Bouygues

online presentation of the WIG Group's interim first half results for 2025. Now this call will be recorded and I can assure you, I'd like to ask you to ensure that your mics are turned off. At the end of the presentation you will have the opportunity to ask questions. To do so you press star 5 on your phone or If you prefer, you can press star zero to be directly in contact with a telephone operator. I'm going to comment this morning's results with Pascal Granger, and we will then take your questions at the end of the presentation, ourselves, of course, and the heads of the various business segments here with us this morning. Let's begin by the landmark events of the First half 2025. Before going to the details here, I should remind you that when we presented our first quarter results, we reminded you that the macroeconomic and geopolitical environments remain very unstable. That said, the results for the first half year are good, strong, so we can confirm the outlook for the group for 2025. Now, if we look at the main indicators for the first half year, what we find is, first of all, the group sales figure is up slightly. over 12 months, thanks largely to the construction businesses. Secondly, the group's COPPA is up quite sharply over the year. This was driven mostly by equines and the construction businesses. That's not including the one-off contribution to tax on profits in France. The net income group share was up last year. May I remind you that the impact of the Budget Act and the social welfare funding law for 2025 have had an impact on our accounts, a burden I should say, €100 million, approximately, mainly driven by the additional tax on companies. Finally, at the end of June 2025, our net debt was below the level at the same time last year, and included approximately €1.2 billion in acquisitions, net acquisitions that is, made over the last 12 months. Okay, the key figures for the group in the first half of 2025. May I remind you that, as usual, the first half results are not representative of the full year results, mainly because of the Seasonality of Colas' businesses. Colas does not have any business in a lot of our regions during the winter periods and equines also have an impact of course. The group sales figure for the first half reached 26.9 billion up 1.3% over the same date last year and on a like-for-like basis that was at 0.7% increase. Copa for the first half rose €49 million over one year and amounted to €796 million. Net income group share amounted to €173 million. This amount is not comparable with the figure for the first half of 2024 because this half year it includes the exceptional contribution for large companies in France for a total of 47 million euro. This additional tax, or surtax, if we were on a comparable basis, would see our net income group share improve by 34 million euro to 220 million. The effective tax rate for the group was 54% in the first half of 2025. The surtax, the additional tax, significantly deforms the effective rate of tax in 2025, even more so in the first half year, because of the seasonality of our business and, of course, the way this surtax is calculated. Finally, our net debt totaled €8.5 billion at the end of June 2025. compared with net debt of 8.7 billion at June 30, 2024. This is good performance given the acquisitions we've been making over the last year, and in particular the acquisition of La Poste Telecom. Let me continue with issues concerning the environment. Let me grab for a few seconds of what we are doing in this area, in particular on a mock-up that we presented at VivaTech showing all the solutions we do. In a short video showing you the main solutions we have devised in order to have ideal solutions or the best possible solutions to climate change. Short video.

Built on an intermediate approach, Living Avenues addresses the challenges of mutation in urban space in terms of attenuation and adaptation to climate change. All the solutions presented in this model reflect the city around four main axes. energy, water, biodiversity and living together. This transformation implies refocusing on natural resources and reviewing the relationship to the soil between citizens to rebuild the city on the city. On energy, the neighborhood has been thought of as an autonomous system, guaranteeing its production, its storage and its sharing. For example, Equance offers a geothermal solution capable of storing energy underground and which, thanks to heat pumps, allows to produce, according to the needs, the summer air conditioning and the winter heat. Bouygues Construction can also propose the installation of photovoltaic facades on buildings to meet the needs of the inhabitants, while restoring the existing one. To re-naturalize the city and promote biodiversity, good water management is essential. Colas has designed a permeable coating on the ground that recovers rainwater and stocks thanks to underground reservoirs. This is a way to reconsider the link to the ground and to feed it with water for better preservation of plant spaces. The goal is to integrate urban space into a living and sustainable ecosystem. Bouygues Immobilier adopts in some of its projects a better water management thanks to an aquapod module capable of treating gray waters and guaranteeing reuse within the same building. Restoring the water cycle at the heart of buildings and restoring biodiversity are major issues of the Living Have News approach. More than 120 internal and external solutions have been gathered at the scale of a neighborhood in this approach.

There you are.

Now just to give you some more specific information concerning our approach to environmental issues, on page H, as an illustration, Greek construction signed a partnership for large scale water, ACT. low-carbon cement technology, devised by Ecosem, is aimed at significantly reducing the carbon footprint of the construction sector. We hope to use this on a very broad scale. It's an important stage in the commitment we have made to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our construction projects. WIG Telecom has entered into a new power purchase agreement, or PPA as we call it, for the supply of electricity. This is a 15-year agreement that was signed on June 17th, last with Suez, under which Suez will supply us from January 1st of 2027, supplies with 53 gigawatts a year of electricity, that is 800 gigawatts over a 15-year period. This is based on the transformation of household waste. We are still working on biodiversity, particularly its so-called fresh gardens, Kolas has continued to work on its restoration of waterways and wetlands. Equans is working on the circular economy, and early this year it entered into the so-called circular industry coalition. Finally, TF1 plays an important role in raising awareness about biodiversity, climate change, sustainable consumption and waste, and has devoted quite a number of items on television on this particular matter. Moving on to a review of operations, let's begin with construction. I'm on page 11 now. As you can see, the backlog is at the very high level of 33 billion euros. This gives us very good visibility for future business. The increase has been driven by international reconstruction and CODAS. Looking at this backlog in greater detail, this is page 12, beginning with CODAS. Backlog is up 900 million a year to 15 billion for roads. It's up 3% year on year, and in rail it's up 12% year on year. At the end of June 2025, the share of the backlog to be carried out over the next 18 months had increased by 500 million euro by comparison with the end of June 2024. In the first half of 2025, Colas had an order intake of 7.5 billion euro, up slightly on roads and up sharply outside of France, particularly in EMA, that's Europe, Middle East and Africa, and in Asia Pacific. In REL, the first half was marked by the signing of several contracts for 700 million euros in the UK and Morocco in particular. In the second quarter, Cordas was also awarded new road contracts, particularly in Canada, Finland, the US or in the UK.

