Sword Group S.E. (9RS.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Interpreted] Good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for being here. Thank you for having day to come here despite everything that is scheduled to block France. Thank you, in particular, for coming here because we have many different things to say, many different things to say about our future and also about the current context. I hope and I believe that there are quite a few questions and the questions will be put, I imagine, to everybody. I won't answer all of the questions personally. For the moment, I would simply like to introduce the conversation that we're going to have. First of all, the conversation will be managed by Greg, who will be talking about technologies, very important. After that, each General Manager will go into detail on their division. And further down the line, we will talk about the figures. So first and foremost, 2025, it's a difficult year. I think we have to be honest. When we say difficult within Sword Group, it means that our organic growth drops from 22% to 12%. I think we'll achieve approximately 30% at the end of the year, that's our objective. But let's say that we will achieve organic growth that will be largely double-digit. Things are going very well. Of course, what is important is the future. And with regard to the future, I'm sure you will sense the extent to which we are in a very positive mindset heading in a very positive direction. I would, however, like you to analyze, particularly the analysts, mainly in Paris. So I hope the dear analysts that you're listening to me, what is important is the comparison with what is comparable. In other words, organic growth. I'm very happy to make acquisitions in all directions. A lot of people have done that in the past and have got things wrong. So please let me repeat, 50% of the acquisitions that are made do not create value. In other words, they destroy value. And I would like us to be judged based on our dividend that our dividend policy is something that you take on board. And also I would like M&A to be analyzed in detail and properly. And when you see our decision to sell off France, to sell GRC at the right time or to acquire cybersecurity companies, I think that here, that is well and truly the strategy, the strategy that we adopt. And to say that we have 20,000 or 30,000 people in the group, that's never something that makes people rich. That's my introduction. Second part of my introduction. We currently have an organization that is not fragile. I am only Executive Chairman, but there are four general managers and the four general managers have full control as general managers. That is a very important point for the future, for the sturdiness and the soundness of the group. I'm very much aware that a group is only worth its future. Next, we have a product and service offering that we've invested in a great deal. And once again, when you haven't got any money, when you're not ready to put money on the table, you, of course, do not invest and you create a vicious circle. On the contrary, we have profits, we will have cash, and we are investing and we'll continue to invest. Greg will talk to you about this. Lastly, when it comes to globalization from the Anglo-Saxon perspective, the international nature of the group is what guarantees our success. We see very clearly when at a given moment in time, you have a division that is slightly less high-performing, other divisions step in and high-perform. We have specific locations that are able to step up to the mark. And hence forth, we are creating synergies across the globe. That's what I wanted to say by way of introduction. Regarding the past, you know full well what the past looks like. And at the bottom of this screen, what is missing is M&A. Please don't worry. Between now and the end of the year, there will be several operations, several M&A operations. So we're making a commitment at the end of the year. There will be acquisitions, but we are in no hurry. We've observed in one negotiation process that we virtually managed to divide by two the value that we proposed initially speaking. So mergers and acquisitions take time. So please don't push us to make mistakes. It's not you, it's the analysts. Please don't push us into making mistakes. Next, the organization, as you can see, we have the four general managers. Nasser apologizes, he has a major challenge that he is up against at the current time in Portugal to be totally honest. And so I will give his presentation on his behalf and be brief about it. Next, we have a system of affiliates. It's very dynamic. I would like to have more affiliates because this is something that enables us to create additional product and service offerings without destabilizing or unsettling our organization. Moving ahead. With regards to the central functions -- let me say, the central functions, we are currently becoming bureaucratic. We have ISO, for example, GDPR, ESG in French, the AI Act and so on and so forth, taxonomy, all those things. How on earth can a company resist if it is not massive in relation to all of this bureaucracy? There are needs, there are a lot of good things. But our challenge is not refusing obstacles, our challenge is making this problem into an opportunity. And from that perspective, I am counting on Greg and on many other people as well. If I look at our financial organization, that is stable. Previously, we subcontracted the management to a person, but also to a company, Frédéric Goosse. Frédéric Goosse sold his company. And at the right time, we had Philippe Blanche who is ready to step in and take over. Philippe introduced himself to you last time. So Philippe, you don't need to do so today. And Philippe has a group of CFOs who are at the perfect level to assist him and work with him. Now our products and services offering hasn't changed, inherently speaking. I'm going today to be a tiny bit arrogant. We used to do document management. Afterwards, we said it was data management. Then we talked about digital transformation. I could serve up all of the buzz words, all of the names that people like to flush around. But to keep it brief, we still have the same vision with regard to the market. Let me turn my phone off. We have a services company. Our company is specialized in services. I apologize for the phone. And the products that we mentioned are all products that are there to draw or attract the client's attention. And ours is not a true product strategy, but products have value. In Venue, for example, you'll possibly talk about it. Will you, Olivier? Okay. I won't talk more about it. And we are either certified in all of these different fields. But just imagine the cost of all of this applied to 17 countries -- to the 17 countries where we are truly present and between 45 and 50 countries where we actually work. So we're going to give you a presentation based on each individual division. And first of all, let me pass you on to Greg. And please, I invite you to wear your headsets, it will probably be useful. Greg, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Jacques, and good morning, everyone. So this morning, I want to talk about what we are doing in AI and cyber. And I guess, to start there, we should think about what's happening and our customers because that is what we base our decisions on our offering. So I think with both of those topics, we view them as very strategic initiatives across our customer base for a couple of key reasons. One is regulation. So in the EU, we have the AI Act that is now in place, that is affecting a huge amount of our customer base. And in the cyber space, we have things like DORA, so the Digital Operational Resilience Act, and NIS2, which are driving new requirements for our customers to be -- to look at to be compliant to continue to do business. So regulation has been a key driver, underpinning what we look at from an AI and cyber perspective and also the increasing need for our customers to transform. So in the last few years, that's been driven by digital. I think we see AI being the new key initiative that our customers are looking to help understand and get us to work with them to implement solutions that they can benefit from. So I'm going to talk you through our AI offerings framework. As I say, this is in direct response to conversations with our customers. All of our customers recognize the hype. They see the potential opportunity, and they've all been exploring what they should do with AI. We really came in as a practical partner to help them drive transformation. So we have a set of enablement services we've developed, which we've been looking at. Can we help them design and clarify the strategy? Can we help them with the security element of AI? So everyone is worried about protecting their data, not leaking personal or confidential information into the public AI services. That's a big part of what we're looking at, at the moment, looking at how we improve sovereignty of data attention when it comes to AI. We are looking at some solutions around that. We spent a lot of time upscaling people. So not just training but actual change in adoption, looking at how people use things like Microsoft Copilot and adopt their ways of working to use that and obviously, compliance with the EU AI Act in particular. We're also looking at how we develop solutions for our customers across a range of areas, looking at predictive analytics. Historically, we've done a lot of work helping people put reports, dashboards in place. We are moving it on to predictive analytics now. We're starting to develop agenetic solutions, looking at how we integrate the AI offerings from the major vendors with people's current systems and data sources, looking at integration, things