconsistencies. We formulated an observation for the first year of application of the ESRS with all the information that have to be communicated in the coming years, forthcoming years. And finally to summarize, the other reports we've established in compliance with the laws and on which you'll have to vote. The first is our special report on the related party agreements, and we will not submit them to your approval because their execution has been carried forward. We have two reports for the extraordinary general meeting, so that you can realize certain operations on the share capital of your company. These different reports do not call for any remarks or any particular observation from our part. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much [indiscernible] for this report, and thank you for this 6 years of fruitful cooperation. She is going to leave since there is a required turnover with a new statutory auditor. So thank you on behalf of the Board of Directors. We are now going to proceed and give you the floor. We've received some written questions from two shareholders. Answer to these questions was published on the website of legrandgroup.com in the 2025 tab for the combined general meeting. Shareholders had the opportunity between May 21 and Monday 26, 2025, 15:00 hours time -- Paris time to send their questions by e-mail, and I will now suggest that we move on to questions here from the floor as is our habit. I will invite you to be brief so that we can take as many questions as possible and wait for the steward or the hostess to give you the microphone. And also please introduce yourself before asking your question.

[indiscernible] I do represent some shareholders. It's a very basic question as to many companies you have quite a high percentage of your sales in the United States? Is it local production? Is it exported? What about the tariffs policy from the U.S.?

Thank you. 40% of our sales are in North America, the big bunch of which in the United States, we have less than 50% of what is sold in the U.S. is imported. So that we -- they are pretty much dependent on import from Mexico and China a bit is imported from Europe, Taiwan, Vietnam but the main importing countries are Mexico and China. What we've said when we reported the figures for the Q1 2025, in the most plausible scenario that is tariffs, which was said to be at 145% for those products coming from China. And we said it would probably be 50% for the rest of the world. The tariffs would range from 10% to 40%. We said it would cost up to $200,000 for the group but we said we would completely cover the impact of these tariffs on our products. So it would have -- and wouldn't have any impact on the 2025 margin. But as you've heard or read, we have better news since the tariffs for a short period of time for products and components from China will be taxed at up to 30% and 10% for other countries. So based on this assumption, the invoice for Legrand would be less than $250 million as opposed to what we said a few weeks ago. So the same conclusions apply, we would compensate for all the tariffs. The last comment is, of course, it's a very fluid uncertain situation. The strength of Legrand is that we are agile and we are used to adapt to the situation. Now if some tariffs were to be imposed on some products coming from various geographic areas, we would adapt ourselves. The three ways to adapt is to act on pricing, slightly increase the prices or second is to be more flexible when it comes to our supply chains that is diversify the supply chain so that the products would come from countries where the tariffs will be lower or make sure that our products are USMC labeled, which would mean that tariffs would not apply. So in summary, it's going to cost us less than $150 million. It's not going to have an impact on the group's margin in 2025.

There is another question there. Number two, first. Go ahead, sir. #3.

I have three questions. The Legrand products are of a higher quality, but of a higher price, do you suffer from the competition of products coming from China that are cheaper and of poorer quality? When it comes to renewables, you are also involved in the balancing of the grid or maybe I misunderstood your presentation. What is the robustness of your system if we go from 20% to 70% renewables that are intermittent sources of energy. What about the balance of the grid? And then the third question about the financial statements, no significant anomalies were reported. What does that mean?

