Arcadis Nv S/Adr

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gailie, your course call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Arcadies conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the second quarter and first half 2026 results. All participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by 1 on their telephone any time during the call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Christine Disch, Investor Relations Director. Ms. Disch, you may now proceed.

Thank you, Gilly. Good day, everyone, and welcome to our half-year and second quarter 2026 results conf call. My name is Christine Disch, and I'm the Investor Relations Director here at Arcadis. With me on this call are our CEO, Heather Polinski, and our CFO, Simon Crowell. We would like to start with a presentation, and as usual, this will be followed by Q&A. We would like to draw your attention to the fact that in today's session, management may reiterate forward-looking statements which were made in the press release. Please note that the risks to these statements are described on the press release itself and on the company's websites. Now, let's start. Please, over to you, Heather.

Thank you, Christine. And hello, everyone. Welcome to our half-year and second quarter 2026 results. You will have seen our results, medium term guidance and rejection of the WSP proposal this morning. I will focus on our half year results and second quarter results in this presentation, as well as our medium term guidance. And we are happy to take questions on those. As it relates to the rejection, we have elaborated on our board's reasoning in our press release, and there is nothing more to say. So turning to the momentum we are creating through our results. We have delivered strong quarter results. The actions we have taken to improve performance together with our strategic investments are increasingly reflected in our results. We are seeing growth accelerate, order intake strengthen, and margin improvement continue. Given this progress and the momentum across the business, we have upgraded our 2026 growth outlook. We are also pleased to provide our midterm guidance and introduce our 2027 to 2029 strategy, setting out the next phase of value creation and growth for Arcadis. I'll take you through this shortly. But first, let me turn to the Q2 results. We are executing our strategic priorities at pace and seeing tangible results across the business. Net order intake increased 13.5% year on year, reflecting our renewed sales focus, capitalizing on strong client demand and accelerating growth momentum compared to Q1. Margin improved year on year, driven by disciplined performance actions and a shift in business mix while we continue to invest in the capabilities needed to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. Our strategy is gaining traction. We are winning where clients need us most and delivering with greater speed, consistency and impact, enabling us to create better outcomes and greater values for our clients, And as a result, our shareholders. Our first half results have been supported by sustained momentum that we built throughout Q2. Margin performance slightly improved to 11.2, reflecting the benefit of our operational focus while we continue to invest in growth and strategic priorities. Order intake is up more than 10%, resulting in record high backlog. We're proud to show green areas across the board. Our backlog also gives us confidence in our future trajectory. Our strong employee engagement and talent metrics further reinforce our confidence in the ability to execute and deliver on our strategy. At Arcadis, our success comes through the knowledge, innovative spirit, and passion of our people. It is critical we bring our people with us, and we are proud to recognize that we score in the top 10% of professional services firms on employee satisfaction. As I said at the full year and Q1, we've only just begun. We are fully committed to unlocking further value and driving improved performance in the periods ahead. Now let's take a closer look at our business areas. Resilience continues to be a strong star performer with sustained momentum in H1. There was notable strength in water in the US where the business grew 15% year on year in the first half with record breaking backlog. While we are also amping up our AMP 8 programs in the UK. Our German business delivered exceptional performance, double-digit year-on-year growth driven by large multi-year energy grid, biogas pipelines, and substation projects with Tenant, Omprion, and Gasuni. In environmental restoration, order intake is improving across our geographies with key wins, with large energy, mining, and chemical companies. Now, turning to places. There was some momentum improvement in the quarter, demonstrating progress against our strategic priorities. Data centers in U.S. pharma continue to perform strongly, and we are reversing the decline in places with a strong book to bill. We continue to expand our leading data center position in Europe with new hyperscaler wins. And as have we shared over the last six months, we are reshaping our property and investments business towards higher growth opportunities. This enables us to strengthen our portfolio and redeploy architectural resources to areas of sustained client demand, including transit, mission critical facilities, and workplace solutions. I'll return to how these actions support our longer-term growth strategy later in the presentation. Mobility delivered sustained performance in the first half, supported by continued strength in rail and highways across Canada, the US, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the UK, we are seeing encouraging progress with improved order intake, including a 90 million Euro commission for design and program management services for the new HS2 Washwood Heath Depot, helping us to offset the wind down of other large projects. Major infrastructure programs remain critical to our strategy, and we continue to leverage our global expertise to secure important new wins. A clear example is our appointment as the lead designer for Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in Vancouver. The win demonstrates the strength of our global expertise, bringing together teams from Canada and the Netherlands and building on decades of experience delivering complex port infrastructure around the world. We are encouraged by the strength of our pipeline in Germany and North America, which, together with our backlog, supports our confidence in stronger growth momentum in the second half. As you've heard today, we are seeing the benefits of our management actions. Most importantly, we are seeing the impact in our order intake. Clients are increasingly choosing Arcadis for critical programs where our sector expertise, integrated capabilities, and innovation make a difference. Reflecting this progress and continued momentum, we are upgrading our 2026 growth outlook to low single digit while reaffirming our margin outlook of 11.7 to 12%. Over to Simon for more details about the second quarter.