that MCP is part of that as well. So we have a key set of offerings that are more project-orientated, but our real goal is to be the partner that drives AI transformation. So looking at how we put managed services in place within our key customers to drive that transformation over the next 3, 4, 5 years and looking at how do we identify those pain points and challenges that we can then put our services in place on top of the AI capabilities to drive value for our customers. So that's what we're looking at in AI. We have several successes. One I want to touch on. We are working with a large U.S. bank at the moment. They are working with Microsoft and us to deploy copilot to 100,000 of their internal users. We, at Sword, are delivering the change in adoption program for that. So working across their business units globally, making sure that they get value from that investment. So that's one key thing we're doing in that space. Next, on cyber. Again, regulation is a key part of cyber. But I think we've all seen in the news in the last year or so, [indiscernible] speeds of a tax and complexity of a tax. We are really looking at cyber from a business perspective, looking at operational resilience. So really, our message to our customers here is we can help defend your business. So we've got a range of offerings in this space, again, ranging from strategy, helping our customers understanding their risk and their threat landscape, so to protecting their endpoints, protecting identity of users, protecting their core platforms. And we've just won a circa EUR 10 million contract with a large oil and gas operator in the U.K. It's a new joint venture between Shell U.K. and Equinor U.K. They have awarded us as a prime cybersecurity contractor for the next few years with them. And really, they recognize the importance of the services that we bring, not just to put technology in place, but to be a partner to help defend their business. So that's what we're looking at in the cyber space. We've got some really key partnerships in place there with people like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Unit 42. And the key part of our strategy moving forward is working with them and layering our services on top. So key highlights. We are looking at AI and cyber services, being 20% of our revenue by the end of 2028. So we see these two strategic initiatives is driving a lot of value over the next few years. We're also looking internally how do we benefit from AI itself and avoid potentially 10% of additional costs internally to support that growth. This year, we're making about EUR 1.2 million of investment in dual purpose use cases around AI and cyber. So what I mean by that is developing solutions that we can benefit from internally and also then being able to resell those solutions and provide credibility to our customers. So again, a couple of key highlights. We're the prime cybersecurity contractor for that new joint venture in the U.K., in oil and gas. And we're driving probably one of the world's largest change and adoption programs around AI with the large U.S. bank. So happy to take questions later, but I'll pass on to Dieter. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Dieter Rogiers, and I'm in charge of Sword in Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece and Spain. I will start my short presentation with some key facts and figures. So technology is mainly focusing on the European institutions, more specifically on huge multimillion, multiyear framework contracts. We have a very strong and successful bid team. Just to give you an idea, in 2025, the offers that we submitted and that will be submitted before end of year will exceed EUR 350 million. Sword is a top contractor -- preferred contractor of the European institutions with a very strong European identity. And this identity has become more important than ever more specifically because of what's happening in the world and in the United States. Today, we are serving more than 45 European institutions and European agencies in more than 12 European member states. We gained important expertise in some important fast-growing functional domains of the European institutions. And because of the long-term multimillion framework contracts on which we're working, there's a huge backlog that we have, which exceeds more than EUR 250 million. What is our technical and business expertise? We are a main contractor of the European institutions, like I said, mostly in large IT systems, which are fixed price projects. And this in the domain of application development, application maintenance, application support, also more and more in the domain of managed services and of digital transformations. I will come back in my next slide on the expertise on the functional domains. We also have important business in talent management, talent recruitment and staffing of IT consultants. And in that context, we created also internally some centers of excellence, some competence centers. We are up to date with the latest IT trends and the latest market trends of the European institutions. We recently won major framework contracts in almost all, yes, latest technologies. For cybersecurity, we have won the global overall framework contract at the European institutions, more than EUR 300 million framework contract together with Atos. For artificial intelligence, data analytics and cloud, we are -- we have won European Investment Bank, and we are awaiting results at EUROCONTROL, and at DIGIT, the MAIA contract. And finally, for what has to do with digital transformations and interoperability, there is a huge framework contract eu-LISA. But once again, I will come back in my next slide more in detail on the figures behind. Finally, Jacques was talking about bureaucracy, but that bureaucracy is helping us because it provides us a lot of business as all the ICT regulatory compliance programs of the European institutions are getting more and more important. We are helping them by putting these programs into place. Okay. Something about the fast-growing functional domains in which we are getting more and more importance. I'm particularly thinking about three domains. First, domain is border control and security. Second one is taxation and customs. And finally, there is the intellectual property and the patents business. For border control and security, we are today active in almost all their critical systems. We won the VIS and the SIS framework contracts, so the Visa and Schengen framework contracts. We are active in everything what has to do with ETIAS, so the European Travel Information & Authorization System. We are involved in FRONTEX’'s Travel mobile application and some other important framework contracts as well. For taxation and customs, this is most probably the customer where we have the longest track. We're more than 20 years active with them. And year after year, we are building up the business with them. But we recently won some new major framework contracts with them as well. First of all, in IT service management, in customers and taxation. We also won some operation activities. We at least preselected and started some activities in that area as well. And we have set up, signed strong and strategic partnerships for the upcoming framework contracts in Data Hub and customs area. And finally, the third domain -- functional domain where we are very active is the main of patents office and intellectual property. We have signed a new framework contract with EPO, and we started some new initiatives, Machine Translation Services. The AI assisted paperless patents process and the MyEPO portal. We also are getting more and more fixed-price projects within EUIPO. And finally, there is more and more in-house expertise that we are providing to our customers. Just to give you an idea on the framework contracts on which we are working this year in 2025. The lower part of this slide is showing offers that we already submitted. The total value of those offers is above EUR 60 million. We didn't mention all of them, but well, we already submitted quite a number of offers this year. And there are three very large, very important call for tenders that we are waiting for which we have a very, very strong partnerships -- European partnerships. So to conclude, I think we have the operational excellence. We have a very strong bidding team. We have great teams in general. We have an important pipeline and we have a huge massive backlog. So I'm very, very positive, I'm very confident that we are in track for the 2028 objectives, and that the goals that we are setting are even exceeding those objectives. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Dieter. Thank you very much. I'm going to continue in French, that way some of you can have a slight rest. Good morning, everybody. Olivier Perrotey, I am in charge of the Swiss division. This is a division that works very closely, as you know, with one of the affiliates, Sword Technologies. We provide desktop publishing, IT services and a lot of local services throughout Switzerland. Sword Technologies has offices in Switzerland but also in Canada. So I'll focus on all of the activities taking all of this perimeter into account, including also our business activity in France that is more recent and our Canadian activities. Just to give you an idea of how we're doing and an update in relation to the 2028 Vision that we've shared with you. We are making very good headway this year. There were three main parts that I'd like to look at, the main sectors. These are our verticals, the verticals around which our teams are organized. Next, I'll focus on our business offering, global outsourcing. And last but not least, an update, a bit of topical information concerning our geographic footprint that I just referred to. The first of the sectors that I want to underscore is the sports sector. I'm sure you're familiar with this. Jacques talked about Sword Venue. Sword Venue that is a wonderful showcase for us. We're able to illustrate all of the businesses we enter into showcasing them in the sports sector working with a lot of sporting organizations. We're continuing to develop our business according to plan in the sports sector. In the past, I talked about a niche market. It's no longer such a niche market. We are gradually becoming specialists, fully understanding the IT needs and the specifics to sport, and this really does differentiate us today in this market. As you know, we brought out a press release recently in order to officialize our status as privileged favorite technological partner with the OL Group in Lyon. And the OL Group has had a wonderful start to the season. We're following that very closely. It is not the only one, we also have LDLC Arena for whom we run a certain number of IT services. And we hope that we'll be able to continue to develop business with them and support them in their ambitions within the different arenas in France, but not only. And Sword Venue is a wonderful tool for doing this. In the key sectors, private banking, for example, we could talk about financial services globally speaking. We're also seeing a great deal of development in line with our forecast in this sector. We are exceeding the private banking sector. We now work with a retail bank in Geneva also. And this retail bank has listed us to provide them with all of their IT services, managing their projects, developing applications for them, et cetera. And they are now part of our portfolio. As you know, in Switzerland, we're very fortunate in that we have many international organizations that are present, the United Nations organization, for example. I like going into detail on these international organizations. Please note that we've set out a long-term agreement that often lasts for 3 to 5 years with a certain number of international organizations. One of them is IRENA. I could refer to the International Agency for Renewable Energies for example. In the public sector, Jacques, you talked about the fact that it's very true. Currently, we have the obligation to achieve certification -- ISO certification. It's true in Switzerland as well. We even have our own certifications. [indiscernible] is one. This is very much requested by public authorities. It's important to note, nevertheless that if you want to work with all three levels, if you want to work with the local levels in Switzerland and the federal level of local government, you cannot do so unless you have ISO certification, CSR certification, EcoVadis, et cetera. So what was a costly investment in the past now is absolutely necessary for us, and it really makes the difference between you and the competitors. It enables us to consolidate our position. Yes, a press release came out this week concerning lots of new developments, lots of new clients -- three new clients who have listed us in [indiscernible] in local government, and we will be working with them from 2025 through to 2028. So this means that it's a backlog that is guaranteed will increase the number of staff, the revenue, et cetera. Let me now move forward a bit more quickly on global outsourcing. We round off our offer. Jacques, you talked about synergies. We have some wonderful synergies with Greg's teams, wonderful synergies as well with Dieter's teams in Greece, et cetera. All of the new partnerships in cybersecurity are very much ongoing. We're also deploying our products as service centers. We can start out with a product, and we can use it to facilitate the work that is then done by a team to provide services, and it's highly profitable. This is something we're developing more and more. Also, sometimes we break down borders, and we don't just work in the sports sector, but we help our clients when they ask us to make digital contents available, different types of videos. These are gradual subjects that are gradually completing our product and service offering in this sector. I've talked a great deal about French-speaking Switzerland. As you know, we made an acquisition in Bern last year. And that means that today, we're gradually expanding our activities in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. New clients in Zurich, in particular, the ETHZ, apologies for the acronym. That's the polytechnic school of Zurich. We're already working with the polytechnic school in Lausanne. So it's great to have this new one. The summer is always a very busy period for Sword Venue. We've worked with the Tour de France, the Paris Marathon. We also have teams in China for the world games. All of this is something that is leading to some very good business developments. and the business activities that I referred to also related to Sword Technologies, their business is now developing in Greece with a global service center for everything that revolves around Microsoft Office 365. That is something that is so wide ranging. A lot of requests still coming in on the subject alongside with cybersecurity. We're very well equipped in Switzerland to be able to provide these services and throughout Europe. That's what I wanted to say on that part. In addition to our product and service offering, nevertheless, I, of course, want to talk about artificial intelligence. AI is a field we're working on developing with Greg's teams. We provide real added value in the sports sector, for example. All of the issues potentially related to managing data, particularly in the context of the athletes organizing the sports event. All of this means we're very strong. We've got a very steady, sound product and service offering. We talk about multi agents or our agentic approach. And in Switzerland, there's massive demand out there for what we call Sovereign AI. In other words, we make sure that currently we're capable of guaranteeing to our clients that their data will remain within their IT environment whilst guaranteeing that the AI tools can still be very powerful. This is a strong product and service offering. And I repeat, a lot of demand out there for this. Next, moving on when it comes to platform management, different IT platforms. As per usual, we work with clients to modernize their business applications, lots of migration issues. In the past, these were sectors for the future. Then you've got the cloud identity management, for example, related to desktop publishing, all kinds of IT systems and lots of adaptive, preventive and corrective maintenance that keep most of our teams very busy. So we have a global product and service offering that is very much in line with outsourcing. We work with 20-or-so countries. We have a follow-the-sun approach for our managed services, whether it's for application support, user support, housing and so on and so forth. Literally, we follow the sun. I'm not necessarily going to go into detail on all of the elements that are on the screen because I've already referred to quite a few of them. The general public never know how Switzerland is structured and organized. Local government is very complex. But obviously, we work in health, mobility, transport, energy in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. We do a lot of work in these areas. We have new partners of financial services for extending what we do in the core banking sector. And there are so many acronyms I'm using. We have onboarding of new clients that we work in as well. A lot of our clients are very interested in this. One sector I didn't mention, and this is related to the expert knowledge we have in terms of financial services. We currently work in ATI for the aviation sector. Typically speaking, we use our know-how in the financial sector in order to develop and deploy clearing services, financial intermediation, platform in the aviation sector. One of our clients, for example, is the International Association for Air Transport that runs all of the main aviation companies. But you've also got the SITA specialized in the telecoms part. This is a sector that is extremely buoyant and we work with them on very ambitious plans currently for 2026, and we believe there will be a great deal of investment in these areas. In the past, we've talked about our developments all around the world from a sports perspective, and we might focus on that when we talk about WADA is the World Anti-Doping Agency. I have a meeting that is scheduled virtually every 6 years. It's their annual conference. And within the scope of the annual conference, they give us the opportunity to speak. We provide IT for all of their systems. And during the scope of this 6 yearly conference, we have access to all of the international federations, to all of the national agencies and to certain governments as well that take part in the event. That's a very brief overview. I've talked -- I wanted to talk about Richemont very briefly and the two other contracts you have on the screen, all part of framework agreements and the Olympique Lyonnais, I won't refer back to. Just one last point to conclude, a few pictures. It looks a bit marketing like. But on the right-hand side, you've got an illustration of the different sporting events that we've worked on. We have a Sword Day that we organize for our clients. I think we're going to do it over a 2-day period from now on because so many people seem interested in taking part. And we also celebrated Sword's 20th anniversary in Switzerland just before the summer. And it was a wonderful opportunity to bring together all of our teams, our partners and to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Thank you very much. So let me now pass the floor over to Kevin. Kevin will talk about the U.K.

