SPIE SA (SPIE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for attending this Investor Day of SPIE. It's a pleasure to see you all, and I hope that we are able to give you a good picture of what we plan going forward. The speakers today will be Jérôme Vanhove, our CFO, Jérôme has been more than 16 years with the company and for a long time as head of M&A, which is an important part of our model. We'll have Severine Walser who is our HR Director, who joined last year [indiscernible] we'll have Markus Holzke, who is the Head of the Germany and is also responsible for Switzerland and Austria. And Markus joined in 2013 when we did acquire our first large platform in Germany, Hochtief Solutions, and he has run ever since the business in Germany and made it to a very significant player in the countries, has been instrumental in making Germany the first country of SPIE. We have Isabelle Lambert with our Sustainability Director, Isabelle has joined us, I think, more than 5 years ago. And she has brought us on the cutting edge of sustainability so she actually played an important role in spreading the gospel and making sure we're really understanding what sustainability would mean for us, but more importantly, for our customers. We'll have Arnaud Tirmarche, who is the Head of France. Arnaud will show you how strong this business is France is where the whole story of SPIE started. And Arnaud is leading a -- up the values and the model of the company. And then we have Evert Lemmen. Evert is our newest addition to the Ex Com of SPIE. He became a member of the Ex Com of SPIE a few weeks ago. And before that, he was heading the Building Solutions business in the Netherlands, which stem from the Worksphere acquisition. And then we'll have the [ whole come ] -- Ex Com of SPIE present with us today. So we have Pablo Ibanez, who is the Head of Operational Support. So Pablo makes sure that all the integrities work within the company. And I think that we are relying very much in depth to Pablo to ensure that all our systems work is what he does, he is not seen all the time, but it's absolutely instrumental. We have also Pascal Lekeu, who is Head of Belgium also for -- since last summer. And Christophe Bernhart with Head of Global Services Energies, which was our was our former Oil & Gas business, which now has also the responsibility to grow the Wind business outside of Europe. And Christophe has -- is leading this diversification while still managing to grow further and improve our Oil & Gas business. So it's a great team. It's always a pleasure to work with this team. And I think that together, we have devised a new plan. And obviously, it's a whole commitment of the team to deliver on that plan. At SPIE, we tend to deliver on what we promise. So one thing we did over the last 18 months was working on the purpose in France, [ raising ] debt. First, It was really important in a world which is changing and changing fast. It was very important to really reestablish a strong compass and gives our employees, our customers, a strong sense of what we are standing for. So we did devise this purpose. Again, it was not a top-down exercise. It's been done with 500 workshops all among the -- sorry, 500 employees working in numerous workshops all around as a company to make sure that this purposes coming from the base and was really corresponding to what our employees here and to what they want to do in their daily professional life. So we have a simple [ sentence ], also working around solution. So we are here to implement reliable technical solutions to tackle society's sustainability challenges. And then we have four commitments because obviously, you don't need only a [ sentence ], you need commitments who would then are transformed into concrete steps all within the company. And these commitments are around talent, technical and competencies of our people, they're around trust towards our customer, they're around sustainability, and mainly decarbonation and then innovation. And these are commitments that we want to live and demonstrate also activities with our players, with our customers and with all our stakeholders. I keep repeating it, it is a good time to be an electrical engineer and I have been more than 20 years in this business. I think it's never been a better time to be an electrical engineer. SPIE has developed as a #1 independent player in Europe for technical services. We are delivering best-in-class performance. And I think our -- the margin that we displayed yesterday is best-in-class. We have demonstrated and we'll come back to that strong talent for compounding model in our industry. And we are very strongly embarked on digital transformation and energy transition. We are the independent leader. Let me just spend a few words about that. It's -- why is independent important? It means that, first, our customers recognize us for what we do. So it's a very clear message with our customers. We focus on technical services, and that's what we want to do as best as we can for them. We have a very cash-generative model, and this cash is totally invested in the company. It's like that we'd funnel up cash to a mother company, the cash is devoted to shareholder return and acquisitions. And really, that's a very important message also to our employees. They are all core of the business. So that's why independent is important. And I think it's been a strong driver all along this year to bring us forward. In terms of geographical presence, we are #1 in the Netherlands following the acquisition of Worksphere 3 years ago. We are among the top 3 in Belgium, in Austria, in Poland. And in other Central Europe countries as well. By the way, I missed because he was not sitting on the first rank, I missed to introduce Pawel Skowronski, who is our Head of Central Europe. Pawel joined us with the acquisition of SAG. Sorry about that, Pawel. We are #4 in France and we are #2 in Germany, very close to #1 and probably the ambition is not to remain #2. In terms of geographical spread going forward, we managed over these last years to really rebalance the company and to make sure that we have a much better spread geographical presence. So now we have Germany becoming this year the first country of SPIE. You will see that later in the presentation. This year -- in '24, Germany was the first contributor in terms of EBITDA to the group. And on a pro forma basis, just on par with France. So with the differential in organic growth that we anticipate this year. Germany is the first country of SPIE. Going forward, we think that Germany will continue to take a growing share of the business because of the drivers in the -- which we see right now, but more fundamentally, German GDP is 150% of French GDP. So at some stage, it's only normal that Germany is 150% larger than our French business. So aiming at something like EUR 5 billion for a start. And clearly, on top of that, industry in Germany is 3x as large in France, and you have seen also the present drivers in Germany. So that's just a natural path of growth. We obviously not forget the strength of the French business, what -- where the whole SPIE story started. And as you will see, Netherlands are emerging as a very strong third pillar. We have a good presence in Central Europe and probably a lot of area for further growth. And then we do welcome the strong booster we get from Oil & Gas and Wind, Solar and [ GSE ] going forward. Compared to where we were at 10 years ago at IPO time, obviously, I don't want to dwell I too long on that. But basically, we nearly doubled in terms of revenue. We more than doubled in terms of EBITDA, and we also doubled the return to the shareholders with a dividend now at EUR 1 per share. we have generated over this period of EUR 3.2 billion cash flow, which is to be compared to the market cap at the time of IPO, which was in the range of EUR 2.5 billion. Since IPO, we have achieved 71 acquisitions. So one large platform acquisition, which was SAG in Germany and 70 bolt-on. And we have been pioneering the measurement of our green share, so which is the share of our revenue, which is aligned with the European taxonomy. We are standing, at present, at 49% which puts us as the #1 in the SBF 120. And it does demonstrate the commitment of SPIE to decarbonization of the economy. The reason why we are here today is that we met our -- the expectations of our previous plan 1-year in advance. So the good news is that we are 1-year in advance. But it means that we have to come up with a new guidance and this is the topic of today. Well, at the time we had promised an average organic growth of 4%. We delivered 6.5% over the period. We are aiming at a margin at least 7%. We are now at 7.2% so 50 basis points ahead. We did EUR 1.7 million of acquired revenue versus the period. And we were advertising as always, cash conversion of 100%. We delivered an average of 109% over the period. In terms of value creation, the annualized total shareholder return over the period since our 2022 CMD stands at 22.1%. So it's better than the [indiscernible]. Looking ahead, we have -- we are really in a very interesting time for what we do. Clearly, if you have -- [ through ] the press and even as recently as yesterday, there was a very large announcement from TenneT in the Netherlands. We have a huge investment plans for T&D in most of the regions in Europe, including France, by the way. And clearly, we live in a time where the energy of tomorrow is electricity. And moreover, energy of tomorrow is a low-carbon electricity. So we have a fantastic growth in renewable, now -- moving now at 45% of the electrical production and we'll see, especially in France, we have a very strong push for nuclear electricity. So this is a world where electricity becomes the main energy and low-carbon electricity is at the forefront. So investment in these areas are huge and especially in T&D. It's also a world where people try to save energy, and it's true for all areas. It's true for industry. It is true for buildings. There's not one single offer in Buildings or Tech FM from SPIE where we had -- don't have an energy efficiency component. And it's really a major focus of the customer. Basically, all our customers embark on the Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 journey of reduction of these scopes. And basically, they turn to us, Scope 1 and 2 is the fleet, which has to become electrical, it's the Buildings, which has to become more efficient, we are the answer to this -- we're the solution to these programs. All this would not happen without digitization. You need much more [ monitoring ], much more sensory. So clearly, much more data, and then we entered this data storage, data security, data transmission with optic fiber. And at the end, they all end up in data center, which is a very strong area of growth going forward especially in countries where the electricity is low-carbon because data center needs a huge amount of electricity. And you see the plants in France for the data centers to be built. In fact, it is the production of several nuclear reactors. So it is a huge trend going forward. Again, energy efficiency is also a key element in this regard. So again, never been a better time to be an electrical engineer. We are very well poised to capture this megatrend. So I mentioned T&D, which is now a very significant chunk of what we do. And we are now seeing that with a lot of new electrical lines, new backbones, you also need to completely transform the grid. So it means new substations and new distribution networks. Industry, as I see, is a major shift to electricity. So replacing gas also trying to replace gas with hydrogen or replace gas with electricity. But if you replace gas with hydrogen it means you need electricity to produce green hydrogen so it does play exactly to where we are. Energy efficiency is key in industry. It is key in Tech FM, as I just mentioned. And we see also the same trend in Building Solutions with a lot of new installation now with different source of electrical supply also for the heat with a lot of heat pumps. And then see our information and communication system are very much at the heart of all these transformations. Looking at a bit more in details into a few verticals. So we've now -- we have on this chart, the verticals, which will display some growth in the years to come as they account for 35% of what we do. And we mentioned the building automation. We mentioned the optic fiber, which has still a lot of runway in some countries, less in others, Industry automation and in France, specifically the nuclear. And then we have growth boosters, which are areas where we see growth higher than average going forward. And clearly, in that sense, you see the grid, you see Cybersecurity, you see Wind, which is becoming an important vertical for SPIE, a bit later, you will see Hydrogen. I mean not just starting. And clearly, e-mobility is an area which is still fairly small, which we're enjoying and will enjoy strong growth going forward. For organic growth, we'll discuss this, but clearly, we're looking at a good trends to support our organic growth. On top of that, SPIE's model is a compounding model. So M&A is a key pillar of what we do since 2007. I think we did 117 acquisitions. So we have become extremely conversant in sourcing, in valuation and in integration. And a good example by the way, is that 3 of our Ex Com members have joined SPIE through acquisition and so Markus with Hochtief, Evert with the Worksphere and Pawel with SAG. So it's really at core of the model of SPIE, Jérôme will give you a few more details of what it means in terms of return on investment. So coming to the outlook. And again, we take our guidances very seriously at SPIE. So it is a strong commitment to deliver on what we promise today. So we're looking at the total revenue growth in the range of 7% to 9% average per annum, of which 3% to 4% organic. We're looking at further margin expansion and at least 7.7% by 2028. And you know how margin is important for us and here at SPIE, the stance is margin over volume. So the focus on margin remains absolutely essential and this is a commitment which we take very strongly. It would lead us to surpass the EUR 1 billion mark EBITDA by 2028. Free cash flow, we're going to generate more than EUR 2 billion free cash flow over the period. And you see that we are now at a strong level of free cash flow. It's always based on the 100% cash position, which is something that we are going to stick to. And it is really something essential at SPIE because it is a testimony of the quality of the earnings. And then with this amount of cash, we'll see we look at the -- continuing with our dividend policy and it's 4% payout ratio. We'll look at anti-dilutive SBB share buyback every year, we have an employee share program, which creates some dilution. We want to compensate that on a recurring basis going forward. And they will see, we'll continue our policy of self-financed M&A. If you do the math, there is some cash left. And clearly, we'd be looking at -- it will give us a lot of flexibility either for additional M&A if we have a good opportunity or further return to the shareholders. Our guidance will not be complete without element of sustainability. So actually, we're going to embark on the new road map for 2030, which Isabelle, I think, will describe to you. It's really an ambition across the board and everybody at SPIE take this very, very seriously. Again, it's part of our purpose. It does really give sense to what we do. And I think it's a very good way also to value the contribution of 54,000 employees. With that, I will conclude this introduction and before giving the word to Jérôme, who is the new corporate [indiscernible] at SPIE. Thank you for your attention. [Presentation]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to this morning to guide you through our value creative growth model to which, as you have seen yesterday, our 2024 performance made once more, no exception at all. So just to put numbers onwards, here on that chart, we basically express the outcome of such growth model over the last 3 years from 2022 date at which we had and we hold our last Investor Day. Let's start with sustainable growth, Gauthier commented already on it, 6.5% on average over that period, very clearly evidencing the very strong and robust dynamic of our markets but also our strong positioning to capture those opportunities. Of course, '22, '23 were years of quite high inflation but no mistake, margin-wise, it was clearly not a walk in the park. And talking about margin, we did deliver over that period, '22 to '24, an EBITDA margin expansion by 90 bps from 6.3% to 7.2%. How have we made? Basically using pricing and pricing power in markets such as transmission and distribution typically benefiting from a strong demand, we were able to uplift prices and to improve our margins, always being positioned as a mission-critical service provider is also part of this equation. And as always, at SPIE, focus, permanent focus on operational excellence including the quality of the execution. So that's what we call at SPIE, margin over volume approach, and it is not exclusive and allow for decent organic growth still. But there is not such a good performance without measuring our performance in terms of cash. And you see over the last 3 years, an average cash conversion of 109%. That's very high cash conversion, it's obviously testifying the very strong quality of our earnings, but as well as a very strong monitoring of our working capital all along. This has translated very naturally into a cumulative free cash flow of EUR 1.3 billion over the last 3 years as just passive. What have we done with this EUR 1.3 billion, EUR 0.4 billion roundabout dedicated to dividend distribution return to shareholders, EUR 1.4 billion invested into value creative bolt-on M&A. This has allowed us to add on top of our top line, EUR 1.7 billion of cumulated annual revenue. All of that EUR 0.4 billion plus EUR 1.4 billion, slightly higher than the free cash flow generated, but allowing, however, to maintain a very decent leverage ratio, not more than 1.6x at the end of 2024. Just to close that loop, this additional EUR 1.7 billion annual turnover we acquired through M&A allowed for a 12.5% of total growth on average over the period. Later on in this presentation, Markus and Evert will give you some insights on the driving forces to the organic growth in front of us and how do we see our future in that respect, how strong are our market. Let me focus on EBITDA. We delivered, we posted 7.2% EBITDA margin in '24. It's really good performance. It's even best-in-class in the sector, but there is still a clear potential for further uplift. And that's the reason why, as Gauthier just revealed, our commitment is at least 7.7% by 2028. Germany is already leading the way. Germany has positive 7.5% EBITDA margin as from 2024. How do we get to -- from 7.2% to 7.7%? Clearly, pricing power with higher added value services provided to our customers. Later on in this presentation, you will heard about energy efficiency solutions. You will about data center-related services, wind, wind installation, nuclear sector, all good drivers supporting our pricing power. Of course, also a favorable mix evolution in our business. T&D, you've seen in the previous slide, T&D networks totaling more than 30% of our business and service portfolio. This will grow and probably grow faster than some other business lines within SPIE and you know we are playing with very strong pricing power in this domain. The demand is strong, and we are able to increase constantly our prices. This goes together with a permanent discipline observed with selectivity on project, with discipline on pricing and, of course, quality of the execution. And I would not be accurate mentioning a bit of cost synergies, not all the time when we do M&A, but in some specific circumstances, Worksphere typically, Evert will say a word on that, it was a very good example on our ability to extract cost synergies from that. That's one leg on our product to expand our EBITDA in the next 4 years. The second leg, obviously, is the revenue growth. You will hear further today, how do we see and how do we -- how confident we are in such sustainable organic growth path for the coming 4 years. Of course, contribution from bolt-on plus a bit of cross-selling that we are able to develop on the basis of our bolt-on M&A. You factor the uplift of the EBITDA margin that permanent total growth that we embark on, and you have our commitment to surpass EUR 1 billion of EBITDA in 2028. Of course, we have to talk about cash once more. SPIE is embarked on a clear cash generation step up. We have a proven cash-generative model. 2017 to 2020, EUR 1.1 billion of cumulative free cash flow generated during these 4 years. This also on the basis of 115% of cash conversion on average. Next 4 years period, '21 to '24, EUR 1.6 million of cumulated free cash flow, this on the basis of 107% of cash conversion. So as I just mentioned, we are clearly now embarking on a cash generation step up, and that's going to be massive. First driving factor will be obviously the growing EBITDA we have just explained towards surpassing EUR 1 billion in 2028. And then because it's a permanent commitment at SPIE internally and externally the cash conversion of 100%, at least 100%, but that's our commitment and that would lead us to accumulated free cash flow for the next 4 years above EUR 2 billion. EUR 2 billion of free cash flow to fuel our growth model. Our capital allocation for the next 4 years, as Gauthier has indicated, will be focused on value-creative M&A and shareholder returns starting with the growing dividend year-over-year based on a steady 40% of payout ratio. Recurring anti-dilutive share buyback. We have already started in January '25 with our first program. As Gauthier mentioned, it is, I think, compensation, fair compensation to the recurring SHARE FOR YOU program. That's our capital increase reserve to the employees with the discount and LTIPs for more than 300 managers. Human capital is and remain -- will remain our core asset, it has to be well protected. Of course, the lion's share and our top priority in terms of capital allocation will remain the self-financing of our bolt-on M&A strategy. This being said, and if you do math with above EUR 200 billion of accumulated free cash flow over the period and while delivering satisfying our program in terms of return to shareholders and bolt-on M&A as per our total growth guidance. It might be a bit of flexibility for incremental return to shareholders or as Gauthier pointed out, additional opportunities. So let's have now focus on this value creative bolt-on M&A strategy. You know that it has been for years, clearly part of the DNA of the group have been instrumental in our development, especially the pan-European development of the group. Historically, and since IPO, Again, that's what you see on the left-hand side of the chart, a very clear recurring flow of small- and medium-sized bolt-on M&A, 71 acquisitions since IPO, even more than 160 acquisitions since 2007. The second element, which is to be noted is, over the last 4 years, a clear slight increase of the average size of the target we acquired, with now over the last 4 years, EUR 75 million of turnover on average. Two examples, acquisition of Worksphere in '22, acquisition of ROBUR at the very beginning of 2024, around about EUR 400 million of turnover at the time of the acquisition for those two ones. These are absolutely instrumental in our development and in our acceleration on the M&A side. Now let's talk about the value creation levers because there is no good M&A if it's not value creative. Ever since start -- and it's not on that chart, but as just stating the obvious with attractive valuation. I think Markus has -- but I don't want to spoil that has a very good sentence to summarize what it means. Our valuation metrics are always the same for mid-single digit to high single-digit EBITDA multiple, depending on the intrinsic qualities and specificities of the targets we are valuing. And then it's all about integration. We have developed a true integration expertise over the last years. We have even a toolbox that are systematically deployed locally by the teams in charge of the integration within already existing organization within SPIE. We don't just buy business for what they are. We are also able to develop on cross-selling. When you acquire a specialist in one domain, you acquire a new client base. And with that new client base, you can also develop further SPIE services, which are part of our total offering. Cost synergies, they are not systematic, but they do exist in some cases, and that's also one element of the value creation. Margin expansions. Again, we don't buy the business for just what they are. We also have a project for those businesses and embedded into SPIE, they can perform even better. Markus will later show to you two examples, one in Germany, one in Austria where we have been able to leverage on margin expansion. Last but not least, working capital improvement. At SPIE, we have our own model. It's even patented with obviously a structurally negative working cap, the way we operate the business. Most of the case, we acquired businesses with positive working capital and deploying our know-how, our processes, our discipline into that. We are able to turn negative those working cap going forward. All in all, it's a clear impact on our value creation generated from the M&A. So these are concepts, but I would like to even go further and show to you what does that mean in terms of metrics and true value creations. At acquisition, it goes without saying with the range of multiples we are applying, the return on capital employed for every single acquisition we do are above the weighted average cost of our capital, so to be a bit technical, but in terms of value creation, that's clearly the floor. That's at inception. And then we develop all our tools to improve that value. And here, we have measured on the back of the last -- of 15 acquisitions we've done in the period '22 to 24 -- sorry, 2019 to '22, what is the return on capital employed from those acquisitions? So on average, 3 years post acquisition outcome is 17%. One leg is obviously the development of their organic portfolio. The second leg being obviously the margin expansion, on average, 200 bps. The third leg, the working capital improvement which translated into valuation multiple is allowing us to reduce implicitly the multiple by one [ time ]. What is in front of us, and let me conclude my presentation with a comment on our reach and even endless pipeline for M&A, starting with a very clear statement. We do operate on highly fragmented market. Why that? I think it's inherent to the industry to our technical services industry, operating systematically, locally and in proximity with clients and obviously addressing the needs from all economic sectors in the countries where we are. Such pipeline is permanently fueled, starting with an proactive internal approach, we do capitalize on our local network to identify targets to get into contact, to get to know -- to track who are the experts in some domains, which we believe can enrich our service portfolio. And this is very, very powerful as it also allows for bilateral and one-on-one discussions. So the lion's share of the transactions, we are making successfully are outside any auction process. But of course, we are known now on market as a very serial compounder, and there is not one single week without a new teaser on our desk coming from M&A agents or bank. So what does look like our pipeline of M&A today? 12 active M&A situation at the time we speak, and that's very consistent with what we have observed in the last years. In total, those 12 active M&A situations are representing EUR 400 million of annual turnover. If we look a bit more forward 50 identified mid- and long-term targets. Altogether, they represent EUR 3.3 billion of annual turnover. And if we look clearly forward in the long run, an identified list of 150 targets, which would fit really our criteria for good M&A totaling more than EUR 6.5 billion of cumulated revenue. Of course, I'm talking about long term, but we know and we have experienced, for instance, with the acquisition of SAG, not really a bolt-on, but it had been instrumental for which it was years and years of close proximity with the management team. And at the time, SAG came on to the market, we were just ready and know what to buy. This is concluding my part. I thank you very much for your attention. Before I hand over to Markus. Markus Holzke, CEO of SPIE Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Let's discover a short movie on high-voltage project in Germany. Thank you. [Presentation]

