SEB SA (SK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. Every year, when we organize our general meeting, you know that it's a very important moment in the life of our group, and it's also a very pleasant moment for us. Unfortunately, this year, once again because of the pandemic, we are deprived of the pleasure of coming together physically. We unfortunately have to do this using video conferencing, but we at least hope that you're all well, you and your friends and family. And so I would like to wish you a very warm welcome to this general meeting. Before I get the ball rolling, maybe 2 comments I'd like to make. The first comment is I've withdrawn, we've withdrawn our masks. And I think the people who are with me are going to take them off. As you can see, we are protected from one another by plexiglass screens, so we are very much in line with the regulations in force and we're guaranteeing the safety and security of physical people. The second comment I'd like to make, and this is a legal consideration, I would like to remind those present, in according to the order of 2020-321 of 25th of March 2020 and the decree 2020-418 of the 10th of April 2020, as was prolonged by the decree number 2021-255 on the 9th of March 2021, the mixed general meeting is taking place in a closed environment, without the physical presence of the shareholders, from the headquarters of Groupe SEB in Écully. Indeed, on the date of the invitation to attend the general meeting, different administrative measures limiting or forbidding travel or forbidding people from coming together in a group, for health reasons, have prevented us from organizing the meeting whereby the different members are present at the general meeting. The current assembly is taking place and is being broadcast live from our headquarters and will also be available after the meeting. As Chairman of the Board of Directors, I will manage this meeting with a limited group. This is made up of Stanislas de Gramont, general manager, who is to my right, you can see him on the screen; Nathalie Lomon, who is the deputy general manager in charge of finance, who is on my left; and also Philippe Sumeire, who is in charge of legal affairs for the group and also the Secretary of the Board of Directors, who is also on my right. This year, the directors who are usually present have been able to connect remotely. So the invitation to attend this mixed general meeting was published on the bulletin des annonces légales of the 24th of March 2021. The invitation to attend this mixed general meeting was published in the journal for the legal announcements entitled Le Tout Lyon on the 24th of April 2021 and in the bulletin des annonces légales of the 28th of April 2021. The shareholders who have enrolled with their names and also the statutory auditors have been invited to attend as is normal via a letter that was sent. The [ bureau ] that I am going to be the chairperson of is comprised of the scrutineers VENELLE INVESTISSEMENT, represented by Mrs. Damarys Braida; and GÉNÉRACTION, represented by Mrs. Caroline Chevalley; shareholders of SEB SA and family holdings, representing with their members and partners the highest number of votes in terms of the shares and that have been appointed by the Board of Directors that took place on the 21st of April 2021, in application of the legislation in force and who have accepted this role. The scrutineers, like the directors, are connected remotely to the meeting in order to follow what goes on. Mr. Philippe Sumeire will serve as the Secretary. The statutory auditors are not physically present, but they will speak during the course of the meeting via a prerecorded presentation. In order to favor discussions with the shareholders despite the very unusual circumstances and as an add-on to the legal provisions, written questions were sent. And we set up also an interactive exchange period that will give you the opportunity to put any questions on a real-time basis. As of now, you can begin to send your questions via our Internet site. First of all, we ask you to identify yourselves, and then we will answer these questions during the question-and-answer session. So this will be after the first presentation. This possibility of putting questions via the platform will end after the presentation given by the statutory auditors. Concerning the voting process, many of you have expressed yourselves on the resolutions that have been presented, and I thank you very warmly for all of your engagement. Remote voting is something that took place prior to the general meeting, and this was the only way of voting. Hence, voting is now closed, and the results will be presented to you at the end of the meeting. The number of shareholders having voted amounts to 4,324 in the ordinary general meeting and 4,313 in the Extraordinary General Meeting. This accounts for 45,492,473 shares in the ordinary general meeting And 45,434,620 shares in the Extraordinary General Meeting. If we link this to the total number of shares that have the right to vote, in other words 55,309,441 shares, this accounts for 82.25% of the number of these shares in the ordinary general meeting and 82.14% of the number of these shares in the Extraordinary General Meeting. The general meeting therefore has the necessary quorum in order to be able to meet both for the ordinary part of the meeting and also for the extraordinary part of the meeting. In front of me, as per usual, and let me show you, I have the file that contains all of the documents required by the legislation in force. Moreover, all of the preliminary documents have been sent or have been made available to the shareholders by the shareholders department and on the company's Internet site, in compliance with the legal and regulatory conditions. So in the light of these information, I declare our general meeting open. On the screen, you have the summary for this meeting. So we're going to start out by going through 2020. We'll talk about the financial results, of course, but we'll also talk about the main projects that we've entered into. We'll say a few words about the beginning of the year, about the beginning of 2021. And we'll focus on a more traditional part of the meeting whereby we talk about the share price, governance and so on and so forth, remuneration and the social representatives. We'll also focus on the statutory auditors' report. And we'll move on to question and answers before we read you the results of the voting on the resolutions. So let's get the ball rolling with the first part of the meeting, and we're going to review 2020. Of course, 2020 has been a very particular or unusual year. First and foremost, this has been the case, of course, because of the crisis, the unprecedented health crisis, we've had to manage because of COVID-19. And of course, this crisis for us began at the beginning of 2020 with the start of the crisis in our site in Wuhan in China, and then this spread throughout the planet. This crisis, of course, has had a major impact on the retail sector with a lot of closures in terms of our points of sale, so a high percentage of our sales initially have since taken place via the Internet. And also there was a massive impact on consumption and on consumers since consumers, for a lot of the year, have had to buy from home, and so this has meant that a lot more has been bought on the Internet. So regarding our business specifically when it comes to household equipment, I think what we can say quite safely is that -- one, that our business activity has been rather good for everything that revolves around cookware articles. Of course, because people were obliged to stay at home, they couldn't go to restaurants or cinemas, so as a result, after the initial weeks, we started to see that people were very interested in buying our products. There was a massive speed-up as well in terms of online sales. And all of this meant that for our general public or consumer business activities things were good, but our professional markets have been highly impacted, nevertheless, by the prolonged closure of the hotel, restaurants and cafe sectors that were closed. They remained closed for a large part of the year. Last but not least, notwithstanding COVID, 2020 was affected by the monetary environment that was particularly volatile. And the same is true for raw materials. So as far as we're concerned, 2020 -- next slide, please. So of course, 2020, as I said, was a major year; a year during which our first concern, above all, was to guarantee the safety and the health of all of our staff. And I would like to say that -- right at the beginning of this meeting, I would like to take a few moments to say thank you, a very big thank you, to all of our staff, the 33,000 staff; our clients; and our consumers; our shareholders, of course; and all of the stakeholders who have provided us with their support throughout this year that has been such an unusual and untypical year. I would like to pay particular homage to our staff also not only for all of the dedication that they've shown during this very trying and testing situation, for those people who have worked in the factories that have enabled us to keep on making the products, but also thank you to the staff for all the generous initiatives that have been taken in all of our companies all around the world so the assistance and help has been provided who -- to those who needed it, notably hospital staff. Thank you to the hospital staff. Also thank you for their attitude throughout the year. Just a few words now about the key figures for 2020. So the revenue amounts to 6 billion -- EUR 6.94 billion, down 6%, as you can see, but only down 3.8% on a like-for-like basis. I'm not going to go into more detail on this for the moment. We'll have the opportunity to go into detail further on. The operating result from the activity, at EUR 605 million, down 18% -- 18.2%, but if we look at the figures on a like-for-like basis, we're just missing 18.2% (sic) [ 4.8% ], so it's not quite as bad as what was anticipated as what could have occurred. Next, our net result amounts to EUR 301 million, so down 20%. And the net debt has dropped considerably. Nathalie will refer back to this. And our debt amounts to EUR 1.51 million (sic) [ EUR 1.51 billion ]. So it's important to note that 2020 as a year has been, nevertheless, a very solid year. And we have an excellent outlook for 2020. And as a result, the Board of Directors has decided -- this was during the February meeting that we decided this, February 2021. We've decided to propose to the meeting a dividend of EUR 2.14. So this is the same as was the case and what was distributed and chosen by the general meeting of 2019. This dividend that is the same as 2 years ago and -- means that we will also provide a free share for 10 shares purchased. And this is something that was set out in March of this year. Let me now move on. And I'm going to pass the floor on to Stanislas de Gramont, and he is going to talk to us about the sales for 2020.