Good morning. Kevin Moreton, I am in charge of the U.K. and the U.S. operation. Very proud to be here today. Great to talk to you. First thing, I'd like to highlight our success this year, and I'll pay down to three things. The strength of my team, the evolution of our offerings. I think we've been very good at listening to our customers and working out where to place ourselves. And lastly, the ability to integrate our previous acquisitions and make sense of our organization and how we line up to our customers' markets. So I think that's the three things that's really helped us this year. In terms of our sectors, we're in energy, public sector and financial services. We continue to be strong in oil and gas. It's a difficult market that our cost optimization agenda is upon it due to government regulations. We found a way through it. There's a change agenda. There's a lot of assets offshore platforms changing hands. That change agenda brings opportunity for us. And with our M&A offering, which I'll talk about on a subsequent slide, I think we've been very relevant to the challenges that market faces. No more evident than the GBP 20 million project, which we've won and delivered successfully this year for a company that's a new entrant to that market. That's very encouraging. Over and above energy is a mix, as you know, of oil and gas, renewables and other sources. I talked to you last time about our hope to win our biggest ever contractor renewables. We were successful in that since we talked last time. It's our biggest ever contract. It's a GBP 25 million award just now, could become GBP 60 million. And in fact, we've been awarded or we've got onto several subsequent frameworks. They can see that being hundreds of millions in years to come. So very encouraging our progress in renewables. In terms of cyber, we've got both an IT cybersecurity offering and an OT cybersecurity offering. That's more relative to industrial companies, manufacturing companies typically. We'll organize our business to make sure we can bring both of those capabilities to bear next year. And again, I'll talk to you about that on a subsequent slide. In public Services, we've been working hard on broadening partnerships to make it easier for public sector organizations to be able to buy from us. That's key. There's a lot of regulation in terms of how they can buy. It's different from private sector. Greg talked to you a little bit, they've been working on the evolution of our data and AI offering. We think that's very relevant. I think it's very relevant to where the U.K. government will be apportioning their budget and spend. We believe that's going to be in defense and in health. We believe the opportunities in both of those sectors are in data and AI, particularly in the health sector. Defense sector, there's an initiative called the Defense Tech Scaler program, which really is the ability or the desire for the government to work with smaller partners. Now we are considered a smaller partner in relation to some of the big multinationals that we compete against and often win against. But it offers us great scope to grow our public sector revenues in the coming years. In financial services, again, Greg touched on it, we've been working with a very large bank. We should be very proud of the fact that we were selected to train and educate and help them adopt AI within their business, 100,000 users that may become a bigger project, and we look to replicate that across our customers. Again, there's the development of partnerships. Partnership is really a key theme for us in the U.K. We've been working with lots of technology partners, working very closely with them, making sure we develop that relationship in the right way. Why? Because they become an extension of our sales team, they bring opportunities to us. We're able to increase our revenues through selling their products and pull through our services ability and capability to deliver bigger projects. So I'm really keen to continue to develop on our partnership model in the U.K. And I think, as I said, it's been one of the key things that's led to our success. Also since last time we made an acquisition, a small one, nevertheless, strategic in terms of what it brings to us. It was a company called iDelta. That brings cyber and AI capability, in particular, access to financial services, accounts and customers. We will merge that capability with our cybersecurity offering going into next year, and we think it really offers us a compelling differentiator to the market. So I'll tell you more about that next time we talk. Without becoming overly technical, in fact, it's not possible for me to be overly technical because I'm not. But we're working very hard on developing or looking for an acquisition that can give us greater capability in what we would term a multi-hybrid cloud. Why? Still a lot of data payloads to be migrated to the cloud. There's still a nervousness, particularly within financial services around the security of that data, and they don't want to be beholden to only one cloud provider. So we feel it's very important that we have capability in more than one and that's something we're working very hard on. We're working with some companies at the moment. We're active in discussions. I hope to tell you more when we talk again in March. So moving on, our services and offerings. It was very clear with the guys when we talked today as a management committee. Again, our success has been a testament to making sure we listen to customers. I'm not going to market with an IT or a technology solution. We're going to market with offerings that deliver outcomes to our customers. And so we have defined four key offerings. I have four COOs, as you will see in the org chart. By design, each one of those guys owns one of these go-to-market offerings. Data and AI, it's very clear, Greg talked about it and why we've developed that proposition. Operational resilience. We don't really talk about cyber security to our customers, we talk about operational resilience. Why? Because it's inevitable that most organizations will be penetrated one way or another from a cyber attack at some point in time. How do they continue to run the business? How do they make sure that they are resilient to things that are inevitably going to happen to them? So it's more than cybersecurity, it's process, it's [indiscernible]. We've got to think about a lot of things with them. So we talked about operational resilience. That message is lending particularly well, especially in financial services, but our customers get it when we start talking about these things, and it lines up to one of the apps that Greg referred to earlier on, which is DORA. We're also very prevalent with some of the financial services organizations, particularly FinTech Scotland, where we're helping drive the agenda about how they evolve their operating offerings and how they use technology to advance their business and to become more modern in that approach. So very proud of that one. Mergers and acquisitions. Look, our focus has always been on oil and gas. We are #1 by a mile in terms of our capability. We are the go-to partner when somebody looks to enter that market with no capability or indeed if they're transferring assets from one provider to another. We've got many case studies, lots of track record, and it continues to be something that's working very, very well for us. We have end-to-end capability in terms of networking, cyber infrastructure applications and so on, overlaid by the domain experience, which we clearly have in that market. Again, in discussions with my colleagues yesterday, what's the applicability of that mergers and acquisitions offering to your other markets? Well, the answer is very applicable. It's largely the same things that we can bring to every market and using the demand expertise within our constituent teams is what will allow us to differentiate ourselves. And lastly, global managed services. Why to talk about global managed services? The cost optimization agenda, particularly in energy, is leading customers to think about how they reduce operating costs, quite often that comes down to IT being seen as a cost. Therefore, they look for where can they get savings. Now we've all seen the model of outsourcing to nearshore and offshore locations with limited success, particularly in oil and gas and years gone by. Our offering is a bit more modern and nuanced in that we will still lead the customer engagement in all interactions with the end users in English locally available to them, but with the right functions backed off to our group. And it's really encouraging that we now start to see synergies in cooperation with the guys in the Middle East, in particular India. So that's allowing us to bring a price point to our customers that's attractive to them as they wrestle with the taxation agenda that's on them as well as the headwinds that clearly are in that oil and gas market in the U.K. So I think these offerings, we've been working very hard and it aligns very well with our customers. My guys, my team are doing a great job. It's what I think is one of the key things that's allowing us to win more instead of just talking about technology or people. I don't intend to cover this. You can read this at your leisure, and there are clearly far too many words. But suffice to say, as well as the growth we've delivered this year, I see a great future ahead for us. I'm very confident about delivering our '28 plan. I think we've won two or three projects that we had never envisaged were capable in years gone by, by the strengthening of our offering, by the strengthening of our team, by our ability to integrate acquisitions. I'll let you read those at your leisure. As I said before, there are still some massive opportunities and still something that could make a difference to us this year, but it gives us lots of certainty going into next year and beyond. Again, these are just three examples of some of the larger projects that we've won very recently, very strategic ones for us clearly. I'll leave it to you and amuse them yourself. Ready to take questions afterwards. Thank you for listening to me today. I'll speak to you soon.