With RPF, for the statutory auditors, EUR 1 billion was not considered as a significant anomaly. Well, I will answer the first two questions and then I'll leave it up to our Financial Officer to answer your third question. Now you will always find cheaper products on the Internet, if you type switch or socket, you will find 150 SKUs. And out of those, 130 would be cheaper than that of Legrand. But then why are the Legrand products more expensive than the cheapest one coming from China? Well, it's because it's a flawless quality. Don't forget that these electric products may also kill people. So we have strong protection systems because we integrate technology because there can be recycled because they're readily available in the corner shop because you have an electrician that can fix it. Now we have various ranges, that have products at EUR 2, up to EUR 50 for other products. Now if you want to go for cheap refurbishment of your house, we can go for the so-called access Legrand branded products, which do include all these features. Now to answer your questions, we've had many competitors but we've been gaining market shares, whether than losing market shares recently. So our customers are ready to pay an extra price to have the quality, the easiness of fixtures, et cetera, et cetera. We're not involved in power generation to answer your question. We're down on the low -- the back end of the system. Now regardless of the source of power intermittent or not, it doesn't have any impact on us. We are involved in the transformers, not the high-voltage power generation. But it's true that intermittent sources power will require -- will impose the need to have a proper energy management in buildings. That is having in the buildings solutions to have a more efficient energy consumption. And depending on the prices and the peak hours or not, you will have to keep preference to one source of energy or the other, find energy storage solutions, maybe returning back some energy back into the general grid from the buildings. So that's a source of business for Legrand, where in the past, we used to sell circuit breakers, et cetera, et cetera. Now we can be involved in other solutions to measure the energy consumption in each and every room, find energy storage solution. Connected to your PV panels on the roof. Have ways to program your energy consumption so that you will consume energy when the energy is at the cheapest price, et cetera, et cetera. So all these are sources of business for Legrand. So we're not on the front end that is the power generation side. So the absence of significant abnormalities. No statutory auditors would certify that. Our social and consolidated accounts reflect a sincere image of the financial situation of our company and abnormality would be some information that would change your decision, your perception of the overall business performance of the company. Now there is a materiality threshold and abnormality is when this threshold is exceeded. Now we are well below that. And otherwise, the statutory auditors, the two statutory auditors would not have certified and signed our accounts. I will let them answer if you want, as far as their professional standards are concerned, it's a few percentage of the operating income. So it's not EUR 1 billion as the example you've mentioned. There are many, many inspections and controls. It's a constant monitoring of their quality unit in each and every statutory auditors firm. And the French authority of the stock markets which is a governmental agency will make sure that the abnormalities that are not corrected are well below the thresholds.

Thank you, Franck. Any further questions? Yes, sir.

I represent the association for assets and individual shareholders. I think that the environment is ever changing and uncertain and Legrand is performing pretty well. I'm hoping that will carry on in the future. Now I have 3 questions. The first one is the fact that you are shaping the future, but regarding data centers, is your R&D center indeed designing data centers so that they will evolve in a liquid environment total said that they had a liquid cooling fluid, which is better than what we have in the data centers nowadays. My second question is the following. You have issued a EUR 500 million bond by 2035. Why not a green bonds since your syndicated credit is based on achieving CSR objectives. Third question, you have reinforced your position by buying computer com solutions in Australia for the data centers is that the sign of new acquisition in this region, Oceania.

Thank you for this very specific question. I will suggest Benoît Coquart answer the first and the third, and Mr. Lemery will answer the second question on financial aspect.

Well, thank you for asking this question on data center because it's really trademark of Legrand, we have the strongest position as a percentage of our sales. So all the big ones in the electricity sector are investing in data sector and now the leak, the coolants, there are several technologies available out there. Our technology is based on what the rear door cooling, as we call it, when you have a rack with the servers. You put a door with the coolant, which will capture the calories and discharge them outside. We do not have immersion cooling systems where servers are such that they can be put in a specific cooling liquid. Now we do have this technology. Now the Legrand technology helps to cool up to 200 kilowatts per rack. Today, it's 15 to 20 degrees per rack. And in 5 years from now, it might be 1% of the racks, which will have emissions above 200 kilowatts. If we do not cover all these, we can cool from 90% of the racks available in the market. Now if there is an opportunity to move to other cooling solutions through organic growth or acquisitions, I don't know, we'll see. Now for the acquisition in Australia, well, it's not the beginning, it's rather the end because over one year, we've bought 3 companies in Australia, APP, VAS, CRS and one in New Zealand as Franck Lemery said, this has helped to more than double our size in Oceania. CRS is a company specialized in so-called containment solutions. In a data center, you have the cooling systems, but there is a way also to organize the cold and hot air flows and this helps to cool the data centers, and these are products that are difficult to ship, and shipping containment racks or cabinets from New Zeal -- from the Netherlands to Australia would cost a lot. But there, we have a local manufacturer. So it will help us to rely on cooling solutions which is rather efficient and have contact with the data center leaders to whom we will be selling all the other Legrand solutions, racks, power distribution units, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you.

