Rubis (RUI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, if you agree, maybe we can get started. Order, please? Thank you. Let's -- let the stragglers come in. Let me call this meeting to order. This joint ordinary, extraordinary meeting. Let me thank from the bottom of our heart, the shareholders who have made the trip to attend this meeting. Can I tell them how pleased I am to meet with them once again after 2 years of meetings behind closed doors. And let me also welcome those who are online. Together with me at the high table, there are Mr. Jacques Riou, Managing Partner; Madam Clarisse Gobin-Swiecznik, Managing Director in charge of new energy, CSR and Communications; Mr. Bruno Krief, CFO and Mr. Oliver Heckenroth, Chairman of the Supervisory Board. I'm pleased to see here at the front of the room, members of the Supervisory Board and a number of candidates, who are being put forward for nomination. We also have a few guests in the room. To have a swifter and easier vote immediate tally, we will be using for the first time an electronic voting system during the assembly. You will have received a voting device, as you walked into the room, please remember to give them back -- hand them back in as you leave. As per law, let me establish the bureau of the assembly. As a managing partner and in accordance with the constitution of the company, I will chair the meeting. The 2 members who have the largest number of votes will and who have accepted to sit as tellers the [indiscernible] with 5,892,616 shares, represented by Mr. [indiscernible] and FCP Rubis Avenir with 1,701,817 shares represented by Madam [indiscernible]. It is so decided. With the agreement of the tellers, I suggest that Mrs. Maura Tartaglia, as Company Secretary should serve us Bureau's Secretary. Also in attendance today, the statutory auditors and Mr. Daniel Escudeiro from Mazars, Mr. Cédric Le Gal from PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit. Mr. Laurent Guibourt from Monnot & Associés. We also have representatives in the room of KPMG, SA, whose appointment as statutory auditors will be submitted to you later on. Let me move on to formalities. You've been called upon to sit in a general meeting today on the invitation of the Managing Directors. In accordance with the Notice of Meeting published in Below on the 29th of April 2022 and of the invitation published on the 18th of May 2022. The agenda is in the document that you received on Page 3. All the documents or the statutory documents are here in the fall next to Ms. Maura Tartaglia. In accordance with the legislation, these documents were made available to the members of the shareholders and also on the website. But we will have the shareholders all the way through until the adoption -- all the way through during the dialogue. On 7th of June, the share capital was EUR 128,692,600, divided in 102,953,566 ordinary shares, 514 preferred shares with no voting right and also 51,999 treasury shares with no attached vote or dividend entitlement. The quorum for our general assembly is 20% for the ordinary meeting and 25% for the extraordinary part of the meeting. According to the attendance sheet -- the temporary attendance sheet, I can see that the shareholders present or represented have 58,423,938 shares, well above the 25% quorum. Let me, therefore, state that our assembly is meeting in accordance with the statutory obligations. Let me tell you that we will hear Mr. Jacques Riou, the managing partner, who will tell you more about the highlights of the year and the group strategy, then Mr. Bruno Krief, CFO, who will tell you more about the activity of the group in 2021. Mr. Clarisse Gobin-Swiecznik, Managing Director, who will tell you more about our CSR policy. And then Mr. Olivier Heckenroth, Chair of the Supervisory Board, who will review governance. Then Mr. Daniel Escudeiro from Mazars, representing the statutory auditors will submit the statutory auditor's report. After which, and we will have an exchange dialogue with questions from the room and from the public. And then we will vote on the resolutions under the stewardship of Mrs. Maura Tartaglia. You will find the resolutions in the notice of meeting in Pages 27 and [ Securitor ]. The reports of management on these resolutions are to be found before that. And let me also say that the statutory auditor's report has also been made available. Thank you. Let me now give the floor to Mr. Jacques Riou.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It's a good thing that we can meet today. And even beyond looking at 2021, I think we need to look at 2020 and 2021. So take into account COVID, of course, which followed 2019, a year with record highs. So it's very interesting to look at an excellent year and 2 years of upheaval with a health crisis and mishaps on the oil price front. As we all know, this period was marked by COVID. As of the end of Q1 2020, even though the quarter had been very good, then we had everything going to stand still lockdowns and the like. Of course, oil prices are very significant in our business. In 2021 -- rather 2020, a sharp drop in prices. And then 2021, a sharp hike to reach levels beyond or above $120 a barrel. So very sharp and violent swings. What happened then? If you'd like to look at the table on the right, you can see the numbers for 2019, 2020 and 2021. And you can see that the net income group share is EUR 293 million, above what it was in 2020. And almost as high as the record high year that 2019 was. If you look also at the EBIT, you see that we are 7% above the previous year and only 5% below the record high year that 2019 was. So I think what you can see here is the resilience of our group and the way in which we can weather very brutal storms. And can I also say that we were all overboard. We didn't get any subsidies, any support nor did we lay off staff. And that's what we say on the left of the slide and we also preserved a very solid financial structure. If you look at the situation at year's end, it has changed since then. But at year's end, the debt-to-EBIT ratio was below 1x. So very low indeed. We've also been in a position to increase the dividend per share, up almost 3.5% to reach EUR 1.86 per share following on the footsteps of a previous increase the year before that. And indeed, we have always increased over the last 3, 5, 10, 15 years at least. Given the external shocks, of course, we didn't sit on our -- rest on our laurels and wait for things to happen. We -- you will remember that we outlined a strategy. And that included going beyond our usual retail business for petroleum products and gas, for instance. We said that we would invest in renewables, and that led to a lot of work. I mean renewables, what you have nuclear geothermals, maybe hydro power, maybe 6 or 7 types of renewables. We've -- we then looked at a number of options for 2021. And we closed 2 high-profile deals. First of all, chronologically is we increased -- we bought a stake in HDF energy, Hydrogen De France, focusing on green energy. And I'll come back to it later, but we have a strategic agreement or a strategic development agreement with the company, and we hold a minority stake in it, as I said. And later on in the year, we started negotiating with the founders and developers of Photosol. The deal was closed only 2 months ago. But let me just tell you that Photosol was set up from scratch a dozen years ago. And the management team then is still at the helm today, and they have been able to be ranked fourth or to end up fourth largest in terms of procurement deals for renewable energy in France. So that was another significant deal for 2021. Over and beyond all this, we have gone on, as we said, working on our CSR initiatives. We have, for instance, the CSR road map for the next few years. And we've also looked at the decarbonization profile for the group. We said 20% decrease from 2019 to 2030. And in fact, having revisited all the projects, we've come to a 30% decrease. Can I also say that Rubis Terminal is no longer consolidated. It's a joint venture. But under that heading, we developed strong business in Spain, and we sold off our terminal in Turkey. Here, you have a snapshot of the group as it now stands. We have retail and marketing, and support and services under Rubis Énergie. That's on the left of the screen. It includes all the products that I mentioned earlier, and we have business in some 40 countries in Europe, in the Caribbean and across Africa. The EBIT is something like EUR 290 million for 2021, and it accounts for the largest share of the group's EBIT. Then we have what we call the, I suppose, the upstream business, looking at the supply for our group, and we -- that includes also shipping. We have 15 or so ships. We also have a refinery in Martinique. And we have a number of logistical assets that we share with some of our, well, colleagues or competitors depending on how you look at it, to handle these products. I think you're familiar with all that. Then this Rubis Terminal. Since 2020, this has been a joint venture with a large U.S. group, I Squared. And we, therefore, do bulk liquid product handling and storage for third parties. For a long time, this focus mainly on petroleum products, but in fact, it now accounts for -- or petroleum products account for less than 50% of our products. And we're now focusing mainly on biofuels, chemicals and food stuffs. And there's a new division, a new branch of our business, which is a subsidiary of the holding company. It's entitled Rubis [Foreign Language] or Ruby Renewables in English. Well, it does what it says on the tin. And it's dedicated to renewable energy, focusing mainly on production and sale of green energy. And our ulterior motive, I'll say it, is the upcoming hydrogen market, green hydrogen that really fits in with renewable and electricity production. So if you zoom into the right-hand column, renewables, you see in the -- on the left, HDF Energy, we hold an 18.5% stake in that business. So we're the largest shareholder apart from the founding members of the company and that was done following the IPO last year. Now their approach is quite interesting indeed. What they are doing is suggesting or offering non-intermittent green power solutions. Now as you probably know, one of the main issues with green energies is the intermittent nature of the power production, obviously, wind farms don't work if there's no wind and solar farms don't work if there's no sun. So what they're doing is to combine solar panels with hydrogen storage and fuel cells so that you can supply power around the clock, managing the production levels. And as we all know, production levels are higher. Well, the surplus is higher at night than in the daytime, but that's easy to understand. So these are solutions that are being worked on. It hasn't yet quite come to fruition. We are involved in this. And HDF Energy has just started building a larger plant with 50 megawatts of power -- of solar energy. This is due in French Guiana. We also have a framework agreement with Barbados in West Indies for a similar project to be rolled out over the next few months and years. So these really would serve a great purpose for sort of discrete, not interconnected markets. And island nations are quite more good for that. And if you don't have this additional top-up of hydrogen, then you can't sort of smooth the green power production. Then in the middle, you have the hydrogen power infrastructure. So this is basically the result of the HDF Energy corporation. All of the projects developed by HDF Energy are submitted to us so that we can become the prime and indeed majority investor in their projects. So we really have a genuine strategic relationship between HDF and Rubis, and we'll house these projects into the ad hoc vehicles. Now the project in Guyana is something to the tune of EUR 130 million in investment, Barbados roughly the same. And these are the first 2 projects to be drafted and put forward by HDF Energy. And well, we might just be successful. And you can imagine what would happen if we got 10x, 20x that, and that can clearly become very significant for group, Rubis business. And of course, because we are -- and we'll be the majority shareholder there, this will be consolidated in our business. And then there's on the right Photosol. Over the last 2 months now, it's been an 80% subsidiary, so fully consolidated in our accounts. We've managed to keep the handful of founding members alongside us. These people have considered that given the state of the market, it made sense for them to rely on a sort of broader or maybe stronger group, but who still wanted to go on working and building on what they have been doing. Now Photosol, or solar panels or solar farms, if you will, flat on the ground, not on roofs, but something that is as wide and extensive as possible. Clearly, they've picked a winner ever since they started doing business in that field. If I not mistaken, we might just have a video to show you. Would you, please? [Presentation]