So thank you, Jerome, for the nice introduction of myself. Yes, the video already spoiled where you have to be in Germany these days, and I'm quite happy to deeper dive with you into Germany, the powerful growth engine within the SPIE organization. Yes, directly moving on to deeper take you into the German situation of today at a glance. And meanwhile, we look at grown-up multi-technical service portfolio including all the SPIE business lines being present in all our countries. We have the T&D Networks business line being by far the biggest in Germany closely followed by our technical facility management competencies. And then of the visible size and equal size, followed by Building Solutions, which we call internally Building Technology and Automation Business then our Information and Communication Services and our new industry service and wind activities. Well, our broad and long-lasting and very diversified client spectrum is being served by our close to 18,000 employees generating EUR 3.2 billion of reported revenues in 2024. And with the full year contribution of those acquisitions being done in '24, we already have a growth portion looking at '25. However, on a good organic momentum, you see that over the period until 2024 from '22, acquisitions play a major role. So 8 acquisitions, creating more than EUR 900 million of additional turnover being acquired within this period. But margins and cash are key as Jerome and Gauthier pointed out. And the margins, they stand for our competitiveness in the market. they also stand internally for our execution excellence, our execution capabilities of our operational business and are giving us the strength of moving forward and we were able to permanently increase these margins to 7.5% in 2024. Well, looking at the slide, and I wouldn't say that we did that flawlessly within all the single actions. But in sum, you can say that, yes. It was not always the case, the size. And this is why we can take a look back at the period before 2013, 11.5 years ago. SPIE's presence in Germany was slightly smaller with the company having EUR 35 million of sales volume, 270 employees spread across 5 locations. Today, our 18,000 -- close to 18,000 employees are spread across a dense network of over 700 locations in Germany. So we are very, very close to our customers. We are completely diversified in all the landscape of Germany. Generating the said, EUR 3.2 billion of revenues and making us the #2 in the market of multi-technical services in Germany with a best-in-class margin of 7.5%. The real entry point coming back to 2013, and Gauthier already pointed it out of SPIE in Germany was in 2013 with the acquisition of the HOCHTIEF Service Solutions portfolio. That was the first platform acquisition of SPIE made in Germany. And that was also my arrival, and within the SPIE organization. And since then, I have the pleasure to lead the business together with a strong team moving forward. Yes. From day 1, we implemented business model very successfully. And that means that over the years, we extended and deepened our service range from being a pure facility managements player as service solutions was at that point in time to a real multi-technical service provider being present in a lot of technical expertise fields in the business lines of SPIE operating in numerous markets. With having had the chance to build the business from scratch organically, we put margins over volume. Went out of commodity into specialization also into solutions for our clients and develop ourselves into vertical markets, suiting our technical capabilities best on the one hand and providing us with higher growth prospects on the other hand. In the period, purely looking at Germany here, SPIE realized 2 platform acquisitions, HOCHTIEF already mentioned in Group in 2017 also already mentioned by Jerome. And on top of that, we did 23 so-called bolt-on acquisitions. And on the back of the larger ones, we were even able to form new operational divisions like we did last year with the Lobo acquisition, we founded our operational division, industry service and wind and made the first bolt-on acquisition with Otto LSE, now SPIE Life science engineering already in that operational division. Our acquisition strategy works bottom-up and top-down both ways. But we only focus on profitable and competitive businesses only, where we have a good cultural fit as well with the management teams. And when it comes to manage the integration, we developed over the years and deployed a standardized PMI approach, always being customized to the special situation of the newcomers and orchestrated by a dedicated PMI team. Yes, being a pure multi-technical service provider, we only have our employees and our customers. Thus, we permanently have to invest into our business. And now I come to a few logos, which you can see on the slide as well. And I would like to start with a statement that people like to work for SPIE. And say people, not only employees, but I start with our employees. We are a great place to work. That's the red logo in the middle of the slide. A Great Place to Work, and we were awarded by this internationally recognized seal from our employees, who give the statement that we are an employer of choice for them and an infective employer. 74% of our employees rated their workplace as being very good. And that is an excellent result and which is definitely confirmed by also our low resignation rate, which is one of the lowest in the industry. We are also -- and that is the logo next to the red one, Great Place to Work. We are also a great start organization. 500 young talents were hired by us in 2024. So more than 500 young talents start their career within apprenticeship within SPIE. And that is also a great focus of us and a good statement. In total, we were able to hire 2,000 -- more than 2,800 employees in 2024, which more than 1/4 has been higher through our co-optation program. through our employees. And this is what we really emphasize. Employees who want to work for SPIE, they already want other people to join SPIE. And this is why I said people want to work for SPIE. And this is also if we are happy to have an employer of choice, me personally, I'm happy to embark on other ones. This is how it works. Yes. Furthermore, we had our focus also on investments in IT, for example, a strong ERP back a scalable IT infrastructure and resilient IT security framework. Sustainability and digital and innovation are for us, key differentiating factors for us to differentiate in market and from our competitors and doing benefit for our clients. In terms of sustainability with our technical workforce providing solutions, understanding the brownfield. We only have a small step to really bring a lot of benefit for our clients to decarbonize and embark on the future. So this is automatically a field where we can differentiate very much. Internally, of course, we contribute in the terms of Scope 1, 2 and 3 to the CO2 reduction of the group. And also we work on our green share all the period long being accretive to the group's green share. Digital and innovation leadership, if we are working close to our clients, providing them with a solution, a technical solution, understanding the brownfield of the client. Automatically, the client expects us to be the leader in innovation of what we do, the leader in digitalization. And this is automatically what our employees are asking us to do. So this is something what strive we for and have to strive for. The ARENA2036 and the [ ORF ] community are examples for platforms, research platforms, giving us a different horizon to embark on these challenges. Coming back down to earth, enhance and safety for our employees over the period of the last 10 years, we were able to decrease our accident frequency rate by up to 60% and increasing the safety of our employees. And that is a remarkable result because with the growth story you see with the logos, we have to deal with a complete different maturity status of the health and safety culture of our newcomers. And all of that, I think, is a great sign, which arrives finally at our clients who also value our development over the past 11 years. And they provide us good feedback in our annual customer satisfaction surveys, yes. And we are quite proud that our Net Promoter Score always grew over the years to an all-time high last year in 2024 to 54.2%. Yes, all of that development is steered by a highly little management team. are also having the highest ambition to move forward. But before we move forward into the future into vertical markets. We take a look at 2 examples what Jerome already spoiled a little bit. I would like to illustrate you how the success of our compounder model works. And the things you can read on the slide. I would like to take you with me a little bit behind the scenes of those 2 acquisition cases. And starting on the left side, yes, Osmo was a case, a clear bottom-up bolt-on case. That means managers, new -- the company, new -- the owner of the company being 85 years old managing the company on top of his operational management team. And we worked on this owner for 1.5 years. And we stay convinced him that SPIE is a very good home for his employees, for his company moving forward. And finally, we were successful. And within the SPIE organization, you see that the company grew quite successfully and even more successfully was able to improve the margins. And nowadays, we look at a very solid, high double-digit margins in a sphere of work, which is giving us, at this point in time, a better footprint in Germany, but also entering the traffic and explicitly the tunnel infrastructure market. 2 years later on the knowledge or management of Osmo we were able to acquire the competitor of Osmo also from an owner being 75 years old. Embarking on our management team, whether it would be a good idea also for SPIE DÜRR, not SPIE this time, also for DÜRR to be acquired and finding a home in the SPIE organization, and this is what we did. We gave a responsibility to the Osmo management. And then last, the 2 companies were merged to a company with the name SPIE Building Technology, Automation and Traffic GmbH. We are not good at these finding names. But we have now a uniform presence in a great traffic and tunnel infrastructure market. under the name and brand of SPIE with 1 ERP backbone and harmonized business processes. So not only financially, it was a success story, but also from the whole surrounding and what we learned. We learned to stay tuned to identify to stay tuned to come to, in the end, to a signature under the contract to integrate and even grow further on the back of this new acquisition. The CEA case was slightly different. It was a professional process. And it was one of the shortest acquisition process we did, a professional process where at the beginning, we completely knew what the company was doing from what we were doing in Germany. And we knew that this could be a case to enter into Austrian market. We could convince right in the first moment of the professional acquisition process, the sellers, the owners and the management team that we could be the best partner, and we achieved exclusivity. And within less than a month, we finalized the acquisition in 2019, giving us the first entry point into Austria and I would say it was for free because when you see that we manage directly after the acquisition to reduce the working capital by EUR 22 million in a very short period of time. The underlying EV of the acquisition was paid back by post-acquisition working capital reduction, and that was what Jerome pointed out in his section to the compounder model. Yes. well, basing on the good development of CEA over the years, you can see the growth and the margin improvement. We dared ourselves to do 2 other acquisitions SPIE [ Chem ] in the following years and SPIE DÜRR, Austria. DÜRR that was a company on the left for Osmo. Yes, it is the Austrian subsidiary. The company DÜRR was equally split the business, one in Germany and one part in Austria. And on the back of these 3 legal entities we founded our country organization in 2024 in Austria. Yes. If it comes to promotion of managers being acquired, you already heard that managers from acquisitions are able to work in this reorganization. And also here in Austria, is the case, the CEO of SPIE DÜRR Austria, the former CEO, is now heading our Austrian operations. And the CEO of CEA, the company you see on this slide is now our CFO in Austria. Great story, I think, not only pointing out the past, but also giving you some information and background how much knowledge we gained and how much this is driving us our experience moving forward to grow the platform and how the platform growth is working. Did I point out that Austrian business was already present in T&D business. No? If not, then this would be the point to hand over to Germany. And if there is a point or if there is a place to be in the German market, it is the T&D business which we can see and taken now on this slide. Thanks to the vision of SAG in 2017, we are best prepared to benefit from the huge investments predominantly from the energy transition in this market. And we serve this market from 2 operational divisions. You can see the names on the slide. that is high voltage and an operational dividend for high voltage. This is focusing on the transmission market, building the transmission lines, but also the substations to it. But being able to also do all the surrounding technical services, which you need to accompany the assets which are built across the life cycle, from the design to the service and maintenance and in the middle, the erection and installation. And the same does the Citynetworks and Grids division focusing on the distribution part of the electrical grid. Both operational divisions, yes, they contribute to the German revenues 37%. So they also do some other activities like fiber deployment and so on. but purely the electrical grid services, which we call T&D services, they're making up 30% of the German revenues. And following the arrival of the 2 operational divisions in SPIE with SAG. The market gave us a little bit time to prepare ourselves with integration. You might remember, out of these times, the 20 million run rate synergies lifting up our EBIT with the combination of the existing SPIE organization. But also then afterwards, we experienced a very strong organic growth with an acceleration over the past years. And this is why we are quite confident that we are reaching. And very solidly, the growth pattern above 10% CAGR until 2028, and I would say, even beyond which we have listed on the slide. We're coming down to the transmission and distribution market, you have seen already the investment volume. And the drivers are for both parts, the same for distribution, the same then for transmission. It is, on the one hand, the grid expansion investments. It is the modernization of the grid. It is to make the grid more intelligent because of the more decentralized energy sources with the renewables coming into the grid, you need to monitor. You need to go to know what's going on in the grid to make the grid digitalized and thus, more intelligent. These are the major drivers. And the investment volumes, you see they ramp up to EUR 14 billion on an annual basis in the transmission grid that is said roughly