There was another question for your -- the question on the bond issuance why so much CSR achievements and commitments? And why not go for green bonds? Well, you've noticed it we have a syndicated credit, which is based on the CSR performance of the group. And I think we were the first company listed on the CAC 40 who did that. We also have two green issuances, which were made, both are dependent on the certain number of CSR criteria. But this type of credits are no longer the fad on the market because investors are more trustful when it comes to CCRD directive and other compliance. You no longer have SLDs that is considered as a green washing on the market. That's why we don't use it anymore. Even though we've used this in the past, it doesn't deprive versus our commitment from its strength and robustness.

There is somebody in the back, I think.

I have 4 questions. I will begin. I have heard the report presented by the statutory auditor on the related party agreements, but I didn't find in your agenda, the resolution to be approved by the shareholders. Though there are no new related party agreements or old ones. And the legal department talked about a quorum of 81%. Could we know the chart of those who hold the capital, the investors, the reference shareholders and the float? And the third question, you mentioned in your presentation that you had a catalog of 300 references. For me, that's huge. Sorry, 300,000 references. So that's huge. You have a lot of stocks and you have to mobilize a lot of liquidity. And my fourth question, I've forgotten it, but I'll get back to it. Maybe I've forgotten my fourth question, but I'll tell you if it comes back to my mind.

Emmanuelle?

Yes. Thank you. As for the related party agreements, we don't have any obligation to have a specific resolution for the approval of these agreements, as you underlined, we have no agreement this year, related party agreement this year, that we could have included in our resolutions. This is not our practice usually, but you have all the information in the reports that were submitted before the organization of this meeting. As for the breakdown of our capital, you are absolutely right. We have the figures of the definitive quorum that we will share with you in a few moments, slightly above what we said earlier. Our free float is 97%, and we have no reference shareholders. So you have institutional shareholders from various regions of the world. So no reference, no particular shareholder to mention.

And your third question, it was about the 300,000 products, which is very complex. It's very complex to manage in terms of stocks. We have stocks above our historical records, but it is around 13% to 14%. These are stock levels that are well under control. But fundamentally, these 300,000 references, this is a huge strength for us. The advantage is the depth of our products exceed the drawbacks. And this allows us to cover all the global standards. You know that in our industry, standards can differ from one country to another. So we can build the different ranges from the access to the premium range. We can have products for simple residential installers and for large installers. So we can thus cover the market, and we can do it better with all these references. And when you are a low-cost competitor, it is easier to compete with products with the 5 SKUs or 5 references rather than 200,000. So for all those reasons, it's a great strength to have Legrand's model, although it does induce a certain amount of cost in terms of expenditure and capital employed.

I think you have remembered your fourth question?

Yes, I remember my fourth question now. You talked about your business model to grow through acquisitions. And when you make acquisitions, do you plan in the contract any earn-outs?

So we can have acquisitions through steps, 50%, and then we take 80% than 100%. And then we can have acquisitions where we take 100%. And for those who are not familiar to this earn-out is costs that we pay afterwards based on the results, I pay 100 now, and you will get 30 later on. If you have this growth in your revenue, in your sales, this happens especially when there's a big difference between the expectations of the salesperson and what we are ready to pay, all the possibilities are doable, but Legrand, we prefer being the major owners. It's rare when Legrand takes only 20% to 30% of our business. We take 50%, and then we pay an additional price later on either through earn-outs or by increasing our capital.

Those gentleman on my left and then behind.

So my question is on Resolution 4. I feel that it is new this year. As for the remuneration, the compensation from the 5, you talk about the chair, the CEO, the Board, but I don't understand what you want us to approve in Resolution #4?

Emmanuelle?

So we're going to go through it. So this is a resolution that comes back each and every year, and we are forced to submit it to your approval. It is the ex-post of all the compensations of all the corporate officers for each and every year. It's a bit complicated because compensation is very detailed today. You have the ex-ante and the ex-post the policy of the previous year and the policy of the following year, and this for all the corporate officers, the president, the directors, the Board and we have a global presentation for all the company officers also.

Yes, the gentleman over here, #2.

My name is [ Hage, ] Individual shareholder. I had 2 additional points of information on the United States. The first, you talked about the 50% of the products sold to the U.S. are imported to the U.S. and a huge volume is sent to Mexico or New Mexico imported 45% to 50%. The products that we sell in the United States come from Mexico or China and the rest of the world.

