Bureau Veritas Sa

Good day and welcome to the Baruch Veritas Q1 2024 Revenue Conference Call. Please note this conference is being recorded and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask a question and this can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to Hinda Garby, Chief Executive Officer and Francois Chabat, Chief Financial Officer. Hindia, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining Bureau Veritas today on the webcast and on the call. François Chabat, our group CFO, is here with me to present our Q1 2024 revenue and answer your questions. In the first quarter of the year, Bureau Veritas maintained a strong growth trajectory in line with our expectations for the year and our commitments following the unveiling of our LEAP 28 strategy. First, starting with our revenue performance in Q1. Revenue for the quarter was 1.44 billion euros, up 2.5% year-on-year. The organic increase was 8%, exceeding our expectations and confirming the strong underlying market trend. The growth was broad-based across divisions, with three out of six businesses delivering more than 13% organic growth. The scope effect was a positive 0.1%, reflecting the contribution from recent bolt-on acquisitions, offset by the impact of a small disposal last year. Forex had a negative impact of 5.6% in Q1, primarily due to the depreciation of some emerging market currencies against the Euro. Excluding Forex, our growth was up 8.1%. For the first quarter of 2024, I'd like to share with you the key events. We have launched our LEAP28 strategy both internally and to our investors. Our strategy execution has started across the organization with defined plans and agreed deliverables. To execute our 200 million share buyback program announced in March 24, we completed the acquisition of circa 0.8% of the group's own shares on April 4, 2024. This was executed under the Vandell placement. The remaining 100 million will be done throughout 2024. Finally, I'm pleased to announce the first long-term credit rating of Bureau Veritas with an A3 rating from Moody's and a stable outlook. This reflects the group's strong financial structure and competitive advantage. When it comes to our CSR commitment, in the first quarter, we have continued our efforts to be exemplary in terms of sustainability around environmental, social, and governance practices. We continue to work on delivering our CSR commitments, updated in line with our 2028 strategy targets. Those metrics will be evolving throughout the year. We received new recognition by several non-financial rating agencies, including a first ranking by Sustainalytics. We also joined the United Nations Global Compact the world's largest initiative related to corporate social responsibilities. Looking at our business and regional mix, these results have been driven by all business lines and regions and included high growth from sustainability, decarbonization, and energy transition solutions. Looking at the mix, marine and offshore industry and certification continue their strong growth momentum in line with previous quarters. Robust low to mid single digit organic revenue performance was achieved in BNI and agri-food and commodities. Our consumer products further improved with an organic growth up 6.1% in the quarter thanks to earlier seasonality and a pickup in product launches. From a geographical standpoint, all regions performed well with Africa and the Middle East leading the pack. In line with our LEAP28 strategy, we aim to build our new strongholds in consumer technology testing. This quarter, we realized three acquisitions, one tech and cost tech in Korea and high physics in India. These capabilities strengthen our position in the electrical and electronics consumer products testing in South Asia and in the consumer tech R&D platform of Korea. This follows the recent acquisition of ANSI in Mexico, announced in February 2024, which allows us to enter a new market that will serve as a springboard for expansion into North America consumer market. Across the group, we are pursuing our M&A programs to expand leadership and create new strongholds. Our M&A pipeline is robust, and we expect to announce new deals in the coming quarters. I'll hand it now to Francois.

Thank you, Inda. Starting with the revenue bridge, so we delivered 1.44 billion euros in the quarter with a strong organic growth of 8%. It shows our execution capacity combined with the good momentum of our secular growth trends. This is now the seventh quarter of organic revenue growth at or above 8% in the last two years. On the scope side, acquisition added 0.1% on the net scope basis, reflecting the impact of the bottom acquisition just mentioned, and offset by the disposal of our non-core automotive inspection business in the U.S. last year in July. As presented in our Capital Market Day, we continue to actively manage our portfolio. Forex impact represents a drag of 5.6%, leading to a total growth of 2.5% on the net reported basis, This is mainly attributed to the strength of the Euro versus several emerging market currencies. From H2 onwards, we expect easing the negative impact due to easier comparables. When it comes to the performance of different businesses in the first quarter, all businesses delivered good growth. Three activities that they rose, marine offshore, industry certification. Like in the last quarter of 2023, they all delivered strong double-digit organic growth in the quarter. on the back of continued momentum in sustainability services, including marine decarbonization and renewable energy projects. Interestingly, consumer product services recovered to 6.1% on an organic basis and confirmed the gradual recovery that we've seen already in H2 last year. And finally, agri-food and commodities and BNI both delivered low to mid-single digital revenue growth. BNI was led by the infrastructure segments, growing double-digit. Agri-food and commodities growth was driven in particular by the strong demand for agri-food products. On the specific topic that we've communicated upon during this publication, I'm pleased to announce the first long-term rating of Bureau Veritas, credit rating. The decision by Moody's to assign an A3 rating with stable outlook confirmed more strong financial structure. a leading market position, and a solid business model, together with a strong track record of positive free cash flow. This long-term credit rating will support us in further diversifying our source of fundings, enhancing access to capital markets, and managing debt maturities in line with our new 2020 strategy. That's it on my side. I now hand back to Inda for the business review.