Tinexta S.p.A.

Good afternoon. This is the Corusco conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Tinexta Group 9 Months 2024 results ended on the 30th of September 2024 conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Joseph Mastragostino, Chief Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. First of all, thank you for joining Cinexa's nine-month results presentation. We're sorry for the delay, but we've had a major electricity problem here in Milan, and unfortunately, we were late, and therefore, sorry again for that. Let's kick it off by saying that here with me today is Pierre-Andrea Chevalard, CEO of Kinecta Group, O'Donnell Paul, Chief Financial Officer. As a reminder, all the relevant documentation of the nine months 2024 results can be downloaded from a company website in the investor relations section. For the purpose of this call, Pierre-Andrea will go over some key strategic items and messages of the call. I will go over the nine months 2024 highlights and updates. O'Donnell instead will go over the nine months financial results, as well as the business unit's performance, providing us with a deep dive. The last part of the call will be dedicated to Q&A. A recording of this conference call will also be available on our company website, and it will be posted upon completion of this call. Pier Andrea?

Thank you, Joseph, and welcome, everyone, to our call. Well, I would like to start by updating you on our performance as of September 30th, and highlighting the growth experienced by the business in the third quarter of the year. While performance came in very strong if compared to the prior year, the fourth quarter will represent a very important part of this year's delivery as in the last years. Well, it is no secret that 2024 has been characterized by general turmoil due to a variety of external factors. In this scenario, our group has not remained still and instead has reacted and adapted to these circumstances and will continue to do so. Such conditions have significantly affected some of our key markets, especially Italy and France, leading us to further update our guidance for the end of the year. I will try to better explain some of the key dynamics of the group by walking you through the different business units while providing some meaningful insights. First of all, digital trust continues to perform extremely well with a great performance registered again in this quarter. Growth is steadily coming in at double-digit growth with marginality growing more than revenues. Such performance is the result of constant and careful cost management. Moving to cybersecurity business innovation, their performances have been influenced by a variety of elements made external. Business innovation on the one hand was negatively impacted by the declining rate related to Industry 4.0. as well as the delays in the launch of Industry 5.0 and its implementation process. Let me be very clear on this. As such, a phenomenon is entirely out of our control, but rather the result of transitioning from one fully funded plan, the 4.0, to another, the 5.0. For the 5.0, 6.3 billion have been allocated and will show its effect in the coming months. Till now, it hasn't shown any effect because not all the regulatory tools has been delivered. On the other hand, we have also been impacted by the political unrest in France, which caused delays regarding public tenders and the lower level of winning projects, penalizing ABF Group. Such performance for ABF, while strongly disappointing, was also out of our control, making the result entirely driven by the overall French market condition. Going to cybersecurity division, it has mainly been impacted by the slowdown in growth of the overall IT services market. It is important to highlight that the IT services market in Italy has shown sign of slower growth if compared to other markets, mostly driven by lower available economic resources and therefore budgets. These elements justify and explain the results that we will present to you today. From a perspective of full transparency and constructive dialogue with the financial community, we have decided to update our guidance accordingly. Moreover, to address the performance of these two business units, we have decided to implement a new series of aimed at achieving a higher level of efficiency to face these new challenges. We will start with strong scrutiny of the cybersecurity business unit in order to better overall efficiency, in particular following the recent integration of the three purchased companies. It will then be the turn of business innovation, which will, on the one hand, be pushed by the stronger facing of Industry 5.0, but also by a clear plan of rationalization, reallocation of resources to better respond to market needs. We are confident that these actions, which will have greater disclosure during the presentation of our strategic plan and the full year results, will lead us to a strong performance for 2025. Lastly, I would like to say that the Board of Directors has approved the beginning of a share buyback program, giving its full confidence towards the company, its shares, and the shareholders. I will now leave it to Josef and Odone, who will give an in-depth overview of the numbers. Thank you very much.