Nexans S.A. (NEX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted] Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to welcome you, and thank you very much for coming to Paris today here to the headquarters of your company. During this session, we will comment on the performance and the highlights of the financial year of 2024, including a presentation of our E3 performance model, the outlook for '25 and the acquisitions that we have made successfully. A thematic presentation on the group's vertical integration and circular economy, followed by description of Nexans' climate strategy are also on the agenda. On the agenda is also the composition of the Board of Directors with the renewal of the terms of office of Marc Grynberg as an Independent Director for the 4-year term. The group has benefited from his experience for several years, particularly in international business management and ESG. He is the Director in charge of monitoring climate and environmental issues. We will also submit for your approval the renewal of return of office of Francisco Perez as Director proposed by the main shareholder in Nexans for a term of 4 years as well. You will also have to choose the Director representing employee shareholders between 2 excellent candidates, Gwenael Gilbert and Bruno Daguet. In addition, we are submitting for your approval a remuneration package that is fully aligned with your group strategic objectives. 2024 is a record year with results never achieved before, proof of the relevance of Nexans' vision and ambition, in line with the dividend policy implemented in 2021, and in addition to the stock market performance, we proposed to distribute a dividend of EUR 2.60 per share. We'll come back to this during the meeting. Dear shareholders, at the entrance to this room, you've seen an exhibition illustrating E3, our unique model, developed by Chris, combining social, environmental and financial performance. It's a real philosophy and driving force behind everything we do. You also saw 2 major industrial plants, the Nexans sites at La Triveneta Cavi, the group has just acquired, and Bohain, an incumbent site of Nexans in the Aisne district. INFRACHECK is a very innovative tool that uses augmented reality to instantly check cable connections using a smartphone. And at last, a testimonial from one of our large customers, RTE. I hope that you like this exhibition. I now declare open the ordinary and extraordinary shareholders' meeting of Nexans. To make it easier to vote on the resolutions and display the results quickly, we're using an electronic voting system, which is fast and secure. You received an electronic voting tablet at the entrance containing the Notice of Meeting brochure. I invite you to use it and return it, of course, at the end of the meeting. Please note that the URD can be downloaded from our website. You can consult its own request from the staff in the room. For environmental reasons, as you know, we no longer print it systematically. Finally, I would like to inform you that this is a public meeting. It will be filmed and recorded for live and recorded broadcast on the Internet. Unless you object, your image may be saved and broadcast on the Nexans website. At my side are Anne Lebel, Independent Lead Director; Chris Guerin, CEO; Jean-Christophe Juillard, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Nino Cusimano, General Secretary and Group General Counsel. I would also like to welcome the members of the Board of Directors and thank them for attending the meeting. Also in the room are the members of the executive committee. Some of them will be joining us on stage later for presentations. I'd like to welcome Juliette Decoux-Guillemot from Mazars as well as Edouard Demarcq from PwC. Both of them are our statutory auditors. Okay. So let's set up the presiding office in my capacity as Chairman. The 2 members of the meeting present to have the greatest number of votes and accept the role of scrutineers. In view of the information of the tenancies, the 2 shareholders present representing the greatest number of votes are Invexans Limited and Bpifrance Participations. We ask these 2 shareholders at the start of the meeting if they would accept to act as scrutineers, and they did so. I therefore propose the following as scrutineers, Invexans Limited as a member of the General Meeting, who has agreed to act in this capacity represented by Hervé Pisani. And furthermore, Bpifrance Participations, member of the General Meeting, who has also agreed to act in this capacity represented by [ Melanie Zhu ]. I also propose to choose as the Secretary, Nino Cusimano, General Secretary and Group General Counsel, Therefore, the presiding office is validly constituted. I remind you that this meeting is being convened on first notice. The legally required quorum having been reached, 83.8% for time being, it's already a record. Thank you. The quorum is 20% of shares entitled to vote for decisions falling within the remit of the ordinary general meeting, resolutions 1 to 14, 27A, and a quorum of 25% of shares entitled to vote for decisions falling within the remit of the extraordinary general meeting resolution 15 to 26. Consequently, the presiding office of the combined general meeting note that the combined general meeting having more than the required quorum may validly deliberate on the items on the agenda, whether it's for the OGM or the EGM. The meeting will take place as follows. First, we'll take care of legal formalities with Nino, then a short introductory video, and Chris will review the highlights of 2024. Jean-Christophe will continue with the comments on the 2024 financial results and the first quarter of '25. This will be followed by thematic presentations on the focus on our power grid business with Elyette Roux; our product, MOBIWAY POP with Christophe Demule; and a progress report on Nexans' climate change strategy and the follow-up of initiatives undertaken, which is an item on the agenda without a shareholder vote by Marc Grynberg. Finally, we will be giving you an update on governance, candidates for the Board of Directors and remuneration with Anne Lebel, Independent Lead Director, Chair of the Appointments and Corporate Governance Committee and the Remuneration Committee. Afterwards, we'll hear the statutory auditor's report. Then we'll take questions from the floor and from shareholders who are watching this session live on the Internet. And finally, of course, you will vote on the proposed resolutions. The company has not received any request for the inclusion of additional resolutions or items on the agenda. Furthermore, we have not received either any written questions from shareholders. So I'm going to give the floor to the Secretary of the assembly, Nino.

[Interpreted] Chairman, thank you. All the documents required for the general meeting have been made available to shareholders in accordance with the law. You will find the various reports of the Board of Directors in the Universal Registration Document '24 and on the website of the company.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Nino. I would like now to hand over to our Managing Director, Christopher Guerin.