We continue with page 13, Bouygues Construction, where the order book stands at. 17.2 billion euros and that's an increase of about 1.3 billion euros year-on-year and this is underpinned by Public Works. The backlog is up 15% year-on-year and by Bâtiments France where backlog is up 5% and the order book for international is down very slightly, down 1%. At the end of June 2025, the share of the order book to be performed over the next 18 months is around €200 million higher than at the end of 2024. Part of the business is related to major projects. which are not awarded on a regular basis, and so order intake is not identical one year to the next. For example, 2024 was a great year for major products. In the first half of 2024, reconstruction got contracts for the construction of the Grand Paris Line 15 S2, about 570 million euros, or the Rabat Hospital, worth about 490 million euros, and in third quarter, of 2024 because we also got the T2D contract in Australia worth over 2 billion euros and these major deals create distortions in order intake and backlog and this is inherent in major products and this doesn't call for major, for any special comments but in any case these major products generate business for several years and the way in which these big projects are recognized in the order book depends also on the way in which the contract was signed. For instance, this year we signed a contract for the Sizewell nuclear plant because the consortium that was renewed for one year, but the orders will be only recognized as the batches, as the loci orders, so you don't see suddenly a big order for the whole plant because it is gradually lot by lot that the orders are recognized. And so reconstruction got orders worth 4.1 billion euros over the period. That significant proportion came from what we called traditional businesses, products that are worth less than 100 million euros, and that accounted for about 77% of the total order intake over the whole year. And that's good news because it shows that our teams are very dynamic. We also got a number of additional contracts worth more than 100 million euros in the UK, in Switzerland, in Cyprus, and in France. And then in line with previous quarters, Immobilier is still facing challenging conditions. At the end of June, it stood at 800 million euros. And in France, the commercial sector is weak, but housing orders are up slightly, plus 2%. an increase in block orders and stable unit orders in spite of the disappearance of the PINEL scheme, the tax saving, tax incentive scheme. This growth in bookings and reservations should enable Bouygues Immobilier to gradually rebuild its order book over time. Let's talk to the construction activities, the financial results. On page 14, construction activities reached 12.7 billion euros, up 3% year-on-year, also up 3% on a like-for-like basis. Collapse, sales were stable year-on-year. It's mostly to do with the real business up 12% year-on-year with the continued growth in soft mobility structures. The road sales were down slightly, slight growth in France, slight growth in EMEA, strong growth in Asia Pacific, but a decline in North America. 5% driven by the three divisions, Bâtiment International, Bâtiment France and Travaux Public, Public Works. And finally, Bouygues Immobilier sales were up 6%, housing sales up slightly 1% in a year, of which plus 5% in France, and commercial property sales at 37 million euros for the half year. This is a sports situation due to the delivery of a 36 million euro project in Q2. Let's go to page 15, current COPPA. As you know, every year because of Sikolas' seasonal business, there are a number of countries where between November and March there's very little going on, the performance for the half year is not representative of the full year results. Having said that, COPPA for the construction business stood at 26 million euros at the end of June, 47 million euros year on year, driven by improvement at WIG construction, near stability at Coras in spite of unfavorable conditions, weather conditions in North America, and lower losses this year than last year for WIG immobilier. And talking about Brigue Immobilier, its COPPA is impacted by a seasonality effect. Its business in the first half is usually less than the second half of the year. And then the smaller loss recorded compared to the first half of 2024 is related to cost savings, and that is what Daniel Maizière implemented in 2024, a slight improvement in operations in 2025. So let's look at Equance now, sorry, on page 17, the key figure for each one of Equance. At end June 2025, Equance had an order book of 25.8 billion euros, which is slightly down, down 2% compared to end June 2024. It benefited from an order intake of 9.4 billion euros over the half year and has a substantial pipeline of projects. eQuants has noted some delays in launching the data center projects and there's been a temporary slowdown in the Gigafactory market, a critical item of its strategy. The margin on orders is improving gradually. Sales for eQuants reached 9.2 billion Euros in the first half of 2025, slightly down, down 1% year on year, sort of wait and see attitude that we saw in the first quarter. in some industrial and service sectors continued in the second quarter, but that doesn't challenge the favorable medium in long-term trends. And on the like-for-like basis, sales was also down 1% year-on-year. Copas reached 364 million euros, so that's a margin operations standing at 2.9%, up 0.7 percentage points compared to the first half of 2024, so that's a nice illustration of the PERFORM plan. On the following page 18, eQualms is rolling out its strategic plan, its aims for 2025 are Sales close to 24 at constant exchange rates. Previously, equines were looking at a growth slower than in 2024, and now it's targeting an operating margin close to 4.2%. And initially, or previously, equines was targeting a margin of 4%. So there's a slight increase in the COPPA target for the year 2025. And then finally has confirmed that it's now aiming for a conversion rate of 80% to 100% of EBIT to cash flow before WCR. I'll remind you that Equance's target is to catch up with the organic growth of the sector's comparables and to achieve operating margin of 5% by 2027. Let's look at Bouygues Telecom now. It's operational review. This is page 20. You can see that the sales performance is strong in the fixed line business. growth continue in fiber you have 244 000 new customers in the first half including 95 000 in q2 ftdh customers now uh reached 404 million customers 84 of the total fixed line base compared with 77 a year ago the fixed line customer base now stands at 5.3 million up 105 000 customers over the half year including 36 000 over Q2. The good momentum achieved at the end of 2004 on BIG and BCYU pure fiber. This offer continues with an improvement in customer satisfaction and a good satisfactory level of churn. Fixed ABP was stable year-on-year at 33 Euros and this is because the market has become more competitive and the numbers remain stable. Page 21 now. Telecom's performance was good in the mobile segment in a competitive market. At the end of June, it had 18.4 million mobile package customers, including machine to machine. So that's an increase of, again, an increase of 105,000 customers over the half year, including 43,000 in Q2. This is more than the first half of 2024, where we got 76,000 new customers. 76,000 new mobile customers. This is because of the positive effects of the BIG offer, its favorable impacts of convergence fixed mobile, and a satisfactory level of churn. Mobile eBPU, including LabPost, it comes to that 17.3 euros per customer per month. again in the market where competition has been tough, especially driven by SFR since the end of February. If you look at page 22, sales built to customers in first half of 25 are up 5% year-on-year, including Laplace Telecom sales would be stable year-on-year. Total sales were up 3% over the period, including other sales, and that's handsets, And that's slightly down, down slightly to down 2% year-on-year. EBITDA after leases reached €956 million, it's stable year-on-year if you leave out the post telecom. The stable EBITDA after leases reflects several factors, growth in sales built to customers, continued efforts to to control costs. High energy costs, you may remember that Bouygues Télécom no longer have these energy price hedges and that the increase in energy costs will be about 80 million euros by 2025. And then the IFER tax on mobile networks has increased in Q1. Operating income then from ordinary activities was down to €306 million, and that's because of high depreciation and amortization charges in line with the CapEx, with Telecom's CapEx trajectory, and growth operating investments, including extruding frequencies, were in line with the target €706 million. The outlook now, we have adjust our outlook for build customers in 2025. First, sales built to customers including La Poste Télécom will be up on 2024, and on the like-for-like basis, not including La Poste Télécom, builds to customers should be close to 2024. It will be slightly higher, slightly lower, depending on the duration and the intensity of the competitive pressure that we are witnessing now. With Telecom previously targeted a slight increase in sales growth to customer compared to 2024, on a like-for-like basis, excluding La Poste Telecom, and now we add La Poste Telecom's contribution. Butte Telecom confirms its target for 2024. EBITDA after leases should be close to 2024. LaPoste Telecom's contribution to EBITDA after leases will be limited in 2025 the full effect should be expected from 2028 onwards and so for 2025 we're looking at 1.5 billion in gross operating capex excluding frequencies and that's mostly to prepare for the migration of LaPos Telecom's mobile customers migrating to Big Telecom. We move to page 25 and that's TF1.