This brief video showed you a number of things that these solar panels are blue interestingly. The manufacturers are American. So these are not sourced in Asia. Solar energy is a renewable source of energy that is widely accepted, at least for the moment, the acreage coverage is not that extensive. You can just squeeze it into the landscape. You can have trees and [indiscernible] I mean not too close to the panels, of course, but still -- and you can sort of blend it into the environment. And you will have seen a sheep under the panels. Why not cattle? Well, simply because cattle come and scratch on the pillars and therefore, destroy the panels. No goats because they can jump up and crash land on the panels and destroy them, but sheep are very good. So we have sheep underneath. Now obviously, one of the issues here is access to land. So what that team of developers has done is that they've -- they're working with sheep farmers, and that's supported by the Farmers Union, but also by the authorities. And that means that we will be able -- they will be able to access new land that was up until now off limits for solar panels. I mean, as you know, you can't set up solar panels on fertile arable land just on pool soils basically. So look at this here. This is quite impressive. On the left, you have the total installed capacity in gigawatts. We have a dozen or so installed, not that much. It's about twice that in Spain. The current government plan or government-supported plan is to take that up to 40 gig, so times it by 3.5 by the end of the decade and then reach 100 gig by 2050, but that's years away. That's already quite a tremendous increase in installed capacity. Now the recent developments and war in the East of Europe, have shown things that -- well, we'd sort of forgotten, and that is that we should never rely on one single supplier, and you should diversify your energy sources. Now as you know, Europe or most European countries have decided to revisit their plans to roll out a green energy and green power faster, of course, including solar. Now the plan isn't out there yet, and we're not too sure what the numbers are, but we can probably expect a 50% increase. There are call for tenders or we can expect for call for tenders for 3 gig per year over the next 4 years. So compare that to 12 gigawatts of installed capacity is enormous. And you can well imagine more we can derive from that with Photosol being our subsidiary. And I think the most recent events that actually occurred after we purchased the business supports what the choices we have made. And then there's also the role that HDF might play in smaller markets than the European market. There we go. Now if we zoom in now on -- so installed solar capacity in France for R&D, that is our market. There's just under 6 gigawatt installed in 2021. So something like half of the overall capacity in France that would include the rooftop panels. In 2028, given the current government plans, the capacity should be 25 gig, so 4.5x. And projections for 2050 would lead to another threefold increase, but that's years away and maybe looking at a 10-year prospect would be more than enough. Bottom right, you can see what happened with Photosol 300 megawatts in 2021 installed. We expect times it by 3 in 3 years by 2025, when you'll be able to see how effective we are. So reach 1 gig. And we hope to get to 2.5 gigawatt by 2030. So we're working on some 300 projects, 150 of them, half of them, therefore, already in the development phase. What that means is that we have the land. We know what we're talking about. We've got counterparties. We've filed for building authorizations. So we do expect strong increase in solar somewhere around 40% per annum over the next 3 years. So by way of conclusion, I'd say that Rubis, as a group, has really changed over the last few months. Of course, you know and can find all our traditional business that we are investing in and growing and Bruno will tell you more about that. We have and still have our Rubis Terminals business, which, in fact, enjoyed a 20% growth over 2020 and 2021. So exceptionally large, having made acquisitions in Spain. And we now have a green investments division, which gives the group a real diversity of energy sources. 20% of our assets are indeed green assets. And I think there are very few businesses which have managed to reach that level quite -- so fast. So what it shows is that depending on where we are, the time, the weather, the state of the market -- we are in a position to put forward all sorts of varied solutions that will lead to some synergies. Now I'm sure I've said far too much and taken far too much time, but I hope you will -- you will excuse me. But I think what you're doing now is that you, as shareholders, are trusting energy retailers. So we were a small retailer of GPO in Brittany. And now we have a company with business present from Rotterdam to Spain. With HDF, you have pioneering hydrogen business. And Photosol, well, you've just been told to what kind of development they've gone through. So much for my presentation. Thank you. Let me now give the floor to Bruno Krief, who will give you a review of the 2021 business.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Good afternoon. Yes, let's continue and look at further details having to do with our business in 2021. I'd remind you Rubis Énergie, 2 divisions: retailing and then upstream, logistics, transportation, shipping, trading, that's Rubis support and services. Let me show you on the screen. On this chart, on the left-hand side, to begin with, we can see volumes over the last 3 years 2019, '20 and '21. 2019 was an usual ordinary year before the COVID crisis. Stronger than Q1 due to a big extension of our scope in Eastern Africa and prices went up as well. That's the top of the curve. Then we have growth for the remainder of the year. The 2020 everybody here experienced the COVID problem. End of Q1 2020, where we saw volumes plummet, and you can see that on the curve here. Then gradually, gradually restrictions were lifted, fewer difficulties and then we saw growth trending toward the end of 2020. 2021 becomes almost normal, a lot less volatility. As you can see, that's the red curve towards the center. All in all, Rubis Énergie, 5.5 million cubic meters distributed every year. In 2021, growth was 7% versus the previous year 2020. Now the segment aviation, if you will continue to be hard hit throughout 2021. And then starting towards the end of the summertime, we saw recovery as the U.S. economy recovered [indiscernible] aviation, Caribbean and so forth, started reaching almost normal levels. In Q1 2022, the -- that trend speeded up. So those are the points regarding volumes. To talk to you about EBIT results at the right-hand side of the screen, change in EBIT in both divisions, support and services and retail marketing, growth of 8% versus 2020. We observe, of course, within 2020, there was the -- well, there have been a record year in 2019, and there was a significant improvement in 2021. Nevertheless, we can say that the business has demonstrated quite good -- stood up quite well we showed good resilience through the period. To delve into detail, 3 continents: Africa, Europe did well, growth in 2021 compared to 2020. The Caribbean, down more, as I mentioned previously, weighed down by aviation, which was still lagging during '21. Now to talk about support and services, support and services, 1 refinery plus logistics assets in the Indian Ocean. As Jacques was saying we've also got ships, maritime shipping, also trading for supplying to third parties. And what we see in the 3 years, group support and services wasn't affected by the COVID crisis. More than just stability, EUR 123 million, EUR 124 million in annual contribution. As we saw in 2021, it was a good level, better optimization of the way we organized our ships that generated better earnings. We saw good growth in unit margins in trading, in exchange setup we saw results down somewhat, particularly related to booking provisions and write-backs of provisions as opposed to problems in cash flow because that was stable -- cash flow was stable between 2020 and '21. There was not an issue there. So that's Rubis Énergie. For the entire period, generating EUR 392 million in EBIT. I'd like to really bring your point home, emphasize this. It's a combination of both business areas, support and services, upstream and then retail and marketing. That's downstream. We've got a very diverse base to simplify. About 2/3 is residential and about 1/3 is industrial clients, farms, services and so forth. And we can say that usages are quite varied for heating purposes, cooking, for transportation, of course, mobility, also serving industry, job size, mines, farming and so forth. So we can say that our customer base is quite varied, really ranging throughout the economy, all economic areas. The strength of Rubis Énergie, again, is our business lines and these subsegments. Our further strength is our overall geographical footprint. As we can see here, there's a good balance in our presence. You've got some geographies that are growing strongly. Africa couple of reasons you're familiar with demographics stepped up development and so forth. Then the Caribbean, some niche positions. We're basically the leader about 40% market share in the entire geography, representing 31% of our gross margin. Next, Europe -- 36% is Africa. And then Europe, fairly specialized in niche areas such as LPG, retailing big markets, such as 70% market share in Switzerland. We're #2 in Portugal. We're a real challenger in France where our market share is growing. We're very well positioned in bulk in Spain. Again, to talk about diversification. I mentioned business lines. I talked to you about the makeup of our group. We've got upstream and downstream business. Furthermore, to talk to you about currency contributions, we can see here, if we look at profits for all of Rubis Énergie, contributions here, you can see, 80% is in -- is either euro or dollar denominated euro. And then you've got the Swiss franc as well as the pound sterling. The remainder 21% covers based -- all of the currencies we work in, we're located in around 40 countries. The U.S. dollar all support and services basically sees its earnings in dollars, 100% in U.S. dollar denominated. So you can see this is yet another strength of ours at Rubis. For the last 6 months, we've seen the dollar has gone way up versus the euro, and that has a significant positive impact on this group a real upside. Now next point, second major division group for 2021, as Jacques said, there's been the establishment of Rubis Renewables. So next year, we'll comment more on Rubis Renewables. But the joint venture Rubis Terminal is a major long-standing asset of Rubis. You'll remember, we've held since 2019, 2020, around 55%, together with the U.S. Investment Fund. 2021 was a good year in income, that's our revenue. Storage revenue up by 5%. Capacity utilization rate was above 90% or even 93%, so way at their top level. Also, if we look at the distribution, the composition of storage between petroleum products and chemicals and other inventory products. Petroleum products were below 50%, around 45% actually to the benefit of chemicals, all in all, I think of new facilities, in [ Arab ] areas and so forth, plus our acquisition in Spain, Tepsa very well positioned both in chemicals and in biofuels. So I'd say to you for 2021, our main highlight was our exit from Turkey. So we could refocus on Northern Europe and the Mediterranean and the Western Mediterranean in this instance with an extension of the routes from Northern Europe, France and Spain. So Rubis Terminal is really a unique player in storage landscape throughout Europe. There's no other store that's located in all 3 countries. In France, basically, no non-French storage companies have managed to make inroads in the market. We make the junction between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean area were to grow crossroads and that puts us in a beautiful position. Outlook for 2022. Let me say that we're continuing to grow to build new capacity in the [indiscernible] region and particularly a big depot we have a hold with [indiscernible] our Japanese joint venture. We're continuing to develop nonfuel capacities as well, ethanol, biofuels. Biofuels, they are significant examples such as the shift we're seeing in Rotterdam, around 75 million cubic meters of heavy fuel. This made economic sense for many years. And this year, though, we're seeing a shift to 75 million cubic meters -- liters of biofuel. Shell has established a major refinery for biofuels right near our depot. They'll be using our facilities as a storage base as part of their logistics storage base, which is to say we're in step with the energy transition. We're following along customer demand. You can see an example of that last year. We're meeting their demand, and we're speeding things up through our own decisions and our capital expenditure, always pushing in that direction. To talk to you about our profits, we've indicated here, our gross operating income, up 6% in 2021. So very good growth in spite of the overall COVID context, the slowdowns. Free cash flow, this is an important essential indicator, in fact, at Rubis Terminal. Cash flow up by 15% last year. Joint -- Rubis Terminal joint venture is able to get around EUR 50 million in cash flow after capital expenditure, after taxes and after financial expenses. Whereas the joint venture structure that we set up in 2020 means that we leveraged the company much more. So there's a big line item of debt that's not consolidated under Rubis. It's nonrecourse debt at Rubis SCA. So we've got financial expenses relating to this, but this also makes it possible for us to generate to the shareholder of return, EUR 50 million of return to shareholders in excess of 9% -- 9% to 10%, and this is a cash return. Those are my points on the 2 major divisions, Rubis as of the end of 2021 before the arrival of renewables. Now I talk about our balance sheet briefly. You can see here our consolidated balance sheet as of the end of the financial year. Comments, first of all, total balance sheet, just over EUR 5 billion, going beyond the EUR 5 billion mark, EUR 5.2 billion for that matter. I'd say that financial year '21 didn't see any major changes in our scope, broadly the same scope as in 2020, current assets growing related to your investments. So current assets plus growth investments, new ships, for instance, also investments we've made in Eastern Africa to rebrand the service stations that's included here. Current assets, noncash. This includes inventory, storage and receivables. It's something we saw in 2021, a strong uptick in prices for petroleum products, which generated a big increase in working capital requirements. And you can see this under this line item going from EUR 55 million to EUR 200 million. Then cash and cash equivalents. Here, we see is balance sheet is highly liquid. It's got a lot of cash. It's strong, EUR 875 million in cash and cash equivalent, down compared to 2020. It really are due to a share buyback, a share buyback, which we carried out in 2021, EUR 0150 million. Also, there was the buyback of the percentages of HDF and that took out EUR 80 million of the cash on hand. Shareholder equity EUR 207 million. And what's good for you to realize is your -- you own a group that has very little debt, not highly leveraged. As of end of 2021, our level of debt measured in terms of the ratio of debt over -- but it's only 0.9x, so very low, 0.9x. EUR 438 million net debt at the end of the period. Another important thing to underscore after 2021 -- April 2022, because of the big acquisition we mentioned in renewables, this same ratio of gearing that, well, currently, the ratio pro forma is less than 2.5x. So Rubis continues to have a very strong balance sheet, low debt level and a large portion of the debt, I would say to you, particularly relating to Photosol is debt accommodated under SPVs. These are special purpose vehicle specific companies that are designed to hold highly indebted assets. So very notionally and structurally, this is part of the way our business is organized, the whole sector is organized this way. If we just look at specific corporate debt, actual conventional debt, so to speak, business debt, company debt. The ratio is not 2.3x, but 1.5x gearing. So again, to repeat, your balance sheet is very strong indeed. Let's talk about the parent company accounts, Rubis [ SA ]. Shareholder equity remains stable, of course, increased by the profits of the financial period. Of course, this is the share buyback effect, EUR 150 million in share buyback. It has somewhat of an effect that brings shareholders equity to [ EUR 3.1 billion ] at the end of the financial period. Aside from that, big comments to make just that there's virtually no debt, the EUR 16 million you see here. This is tax and other debt. Now the fixed assets, the EUR 1.037 billion, this is the booked stakes we have in Rubis Énergie and the 55% in Rubis Terminal. That's all that amounts to. Current assets, EUR 713 million. These are advanced payments that Rubis SCA has made to Rubis Énergie. It's circulating cash with another group to finance debt. Next, you've got available cash-in-hand cash and cash equivalents of EUR 875 million. Here, we see the share buyback effect as well that we mentioned earlier for 2021. Next point, in my presentation, I'd like to talk to you about what we see on the screen. We can see changes in earnings per share and changes in dividends over a 10-year period. We can see growth. Compound annual growth in dividends of 10% and earnings per share, 9% growth over the same period -- annual compound growth. Now the payout ratio. Dividend portion of profits being paid out is 2/3 around 65%, 66% is the payout ratio. You also observe Rubis can maintain its dividend, in fact, increase it. In spite of the efforts we've been making, particularly in spite of the investments we've been making in high-growth activities. And this is very specific to us. At Rubis, we're present in strong growth activities, and we're maintaining a payout of a high percentage dividend. This is our policy, and we'll be continuing with this self-same policy in the future. Lastly, let's talk about our medium- and long-term outlook and also a shortest term outlook. I won't dwell on medium-term outlook because Jacques already explained to us -- described this to us. To talk about Rubis Énergie, growth drivers are significant here and really we've got the things we'll be able to do in Africa, where we're highly present in bitumen in Western Africa, service stations in Eastern Africa, in the throes of remanagement and development. Furthermore, there's growth in demand -- buoyant demand. This will be for a long time. The fundamentals are good. Growth in the continent is good demographics, increased urbanization, leading to this growth, which means for many years to come. Many decades to come, we can expect significant growth from our establishments in Africa. In addition to what we've got in the Caribbean and in Europe, of course. Lastly, Rubis Renewables, Jacques said this to us. Takeaway points, a takeaway figure. Photovoltaic, the market is very broad and deep. The photovoltaic segment on ground going from 6 to 7 gigawatts in '21, '22, reaching 70 gigawatts in 2050, according to the forecast energy plan. There are some of the major trends and to comment on a topical element. Legislation has just been passed designed to speed up the process, the transition to an energy mix, which has a greater focus on photovoltaic. There's going to be further simplification of procedures. Also, the intention is to further boost farm voltaic, agri voltaic, that's where Photosol is already a leader in France. As Jacques has said, renewables, we're expecting to make up 25% of contribution to EBITDA. We talked about the medium and long term, get back to the closer term, the first quarter of 2022 and it's -- we're looking excellent. We've indicated growth on the order of 7%. In terms of our margin at Rubis Énergie and retailing, 19% growth. That's a margin contribution of Rubis Énergie. So the year has gotten off to a very good start. Since May 8, we've had -- since results given on -- for Q1 on May 8, we then had April and May after Q1 that are seeing continued growth. We've already got 5 months under our belt. So we believe the first half of 2022 will see good growth, a similar order of magnitude, like-for-like, of course. And I'm talking about the results I just indicated, i.e., operating results from Rubis Énergie. I believe we've gone through all the points on these slides. Yes, we've heard a financial presentation. Now we'll hear a non financial presentation on CSR. We'll talk about a new area for us is set up by Clarisse, which is -- who is going to report to you on the situation in terms of our CSR policy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be with you once again and to have this opportunity to show you what we have done in terms of CSR, corporate social responsibility. As you know, this is an extra financial issue that is very time -- very -- that keeps us very busy nowadays. This is at the heart of our strategy, of course. And it also involves, of course, our stakeholders, I mean, our staff, our clients, our customers, our suppliers, our partners, our shareholders, our banks, everyone we have to be accountable to. This aims at operational excellence in our business and includes the 3 main pillars of sustainable development social, societal and environmental issues, which are really at the heart of our strategy, namely access to energy. This echoes our initial road map published in September 2021. What it means in practical terms is giving access to energy. Indeed, that is the key factor for development for geographies and communities. It is a key element for us because we have business in Africa, in the Caribbean, where access to energy really is a day-to-day issue and concern. This has meant that we have had to rethink our strategy and to deep-rooted with a long-term outlook. And that's exactly what we've done by purchasing Photosol and producing renewable electricity. And also with our partnership with HDF and our hydrogen power plants in non interconnected places such as Ireland countries. It's also an issue of increasing the awareness of those who are using energy and power on a day-to-day basis to be more aware. In 2021, we reached our goals and many people recognize that. First of all, we had our road map to structure our CSR approach with benchmarks and numbers. And we have, therefore, committed ourselves forcing us to be involved. We've joined the global compact and signed up to the Sea Cargo Charter for instance. Our performance has been acknowledged with an initial rating -- good rating hinting by the climate change questionnaire and also a reward for the gender equality policy awarded by the French Ministry of Gender Equality. Here, you have the think tomorrow road map covering 2022, 2025 and then we want to have operational excellence on our day-to-day business structuring over environmental issues, social issues and society-wide issues. This is, of course, focusing on progress. We, therefore, have disregard what we have already achieved, but looked to the future only to try and improve further. In the environmental issues, of course, climate concerns are very real. And we have a key objective here of reducing our carbon footprint. We've worked it through with climate experts, then we have social issues, trying to increase and guarantee diversity and security. And then the society-wide issues looking at having responsible ethical business in the countries we operate in. These are realistic goals. They go with numbers, and this will enable us to measure our progress in the next few years. As I've said, it's all about progress and improvement. I think we can now say that we can update our decarbonization target initially set at minus -- a 20% decrease announced in September, to 30% decrease by 2030, given the current results. Now how are we going to achieve that target? This is quite significant for the entire group. Well, first of all, we'll increase our staff's skills and abilities, but also set genuine targets for our industrial sites and also by reducing our emissions for land and sea transport by looking, for instance, using more biofuels. So we must stay focused and make sure that we report back on a day-to-day basis. As concerns diversity in the group. As Jacques told you, we are devising our business. We've purchased green power production facilities, and we are increasing renewables across the board. At Rubis Énergie, for instance, we're looking at 3 ways of diversifying. First of all, looking at mobility changes with the switch to electric-based mobility, mainly in the Caribbean, then offering biofuels for private and professional clients across Europe, but also in the fuels that we use ourselves. And thirdly, by developing a hybrid solutions, solar diesel, solar, LPG, and other hybrid solutions. As concerns Rubis Terminal JV, we -- I must say that our teams have been looking for some time the makeup of the shared -- the stored products moving from purely oil-based products to petrochemicals and food stuffs. Let me come back to this safety and work issue. This is also a key factor in CSR. We want to ensure the safety of our facilities, but also of our staff. For instance, over the last 7 years, we've seen a 53% drop in occupational accidents. This has meant significant investments all over that period and increased training -- targeted training for our staff. For society-wide issues and sponsorships and patronage. Well, we have had patronage for some years, focusing on local communities, in the countries where we have business. We've been looking, for instance, and working, for instance, at that on access to health care and access to education, and we'll be developing soon business on energy transition. And then also access to culture and the arts in underprivileged areas in Madagascar, Jamaica and South Africa, mainly where we already have business. 2021 is basically the year where we got our results over 2 years of reflection and thought and we have a well thought through CSR policy that is in line with our DNA. For 2022, 2025, we will go on implementing our road map. In 2025, we'll adopt a new one, making the most of what we have achieved. And it is in that sense that I can say that Rubis is and remains on the march. Thank you.