[Interpreted] So good morning to you all. I would like to make a small presentation. We -- last year, we were at the RATP, and we had Castex, our former Prime Minister with -- he talked about for 15 minutes. Now this year, I'm going to take the floor. Before coming to the crux of the matter and at the Investor Day, I would like to say a few words. Dear shareholders, members of the Board, colleagues, in '25, I would like to welcome you as if I was a traveler stopping for a while. I've been browsing now for 7 years as we had headwinds with our teams, and we also had a calm sea, and we had to cope with a health crisis. But altogether, we decided to follow our road with determination, that is to say, to follow the sustainable electrification. We wanted to come back to the basics to convert complexity into transparency. We simplified to amplify. We reduced what was excessive. We wanted to find sobriety and find strength in it. During those years, I -- we learned how to listen the essential rhythm and pace of our plants with valuable know-how of our staff, a reason for our success. We have to come back to basics in order to respect our industrial heritage while turning to the future. I would like to pay tribute to the staff. Thanks to them, since we have been building electrification for decades and decades. And electrification is unique. At Nexans, we are deeply convinced. We believe in economy, environment and commitment. We believe that economy goes beyond the aggregation of profits. It represents the indispensable seeds for future investments, the creation of jobs and innovation of the future. Our environmental conscience is not just limited to regulations. It's a sincere commitment to preserving our planet and to guaranteeing the future generations of having a proud world. Our social commitment is a collective commitment showing solidarity. We want to share pride and happiness together. We are writing a quick chapter of our company, but this company has existed for over 140 years. In this general meeting, I would like to thank the Board of Directors very deeply because they are extremely reliable, and they are also the source of this success as well with faultless commitment. Ahead of us, we have a rich future, rich in terms of challenges, but also extraordinary opportunities. Let's keep on walking along that line. It's a promising future. We want to have a simple, sustainable commitment. Thank you very much for your presence. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] Accelerating a sustainable revolution, I would like to get my slides on the screen, please. As I said, we have a heritage of 140 years, and we are fully connected to the history of power. Let's go back to 17 -- 1879, the pioneers of electricity with Westinghouse and other companies that needed cables to take power to households. The first revolution occurred between 1819 and 1910. The Champs-Elysees were electrified, then we had the war. We were involved with the reconstruction and the electrification of Europe between 1950 and 1970. Emerging economies then had increasing demand for power between the '70s and 2000. This slide shows in -- at a glance that emerging countries and mature countries will have the exact same means -- needs for power in Europe. Mature economies, South America, North America, are going to have to replace fossil fuels by renewable fuels and/or energy. But the biggest challenge is to replace more than 80 million kilometers of cables that were installed back in the '50s and '70s. Back then, their life cycle was estimated at 30 years, and we're well beyond 50 years now. So it's a massive, massive challenge, but tremendous opportunities as well for us as a cable company. Let's take a look at the segments of our business. We have PWR-Transmission, Grid and what we call Connect. These are the buildings. As you can see, we are about to enter 3 decades of glorious development, demand on power transmission, interconnection with offshore wind farms or interconnecting regions following the blackout between Spain and Portugal. France, very successfully within hours, was able to bring power back to the region. Those interconnections, the number of interconnections is growing. Annualized growth is about 10%. The global worldwide market is EUR 26 billion. That's an estimate. Looking at Grids, more than 80 million kilometers of cables that are going to be replaced in the years to come, all around -- all over Europe, North America and South America. Growth is estimated at 7% every year. Elyette will develop this in a moment. And last but not least, PWR-Connect, these are the buildings. Of course, there is a lot of demand in urban areas. 2 billion inhabitants are going to be moving to urban areas between now and 2030. And there is a growing demand for electrification. We need more power everywhere all the time and, therefore, more cables. Annualized growth estimated at 5% by 2028. So these are the 3 segments. They're all connected. High-voltage, mid-voltage and low consumption -- or power consumption, all growing sustainably. These are the main fundamentals of our business. And looking forward, there is also an increasing need for electric vehicles. The -- 86% by 2050. Numbers are changing very rapidly, especially in the past days. But it's not just EVs, it's also the network. There's going to be a need to charge those vehicles. 85% renewables by 2050 -- 80%, I'm sorry. And AI is a much talked about subject. AI is going to consume massive amounts of power, and consumption there again is expected to increase by 85% for that market alone. Urbanization, as I said, nearly 2 billion people will be living in urban areas, which means that we're going to see more and more high rises and new buildings across large urban centers around the globe. When we draw up strategic plans, we naturally tend to look at the things that are positive. So we've done an analysis of what we call mega risks. They're not always completely negative, but I think we have to be aware of them, starting with renewable energies. Renewable energies induce new complexities. Fossil fuels and the question of intermittence, the wind doesn't blow all the time, sun doesn't shine all the time. So this is an upcoming challenge for Europe. More intense climate events -- or climate-related events, which means that potential power outages or blackouts is going to be multiplied by 12. This is -- we're not used to being out of power. Recently, the blackout in Spain and Portugal, the first thing that's missing when you're out of power is access to water, access to oil, access to communications. And this shows that power has become absolutely vital in our economies. As we saw in the earlier slides, there is a convergence between demand in mature economies and developing countries. This is putting a lot of pressure on raw materials. Copper, aluminum are the 2 main ones we use in the power industry. Not everybody will be satisfied in terms of demand. And this is why Nexans today is focusing a lot on recycling. EUR 100 million have been invested in the loss -- in our loss facility to recycle 80 million tonnes of waste that contain copper between now and 2027. Elyette, again, will come back to this in a much more detailed way where you will see how cables are going to be gradually replaced. So there is a strategic shift we have to operate. First of all, there is a risk, what if we don't have access to the supplies? What if there is a shortage? The number of suppliers, we are bigger and bigger. There are fewer and fewer suppliers, but then they're getting bigger and bigger. Our customers do not just want basic cables. They want pre-connected cables and intelligent accessories and digital solutions that come with them. And this is really why we're developing our third strategic plan, which I'm developing. There will be massive technological mutations and -- ahead of us. So these megatrends, mega risks, change in market patterns are positioning us at Nexans in a very good position and will bring us long-term prosperity. When you're a listed company like Nexans, it's not the case for a general assembly. But when we talk to our institutional investors at a quarterly basis, we tend to have a fairly short-term vision. What I would like to remind you of today is that the Board of Directors and management are trying to have a long-term vision, long term being 10 years, 10 years down the road. So during the Investor Days, which have punctuated the past 7 years, we had a first chapter in 2019, during which we started to reinvent, rethink the business. Some investors were unhappy. Our results were down. We had -- there were some profit warnings in 2018 in spite of growth. So we had a need to gain your trust, confidence of our customers and shareholders. So we revisited our -- the Nexans performance model back then, and it worked out very well. We had the COVID-19 crisis, which impacted everybody, all nations around the globe. In 2021 -- between 2021 and 2024, we decided to focus on electrification only and decided to dispose of some of our businesses. They were very good businesses. Some are still being disposed of. The telco industry -- segments were sold off. And others are still in the process of being sold off. And we want to reallocate our resources and our research and development strengths with one single focus, which is electrification, cables, high-voltage; cables, mid-tension; and cable in low voltage. So this is what we've done between 2021 and 2024. We're now coming to the end of the second strategic plan. Jean-Christophe will come back to some of our achievements, the financial results, which I believe have been relatively good. And with the Board of Directors, we have now started and we're going to submit, we've approved a third strategic plan, which, as you will see, is very much in line with the previous one. We're going to engage in a new momentum of growth, sustainable electrification with an increased focus on technology. We want Nexans to be structurally stronger than the years before. Profitable growth, of course. Not growth just for the sake of growth. We do want to grow, obviously, but we want to grow in markets that are interested primarily in low-carbon markets or renewable energy markets and markets that are regenerative, as in recycling, copper recycling being one of the big markets in the future. There are going to be new technologies as well. Every year, we have announced new technological developments and new market segments. All this is amplified by artificial intelligence, AI. We now have dedicated teams who are working on AI. This is not just promises. In the past 7 years, we have worked relentlessly to be where we are today. We have been determined to prepare our future. In the transmission market, the one that connects countries or wind farms, our backlog is about EUR 7 billion. Visibility is long, end of 2028. Even if there were to be a recession in the world, this particular segment is entirely focused on production and execution of this backlog. It's a very high-quality backlog. We invested nearly EUR 900 million in that segment alone. I will share some of the investments with you in a moment. As far as networks are concerned, we're going to capitalize on our existing know-how. Again, the business has been around for 140 years. We have been laying cables, both in Europe and in the Americas for decades. You've seen some of our demos outside as you arrived here at our HQ, and we're going to continue and innovate with additional new solutions, especially in the field of accessories. We'll come back to that in a moment with Elyette. As far as Connect is concerned, Connect historically has always been a bit ignored by cable companies. But when you look at the reality of what is happening today, there is a fire that is sparked in a building every 2 minutes somewhere in the world. Cables are, in many instances, the cause of those fires. Cables for many years were made with plastic, and plastic actually propagates fire. In the past 15 years, we've been working actively on high-density polymers. They resist fire and will not propagate fire. We're now developing this across Europe and in Latin America as well. It is reinforcing our commercial awareness, brand awareness, and it is reinforcing the quality of our image, perceived image. We're very proud of this. Let's take a look now at the pillars of our strategy. We have worked very hard on those pillars. We consider we are in a very good position. We're now entering this third wave of electric hyper cycles in electricity. It is a bit similar like what happened between the 1950s and '70s. These are very buoyant, very fast-growing markets and very balanced as well. There are complex projects in high voltage. We continue to lay cables, submarine cables. These are very complex projects, costly and dangerous projects. So we have that portfolio. On low voltage, we have short-cycle projects that are not very complex. We invested over EUR 1 billion since -- in the past 7 years to prepare for our growth and for this acceleration, this amplification. We announced a few months ago we have this vertical integration as well with raw materials. And thanks to this, we can now bring low-carbon solutions to our customers to better meet their needs, accessories, services as well. This is the only way for us to reinforce our structural footprint and distinguish ourselves from North American and European as well as Asian competitors. Here are a