TF1's results were published on Tuesday morning. Very solid audience figures. The share of women under 50 years of age who are decision makers is 33.7%. 33.7% in the case of individuals ageing 25 and 49. In the first half year, sales were stable at 1.1 billion. Media figure was down 1%, which includes advertising figures, down 2%. The non-linear market was impacted by macroeconomic uncertainties in digital. TF1 Plus has continued to post good performance with advertising sales up 41% over the year. This confirms just how attractive this is for advertisers. Studio TFR with Nguyen was up 6% over the year. It includes 11 million for GPG who's Business is mostly focused on the end of the year. TF1's COPPA was stable, broadly speaking, at €131. Cost of programme was €451 million, down slightly over the previous 12 months, which is a reflection of the premium programming maintained in the first half year and the Euro football competition in 2024. Market for activities was 11.9%, up slightly year on year. Moving on to page 26, the outlook for TF1 in 2025. After the first part of the year marked by a more challenging advertising market, well, more challenging than expected, there's still limited visibility. TF1 maintains or confirms its 2025 guidance of strong double-digit revenue growth in digital, margins broadly stable compared to 2024, and a growing dividend policy in the coming years. I'm now going to give the floor to Pascal Ganger, who will give a more detailed presentation of the financial statements. Thank you, Olivier. Good morning, everybody. Just a few additional explanations on the financial statements as of June 30th. Concerning the income statement, this is page 30. I'm not going to dwell on sales and COPPA, which have already been explained at some depth by Olivier. First of all, in the first half year of 2025, we posted €53 million in PPA amortization, mainly €25 million due to equans or related to equans, booked at Brigue SA, and €18 million at Brigue Telecom. Second, the non-recurring items. These are not representative of the business level. They amounted to minus 55 million euro in the first half. This amount is largely due to equans, and it's booked partly at equans and partly at WIG SA. Overall, this represents for the first half year a total of 47 million euro. Third thing I'd like to mention is that interest expense includes lease obligations, other income and expenses, a total of minus 109 million euro, which is very close to the figure in the first half of 2024, which was minus 185 million euro. Fourthly, concerning the bottom half of the statement, Income tax was €210 million, higher than last year. This was because we had better operating performance in the various businesses. This amount does not include the surtax on profits for large companies in France, which amounted to €58 million over the first half year. Finally, the share of profits of joint ventures and associates was minus €4 million. That's an expense. It was plus €6 million last year. This was because of the end of the positive contribution of co-promotion in the tertiary at REIC Immobilie as a result and taking into account the impact of the 47 million surtax on profits the net income group share was plus €173 million, down €13 million over the previous period last year, but this contribution was nonetheless up €34 million if we factor out the surtax, the one-off surtax. Page 29, net debt at June 29 was €8.5 million by comparison with €8.7 at the same time last year. This is a variation of roughly €2.5 billion, mainly due to the usual seasonality of the group's activity. This variation is comparable to the one we observed between the end of 2024 and the end of the first half 2024. The variation by comparison with the year-end 2024 was mainly due to the following items. Net acquisitions, net of disposals, €120 million, mainly acquisitions by COLAS, and investments by BRIC Telecom in joint ventures. It was also due to the change in shareholders' equity for €132 million, which mainly includes, in the first half year, the exercising of stock options. Dividend paid was €861 million, that's less than €75 million paid to BRIC, the remainder being paid almost entirely to minority shareholders in TF1 and BRIC Telecom. Operations and Other, which amounted to an expense of €1.6 billion, is something I propose to look at in detail now, just a couple of seconds. On the next page, page 30, begin with net cash flow. This includes the lease obligations. Net cash flow was €1.725 million, up €90 million on the first half of 2024. Not including frequencies, operations amounted to €1.6 billion. This is higher than last year at the same period. Free cash flow before working capital requirements was €439 million, up sharply on the first half of 2024, when it was €205 million. The change in working capital requirements and others was, as is customary now, impacted by seasonal effects. Variation at the end of the first half which was an expense of a little over 2 billion, slightly higher than during the corresponding period, 2024, when it was an expense of 1.7 billion euro. One-third of that variance by comparison with 2024 was due to currency translation in the cash financial debt and financial instruments category. Let's now look at the group's financial structure, page 31. we have seen that net debt has improved somewhat by comparison with the same period in 2024. The improvement is much sharper if we make allowances for the net acquisitions made during the period. By comparison with year-end 2024, the variation reflects the seasonality of our activities. The gearing amounted to 62% at the end of June, which was up 3 percentage points over a 12-month period. Finally, the rating agencies have given the group good ratings. Saladin Poor's have given us an A minus negative outlook. At Moody's our rating is A3 with a stable outlook. The group's liquidity amounts to a total of 13.4 billion, a very high level indeed. This amount is comprised of 2.2 billion in cash and 11.2 billion in undrawn medium to long term facilities that have not been drawn down of course. If you look at the bottom right, the bar chart shows the maturity schedule, which is debt maturity schedule, that is, which is well spread over time. That concludes the end of my presentation. The statement is thank you for your attention. And Olivier, I can give you back the floor now. Thank you, Pascal. I propose to turn the page, so to speak. and say a few words about the outlook for 2025. Moving on to page 36 directly. Am I on page 36? In a very uncertain global environment, the Group 6 business segments will continue to prove their ability to keep pace with and to adapt to developments in their respective markets. They will pursue their efforts to improve profitability, As a result, the BRIT group is targeting for 2025 a slight increase in sales and current operating profit from activities by comparison with 2024. Finally, the effects of the French finance law and the social security funding law for 2025. This has an impact on net profit attributed to the group. And the effects are estimated to date at around 100 million euro. So this additional co-operating tax is a one-off and should only have a bearing on 2025. Sorry, I went too fast. I overlooked something very important. Speaking of turning the page, usually after Pascal I move on directly to the outlook. Not so this morning. I overlooked something very important and I apologize to Pascal. Let me come back to page 33. to tell you that there's change in the group's governance. Before talking about the outlook, there are two things I want to say. First of all, the board of directors have been informed by Martin Luig that Pascal Granger, who