Ladies and gentlemen, hello. So 2020. [ It's true ] it was a year that was characterized by a drop in our total sales, as you can see on the screen, and this is of 5.6%. This is made up of the organic growth down 3.8%; the currency effect, Thierry mentioned, down 3%; and then the scope up 1.2%. This is mainly thanks to the acquisition of StoreBound that we acquired in July 2020 in our accounts. It's important to note also that this drop in organic growth is highly contrasting because the first quarter led to a drop of 12.6%, and then the second quarter meant that we then returned to growth with 3.6% growth. If we look in detail at our different business activities, let's start out by looking at our Consumer activity. And for this, let's move on to the next slide. In the bottom right-hand side, you can see for the Consumer activity EUR 6.365 billion, so with a slight drop of 0.5% on a like-for-like basis in terms of the exchange rate for the year. Here once again, the first quarter, we were down 10%, 10.6% exactly; and up 7.8% for the second half of the year. So this turnaround, this excellent resilience of sales can be explained. It was mainly explained by the fact that we did very well in terms of demand for all kinds of household appliances across the board in all the different geographies. Next, when it comes to the Professional business, here the scenario is rather different because here we have a drop of about 30% in our sales. This is for the year, globally speaking. This drop began as of the end of the first quarter of 2019, but with the initial negative impact -- in that we had some very big contracts in 2019, major contracts that created a comparison basis for 2020. Then we had the negative impact of the COVID crisis on all of our hotels, restaurants and cafes that were closed and hence no longer ordered coffee machines. Just from the perspective of the anecdote, look at the pancake [ meter ]. We celebrate the 40th anniversary of our specific pancake-making machine, so for those of you who are not familiar with it, now will be a good time to discover it. Now if we look at things per continent, when it comes to Consumer sales, the sales followed exactly the same trend. So a clear drop during the course of the first half of the year and then a massive turnaround as well for the second half of the year. So for EMEA -- we were up 8% for the second half of the year. For example: EMEA up 9.1%; and in Asia up 5.2%, as you can see, with an initial drop of 11.6% in the first half of the year. So once again, we have a gap of around 17% from 1 half of the year to the other. All of the different zones were characterized by strong growth in e-commerce, and we'll refer back to that a bit further down the line. When we look at all of the different product categories. Of course, electric cooking, food preparation, they've done very, very well, blenders, mixers and so on and so forth. You can also see in the middle of the graph a slight drop for cookware articles. This was because the Wuhan site remained closed for a long time just -- over 2 months. This, of course, led to a lot of products that were not in stock, and cookware articles the same when they -- that was necessary. When it comes to personal care and home care, they were pretty stable for the whole of the year but with a strong contrast, as I've said, between the 2 halves of the year. And the most highly penalized categories by -- because of the pandemic were all of the large pieces of kitchen equipment and also linen care, kitchen equipment in China because the construction sector was not able to work for a lot of the first half of the year. And also, linen care, here the decline was caused by the fact that consumer behavior behaved -- people didn't go out as much. They didn't work as month -- work as much, and so as a result, they didn't need to use this category of products quite so much. So just to round things off, I'd like to talk about the Professional Coffee sector and the impact for -- that started out in 2019 and then we saw a decline in sales. It's also note -- important to note that, as of the second quarter, because of COVID, a lot of our clients had to close their premises. One point that is very interesting is that 70% of this business is made up of the sale of machines, and 30% made up of services and maintenance. So this means that we still had a small amount of activity for this business sector, the service sector. And there was a slight turnaround in the fourth quarter, but nevertheless the business was too weak to have had a global positive impact. Let me now pass the floor over to Nathalie Lomon, who is going to present the financial results following on from the sales performance presentation.

Thank you very much, Stanislas, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders. So Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise has already indicated, the revenue, as you can see, for 2020 means that we have an operating result of EUR 705 million, yes, with a drop, an 18% drop, in relation to the performance for 2019, but on a like-for-like basis with the currency effect, the drop is only of 3.8%. And this is pretty much in line with the drop that we were able to see in terms of the revenue. Let's move on now, please, to the next slide that shows you how the operating result is divided up. You can see the annual result. Let's start out with on the right-hand side of the graph you have the negative currency effect down EUR 9 million. This mainly is because of the [ evaluation ] and the degradation of the emerging countries' currencies, particularly at the beginning of the year, and also coverage that was favorable but less favorable than what we saw in 2019 for the American dollar. We are used to trying to compare the currency effect with our own capacity to cover this and hedge this in relation to our price increases or the product mixes. So you can see this partially, I believe, with a premix (sic) [ price/mix ] that amounts to EUR 60 million. And this does not offset all of the currency effect because in fact we started to add price increases on once we evaluated the currencies during the second half of the year. And it takes a certain amount of time before you get the opportunity to really correct your prices and make up for this gap. The other element that is very important within the context of the operating figures, it's the volume effect down EUR 126 million. So this is a significant drop. This mainly took place in the first quarter with the drop in business, the major drop in business Stanislas commented on, but in the second half of the year, it was the price/mix that basically restored the operating result for the group. I don't have many comments to make on the cost of sales up, the up EUR 9 million. This is illustrated -- the plus EUR 9 million is illustrated by the impact of the lower activity in our production sites, but this was offset by a lot of efforts made by sourcing of the components that we buy. And of course, you also have the commercial and administrative costs that dropped because we reduced our costs and there were fewer travel costs. One last comment, possibly concerning the seasonality of this operating result that doesn't appear on this specific graphs -- graph. You might remember that, during the first half of the year, we published our results. And in the second half of the year, we were able to achieve a much higher operating result. It was very much a record for the company. I'm now going to move on to the next slide that gives us the opportunity to move on from the operating result to the net result. And here I'm going to go into detail on the different lines. First of all, I'm going to be talking to you about incentive and profit sharing. This has dropped in 2020. This is normal given the drop in the business activity in France, the drop also in profitability because of the crisis. The amount of the other charges correspond to EUR 78 million. This mainly is made up of charges for restructuring, for example, for VMF -- WMF, EUR 50 million. And then the remainder, this covers the cost, the restructuring costs; and also the impact related to disposals. This gives you the overall amount that we have from 1 year to the next. The financial result is that -- is stable in relation to last year, no damage, let's say, or no reduction in the financial conditions. Another point is important: This concerns the tax costs. Taxes dropped considerably in relation to 2019. These drops come from 2 impacts. First of all, there was a drop in what we call the effective rate, the effective tax rate. And we translate this in relation to last year by a certain number of one-off impacts, nonrecurring one-off impacts, that have meant that this year we've been able to have a 21% rate compared with 23% in 2019. And the other obvious effect is the drop in the operating expenses. This, of course, is related to the crisis. The minority interests have remained stable compared with last year, which means that we have a net result of EUR 301 million. These are the comments on the results. Now here is balance sheet, which is simplified with our tangible fixed assets and the amount of financing available. I will focus here on the operating capital, the working capital, which is down significantly by EUR 367 million compared to the previous year. This decrease is due to 2 factors, mainly the customer line where we collected significantly all through the year, including at the end of the year, which allowed us to reduce this position. And we saw a decrease in Professional activity, which is an indicator of the fact that this sector went down during the second quarter, second half, in fact. And then we had an increase in supplier costs and which meant that we had component and communications costs as well which comes out -- which come out at the second half of the year. For the other elements, there's no significant variations. And you can look at the wider document. And I think it's important now to explain the variation of net debt, like Thierry was saying, that we had EUR 480 million less compared to the previous year, with free cash flow which was at EUR 752 million this year, which the -- compared to the ORfA, we take out the amortization and we take the charges of interests and participation, which means we have an EBITDA in 2020 of EUR 851 million. And then we benefited from the need in working capital. And group continued to invest in 2020, mainly in manufacturing and production, as it had done in the previous years. And taking off the taxes and financial costs and some needs in working capital beyond operations, the overall business allowed us to generate EUR 752 million in free cash flow. This was used to -- for acquisitions and elements outside of operations like buying back shares and the dividend, which is the main part of this amount was -- EUR 101 million was for the dividends for the holders of SEB SA and the minority shareholders of Supor, which means we have a net debt of EUR 1.51 billion, which means that the company has strongly lowered its debt compared to the previous years. And let me remind you that the group continued to maintain a very stable financial position with no help needed because of payments -- for payments or guarantees and guarantees for the state to maintain its activities. So now we have the financial structure which is also very healthy, very balanced. You can see here in this graph that we have a gross debt which is very balanced. And in terms of the payback, which looked high in 2021 but which concerns using short-term financing -- for new short-term financing which just goes into the cash, available cash, for the group which is EUR 2.4 billion. So we have a debt structure once again very, very balanced, Schuldschein, bonds, ORNAEs, an NUE (sic) [ NEU ] at the end of the year. We have [ new ] CPs and [ new ] CPNs (sic) [ MTNs ]. We have a credit line which is confirmed and which we don't necessarily use, which gives us financial flexibility, for all of this debt is not the subject of any financial covenant. And of course, because of the -- we have the events this year which is in June 2020 a EUR 500 million bond issue maturing in 2025. And we continue to work this year -- in this special year with our banks to extend our syndicated credit line, which once again we do not use. So this financial -- financing structure is healthy, optimized, on the one hand. And the EBITDA of [ 258 million ] allowed us to continue to reduce the leverage of the group, which is established 1.8 at the end of '21 compared to 2 at the end of 2019. If you adjust that to the IFRS accounting, the leverage is 1.6 compared to 1.9 at the end of 2019. And debt -- net debt-to-owned capital is at 0.6. So that's the financial part of 2020.