few highlights of 2024, things we're quite proud of. First of all, there is the extension of the Halden plant. You could see two towers. We used to have only one. We -- this is for submarine cables. As you know, we have a big backlog. So this Halden extension was officially opened about -- a few months ago with 100 customers present. And then there is the acquisition of Triveneta between [ Verona ] and Venice. It's a beautiful location, industrial location, great company, more than EUR 800 million in sales. It is now under -- managed by Nexans. Connection to the Swedish Island, Gotland, a very beautiful achievement, and the wind farm, East Anglia for the North Sea and Baltic Sea. We, of course, have to provide security because you heard that some subsea cables were cut by Russian vessels. So the interconnections are vital for electric grids, and we should not look at Europe through the physical borders, but through the subsea interconnections, energy and telecom, we are all interdependent. In 2024, we also focused on the supply chain, recycling and the ergonomics. CABLELOOP, it's an innovative product launch in the defense environment. So many buildings have to be revamped, and the cables are not all bought, so -- are not thrown away. So we can recycle some cables. So we are going to suffer from a shortage of metal in the next few years. So we have to commit ourselves to recycling our waste for the future growth. MOBIWAY POP, very proud at Nexans. I'm not going to elaborate on it because Christophe Demule will come back to it. And ULTRACKER, ULTRACKER allows us through sensors to geolocate our cables throughout the world. So increasing visibility and recognition. I'm very surprised and very proud with the HR team, with Severine who joined us, the HR Manager of the group. Because to join the Nexans vessel, we didn't receive a lot of applications. The company was not doing well at all. The recognition was damaged. Results were down. It's no longer the case. We received a lot of applications, very nice profiles and talent. And of course, we have this capacity now to retain those talents at Nexans. Our results, of course, our strategic model, the electrification, sustainable electrification, this is quite attractive. But also the E3 model, proving its worth. We launched a chair with HEC, the business school. And we launched a business case for the students of HEC, 2 works -- 2 years of work, 2 professors spending a lot of time on our model for the school case, but with all educational tools for the professors who want to teach this use case. And we were proud after having tested this case with 400 students. We were very proud to see that HEC had on its own platform, and Harvard Business School did it as well on its platform. So we are very proud. And among -- we also see a remarkable increase in the press release and press coverage. And we have a greater influence not only in France, but on other territories like Morocco. A very nice event last year with the Moroccan government, which took place with over 500 people in Rabat, but I'm not going to talk about it. I'm going to show you a video clip. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] So a very nice event, which will be followed by equivalent In Canada, in Toronto in the next few months. So electricity is the backbone of a nation and of an economy. There is no electricity without any cable. I'm going to give the floor to our CFO, Jean-Christophe Juillard.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Christopher. Dear shareholders, good morning or good afternoon. The financial results of 2024, as you're going to see, those results are very good results. Before entering into the detail of 2024, I'm going to spend a minute to take stock of the equity story and the strategic journey we started in 2021 with very precise objective for '24. And I'm proud to say that the Nexans group, you see here for the objective -- financial objective, Nexans reached or widely exceeded the financial objectives we presented to the financial market in February 2021, be it for the EBIT -- adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, the cash flow and, of course, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. We had a target of minus 21%, and we achieved minus 29%. Each year, as you could see, we announced guidance for each year during those 4 years, and we raised the guidance during the year each year, and then we systematically exceeded the targets. Let's look at the 2024 financial year. You see the main financial indicators. We reached a record level in 2024. Let me start with the EBITDA, the operating income in volume, EUR 804 million, plus 20% versus last year or in terms of EBITDA margin, 11%. It was at the top of the bracket to which we were committed in 2021. 74% of growth of the adjusted EBITDA versus '21, the year of -- the starting year of the plan '21, '24. In terms of cash flow and free cash flow, normalized one. You see that we reached a record EUR 454 million. And in '23 and '24, we had major investments, as mentioned by Christopher, especially for the high voltage subsea. But generation of free cash flow after those investments of EUR 313 million, the record -- the return on capital employed, 21%, in '24. And if we look at the ratio of pure electrification, our core business -- our future core business, pure player, 26%, 5 points of difference versus the ROTCE before. If we look at the growth, because we transform the group and the group is profitable, growth becomes a major element of our future. In 2024, you saw that we had an organic growth of 5.1% with a very strong fourth quarter, plus 8.3%. So growth in the revenues on organic growth, change in scopes with acquisitions, but organic growth by 5%, while the margin rate raises by over 1 point, organic growth profitable. Electrification, as you can see, it was at the core of this growth, plus 13%, double digit, and a growth of the margin in percentage point, plus 0.4 points. We had some drops -- or decreases in the nonelectrification business, especially because of a slowdown in the robotics and in the automobile business. You know that the automotive building is difficult. And for the other activities, we find metallurgy mainly, and in our strategic plan, our objective was to reduce the external sales of metallurgy in order to focus on the internal needs of the group in terms of awards. If we focus now on the electrification, pure electrification, you find this strong growth of EBITDA for our electrification activities, plus 73% between '21 and '24, EUR 595 million of EBITDA in '24 adjusted, and it corresponds more or less to the EBITDA of the group in 2022. So you see that the growth of the EBITDA on electrification has been very strong and contributed to the financial robustness of the group. If we compare the EBITDA margin of the group and the electrification, you have 2 points more for the electrification. And in terms of conversion of the EBITDA in generation of free cash flow, you see that the difference is rather significant, almost 18% or 19% of growth of conversion -- additional conversion of our electrification activities versus the other activities of the group. Let me enter into the detail of our main businesses in Electrification. Let me start with Transmission, the high voltage that is. Chris also mentioned it, a very strong growth of our order intake, order book. We have a lot of visibility, therefore. And long-term projects till 2028. The revenues, the margin and the cash flow to be generated on this activity will provide us visibility till 2028. We are full until 2028, in other words. And you also see that the revenues experienced a very strong growth, especially in 2024, thanks to the additional activities, the investments we made. And Christopher said that our production lines doubled in Halden in Norway and a new vessel for the installation of cable. So hence, increase in growth and organic growth by 50% between '23 and '24. And the adjusted EBITDA increased by 72% between '23 and '24 because the -- all the projects with low margins step-by-step are exiting the order book. And now we focus on high added value like the framework agreement with TenneT or the interconnection contract. In PWR-Transmission, if we look at the backlog, I was saying that we had visibility of 90%. What is interesting is our backlog is mainly subsea. It's a subsea backlog. Only 8% are nonsubsea, corresponding to the connection of our subsea cables to the ground and the transformers on the ground. Why are we proud to have subsea backlog? First, because margins are much better, much higher than on the ground projects because of the complexity. The complexity -- sorry, is less. The terms and conditions of our customers are simpler. And therefore, this activity is more accretive to -- is better to be in the subsea than on the ground in other words. And you see that our customers, 85% are TSO. And the share of the U.S. with the election of Donald Trump and his desire to stop old wind farm projects at sea in the U.S. So we had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of impact on our shareholders, a lot of questions by the shareholders on the potential impact on Nexans. But by the end of '24, the share of American projects only accounts for 4%, which is negligible. On the Grid, organic growth, 3%. Sales, up even more. We had some special business in Italy, which allowed us to grow the scope of this segment. Adjusted EBITDA, up 9%. So a very positive momentum for this market segment in 2024, improved margins as well, primarily due to the increase in -- of accessories in the Grid division with much, much better margins, nearly double the margin of mid-voltage cable. So a favorable mix and a market with a lot of demand and a good mix. This is why the results have been so good for -- in distribution for 2024. Moving on to PWR-Connect. Low voltage, primarily building cables. Organic growth, 1%. Sales growth is mainly coming from the acquisition of La Triveneta Cavi in Italy, which starting in June allowed us to increase the sales of this segment of Connect. And organic growth, which was relatively weak, but margins and adjusted EBITDA growth, quite significant. EBITDA, 24%. Once again, our transformation shift and innovations like MOBIWAY and CABLELOOP, these are just 2 examples, have allowed us to significantly increase our margins on this segment and sell connected products and so-called smart intelligent products. This has contributed to the growth of EBITDA for this segment as well. Looking back at the overall balance. Balance sheet on December 31, 2024, as you can see, it is a solid balance sheet. Once again, the leverage ratio is EUR 681 million. The increase between 2023 and 2024 is mainly coming from the acquisition of La Triveneta Cavi, the Italian company. As you can see, we've generated cash. We were able to complete strategic investments, especially in high voltage. And there is also the dividend payout, which has been increased once again, which was the case already in the 5 past years. As a matter of fact, looking at the dividends and the shareholder return, TSR, as you can see, we can see that dividend per share has gone up nearly 120% between 2021 and 2024. We're offering a dividend of EUR 2.60 per share payable in 2025. This gives us a ratio of 35% distribution -- or a dividend payout ratio of 35%, which is very much in line with our commitments. If we look back over the past 4 years, the TSR was 97%. And if we look even further back 2018, at the time of the first strategic plan, it's nearly 400% TSR, with the stock price and progressive dividend payout. So in closing, I would like to talk about the 2025 guidance. Adjusted EBITDA between EUR 770 million and EUR 850 million, this shows continuity. We expect to continue the company's performance. Free cash flow generation between EUR 225 million and EUR 325 million for 2025. Let's now move on to Q1 2025. It has been a good quarter, perceived positively by the financial community. Some of the highlights for Q1, organic growth, 4.1%. In electrification, organic growth at plus 6.8%, very consistent with 2024. It shows that the electrification market is continuing to boost the company's performance. It's above the average performance of the company. Sales, total sales, EUR 1.8 billion. Standard sales, EUR 1.2 billion. The transmission backlog was at EUR 7.4 billion in 2024. We're now at EUR 8.1 billion, with additional order intakes coming from RTE. The integration with La Triveneta Cavi has been successful, and it is continuing to deliver expected synergies. The objective was EUR 20 million per year. We're there, we're right on target and in line with our forecasts. We're therefore very pleased about this acquisition. And I would also like to say that as far as asset rotation is concerned, you know that we have announced the signature of an agreement for the disposal of Lynxeo. So Lynxeo will be exiting Nexans starting the beginning of Q2 -- sorry, Q3 '25, H2 -- sorry, '25, H2. Organic growth at 4.1%. Distribution and connect are in the vicinity of 2%. Q2 should be better than Q1. We expect in Q2 to see a strong contribution of organic growth in distribution. The other activities, mainly steel, it's stable or nearly flat. Nonelectrification, still suffering in 2025, a bit like in 2024. This is mainly robotics and automotive and including assets to be disposed of. So much for 2024 and Q1 '25. Elyette, over to you with a focus on Grid.