from the 4 transmission system operators in this market and the German government, EUR 14 billion per annum, and we reached a peak of last year's investment, reaching EUR 10 billion. So you see it will already ramp up quite a lot. And the same we see in a different relationship in the distribution grid. We talk about EUR 10 billion and spend until the period of 2035. So enough volume to tap on and to fuel our organic growth and maybe also our inorganic growth in the future. But T&D not only plays a role in Germany, we see the same pattern in all the countries where SPIE operates, especially in Europe. And you see the investment volume, of course, slightly bigger. But also here, energy transition is the major driver. The grid expansion, the modernization of the grid is required with heavy investments to support that. And the key drivers are, of course, the increasing electricity demand coming from the electrification but also from the digitalization, AI is the major driver of the future. Bridging the distance from an offshore wind park bringing the electricity down in the heart of Europe needs long distance lines. You can only achieve that with direct current lines, which we've listed here under the special task not to lose energy in between. So renewables play also a significant role in the future, the capacity additions are huge coming from wind parks, not only offshore but also onshore. And of course, PV plays a role as well. With all these decentralized energy sources, we need to have more intelligence in the grid. The grid needs to be digitalized. That's what we call smart grid, especially in the distribution areas. And then of course, all that is happening in brownfield with an existing old grid infrastructure, which needs to be modernized everywhere, and Evert can give you some examples later on. I realized this [ spoiler ] yesterday. Yes. So it is also attractive for us. And you can see how much volume we create within the SPIE organization in this T&D services market with 10,000 employees, we are creating and generating EUR 1.5 billion in revenues from 9 countries. And this leads me over to our group committees. I recently became the sponsor of the T&D Group Committee. And when you ask the question, how do they exchange best practices from one country to the other in the business lines and so on, our group committees are giving the answer. And in these group committees, we try to do exactly that, to do action plans, how to exchange with each other on best practices, on process harmonization, systems, harmonization, sales initiatives and so on. And I'm -- I handed over my sponsorship for the technical facility management business to Evert and took over the sponsorship for the T&D activities. Yes, especially in the T&D activities for us, it is relevant to harmonize our processes, our HSE standards, our tools and equipment in order to finally be able to exchange capacities from one country to the other because this is how we also can capture growth. And this is what also happens in Germany already. with our Polish colleagues from Poland working and supporting our transmission line projects in the northern part of Germany. And with our Slovakian colleagues in the southern part of Germany. We are very thankful for that exchange. This is how we can also capture more market growth. Yes, T&D is a sweet spot, but it is not the whole world of businesses in Germany, and this is why I would like to point out three other vertical markets, which are also interesting for the SPIE organization of which you have already heard from Gauthier and from Jerome. Data centers, telco infrastructure and pharma, vertical markets, which are extremely interesting for SPIE. Starting off with the data centers. Well, the German Ministry of Economics pointed out that from 2010 to 2024 -- so in 14 years, the capacity of data centers already doubled to a value an amount of 2.7 gigawatts. And in the next 6 years, not 14 in the next 6 years, we are close to double again. So it is an acceleration of growth, with a solid double-digit growth also for us at what is interesting for us. For us, in Germany, which is by far the biggest and largest market for data centers in Europe. We look at an investment volume in '24 of EUR 2.9 billion. And thereof, EUR 75 million technical equipment, our supply or building technology equipment and the accompanying installation works. This is exactly where we want to be. Our focus in terms of data centers is not lying on the big hyperscaler data centers but rather on data centers, on-premise for enterprises and for co-locators. This is where our technical capabilities are best suited and where we can grow the most. And then as a multi-technical service supplier, you have a charming situation that with all our business lines, we have data center expertise. So from all those mosaics of logos, what you have seen on the slide of our growth path, we can build a picture, a solution for a client, and that means in terms of the data center vertical market, we are able to accompany a data center from day 1, the first sort of a customer wanting to build a data center until the end until renewal investments happen from the power supply with our high-voltage division and City Networks division, building a substation also for data center campus to the installation of the single data center, the design, the installation, the commissioning and then handing over to Technical Facility Management for the operation of the technical equipment and of course, for the core heart of the business of the data center, our information and communication services guys are best to do the business there. So we understand the whole ecosystem for our clients and can provide a real differentiating factor and a lot of value for our clients. So moving over from the data centers to the telco infrastructure with the two segments, FTTx, on the one hand and the mobile infrastructure on the other starting with the FTTx business, where EUR 8 billion market is a very big and attractive market growing with a CAGR of 10%. And until the period of 2027. We estimate a peak or studied estimated peak at 2030 and then with the completion of the fiberization in 2035. So you might say, well, they invest in a market which stops and ends for us, that is absolutely not a problem because all the competencies you need to deploy fiber you can shift them into the distribution grid and you are able to work in the distribution grid and capture the growth going forward. So that is a charming situation with the energy transition in Germany. So that is why we can invest in both, in fiber and in the distribution, energy transition grid. Moving over to telco infrastructure. One of you one or the other might experience in using a phone from London, in the train from London to Paris or even you might use the phone traveling with the Deutsche Bahn in Germany, and then you worry why isn't it working. Yes, because the mobile infrastructure is not fully deployed. And the 5G network has really a lot of holes in it. So we have a lot of potential of growth being estimated at a CAGR of 13% growth in this market. And especially the Deutsche Bundesbahn is a key client, there are estimations that 20,000 masts needed for 5G deployment alongside the railway, if it comes to 6G, you even need 37,000 masts in order to digitalize alongside the railway line. So that is a huge potential and customers here which we want to grab on. Well, with our existing business of SAG plus a bolt-on acquisition, which we have done in '21 called Gilead Carbon and even more with the acquisition of ICG Group last year in 2024, now being already renamed SPIE Telco infrastructure we are best prepared to be a reliable turnkey solution provider for our clients to capture this market growth. Yes, coming to pharma. Pharma is the largest market in Europe, in Germany. GDP portion of pharma is EUR 28 billion investments into R&D are EUR 12 billion last year. But for us, it is relevant what is being built in terms of pharma and biotech, GMP facilities and laboratories. This is the place for us to be. The market is so attractive because it has high market entry barriers you have all the GMP requirements to fulfill a client who does not really find a lot of suppliers being able to build on the high standards and on a reliable basis his new factories -- his new laboratories. And this is exactly where we tapped in with our Otto Life Science Engineering acquisition in 2024. And this is not the only business we have already in the pharma business. We already work for well-known blue chip customers like Boehringer, like Siemens Healthineers or Baxter with our technical facility management business or with our BTLA businesses. Also here, we can make a difference and capture market growth in a very attractive market. All that brings me to my last slide. And Gauthier pointed out that certainly, we are going to strive for the #1 position in Germany. That is certainly true. And it is definitely our ambition. But you also heard that the market is completely fragmented and the #1 position in a very fragmented market will definitely not be the end. There will be chances beyond that for further growth and further margin expansion and so on. So I would like to give you 4 good reasons why we are best prepared on the one hand, to embark on the #1 position, but also beyond simply on the future in Germany. And the first thing I would like to point out is on the left side, Internally Prepared, and I would like to start with our employees. Years back, we put with an initiative our employees in the middle of everything. And you saw the result is a great place to work with our co-optation ratio also with our low resignation rate. That is absolutely key for us to embark on this further. Our one culture is essential for us. We do not have so much of a problem with an overloaded organization. With that heavy growth, we always struggle with keeping up with the organizational growth. So we automatically are more lean than that and have a more efficient organization. For me, it is important that this organization is able to share and to collaborate internally but also to the clients. That's very important. The management team is an experienced one highly motivated, but also has been permanently being adapted to the size and growth of the organization. A lot of the managers are coming from the acquisitions. Gauthier pointed out that this is with me the case Pat is the case with ever. The 2 Austrians are there, the manager of Osmo, my manager of High Voltage division, Citynetwork and Grids division technical facility management division, and I could go on and on. All these managers know exactly how the market works, how the business works. They go through the ranks and they are completely love SPIE. They like the values, they like the SPIE model, and they have proven that they can develop even further. Strong organic growth ahead where our customer reputation is excellent, as I pointed it out. Our client base is completely diversified, long-lasting and very broad. As Jerome said, with each acquisition, we also acquired a new client base. This is offering us as well to open the door to our other business lines for our existing sometimes very local, sometimes the German Mittelstand client is opening the doors and is happy with SPIE and to do more business with SPIE. That is definitely offering us a lot of potential. Tier 1 positioning to the customer is key to be able to provide a more general and more broad solution for the customer and holding the direct contract is giving us more benefit. Focus on growth markets. That's what I said, benefiting from long-term drivers of the energy transition, the digitalization, infrastructural investments and other dedicated vertical markets. with high market entry barriers where our technical capabilities are best suited are giving us a lot of growth prospects. And this is directly leading me over to further margin increase capturing the growth in attractive vertical markets with high market entry barriers is also giving us a better position for margin increase. Our value to our clients is much higher than in commodity businesses or areas where there's no growth. Permanent operational improvement of our existing business. That is key for us mastering the project life cycle, having a transparent healthy and very positive failure culture is absolutely necessary. It is not the case that no failures happen. They happen every day. It is just a question, how transparent, how fast you are going to discover them, how you discuss it, how we are going to find solutions. That is key. And this is something what, from my perspective, we master over the years. This is also helping us to increase the margins in the existing business that is meant with the stickiness of margins. And maybe to answer the question what you might have, is it possible to increase even the margins in Germany? I would answer that I came with a business where the margins were around 3% and below. And in that period of time, we increased and reached a level of 7.5%. If you would have asked the people 2013 would 7.5% be possible. Everybody was said, no way, we will never achieve it. So margin increase goes step by step by step with a lot of works where you need your 2 hands and permanent work on the topic. And thus, of course, I'm confident to increase the margins. Will it be possible to reach 100 basis points more next year? No. It will be a steady work on margins and then, of course, an increase is further possible. And we all do that in a market which is huge, which leads me to the last pillar, the consolidation opportunities in the market, EUR 110 billion of size where the top 5 players are only tapping on 10% of the market share. You have numerous players inside, very small ones, medium-sized ones, big ones, you have specialists, you have more generalists, a lot of opportunities to further grow via acquisitions, but also organically. Our pipeline is rich. As Jerome pointed out, it works bottom up and top down. So we benefit from the experience of all our managers coming to us with their knowledge and their network. And we have a proven track record over the years with a lot of experience how things work, how we can make a difference in M&A processes. And then when it comes to integration, we made a lot of experiences some good, some lessons learned and all that is flowing into the next integration approach. And this is the key to move forward for us. Yes, being 11.5 years within the SPIE organization. I think the whole journey has been tremendous. And we now look at a platform, which is really valued by our employees, by our customers. by our newcomers. And I'm very proud that I could be part of the story and drive the business forward. And definitely, I'm confident to move forward into the future. And I would like to adapt the statement of Gauthier at the beginning. It's a good time to be an electrical engineer. Of course, but it is even a better time to be an electrical engineer in Germany. And now I have the pleasure to hand you over to a video pointing out our industry service and wind activities. And then I introduce you to a break, 15-minute break, where we can discuss about Germany, if you wish or you can have a spoiler on the French presentation because Arnaud is after the break, the first presenter for France. Thanks a lot. [Presentation] [Break]

