Alten S.A.

good evening i apologize for this small delay we had a couple of technical issues which i hope are sorted i hope you can hear me well if it wasn't the case please if it isn't the case please let us know thank you very much for joining this conference regarding the first quarter of 2024. The revenue for Alten is 1.067 billion, which is an increase from last year. We have seen 6% growth in France and 1.6 outside of France. For the same data, the business has growth to almost 1% plus six in France, and it is decreasing outside of France. This quarter has seen 0.9 less working days, which impacted the growth by 1.2%, which means that our organic economic growth would have been 2% for the same number of working days. The activity rate for the first quarter is at 91.5%. It was at 91.7% for the first quarter last year, so slightly inferior than last year because of attention in some countries where the activity has gone into a halt. as you can see the uh decrease in uh business for uh that we saw at the end of 2023 has continued and has accelerated in some places we will talk about it in more detail later the trend that seems to that we we are seeing um we have growth in march after an initial uh higher volume in 2022 we had 57 000 employees at the end of 2023 50 000 engineers end of march we are 58 400 which are all engine of which we saw a 1400 increase for engineers So 150 in France, 370 outside of France. Out of the 51,400 engineers, 11,950 are in France and the rest outside. So we have a slide on the revenue per country. France, if we look at the activity if we split it geographically France has seen good performance despite one less working day so 1.3% impact on growth which would have been 7.3% at for the same number of days we have a good good results in automobile rail defense and security retail and bank finance insurance have seen a decrease In Iberica, Spain 94, Portugal 16, we've seen a 5.5% increase. All the sectors are growing except for banking and finance, which is also seeing a decrease. In Italy, after many years of growth to up to 25%, The growth has slowed down to 14% for this quarter. All the sectors have seen a slowing down, but still showing strong growth because we're over 10% except for bank finance, which went well last year, but also saw a hold for this quarter in the city. Same for telecoms. It has is a sector that has stabilized in Germany. As you can see, we've seen a decrease starting from Q1 2023. The trend has continued for Q1 2024. It is true that there were 1.3 less working days than last year. So for the same number of days, it would have been an only 6.2% decrease instead of the 8. Several sectors in Germany are decreasing, automobile, the automotive industry. This very contrasted situation, the manufacturers except for one are all seeing growth. And it is the decrease of 45%. percent for the equipment. We've seen in Germany also a slowing down in aerospace. The activity is stable, but lower than last year. In the UK, which is also seeing one less working day, the decrease has continued in aerospace and in the public sector. where Method operates, which were acquired two years ago. On the contrary, Automotive, 15% of the revenue is seeing growth because we are working with the manufacturers and not the outfitters. Good growth in Belgium. We've seen a decrease in the Netherlands. So we're now moving on to Benelux. We've seen less projects, which was unexpected in semiconductors. In Scandinavia, less working days as it was for Germany. We've seen a continued decline. especially in automotive. Tooling in Finland also has seen a strong decrease for the first half of the year. And Eastern Europe, same one working day less. The activity is stable. We have a small growth in Poland. Romania has seen a 10% decrease because of the automotive banking finance sectors. In North America, as you can see on the slide, we've seen a continued slowdown of the activity and continued decrease. Canada has seen a decrease for bank and finance. Mexico is only 4% of the North America. is seeing growth especially on uh product uh which is quite productive on automotive bank finance asia pacific satisfactory growth uh four percent china which represents a third of the region has seen uh growth of 11 which is carrying the rest up india representing 30 of the region has also accelerated the growth we're at 17 percent if we could if we um look at station industry japan which is uh 20 of the region has slowed down and for korea 10 the slowdown has been felt because the growth is uh five percent where when it was much higher in uh in the previous year so in total at the group level we are at 0.8 percent growth on average with a couple of countries especially uk germany and scandinavia which are seeing uh the growth rates which you hadn't seen in 6 2020. if we look at it sector by sector so if we move on to the the pie chart which is just here uh automotive uh 18 percent and has seen uh five percent growth mostly thanks to manufacturers because they have seen except for ford in the u.s and volvo trucks in sweden we've seen a significant we've seen a good growth and but the decrease has been seen at the uh automotive suppliers, especially the Germans ones. Rail had started to increase last year, has continued in that direction because we are now at a 7% increase compared to last year. Aerospace, 15% of Alten is still very dynamic, 18% growth despite the slowing down in Germany and UK. Defense, security and naval, same thing, strong progress. more than 20%, which brings it up to 7.3% of the revenue. Energy is stable, 7.4% of our revenue. Oil and gas are only 2% of the revenue, have seen a decrease of 10%. Other sectors, nuclear, for instance, has seen an increase of 6%. Life sciences, 8% of our revenue is seeing a decrease because of mostly at the industrial class where the medical equipment is seeing growth. Industrial equipment, so mostly the heavy industries, industrial equipment and electronics is stable. We've seen an increase of 4% for other industries and semiconductors especially is seeing a significant decrease on almost all regions because we are close to a 10% decrease. Telecoms, a 4% decrease whether it's operators or suppliers. And for finance, 8.5%. We've seen a global decrease of 10% at the group level. The French banks, some Canadian institutions, a couple of Southern European banks to a lesser degree that are feeling the hit of the contraction of investments. Regarding retail services and media, we've seen a 6% decrease. So as you can see here, We have mixed results for the Q1. Some of the results were expected. The macroeconomic situation in Europe was harder than we imagined. To be honest, there are no signs of improvements for Q2, except for the USA, where we have seen positive forecasts. because of pricing or new deals that were not successful. We have still acquired a company, a group of companies to be more precise. We have a presence in Vietnam, which plays a DC role, a sales presence in Japan. It's a company that is specialized in BI, data science and software development. company that realized a 20 million euros revenue in 2023 950 consultants and a bit of 10 so for 2024 the first semester which is well underway will probably continue following the trend of the first quarter. The rebound expected for Q2 is not manifesting clearly. We're not seeing an increase in the call for centers. However, we should have a growth coming uh to us in a in a but it is difficult to uh anticipate which is why we're forecasting a three percent organic growth which will be uh reviewed at the next uh publication depending on how the year goes. So I'll hand it over to you now. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask away. And I'm obviously here and happy to answer any questions you have. So we have a first question from Mr. Markon.