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much to all of you. Very, very briefly I'm going to speak on behalf of Nasser. Nasser is the profitability genius. He lasted for over 10 years. Nasser is in charge of our offshore services, the English-speaking offshore services out of India, and we celebrated the 20th anniversary in India. And the second Arab-speaking and French-speaking setup out of Lebanon that works very, very well. And we've secured it with a backup set of offices in Cyprus. So we work out of Cyprus and Lebanon, and we can move the teams around. The teams are all very, very young and very happy to travel. We also have the Middle East, Dubai. Dubai is a market in itself. We have contracts with local government setups, notably with the ministries. And our ambition is to succeed in making headway into Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, the U.K. has managed to work directly with NEOM, I've already talked about that. We are now present in Riyadh. We have found the ideal shareholder -- Saudi shareholder to help us. And in 2026, I'm sure we will be able to talk about successes in Saudi Arabia. Very briefly, that's what I wanted to say about Nasser's sector. Moving on. Our objective has not changed. People often say to me, but how are you going to be successful in 2028? How are you going to achieve these targets despite the fact that you're delaying M&As? Now with M&A, with acquisitions, if you -- whether you perform the M&A at the beginning of 2025 or 2026, it really doesn't matter. The important thing is to choose the right companies and the right companies can't just be summed up by the revenue. What is important is their capacity to remain in synergy. Our capacity to solve any technological issues and our capacity to guarantee that we have know-how that creates organic growth. You might ask us, how are we going to switch from valorization 1x the revenue to many more times the revenue? Well, I believe that when we compare companies today, it's important to compare organic growth and also profitability. I'm under the impression that we are in the process of illustrating that we are capable under very difficult circumstances, sometimes 2025 is difficult. We are capable of continuing to be profitable whilst guaranteeing double-digit growth. So I am very confident as to our figures of EUR 1 billion. If it's EUR 900 million, I'm sure you'll accept it as well. Let's look at the figures, the figures for 2025. The first quarter, these are the figures very much on line with what we scheduled and we've predicted the figures for 2025. It goes without saying that in the fourth quarter, we have provided for strong growth. So we are not going to multiply EUR 175 million by 2 in order to provide you with the figures for 2025. The figures will be higher. We announced EUR 363 million for the current perimeter, we are continuing to announce it's EUR 363 million. If it's EUR 362 million, please to be angry, EUR 363 million for the full year. So 12% in terms of organic growth and 12% in terms of the EBITDA IFRS profitability. How is it distributed across the board? This year, the organic growth is provided mainly by the U.K. And I don't like the word transition but BeNeLux is currently doing very well in a difficult period. The period where we're winning fixed price contracts. These contracts are going to be set in place. It's up to the European Union to decide, but we also have to be able to put together the teams. We have to be able to guarantee that we have the capacity to provide the services using our near shore systems. So I would say that there's a certain degree of stagnation that was very much on the cards that were scheduled, and it does not mean that we anticipate future stagnation. Very much on the contrary, we anticipate growth. For the rest, everything is what we expected and it's online with the budget. Concerning our P&L, we have an EBIT of 10%, that's the current EBIT. What about the noncurrent costs? They amount to 75% of the cost of the M&A. You might say, but you haven't made any acquisitions. That's why I'm telling you we will make acquisitions and these acquisitions will justify these M&A costs. And as far as the rest is concerned, the financial costs -- the standard financial costs, we do have an issue at the current time. Our group is present in 27 countries, and we have to keep a certain amount of money available in numerous countries. So as a result, we have credit lines that we use at the same time as we have cash available. Let me now go into detail on the cash or rather a bit further down the line. Let's talk about the balance sheet. The balance sheet is pretty constant. Why? Because we are constant in the way in which we run our businesses, the way in which we communicate with the market, the way which we manage because we haven't made any acquisition. You generally see that the goodwill increases because we've made an acquisition, but it's not the case for the moment. Next, there is one modification. This concerns our trading and other receivables. And this is related to the new contracts. I won't go into detail again on net cash position that is impacted by three criteria that the management entered into because of the fact that we have numerous countries, the part -- the contracts that are partly due and also the work in progress, the WIP. Here, you've got all of the liabilities or the financial debt. Here, I'm going to be totally honest with you, you're used to this. It's always good to be able to be honest. I really don't understand IFRS, but we have to abide by it. You can see that there is an increase due to hypothetical debt. In other words, currently, we do not owe EUR 39 million to our key people because for the moment, they haven't delivered the target -- the budget for 2028. But in terms of IFRS, these new share deals that will have an impact on the cash in 2029 have to be considered as a debt. Although for the moment, we don't owe the money. So to me, that is wrong, it shouldn't be the case. So obviously, it means that in terms of cash management, we're having to manage the cash, but the share deal will only be paid out in 2028, but we have the wherewithal. We have ambitions, but we have the money to achieve our ambitions. Let's focus now on cash, what does our net cash position look like in the bank, not in terms of IFRS. In the bank, our net cash position on 30th of June 2025, down EUR 45.4 million. Let me give you the exceptional items. First of all, the last share deals that we have paid out EUR 23.5 million, there won't be any more until 2029. And also delayed payment of invoices that, of course, will be paid between now and the end of the year. And also the H1 acquisition costs, these are the earnouts. This hopefully will enable you to put things into context. If we had our net cash position as usual, then we'd have been down EUR 5 million. So currently, our net cash position is quite strong, and with the same perimeter. In other words, without any acquisitions. At the end of the year, we will be down EUR 15.5 million. In other words, we will recover approximately EUR 30 million between now and the end of the year. With regard to our backlog, the backlog is stable. It's been stable from one quarter to the next. Our next one is going to be the end of the year because it means that our backlog is going to be compared with the budget for next year and our budget will be at least 12% higher. So in terms of the number of months, we have to continue to sign contracts if we want to continue with the stability. Let me repeat you, as long as we have beyond 19 months in terms of the backlog and given the current state of affairs in our group, it means that we know we can achieve double-digit growth. Next, let's take a look at the clients. Our top 10 clients are relatively stable. And this gives you a clear illustration of how our divisions function. BeNeLux ought to change. They ought to just say EU. Next you've got the U.K. and Switzerland. These are the three divisions that provide the biggest portion of the revenue for the group. And these are the three divisions that I consider to be on very good form for 2026. Let's take a look at the staff. This is secondary. I would argue that if we could achieve EUR 1 billion with two people, we would be very, very happy to do so. Staff is a resource, a resource I stress that we need to invest in. We have to invest in young people, young people who are capable of developing AI and who are capable of developing cybersecurity. We should not be investing in people who are going to focus on old models, low end of the range delegation models. I, for example, don't have anybody working for me. I don't need those kind of old models but I need to have a clear vision for the next 2 years, I need young people able to provide these services in our P&L. That's our objective. We're not interested in calculating the number of people, we will have hired. Please keep in mind that clearly, people like working for us because the staff turnover is very, very low. Let's look at the share price. We have based the share price as of the 30th of June. Currently, the share price has dropped slightly. And my role is to work in order to reestablish the real value of the share that was at EUR 38. So when I analyze our performance, I analyze our performance taking into account the share performance at the end of the given term. We're talking about the first 6 months. And so I've taken into account the share price on the 30th of June. Some people might comment, but we always need to focus on our performance in a comparable manner. And apart from a difficult year in 2024, we always guarantee to our shareholders the profitability of their investment. And at the right time, when disposals occur, we always pay out the shareholder for the risk that they took. So at the end of the day, we have a track record that isn't as bad as all that. Here are the future dates. I wanted to be brief because I wanted to leave plenty of space for questions. A lot of people are not present here in the room, so Stéphanie is going to be in charge of the questions.