Yes, we are working hard here on this. So having seen a strategy, let's move on to governance. And I'll give the floor to the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Mr. Heckenroth.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, yes, to submit you 2 reports, 1 report on Supervisory Board, corporate governance and 1 report on our company financial statements for 2021. That latter report, you can also find in the brochure appended to the invitation. We would have nothing to the report. I would just say the Supervisory Board has no comment it needs to make on the financial statements that have been reported to you and submitted to you for your vote. Now on corporate governance, that's a document that you can find under Chapter 5 of the Universal Registration Document. It's a fairly cumbersome bulky document. So I won't go through every point in it. But I would like to emphasize 3 points. Firstly, the composition of your Supervisory Board. The renewals and appointments that will be taking place depending on your vote. After that, I'll talk to you about compensation of the managing partners and the Supervisory Board members for 2021. Lastly, I'll give you an overview of the compensation policy for the managing partnership and the Supervisory Board during the current year. First of all, I'll talk to you about the composition of your Supervisory Board. After this AGM, we'll have at this AGM, we have 5 seats up for renewal. We're proposing to you, firstly, renewal of 3 terms in office. Ms. Carole Fiquemont, Ms. Chantal Mazzacurati and Mr. Mark-Olivier Laurent are proposed for renewals. Next, we're proposing to you after working on this at length in the Compensation and Appointments Committee assisted by our managing partners and our secretary, we selected 3 candidates to be appointed to the Supervisory Board. These are 3-year terms in office, I'd remind you Ms. Cecile Maisonneuve, one proposed appointment; and Ms. Carine Vinardi; and then Mr. Alberto Pedrosa. The latter we won't be seeing since he's not in Paris right now, but we will see a prerecorded video, and I believe he will introduce himself in that video. These appointments are very important. The appointments don't happen by accident. We want to appoint these persons because we very much want to continue strengthening our Supervisory Board, giving us ever more resources at the Supervisory Board. We want to bring in people who bring in expertise, who have got experience, such as people these 3 appointments, we think will give us a great deal of experience in the area of CSR, a lot of expertise in that area. If you vote in their favor after these appointments, you'll observe, we'll have 11 members of the Board versus 10 currently. 45% women members of the Supervisory Board. 55% members are there, who are independent, 18% of the members are non-French nationals. I would like to begin with Cecile Maisonneuve. She'll be introducing herself and briefly tell us about ourselves.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for giving this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Cecile Maisonneuve. I was born in [indiscernible] 50 years ago. My -- I have also routes in Brittany. I mean I've come and lived in Paris ever since I started -- I came up to study at École Normale Supérieure where I studied History at Sorbonne also called University of Paris and also at Sciences Po where I read Public Service and Government. Then I took the entrance exam to the French Civil Service and spent the first 10 years of my career working in the National Assembly as an official of the house. I worked for 10 years on energy issues, I mean, defense first, but since 2005, I've really been working on energy issues. I worked at the Foreign Affairs Committee, looked at geopolitics and the Geopolitics of Energy, and we all know how relevant this is now. Then I moved on for 10 years in industry, first at AREVA, where I looked at outlook and international issues. I learned a lot about the nuclear market, but also more generally, power and electricity because at that point, we were looking at renewables. Then I moved on to VINCI. I moved on to the planning unit and the futures division, Fabrique de la Cité we call it. So I looked at these issues from a very sort of local grounded point of view and worked a lot on mobility. I'm still working and looking at these issues today into 4 -- in 2 think tanks actually at the [indiscernible] where I'm the adviser for urban issues and local issues. And also the [indiscernible] , where I still work on energy transition and European Affairs, and we all know how significant and changing things are in Europe nowadays. I also teach at the School of Public Affairs at Sciences Po and I teach Energy Affairs from the local point of view. And I have also been working in my recently established consultancy firm looking at environmental issues, environmental energy transitions and future. So that's my background, and I hope that will give you a better idea of who I am. As my name is put forward, for election to support the group as a member of the Supervisory Board and I'll be pleased to support the company in its growth strategy. Thank you.