So 2020 was then a year with highs and lows in terms of our economic performance. We also continued to carry out projects and strategic ambitions, which we are going to present now with Thierry and Nathalie. I'm going to start with the priority on digital activities through -- and then we'll talk about product innovation and responsible behavior. So for digital first, we talked about the digitalization of the group. Today, everything is digital. All commerce is increasingly digital. E-commerce is our -- is about 35% of our Consumer sales, up 8 points versus 2019. In all areas, digital investments have increased by a great deal. It's about 60% of our media investments. We -- this means that we've doubled since 2016. And we will also acquire companies in the digital area. So transactional and relational in our demonstration online and direct sales online, which I will talk about in the next 2 slides. Let us begin by the relational aspect. Increasingly, we have online demos which can be done by chefs, by influencers or both; and we want to share with you 3 examples of that. It began with the grand live from Moulinex, a very -- Cyril Lignac, who's a very famous French chef, with -- at the beginning of 2020, with 4 million hits all together. And the second session began yesterday. It's a live show with chefs and different personalities and Moulinex ambassadors. It's Cyril Lignac and all of these other people. There are gifts. There are things to be won. And its announcement, and he says it's easy, and it's just a teaser for -- now it wasn't just in France, but we've gone beyond. We have a partnership for the last 15 years with Jamie Oliver, the great British chef, which renewed in 2020. And we've extended it to several products. And Jamie Oliver presents the Ingenio Tefal. [Presentation]

It's simple, clear and efficient. Let me finish this presentation with live -- about live streaming with an example in China which was developed in China during COVID and on different Supor products. We have several hours of live streaming every day. I propose that we discover how you make beef with onions with a kitchen chef in China. [Presentation]

So you've recognized the smartphone format is -- increasingly these online demonstrations are done -- are looked at by consumers on their smartphones. The other aspect is sales of direct-to-consumer sales online. We have about 100 sales points direct to consumer, and we have 30 more during the year. We developed 30 more this year in 2020. We're continuing to open online [ stars ] either on our own brand sites -- we have WVM -- wmf.com, which sells all the WMF products. You see the Rowenta Spain, which spends -- which sells all of the Rowenta products in Spain. And we're developing an activity by going our own, own-brand sites with a back office that allows us to take orders, deliver, invoice and to aftersales service. And also, marketplaces, Alibaba in China. You can see the Tmall on Alibaba in China on the right-hand side and a Tefal marketplace on Wildberries in Russia. So that's an activity that is increasing on Rakuten, [ AliExpress ]. So that's a very big increase in our activities online.

