VusionGroup

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Vision Group first half 2024 results conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, Mr. Olivier Guénon, Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Radia. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to RH1 2024 Results Conference Call. I'm here today with Thierry Gadou, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. as well as Thierry Lemaitre, our Deputy CEO and Chief Finance Officer. Thierry Gadot will start with some remarks on the group's first half business and ESG highlights. Thierry Lemaitre will then comment our financial performance, and Thierry Gadot will conclude with some comments on our full year outlook. After these remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. As a reminder, some of the information to be discussed on our call today is forward-looking and subject to important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For these, I refer you to the safe harbor statement included in our press release and on slide three of this presentation. This evening's release was issued a short while ago and is available in French and in English on Vision Group's website, vision.com. The slides of this presentation can also be found on our website in the regulated information section, and a replay and a transcript will also be available on our website after the call. And with this, it's my pleasure to hand you over to Thierry Gadot for his opening remarks.

Thanks, Olivier. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our conference call. Let me first summarize H1 performance in a nutshell. So sales in line with guidance, strong business momentum and record order entries, sharp improvement in margins and cash flow generations. Overall, H1 confirms Vision Group's excellent performance. The second half should be excellent. We're confident in our objective of one billion adjusted revenues, and we raised our initially bid-down margin target. Let me now come back on the semester's main business highlights. As I said, revenues were in line with our plan and with our guidance, so no surprise here. It's the order entries which were the exceptional achievement of the semester. Over 700 million euros new orders intake, up 38% year on year, and that only includes a fraction of the 1 billion euro purchase orders signed for the second tranche of the Walmart contract. 2024 continued to be the year of records. In March, we passed the 1 billion mark in rolling 12 months order entries. We signed our first billion euro purchase order in April, and we should pass the 1 billion mark in annual revenues at the end of the year. USA, now our first market, is clearly the primary driver of that momentum in 2024. The Walmart contract has entered now a very intensive phase. We're currently rolling out the program as planned with slightly below 250 stores installed at the end of June, as we stated in July, and with an objective to have shipped 500 stores at the end of the year. and 2300 stores by the end of 2026 so the rollout acceleration will continue in 25. we're happy to announce that we have signed a new ems which is foxconn to further increase our capacity on edge sense our software revenues are growing rapidly as well and overall the program is on track and the customer is happy and new solutions and use cases are being tested to expand the partnerships There were several other successes in America. We announced recently a contract with Ace Hardware, the 21st largest retailer in the US and one of the top DIY brands. It's a high potential contract and a major win. We have announced a rollout with Hy-Vee, one of the top regional grocers in America. And we have many pilots underway with US tier one retailers and hope to announce new deals in the second semester. In Europe, new orders intake were back to growth in H1, with many successes in France, in the UK, in Germany, in Scandinavia, in Portugal. In food and grocery, of course, first, with wins of Sonae, of Netto, of Spar, and others not yet announced. But also in a multitude of non-food retail segments such as pharmacy, sports, DIY, furniture, household appliances. So good performance in Europe. And I remind you that the only reason for the temporary deep in European revenue this year is the finalization of a very large pan-European rollout. And don't forget that prior to 2024, Europe has grown at 45% per annum in average since 2020, a much, much faster pace than the targeted 20% growth rate in our Vision 27 plan. So we are consistent with this average growth trend in Europe, and we expect an excellent 2025 with all the wins I mentioned. On other aspects of the semester, H1 has been the semester where we have successfully rebranded the company, and Fusion Group is already one of the fastest growing and admired brands in retail tech. We have come out with our vision of a positive commerce enabled by IoT data and automation. we have launched EdgeSense and VisionOX, two major innovations which will reshape retail as they turn physical stores into smart grids where it becomes possible to synchronize and connect products, associates, and shoppers. EdgeSense is also a fantastic driver of sustainability as it reduces by approximately 50% the total carbon footprint of ESL systems. And this is just the beginning because H10s will soon be powered by in-store light energy harvesting. We continue that in 2023 to reduce our carbon intensity, minus 13% last year. And we have again made progress on all our ESG initiatives, including our Great Place to Work program, which I'd like to highlight. Our internal satisfaction surveys show great employment engagement. confirmed by a very low attrition rate of 8%, which is an exceptional number in the tech world. And because we believe in creating shared value and in fostering a sense of long-term belonging among our teams, we have further expanded our employee shareholding program to now include all categories of employees. We believe it's all about people, and the superior level of motivation in the team is what explains our good performance. Good performance, which I will now let Thierry Lemaitre explain in more detail.