[Interpreted] Hello, everyone. It is my pleasure to tell you about the electric network business. Words are not necessary. Simply take a look at what happened in Spain, pitch-black. The thing is that's exactly what happens with the network. You don't see the network. It's generally underground, except for the few low or mid-voltage cables in Brittany. Otherwise, you don't see cables. And yet they are absolutely essential because they allow you to access data, your health applications, your fridge, communications, and they are for the common good. And that's really what this is about. I'm going to give the floor to one of our customers, Eiffage. They're one of our strategic customers. They work with us on renewables. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] Many thanks to Eiffage. They buy low carbon cables from us, and they promote at other platform in which we are the only supplier of such cables. Allow me to come back to the Grid. Spain was one of it, among many others. A similar event happened in London. So what happened? Well, it's a convergence of network-related challenges. Sometimes, the network is obsolete in many European countries and American countries. The networks are old, 30, 40, 50 years of age, which means those networks have to be renewed, have to be renovated and/or replaced. And we are using -- we're seeing renewable power, offshore or onshore. We have electric vehicles as well as industrial plants that connect to the network. And sometimes, you end up with bottlenecks. There are energy transition bottlenecks. As we said earlier, we're going to have to install 80 million kilometers of cables in the years to come. That's 2,000 times around the globe. Imagine how much steel, how many metal that -- how much metal that represents. And we're facing a shortage in aluminum and copper. So we have a number of solutions, which we will be implementing to recover and recycle those products. But there are shortages in other areas. There -- here you're able to see what RTE does, for example, and how sometimes installers use artificial intelligence to install in trenches. The problem is there is a shortage of installers. There is a shortage in France, in Europe and in emerging countries. Therefore, we have to find solutions. In a moment, I will focus on that subject in particular. But for now, I would like to tell you that the challenges faced by the networks are a real opportunity for us because main operators in Europe are going to have to double their CapEx in the years to come. And whether it's in renewable projects as well as in data centers or gigafactories, they will double in the years to come. And for us, for our cable business and accessory market, it means 7% growth year after year between now and 2028. So how do we drive this growth? Well, we work with companies like Eiffage, that was in the video, to go from standardized products to -- and traditional networks, generation, production, consumption to new -- completely new solutions, tailor-made solutions that are end-to-end and that are unlike those that are offered by the competition. How do we do it? Well, in the past years, we have amplified the products we sell and the skills we have. In terms of products, we've invested in new capabilities, in new production plants in Bourg-en-Bresse, in Jeumont, in the North of France. We've invested in accessory plants with a lot of production, which is now fully robotized, connectors that connect cables. And we invest in training centers, certifying training centers. We are an industrial partner of Enedis, [indiscernible] the network school to train people to become familiar with future networks. As far as wind farms or solar farms are concerned, as you know, Eiffage buy cable, but they buy more than cables. They also buy end-to-end solutions. What are those solutions? Well, they combine cables along with accessories as well as services and training. And this allows some operators, those who operate those wind farms or solar farms, to ensure a much longer life cycle and -- up to 5 to 10 years longer life cycle. Keep in mind also that on the network, there are different products, different systems, some areas on the networks that are absolutely critical, especially when they fail. Those critical organs are called accessories. They're connectivity, connectors or connection systems. And those accessories, and 80% of the problems, they are related to those accessories. So it's not a problem of quality. In most cases, failures are due to poor installation. In other words, it's a human mistake. It's systems or problems that are caused by human mistakes. Again, these are products we put in trenches to connect cables together. So we have to invest more in skills and talents to provide solutions that will help installers in the quality of their installations. As you saw earlier, you had a demo illustrating INFRACHECK in a trench. INFRACHECK in a trench is technology. It's based on years of experience between -- with Nexans and its training centers and operators where they're now leveraging AI. AI has learned from those installations, the good ones and the bad ones. And today, with a phone, you can scan an installation, and your phone will tell you if you did a good job or a bad job. And trench operators have to go through 90 different steps to connect 2 cables together. With this kind of technology and AI, we bring it down to 20, which substantially reduces the number of potential problems. And here is a video that illustrates the use of AI. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] You saw the example of a type of innovation we are launching in 20 countries for the second half year of this year, with 20 different electric grids and consumed by 2 major customers, Enel in Italy and Enedis in France for the time being. So to summarize, we combine the customer experience and improved one, thanks to AI and the monitoring of the grids as well, and the implementation of solutions, enabling us to have sustainability on the grid, issuing less -- releasing less CO2. That's why this year and last year, we launched products reducing the carbon impact by up to 50% with the use of recycled aluminum. And to finish, you should have in mind that those digital applications allowed by AI enable everyone, especially our network operators, to have access to information at the right time, at the right place, to make the right decisions. This implies to send the right technicians to the right place for the right effect on the network quicker. And in the future, we can therefore prevent those faults because we're able to measure them to anticipate on the faults. And in the case of Spain, it was my introduction, we would like to all anticipate this problem in order to avoid this type of events, especially in France. Thank you. And I'm going to give the floor back to Christophe.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Elyette. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm very proud to talk about MOBIWAY POP and the history -- and the story of MOBIWAY POP. We were faced with the challenge. How can we innovate in a commodity market? PWR-Connect is regarded as a commodity market. Cable is a standard product. Everyone knows the type of products that you are confronted with. This type of crown, very standard product, a classical one, how do we innovate on such a product? That's the question. The answer, the answer starts with the users, who is using this product, the electrician. So our first approach, our first step in this approach was to say, "What are the difficulties encountered by an electrician in using this type of product? How can we understand his challenges, his difficulties to implement adaptive solutions?" Those last few years -- in the past 4 years, we met over 20,000 electricians on the 4 continents -- on the 5 continents. We met them with ethnologies. Why? Cable is standards. Okay, it's a standard product. No problem. But the customer user is -- or experience is not the same. And we wanted to innovate on this customer experience. It was an exploration mission, and we were able to know the key challenges and the key difficulties of the electricians on a daily basis. So the first difficulty for the electrician is to unwind the cable and not just one, but three. That's what you have in your connectors, in the switches. And it's complicated because you have a kind of a pigtail as it is called in the jargon, not in other words. So it has an impact on the installation time systematically. They have to redo the work and to readdress -- rectify the wire, so that it enters into the sheaths. And it is very time consuming. Therefore, money consuming. How can we solve this type of problem? The first way of solving the problem is to say, "Well, we know the difficulty very well with the crown. When you have a drum and at Nexans, we know about the cable trims, we delete this problem of pigtail." So we said, "Let's move to a drum." This is a recharge, MOBIWAY POP. The advantage of this recharge is that you normally have plastic, it's cardboard and paper. So we wanted to have this environmental approach in creating it. Once you have this small drum, what do you do on discharge? What do you do? It's not convenient to use to unwind rods. What is MOBIWAY POP? It's a system integrating a tool and a recharger. This is the tool. I promise I have no other examples, okay? This is the tool. This is a simple tool for the user based on one tool, helping or facilitating the unwinding and recharging systems. Of course, we have a patent. So the electrician is completely changing his way of using wire or rods. It's a commodity product by excellence if we ask them. What is the benefit? Well, they say 36% of their time when pulling on the wire or the rod. In Colombia, the product is already there since -- has been there since '23. The electricians in Colombia are paid based on the number of houses or buildings they have. So if it takes them 10 hours to install the wire in the house, it will be 10 hours. If it -- but with such a tool, they can save 2 hours a day. 2 hours a day means 2 hours more to spend time with their family for them. And to us, of course, it is a key. And beyond time, what have we been doing as well? We've been working with ergonomics with ergonomist. Electrician Is a difficult job. You always have uncomfortable posture, stances. And when you work with ergonomists, you can reduce the difficult positions. Thanks to MOBIWAY POP and in working with ergonomists, we could delete 67% of the uncomfortable positions and stances. And it has a direct impact on their life quality with a solution, which is sustainable. On top of that, this is the MOBIWAY POP. It is deployed in France and, of course, in Colombia, as I said. So there is -- what is the surprise? What we can observe in France is that we have a lot of feedback from social media. Electricians in the building industry, they are on the social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and so on. And like everyone, they make comments. And they say it is good, it is no good, we're happy, we're not happy, it is innovative, it's not really innovative. As I said that the story started with electricians. They shared their challenges with us. So don't listen to me, that's my proposition. Listen to the electricians, what they say about the solution and what are their own comments. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] So that's the best example. They use it on a daily basis. So this solution was awarded a label in the industry in '24 in France and are being awarded abroad as well. What is our mission? It's simple. It is to put into place a new standard. MOBIWAY POP is a new standard of customer experience for electricians worldwide. Today, it is present in 2 countries. Our ambition is that by the end of the year, it's present in 5 countries. And we want to this innovation -- roll out this innovation very quickly and in a more powerful way. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Marc Grynberg is next, managing climate and environmental questions. He's going to give us an update on the company's climate strategy.