To remain in the digital world in a different way, we have several in-house initiatives. We've had acquisitions and we continue in 2020. And we took a majority stake in American company called StoreBound, which is -- StoreBound, which we did in July 2020. StoreBound is a small company with $120 million in business. They did $25 million the -- before, but I think -- this year, I think they'll increase significantly. And it's, above all, incredible know-how in digital marketing and in particular in a very special experience in community management to develop products with the consumers and then, once they've developed these products, to market and sell these. It's a very different approach to our traditional approach, which means -- we develop products, so it seemed to us very interesting to understand this model and to integrate that into the group and so that all of our teams can learn from this experience and which gives the consumer experience a priority. You see the figures. There's 100 million people on Instagram -- partnerships with brands, chefs, influencers between 500,000 and 20 million followers. It's developing very quickly, about increase of 35% every year since -- for the last 5 years. It's in the very heart of New York. And so it's a very promising acquisition. I think we're going to learn a lot from them. And then we'll -- it's we're a group that wants to be at the cutting edge of progress and innovation, and we have to work through acquisitions to acquire new techniques and technologies. So now not only is this an acquisition, but we took a stake in our company through SEB Alliance. And I am very happy with that. There are 3. The first one is Chefclub. It's a French start-up and it's the -- a leader in Europe and China. And they are very good in the recipes like melted [indiscernible]. So it's really good. I've tried it myself. [indiscernible] to have easy -- easily explained. And it's a lot of fun. And so in the key figures, you see it's foodtech which is the one that's gone up the most in the social networks in 2020 and almost 2 billion monthly views, 700,000 books sold. The figures are incredible. A small start-up with 3 brothers in Paris. And we took a stake to understand this business model and integrate it into our operations. And we launched in this first half of 2021 a range of products in Chefclub by -- which is Chefclub by Tefal, which will be done in a sub branding; will give us more access to a new group, a new segment, like millennials, and to open up to new customers. Another example where we're a minority stakeholder is -- for SEB Alliance is CASTALIE'S water. It's a French start-up as well, [ I will say ], in the water fountains, for microfilters in restaurants with reusable containers. So what we call -- it's a B2B activity which isn't for the general public but for companies, offices, et cetera. And of course, it's to reduce the consumption of plastic bottles, which this start-up seemed to us very interesting with management people that were very high level, very imaginative. And we think that this company can help us to move forward in water treatment and to allow them to develop more quickly. And the other example of a minority holding is Angell, with electrically assisted bikes, where we'll have a minority stake in this company and will be their industrial partners. And all the -- here's a model for men, and there'll be a ladies' version further the -- in the year. And we will develop -- and will be done in our factory in Is-sur-Tille in France. So we're trying to acquire and take stakes to increase our competence and our leadership in the world. The second part, of course, is to go back to our essentials with product innovation. Without that, we would not be able to exist. First of all, for Professional Coffee, if it -- which is a very innovative sector -- we don't see it on the slides here, but on the left you see the new machine for espressos for McDonald's. It's a machine that looks like the one you find in bars but is automatic so that the actual coffee grounds go in directly. So you don't have to have any competence in terms of loading the machine. And so the barista -- it makes it a lot easier for the barista; and which means, for a group like McDonald's which have many untrained people, that's very important. The VMF -- or WMF 1300, which is a machine smaller than the others, that makes only 120 cups per day, but it's already a pretty good rate. And it's for offices, for example, law firms; and which is at a much lower price. Schaerer Soul is another concept, which is our second brand, a Swiss brand which is very flexible and can give you tailor-made products when you have -- and you have on the photo a new model which you can adapt to each of our customers. The last one is MyAppCafé, which can work only -- simply with an app on your smartphone and which gives you new facilities for these big coffee chains. Let me come back now to consumer products with the 2 big successes at the time, Cookeo Touch, which is an electrical cooker, an electronic cooker. It allows you to have recipes and to be sure that you'll be successful in your -- with your recipes. And many of the people here have tested it, even if we don't know how to cook, that it's impossible to get it wrong. And it's a product that means that it's a connected machine, so it makes it even easier. And i-Companion connected machine, which is a heating robot and was very successful. Easy fry Arno, which is something we're selling in Brazil in small domestic appliances, with no-oil fryer. And South America is now frying without oil and it's extremely successful. A new range of Tefal. We always -- not often talk about our cooking equipment, which we renew every 4 or 5 years. This is the G6 generation, which follows G5 which we've -- which we produced since 5 years -- 500 million. And we have a better nonstick covering -- and gives advantages to consumers and will be very successful and be -- once more will, hopefully, sell 200 million articles. We launched it in Korea at the end of 2020, and now it's being rolled out throughout the entire group in 2021. Now we go for Chinese products with once again a heating robot kitchen chef using our super -- Supor brand in China; and a fryer without oil, which is a steam fryer for the Chinese market with the Supor brand. And Nespresso machine with cartridges which we designed and is sold under our Krups brand and is very innovative to give you a frothy milk. And it will be very successful and will be launched this year. And I'll finish up with another product which is really fundamental for the Chinese market, which is a hi-speed blender which goes very fast and which takes over on -- vegetable mixing machines are very important for the Chinese market, and Supor has in as 1 of the 2 main players in the market. We leave the kitchen now and we go towards the rest of the house. I'll just use -- I'll just mention a couple of products: The CUBE, which is a high-pressure de-creasing machine which allows you to get rid of creases with steam and allows you to destroy 99% of viruses and bacteria or germs. You can imagine how important that is, to be able to get rid of all this material. The robot, the X-plorer, which is a robot vacuum cleaner which is being developed [ well ]; also the X-force, a new line. These are -- this is a product category which is really a good development -- a good source of development for the -- throughout the group. We continue to develop in innovation in this area. And let me also mention Clean & Steam, on the right, which is the latest generation, which is both a vacuum cleaner and a steam cleaner for hard surfaces. And I'll finish with air purifiers, which is a very significant product, this Intense Pure Air by Rowenta; and uses technology from Ethera, which we have a majority stake in and which is -- the atomic commission developed this technology. And these are new formats for anti-pollutants in carpets and textile. So always product innovation with all our product families, and we hope they'll be very successful. Let's move on now and talk about another sector that is very important for us that enables us to be extremely responsible in our approach. Nathalie, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Thierry. As you know, for many, many years, your group has been part and parcel of a sustainable growth approach and sustainable development. Hence, we're delighted to be able to share with you some of the illustrations of this responsible approach that we enter into. We're starting out with the implementation of our repairs fixed price. The group, I would argue, is a pioneer when it comes to repairability in our sector. Notably, for example, since 2015, we've had the opportunity [ towards the ] repairability of the vast majority of our products, products that we place on sale on the market. And over the next few weeks, we're going to be able to extend this even further, to extend it considerably to repair the vast majority of our products. So to make it easier to repair our products and notably in order to help consumers to want to repair products at a cheaper price, this year, we've set up what we call the fixed costs -- fixed price for repairs. This can be purchased online. And for the moment, in France, and very soon also in Europe as of the second part of 2021, this will make it possible to repair all of the products from the group's product range at a price that is a lot less than the new purchase price. So this means that people will no longer replace products. They will ask them to be repaired. We've also worked, I would say, on the possibilities offered in France in order to be able to repair products. Notably, for example, we're able to note that in Paris and in the Paris region there was a serious lack of repair specialists, so the group decided to combine this repairs approach with a retraining approach, finding jobs for people. And so we work with Ares: Ares is an association for finding jobs for people. It's a very, very good group for helping people return to employment. And it's people often who are finding it difficult to find a new job. They're based in the Paris region. And with this organization, we've set up a workshop that makes it possible to offer repair solutions, but another thing that is important, it also enables us to find jobs for people who are finding it difficult; who've been unemployed for a long time; and/or young people, for example, who've never worked and who would like to have their very first job. So those are the 2 first approaches that we're entering into. I'm now going to move on with another project that revolves around inclusive design. So what is inclusive design? Well, in fact, we're talking here about all the best practices, all the best design prices that make it easier to use a product on a daily basis in terms of its legibility, the way in which you can use it, the way you can understand the product. And it's important to make sure that the product is easy to handle. And all of these design practices have been drafted in a book called the Good Design Playbook. And this is something that was put together with France Handicap, the organization. And thanks to this book, we then decided to launch a first range of products. This year, it's a range that is dedicated to breakfast time, so it's a kettle, a coffee maker and a toaster. You can see them on the screen. And these all comply with a certain number of principles in relation to inclusive design. Inclusive design is all about products that are made for everybody: for those people, for example, who have a disability on a permanent basis or who are in difficulty; and also for those people who have a more temporary disability. For example, imagine you're holding a baby in your arms or imagine that you have a problem temporarily in picking up or holding something heavy. Another part of our approach is in relation to renewable energies. Currently the group has 5 (sic) [ 6 ] sites that are equipped with solar panels. These are solar panels that provide electricity that can be then be used at the site, at the industrial production sites. All the electricity can be used to provide energy to air-conditioning systems. There are other projects also that are currently being studied within the group. And these projects all aim at reducing, considerably reducing, the amount of electric energy that we use annually; and that we purchase from the electricity board to use the energy on our sites or in our offices. Maybe the last point I could raise, and this is part of our approach as well for sustainable development. We do also contribute to reducing our carbon footprint. We do this by working with specialists who monitor these kinds of actions for scopes 1, 2 and 3, the aim being to reduce our greenhouse gases: first of all, gases related to the manufacturing of our products; then the gas emissions related to the use of our products and to the life cycle of our products. And we have a certain number of targets that are extremely ambitious. These are calculated here based on what we've been able to observe in 2016 in the group. And the aim, for example, is to reduce by 40% for the carbon intensity issued by our products within the scope of manufacturing them by 2023 and a 60% additional increase following further down the line. Next, when it comes to the life cycle, we set up a certain number of strategies, the aim of which is to reduce the amount of energy used by our products. Here we're talking about energy during usage but also the sourcing of the raw materials. What we want to do is favor the use of raw materials that have been recycled. We favor the repairability of products, and globally speaking, we want to reduce energy consumption. So as you can see, the group is definitely cutting edge on many of these subjects. We're going to continue to work on all of these themes despite the very unusual, the particular year that we've experienced with the COVID pandemic. That's what I wanted to say for this part. Let's move on now to the second part of this presentation. And here we're going to very quickly focus on the first quarter for the year. On this next slide. For the first quarter, you can see that the group has a revenue of EUR 1.852 billion, so very strong growth approximately 31% on a like-for-like basis with the same exchange rates. It's an excellent performance, very, very promising. The operating result, as you can see, is a -- shows a record EUR 198 million. We're used to saying that the first quarter is not an illustration of what we'll follow, but as you can see, this year, we're repeating the time-old saying. I will tend to say we've benefited, we fully benefited from a great deal of demand for our consumer products and despite the fact that the Professional sector was less busy. The group has continued to reduce its debt. So the debt amounted to EUR 1.465 million (sic) [ EUR 1.465 billion ] at the end of March. And at the end of December, you saw the figures earlier. Now when it comes to the Consumer business activity, the growth is very, very buoyant, almost 40% growth on a like-for-like basis. The growth is continuing. There's plenty of growth in all of the different countries for all of our different cookware articles, electric articles; very strong demand as well that is enabling us to make good-quality projects. And we're not having, for example, to offer lower prices on these products. And also there is very buoyant demand that has continued throughout the quarter. The month of March was absolutely magnificent. What is also noteworthy in terms of our performance for the first quarter is that it's the same for all of the countries. All of the countries are showing growth. All of the categories are showing growth as well, apart potentially from the fans, the ventilators that have been impacted by the weather conditions that haven't enabled us to speed up the sales, particularly in South America. And we've continued to grow also in terms of e-commerce. We note that there are a few tensions, but when it comes to the supply chain, globally speaking, we'll have the opportunity to refer back to that a bit further down the line. Now this slide illustrates the growth rate for each of the continents where the group is present, and then you've got the main countries also that are concerned. So here we've got the first 20 countries. In capital letters, you've got the top 10. In Europe and the Middle East and Africa, we've grown by approximately 42%; the Americas 61%; Asia 29%. And as you can see, the performance levels are magnificent for France, Italy. I'm not going to list all the countries, but you can see the growth rates are often above 60%. And even 15% is very, very good for the consumer sector for this first quarter. Next, when it comes to the Professional business activity, there's a drop of 26% in relation to last year on a like-for-like basis. It's important to keep in mind that the first quarter for last year for the professional sector was not very strongly impacted by the crisis, unlike for certain other sectors, the consumer sector, so it's not easy to compare with last year. Today, we're able to note that the Professional Coffee sector is still heavily affected by the health crisis. This, of course, is due to the impact that COVID has on the hotel, restaurant and cafe sector. Most of these sites are still closed. And we note nevertheless that our performance is better than the hotel and restaurant sector globally because we have managed to continue to work with a certain number of clients. And we've benefited from clients who have bought machines in certain sectors where we were slightly a little bit less present in the past. And there are people today, for example, petrol stations or small grocery stores, where people are allowed to drink coffee. That's what I wanted to say for the professional sector. Now all of these business activities, if you bring them all together and combine all the aspects I've talked about, good-quality sales apart from, in the professional sector, no promotional offers, it means that we have an initial operating result for the activity of EUR 198 million, a very good result, very good industrial absorption. In other words, our factories are full. Last year, we suffered a great deal from production sites not being able to be filled. And we also benefit today from excellent leverage in terms of the need to use our operating sites. There is the currency effect, a negative effect, of EUR 28 million. So this still has an impact on the operating side of the business. And there are excess costs, of course, related to the increase in the price of raw materials, components and the price of freight as well. We've already commented on that. These costs, however, are limited for the first quarter, and we will see how they go during the rest of the year. The last slide that I have concerns results for the first quarter concerning the financial structure. As I said earlier, there is still a reduction in relation to the net debt in relation to the 31st of December 2020, with strong growth, a strong increase in the EBITDA, in its cash [ conversion ]. And this is higher than the increase in the need for working capital requirements. The restaurant sector, for example, is not yet up and running fully. And we're still benefiting from this balanced situation, no major change in relation to what I said a few minutes ago in relation to the 31st of December. So Thierry, that's what I wanted to say. And let me pass the floor over to you now for the rest.