Hello, Bruno. Hello, Eric.

First of all, congratulations for moving to teams. I'm a big fan. Two questions. The first one is the 3% on year. Is it the same theoretical exercise that you do at the beginning of the year? So an embarked growth without taking into account positive net stuffing on the quarters to come? Or is it... really what you think is doable in the current situations with the predictions of net suffering for the next quarters? That's my first question. The second one, is on the automotive industry. What is your visibility on this market for the coming quarters? So the first question we give the embarked growth, because we have no visibility on the growth dynamics. And it's difficult to project and to give even an estimation as to what we do. But communicating on it would be a bit premature. What we did here was looking at the current situation in the most objective way possible to date. And so we asked each department to evaluate what they believe to be reasonable to expect growth-wise for the end of Q1 and Q2, taking into account the trends observed on the first quarter taking into account the perspectives that we had last year or the beginning of this year, because we're realizing that there's quite a lot of clients that are postponing projects. They're not canceled, but they're postponed. And then we have other clients, especially in bank finance, that have reduced their investment budgets. which means that even in aerospace and automotive, there are consultations that are done on projects that should have started now, but will start in September, which leads to our current situation. So 3% is not embarked. It's what looks like. logical to us expected we'll see in july which is the next meeting if we confirm this if we improve it um well not depending on what happens in the interval to be honest it's quite uh um unfortunate we weren't expecting this uh slowdown to last this long um i think that we won't see rebound in 2024 in the us we have more positive uh forecasts especially in the automotive industry for now it's not really show uh translating into more consultations, but the restart after this slow period that is 2024, it might start with the US. But we have a visibility like other sectors where we have consultations of two to three months, manufacturers where things are going well are continuing to follow that trend. An important part of the growth in France actually came from the automotive. We've seen an increase in Germany because they are in a difficult situation. But we're not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the suppliers. When we listen to our German managers, quite depressed and there's no positive messages coming from this side going back on the first thing you said could you can you do the link between the two and a half and bar growth and the plus three that you see today as the most plausible results with the recruitments from q1 because in the plus 2.5 there is the net staff i mean