Okay. I've understood. But I wanted to understand the proportion of Mexico on the whole. So out of the 45% to 50%, 20% is from Mexico, 15% to 20% China and the remainder is a mix from everywhere. So a large part from the EU, a few percentage from the EU, little percentage from Canada, the proportion from the EU is very low. And I'll tell you why. That is the products we import and we sell to the U.S., and that is the access, the switches, the simple switches, the presence detectors, the basic ones, and they come from low-cost areas, Mexico and China. Very few products come from Europe. So it's only the 20% coming from Mexico. It's for those that you expect to escape from the tariffs because of this U.S. convention. No, it's far more complicated because all the products coming from Mexico are not eligible to the SNC. There's a list of products. These aren't. So we have parts imported from Mexico, they are exonerated and the others will be submitted to the tariffs, 10%, 20% or 40%. It's far more complex because you have the tariffs on the increase in aluminum and steel.

And second question on the United States. In the first quarter, the total sales in North America increased exceptionally compared to the previous years, plus 18%, plus 16% on a like-for-like. So isn't it simply in anticipation of this stocking from your importers, anticipating the setting up of the American tariffs? And aren't we observing in April and May, strong slowdown in this sales in the U.S.

April and May, I can't really answer because this is information we will communicate when we talk about the sales of the Q2 there was no anticipation and the reason for this beautiful growth in the U.S. is because of the data centers, the data centers account for 1/3 of our exposure in North America and only 10% of our exposure in Europe and the rest of the world. So the impact on our total sales in the U.S., it suffered a lot. And in the data centers, it is much stronger than elsewhere. But as far as we know, there was no anticipation of any purchasing.

Thank you, Benoît. Any more questions? Yes, madam? Or the gentleman over there, I can't see very well.

Yes, I'm an individual shareholder. I would like to ask you more down to earth question. You know that right now, there are wars all around the world, and they might be resolved quickly. I'd like to know if you have gotten touch, if you have met engineers on the spot, to obtain some of the contracts that will be signed because in the last conflicts, it's the U.S. and Germany that obtained the greatest number of contracts. In Ukraine and Gaza, we will have to rebuild everything, have new sockets have new plants. Are you ready?

Well, the conflicts you're talking about are not totally resolved and the war is still being waged and the situation is still quite dark. As for when things will be stabilized, we hope that they will be. We aren't in infrastructure. So when you read in the press, there's a battle between X and Y the companies that will be first in the field, these are for large infrastructure projects, the production of energy, railways, et cetera. For us, there's no reason we will not benefit from that. We have certain market shares. Gaza it's a small market, Ukraine, we have a small team, and they went through the situation without any losses. They're working in Ukraine, they're organizing shows, making sales. And when we will rebuild, we will benefit according to our market share but these are small markets in any case. But unfortunately, this topic is not yet ready to be discussed.

Number two.

You made your presentation per geographical sector and per business sector. The traditional sectors accounted for 53% of the total sales and the activities in growth accounted for 47%. So what will happen by 2030? Because you made a presentation on the objectives by 2030. What will be the proportion between these data centers, these new operations in health care, the digital compared to the traditional. What will Legrand look like in a few years from now, an idea about your major trends and I have the same question for the different geographies, which are the geographies that will be the most prosperous that will provide more growth to Legrand? And the last question, in your business model, you're presenting a large section, which is based on external growth. And there are a lot of companies that you will acquire that will have a lot of experience. And how will you have a group in spite of all the cultural differences in all the different geographical zones, how will you have a certain Legrand homogeneity?

