Vantiva S.A.

Okay, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Ventiva's third quarter revenue conference call, chaired by Luis Martinez-Amago, our CEO, and Lars Ehlen, our CFO. At this time, all participants are in listen mode only. Later, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you'd like to register a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad. Just to remind you, all this conference is being recorded. We would like to inform you that this event is also available live on our PNTVAS website with synchronized slideshow. During this conference call, statements could be made that constitute forward-looking statements based on management's current expectations and beliefs, and we are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the future results expressed, forecasted, or implied by such forward-looking statements. For a more complete list and description of such risks and uncertainties, refer to Vontiva's filing with the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers. I would now like to hand over the call to Luis. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Thierry, and good evening, everyone, and thank you for being in the call. As I'm sharing with all of you, in this call since the end of last year, and as you maybe are also aware, hearing from other players in the industry and especially for the two or three big network equipment providers, 2023 is a low demand year due to the macro economical situation in the world. In addition, 2022 was an exceptional high demand year due to the shortage that we were suffering, which created some excess of inventory in our customers that they are consuming gradually during the year. And this contrast between the extraordinary high demand in 2022 and the extraordinary low demand in 2023 makes the basis of comparison a bit abnormal. None of this is coming as a surprise to us. We prepare the year with the right market assumptions, and the year is developing within the min-max revenue scenarios and is slightly lower than expected in quarter three, as you will see in a minute. But the good news is that we are maintaining our EBITDA and EBITDA guidance, our profitability guidance, which proves that the actions launched and that we launched for this year are delivering the expected results, which, as you know, not many companies in our industry can say this. We are adjusting our free cash flow guidance, mostly due to some revenue timing within quarter four, which is impacting the time of the cash collections. Concerning a longer view, we don't yet see signs of demand recovery. Visibility is still limited into next year, but we are preparing our plans for a difficult 2024 still with a weak demand. But the top priority for all of us is to execute in the project that we already communicated to all of you a few weeks ago, is the acquisition of CONSCOP home units and integrate them into Vantiva. The priority will be to execute our plans on this aspect. As shared with you here, we saw that this is a transformational project for the industry at large and for Vantiva in particular. It's a consolidation that the industry was needed and it's a very important project for Vantiva. The feedback that we are getting from customers and partners are very positive and encouraging. We are convinced that with the amount of synergies that we are planning, This is a significant value creation project for all our stakeholders, our customers, our partners, investors, and employees. 2024 will be a transformational year for Vantiva. The market will recover at some point, and we are sure that we will have a very efficient and performing company to make our customers successful with our products and services. In the following two slides, you have a breakdown of revenues for quarter three and year to date, splitting them by the business divisions. I think they are self-explanatory, and if you have any questions, we are ready to answer. My only comment, and I would like to repeat, is the abnormal comparison basis between the two years. Again, being 2022, a higher demand than normal, and 2023, a lower demand than normal. And with this, and in the final slide on the guidance, you will see our confirmation of the profitability, as I indicated, and the adjustment that we are making in terms of free cash flow expectations. And with this, I would propose to move to the questions and answers.

Thank you, Luis. Operator, please go ahead.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Once again, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. If you have any questions or comments, then wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced for any questions or comments. We have no questions at this time. I will now hand back to you for closing remarks.

Okay, thank you again for being here, and I'm happy to share with you in the next occasion the closing of the year and the future evolution of our project. Thank you, and talk to you later.

And if you have further questions for this evening or tomorrow, feel free to call me whenever you want. Have a good evening. Bye now.