So good morning, everyone. I will make my presentation in French. So there is some headset for some of you who did a translation. [Interpreted] Hello, one and all. I'm very happy to be with you today. Very happy because I'll be talking you through what SPIE has done in France. We'll look at our dynamics. SPIE is very dynamic on its markets in France. To start with, where are we? What have we done? And I suppose you have seen the figures before. In France, we've reached EUR 3.4 billion in revenues, as you can see on the slide. We've constantly improved. And in 2024, we reached a level of 7.1% for EBITA. This will still improve in the future because we contribute to the group's ambition for 2028. We have a number of opportunities we're thinking about to improve, as you will see in the coming slides. And we have a strong historic position in France. We cover 5 business lines. And as you will see, this is one of our assets in terms of our strong positioning in France. What's more, as Jérôme was saying earlier on, the French market is more consolidated than elsewhere in Europe. If you look at the top 5 companies in France, they represent something like 45% of our revenues. Yet we have made 6 acquisitions since 2022, and we've been working on other possible acquisitions. We have quite a lot of them in the pipeline. And we think that we're going to have interesting further acquisitions in the future. As I was saying, SPIE truly is well rooted in France, which means that we have assets and we can, therefore, cover the French market in a solid manner. First, look at our footprint. We have more than 300 sites in France, which is something that really matters for SPIE because we're close to our customers hand in hand. That's part of our DNA, which means that on a daily basis, we can support our clients when they roll out their projects about renovation, extension or other projects in industry, for the public sector, for the commercial sector. This is one of our many assets. In addition to this, as I was saying before, we have a good coverage. We cover all of the business lines, as you can see on the pie chart on the right-hand side. We cover industry. We have a very good footprint there. But also we cover the ICS business plus Tech FM. This is one of our strengths to cover the different markets that have different dynamics depending on the [ years ]. And with that, we come up with more complex offerings for our clients. We combine the different skills we have in the different business units to provide packaged integrated offerings for our clients. I'll be showing a number of examples in a minute. And SPIE in France works with many customers with different profiles, the private customers, all types of customers in all areas, but also the public sector. So we have a wide portfolio of historic customers, which means that we have a very solid footprint and basis in France from which we're going to grow in the future. There's another thing that I think I must talk about, which is that for years and years, SPIE in France has been creating value for the customers. It's in our DNA. We provide different solutions to our customers. We work on their businesses, on their transformations. This has been a tidal wave for several years. The technical aspects are more and more important for the customers, which means it's a strategic asset for them and for their development. As far as that is concerned, SPIE is showing the way, leading. In France, we support our customers through their transformation. For instance, the data centers, that's something that everybody talks about today. We know that this market is growing fast. And the outlook for that market is really good as Markus was saying, in Germany, that's the case. And it's the case in France as well. SPIE has been operating on that market for years. We've been working on data centers for more than 10 years. We work a lot with the banking industry. We also have clients in national defense. That's still for data centers. It's a small world, a world of experts, which means that today, SPIE can guide you through the development of your business. SPIE also thinks about the sovereign aspect of things that is sovereign management of our clients' assets. We've been doing this for years and years. Example number two, AXA. For them, we have an energy performance contract. SPIE is a key player in multi-technical maintenance. And for years, we've been developing tools, [indiscernible] to which we can monitor power, we can manage the assets in the hands of our clients so that they, in turn, can grow and develop in the future. We've seen how the cost of energy is skyrocketed in the recent years, and customers realized that what was very important for them was to maintain the buildings, to optimize energy consumption, to abate CO2 levels connected to their assets. And SPIE knows how to do this. We know how to manage the data. And therefore, we've come up with practical and concrete solutions for the customers. That's the case for AXA, but we have tens and dozens and hundreds of customers for whom we do this. We've gone from multi-technical maintenance contracts towards new value-added contracts. We commit to the energy performance of the contracts that we manage. This is a win-win type of contract. SPIE provides genuine value added to the customers, which means that we can constantly improve our margins as well. But at the same time, the end users save money. Example here is AXA, but there are many more. The third example is that at The American Hospital of Paris. We've had that client for years and years, for managed services in French and for [indiscernible]. And we were supervising part of their networks, IT infrastructure and also part of the PCs and the workstations. And given the fact that we all know that cybersecurity is something very important. By the way, that was particularly the case in the field of health and some hospitals had to almost shut down because there were some cyberattacks. So this hospital came to us because they trust us and they said, could we perhaps develop new skills? Could we work hand-in-hand? Could you try and help us to protect our hardware rather than what we did in the past, just the management of their infrastructure. So we provided this cyber [ layer ]. This is something that we developed over time on the basis of trust, thanks to which we've developed this relation. And year after year, SPIE has shown that it is knowledgeable and has supported this key activity for a hospital. And the EDF partnership that started in 1952, I suppose that most of us were not born in 1952. So we've been working with them for more than 70 years from the word [indiscernible], if I can say when the first nuclear power plants were being built, we were there. And recently also, we won -- we were the best bidders for a [indiscernible] on the future EPR2s, which really shows that this partnership is robust. There's trust between EDF and SPIE and their installed base has changed over the years. There are new safety and security constraints. We have feedback loops whenever there's an incident, for instance, Fukushima. We also support EDF to lengthen the life cycle of their nuclear power plants. We do this for power, electricity, HVAC, air conditioning. So we have strong links that are lasting and solid with EDF. And I'm certain that we will continue and support them with the future EPR2s tomorrow. Here again, -- this is done on the basis of our historic footprint with our customers. This is our strength. This is not done to the detriment of our fundamentals, as Jérôme said earlier on. We've always had this culture you see to focus on margins rather than volumes, which means that we are very careful when we choose our contracts. That means that when we get a contract, we think about the services we can provide and we look at the value we can create for our customers so that they would pay a fair price for the services we're going to deliver for them, which means we have to have a clear strategy and businesses where we create value, and the market segments and the plans for whom we can provide growth. Which means we have to analyze risks and opportunities. When you do that for a client, you have to think about things ahead of time, which means that we rigorously analyze risks and opportunities. SIE also focuses on reasonable projects. We'd rather have quite a lot of these smaller projects with one client rather than having a massive or major project. We're here to stay. We support our customers over the long run on the basis of these smaller projects. Sometimes these customers have larger projects. Now in this case, we have a validation process and above the mark of EUR 7 million -- I have to check these projects. And above the mark of EUR 15 million, the projects handed to Gauthier so that he has a look at them. So we're very selective in the projects we choose. And as Gauthier was saying before, cash is something that's pervasive in the company, so much so that for years and years, we've had a tracking mechanism to keep an eye on our cash in a very operational way so that everybody can understand what we're aiming at. And each project manager at SPIE can keep an eye on the cash level for their projects for their clients. And there's an incentive, that's the variable pay, which is based on the correct management of cash position for each project. And we also keep an eye on the working capital requirement at the level of each subsidiary, which is a tool for us to incentivize all those in the SPIE Group have a variable pay. It's part of our culture at SPIE. This is something that we've been deploying day in, day out in all of the French entities. As I was saying, we've been in France for years and years, of course. We have this very strong regional presence in France. Okay. That's one thing. Yet we still innovate. We're on the move. We seize all opportunities because our objective is to find a solution to all the problems that some of our customers could have. In another slide, here's an example with [ Ventolin at GSK ] we've been working with them for years. Their problem, their difficulty was a strategic difficulty. They didn't have much time, but they had to build a plant to produce the new Ventolin products. They were very [indiscernible] in the past. So there's a fierce competition between the key players because everybody wanted to have a nonpolluting Ventolin that would be produced at quick notice. So there were 2 options for them, either they would take their time, they would go around, do their own company shopping for the best supplier or to work with a trusted partner to co-develop their solutions, which is what we did. We started from a blank page or we had just sketched something on an A4 paper. I can tell you that this is the truth. And after this, we extended a production line for them. At the end of the day, the total amount for the project was EUR 20 million and SPIE supported their technical development. So that was done so quickly, which really shows that there's trust between GSK and SPIE, but also it shows that SPIE can innovate and take part from the design phase and then support and guide the customers to the end of the project. Now the second example is a bit of a more general example, but then SPIE decided to also work on the energy transition, as you know. Earlier on, I talked about our facilities business, but also when it's power generation or the energy mix, we have know-how as well, not just in the nuclear business. So photovoltaic business is a business we know well. We have a marked presence for photovoltaic panels, but also the [indiscernible] or offshore and onshore. We also invest a lot in the storage of energy. There are many projects mushrooming in France, and that's very positive. Look at the number of players. There [ aren't ] that many players, and this really is something that's going to be fruitful for SPIE in the years to come. There we are. So as you can see, the market is quite dynamic. It's very dynamic, I should say. And a lot of people saying there are headwinds at present in France. And well, that's true. Some of our markets are a bit sluggish. For instance, the developers, the property developers or the public sector players, they didn't have budgets that were ready. Yet, as I said before, we have a good foothold. We cover all business lines. For instance, for property development, we didn't wait for yet another crisis to ask ourselves the question. And the question was, how can we react better when there's a property crisis that for years and years, we've decided that -- what we should focus on is the renovation of buildings, issues the build structure is already there. So this sector is suffering less than the new construction sector. That's one thing we decided to do. And then as I said earlier on, the public sector in some areas is a slow mover. But for years now, we've been earmarking our resources to develop in more buoyant industries, for instance, the national defense operators. SPIE several years ago, decided to take strong positions throughout France. And today, the choice we made, I would say, was quite consistent, very much in sync with the global trends. And on the right-hand side, as you can see, we still have markets that are very dynamic. I talked about energy a minute ago. Now you probably realized that data center is very dynamic. Decarbonization of industry, as Gauthier said earlier on, is developing fast with automation as well, which is something very interesting. And of course, there's electrification of vehicles, electrical vehicles, EVs and SPIE's installing charging terminals everywhere in France. All of these topics are very positive. And well, the grid underlines, well, we do less in France than elsewhere in Europe because the grid we have is perhaps more mature in terms of distribution of power, yet RTE, the French transmission system operators decided they will launch major programs. And we're working with the French RTE because we have multi-annual contracts. So we'd like to know which resources will be working for them because you need to have qualified operators. And these are interesting opportunities you see for SPIE for the years to come. And this will last because this is not work that's done in 1 year. You need to look at the midterm and long term and the opportunities are quite positive. That's all as far as I'm concerned. Thank you very much for your attention. Now I hand over to the next speaker who's going to be talking about the Netherlands. Thank you.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Evert Lemmen. I'm proud to present the Netherlands for you today, but let's introduce myself a little bit more because I'm 35 days already the Managing Director of SPIE in the Netherlands. I joined SPIE 3 years ago with the acquisition of Worksphere. I was the formal Managing Director of Worksphere in the Netherlands. And my background is an electrical engineer, and I heard from Gauthier Louette this morning that it's a good starting point for my presentation today. So let's move to the Netherlands at a glance. Here, you see that we, in the Netherlands end up in '24 with a EUR 1.6 billion revenue, that's 16% of the revenue of the total group from SPIE. It's coming out from 5 business lines. The biggest business line in the Netherlands is everything regarding buildings. So that's the Tech FM business and the Building Solutions business. But also the industry environments as well as the T&D environment are really a big contributors to the Netherlands and our huge divisions in the Netherlands. We are a [ multipactical ] player in the Netherlands, so also offering services within bridges, rocks, the telecom sector, the indoor connectivity sector, et cetera, et cetera. And this having said means that SPIE in the Netherlands is an essential link in the fields where we work, where we live, where we stay and where we travel. We had a broad portfolio of customers, as you can see, with more than 3,600 customers, and that means that we have a good risk diversification. We did -- since '22, 5 acquisitions with a revenue of EUR 500 million. That's including the Worksphere acquisition for your information. And we ended up last year at 7% EBITDA. And we did that, last but not least, with 6,000 employees, and they were all very proud to be part of the SPIE organization, I can tell you. Before I go to the coming years, let's go back in time to the year '22 with the acquisition of Worksphere because there was a kind of a tipping point in the Netherlands where the scale of our organization began to function like a flywheel. What we achieved with the acquisition of Worksphere is presented here. First of all, we organized a new Building Solutions division. It's the largest division in the Netherlands at the moment, as I already told you. Furthermore, cross-selling and our competitive position was very important. So we were able to increase the cross-selling to a high level, more than 60 clients, we moved in other services from [indiscernible] what is really giving us a good competitive position. And you see some names on the slide like ASML, Philips, et cetera. At the same time, we were integrating -- we did 4 bolt-on acquisitions also in the Netherlands since '22. As Jerome mentioned, in this case, for Worksphere, the synergies were a part of our business case, and we achieved EUR 9 million synergies within 18 months, and you have to think about merging offices and merging the staffing organization of both organizations. What I liked when I came to SPIE was the secret how they have a performance-based way of looking at results and cash management. And we achieved an incredible better working cap. As you can see here, we extract EUR 25 million of working cap from this acquisition. And if you look at the key -- the most important factor, the critical success factor of the success of this integration, then is it a perfect cultural fit. And that means that we have no turnover as a result of the integration. And because we are a people business, of course, this is a very important achievement. And last but not least, our value creation delivered is at 18%. What we achieved with this M&A with the Worksphere M&A in the Netherlands, you see on the right. We are now the undisputable leader in the Netherlands multi-technical services. We had a year-over-year organic growth in the last years of 10%, and that's especially with the focus on the cross-selling, as I already mentioned. Of course, we bettered our margin with 130 bps, and we strengthened our cash generation with 9 days. So I can tell you all the people in the Netherlands are very proud of this performance and very proud to be part of the SPIE organization. On my next slide, I will give you some foundations for the coming years for the future growth. First of all, it's our brand. SPIE is a very strong brand, well known in the Netherlands as well within our customers as in the labor market. Of course, a national coverage. And with 6,000 employees, we have a lot of vans cars and the Netherlands is not a very big country. So when you drive from the south to the north, it's impossible nowadays to ignore SPIE anymore. That's the good news. So we are very visible in the Netherlands. We have a market share of 6%. Also, the Netherlands has a lot of local and regional companies, so very fragmented market. But there is a consolidation going on, and I think this will give us a lot of opportunities for M&A in the coming years. I already mentioned our portfolio. It's a well-balanced portfolio, as you can see on the top right. But I think important here is that there are also in the Netherlands, 2 important strategic pillars, and that's the digitalization and that's the, of course, the sustainability. And I will come back on that because also in the Netherlands, SPIE is leading the way to a more sustainable Netherlands. Of course, we do that by offering a lot of sustainable technologies, EV panels, we install heat pumps, et cetera, et cetera. But what we also did is we train our staff in green awareness, so especially Scope 1 and 2. And that makes them valuable partners for our clients so they can make choices together regarding the road map of sustainability. Also, the transition from a linear to a circular economy in the Netherlands is full swing focus. And what we do is we are trying to extend the lifespan of assets and we do that by offering smart maintenance. And there, I go to the right bottom part because, therefore, you need to be ahead in digitalization. We try to be the conductor of the data in and around our assets and the places where we work. And you see here an example in the facilities area where we, as speak developed PULSE Core. PULSE Core is an IoT-based platform. We gather the data via algorithms, we can predict the behavior of the assets. And that's nice because with that, you can higher the availability, of course, from the assets and you can better the energy efficiency, of course. Nowadays, more than 93% of the contracts, the maintenance contracts in the Netherlands are connected to the PULSE Core platform. So that gives us also a very strong competitive position. Another thing is the energy transition also in the Netherlands, a strong outlook over there. My colleagues already presented a lot of details about this. But I can tell you there is one thing different in the Netherlands, and that's the net congestion. And the net congestion means that the energy -- the capacity of our electrical network of energy, lacks capacity and flexibility to accommodate the demand for sustainable energy and, for example, more electric cars. Well, I can tell you last week, I was in a very big city in the Netherlands. The good news is the Netherlands has a lot of electric cars. The good news is there are charging points everywhere. But the bad news nowadays is you don't receive electricity anymore because of the net congestion. And this is one example. And I can tell you, if you have a new build house in the Netherlands and you want to connect it to the net, you can wait for 6 and sometimes 12 months. So there is a huge sense of urgency in the Netherlands to do investments to the network. And that means huge investments from the TSOs. But in the Netherlands, there is only one TSO, and that's TenneT. TenneT is the biggest customer from SPIE in the Netherlands already for many, many years. So we have a strategic partnership with TenneT in the Netherlands. But also the DSOs are investing in the coming years, a lot of money to better the infrastructure in the Netherlands. Over there, we are focusing on, as you can see, the mid-voltage infrastructure cabling markets. We are, at the moment, building strong new teams, qualified, experienced and with the right authorizations to enter this market in the coming years and to gain from the investments over there. On the right, you see that it's not only about CapEx. We are also focusing on the OpEx side of the business. So we always try to walk around the design, build, maintain and operate circle. And I think that's important to be at the entire lifetime of the asset available. And of course, it fits very well in the recurring business model of SPIE. A little bit more about the digital transformation because implementing the digital transformation means also implementing new digital services, what leads to the more sustainable solutions and efficiency. And I think this is also a good enabler for us for additional work within all our customers. Two examples on this slide. If you see the industry, digitalization, process optimization enhance the production efficiency by using automation and AI. And of course, if you look at the utility side, it enhances the energy efficiency and sustainable resource management. And if you look at the Tech FM business, there, we are more and more measuring the utilization of buildings, not only the historical data, but also we can predict the utilization for the coming months, days, weeks and hours. And that gives us the opportunity to enhance the energy demand of the building. Two examples where we are entering full swing, the digital solutions. If we talk about digital solutions, then it's talking about data, and that requires a secure environment to store all your data. And that brings me to the ICS data center market in the Netherlands. If you ask me the question a year ago, and I talked to my customers, most of the customers have a cloud-only policy. So they stall all their data in the cloud. Now if you look at all the things which are happening in the world, we see that it's not only a cloud-only policy anymore, it's more a hybrid solution where they choose for as well an on-premise enterprise solution as well with co-locators and sometimes hyperscalers. But for the same, as Markus already told for Germany, we are not focusing on the hyperscalers, but I think this development will give our data center market in the coming years a boost because there is more demand for enterprise and for on-premise solutions. Well, with this presentation, I aim to give you an impression of the opportunities and the focus areas for the Netherlands. And I'm looking forward for the coming period with a lot of confidence, I can tell you. Nothing of this is possible without people. So after my presentation, I will hand over to Séverine Walser, Head of HR. But first, we're going to look at the movie, stronger and greener together. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Séverine Walser, Group HR Director for SPIE, and very pleased to be with you today to exchange and talk about our greatest asset. So indeed, our employees are our first asset. And the growth of the workforce has followed the growth of the group with 54,000 skilled and committed employees at the end of 2024. In the past years, SPIE has demonstrated a strong ability to recruit in a context where the talent demand stays high in all the markets where we operate. We've implemented solid initiatives to attract talent with over than 6,000 employee recruitment on permanent contract per year since 2022. Apprenticeship is as well a key lever of our environment policy with over than 4,000 apprentices recruited in 2022, and a level of more than 7% in France or Germany, for example. Through apprenticeship, SPIE aims to develop skilled professionals to anticipate some market evolutions and to build with our apprentices a strong relationship with the goal to keep them afterwards in the company, what we succeeded last year at more than 70%. We consider as well that our employees are our first ambassadors. And we've built strong referral programs, [ co-efficient ] programs in all our countries, recruiting more than 4,500 employees through this channel since 2022. With those programs, we are able to attract high-quality candidates while rewarding our employees for their contribution to the growth of the group. And it's as well for us a demonstration of the employee satisfaction and their willingness to recover SPIE as a great company to work for. So attracting and recruiting is key. Even more important is then to retain and develop our talent. At SPIE, we are committed to creating an engaging and supporting working environment, fostering employee loyalty and decreasing voluntary turnover. We've got a long tradition of employee shareholding at SPIE. Our employees are our first shareholders, and we are very proud about that with 9.6% owned by employees and managers. In 2024, we renewed with success our shareholding program, SHARE FOR YOU, with a participation rate of over 45%. I would underline there as well that in our recently acquired companies, the participation rate was over 32%, which is for us as well a strong signal of the high quality of the integration. Employee shareholders matters to us because it shows the trust and the commitment that employees do have in the company. And at our executive management level, it's an important responsibility, which commits us as well in developing SPIE in a sustainable and successful way. Our action plans on retention and developing on talents are paying off in all the countries. And as you can see, we managed once again to decrease the voluntary turnover in 2024, reaching a level of 6.6%. We aim to be in each country an employer of choice. Markus mentioned the topic. It's really our goal to be recognized everywhere as an employer of choice. So for that and to monitor the engagement and the well-being of our employees, we've launched and developed several surveys with independent institutes like Great Place to Work. And we are very proud having been indeed recently labelized Great Place to Work in Germany and Austria, renewed as well top employer in Belgium. And you can see here as well the [ Top 4 Women level ] in Germany, which recognizes companies who are offering equal conditions to its workforce. So those levels and KPIs you can see on the screen are illustrating the focus SPIE is putting on its workforce with a strong attractivity and offering the ability to have career and skill development opportunity. SPIE is really a great company to work for. And this long-term trust with our employees is key in offering to our clients, a sustainable relationship with skilled and committed employees at the core who are ready to embrace the next challenges. So with that, I thank you for your attention, and I will hand over to Isabelle.