[Interpreted] Hello. Good afternoon, and thank you. Yes, I'm going to give you an update on the progress in our climate strategy. Please allow me to come back to some of the projects that has kept us quite busy in 2024, starting with the implementation of new European reporting standards and nonfinancial standards. Our teams worked relentlessly in 2024 to develop a reporting that is compliant with the new European directive. It gives a very comprehensive overview of what is at stake as well as our performance, environmental, social and governance. We have also continued to work and adapt our ambitions and the climate roadmap to make them more coherent with the amplification of our strategy, as described by Chris, a few moments ago. We looked at our circular economy strategy with several initiatives that are positioning Nexans as -- to capture some of the -- some products that are coming to the end of their life cycle to actually recycle them and reinject them into our production systems. And we've also made a major investment, nearly EUR 100 million, in the Lens facility to recycle copper starting in 2027. This will allow us to considerably increase the percentage of recycled copper, thereby reducing the carbon footprint of our products. In 2024, we also developed a methodology we are using to systematically measure the potential impact of acquisitions we're considering. As you know, with the amplification strategy, acquisitions will play a key role. And we thought it was quite natural to prepare those acquisitions in light with our climate ambitions to integrate them as efficiently as possible in our future environmental roadmap. A few words on carbon emissions. Our objective is to reach carbon neutrality at the very latest in 2050. Between now and then, we have a number of milestones. Scope 1 and 2, down 46%. Scope 3, down 30% by 2030. The Scope 1 emissions are the greenhouse emissions coming from our own industrial operations. Scope 2 emissions are the ones that are coming from -- generated by the power we buy. Scope 3 emissions are emissions that are generated upstream. For example, coming from the raw materials we consume as well as the emissions that are on the downstream part of our business generated in transportation or generated when our products are used or when their end of life cycle is managed. So where do we stand in 2024 with respect to our 2030 objectives? At the end of 2024, Scope 1 and 2 emissions were down 38%. This shows we're actually getting quite close to the target of 46%. Very encouraging numbers. To illustrate the progress we accomplished in 2024, I would like to give you a few examples. We launched new heat recovery technologies in our Canadian facilities. We continued to deploy solar panels to supply some of our sites with green energy. It was the case last year in 2024 in Switzerland, for example. And in some of our operations, we replaced fossil fuels by biofuels or by electric solutions. As far as the Scope 3 is concerned, at the end of 2024, we reached a reduction of 42% versus the year of reference. Year of reference was 2019. And part of that reduction was achieved, thanks to increased use of multimodal transport, and also thanks to the launch of new technologies and new products that allow us to reduce energy losses when we use our cables. This is another example that shows that technological innovation is great in terms of growth, but it's also good for sustainable growth because it allows us to reduce our CO2 emissions. 2025 now. The agenda for 2025 is, with no surprise, very much in line with the 2024 agenda. We are going to continue our hard work to further reduce our CO2 emissions. This year, we're going to focus a bit more on some activities, the ones that are maybe a bit more difficult to decarbonate, for example, with the vessels we use to lay subsea cables as well as in the steel industry. We're also going to continue and reinforce our skills. Especially at the Board of Directors level, we need to make sure our Directors are trained. We must -- they must be well informed about the topics and the priorities of the company. So we have ongoing training on subjects such as climate change, the climate roadmap. For this year, we have a session -- a training session, which will be dedicated to recycling, especially the recycle -- recycling of steels -- or metals, rather. We're going to continue and monitor regulatory changes very closely. We're awaiting announcements made by the commission. We're hoping for some simplifications in how we report. Reporting today has become quite difficult for our teams, and we are certainly hoping that there will be some simplification coming from the European authorities. And hopefully, that will make the next years and -- the future implementation of European directives a bit easier. Meanwhile, our intention is to continue and to further implement our recycling strategy. And as I said earlier, we will continue to monitor the impact of our acquisitions on our decarbonation roadmap. We do want to make sure that our decarbonation roadmap really captures all the growth, but also in a respectful way when it comes to CO2 emissions. This is my final slide. As always, I would like to show you the scores we have received from nonfinancial rating agencies. They typically rate the nonfinancial performance of Nexans. They do this on a regular basis. I'm not going to go into each score, but I think what I do want to say is that those scores are best in class. I think they simply reflect and confirm that Nexans is not only a pioneer, but also a leader in the industry in the field of sustainable development. It makes us quite satisfied, and we're very proud to see that our leadership and performance are recognized not only by the Board of Directors, but also by independent external third-party organizations. In closing, I would like to make a side comment. We talked about blackouts earlier. I would like to share the experience of -- I was in Portugal the day of the blackout, and I can tell you that life without power for 12 hours is just impossible. It was very frustrating, especially when you're in a country where 75% of the power supply is renewable. And all services, public and private were -- are highly digitized. So the need -- there is an obvious need to modernize networks. This was a blatant example. A wonderful illustration of this. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Marc. And over to Anne as independent member, who is the Chairwoman of the Remuneration Committee. She is going to tell us about the governance.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Jean. Dear shareholders, it is my pleasure to present the resolutions on the governance of your company as well as the remuneration. To start with, there we go, your company's corporate governance complies in all respects with the AFEP-MEDEF Code, its most recent version. 2022, the composition of your Board of Directors is balanced and diversified. This is our objective, to strengthen diversity and complementarity of skills, maintain diversity of ages, nationalities and international experience as well as a good gender balance. At the end of this assembly, pending your votes, we will have 54% women, 46% men in 2025. The main changes we proposed in the composition of the Board are as follows. First of all, the end of Andronico Luksic Craig's term of office at the close of this general meeting. Andronico did not wish to be -- to stand for reelection. I would like to thank Andronico for his strong commitments, his continued hard work all these years. I think his work was essential -- an essential contribution to the development of Nexans. The renewal of the mandates of Marc Grynberg and Francisco Perez Mackenna, which we will submit to your vote and the appointment of a new Director, representing employee shareholders to be chosen between 2 candidates, Gwenael Gilbert and Bruno Daguet. Selma Alami's term of office expires at the end of this meeting. Furthermore, Angeline Afanoukoe's term of office as Director representing employees was renewed by the French Group Committee for 4 years starting today. Pending your approval, the number of Directors will be reduced from 14 to 13 at the end of this general meeting. The independence -- this would increase the independent's rate from 54.5% to 60%. The Board's 4 committees are -- that are presented here are very active and function very well under their respective chairmanships. This was highlighted on the latest evaluation of the Board and its committees carried out at the beginning of the year in 2024. We held 14 Board meetings, 24 committee meetings as well as 2 joint sessions of the Audit Committee, Accounts and Risk Committee as well as the Strategic and Sustainable Committee dedicated to CSRD regulations and the implementation thereof. I also organized 3 executive sessions without the presence of CEO and the management. Those sessions were dedicated -- were an opportunity to interact, to talk about how to improve the Board operations and the support management on key issues. We also organized 6 meetings with independent Directors on various themes related to Board operations, governance development opportunities as well as the annual assessment of the Board and its committees. I also took part in the government -- governance road show with the Chairman and the Climate Administrator in preparation for this year's Annual General Meeting. Let's now turn to the Directorships we're proposing. As we said, there are 2 renewals, and there's 1 appointment. We propose that you reappoint Marc Grynberg to the Board for a 4-year term. Marc, as you know, is our Climate Director and he's also an independent Director. He brings to the Board his experience as a manager in an industrial company and has tremendous expertise in financial and extra-financial fields. We would also like to propose the -- to renew the mandate, a proposal of the shareholder in Nexans Limited of , Francisco Perez Mackenna for another 4-year term. Francisco is the CEO, and he is a major contributor to the work of the Board and the 4 committees of which he is a member. We are also proposing the appointment of a new Director representing employee shareholders for 4-year terms to succeed Selma Alami. Thank you for her contribution over the past 4 years. Gwenael Gilbert is the Vice President of the Grid Business and Connect in Brazil, Managing Director of Nexans Brazil. Bruno Daguet is Vice President, Industrial Operations and Engineering. After having considered these 2 candidates, the Board recommends the appointment of Gwenael Gilbert based, in particular, on his international experience as a company Director. The candidate elected today will join the Board at the end of this meeting. As usual, we invite you to view short introductory videos of those 2 candidates. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] Thank you to both candidates for their presentations and introductions. So I would like to turn to the resolutions concerning the remuneration policy of our corporate officers, Resolutions 7, 8 and 9, concerning the remuneration exposed of 2024 of corporate officers; then Resolutions 10, 11, 12, proposed compensation policies ex ante for the financial year 2025. All remuneration components are presented in full in the 2024 URD. Let me start with Resolution #7, the Directors' remuneration for 2024. At the 2024 Annual General Meeting, you voted for a budget of EUR 820,000 to cover the cost of 24 committees and the dedicated task of the Climate Director and the Independent Lead Director. Total remuneration paid to Directors in 2024 amounted to EUR 779,560, i.e. 90% -- 95% of the maximum envelope. And in 2024, 24 committee meetings were held, 4 meetings of the audit accounts and risks, 5 meetings of the Appointments and Corporate Governance Committee, 5 meetings of the Compensation Committee, 8 meetings of the Strategy and Sustainable Development Committee and 2 joint meetings of the Audit and the Strategy Committee to discuss the directive on corporate reporting and sustainability and its implementation within the group. The 2024 remuneration of the Chairman of the Board is subject to a vote in Resolution #8. In accordance with your approval at the Annual General Meeting of 2024, the Chairman's remuneration amounted to EUR 320,000 for the same financial year. No other compensation or benefits of any kind were paid. The 2024 remuneration of the CEO is submitted to the vote of Resolution 9. Fixed remuneration, we remind you that the remuneration policy for the CEO is reviewed at multiyear intervals for a period of every 3 years. It was revised in 2024, and it was EUR 950,000. It remains unchanged since 2021. Short-term variable compensation now. The remuneration policy for the CEO sets a maximum variable remuneration of 150% of base salary. Within this variable remuneration of short-term, collective targets accounting for 65% of variable compensation and individual qualitative targets for 35% for 2024, variable compensation amounted to EUR 1.280 million, i.e. 89.9% of its maximum, 134.8% of the target bonus, reflecting the very good performance of the company. The collective portion was based on 4 criteria: EBITDA, ROCE, net free cash flow and net income. The collective share has reached its maximum, and it results from the calculation done based on the results observed. The individual share was based on 3 criteria -- or groups of criteria. One linked to strategy deployment. Another one, the operational efficiency, representing 30% of the individual share. And the cultural and commitment and ESG strategy deployment representing 40% of the individual share. The individual share was reached at 71% of its maximum, i.e., 106.5% of the target bonus. And you also have a long-term variable compensation with the allocation of shares, and the variable long-term compensation represents 150% maximum of the fixed compensation of the CEO. 20,000 shares were allocated to the CEO, therefore, for a total value of EUR 1,333,412, 145% of fixed remuneration performance shares. The acquisition is for 4 years. It's subject to the achievement of performance conditions based on 3 criteria: 40% on an economic criterion based on EBITDA margin and free cash flow conversion rate; 40% on an external financial criteria consisting of measuring the relative performance of the TSR compared with the benchmark panel; and 20% on an ESG criterion that measures achievement of 9 ESG objectives in the following areas: commitments, 3 indicators; environment, 4 indicators; and ecosystems, 2 indicators. The other compensation items -- or components are also presented here. They include commitments such as termination benefits, noncompetition clause, pensions and other benefits in kind. Let me turn to the 2025 remuneration policy. I will start for Directors -- with Directors and the Chairman of the Board put the vote in Resolution 10 and 11. For the Directors, no change. The remuneration policy of 2025 follows the same principles as in 2024 with the variable components linked to the Directors' attendance at Board meetings, a predominantly variable components. Total remuneration of all Directors is maintained at EUR 820,000 for fiscal year 2025. The Chairman of the Board, 2025, we remind you that the compensation policy is also reviewed at multiyear intervals. The remuneration of the Chairman of the Board remains unchanged in 2025 with fixed remuneration of EUR 320,000. No other remuneration or benefits of any kind will be granted in respect of 2025. The remuneration policy of the CEO is submitted for your approval at the General Meeting -- was -- so this remuneration policy will be submitted for your approval at the General Meeting in May 2024, is based on the following 3 main principles: competitive remuneration in line with market practices as detailed in the URD; balance compensation with an equal weighting of short-term and long-term variable compensation. It is in line with the strategy of the group, motivating the CEO to achieve Nexans' long-term ambitions. In accordance with the remuneration policy of the CEO, we submit for your approval the remuneration policy unchanged in 2025 with a fixed salary of EUR 950,000; a variable remuneration corresponding to 100% of fixed remuneration up to a maximum of 150%. And there are collective objectives accounting for 55% of annual short-term variable compensation and individual objectives based on quantitative and qualitative targets accounting for 35% of the short-term variable compensation. And then a long-term variable remuneration, the value of which may not exceed 150% of fixed remuneration. As I explained previously, this long-term variable compensation takes the form of performance shares. The conditions, 40% on an economic criteria, measuring the level of adjusted EBITDA and the conversion rate into free cash flow; 40% on an external financial criterion consisting and measuring the relative performance of the TSR compared with a reference panel at 30%; and the Eurostoxx 600 industrial for 70%; and 20% on an ESG criteria that measures the achievement of 9 ESG objectives in the following areas, in line with the ESG roadmap for the years to come. In addition to this, we have a strategic long-term plan. During the previous assembly in 2024, you voted an exceptional package of 130,000 performance shares to be allocated to the company's executives to support the new strategic plan, which was communicated on November 13, '24 called Sparking Electrification. 129,800 shares were allocated March '21 to '25 to almost 50 managers, including 26,000 shares, which were allocated to the Chief Executive. This represents 20% of the total allocation. As I said, these are free shares -- performance shares coming at the end of a 4-year period and that are subject to the achievement of specifically defined performance conditions based on 5 criteria in the strategic plan, which have to be met by December 31, 2028. 70% of the indicator is on economic performance. ROCE at 20% at the end of December 31, 2028. Annual growth of 4%. Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1,150 million and a cash conversion criteria of 45%. 30% of these indicators are based on relative performance of TSR compared to a reference panel and 30% and the Eurostoxx 600 industrial index at 70%. Other components -- compensation components are also presented here, some of them once again include termination benefits, noncompetition clauses, pensions and other benefits in kind. I'd like to turn now to Resolution 22 and 23, employee shareholding and the capital increase reserved for employees in France and abroad for a maximum period of 24 months. As you know, employee shareholder -- shareholding is essential. It is an essential incentive at Nexans. It's a way for us to involve employees in the company's long-term strategy and to share the creation of value as shareholders. At the end of 2024, it represented 3.2% of the capital. Nexans has just launched a new employee shareholding program and it's called ACT 2025. It's open to 98% of the company's electrification employees across 28 countries. The last 2 resolutions are on free shares and performance shares for 2026. Resolution 2024 (sic) [ 24 ] concerns the free allocation of performance shares to the Chief Executive and key executives. Resolution 25 concerns the allocation of free shares without performance conditions to high-potential employees, performance employees as well as key experts. All 3 share plans have a vesting period of 4 years. As I said earlier, performance share plans are based on 3 performance conditions: financial performance condition, economic performance condition and an ESG condition. The allocation of performance shares to the Chief Executive may not exceed 12% of the total package. In 2025, the allocation of the CEO represented 5.8% of that total package. So we're going to submit to your approval a maximum envelope of 330,000 shares, which is -- represents 0.75% of the share capital. As far as free shares are concerned, free shares are allocated to employees and key experts at Nexans. Those plans are subject to one single condition, which is the presence and no performance condition, and we submit to your approval a maximum allocation of 50,000 shares, which represents 0.1% of the total share capital. I'm now done with the presentation of the resolutions. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Anne. Over now to our statutory auditors who are going to present their report. This is Juliette Decoux-Guillemot from Mazars.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, in the name of the statutory auditors comprised of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Forvis Mazars, we are going to present the reports we have issued for fiscal year closed December 31, 2024. As usual, I'm going to give you a summary. The reports have been made available to you before this meeting. This year, we have generated 10 reports, 4 reports for the ordinary shareholder meeting and 6 reports for the extraordinary shareholders' meeting. Let's start with the ordinary shareholder meeting. The first report is on the consolidated financial statements. They are certified with no reservations and no observations. This report presents the 3 key points of our audit. These are the 3 specific topics we worked on, and they are unchanged compared to last year. They have to do with the accounting of contracts of goods and services, especially the estimates of results upon completion of long-term contracts, litigations and -- as well as the goodwill evaluation, and tangibles and intangibles. We also verified the information that are in the management report. The second report is the report on the corporate financial statements. Here, again, we certify them with no reservations and no observations. We are presenting the 2 key points of the audit to the holding. It's the assessment of participation as well as litigations and competition investigations. We've looked at the information and verified the accuracy of information on remuneration and the benefits given to Directors as well as the other favors. Our third report is the special report on related party agreements. The objective is to communicate the characteristics, the modalities that justify the interest of these related party agreements. One agreement was agreed this year between Bpifrance and one of Nexans' subsidiaries as part of the investment plan called [Foreign Language], France 2030 in -- on recycled copper. Our report also includes the agreements that you signed in previous -- during previous years and that are still enforced today. The last report of the ordinary shareholders' meeting, it's the report on the certification of sustainability information. In accordance with new regulations mentioned by Marc earlier, this report comprises 3 separate sections, and each section has its own conclusions. The first one has to do with IFRS compliance and the process launched by the company to determine published information. We have paid specific attention to the identification of stakeholders, the identification of impacts of both risks and opportunities as well as the evaluation of impact, materiality and financial materiality. We confirm we did not find any significant anomalies. The second chapter of the report has to do with compliance of information and sustainability that are included in the sustainability report. We focused, in particular, on the information provided in application with the new environmental standards. In this report, there is one observation that drew our attention to the preparation. This observation we've seen with many, and it describes the main uncertainties and the inherent limits given the context because this is the first time we're applying this new regulation. Here, again, we have not found any significant anomalies. The third and last chapter of this report is the obligations to publish information on taxonomy. We paid specific attention to information relative to the eligibility of activities, the key performance indicators and supporting information. There, again, we have not identified any mistakes or significant omissions. Let's now move on to the extraordinary shareholders' meeting reports. Once again, there is a total of 6 reports. On Resolutions 15 to 25, you are going to be asked to vote relative to capital reductions, authorizations to increase the share capital, authorizations for the employee shareholding plan as well as the grant of performance shares and free shares. We have established those reports. You will give a delegation to the Board of Directors to actually carry out those operations. In summary, we have no observations when it comes to the modalities of those operations, and we will issue additional reports, if necessary. Thank you for your attention.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. Let's now move on to our questions-and-answer sessions. We will answer the questions asked in the room and the ones that are asked online. Please, if you're -- if you have any questions in this room, we would like to ask you to use a microphone. Only shareholders are entitled to ask questions. We will only answer questions that are related to today's agenda. Please be kind enough to introduce yourself before asking questions. Do we have any questions in the room? Or do we have any questions online? Yes, sir, please.