Yes. Following on from this first quarter, what are our hypotheses? Let me go back to what we said when we published the accounts for the first quarter, in the month of April. It's true we've had a very good first quarter. Nathalie has talked about this. We anticipate highly dynamic sales for the second half of the year. The crisis in Europe, for example, started in the month of March. The Consumer business activity is very buoyant, and we're expecting a turnaround in the professional cafe sector in that a lot of contracts are going to be re-signed. Now our hypothesis is that the second half of the year could be stable given the fact that things are looking very promising. As we said earlier, we've had a very good second half of the year for 2020. For the second part of the year, there are uncertainties, of course, as to the evolution of the demand for small household appliances. What will happen, for example, if the COVID disappears, if people suddenly go out and about? How will consumers behave? Or on the contrary, what will happen if it's the opposite that occurs? There is a lot of randomness as well in terms of the turnaround for the Professional Coffee sector. It all depends on what happens in this sector, whether hotels, cafes and restaurants can open. Now these are all hypotheses, of course. And within the scope of these hypotheses, the growth in sales published in 2021 [indiscernible] could amount to approximately 10% more, including the currency effect that will have an impact of minus EUR 100 million approximately. The operating margin could amount to approximately 10%. And we also think that there will be excess costs nevertheless that will be taken into account within this context: currency, for example; raw materials, components; and also transport freight costs. Freight is very important. These costs potentially might be higher than what we initially anticipated on at the beginning of the year, and this is something that was estimated at the beginning of the month of April at EUR 140 million in relation to the operating result from our activity. So that's what we wanted to say to you about this year, about 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. I'm now going to move on to the second part of this meeting, which is more -- which concerns shareholders and legal aspects. Let me stress that you can answer any -- you can put any questions you'd like to put at any stage via the Internet. So our lines are open. Do feel free, and we'll be delighted to answer your questions. Now a few slides here to talk about how the group's share capital is distributed with 2 specific slides, 1 as per the 31st of December 2020 that doesn't show any major changes. You've still got the floating shares that were about the same amount as last year, with the different components of the shareholding in relation to the founding group and then other family shareholders; and of course, our all-time friends that you can see on the right-hand side, Peugeot, for example. So no major changes from this perspective. Here you have the share capital breakdown on the 12th of March 2021. And this shows 2 changes, 2 evolutions in relation to the 31st of December 2020. First of all, in the middle the circle you can see that we no longer have 50.3 billion (sic) [ 50.3 million ] but 55.3 million shares. This, of course, is the result of the allocation of the free shares that we will refer back to in just a few moments. And this corresponds to the 1 share for 10. And this means that, instead of having 50.3 million, we now have a share capital of 55.3 million shares. And this is the case as of the 12th of March 2021. The next element that is important. Within the founding group shareholding you see the appearance of a new company called HRC, Holding de Renforcement du Contrôle. And this is part of the ambition that comes from all of the shareholders who agreed that it was a good idea to set up a company, the vocation of which is to strengthen and buy back SEB shares in order to basically strengthen the control or the control that the family has over the SEB share capital. I would like to congratulate the shareholders for this initiative. This is an initiative that was carried out by the sixth -- or seventh generation of our family shareholders. And I think this is the best illustration possible that, after all these years, the family shareholders are still very, very attached to the group, attached to the group's future, attached to all of the staff that comprise the group, so personally I'm very delighted. I really am delighted that all of our shareholders, together in a concerted manner, have entered into this approach, and hence this company has been set up. And the company has just started its adventure as of the 12th of March 2021. The second point I wanted to raise concerning the share capital, and this concerns the allocation of free shares, a decision made by the Board of Directors on the 23rd of February 2021. The decision was made to allocate a new share for 10 old shares for all of the shareholders who owned shares on the 2nd of March 2021. This, of course, corresponds to an increase in the share capital by incorporating it into the reserves. And it makes no difference as to the overall equity, but it simply increases the share capital by 5.3 million, approximately, new shares, with the share capital that increase to 55.3 million. And if we look at the shares specifically that are distributed. This will be in March 2021. Some of you have already had a great surprise when you saw all of a sudden that the share price dropped by 10%. You have seen that the share price has once again increased and has made up for a lot of the ground lost. And these new shares that have been issued, they were issued with exactly the same characteristics, the same rights as the previous ones; and are valid as of March 2021. And they give -- they entitled their bearers to dividends that will be paid out in a few days time. Now while on the subject of these 1-for-10 free shares, let me stress that the Board of Directors meeting, during its session in February, also decided to propose to this meeting to pay a dividend of EUR 2.14. As you can see, it's the same dividend per share as the one that was paid out back -- well, based on the results for 2018 and paid in 2019. Let me remind those present that, last year, the Board of Directors meeting in February 2020 did decide to increase the dividend by 7%. And taking into account the recommendations from the [ fed ] notably and given the health situation, of course, with COVID last year and the situation that the state authorities described, it was recommended to our Board to -- not only to not increase the dividends but, in fact, to reduce it by 1/3. And that's why on this graph you can see that you have the dividend that was paid out last year for 2019, EUR 1.43. And in order to thank our shareholders, thank all of you who made the sacrifice last year under conditions that were difficult, well, the Board, this year, wanted to revert back to the dividends paid out in 2019 for 2018; and of course, to accompany the dividend, to provide the free share along with these dividends. And I repeat the dividends now apply to the 55 million shares. You might want to take a quick look now at the second part of the shareholding [ aspects ]. This is how the share is performing. And I think you have the share price up to last night, and this means that the market capitalization amounts to EUR 8.38 billion. And over a 10-year period, you can see that it's done very, very well. Over a long period of time, we have clearly outperformed the CAC 40 because the CAC is up 55% and the group is up 130%. So this basically means that we have a return -- a total yield, let's say, for the shareholder over a 10-year period of 166%, with of course the dividends we reinvested, in relation to a CAC 40 that amounts to 117%. So whether you look at the share price or whether you look at the total yield, the payout for the shareholder, it's clearly far more favorable than the CAC 40. And I'm absolutely delighted about that. So that's what we wanted to say to you -- rather, what I wanted to say to you about the share capital. And we're now going to move on to governance and remuneration, and I'm going to pass the floor to Philippe Sumeire.