Yes. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Carine Vinardi and I'm -- I've got a science background and an engineer in transformation and plastics and composite materials. In addition to this side, did a Doctor Dissertation in industrial engineering at the Compiègne university in Sorbonn. For 25 years, I've been working. I have always worked in industry, international companies, international -- these were French, U.S. and German companies that I worked in. I've had international experience started fairly early on in the U.S. and in Europe. I also taught about 10 years back, at the Shanghai University China, also in Morocco and in Tunisia for 20 years -- almost 20 years. I've been managing international teams and multicultural teams worldwide. Aside from that international experience, I've also worked in several business areas. I worked 10 years in the automotive industry, 4 years in the aerospace industry and I worked almost 4 years in renewable energies, wind energy [indiscernible], also hybrid solar wind energy. Aside from that experience, currently I'm in charge, I'm Vice President -- Executive Vice President in charge of R&D and Operations for a corporation that's called Tarkett, it does flooring, commercial and residential and sports flooring, processing composites, plastics and also wood as well as textile flooring, with executive committee of that company. At the same time, I've got a first office at the Board of Directors at a medium-sized company there in steel processing. I think I've given you a good introduction given my background. It would be an honor for me, if I could become a member of Rubis Supervisory Board so that I could chip in with my experience and my advice to serve the development of this group.