[Interpreted] The question in the chart that way, it gives those of you in the room a bit of time to think of your questions. I have a question on the European Union market. Will the current crisis reduce the size of this market over time? Go ahead in French.

[Interpreted] Hello. Well, of course, there is an impact. However, my answers is as follows. My answer is made up of three parts. Concerning the current business, I think the Sword virtually only works on critical systems for the European Union. So there will be 0 impact, very much the opposite. Next, there are all the new calls for tender all of the European procedures as we call them. From this perspective, there has been an impact in 2023 and in 2024 on the European budget. There was a transfer of money towards the defense sector. And there were lots of cause for tender that were delayed and very rightly so Jacques said that, the revenue for the BeNeLux countries are stagnated to a certain extent this year, not because we worked badly, but just because there were fewer bids with new business in 2023 and 2024. So that is having an impact on us now in 2025. But the good news is that there will be a catch-up process in 2025. We're currently in the process of responding to calls for tender, as I mentioned in my presentation, for a value of at least EUR 350 million. I'm sure we'll reach as much as EUR 400 million. So for the next few years, in theory, we'll be able to catch up, let's say, for the last time this year. And one last point and this is very much to our advantage. We have a -- ours is a European entity. And we're currently seeing that the European entities much prefer to work with other European companies. We've realized that for the first time in 30 years working with the European institutions that we won a major contract in cybersecurity, and I mentioned it in my presentation, with over EUR 300 million. We run the contract with Atos, and yet we were the most expensive bidder. At no moment in my career, have I seen a consortium win a contract despite the fact that they were priced very highly. So it's a great trend, a great trend to see.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Dieter. I have a question. Can you provide us with an update on the spending at the level of the public sector in the U.K., the investments, in other words, rather?