You'll see on the next slide the Board -- since 2019, the Board of Directors welcomed salaried administrators. We have 17 members, as you can see here. Let me remind you very quickly the composition with the color codes on this slide: first, the representative of the family shareholders, [ VENELLE and GÉNÉRACTION, which are 2 each ]; and FÉDÉRACTIVE. This number of administrators is as a function of their shareholdings. The independent, with the [ MNLF ] code which we have agreed to for several years; and the salaried employees. 2 are designated directly by the salary organizations, 1 by the France which is the -- working council and the other by the European works council. And the representative of the salaried employees who have shares because we've always allowed our employees to buy shares. So there's a fund that's simply all salaried shareholders or former employees who have retired but who have continued to own shares; and she represents, this person. And because it's 2.55% of the capital. There will be 3 positions to be renewed. Yseulys Costes, who's an independent who's, well, the President of Numberly. Peugeot Invest will also be renewed, which -- the new name of FFP Invest; Bertrand Finet, who's the Managing Director. Madam Brigitte Forestier, who is the salaried shareholder administrator. If we go now to some figures on this Board of Directors, the average age of 54 years, which is relatively low for boards. And this can be explained by the renewal of Board member -- younger Board members and in particular for the family administrators and also for the employee shareholders and Board members. Attendance rate 97%, this is to be linked to the number of meetings. Generally speaking, we have 6 meetings per year. And because of the year, because of the COVID, we had to have more frequent meetings at the beginning of the period in January and beginning of April, and so with a lot of work for the Board. And this fact that there are sometimes some people, 3% people absent meant that some of our members also participate on other boards and interleave. Parity, we have 50% women, the legal base being 40%, but this means that you have to compare the administrators that are elected by the General Shareholders' Meeting and don't go into that ratio. And the salaried employees, I respect this group because, as you can see, when it comes from the salaried employees, we have both men and women on the council. Now we'll look at the governance structure. On the advice of our members which gets together, the Compliance Committee, their composition hasn't changed. We're not going to spend a lot of time. The Audit and Compliance Committee always has 3 members with the President, Catherine Pourre; Yseulys Costes; and Jérôme Lescure, who is one of the family shareholders. There was 100% attendance rate. They had 5 meetings this year, which is quite a lot and mainly because they had to select the new auditors and chartered accountants and look at various candidates that were proposed by management. This committee met as well to pursue its work on internal risk and mapping of risks. And this committee [indiscernible] was controlled committee and now it's called the Audit and Compliance Committee because most of the meetings look at internal control and mapping of risks and also compliance, anticorruption and [indiscernible], et cetera. On the right, you have the traditional missions. I won't go into the details: looking at the accounts and work with the auditors. And the Auditing Committee is also held with the Financial Director, the Chief Financial Officer; and that the auditors can ask to hear the members separately to look on the governance and internal control. And the committee also looks at the quarterly and annual accounts. If we go on to our committee which is governance -- on governance and compensation. There are 4 members. The President is Jean-Noël Labroue. Mr. Bertrand Finet, who's an independent; and 2 family representative, Damarys Braida for VENELLE INVESTISSEMENT and Caroline Chevalley for GÉNÉRACTION. They got together 3 times, with everyone attending. The number of meetings seems limited, but these are long and very intense sessions. And this committee takes care of the succession plans of the directors, the executive directors. It looks at compensation and makes the recommendations for the executives. It carries out benchmarks for this sort of thing. And it also -- when it comes to compensation and remuneration, they look at an annual review of human resources; and a whole series of governance questions, which you can -- which are part of their remit because they are asked to look at the evolution of the rules of governance and whether the country -- the company is applying its principles in terms of ethics both on the Board but also in terms of the executives. And the last part of its activity is to evaluate its own composition and its own functioning with a survey and then a report to the Board for recommendations. For example, this year, during -- one of their recommendations this year, the GRC, was certain meetings having been longer. And an afternoon was a workshop which the administrators choose and look at a particular subject that interests the whole company. That's for that committee. They -- then we have say on pay, since 2019, with a new legislation, has enriched the number of resolutions that we need to adopt; and that you have to adopt, the shareholders. We have, first of all, to facilitate, [ as you're understanding ], resolution #8. It is the approval of the remuneration policy for corporate and executive officers, the Chairman, the CEO and the COO. What are the principle we base their remuneration on? And then you have the same thing, resolution 9, for the approval of the remuneration policy for directors; then the 10th revolution (sic) [ resolution ], which is a vote on 2020 for all of the executive officers, the corporate executives and the administrators or directors; and 11 resolution #12, which are better known because it has to do with individual of the 2 main corporate executive officers, the CEO and the COO. On the next slide, for those -- you know this slide because it changes very little. The policy for the Chairman, CEO and the COO has been established for a long time by SEB. It's based on principles, which are based on common sense, to be comprehensive but also to be as simple as possible to have a balance between a fixed and variable compensation for both the short term and the long term, to continue to motivate them and to seek to stimulate performance and guarantee the company's performance. And this last point is the permanence of the criteria. That is to say not to change things often, which is the case. Let me [ certainly ] say that the process itself, which is well established and has been for a long time and which, in a way, gives the Compensation Committee a certain number -- the Governance and Remuneration Committee has a set of criteria which they then apply into recommendations which they propose to the Board in the following way: First of all, in February, when we have the accounts for the previous year and where we set our objectives for the year to come, the CRG -- RGC, sorry, will make its recommendations and propose those to the Board by covering, of course, all of the fixed, variable, both long and short term. You see the criteria on the right, which change very little year-on-year. And you'll see between the annual remuneration, which is variable, and long term, we have a ratio of 50:50, more or less; or a little bit more for annual compensation, and for long term, variables. And for the variable elements themselves, you see we have a ratio where the set is less than 1/3, and variable represents more than 2/3; 72:28 to be exact. Now let's have a look in -- at some detail of the fixed remuneration for the CEO, President and CEO, Chairman and CEO. You can see the amount set in 2020, set plus variable which is paid the following year and which has to do with that fiscal year and the performance. You see the fixed remuneration and the variable and the amounts as administrators and benefits in kind and the total. You'll see the little asterisk, which says -- in the last column for 2020. And the total was reduced by money paid back as COVID donations, as management had said last year, which was communicated in the -- at the Board in April. In keeping with the Governance Committee's recommendation as the variable long term -- on the long term is the number of shares based on performance, which are decided every year once again by the Board which -- with the Governance and Remuneration Committee's recommendation. The acquisition of these free shares is based on reaching the results for 3 years as set by the Board. And furthermore, the directors and executive directors, which are equivalent to 2 years of target revenues [ and plans ], that means that they do not cover the shares that were attributed; not to use hedging transactions, in other words. Now the -- for the -- Stanislas de Gramont, the COO, you'll see it in the same way. In 2018, it was not significant. That's when he arrived. So it's just 1 month. And you can see that you can compare 2019 and 2020 which is a fixed rate. Variable part follows. And the total, given that once again he -- this is before the COVID donations which was EUR 60,000. The long-term amount of remuneration was defined by the Board on the recommendations of the RCG (sic) [ RGC ], with the same criteria as I've talked about previously. Then finally. Now for the actual Board of Directors. As you know, this is an envelope that you vote as shareholders, which is EUR 600,000 and which should have changed in 2020 but wasn't modified. The Board said that it was not opportune. So it's always stable. It's made up of remuneration which for 60% is the amount of attendance and 40% which is the fixed portion. And there is a level which you can see on the right. An administrator that has no other functions but as -- only is an administrator has EUR 30,000 in -- 60% linked to attendance. When the director is a member of a committee, there is an envelope of EUR 10,000 more; and president, chairman of a committee, EUR 15,000 more, which once again is submitted to the attendance rates we have just talked about. And in the same way, the directors also decided to reimburse or give back some of their remuneration to contribute to the COVID fund. And now we'll have the statutory auditors' reports, and this has been previously recorded.