And now we'll watch a video message from Mr. Alberto Pedrosa as his name may suggest, he is a Brazilian national. So let's roll.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. My name is Alberto Pedrosa, I'm 67 and Italian and Brazilian national. I studied mechanical engineering and then MBA in Brazil and France. I started working at Rhône-Poulenc first in Brazil and then from 1985 in France and in -- subsequently in various companies in France. I was in management positions with international responsibilities in textile, chemistry, plastics, pharmaceutical, rail, automobile, agri food with Rhône-Poulenc [indiscernible] and Tereos. From 2013, I went back to Brazil and I worked in sugar, ethanol and energy. I served on boards, in retail, distribution and logistics and also in shipping. I also work in consultancy as a Director, also in engineering, automobile and models and systems for mobility and in French companies. I'd be delighted and honored to join the Supervisory Board of Rubis SCA and to bring my contribution from an international and industry point of view. Thank you for your support.

All right. You've heard the introductions now of the appointments that we're suggesting for your approval. If you do, in favor of these appointments, you can well imagine, this will have an impact on committee membership such as the Risk and Financials Committee and the Appointments and Compensation Committee. In that instance, there would be changes to those committee members. You're familiar with the Accounts Committee and the Accounts and Risk committee. We talk about them often. They work mainly in 3 areas. These are technical committees that work with the Supervisory Board that care out to work, for instance, in terms of monitoring Rubis company activities, financial statements, of course, also monitoring risks. Lastly, they're currently looking specifically at nonfinancial risks, either relating to CSR or more recently, the managing partners established anticorruption, a corruption prevention unit, which is very important for a group the size of Rubis. So the committee would then have 5 members, the Chairperson, Mr. Nils Christian Bergene. Thank you, Nils. Furthermore, Chantal Mazzacurati, member, Mr. Alberto Pedrosa, we just saw, Ms. Carole Fiquemont and myself, with these members of the Accounts and Risk Monitoring Committee. The committee, I'd remind you that Chairperson is independent. That's the case of Nils Christian, so no problem there. Also independent percentage of that committee would be 60%. Now on to the Compensation and Appointments Committee. The membership would be as follows: 4 members. The Chairperson would be Ms. Laure Grimonpret-Tahon, Mr. Erik Pointillart, member, you already know him; Mr. Nils Christian Bergene and myself would be the members. Independence rate would be 50%. This would be the organization of the committees if you vote in favor of these appointments. Now to talk about compensation of the managing partners of 2021 after the fact, exposed compensation for the managing partners. You're familiar as we straightforward 2 components, and that's it. There's a fixed compensation as per statutes and as a variable compensation, which we will discuss. Now on the fixed portion of their compensation, I'd remind you. It operates various governed by several rules, every year corrected, adjusted, taking into account in se benchmark, which for 2021, the benchmark pertains to wages in the chemicals and energy industries. The increase for 2021 was 0.68%. So it tracks more or less inflation. The amount for 2021 is EUR 2,391,465. Now the variable compensation. Variable compensation doesn't take place in 2021. The prerequisite for variable compensation to be triggered net income for the year has to be at least 5% above the net -- again, to come of the previous financial year. Therefore -- the compensation committee observed this, therefore, we do not take over triggered payment of variable compensation for this financial year. There's no other compensation. I bring that point home. There's only -- it's just that each managing partner has a company car. That's it in terms of benefits. Now Chairman Supervisory Board, me, compensation was voted on by your AGM on 10 March 2021. It's -- it was EUR 45,000, in 3 portions, you got a fixed portion, which is EUR 10,800. Then the portion of the compensation is variable based on attendance, as is the case for all Supervisory Board members, EUR 16,200 is the tenant-based variable part. Then you've got a lump sum amount for the Chairman, which is EUR 18,000. So that's for 2021 Supervisory Board Chairman's compensation. Now I talk about broader compensation policy for 2022 for managing partners and the Supervisory Board. Compensation policy, you will remember for the managing partners. It's gotten the go ahead from the Supervisory Board. The fixed portion for managing partners, you're familiar, unchanged as per bylaws equals compensation received and paid in 2021 and we apply a rate to this. Just wanting to in se, reference rate we just said, which is the hourly pay, hourly wages for workers in electricity, gas distribution industry -- reduction and distribution industry. This is the policy, and there are 2 criteria, the qualitative criteria and quantitative criteria. Regarding the quantitative criteria representing 75% of the calculation for this variable compensation. They pertain mainly to overall financial performance, 3 features here. Firstly, the Rubis share price, increase in Rubis share price during the financial period, versus the benchmark index, which is the SBF 120. Now the other 2 criteria, increase in EBITDA and then earnings per share have to be in line with the fact set consensus which is what's used. Now qualitative criteria, 25%. This mainly has to do with CSR policy, particularly accident rates as well. An example earlier, given by Clarisse. Also CO2 emissions. And lastly, definition of an internal carbon price at Rubis Énergie. These 3 elements are essential to determine the amount of variable compensation. Now the variable compensation, you mustn't forget cannot go beyond 50% of the fixed compensation is capped and 50% fixed, and it's triggered as from the criteria I outlined for you earlier. Now compensation policy for the Supervisory Board, the people who decide on this one, of course. And overall envelope was passed of EUR 240,000. You voted on this. There's a fixed portion here. There's also a variable component. The fixed portion is 40% variable, 60% has to do with attendance. Now in the Board, the compensation speak about fees, but no compensation. I have to deal with attendance at the various technical committees and also whether not people chair Supervisory Board meetings or specific technical committees. Thank you. That the floor back to the Chairman. Thank you very much for the full presentation. Now I'd like to give the floor to Mr. Escudeiro, representing the team of the statutory auditors in Mazars firm.