Hello. So I think I touched on it a little bit in my presentation in so much that the government is very keen to stimulate the use of technology, particularly in defense for obvious reasons based on what's going on globally. And also the health sector. So we see real opportunities in both of those. Defense is a little bit harder to penetrate in terms of level of clearance, et cetera. You need to be able to work in there, but that's something we are working on very actively at the moment. So I mean, we think we know where the money is going to be spent. We're lining up our offerings and propositions to do that. We're active in conversations, and we'll see if we're right or not.

[Interpreted] Any questions from the room or shall I continue with my questions?

[Interpreted] Hello. One of the worries we might have with your business is the Americans' attempt to withdraw from certain NGOs that could maybe reduce their funding, their capacity to work with suppliers such as you. Last year, when we asked you the question, you said you weren't very worried. Are you still not very worried?

[Interpreted] So to be totally honest, I am not going to bet on double-digit growth with organizations like UNICEF, for example. Yes, there is an impact, but it is a limited impact because when the business goes down in one area, you can keep your positions because you're better equipped nevertheless. UNICEF in the past was 100% based in New York, that was 2 years ago. Nowadays, they are based in Wales, and we have some fabulous successes, unexpected -- totally unexpected successes because now they're interested in working in Europe. I would say one-off sets the other. So my answer is, if a couple of years ago, you'd have asked me what the growth rate would be, I'd say, between 0% and 5% in the United Nations, but hey.

[Interpreted] Can you refer back to the way which you function with the affiliates, with those that you refer to as the affiliates?

[Interpreted] The affiliates function according to the same rules as everybody. They have the General Manager. The General Manager has to comply with all of our rules, reporting, payment, everything. The only difference is that the share capital is shared. That is the only difference. It's only the share capital. So from a financial perspective, there are minority shareholdings. That's the only difference between an affiliate and a non-affiliate. It's the percentage of the share capital that we own.

Does it mean that you're a majority shareholder with a minority shareholder?

We can be slightly the minority shareholder. The IFRS definition is simply that we make the decisions. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Nicolas Thorez, ODDO. I have two questions I'd like to put concerning growth in BeNeLux. My question is, is your growth related to ramp up above all? Or do you -- is it related to the competitive environment as well in the BeNeLux sector? And my underlying question basically is what about for the second half of the year, what will business be like? Will there be a catch-up between now and 2026? And Jacques, what about evolving the scope, the perimeter? Can you talk a bit about M&A, how you're doing in terms of M&A?

[Interpreted] I'll talk about that afterwards.

[Interpreted] And I know also that you have the possibility of broadening the scope of the business that you do with tiny disposals, tiny purchases. Maybe you could talk a bit about that.

[Interpreted] I'll talk very cautiously. But thank you for the question. At least there's an analyst here. I'll be very brief in my answer. I'm extremely -- I feel very positive about 2026. We'll catch up. We'll make up for anything that hasn't necessarily functioned this year. We'll have -- we've got EUR 400 million bids that are currently being evaluated and our experience from the past enables us to say that we believe we will win between 60% and 65% of the contracts currently under study. It's just a question of time. You have to give time to the European institutions to assess the current bids. And will we catch up as of the beginning of 2026 or in the second half of 2026, that's the only unknown quantity, if you like. Now it is very difficult to talk about what is half the price or ongoing in terms of M&A. But let me be transparent -- as transparent as I can be. We never hesitate to dispose of something that needs to be disposed of. If it's in the group's interest, you know that, and we will continue to do so. It goes without saying that currently, if you look at the number of business units that we have, if there is one that we could dispose of, we would dispose of it yesterday, but it won't make any difference the group. Secondly, yes, we do have two LOIs that could potentially lead to acquisitions within the next few months, maybe before that. And I am confident that we will sign at least one of those very, very quickly. But each time these are small acquisitions. Now in your question, there was an underlying question, are we ready at the moment to acquire EUR 40,000 or EUR 50,000 worth of company? And the answer is clear. I said to Kevin the other day, we are fully ready to make this kind of acquisition now.