has just spoken to you, Pascal Granger, who is our deputy CEO, had announced his intention to hand over his executive office to the board of directors at the end of 2025 with a view to his upcoming retirement. The upshot of that is that the Board of Directors has also been informed of the appointment of Stefan Stoll as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Group, with effect from August 1st. I should add that Stefan has been with the Group and has had a very extensive career with the Group in the last 30 years in operations and functions. He will join the group management committee and initially will report to Pascal Gange. So he will be appointed to his new job as of tomorrow morning. Pascal, I think you will hear again from Pascal for the annual results later in the year. See, he's nodding, so yes, that is confirmed. He will still be in position in February next. Apologies, I went directly without thinking to the outlook. Very Pavlovian of me. I apologize. Speaking of Pavlovian reflexes, I always talk about the calendar, so we will have the results for the first nine months of the year, which we'll be giving you on the 5th of November. That's a Wednesday. After that, we will be at your disposal with all the heads of business segments here to take any questions you would care to put to us this morning concerning our business's Maybe I should add that Etienne Jacola will be speaking on behalf of Equans, because Jérôme is not here this morning with the C-suite. So, let's begin. Q&A, please. If you wish to raise a question, please type asterisk 5 on your phone. If you wish to... withdraw your request, please press asterisk 6. Next question is from Mathieu Robillard from Barclays. The line is now open. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning, Mathieu Robillard. Thank you for your presentation. First of all, I have a question on equines. You said you were expecting equines a slowdown in data centers and gigafactories are certainly the startup of of these for a quarter or two now we've noticed that there are geopolitical changes and the desire on the part of europe to regain a certain sovereignty in this area there's a reason to believe that there will be new dynamics in the data centers market i was wondering if the fragility or weaknesses that you've identified at Equans were specific to France because of macroeconomic uncertainties, or is this something more general or more widespread in Europe? Second question is, are you exposed to this sector outside of France? My second question was on telecoms. Obviously, I'd like to ask you if you wish to comment the rumors in the press, according to which there are talks between the French telecom players with the view to concentrating the market I'm just curious to know if you would confirm this or not but in the telecom trends theory there is not much growth in fixed lines in mobile if we include La Poste on a pro forma basis the market is probably slightly down Is this because of lower offers? Have you stopped raising prices? If you could give us some insight into what's happening, the broader trends. Thank you. Okay. Let me answer about data centers, but also Gigafactories. Because in both cases, there's been a change of technology. In Gigafactory design, They were initially designed for batteries of a certain type. Now batteries have changed and the design that we have been using up to now has stopped. What's happening is that we are redesigning these gigafactories differently. The second phenomenon is that the growth in the EV sales is not as high as anticipated. So let's say the transition to electric vehicles is slower than expected. That said, yes, there has been a slowdown because a the change of technology and b because of the market, which is growing more slowly than expected. We've also closed down Nusvolt in recent months. As it regards data centres, there are two phenomena. The first of these is that, broadly speaking, data centre technology is evolving. Beforehand, the technology was called air cooling. Microprocessors were cooled by air, if you prefer. Then we had much more powerful microprocessors for IA, which required liquid cooling. So the change in design from air cooling to liquid cooling, which is the first thing, and this was accentuated by the fact that we have AI models that work with So there's some doubt about the fact that we should be doing air cooling or liquid cooling or a combination of the two. In all events, data centers, I think there's a kind of wait and see phenomenon. The second thing I'd say is that data centers are mostly designed for American upper scalars. There's been a relocation of data centers in the U.S. Up to now, We did not have data centers in the US. This is a market we have ventured into recently. We've taken an order for a data center. So data centers are an area where we have full control over the technology, be it in air cooling or water cooling. We fully understand the industrial aspects. This is a market we expect to develop substantially because the rise to power of artificial intelligence will be very significant. We have know-how in this area, including in the construction of large data centers, which tends to be the way we are heading. So it's not something we're worried about. There's a bit of a kind of a wait-and-see phenomenon. Let's be cautious. That's for telecoms. There are two parts to your question. The first question, while Benoit is getting ready to answer the second part of the question, first of all, It would appear that there's a possibility of the French market consolidating, because after restructuring of debt, it could well be that SFO could come out of the market, so there could well be an operator for sale. If so, would we be capable of consolidating the market? We feel that the European rule, the hard and fast rule of four operators is changing, particularly since the Draghi report of last year. So, concentration may be possible, consolidation may be possible, provided, provided SFO is divided up in such a way that the French market remains competitive. Now, we need some in-depth talks with operators to see how we could divide up SFO to keep the market competitive. We'd have to put a price on each of the parts and submit a price that will be acceptable to Mr. Draghi. Draghi, I should say. Up to now, any discussions have been very, very embryonic. As for the market dynamics, I think, yes. Yes, good morning concerning the ABPU in fixed and mobile. There are two phenomena. The first of these is because of the strategy that we implemented late last year with the big offering. This is a strategy that's really aimed at anchoring customer loyalty and aimed at convergence. This means that we have what we call cumulative offers. If they take out more subscriptions with us, which of course, this has an impact on ABPU, but it reduces churn both in fixed and in mobile. The second part of this strategy aimed at convergence and anchoring loyalty is that since early this year, We've had fewer adjustments than in the past, so the dynamics in ABPU are not as strong, but we have improved the churn that we observed throughout the first half year. They're the two consequences of the big strategy we implemented in late last year. Secondly, in the mobile market in particular, as Olivier mentioned, the market has become more fiercely competitive since February or March of this year. because of price drops to entry level or new prices, particularly with the SF4, which has an impact on the entry level of the market, the web, and has an impact on the overall ABPU in mobile phones. However, the big offerings are of a different nature altogether. Thank you, Benoit. Next question, please.