Hello, everybody. So yesterday, you might have heard of our 2024 results. And I was very pleased at that moment to present the good progress that we've made on climate action and on protecting and developing our people. But now we are still staying fully committed to reaching our 2025 sustainability targets, of course, but we are preparing for the next wave of sustainability challenges and action. So it's my pleasure to present you with what we've come up with. There are no changes in the fundamentals and in the key stakes of our sustainability road map. And when we discussed with our external stakeholders a few months ago, when we completed the double materiality analysis for the CSRD, for instance, they told us climate action remains at the forefront of their expectations. So that's why we are keeping in terms of climate action, our contribution to a low-carbon economy first. And there, our commitment is to stay above a threshold of 50% of green share in our jargon. So revenues that are contributing to a low-carbon economy according to the EU taxonomy and that directly fight climate change. Last year -- or yes, last year, we were at 49% in this regard. Then this climate action for our clients, which is better represented with the EU taxonomy is also being enhanced for our own carbon footprint. And I'll be commenting that more in details with this slide. We have an obligation of results on our direct carbon footprint, and we have been validated by the science-based target initiative as a company contributing to a 1.5-degree scenario since 2021. And so our 2025 goal is to deliver minus 25% in direct emissions. For us, these are the emissions stemming from our large vehicle fleet. Evert was mentioning the cars in the Netherlands. I think you have a fleet that is electrified by more than 30 -- by around 33%, 34%, that's great. At the scale of the company, every fourth car is now electric. And last year, to give you an example, 70% of our renewals were made into battery electric cars. So this is the driving force behind our rapid -- I mean, behind our carbon footprint reduction on Scope 1 and 2. Buildings do contribute as well, but they represent a much smaller share. And between 2025 and 2030, what are we doing? We are still committed to the same ambition, but we are even accelerating. So our ambition is to reach minus 50% by the end of 2030. But the greatest challenge for any company is to tackle its Scope 3, of course. And for us, Scope 3 represents more than 90% of our total emissions. What is new in our commitment is that we are transitioning from an obligation of means. We used to have -- and we still have, sorry, a commitment to have 67% of our suppliers committed to reduce their own carbon footprint in an ambitious way. But now we are moving to an obligation of results. We want our Scope 3 carbon footprint to decrease over time. And to be more specific, to reduce -- to be reduced by 55% in intensity. Why intensity for SPIE. Well, you have heard it all this morning. We are growing all the time by the means of acquisitions. So that's why this metric is more pertinent to our business model. And what's new in our commitment as well is that we are also tackling now our downstream emissions. So the one that stem at our client sites from the use of our products and services. So how we will be doing that? We have already started well with a very vivid supplier engagement in the past years that have led us to 57% of suppliers with whom we work with, who are engaged to reduce their carbon footprint. But -- now we are moving forward. This engagement also is happening with our employees. Some of you mentioned the way employees are being trained on climate change, on speaking the Scope 1 and 2 languages. There are already excellent engineers in energy efficiency, but when they tackle their clients' decarbonization road maps, they need to understand what is Scope 1, what is Scope 3, where do I act? Where do I make a difference. And last year, we have trained 10,000 employees with our SPIE Climate Academy on those aspects. And last but not least, we are engaging all the time, but now more in depth and with better tools to discuss with our clients the type of decarbonization that we can bring to them. We have internal tools such as the Scope 3 calculator that enables our project managers to propose low-carbon alternatives to their clients and to say, okay, if you take this HVAC system compared to this HVAC system, over the whole life cycle, you'll be saving so much CO2. So that was for the new carbon footprint ambition. And I hope you can appreciate that it also better aligns us with the interest of our clients overall. Now going to the social part of our sustainability road map. We're keeping the same spirit in terms of safety, the same focus. And the focus is on preventing of course, saddle and severe accidents first. The difference with the previous road map is that we are expressing it now in terms of a rate that better caters also to our growth model and to the acquisitions joining us instead of expressing it in absolute terms. And there, the ambition is to reduce the severity -- the frequency of the severe accidents by 30% over the forthcoming period. In terms of gender diversity, there, we are also changing the KPI, but not with the rate instead of an absolute figure. It's more that we are broadening the panel of positions where we want to increase gender diversity. We used to have the top 250 in our previous -- in our current sustainability road map, sorry, we used to say we want to increase the proportion of women holding top managerial positions. And now we are tackling a much broader scope with the middle management positions being added on top of that. So we are moving from a top 100 -- top 250, sorry, to the top 2,000, where we want to increase the proportion of women in this top 2,000 positions by 20% over the period. And with that, I'm at the end of the presentation of our sustainability objectives, ready to hand over to Gauthier Louette, for this summary.