[Interpreted] I have a question in the chat. The nondistributed capital has risen. Is that something we will see over time?

[Interpreted] Hang on a minute. I know that I need to think before I speak. Let's have a look. Philippe, may be? Okay. So we're back on the share deals. Go ahead, Philippe, with the microphone please.

[Interpreted] It is true. You have a minus figure here up to the end of June. This is because of the introduction of the share deal. But of course, the reserves will gradually build up over the next few years, and this figure will return to the positive. So I would say this is what the balance sheet looks like on the 30th of June, but none of this is sustainable. In other words, it will be back in the positive. Yes, we can't just take into account this presentation. It's ridiculous. It's the IFRS part that is ridiculous.

[Interpreted] Stephanie, I have another question. You talked about the strong demand in terms of the sovereign cloud. How do you anticipate that this trend will evolve? And what is your strategy to rise to this trend? Greg?

So I think, again, we've said it a few times today, we listen to our customers. And I think there is a trend in certain countries that this idea of -- they want to be able to use these AI capabilities, but they are nervous about their regulations and also they are comfort with, I guess, exposing your internal data, sensual data to the system. So that's where the issue lies. In response to that, we've looked at how do we invest and essentially creating a solution where we can still access those LRM models, whether that's from GPT or others but we do that in an environment that we are in control of. So using our range of technology. So things like Kubernetes to containerize the solution running on either Azure or AWS or GCP and using things like Open WebUI and LibreChat to give those customers the same sort of experience that they are used to and the open public services around AI, but do that in a secure contained environment. So we've already made great progress in that space. We have that solution developed. It is able to scale, and we are in the process of talking to several customers, particularly in Switzerland about that offering. But we can take that same approach and we could deploy that to any of our customers who have that same concern and they want to use those public cloud services, but in that secured and protected environment.

[Interpreted] Any other questions in the room? I have more questions. With regard to the contract with WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, will this give rise to new contracts with new agencies?

[Interpreted] Thank you very much. Maybe this will enable me to round off what I said about NGOs. In relation to the World Anti-Doping Agency, thanks to our contract with them, we have been able to work with two additional contracts within football associations and other big events organizers. That was the impact we were looking to achieve. So it's all very positive. And we often talk about whereabouts, where are the systems that enable the athletes to declare their positions to be able to be subjected to the anti-doping tests. And next, we work on integration with the ADAMS system. It's the global administrative system for the World Anti-Doping Agency that we run. And here, we develop APIs. In other words, to permit integration with national and more local agencies. And this is what we'll be focusing on in the conference in December. We'll present a certain number of things for the individual agencies. Let me just round off what was said. We believe that we will achieve growth above and beyond 5% within United Nations organizations because, yes, people are under pressure in terms of their budgets. However, please keep in mind that the IT part is often protected also dematerialization of paperless solutions, a lot of people are looking to develop those in these kinds of organizations. They want to streamline their processes. So the IT spend is on the rise. So we are able to position ourselves well. And we are also ramping up our striking power, thanks to our nearshore offshore solutions. We can rise to the challenge. We're opening up a new agency, IRENA, for example, for renewable energies. That is pure growth for us. It's new budgets that are opening up. Suddenly, the post strings are simply being released, and we have our hand inside the pouch.

Yes, there were three spending sectors. There is peacekeeping, the general secretariat in New York, and there's also the agencies for the United Nations. And I think that the first two will suffer more than we will.

[Interpreted] A new question. You referred to a shareholder in Saudi Arabia. Will that Saudi Arabian join the share capital?

[Interpreted] Its a good question. This is a shareholder from the subsidiary. Because in these countries, we have to have premises as a shareholder. So it is a question of Sword KSA and not Sword Group. And we will always be a majority shareholder. That's my answer.

[Interpreted] We have a question on money owing. A lot of money owing, how are you looking to improve the working capital?

[Interpreted] I'm putting the general managers under massive pressure to make sure that the bills get paid faster. It's not worth implementing anything particular. All of these terms are very difficult. We're choosing to focus on the 30th of June. It's not important -- it's important to note that we're dealing with massive organizations and sometimes just with a few drifts. They can be delayed payments of invoices, but this is very occasional. So I think it's better to focus on the 31st of December. On the 31st of December, you will see that everything will be in a perfect state of a phase.

[Interpreted] No questions in the room? Is everything clear? I have one question concerning those people who have Sword shares. What are the funds that own Sword shares? Unfortunately, we cannot answer because not all of the funds make this information public. We do not necessarily know.

[Interpreted] I was going to say, Stephanie. Please answer, I've anticipated. So there is Eximium that you don't necessarily always see at the same level because they are often present on the SLD, they have 20% or maybe a bit more. This means that any movement made by Eximium is visible. There are the family shareholders, of course, and then there are the funds that are very stable. And I think that 70% of the share capital is very stable. Yes, definitely.

[Interpreted] There were many, many questions on the acquisitions and the disposals, but a lot of answers have been provided, I believe. We have a new question.

[Interpreted] What are your ambitions in the sports sector? Do you plan to achieve external growth in the sports center?

[Interpreted] Well, you can tell Philippe sell that if he wants to sell Atos major events, we'd be delighted to look at the deal, but I don't think he'd want to. I think we will gradually become a bigger player. We don't necessarily want to be #1 in Europe, but if we could be 2 or 3, that would be great. But I think there's a lot of space, but it's difficult to make headway. We've been working very hard. We've invested a great deal with the UEFA, we're present with the FIFA now. We potentially could become the #3. To become #1, we're going to need help. That's all it's about.

[Interpreted] Okay. If there are no further questions, for those of you who are in the room, a cocktail is served.

Thank you very much to everybody. I don't know who asked the questions if it was the other analysts, but thank you very much to everybody for your questions. Thank you. Thank you to you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]