Next question is from Vinnie Delsen de Uldo. You have the floor. Good morning, everyone, and thank you. About equants, can you give us an updated list of countries where you have a 4% margin, where you could have equants? proximity agreements, and when can we expect more acquisitions at equants? And another question about equants, and then my Colleagues can ask about Brick Telecom. On the UK subsidiaries, I get the feeling that when you look at the data available on the Internet, the UK is the one where you have the lowest profit margin. Can you give us more color or granularity on Equance's profit margin in the UK and the outlook? When will the UK be in a position to engage in acquisitions and reach the 4% As Etienne thinks about the second half of the question, let me just remind you that we were able to generate 4.2% at the end of the year. I mean, this averages out and so it means that some countries have already reached 4%. Now, right now, we are entering the stage where we can, start the M&A growth. Why do we need to have M&A in a number of countries' acquisitions? It's because in the service industry, as we get a higher presence in the country, we get a better market share, and therefore we can increase profit margin. That's why we want to have The countries that have, that are above 4%, a number of them, we considered some acquisitions, but we didn't. complete anything. I mean, we keep looking, but I mean, of course, until such time as a deal is signed, we can't tell you about that, but we're now entering a stage where we could have Equance engage in acquisitions in a number of countries, and we've basically reached a 4% mark in most countries, and that's the main goal. Etienne? Right. As you know, Equance is a major player in the UK. You also know that the decision was made to gradually cut down some businesses, particularly the construction business, what you call new build. That process is still underway, and so this will come to an end. close shortly. We're not ruling out acquisitions in the UK. It's not a priority now. And, of course, we're developing other markets. I mean, data center, even though there's been a temporary slowdown, or solar plants where we are gaining ground as well. Thank you, Etienne. And so the next question. Next question comes from Eric Havary from CIC. You have the floor. Good morning, everyone. And I have three questions. Number one on Buick Telecom. Reading in the news, we find that your joint venture with the SFR, well, you could have a couple of mobile sites being acquired. Can you give us figures on the number of sites? And will the cash be, well, 50% of that cash go back to the parent company? Second question about Colas. We have a less favorable condition in France on the road business as the elections are coming up. Can you comment on lower business in H2? And then ECONs and data centers and gigafactories, can you tell us just how much that weighs in ECONs sales in 2024? We'll start with Pierre then. About H2 in France, the sales are stable. The order book is looking good. And, of course, we are looking ahead to next year, after the elections, because election years, indeed, tend to be a bit slow. But this is a very traditional cycle, nothing new. Thank you, Pierre. What about Benoit on the sites? Yes, with SFR we started the disposing of some of the passive activities as part of CROZON. And that's what we've been doing for a number of years. And when we have, we're talking about pylons, not active equipment, so we disposed of a number of pylons over the years. But then part of the towers were joint property between us and SFR, about 37 sites in the Creuson area. And so we're finalizing this. I mean, the disposal of these pylons, 2,700 pylons. Regarding the financial impact, this is being finalized, but of course, this will mean lower debt, about $350 million cut in weekly income debt by year's end if the operation is completed by year's end. Thank you, Benoit Le Tien, about the data center. Yes, about the data center, they account for about 5% of Ecrans' business. As we said earlier on, we've never conducted so many studies on new projects. Of course, there's a temporary slowdown, but we have a European team to step up growth in that business, and we are now entering the market in North America to start on new territories. Thank you, Etienne. What about the Gigafactories they ask? No more questions on the French channel. Would you move to the questions in English?