Thank you, Isabelle. And as you see, it is an ambitious rollout, but which is very dear to our heart, and it's really something we'd like to commit to. This is, again, very consistent with our purpose. So it's really something again that we take as seriously as the financial guidance and you know how seriously we take the financial guidance. So coming back to this financial guidance as a conclusion, it's been really a joint exercise of the ExCom, again, based on the strategic plan, which was done bottom up. So it's really something which is extremely well substantiated at all levels of the organization. And I think that with the description that you've been given of our various markets and how they evolve today, it shows that this plan has a lot of substance. So we are extremely committed to that plan, extremely confident that we are going to deliver. And we are really, as a team, absolutely focused on delivering on that plan. It has a lot of ambition, but it is also extremely realistic. And as you know, at SPIE, we tend to take our promises very seriously. So that would be my conclusion. And again, thanks for -- to all the team for the preparation of this exercise. I think they did very well. And now they'll be happy to go back to the daytime job. I think we have a lot ahead. And as a final word, at least you forget. It's a very good time to be an electrical engineer. Thank you. So we have time for questions, and maybe I will ask the speakers of this morning to join me on the stage. And obviously, if you have questions for those of who didn't speak this morning do not hesitate as well.

I'm Christophe Chaput from ODDO. I've got 3, please. The first one is on France. So I would like to come back on the RTE investment plan of EUR 100 billion on high voltage and transmission. What is the addressable market for SPIE because in this figure, I assume that there is some cable, for example, which are provided to you. So what is, let's say, the potential at the end of the day? The second one is on Page 22, you gave the pipeline of bolt-on acquisition and above EUR 800 million, obviously, it's not a bolt-on anymore. I'm just curious, how many targets above EUR 800 million have you identified and that could be an opportunity for the group. And the last one is at the end of 2028, so of the road map. My calculation is between a net debt-to-EBITDA of between 0.5x and 1x. Is it a fair assumption?