Thank you, managing partners, Supervisory Board members, shareholders, it's my honor and pleasure to report to you on behalf of the team of statutory auditors, Monnot and partners, PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit and Mazars to report to you this combined AGM. All of our reports are available to you, have made available by the company for both the ordinary portion of this meeting contained in the Universal restitution document and the remainder. As per custom, and what's customary at our AGM, I will summarize our reports pertaining to the ordinary session of the AGM. Next slide, please. We prepared 3 reports, 2 of which were established after our audit of the annual financials and consolidated financial statements. I report on the annual financial statements is on Pages 304 to 307 at the Universal Registration Document. Our report on the consolidated financial statements is on Pages 301 to 304 of the universal income. Our special report on the related party agreements is on Pages 308 and 309 of the Universal Registration Document. Now the first report of our as our report on the Rubis SCA annual financial statements drafted as for French GAAP. We certified these financial statements with no reservation. Report 2 on the group's consolidated financial statements, consolidated financials done using IFRS international accounting standards as adopted by the EU, we certified these with no reservation and no comment. In our mission, we identified one key audit point under the consolidated financial statements, which is the valuation of recoverable goodwill and another key point pertaining to audit of annual statement, which pertains to the valuation of equity holdings. These key points have risks of significant misstatement. In our professional evaluation, these are more significant during the consolidated financial statement audits. Because it contain estimates -- significant estimates from your company management. They answered these 2 key points during our audits, and we give the details of this in our reports. I'd recall the main objective of ours is to get good overview of the financials to make sure there's no material misstatement and have the fair end to a reflection of the [indiscernible] and the company. We carry out assignments in various parts of the group and different locales. We've checked ongoing operations in subsidiaries as well as one-off events. We've done our due diligence as per professional standards, which apply in France. Our audit approach was discussed as well as the conclusions of our work both with group management and the accounts and risks committee during regular discussions we held with them. Our third report, the special report on related party agreements on Pages 308 and 309 of the Universal Registration Document. Talk about agreements approved during previous AGMs and those authorized by the Supervisory Board during the past period. Both of these are up for your approval. Lastly, pertaining to the extraordinary portion of the AGM, we prepared 1 report on Resolution 21. This resolution may have in the future an impact on your company's capital. We have no observation on the information given by the management Board on this. Ladies and gentlemen, managing partners, shareholders, thank you for your attention.

Thank you. Let's now move on to questions if there are any. We didn't receive any questions in writing. So are there any questions from the room? Sir, with a microphone or the interpreters will not be able to hear and interpret.

[indiscernible], The Managing Director of [indiscernible]. Three questions. You now have a stake in HDF Energy. Can you tell us more about what it is? Why is it only 18-something percent? Why didn't you go up all the way to 20%? And on CSR, refinery and shipping must lead to gases being released into or some kind of substances being released into the atmosphere. CO2 may be, what do you mean to say that? And what's about your plastics policy, will they -- well, the ship you mentioned make its way to France so that we, as shareholders, can see what it is?

On HDF, I'm not entirely sure I understand your question because we -- I mean the fact is we didn't take a 20% stake because we could afford 18.5%. And that was just the way it was when the IPO occurred. It was basically a factor of the interest of the market in the company. So that figure is -- suits us perfectly. We weren't, as I said, aiming to get a majority stake in the company. And indeed, the founding shareholders wanted to keep majority holding. And what's interesting for us, and hopefully, for HDF, too, is this strategic partnership that enables us to be the prime and majority investor for every HDF project in Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. So quite some scope and interesting indeed.

CSR. So if I understand your question, it was all about shipping at the SARA refinery. Our plan leads to replacing the industrial hardware at the refinery to improve our energy efficiency. And when I mentioned earlier, we were also talking about the -- about the SARA refinery. And on shipping, which will be -- this will mean that we will replace fuel with biofuels, capture a CO2 or ammonium and we'll see what is available, of course, on the market. Now our -- our decarbonation plan runs over 8 years. The high point will be between 2025 and 2030. We will reach the 12.5% mark in 2025. Of course, this will depend on the technological advances, for instance, improvements in ship engines. We're even looking at possibly building a ship with the LPG engine. There are indeed 450 actions that come under the decombination plan.

Yes, over there, the eager gentlemen.

Good afternoon. On Rubis Renewables, you're looking at hydrogen and solar, where we already have quite lively competition from a well-established shareholders, companies. What about hydrogen? I mean hydrogen is not profitable yet. When do you expect to be -- to recoup your investment and to be profitable? And on solar, yes, solar panels have gone down recently, but the prices will go back up because of the commodities market. So what are the prospects given the fact that this relies on government subsidies? Now moving on to the share price. Business is buoyant, dividend payouts are high. Why isn't the market following you? Why is the share price still low around -- will be on -- below the historic average of EUR 40 a share, somewhere around EUR 28 nowadays? Why is it that the market isn't following you?

Well, you're asking quite a very relevant question. The issue of green -- the profitability of green investment, lots of people who invested in the initial business are saying, don't invest in green energies, it's not profitable. Well, that's may be rushing to a conclusion. In economics, the issue is looking at yield over capital. And the yield in oil-related industries is much higher than what it is in green energy, but the capital -- the cost of capital is about 4x what it is for investments in green energies. There's a real difference. You might have a 6% yield in green energy. But the cost of capital is only 2%. So the gap, the difference is 4%. So I think you really have to look at it from a financial point of view. You mentioned profitability. Well, I think you really have to remember what the difference is between the yield of the assets you have and the cost of capital to acquire or build these assets. Second comment. Some commentators claim that our stake in Photosol was acquired too expensively. Now obviously, it was a bit. So if we got the bid, of course, we were ready to pay more than others, fact. But Photosol is a leader in its business. And this leads me to competition that you mentioned earlier. But on the French market, it isn't a minor factor. On the contrary, it is an act that has been looking at niche business, so land-based solar, and there was also Agri solar that I mentioned earlier with the sheep I was mentioning. The company hasn't only looked at Lavender fields and extensive Lavender growing fields in [indiscernible] the sun shines all year round. But no, they've looked at high-performance solar farms in Central France, a bit less sun, maybe, but more available land and slightly less expensive. So they know what they're doing, and they've been doing it for a good few years now. And as it concerns the acquisition cost of Photosol. Well, there are a number of studies being published. A recent report by a large bank covering Rubis has said that we paid in equity value, EUR 380 million, excluding debt, that is, and they value it at EUR 450 million. So we are pretty convinced that we have conducted a good -- very good operation indeed. That was one of the very few leaders that could be brought into the group. It's a great platform. We will be able to access other European markets through it. We're working on it. The team is tried and tested. And from a financial point of view, they know what they're doing. So I hope that addressed your questions.

And hydrogen?

Well, the profitability of hydrogen, I don't know. The fact is there is no hydrogen market. I think we all agree on that. I think we can all agree that hydrogen today is maybe what solar was well 12 or so years ago. That it was a bit unusual, exotic, but now we have significant growth with mature technologies. The real question now is, what are we doing to be able to tap into this market? When it grows, it will probably be a very broad market. We probably won't tap into individual mobility with hydrogen cars. Probably -- there's probably not much into it there, heavy goods vehicle, not sure either. We have other options. There's HDF, which seems to be on to something. There's also possibly producing hydrogen from solar panels or maybe from wind farms. That's maybe one option. We'll come back to that later. We'll see what happens there. But the fact is, as I said, we've started working already on the future of the future. So 2 steps ahead. And actually, that might be much closer than we expect. Just look at what happened with solar. I think that's all I can say today, unless you want to add something.

Can I maybe just add on HDF because I want to mention something. Hydrogen in their view, is not something they produce for hydrogen's sake. But as storage in Ireland states, there is a cost-effective product offering by HDF, first storing energy, locally reinsourced and it is competitive on these local markets. Admittedly, as you said, it wouldn't be competitive in -- on interconnected markets. And the fact is that on these -- in these island nations, the supply of the commodities to produce power is very high. So it is competitive in Barbados or in Namibia, but we'll see.

Can I also add that HDF has a license for fuel cells and a Canadian license. And they have established their profitability on round-the-clock power stability and supply. So I think it's established mature technology and HDF is well established on these profitable projects. So we're still very much a Rubis approach, looking at niche products more than a global player.

And to address your final question on maybe -- yes, share price. Yes. I'm sorry, you did ask a question about share price. I mean, all in all, we are happy punters. We have shown you, I believe, that we have weathered the storm and produced profits and dividends. At the same time, we've been able to reinvest in our business and have strong stability. But the market cap is less than 10x net income. Why? Well, don't know. But all we can say is that from the beginning of COVID, oil businesses and oil companies have dropped 40%. A comment off mic from the room to which the answer is the companies who -- the oil companies who do exploration and production have lost a lot of money over 2020 and have made up for it since. And this means why -- we explained why they're back to pre-COVID share prices. Now as concerns our business, our company we are not there yet. I find this abnormal, but I cannot give a rational explanation. Comment off mic, yes, maybe, but I can't say -- it's just not right that groups such as us should be valued at less than 10x less than net income.

I was wondering. What do you think will be the impact of the embargo in Russian oil? What's the impact going to be on your shipping, storage and trading businesses? Also, could you briefly talk to us about the problems you had in retailing in Kenya? Now the share price, it's just that oil has gone out of fashion.

Yes, to comment on your first comment having to do with the war in Ukraine, it's straightforward. We have no business activity, no assets in Ukraine that could be impacted by these very unfortunate events. Have I answered your question?