Hi, everyone.

Thank you for the presentation. I'll take my questions. Just a quick one, really, again, to SFR rumors. I mean, most press reports suggest that a breakup is the most probable outcome. And I was wondering, in your view, on all of this being hypothetical, how can that be done in a way that all parties are satisfied? Thank you.

We can apprehend the rumors within the SFR.

So about the dividing up of SFR, well, SFR as we speak is finalizing its own debt restructuring, and so this is a prerequisite for any disposal. What we think right now is that the European doctrine has changed and so a possible consolidation of the market moving from four players to three players now seems to be possible, at least that's what it looks like. the examination of this issue in Brussels or Paris won't change much. We might be able to move from four to three players, but for that to happen a number of conditions must be met. Number one, we have to be able to divide out things in such a way as, well, provided that all players are prepared to engage in this. So you need to divide out customers in line with the competition rules. You need to find, to put a tag price on the various parts. At the end of the day, you need to have a price that is acceptable to the seller. So if you put all these things together it means that you need to have in-depth talks and that hasn't taken place yet. And so it's early days now to talk about consolidation. But on paper at least some of the conditions seem to have been met for that to happen should the operation take place after firm offer you probably need about like 18 months for the competition authority to study the case and then for this to reflect in the accounts of the players that would take another 24 to 36 months to make any difference. So this is a long-term thing and we're talking about four and a half to five years.

Next question comes from Akhil Duttana from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. I've got a few questions as well, please. Can I start with equans? So on equans, you've talked about mixed effects and opportunities from gigafactories and data centers. I just wondered what this means for margins. Obviously, this year you have nudged up your margin target. Speed today has done the same, so all your peers are similarly seeing margins go up. But I just wondered if we think longer term, how should we think about mixed effects impacting your margin outlook? So that's the first question. Then I've got a couple of questions on telecoms. The first one is on the tower transaction, which we had headlines on yesterday. I guess I'd love to understand a bit better how we understand that transaction. And I guess the things I'm trying to understand is, firstly, I understand you proportionally consolidate that tower entity today, so I'd love to understand what the numbers for that asset are so we can understand as and when you deconsolidate what that means to you financially. But second to that, if we try and apply typical tower financials to that transaction, the implied multiple of the asset would seem to be about 12 to 13 times EV at the dial, which seems very low compared to peer group transactions. So I'd love to understand if that's accurate, if I'm calculating it incorrectly, or if it is a low multiple, why that might be. And then the final one was just on competition. You talked about competitive issues across both fixed and mobile. I was just trying to reconcile those comments versus what Orange has said on their earnings call. So Orange suggested that things have got a bit better in July. I just wondered if you'd agree with that opinion or whether you think that it's just as competitive as it was in Q2.

Thank you.

Regarding profit margins and equants, our target is to have a COPPA of 5% by 2027. We've just announced that now COPPA for 2025 will be better than expected because when we had our capital markets day in February 2023, we announced for 2025 a copar margin close to four, and in our minds we meant at best 4%. Now we're looking at 4.2%, so we have some improvement there. It turns out that compared to what we had on gigafactories and data centers, data centers are now being built in the U.S. We were not interested in that initially because this was a convenience market and we couldn't get good margins there. But when we find that there's a boom of data centers in the U.S., that creates some pressure in the market. That means that we can have better market power for builders and then we can come up with offers and be in line with our margins policy. So this is why we took our first order there and we hope we can go on with this in the US. The momentum in Europe has slowed down but the trend is positive, the overall trend is positive. So what we have ahead of us is a positive outlook for Equosys profit margins and we can confirm that what we were expecting through the PERFORM plan, even for 2025, we'll be able to do even better than expected. So we're not concerned. Our profit margin is definitely on the way up in line with our expectations. Regarding towers and the multiples, the EBITDA multiples, on the disposal of our stake in InfraCo, we are consolidating in proportion, but that has little cash and little debt. So the final impact on the big telecoms, that will be at best 300 or 350 million euros. And we are looking at the closing by year's end. There are some administrative processes that must be completed by then. As to the multiples, you're referring to 12 to 13, we're above that. We're above that. I won't give you exact figures, but we're above that, and we are in line with market multiples for this type of operations. On the competition on the telecoms, well, on the mobile there's a strong competition, lower prices from SFR on the mobile part, yes. Since the beginning of July we've seen some improvement there and we were involved in that to get the markets going, well, back up. These are very early days. We'll have to see what happens in weeks and months to see if we come back to more reasonable figures. But right now, as I said, it's early days. And on the fixed line business, we have a new market segment with the NPS segment, that is customers that engage in platforms and do not need fixed lines. They only want the Internet and a good Wi-Fi. Now, these offers are cheaper. That, of course, brings competition in the fixed line business, but that's our doing. Next question.

Next question comes from Molly Whitcomb from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, I have a couple of questions, please. Firstly, just to come back on the potential sale of InfraCo, the towers, I just wanted to check, do you still own the active infrastructure on those towers? Secondly, in terms of construction, we've already seen a good increase in revenues by 5%. But in terms of margin, the increase is a little bit more modest. Maybe you could give us a little bit more color on margins at construction. and if you think that this top-line trend is sustainable. And then, thirdly, just at telecoms on the closure of the copper, and you've stopped advertising now, I believe, any ADSL products. So presumably we can expect any uplift from the transition to fiber to fade over the next couple of years. Are you seeing any impact there on ARPUs? Maybe a little bit of color on that would be great. Thank you.