Well, as for the breakdown of our total sales per geography, we normally communicate on that because we have a scenario, but we don't know exactly what will be the pace of growth and will depend on the acquisitions. But the 53-47 will probably be reverse. It will be -- will it be 47-53 or something else? I don't know. But at the bottom of the page, I can sign that the activities related to the digital energy transition will account for more significantly more than the more traditional activities, although these traditional activities will post growth. And the growth profile of the group, this is not neutral. We are aiming at 12 or 15. We're aiming at the upper part of the bracket. Here, it will be 5, then next year it will be 10 and then it will be 15. You see that the pace of growth is quite sustained. The second question, the 40%-20%, well, I hope that we'll have more significant growth in the emerging countries. There are emerging countries everywhere in the rest of the world, and in the European zone, we should have greater growth in Africa, in the Middle East, in India and rather than in Europe or the United States. The 20% might be slightly bigger but the 40%, 41% too far from the geographical breakdown of our markets. So the 30%, 35%, 30%, we don't have those orders of magnitude. And the 20% will not become 40% or 50%. So therefore, we will be with the digital energy transition and the essentials will have grown in the emerging countries, the Africa, Middle East, Asia, India. And your last question, we use a term. We like the term of docking and not integration when we buy back companies like when 2 boats are close to each other and navigate alongside, we're very careful. The companies joining us should maintain their DNA and should have an interesting performance. So in general, these are companies in good health. And we don't want to break this momentum. But you're right, Legrand is not aiming at having a constellation of companies. So how do we do this? Well, very quickly, the managerial processes are integrated. The teams use the HR platforms of the group, we have in this R&D development platforms, all the companies acquired. So we have quite a lot of docking, and we preserve what is important for the client. That is the commercial teams, et cetera. So we don't touch the front office, so the customer is not destabilized, the synergies and the stronger integration. We'll do it in the back office with the purchases, R&D, industry, finance, admin, et cetera. And altogether, this model is doing well because if you look in the past 10 years, all the companies that have joined us Well, our trajectories have accelerated. So therefore, with the M&A teams in the group we have a great experience in this area to do deals and to dock companies without any loss.

I'll take one last question. Perfect. Let's proceed to the ballot. Now, I'd like to share the final figures with you of the quorum. 6,029 shareholders, 212 and 240 votes so that's 1% of the equity, meaning that the quorum, both for the extraordinary and the ordinary shareholders' meeting is met for all the resolutions. Now the resolutions will not be put to your votes. Thank you, Angeles. So we're going to vote on, it's an electronic ballot. You will have a short video explaining you how to use this little voting tablet. [Presentation]

Right. We're now going to proceed and vote on the resolution. I suggest not to read all the resolutions before each and every vote. Resolution #1, approval of the company's financial statements for 2024. The vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is passed. Resolution #2, approval of the consolidated financial statements for 2024. Vote is open. [Voting]

Vote is closed. Resolution passed. Resolution #3, allocation of results for 2024 and determination of the dividend. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #4, approval of the information referred to in Article L-22-10-9 of the French Commercial Code in accordance with Article L-22-10-34, the French Commercial Code. Vote is open. [Voting]

The vote is closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #5, approval of compensation components and benefits of any kind paid during or granted in respect of 2024 to Angeles Garcia-Poveda Chair of the Board of Directors. The vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #6 approval of compensation components and benefits of any kind paid during or granted in respect of 2024 to Benoit Coquart, Chief Executive Officer. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #7. Approval of the compensation policy applicable to the Chair of the Board of Directors. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #8, approval of the compensation policy applicable to the Chief Executive Officer. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #9, approval of the compensation policy applicable to members of the Board of Directors. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #10, appointment of Stephane Pallez as Director. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #11, renewal of Patrick Koller's term of Officer Director. The vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #12, renewal of Florent Menegaux's term of Officer Director. The vote is open. [Voting]

Vote is closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #13, authorization granted to the Board of Directors to allow the company to trade its own shares. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #14 authorization granted to the Board of Directors to carry out a share capital decrease by cancellation of treasury shares. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Resolution #15, to grant of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of carrying out one or more free share awards to staff members and/or company officers of the company or related companies or some of them with cancellation of shareholders' preferential rights to subscribe to the shares to be issued in relation to the free share awards. The vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is passed. Resolution #16 amendment of Article 9.5 of the company's Articles of Association to reflect legislative changes on the organization of the Board of Directors. Vote is open. [Voting]

Closed. Resolution is approved. Finally, Resolution #17 powers to -- for carryout legal formalities. Vote is open. [Voting]

Vote is closed. Resolution passed. Thank you very much. Now this is leading us to the end of this shareholders' meeting. Thank you for this very encouraging ballot result. The next general assembly will be held on May 27, 2026. Don't forget to hand back your tablet when you leave so that you are given your present as a sign of gratitude to all of you. I also would like to thank the Governance and Investor Relations group at Legrand, who've worked hard to welcome you here in this meeting, and see you next year. Thank you.