[indiscernible]

Indirect impact, well, indirect impact several points here, one of them -- one of these is very positive on terminal and storage is protective in the supply chain. This has been shown for 30 years now in terminals. When the economy is doing well, storage develops when the economy is in the doldrums, probes and supply chains, storage develops, because our customers need to be sure that they bought what it takes when there are hiccups in the supply chain. So that's on terminal business. Now in terms of distribution of oil products, the impact you've mentioned the various impacts necessarily lead to increases in oil prices. That didn't just start in 2021, 2022. There have been oil price hikes and dips for 30 years. During these periods, we've shown that our unit margins remain stable. We've shown this in 2020, 2021 that we were able to have good profits with oil at $20 or $120. As Bruno said, at the beginning of the year, this was reported in our financials, in our press releases, we've seen increases on the 7% to 8% volume increases versus the previous year and also versus 2019 like-for-like scope. And we're maintaining our unit margins. This proves that even when the environment really goes against our business model, it's unfavorable. Nonetheless, our teams are able to come up with growth and profits. Next question, please.

Yes. I had a question. You had some distribution problems in Kenya. Could you talk to us about this?

Yes. In Kenya, yes, it's true for around 20 days in Kenya, there was a very serious supply problem. And that also happened to happen during its period of holidays and vacation and Kenya is like to travel during holidays, just as we. So this led to very long lines, people waiting in front of service stations and some service stations closed. So that's what happened. You have to realize in Kenya, the market is sourced by government central entity for all operators. The government, of course, worked on this very hard and they accused all the operators, they're 80 in Kenya of reexporting oil products instead of supplying the domestic market. Just for the sake of making more profits. They criticized all the companies, the government criticized one and all. Initially, they criticized us just like they criticized all the other companies. But interestingly enough, the government authorities produced a study on the behavior of the 80 operators during the period, which was reported in the press in Kenya. It came out, of course, just after the episode. And it report showed that the first group positioned to supply the domestic market in Kenya that did not increase its exports to the detriment of the domestic market. The #1 group that did this was Rubis. So these are the facts publicly disclosed. So this episode that struck all the companies proved that we were in the right position that we had done well by Kenya. So the situation is over with now. The local market is being supplied pretty much ordinarily now. I hope I've answered your question. Next question.

I'm an individual shareholder. I have a question about Photosol's business. We know it's in the intermittent energy. So there's an issue relating to storage. We know electricity is very complicated and costly to store. So my question has to do with the blockchain activities. In some countries such as Kazakhstan and in the U.S. State of Texas, intermittent electricity is something that's been fixed by selling energy surpluses to bitcoin factories. My question is, do you intend to enter into agreements with Bitcoin mining businesses in France to sell photocell electricity surpluses?

Thank you for the question. Very technical one. Well, let me say that that's not exactly how it happens in a market, I'm talking about the French market, but it's broadly similar throughout Europe. Intermittent production of green electricity is dealt with by the fact that there are many different activities involved in this, for instance, you can't have problems in all areas at the same time, i.e., you may have wind farms doing beautifully well at night necessarily, of course, PV isn't working at night and so forth. This requires major investments by grid operators. So if they can do the trade-offs, balance loads using nuclear, fossil, wind, PV, and so forth as need be. Regarding Photosol French operator. The problem is not settled at each company level, each operation at each facility, but rather, it's something that's managed and balanced out more comprehensively for the grid itself. As Clarisse said, in areas that are not interconnected, yes, the problem of storage is quite acute because it has to be settled locally where the problem arises. That's not Photosol's issue. But Photosol is like most other operators, is looking into any in all possible solutions using batteries, using possibly hydrogen for storage purposes making it possible at the facility level to balance electricity -- green electricity production. But there is not a natural project as such. And I to agreeing with the specific industry such as bit chain mining -- bitcoin mining. We're not driving a specific clientele. Let me also say HDF is targeting these customers, is trying to find the right approach to the customer base that you're alluding to, but it's something that's a work in progress. To my in France and in Europe, this isn't as developed as in the locations that you mentioned earlier. There is a lady that would like to ask a question over here. Next question, please.

Hello, everyone. I'm an individual shareholder. I'd like to briefly come back to the point regarding the share price. For some time, I've noticed people aren't talking about Rubis in economic newspapers and economic radios. Magazine like [indiscernible] Vestas actually recommending to sell Rubis shares. Now the share price turned back around in the last 3 months. What I'd like to know why the financial press is recommending to sell the shares? Should you possibly more vocal, speak with the economic press?

It's not up to the issuer to hand out recommendations to the press. So no, we do not step in and contact press specialists, the media to try to get their recommendation for Rubis. Now the market goes its way. Yes, let me just say above and beyond the economic press. I believe in [indiscernible] and other outlets, there were articles. So we don't agree completely with your view. We could give you a list of various articles that have indeed been written in the financial press about Rubis. That's not what you're saying. But then, of course, you've got the financial press and then you've got the trade press analysts, brokerage firms. We've got 7 or 8 stock analysts, both in France and outside of France that are mid-cap specialists that track Rubis they report on us regularly. Of course, they come up with their own analysis, their own evaluation of Rubis. It's good for any issuer to be -- get analyst coverage. So yes, things are well established. And in this respect, I don't have anything further, I would need to add. To repeat, though, the economic press is continuing to track our share price. Next question, please.

When you're talking about communication, I believe that this company hasn't talked much about selling the facilities in Turkey. I can think back a few years ago, you were very proud. You were talking this up, talking about the strategic facilities for Rubis. And then I learned not that long ago, I think 2021. These were sold off. You didn't talk this that much in the press. Why did you exit Turkey so quickly would be my first question? Second question. I think this year, you're not allowing us to reinvest the dividend in shares. So I believe that's the case, whereas in previous years, that was allowed, we could be paid either in dividends or in cash. We could be paid in shares or in cash. Surprising, this year, becoming an electricity producer so you would apparently need more capital than in previous years. So that surprises me somewhat. I have a third question. changing line of business. Well, there are facilities with hydrocarbons, storage, vats, ships and so forth. Are you going to do asset impairments? My understanding is the withdrawal from hydrocarbons, regardless of country, there's going to be global step back from hydrocarbons fairly quickly. And this is a company that's very significantly established in hydrocarbons today. So I'd be interested in your answers.

Regarding Turkey, the Turkish company is held by Rubis Terminal, which in turn is held as a joint venture, so jointly controlled 50-50 with the U.S. investment fund. Therefore, the Turkish asset under Rubis Group SCA, the proportion is very small, EUR 8 million in EBITDA in 2020. Our portion divide that by 2, cut in half basically. So compared to the EUR 500 million in EBITDA generated by the group, it's less than 1% in terms of contribution to profits. So it isn't worthy of a special press release or what have you. We're talking about an asset that is smallish. Next, basic point. This was a strategic decision with this strengthening of I Squared, our new shareholder, we positioned more gravitated more towards the Western Mediterranean and also focused more on storage markets for retailers versus traders. It's true the Turkish business, you seem to be very familiar with that company over the 10-year period, we carried it. It had a lot of qualities, but we also have to say it saw significant volatility due to oil prices also due to the exposures to certain clients that were traders. That led to some volatility in their earnings and that wasn't a lot of what I Squared was looking for. They're an infrastructure fund seeking assets with good visibility, good stability in earnings. This is -- these are the reasons why we did this. We didn't necessarily sell all the stuff. But the joint venture is the self-same is jointly controlled. And there was a release directly to the press and via their website. So this was indeed disclosed. It was certainly no secret that Rubis Terminal was selling these assets in Turkey with a capital gain, I might add.

And the second question now related to the script basically paying dividends in shares. It's an old, well-established tradition why we're not doing it this year? Well, quite simply because the share price is unsatisfactory in our eyes and not only in our eyes, clearly. We wanted, therefore, to avoid dilution. When you pay out dividends and shares, you basically have dilution. Of course, some people rather like payment in dividend. Others don't. And that dilution may have an impact downward -- and exercise downward pressure on the share price. We therefore decided and weren't particularly pleased about it, to give up on this option and try and act as much as we could to bring the share price back up to where it should be. Now we have crunched a few numbers, nonetheless, rest assured, and we will be able to fund our investment, the EUR 700 million over the next 5 years to support the growth of Photosol will be self-funded from Photosol. I believe you also had a question here on divestments. We're not changing jobs. We are adding business. I'm pretty sure that petrol and oil will not come to an end in Africa on my watch, probably not in the Caribbean either. Europe, we'll see. I mean you will have heard that the European Parliament confirmed yesterday that there would be no more sales of combustion engine vehicles in 2035. I did misspeak and say 1935. Clearly, you were giggling because you were listening. Well done. So this is going to happen, and the European Council also has to endorse this. But anyway, we are not changing jobs. Our core business has years to run in Africa, in the Caribbean, whether you like it or not. And that means that we will have the time to adapt to the market, to the rules. I mean what we were able -- if we were able to, we'd sell biofuels in Africa, but there aren't any. And where there are some, that 4x as expensive as oil. In euro -- in Europe, we have LPG. We have very few petrol stations in Europe. LPG is butane propane and it can't really be replaced by anything else in rural areas. I mean, you know that heating oil is being subjected to strong regulation. So there are no concerted replacement energy is available. So I don't think we can foresee or expect any impairment test on the assets on the contrary. Last question here.

