VusionGroup

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2025 sales presentation. With me today are Thierry Gadou, our chairman and chief executive officer, as well as Thierry Lemaitre, our deputy CEO, finance and corporate. Thierry Gadou will make some remarks on the group's business performance and financial performance in the first quarter, as well as our full year 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 The slides of this presentation can also be found on our website in the regulated information section. A replay and a transcript will also be available on our website after the call. And with that, it's my pleasure to hand you over to Thierry Gadot for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Olivier. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining our conference call. I'm very happy to present our sales figures for the first quarter. In a nutshell, Vision Group achieved an excellent Q1, slightly ahead of our guidance, with 31% growth in adjusted sales. Order entries nearly doubled in the first quarter to $532 million, driven by the strong momentum in the United States. Vast sales reached $33 million, up 71% versus Q1 last year. And we reiterate our full year outlook of 40% adjusted sales growth and improved profitability. So let's now go into a bit more detail. So the group's IFRS revenue reached €215 million in the first quarter and €233 million on adjusted basis. And that is up 31% compared to the first quarter of 24. This is slightly above the guidance that we communicated during the presentation of the 24 annual results, which was around 25%. And by the way, it's also our best first quarter ever. In terms of geography, in this first quarter, growth was driven by Americas and Asia-Pacific region. In this region, adjusted sales reached 143 million. up 100% compared to the first quarter of 24. This performance was driven by the rapid expansion in the U.S., our first market today, and particularly the deployment at Walmart U.S., which is continuing according to plan. The fluctuating tariff situation was, of course, discussed with our U.S. customers, and that led to unchanged rollout plans due to the strategic importance of digitizing stores in a context of increasing price volatility. So our forecasts for the year are kept unchanged and confirmed. In Europe, we achieved adjusted sales of 90 million, and it's down minus 15% compared to the first quarter of 24. So the business in Europe is Again, not yet benefiting in Q1 from the contract that we signed at the end of last year and more recently due to normal manufacturing lead times. Deliveries will increase sequentially in Q2 and over the following quarter, so we do confirm our target of resuming growth in Europe for the full year. The pipeline is strong. We see increasing focus from retailers on improving the efficiency of stores across Europe. If we now look at order entries, Q1 was a very strong quarter with new orders increasing by 94% year on year to 532 million. And over the last 12 months, that represents 1.9 billion euro. This record figure is in large part explained by the recent Walmart contract extension. And this number includes a part of the new 1 billion euro order announced at the end of the year. and which will be booked in our orders over the next quarters of 2025. So the group expects this good momentum in order for entries to continue for the full year, also driven by signing of new contracts in both the United States and Europe. Let's look at VAST now. Revenue from software services and non-ESM solutions reached 33 million in the first three months of the year, up sharply by 71 percent compared to the first three months of 24. Both recurring and non-recurring revenues grew strongly. Recurring revenues in particular reached 17.2 million, up 38 percent year-on-year, and represented about 52 percent of the total vast revenues. Note that our cloud install base grew rapidly during the first quarter of the year. to reach approximately now 26,000 stores and 188 million labels. This dynamic will accelerate in the coming quarters. And as a reminder, the Cloud NISO base was around 19,000 stores and 94 million labels a year ago at the end of March 24. Our outlook for 2025 is confirmed. I'd like to just comment a little bit the situation. On the one hand, for sure, the fluctuating tariff environment may lead to slower investment decisions for some retailers, those who are still in pilots or just evaluating business case, those who have not yet measured the benefits at scale, and those may wait until there is less uncertainty on tariffs and costs of the technology. On the other hand, though, Retailers who have already decided and launched rollouts are clearly determined to move forward and are not changing plans despite the current tension in global trade. More than ever, this proves that in today's environment, our solutions are providing retailers with measurable benefit, efficiency, and resilience, enabling them to increase the return on capital employed of their most important asset, their stores. Our technology perfectly fits to the present challenges of our customers. So with an order book at an all-time high, with strong visibility, and we reiterate our growth and profitability improvement objectives announced on February 26, which are a revenue growth rate of around 40%, an annual adjusted revenue target of 1.4 billion euro, split between around 600 million in the first half and 800 million in the second, an 80% growth in vast revenue for the full year, an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement of 100 to 200 basis points in 2025, and a positive free cash flow generation. With this, I thank you for your attention and give you back the floor for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1, 1 on your telephone, and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1, 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will take our first question. And your first question comes from the line of Bennett Filman from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.