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, we're very happy to give you the execution of our mission in -- for the fiscal year 2020. We will give you the financial statements, where we worked with Mazars and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have established and which will be presented on screen our report on the annual accounts, the consolidated accounts, our regulated agreements, a special report, a report on the consolidated nonfinancial statements by the independent third-party, meeting and the reports relative to the Extraordinary General Meeting. And Mazars was -- has included all of these aspects in the management report. And this is in -- this can be found in detail in the documents that you have available. We're going to report the content and comment the main points, which -- with the points on the screen.

So for the annual financial statement and consolidated financial statements. To make sure that there are no significant anomalies, we presented these conclusion 22nd February of 2021; and a summary, the next day, to the Board. Our -- this was done according, complying with the rules of auditing in France. Our report on the 26th of March '21 was for the fiscal year and is Page 78 (sic) [ 318 ] in the universal document. Considering that the elements that we collect are sufficient and appropriate, we concluded that everything was in compliance with no reserves. According to French law, on the annual accounts, we looked specifically on the evaluation of the goodwill and trademarks, and we found that this was a significant -- and also you will find the key point once again in detail in the report. We also made sure that the management report and the information which were justified and -- as well as to the advantages for the executive managers. Once again here we have seen no problems.

We at -- on the 26th of March '21, we approved in previous on the consolidated position based on IFRS and approved -- and on European Union guidelines, based on the universal document that you have at your disposal. In this report we confirm that we have undertook -- that we did our studies based on applicable laws and [ then all developments ] we had to conclude that there is -- our audit was in keeping with rules and all compliance factors. We have a reasonable belief that there are no significant anomalies, that the accounting rules are appropriate and the assessment of risks are reasonable and that there is compliance for all rules and regulations. We took -- undertook these studies in all the countries of the group. And we looked at current operations as well as unique operations. And given the evolution of the situation because of COVID-19 and the special conditions that we had to deal with in 2020, we proceeded at the justification of our appreciation by bringing -- giving you the knowledge of key points of the audit in terms of any significant amount, of which according to our professional judgment were the most significant for 2020 in our audit, as well as the detailed answers given the crisis. As for the consolidated accounts, these looked at the assessment of the recovery of goodwill and brands and evaluation also for the deferred accounting. And we also looked at the justification of the investment to make sure that the estimates for significant amounts were appropriately reported. In our report, we confirm once again that we looked at all the verifications as required by law. We have no observations on the sincerity and the compliance and consistency of the accounts as reported by the Board of Directors. We also saw that the performance in extra commercial declarations are correctly reported on in the management of the group. To conclude our work: We have no reserves on the consolidated accounts, which are regular and sincere and give a true picture of the activities of the group both in terms of operations and assets at the end of 2020.

And as part of the 359 (sic) [ Universal Registration Document Page 359 ], the -- you will see the agreements approved in previous years when pursued during the last financial year and the universal registration document. And these are the agreements made between your company and its executive directors. We inform that we had -- there were no new conventions that were made that had to be approved by the General Shareholders' Meeting. Our report reminds that the execution of 3 conventions, what have approved in the previous years, continued in the last financial year. These conventions were -- which we have described in our report are the master joint research and development agreement, cooperation with Zhejiang and Supor -- between your company and Zhejiang Supor Co Ltd; the agreements concluded with your Chairman and Executive Officer, Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise; and those concluded between the executive officer agreement of Mr. Stanislas de Gramont, who has been the Director General between the -- since the end of 2018.

When it comes to report on the statement of nonfinancial performance, we say that Mazars, the firm, has looked at 3 main elements: description of the business model and the main risks relating to the group's business; and as well as the policies and initiatives implemented to prevent, identify and limit the occurrence of identified risks. Then we looked at the presence of key performance indicators measuring the implementation and results of the actions rolled out by the group. Finally, we looked at the selection of specific environmental and social aspects which were present in the nonfinancial report. We consider that we can -- in terms of our professional responsibilities that we have -- 201 -- on the documents, on Pages 201 to 203, that -- first of all, the sincerity of the information that was presented in the declaration of nonfinancial performance; on the other hand, the compliance of this declaration to the applicable regulations.

For the reports that we did for the extraordinary part of your shareholders' meeting, which is the change in capital, there were 4 points. The main modalities are indicated in the slides you see here. And they are in the resolutions for the authorization enabling company to reduce the capital by canceling its own shares bought back in respect of the authorization granted for its share back (sic) [ buyback ] program; the authorization to issue shares and share equivalents with or waiving of preemption rights. That's the resolutions 15 to 18. The authorization of the granting of performance shares, which is resolution 20. And finally, the authorization to issue ordinary shares or equity securities, giving access to future company shares without preemption rights, reserved for members of a company or group savings scheme or the group; and that's resolution 21. For all of these resolutions, we have no observations to formulate on the modalities and for the information that was given in the Board. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your attention.

Okay, we're now going to move on to the question-and-answer session. In relation to the legal provisions, each shareholder have the possibility of sending their questions to us, the written questions that they chose to send to us. So we're now ready to answer those questions. The written questions and their answers will be published in the general meeting site, on the Internet site of the company as soon as possible after the general meeting and, at the latest, 5 days after this meeting. So in addition to the legal provisions that are governed by the written questions and given the circumstances, the current circumstances related to COVID-19 and the fact that the shareholders are not in -- able to take part in the general meeting, physically speaking, we've set up a system that makes it possible to have an interactive exchange, the aim being to enable you to ask questions on a real-time basis. And this is something that we set up and explained before the beginning of the general meeting.

Let's start out by answering the written questions. The first question, and I'm going to read it: You give shareholders an additional discount on the month of their birthday, on one single order. Will it be possible for shareholders to have the increased discount on Groupe SEB merchant website be applied to each order all year round? Philippe, over to you.

Well, no. It is the question of a specific advantage that is related to the birthday that we have once a year, so I would argue there's no ambition or no policy to transform this or to convert this into a permanent rebate. So it will stay as it stands.

Okay, thank you. Second question: "The share price has largely exceeded EUR 100, reflecting its qualities." Thank you very much. Thank you to the shareholder. "Is it a -- is a stock split being considered?" Now there's nothing dogmatic about our approach. Several times over, twice over, we have done a stock split, but -- within 2008. There's no project to do this, but it is something that can be considered. And this year, we didn't want to do so because we've already chosen to allocate a free share, but of course, it is a measure that -- it is a measure that we might potentially adopt in future years. The third question. And for this third question, I'm going to ask Stanislas to answer it. At the beginning of the year, SEB Alliance acquired a stake in Chefclub, a company that produces and distributes culinary content, thus entering the world of followers. What are the expectations and the benefits of this investment? Could this model be replicated in the less-trendy world of home care? Stanislas?