[Interpreted] Olivier [indiscernible]. I'm a shareholder. I have a question about disposals of some of your industrial operations. I saw there was one -- are you satisfied with the prices you were able to get? When will the deals be closed? When -- and when will they be fully deconsolidated? And once you've closed those deals, what will be your plans in terms of acquisitions? And will you be using the money generated -- the proceeds of those transactions for future acquisitions?

[Interpreted] Well, thank you, sir, for your question. To answer your question, yes, we're satisfied with the multiple, which is above the current multiple. So that is accretive for the company, which is good news. The deconsolidation of disposals with Lynxeo will -- the deconsolidation should normally take place at the beginning of H2, let's say, late June, early July. That's our current agenda. As far as using the proceeds of those disposals, the objective is to redeploy those proceeds in future electrification projects, our core business, especially in low voltage and mid-voltage. We've invested heavily already in high voltage. So right now, we're interested in acquisitions in the similar category as those we conducted last year in Italy with Triveneta Cavi. Again, mid-voltage or low voltage, it could be in Europe or potentially in any other fast-growing geography.

[Interpreted] Have we answered your question? Any other questions here in the room? Yes. Go ahead.

[Interpreted] There are disposals of EUR 1.3 billion being negotiated. Any other disposal scheduled in 2025?

There are 2 groups of disposals in progress. The first one with Latour Capital, Lynxeo -- the disposal of Lynxeo that I was just commenting on the scheduling and the process a minute ago. So it's going to exit from Nexans during the second half year of '25. And the second disposal, accounting for about the same size, that's the automotive harnesses. And here, again, we are being disposing it. It's not as well advanced. There -- the visibility is not that big. It won't be before the end of '25 and beginning of '25 (sic) [ '26 ]. And both disposals account for EUR 1.3 billion.

[Interpreted] Has it clarified your -- okay. Good. Yes, another question from the room.

[Interpreted] [ Michel Guileme ]. You made optimistic forecast for the future. I suppose that it is based on potential electricity consumption. But you know that those figures are more or less criticized because consumption of 600 or 700 terawatt hours, but they are not probably achieved. So if you based your projects on this outlook and it is not achieved, will that have an impact on your production and the development of your forecast?

[Interpreted] Thank you for your question because, indeed, based on -- it all depends. The projections might not be the same. Our projections are based on the aging of the network, not based on the possible demand in electricity. So we -- the cables are aging, 30 years of maintenance of networks. So we cannot add another 10 years of additional life of those networks. You have the double effect. You have -- the more you have access to electricity, the more you will consume it. It's a rebound effect -- or impact. But we based our analysis based on the unavoidable replacement of the already existing cables.

[Interpreted] [ Gerard Ponce ]. I heard yesterday that Getlink was going to install a cable in the second tunnel. I understand that you are not that in favor of cables installed in tunnels. As to the profitability, what is your stance? What is your positioning there in terms of recognition? And the first was installed by your major competitor from Italy.

[Interpreted] Thank you. We are interested. The cables installed within the Channel Tunnel generates a lot of profit for Getlink. The way it can be installed, well, it can be used as well by vessels because we are not far away from the sea. So we'll wait for the bid. We do not reject bids before they are launched. It's not our objective, and we are rather close to Getlink. So I think it's a good project. We'll take part in it in due time. The problem is not to say a project is good or not. It all depends on our working load and on the time wanted by the customers. So if we have availability, some available capacity, I think it's 70 kilometers, yes, so if we have available capacity, yes, of course, we'll respond to this call for tender. We are very close to Eiffage and [indiscernible], yes.

[Interpreted] Yes, another question from the room.

[Interpreted] [ Michel Marcnout ], individual shareholder. My question, you see all those custom tariffs, the wars, well, the uncertainties -- political uncertainties. Have they an impact on the daily life of Nexans?

[Interpreted] Well, thank you for your question. It is an essential question, and it's -- there's a broad scope here. It's clear that the biggest impact of those political uncertainties on Nexans was the Russian-Ukrainian war because we have people working in Ukraine. And I would like to pay tribute to the resilience of our teams and the Ukrainian people because we, managers, are trained to manage companies, but not companies at wartime. And I'm very much impressed by the resilience of the Ukrainian people in such crisis. 85% of our population in Ukraine is made up of women. They decided to come and work every day since the very beginning of the war. And we are still working. So we are "lucky" to be rather far away from the bombing locations, so we can serve our customers. And without our teams in situ, it would not be possible. So there is a very strong direct impact. There has been a very strong impact for 3 years now. We hope that this war is going to end soon. And on the custom tariffs, compared to other groups, the impact is rather low -- rather limited. Why? Whether the cables are middle-voltage or low-voltage cables, we focus on local. We produce in France for France. We produce in Italy for Italy. Same for the U.S. So we have very limited flows of import, export within our business. And the only direct impact we had in the States further to the imposition of custom tariffs by the Trump administration was the risk on the copper imports because the U.S. have a shortage in terms of copper production. The extraction capacity is 1.2 million, but their consumption is double or even multiplied by 3 for the time being. And we produce copper. I'm looking for the -- we are producing -- yes, we are producing road wire in Canada. We export them to the States, but Trump decided -- well, because of Trump -- well, we are not really directly impacted, but our customers indirectly are impacted. And the direct impact, we also have had -- because the question is rather broad, is the stoppage of the wind farms in the U.S. And of course, we have plants dedicated to the interconnection of the wind farms in the U.S., especially for the New York state and the Eastern Coast of the U.S. And we are going to focus on European projects while waiting for the future, hoping that the U.S. will take over some of those projects. But it's a kind of a permanent crisis, and we need to be agile. Thank you for your question.