So maybe starting with France, Arnaud?

Out of the EUR 100 billion announced by RTE, we would say EUR 20 billion is for companies such as SPIE, which means 20% would be a type of business. And here, again, this is for the line business. For substations, it's not that clear cut because the private players would be investing as well. And by the way, we're investing a lot in this type of business. All the substation business for us is something very interesting. And it will be in the hands more and more of the private players, which is a great opportunity for us. So the market we're looking at would be EUR 20 billion for the 15 years to come with a number of competitors, which would be to the tune of 7 competitors. Of course, each of us would have some share of that, but that will give you an order of the type of growth we're looking for, for the future.

Regarding bolt-on acquisition as well?

I think you read correctly, we provided EUR 800 million as the maximum or the bigger size of the targets we have identified. I would not be too precise on how many, otherwise, you might discover who are they? And obviously, would love to stay quite confidential on this. The truth is that the lion's share of that pipeline you've seen and if you divide the total accumulated turnover by the number of identified targets that would corroborate very strictly the EUR 75 million turnover size on average that we have realized so far. So it may happen that 1 or 2 bigger targets are in the pipeline. And as Gauthier said already, we would just consider for what it is with obviously no obligation to succeed on it.

And regarding the fact that there might be a bit of cash left at the end of the period.

I think we gave already a quite detailed guidance. So don't ask us to guide you through the leverage ratio at the end of the period, but just not to escape from that question. I think it is fair to consider that at the end of the period, we are not necessarily at a 2x leverage ratio, we would be below that. And that's the reason why in full transparency, we clearly represent the fact that there could be -- there would be flexibility for incremental returns.

Yes. This is Simona Sarli from Bank of America. I have 3. The first one is going back to your organic growth target of 3% to 4%. So if I look alone at the Netherlands together with Germany and the growth opportunities that you have there, you are pretty much already at the bottom end of your guided range, which potentially would imply like no growth for the rest of the business. So what are the underlying assumptions here? Is just you trying to be conservative? So moving parts, if you can give a little bit more color. . The second one, so you talked quite a lot about the structural growth opportunity in grid expansion and modernization. Can you remind us for these markets, what is the revenue model, typical contract size and structure, the risk associated with these contracts and how different they are to the traditional technical facility management contract? Lastly, on cash conversion. So you have a very nice slide where you show like historically that your cash conversion has been substantially above 100%. Now you're guiding for 100% with a cumulative EUR 200 billion plus. Again, is that being conservative? Is there any reason that it might prevent you from sustain what you have achieved historically?

Maybe we start with the question regarding transmission and distribution. And I will ask Markus to describe what type of contracts we are dealing with.

Happy to do so. So generally, you cannot compare technical facility management contracts with -- contracts in the transmission grid, the one with a tech you -- you operate over a period. It's a 3 years contract, and you have a lot of small works, and it is often a lump sum contract, whereas when you install a line or you install a substation, it is a construction project for this installation. So the project size, depending on the size of the substation, you have bigger ones, you have smaller ones, especially in the wind power connection projects you are more on the lower end of the substations. And then for us, it is key to always manage the risk of maybe a bigger lines construction to make it smaller. It is not only that the contracts contain more risks. They have the same contractual patterns than before. But it's also risk for us getting stuck with our capacities in a project, which might be claimed for or citizens do not want to have this line and whatever and the project is delayed. So we try to work with partners, go into joint ventures and to make the risk smaller for us in terms of capacity utilization and so on. So these are the patterns, how we deal with the tendency to larger projects of the energy transition.

Regarding organic growth, well, we make a plan, obviously, to the best of our knowledge. And yes, there are a lot of moving parts and especially this year, we -- as Arnaud presented, we have good areas of growth in France. We have also areas which are more constrained. We also have a tough competitor compared to last year. So it's -- and we have described areas where we're going to grow, areas which are more stable. I think of health or education, probably areas, which gives us a very solid and resilient base. but there are no specific drivers right now. So that's how we come to this guidance. And we'll see as it goes. It's not like we consider that it is a hockey stick thing. It's clearly something that we consider to be fairly consistent over the plan, and that's where we are. And maybe about cash conversion, Jérôme?

Yes, it's true that historically, we have demonstrated, obviously, that we were able on average to be above 100%. However, I would like to remind you that historically we have been quite very constant in our commitment vis-a-vis the market seeing that our target is always and will remain 100%. And that target is something we apply to ourselves internally starting on January 1 of every year. And just to put that a bit into context, if you just look at the business industry or the environment, who has been able to deliver 100% cash conversion with such a strict definition of cash conversion as we did, I just do not know them or they do not disclose, but we are, from that point of view, best-in-class. So our target for the coming 4 years remain 100%. And if it happens that in some years, we do over deliver. That will be great.

I have 2 questions to ask, maybe you will switch in English. So first of all, the really tremendous enormous plan, which is fenced by Germany. Can you help us do a little math and see to what extent it can add on your assumptions in Germany as far as change is concerned, especially. And I guess there could be also some indirect positive impact to your business in Eastern Europe? And second, is it possible to also looking at nuclear energy for the whole group, not only France, bearing in mind that many, many countries currently are switching and are pushing green lights to nuclear energy. To what extent can also add more to your sales, especially in Southern Europe and not only in France?

Maybe we'll start with the second part of your question. So maybe, Pawel, do you want to shed some color on the nuclear power in Eastern Europe?

We are present in this business in Slovakia, and we will continue that. We help also to enter services in the nuclear industry in Czech Republic. If we are talking about Poland, I would say this is future. Let's see if our nuclear project will start. If it is, we will be present. But this is what is -- we can say what is the fact is our activity in Slovakia and perspectives in Czech Republic.

Maybe a word to that in France, Arnaud.