Thank you very much, Thierry. Now Thierry, we discussed this -- Thierry discussed this subject in -- and he talked about the fact that Chefclub is an opportunity to learn, to learn how to interact with members of the community when it comes to cookware habits. It's also an excellent opportunity to be able to develop products and ranges and to publish them in -- within Chefclub, so we have many expectations notably for the relational side of things and also for the business within the scope of these investments. Concerning the other categories, we're seeing that there are a few comparable initiatives as well coming to the fore in the non-cookware world in home maintenance. The cookware world is all about community. It's very friendly. It's all about sharing. However, when it comes to looking after the home, it's all about technology and the performance. Nevertheless, we are starting to see a few initiatives that we're monitoring very closely and showing a great deal of interest in them.

Thank you very much, Stanislas. The fourth question is the health crisis may have weakened some SDA players, small domestic appliances. Does the group intend to take advantage of this to seize acquisition opportunities? Well, first of all, maybe to explain on this, I would say, our colleagues who work on cookware articles and small domestic appliances, I think they've gone through the crisis reasonably successfully as we've been able to see. It's not the case for the professional universe, of course, because as we said at the beginning of the meeting, this sector has been struck heavily by the crisis. So we believe there will be a certain number of opportunities given the crisis, but more globally speaking, as you know, acquisitions, they are part and parcel of our strategy. This is what enables us to develop our business in certain geographic locations or in new product categories. Or as I've said, for StoreBound, for example, it gives us the opportunity to learn about new technologies, techniques to have add-ons for our products and services. So yes, of course, we have our ear to the ground and we're listening and looking at all the opportunities that might come about. Let me add as well that I believe that today we have a financial situation that would enable us to do so. Nathalie illustrated this earlier. Also the management has gone through this crisis and has come out of it very, very well and is perfectly capable to manage a new acquisition, but of course, for an acquisition to take place, there has to be a buyer. There has to be a seller, and there has to be an opportunity. So let me reassure you that, if an opportunity comes about, we will seize the opportunity as we have always seized it in the past. Now we're now going to move on to the questions that are being given to us live. Can you please comment on the trends in relation to recent business. Stanislas, Can you talk about this?

Yes, of course. Now let me just stress that we have 2 main answers for this. First and foremost, our commercial business activity, our sales are buoyant, exactly as we said, very buoyant up to the end of April. The trends seem to be very promising as well for everything that revolves around sourcing, sourcing in terms of the quality of what we're able to source. And at the cost, there is nothing that is likely to be very different from anything that we've said at the end of April.

Would you like to take the second question as well, concerning our wholly owned stores? How many closed? How many open?

Let me stress that we have 1,300 stores that we own. The figures concerning opening and closing of stores, it varies a great deal. I think, at the beginning of the week, Monday, we had 178 stores that were still closed, the majority in Germany. And if I remember rightly, we had 340, 10 days ago. So we're clearly in a -- entering into a phase where stores are gradually opening, but in Germany in particular, the WMF stores are still closed.

Thank you. The third question that we have, I'll read it out. "Why have you increased the dividend above the level of 2019, whereas the profits for 2020 have dropped?" Let me remind you that in 2019 the group achieved absolute record sales. If we look at our past history, we did extremely well. And so we dropped the dividend only in order to follow the recommendations at the time that were made by the political authorities in our country and by the [ fed ], whereas there was no reason to do so. And initially speaking, our Board of Directors made the decision to increase it. So we entered into this approach in 2019. And we thought, we felt that -- this year, in 2021, that it was time to revert back to a much more reasonable level, not a higher level because one could have imagined that, not a higher level than 2019 but the level of 2019 and the free share because we wanted to thank our shareholders for the efforts made last year, in 2020, taking into account nevertheless the results that were good in the light of the circumstances and taking into account the year of 2021 that seems to have got off to a very good start. And that means that we're pretty optimistic for the rest of the year. So this is why we made the decision to maintain this dividend at the level of EUR 2.14 this year. Okay, the fourth question. The fourth question -- and the [indiscernible] talks about the 100,000 new individual shares. Who is going to benefit from this? Nathalie?

Yes. Let me stress that, over recent years, we've noted an increase in the number of individual shareholders in the group shareholders. And yes, it's very true, growth in 2020 compared with 2019. So this is very much in line with what the AMF has been able to observe for all of the market and for companies listed on the stock exchange in Paris.

Thank you. Thank you, Nathalie. I can't see any additional questions, so I'm now turning to -- no. Apparently we have no further questions, so in that case, I would like to say thank you to all of our shareholders who have put questions to us. And I suggest that we move on now to the results of the vote for the resolutions. And for once, we're not going to have to go into detail on all of the counts and give you the 10 seconds to vote. You've all voted already, so we're now going to move on to the results. Philippe Sumeire?

Yes. Before I report back on the resolutions and the results of the voting, let me simply stress to our shareholders that we didn't receive any requests for draft resolutions or for any points to be added to the agenda for this general meeting. So as a result, the quorum that we reminded you of, of the beginning of the session was [ 92.8% ] for the ordinary general meeting and [ 98.2% ] for the Extraordinary General Meeting. Let's move on to the resolutions: #1, approval of the separate financial statements for the year ended 31st of December 2020; resolution 2, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31st December 2020; then resolution 3, allocation of the result for the year ended 31 December 2020, setting of dividend; then resolution #4, reappointment of Yseulys Costes as a director. The first 3 resolutions were approved at 100%, 100%, 99.8%. And this fourth resolution, 92.1%. Peugeot Invest, represented by Bertrand Finet, is approved at the rate of 93.9%; and the reappointment of Brigitte Forestier as a director representing employee shareholders, 97.5%. The approval of the appointment of Deloitte & Associés and KPMG received 100% approval. Next, we move on to resolution #8, approval of the remuneration policy for corporate executive officers. 93.3% of the shareholders approve. The approval of the remuneration policy for directors gets 100% approval. Next, approval of all components of remuneration referred to in Article L. 22-10-9, this is approved by 97.4%. The approval of fixed, variable and exceptional components of the total remuneration and benefits of kinds for the Chairman and CEO, 80.6% approved. Resolution #12, approval of fixed, variable and exceptional components of the total remuneration and benefits of all kinds to the COO, 81.9%. Next, we move on to the authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors for the company to buy back its own shares. Let me remind you that this is something -- remained within the scope of a takeover bid. And here it's been approved by 79.1%. Let's move on next to the extraordinary resolutions. The first one, resolution 14, this is the one that makes it possible to cancel its own shares (sic) [ company to cancel its own shares ]. This is approved 100%. The delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by issuing ordinary shares, approved by 80.2%. Resolution 16, the delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and/or share equivalents, et cetera, this is approved at the rate of 80.1%, 8-0. And the same resolution with waiving of preemption rights as part of an offering governed by Article L. 4412 (sic) [ 411-2 ], this is approved at the rate of 79.9%. Resolution 18, blanket ceiling on financial authorizations. This is for the 3 delegations of authority that we've just talked about in resolutions 15, 16 and 17. This is approved at the rate of 99.5%. Next, resolution #19. This is one that makes it possible to delegate authority to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by capitalizing retained earnings, profit, premiums or other items. This is approved at the rate of 98.2%. Resolution #20, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to grant performance shares, this is approved at the rate of 83%. Resolution #21, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to carry out share capital increases for members of a company or group savings scheme. This is approved at the rate of 99.2%. Next, resolution #22, this concerns the amendment of Article 8 of the company's bylaws, relating to the lowering of the threshold for ownership interests, the crossing of which must be reported to the company, 78.5% approval rate. And then the compliance of the bylaws with the new articles of the French commercial code arising from order number, et cetera, is approved by 99.9%. And resolution 24, powers to carry out formalities, approved by 100%.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, the agenda for the present general meeting has been gone through, so at 4:49, we come to an end. I would like to say a very big thank you to you. Thank you for your participation in this general meeting. And I would like to say let's meet again. Let's meet again next for the 2022 general meeting that I hope will be able to take place on the 19th of May at the Pavillon Vendôme in Paris. I really do hope that, this time around, we will be able to see each other and see each other in flesh and blood. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for having followed this, and I look forward to seeing you next year. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]