Jean-Pierre Marc. Rubis Terminal is in JV. Will it stay within the group? Seeing that Ruby Renewables is in full swing. And investment, you mentioned 2 projects EUR 130 million each and other programs and other projects on the cards can or would you fund one by selling off the other?

The financing of each branch relies on the cash flow from each branch. No problem there.

Yes. Good afternoon. You just mentioned the EU. Has the EU looked at biofuels or agri fuels, many automobile industry experts are saying that electric cars is not the priority, the Americans and the Chinese will stick with both. Should we look at biofuels to keep combustion engine cars in Europe.

Well, what can I say? Yes, interesting question. Indeed, but recent events have shown that you cannot -- must not focus on one energy source and one single supplier. Look at Russia and Germany, and you shouldn't focus on one single technology. Now given the recent choices, in Europe, but the trend does seem to be going one way. I mean, they could have decided to set a very low CO2 threshold or ceiling rather and let everyone develop the right technologies to get there. But Europe has said note grams of CO2. So them choosing EVs quite clearly, if that is confirmed by the European authorities. So I can't really answer that one. It's a policy issue, not an economic one. I would tend to keep my options open but still for as long as other European economic groupings will manufacture combustion engines, we will need to have some in, I don't know, Asia and Africa, while we in Europe only have EVs. So that's a geopolitical issue, I believe. Madam? Yes, last question maybe.

I'm a recent shareholder. I've read -- I saw on the forums that you were going ahead with share buyback. So I tracked the share price. And you would be doing that up until the 15th of May. And then lo and behold, the share went back up after that. So I made an economic bet. I was just wondering -- I mean, clearly, it was the right choice. But can I ask you what's happening? Why have you decided to purchase or to buy back some shares? I'm sure you explained it maybe last time, but I missed it. I'm sure there's a good reason. And another 2 questions, you're saying -- you mentioned LPG. I went to the shipyards in San Jose. The larger ships being built, built our LNG propulsion is LPG Lending, very different. I really have no idea. Can you tell me more? And another question, Mr. Heckenroth, you said that Supervisory Board members were only getting a car. But I thought on Pages 183, 184, there was a rather interesting list of fixed compensation, variable compensation. I thought that the founding member, Mr. [indiscernible] was the only one who have had a car. I don't know. Maybe I completely misread all this.

Okay. Let's take these questions from the top. You mentioned a share buyback. Can I confirm to you that the French markets authority is monitoring very clearly the share buyback practices. We can't even do it ourselves. We have to go through a licensed broker. We cannot set anything as to amounts or timing. The buyback was conducted in 3 tranches on the instructions of the AMF financial market, the French Financial Markets Authority, you're saying the share price picked at the end -- picked up at the end of this. I think it's just, well, coincidence really. Share remitters cannot play and the market -- and influence the market -- the share price. Why did we do this? Well, in the economics and financial world, there have been many learning discussions as to the relevance of share buyback. You might agree to it or criticize it. It's difficult to say anything about what kind of an impact it has had over the share price of Rubis since we started it in January 2021, I believe. It's no less complicated in other places. But as you may know, this is increasingly widespread practice and has become so over the last 22 years in Europe. It was something that's been going on much longer in the U.S., but -- it does mean that temporary available cash might be managed in that way. It's a short -- it's one way of managing your financial policies. Also, we had significant capital gains with Rubis Terminal. And in fact, we were passing on some of that capital gain to shareholders. LPG, LNG. Well, we have in those 2 very different types of gas. LPG, which is our line of business, is very different from LNG. The gap in terms of investment is a tenfold factor. So the risk is such that only very larger groups should do this and look into it. Mr. Heckenroth?

Yes, maybe I misspoke or was not very clear when I was talking about the remuneration and compensation for the managing partners. You have a set compensation and variable compensation. And that is -- the only thing is that the managing directors, the 2 of them get a company car, not even at a company push scooter. Okay. One last question before we move on to resolutions.

Private investor, I wanted to congratulate the management team on the variable compensation section, it's very clear. We can clearly understand that our interests are similar. And as concerns storage policies in various countries, is there a risk that a government might commandeer your stash? And what kind of compensation might there be?

Thank you for your first comment. It's not very often that we hear that. And we've been trying to achieve that. Now I'm sorry, the sound is a bit poor. Are you talking about potential nationalization or store of petroleum products? Well, that's risk you run, but nationalization is fairly infrequent. I don't think you can say that some countries are much more dangerous than others. What actually hedges a company's business is diversifying our -- the countries in which we operate. I mean, out of the 40 or so countries we operate in. And there's always a handful where -- well, something unfortunate happens. So we're not saying that there's a significant risk there. It's a risk, but nothing unusual, and we handle that by diversifying our business. Thank you. Let's now move on to the resolutions, and this will be done electronically. I'll give the floor to our Company Secretary, who will handle this part of our meeting. She will tell us how this will happen. Maura?

Thank you, sir. We're going to begin voting on the resolutions beforehand. I hope you're going to hear me. Beforehand, let me give you the final attendance numbers. We can see that shareholders present or represented and voting correspondents have more than 56.85% of shares with the voting rights. So we've more than reached the quorum, so we can begin voting on the resolutions. Before voting on the resolutions, I wanted to remind you that today, we've set up an electronic voting system. You can see the details on the screen describing this. You have a voting box. If you'd like to vote in favor of a resolution, you press the #1. If you like to vote against the resolution, you press on number two, key number 2, if you'd like to abstain, you press on the key number 3. Once it says voted on your screen, that means your vote has been tallied. I'd like to run you through the resolutions. I'll just give you the headings, the full resolutions can be found in the invitation to this meeting, Pages 26 to 31. When I say please vote now, you can begin voting. Resolution 1. Resolution 1, approval of the 2021 financial statements. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is approved. Resolution 2, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the financial period. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is approved. Resolution 3, approval of earnings and setting of dividend EUR 1.86 per ordinary share and EUR 0.93 per preferred share. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 4, renewal of Carole Fiquemont's term of office as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

9 No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 5, renewal of Chantal Mazzacurati's term of office as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 6, renewal of Marc-Olivier Laurent's term of office as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 7, appointment of Cecile Maisonneuve as a member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 8, appointment of Carine Vinardi as member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 9, appointment of Alberto Pedrosa as member of the Supervisory Board for a term of 3 years. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 10, appointment of KPMG SA as statutory auditor. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 11, acknowledgment of the expiry of the terms of office of 2 statutory auditors and 2 alternate auditors. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 12, approval of the information mentioned in Article L22-10-9 for compensation, financial year ending 31 December 2021 for all corporate officers. Article L22-10-91 of the French Commercial Code relating to compensation. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 13, approval of the components of compensation and benefits paid during or awarded in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2021 to Gilles Gobin as Managing Director of Rubis SCA. Please vote now. [Voting]

Now further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 14, approval of the components of compensation and benefits paid during or awarded in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2021 to Sorgema SAS as Managing Partner of Rubis SCA. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 15, approval of the components of compensation and benefits paid during or awarded in respect to the financial year ended 31 December 2021 to Agena SAS as Managing Partner of Rubis SCA. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 16, approval of the components of compensation and benefits paid during or awarded in respect of the financial year ended 31 December 2021 to Oliver Heckenroth as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Rubis SCA. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 17, approval of the compensation policy for Rubis SCA Managing Partners for financial year 2022. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 18, approval of the compensation policy for the members of the Rubis SCA Supervisory Board for financial year 2022. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. Resolutions adopted. Resolution 19, related party agreements. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 20, authorization to be granted to the Management Board for a period of 18 months for the purpose of carrying out a share buyback program in the framework of a liquidity agreement capped at 1% of the share capital. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. Resolution is adopted. Now we move on to the extraordinary session of this AGM. Resolution 21, authorization to be granted to the Management Board for a period of 26 months to award new performance shares free of charge to employees of the company, employees and/or executive corporate officers of related companies or economic interest groups or certain of them, with the waiver by shareholders of their preferential subscription rights. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 22, amendment of Article 54 of the bylaws. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. The resolution is adopted. Last resolution, powers to carry out formalities. Please vote now. [Voting]

No further voting. All resolutions have been adopted. Thank you. And most importantly, don't forget to hand the voting boxes back in as you leave the room. We'll give the floor back to the Chairman.

Right. Meeting closed. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for all your questions. We were delighted to see you all and see you next year. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by and interpreter present on the live call.]