Could you just come back on the first question when you were talking about the construction effect? I'm not sure I get what you were talking about. And then Benoit will be ready to answer to the second one about the evolution of the FTDH. But for the first one I didn't get what you mean. It was about construction and you say Do you try to find a link between the growth of the revenue and the impact on the margin? This is what I see what you say.

Yeah, I was just wondering what the correlation is between the two. If it's lower margin growth on top line or if there's any way to think about how we can think about bottom line trends going forward given the uptick on top line.

Who was the candidate?

Mr. Granger. On construction, sales are rising, and they're rising mainly because of the higher sales at pre-construction. Now, the percentage margin of pre-construction is rising at pre-construction, too. It's gradually coming back and elsewhere as a percentage margin, it's fairly stable. So we still have no reason why the percentage margin should deteriorate between 2024 and 2026. It's actually going to improve. our normative margin rates are usually in a bracket depending on the type of projects we're merging. If we look at this business by business, in real estate, and for reasons that have already been explained, real estate is going through a very particular period, demand is very weak, because we're missing one of the main players that this is individual investors in France who usually energised this market, usually because of tax incentives that are not in existence at the moment. As a result, the market is proving difficult. Elsewhere, bookings and order intake are doing well, so margins are well below normalised levels, but Real Immobilier is adapting its structure to align it with the current level of business. So the margin in real estate should improve. At weak construction, I'm sure you know that this usually involves a lot of large projects, and the normalized margin will be between 3 and 3.5%. That's annualized. That's our target for this year. There's no particular difficulty this year. On the contrary, the first half year was rather good at Colas. The first half year is never representative of the full year, but over the full year, we expect that in the medium term, our margin will be in the region of 4%. We're not there yet, but little by little, we're getting there. So, in construction, we are quite happy about our results. Thank you, Pascal. Benoit, if you'd like to take the first question on the sale of infracom. Now, if I fully understand the question, the question is, we are selling just the liabilities? No, we're just disposing of the liabilities. We will keep the electronics. That's our strategy for infrastructure. The liabilities can be disposed of. We're doing that on three levels. the remaining 3,700 sites, and as for the acid sites, we are retaining the acids. Now, as for the evolution of ARPU in fixed lines with the transition to fibre, first of all, this transition has been very good, very strong, but we've reached what we call the asymptote. Broadly speaking, in terms of ARPU dynamics, everything that transitioned towards fiber is peaking, we've reached a peak of sorts, a plateau. Two segments in fiber, first of all the traditional offering, that's a CAP, and then there's the 1P offering, which is just internet, high-performance internet, or high-throughput internet. So there's a mix, a combination of these two, 1P has a lower ABPU and prices are lower, costs are lower as well, by the way. And then you have the 3P dynamics. So you need to look at the two and the combination or mix of the two if you are to understand how ABPU will evolve as we transition towards fiber. Thank you, Benoit. Next question.

Next question comes from Rohit Modi from Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, mainly on telecoms. Firstly, if you can give a bit more color on the subscriber net ads on the mobile side. And this is on the backdrop of there was an article a couple of days back where it says that La Poste added 200,000 subscribers since your acquisition. If I see your current net ads, that's around 68,000 in the first half. So just in the sense of how much net ads you're seeing on your legacy brands and how much net ads you are seeing on la poste if you can give a bit of a break up there second question uh sorry on consolidation and whatever change in terms of your comments on consolidation of view around consolidation on the regulatory side of it uh just trying to understand if you had any kind of indication or discussions early discussions with the regulator already that gives you confidence that you know now there is no possibility of this consolidation going through uh thirdly uh again a hypothetical question on consolidation but in the event of consolidation i want to understand do we have a capacity to take on more tower leases that's one of the main contention i think with escape thank you

Are the net ads in mobile?

We have 105,000 net ads. We had 105,000. The two figures are the same. That's easy to remember. 105,000 in fixed, 105,000 in mobile. We were lucky, weren't we? Of these net ads, first of all, we're very happy with the performance of BIG, the BIG packs. This is a family type convergence. Good growth in BIG. This comes from sales that are at a good level, higher than the previous years, but also the lesser churn. So this gives us a good net growth in premium. As for digital packs, a very fiercely competitive market since March. So there's been tension on ABPU, but also on the net growth of this market. Let me come back to BIG for a second. Do bear in mind that our good overall performance comes from sales, on the one hand, of course, but also the reduced trend on the issue of consolidation. The question was, quite specifically, have we already had talks with the regulator? Well, In what we imagine could be the case, we're more inclined to analyze what happened in the UK. I know this is all happening in the EU, but we're trying to analyze how the number of operators was reduced from five to four in Spain, So what we're doing is analyzing how things have gone elsewhere, how the regulator has been involved, rather than talk to the regulator, because the regulator will only give you an opinion on a specific concrete project. The regulator will never say consolidation is impossible, not according to Trahi anyway, but you can only go and talk to a regulator if you have a very concrete project, and in that case the regulator can say yes or no. So to go to talk with them in general, wouldn't actually wouldn't actually do us any good we would need something concrete on the table if we're to talk with the regulator and the simple fact is that we're not there yet we're not there anyway well we need to talk with our competitors before going to see the regulator if we were consolidating from four to four then there would be no no issue here if we weren't It's only insofar as we want to change the number of telecom operators that we would have a very specific or need a very specific project before talking to the regulator. And the regulator's opinion is only an opinion, by the way. The regulator is not the head of antitrust issues. We need to convince the whole college of members of the antitrust authority.