[Interpreted] First of all, I would like to thank you for your video clips. It gave a good image of the company and the new cables, the smart cables. I heard you talk about Europe, U.S., Africa, but what about Asia? And my second question would be, what is the weight of Nexans in Asia in terms of cables?

[Interpreted] Very, very limited. We have a plant in China for the middle- and low-voltage cables, and we are very strong in Australia and New Zealand. But for our future acquisitions, if I come back to the answer given by Jean-Christophe Juillard regarding the first question, we want to listen -- or to observe the European opportunities, but we want to strengthen our positioning where we are limited or weak. And as you said, it's in Asia and the Pacific area. So we are very active. We are looking for acquisitions over there, and we would like to strengthen our North American footprint as well. So I hope that at another general meeting, we'll be able to show you that we've been working there on those 2 areas.

[Interpreted] Okay. A question this time from the Internet. All companies are facing a challenge in terms of recruitment. How do you attract new talent? How do you retain them?

[Interpreted] Well, we -- Nexans is lucky to take part in this third wave -- or cycle of the electric infrastructure. So we are able to project a demand over the next 20 years based on low-carbon products and renewable energy. So it is rather attractive for talents, young talents or not so young talents. And for those who were shareholders of Nexans in the past, well, we suffered a lot, and there is a kind of new birth of the group. Of course, the reputation is much better. Our footprint on the social media was multiplied by 2. And we are very much present -- or we are in the press -- there is a press coverage as well and more and more -- in numerous number of countries, not only in France, of course, but in South America. Our business is extremely strong in Morocco as well. And in France, today, further to many conferences we hold on the E3 model, economy commitment and engagement and environment, this model has become a source of attractiveness. The turnover or the churning rate is getting less and less, and our attractiveness rate is increasing more and more. And we're proud of that.

[Interpreted] You organized a master class in Morocco, and the best business schools in Morocco attended this master class to better know the E3 model. Our development is mainly outside France, and this master class was very, very good.

[Interpreted] Yes. There was a conference of 250 people. Each year, we support -- we have this sustainability chair with HEC, and we also intervene in various schools, business schools in [indiscernible], in Switzerland and also in Spain.

[Interpreted] Another question from the Internet. On water, the scarcity of water resources, is it a constraint for the group? I'm going to ask for Vincent, our expert in water.

[Interpreted] Vincent will answer. Well, when the question is difficult, I'll pass it over to someone. That's my principle.

[Interpreted] So water is used quite a lot in our plants, of course. We use it to cool down our cables during the production. And what we've been doing is that we organize closed circuits or loops. So the water will circulate in a loop. Therefore, we save water because once it is put in the loop, we do not use further water apart from the natural evaporation. And we invested a lot of money, lastly, in Switzerland and in Norway for that. So we are very much aware of the water scarcity, and we are committed to reducing this water consumption.

[Interpreted] Any other questions? In the room this time.

[Interpreted] For your customers renewing their electric grids, why they -- do they decide to buy new cables? And do they have enough money to buy those new cables?

[Interpreted] Elyette is going to answer this question.

[Interpreted] Usually, the network operators come from the States, and they have to render service to their citizens. In other words, they are forced to supply a level of energy or electricity to their citizens. Therefore, their first priority is to be connected to the network, to the grid, and the second one is to modernize the grid. The way they finance this -- the fund, this is simple. With the energy tariffs, we all pay. So thanks to those tariffs, they can do that, and the government funds this. It is very important to be able to improve the common good, let us say, our electric grid because, otherwise, there is no life any longer.

[Interpreted] Thank you, sir. Have we answered your question? Very well. Are there any other questions in the room, please? Very well. If not, I then close this session. I'd like to move on to the votes on resolutions.

[Interpreted] The number of shares present -- or voted is 83.82%, which is an all-time high. I'm going to give the floor to Nino. Nino is going to take us through the voting process.

[Interpreted] Thank you, sir. A few words to present the electronic voting procedure. You've received an electronic voting tablet upon entering this room. After explaining the main terms of the resolutions on the screen, I will declare the vote open. You then have 15 seconds to choose on your tablet whether you vote for, against or abstain. You then -- this is really important. You then need to confirm by pressing okay. The result of the votes will be shown on the screen immediately after each vote for each resolution. If you have any trouble with your tablet, please ask a member of staff in the room. We're going to show you a quick video showing the electronic voting procedure. [Presentation]

[Interpreted] So without further ado, we're going to move on to 15 votes for the ordinary. The first resolution is the approval of the annual accounts 2024 as well as the report. After we open the vote, you will have 15 seconds. The vote is now open. [Voting]

[Interpreted] The vote is now closed. First resolution is now adopted. Resolution 2, the approval of the consolidated -- 2024 consolidated financial statements and the Board's reports. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of the vote. Second resolution is now adopted. Moving on to our third resolution today, the allocation of the 2024 income and the setting of the dividend. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. This resolution is now adopted. Resolution 4, on the renewal of the term of office of Mr. Marc Grynberg as Director, please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. This resolution is now adopted. Resolution 5, renewal of the term of office of Mr. Francisco Perez Mackenna as Director, please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. This resolution is now adopted. Resolution 6, so appointment of the employee shareholders representatives, resolution -- sorry, Resolution 6, appointment of Gwenael Gilbert as a Director representing employee shareholders. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. And we're now moving on to Resolution A, the appointment of Mr. Bruno Daguet as Director representing employee shareholders. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. And the elected candidate is Mr. Gwenael Gilbert. Moving on now to Resolution #7, approval of the information relating to the compensation items paid during the fiscal year '24. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. This resolution is now adopted. Moving to Resolution #8, approval of the items of compensation paid during the fiscal year ended December 31, '24, to Jean Mouton, who is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. And Resolution 8 is now adopted. Moving to Resolution 9, the approval of the items of compensation paid during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, to Christopher Guerin, Chief Executive Officer. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 9 is now adopted. Resolution 10, approval of the compensation policy of the members of the Board of Directors for fiscal year 2025 now. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 10 is now adopted. Resolution 11, approval of the compensation policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for fiscal year '25. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 11 is now adopted. Resolution 12, approval of the compensation policy of the Chief Executive Officer for fiscal year '25. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 11 is now adopted -- 12, I'm sorry. Resolution 13, approval of a regulated agreement between a company's subsidiary and Bpifrance Participations. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 13 is now adopted. Resolution 14, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors for the purpose of carrying out transactions involving company shares. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 14 is now adopted. Resolution 15, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors for the purpose of reducing the company's share capital by cancellation of its own shares. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 15 is now adopted. Resolution 16, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of deciding to increase the share capital with shareholders' preferential subscription rights, maximum amount EUR 14 million. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 16 is now adopted. Resolution 17, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of deciding to increase the share capital via the capitalization of premiums, reserves, profits or other amounts with a maximum amount of EUR 14 million. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 17 is now adopted. Resolution 18, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of deciding to issue, without shareholders' preferential subscription rights, ordinary company shares and other securities via a public offering. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution 18 is now adopted. Resolution 19, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors for the purpose of deciding to issue, without shareholders' preferential subscription rights, ordinary company shares and all other securities via a public offering pursuant to Articles L.411 (sic) [ Article L.411-2 ]. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The resolution is approved. Resolution #20, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the number of securities to be issued in the event of a share capital increase. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 20th resolution is adopted. Resolution #21, delegation to the Board of Directors to issue shares or other securities to the -- to be issued in consideration of contributions in kind. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 21 is adopted. #22, delegation to the Board to carry out a capital increase reserved for members of savings plans without -- please open -- please vote, sorry. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 22nd resolution is adopted. Resolution #23, delegation to the Board of Directors to carry out a share capital increase reserved for a category of employees of certain foreign group subsidiaries without shareholders' preferential subscription rights. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. #23 adopted. #24, authorization to the Board of Directors to grant performance shares to some employees of the group and the corporate officers of the group. Maximum amount, 330,000 shares. Duration, 12 months from January 1, 2026. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. Resolution #24 is adopted. 25, authorization to the Board of Directors for the purpose of granting free nonperformance shares to employees [ or the high players ] -- 12 months from January. 1. Please vote. Maximum amount, 50,000 shares. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 25th resolution is adopted. #26, amendment of Article 13 of the company's bylaws to allow the Board of Directors to deliberate by written consultation. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 26th resolution was approved. So we submit to you a resolution but relating to the ordinary general meeting. Resolution #27 is powers to carry out formalities. Please vote. [Voting]

[Interpreted] End of vote. The 27th resolution was approved. Thank you very much.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Nino. Thank you to you all. So there being no further business, I declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you very much for taking part in this meeting, and I'm looking forward to seeing you next year. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]