Well, to pick on that, I would say that in France, the market was, how should I call it, disorganized for maintenance at the end of COVID. We knew that it was difficult for EDF with all of the corrosion problems they had but EDF is now structuring everything. That's positive, and that's for France. And today, sometimes EDF wants us to support them and help them abroad because they have commitments abroad. We do this in some specific cases, specific business lines. We're not going to aim to go to all countries for nuclear projects. We do this mainly in France because in the midterm, the outlook is really good.

And Markus, what was the [indiscernible] history in Germany.

Sorry, I didn't get it.

What was the new plant in Germany, which have been announced.

Yes. Okay. Yes, you were referring to the discussions of the [indiscernible] with the huge infrastructure [indiscernible] potential new coalition may plan to invest EUR 500 million in infrastructure projects. Energy transition would be part of it. And also other infrastructure investments would be covered by this plan. So first of all, I think that's great. That's great news. On the one hand that the politicians are able to decide fast and then together from -- coming from different sites. And then the amount of investment, I think it's a clear sign also for the German industry that the energy transition and the so-called net end [indiscernible] the money you pay for using the grid is not rising, it's lower, yes. So the energy costs will be lower, and this is giving all reasons for the industry to stay in Germany and to invest in the German sites. I think we will see, first of all, whether this will be approved and they come through with the plan. And then definitely it is giving us a better situation than before.

[indiscernible]. So how much you can add in terms of like-for-like growth, our group can be to the tune of 4% looking at 2027 after you guys have implemented all the plans?

Well, we didn't make the math yet, transferring GDP growth into a potential growth with just something which has been announced 3 days ago. Sorry for that. yes, but definitely, it's a positive sign. I think for the investment amount regarding the energy transition, this is simply money being taken over from private investments to state investments. They will decide also how they are going to do that. But the energy transition is going to happen anyway. It is just not on the cost of the industry, which have to pay that. So this will more fuel the industrial side where we are awaiting more investments from our industrial clients and thus, industry business being boosted and not so much the energy transition. This is going to happen anyway that is decided no way that you can stop it. And then for the rest of the infrastructure investments, we already enjoy a lot of public spendings in tunnels in general infrastructure. And this is definitely being fueled, but we didn't do any math.

Augustin Cendre from Stifel. I've got 3 questions, if I may. The first one is on your target of the margin target of 7.7% in 2028. Would it be possible to detail where you think you can get on your current perimeter? Or in other words, how much do you think bolt-ons will contribute to that margin? Second question is on your revenue breakdown by division on Slide 7. It looks like France could lose about 5% of the group weights. So I was wondering what that would be driven by? Is it driven by other divisions having very strong growth in France being low single digit? Or actually, could we see some revenue being lower in France over the next few years? And finally, my last question is on labor. We've been talking about labor scarcity for many years now. So I was wondering how that will evolve going forward in your view? And whether that could have an impact on your pricing power?

Maybe Isabelle, you want to give a word on labor going forward.

Yes, it's pleasure. So labor scarcity is there. I know the market as I mentioned. That's why we've got strong action plans everywhere. We quoted the coaptation, the apprenticeship. We've got other levers on the attracting action plan. So we are quite confident we manage in all our countries to find the right resources.

I think on margins, there is a main effort on the organic progression of the margin, clearly. And bolt-on acquisitions, they come -- as they come, and usually they're a bit dilutive, sometimes not. If they're small, it doesn't make such difference. If they're larger, obviously, like works -- it makes a difference, but works was dilutive by the time we bought them and then Evert and his team have managed to have done a tremendous job to bring the margins to the average of the Netherlands in a very short period of time to the current average of Netherlands. So it's -- bolt-on acquisition do not play a significant role. And clearly, the assumption for margin increase is not deriving solidly or even is hardly at all deriving from the assumption that bolt-on acquisition will be relative. It is clearly, first and foremost, the view we take on the growth on the margin expansion of our organic business. That's clearly the main driver. And obviously, it will not be the same from one area to the other, but it also has to do with the activity mix in the various countries where we are present. And then coming to the proportion in France, with the plan we have and how we see that evolving, yes, we do see more organic growth outside of France. For the reason we mentioned and I think Evert and Markus have been quite clear about this various drivers. Probably also a bit more bolt-on outside of France. So there are 2 factors would play to that. However, France is a very good business to us. It's a very strong business. And if we find good opportunities for acquisition in France, we'll definitely go for them. So just -- what we have shown this is just some sort of modeling. But again, there's no exclusivity.

Remi Grenu from Morgan Stanley. I've got 2 questions, if I may. So the first one is on the nuclear activity, especially in France. So if we could have a little bit more detail on the pipeline from here and if we think about like different phases. So when are the tenders going -- more tenders going to come through ramp-up of contract? And when do you expect some revenues to start to hit the P&L and quantifying a little bit the opportunity there? And the second one is elaborating a little bit on the margin question. So not a lot made in terms of assumptions for M&A -- improvement coming from M&A. So if we keep the constant perimeter, if you can help us understand the assumption you've made on the 50 bps improvement because it seems to me that what you're saying about double-digit growth in T&D alone, the evolution of the mix could probably give half of that. So yes, the bidding blocks to get the 50 bps over the next few years.

Well, I will start with that and then I'll hand over to -- clearly, we -- as Jérôme has shown, we work all the time and we pull all the registers in order to improve our margins. So yes, there is an impact from the activity mix. There's an impact from the operational excellence. There's an impact from our pricing power, which we have shown has been extremely strong along the years. So it's a lot of levers we have to increase our margin. Some bolt-on will bring some margin relations, some of them won't. But it's the whole plan, which is geared into that direction. And I can tell you the focus on margin improvement is constant in every part of the organization and on a constant basis. So it's really something that we have been able to demonstrate all over these years, and the plan is no different from what we've done so far. Regarding nuclear, Arnaud?

Well, there are several things I can say about the nuclear business. If we look at the installed base to start with because, as you know, there's one thing which is the large projects with all the EPRs. Now the first nuclear power plants were built a long time ago. And now we have new EPRs, but we've always been working for EDF for others, but also for EDF. So back to the existing fleet of nuclear power plants. We don't have just one contract with EDF. We have many contracts with EDF. And therefore, we cover maintenance activities. That is we are present with maintenance jobs on all the nuclear power plants, but also transformation. When they modify existing plants because the life cycle is growing and there are more security constraints. And therefore, EDF has to work with us because we have the knowledge. Less than a year ago, we renewed a contract with EDF for electrical adjustments. It's an 8-year contract. Therefore, we're in charge of studies and works to carry out adjustments on their nuclear power plants. That's one example. So we have this wave of activity, which seems to be growing at present. And what we think is that EDF is going to continue and massively invest in that area in the years to come. As I said before, after COVID, EDF was a bit disorganized. Corrosion on the constraint was one difficulty. And EDF today is better organized, and therefore, they can now take care of the existing nuclear power plants, which is good news for us. In parallel, we see the nuclear players that are acting as well like Orano. They're investing massively. They made announcements recently about their investments, and we work with Orano. We work with Framatome as well and the French CEA, the energy agency, the nuclear energy agency. So we don't just work with EDF. And as far as the outlook is concerned, if you look at the CEA and the civilian activities, we are present as well as in the military activities. That's something important. Then the EPR2 reactors. As you know, the first question is to finance the program. Yet, EDF is on their way. They're signing contracts with some companies, which was the case for SPIE and some of our partners last year, for instance, backup generators for which we have won a nice contract and there are coming tenders and other tenders for which we are bidding at present. And we have good hopes that will be gaining a significant market share from EDF in the months to come and years to come. That's for a program that's going to cover probably 15 years after that. So it's not something you can do in a year.

This is Aleksander Peterc from Bernstein. I just have a couple of questions. The first one is on the pipeline of your midterm M&A opportunities, the [indiscernible] EUR 3.3 billion that you highlighted. Could you give us an idea of the geographic breakdown of these targets in broad terms? So we know where your direct most of your M&A efforts going forward. The second question is on your 3% to 4% organic growth objective, which is -- would you qualify that as being fairly conservative given the growth drivers you outlined? And if you could give us an idea of the price versus the volume component within that.

Well, regarding the landscape of acquisitions, what Jérôme has described is our acquisitions within our current geographical perimeter. And as we said, we have opportunities in all countries where we operate. So obviously, it's not that we've done acquisition last year in many countries of SPIE, and we're targeting more in all the countries where we operate. So there is no exclusive in this regard. And the breakdown doesn't really is meaningful because you see that is the size of the various economies also induce a number of opportunity plus the fact that some geographies as we did show more fragmented than other. And regarding organic growth, I think I will not add to the answer I've given. This is our plan. We have lots of moving parts, and we look at it as a realistic assumption. The impact of price, I think it's twofold. We have an impact of pricing power, which is independent from inflation. And then you have an impact of inflation, which is reducing compared to a few years ago.

Eric from CIC. I got 3 questions, if I may. The first one, you mentioned smart grid. And I was wondering what is the percentage of the grid today in Europe, which could be considered as smart or the penetration rate, if you prefer. . Second question on the fact that you talk about opportunities a lot this morning, and we can understand that. But I was wondering if you could share with us what could be the key risk for SPIE in the coming years? And the last question on the G of ESG, actually. Well, it's a question for Mr. Louette actually. I was wondering if you have started to think about your succession as edge limit for the CEO position is 65. And I think you are not too far from 65 -- and just -- I know you will remain certainly Chairman, but I don't know if you have started to think about it.

Well, I mean, to answer this question, first, obviously, it's part of my task and I've been looking at doing succession moves and over the past 20 years. And I think this executive committees is the result of this constant work preparing the future. And then obviously, it's also a task for the Board. So they at some stage, which is not now, which is probably sometimes in '26, the Board will come up with a recommendation to the General Assembly. But I would like to remind just one thing like for those of you who are familiar with the [indiscernible] I'm doing the [indiscernible] but this guy are doing the rolling. And now to come back to the -- what could derail the plan. I think it's mainly a geopolitical situation. We are not immune to major crisis, so that's something we have to be worried of. I think apart from that, the drivers are here to stay, and you might have fluctuation and sometimes some markets weaker for a given time, but nothing serious enough to derive we plan. The smart grid [indiscernible] to Markus, something...

Well, I think to -- okay, due to the regulation formula in Germany, which was purely awarding investments of the transmission system or a distribution system operators, they were not forced to make any grid smarter. So that means that most of the part of the grid is definitely not smart. That means we are only just at the beginning to create smartness in the grid. It's definitely less than 10%.

We've got a question from the webcast, and it's on Belgium. Elia, the national grid operator has just announced that they raised more than EUR 2 billion capital. How big is it of an opportunity for SPIE in Belgium.

Thank you for the question. And it's a good news. Elia is one of the biggest customer in Belgium for SPIE Belgium. So we have more than EUR 200 million in tender sales with Elia. So this investment will accelerate probably the -- our business with Elia. So it will have an impact on our development in Belgium.

All right. So I think we're coming to the end of this question session. And there's more. So in that case, thank you all for the preparation of this work and also to the IR and Communication team. Thank you all for your attendance, for the interest you bring to SPIE. And for your continued follow-up of the company as I see faces here, which have been following us for many years. Thank you very much for this loyalty. Have a good day. Thank you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]