There are no more questions in English at this time, but we have more questions from the French call.

If you wish to raise a question, please press asterisk 5 on your keypad. Nicola Mora. Nicola Mora, your line is active. Good morning, gentlemen. I have two or three additional questions. Maybe if I could begin with construction. The order in Chink has slowed a bit recently since the start of the year. We haven't had many large projects. Have you any insight into revenue for the second half of the year or after a good first half year? Are we heading towards something less sustained? Secondly, Colas, you've talked about France and the outlook with the forthcoming elections. What about North America, which has really suffered in the first half of the year? Is the order intake still on a good trend? or is the market sluggish? Again, on Colas, Colas Rail is performing well, but is that good enough in terms of margin to reach the growth where we're anticipating? And just one final question on cash flow. I know you don't give us any outlook on working capital requirements, but we've seen in the first half year that Working capital requirements are tending to become more normalized after two exceptional years. Would you agree that payment cycles are coming back to normal? Okay, on construction, I'm going to ask Pascal to come and answer that, but let me say before he speaks to you that, quick reminder, I said that overall building in France the order intake was up 5% over 12 months, the particularity being that we've had a large number of projects below €100 million. This is exactly how we supply our shorter term as opposed to these large projects that tend to span periods of seven, eight years. So things are going well. Pascal. But just to add to that, in the, let's say, what we call the projects below 100 million, we're at the same level as last year, just to reassure you regarding the order table. As for the activity, the sales are actually up 5%, but over the full year we'll be up after the various changes in scope of consolidation of Forex. But broadly speaking, we expect to be on the same trend later in the year. Pierre, on North America. On North America, the first half year was We were impacted by weather, poor weather, a lot of rain, to be practical, to be more specific, which prevented us laying asphalt. Our competitors are in the same boat, by the way, so everyone's had a sluggish first half year, which does not say anything about the second half of the year. The backlog was good, and in the United States in particular, our backlog has improved considerably since last year. So the outlook in the US is rather good. And the second question was Colas Rail. Well Colas Rail has been boosted by, rail includes tramway, metro, of which there are so many all over the world. We've of course benefited from our experience in high-speed train, the TGV as we call it in France. Recently we have built one in Morocco. That's a market that's booming. Coalesce Rail has plans to significantly improve its margin, which is being improved year on year, but that's not the only way Coalesce's margins have been improved. There have been efforts made in every sector of the business, Likewise, like Equan's surperform plan. So the result and margin are increasing by 0.1, 0.2% every year. Before Pascal answers on working capital requirements, just before, I want to say something very briefly about the US. do bear in mind that Colas is mainly in rural areas. From this point of view, the Trump administration, this is not an opinion on the Trump administration, but the Trump administration is in favour of roads being built in rural areas rather than large infrastructure projects. So, if anything, that's good news for Colas in the US, because Colas is in more rural areas. So, On the whole, our outlook is good, because we are in areas in which the administration wants to invest. Pascal. Just to add to what's been said about construction, and to allay any doubts you seem to have regarding the next few months, you have seen, well, we've given you visibility about what we have in the backlog over the next 18 months. This is at Colas and Bouygues Construction, and in both cases, Colas and Bouygues Construction's reconstruction we have more in the backlog than we had a year ago so clearly this is a growth trend as for the order intake at reconstruction there's a lot of contracts under 100 million and other bigger ones no concerns about the larger projects on the contrary we have very significant projects that will come and feed into the order book but maybe in a different way, maybe a little differently to last year, which was marked by a very, one particularly large project in Australia. It turns to Darlington. That's as regards construction. Moving on to cash flow. As you said, we do not give you any guidance on cash flow at year end, because that depends largely on our working capital requirements. What I can say about WCOA is that we're doing well. Over the last few years, we have improved the group's working capital requirement by one billion annually. It's not that we're spontaneously generating cash, it's just that we are still making efforts in our various businesses efforts that have achieved results and despite a very high level, that's objectively a very high level, at equines quarter after quarter we keep improving working capital requirements. So we feel that we have still, we can still improve but the situation is not linear from one quarter to another. So I can't say where we'll be at the end of the year, but let me reassure you that everybody in our different businesses, in our different business segments, and particularly in construction, call us, we give a video, we construction equans, they are all working hard on working capital, as was already the case with Brick Telecom and TF1. Could I ask a final question on equans? I see that sales are slowing for the various reasons you mentioned earlier in the call. Your target this year or next year was to align with organic growth of 2-3%. That's the industry average. Are we on track for that? or what about the margin? On this particular point, two events I want to mention. First of all, there's the currency translation effect in the areas we have business in. In North America, the forex effect is negative. In equines, it's $1 billion of business, but the negative forex impact and we also have a negative forex impact in the UK and Australia. UK is a significant one because it's our biggest country in Europe after France of course. So they're all issues and of course at the moment there's a certain wait and see policy about large projects. Leaving those two factors aside we've no real concerns about the intake in the future and about the sales revenue that will be derived from that. As for being selective about what we choose to do, you see that we tend to achieve our COPPA targets earlier than they expected. So we're confident. Trends underpinning Ikhwan's business are good. They're there and they will be there sustainably. Did you want to add a point? Just one thing. During the Capital Markets Day, We also told you that we'd be closing down certain dilutive businesses in order to improve our margin. When you take that type of decision, it takes a certain amount of time before revenue actually slows to zero. We're still experiencing negative effects as a result of the decision to close certain businesses, which would only be finally closed in 2027. We talked about the new build. new bills in the UK. This represented several hundreds of million pounds. We decided to discontinue this because the level margin levels were not in line with what we expected of equans.

No more questions and so I'll give the floor back to Olivier Roussa who will Well, thank you so very much for attending this presentation. We'll meet again on November 5th. Goodbye.