Capgemini Se Ord

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for our first half results call. I'm joined today by our CFO, Nivi Bhagat. So our performance in the first half confirmed that our strategy is translating into tangible results. We set out to make AI real for our clients, helping them move beyond experimentation and turn AI ambition into measurable business outcomes. That ambition is now materializing in the market, in demand, in growth, and in market share gain. So I want to focus first Today on three areas. First, one is the strength of our H1 performance and what it says about our AI relevance. The second thing is the new AI value pools that are expanding our addressable market that we presented to you at the Capital Market Day. And then the role of WNS and Cloud 4C in accelerating our growth and strengthening our future positioning. So coming to H1 revenue, they reached 12 billion H2 millions. up 11.3% year-on-year at constant currency, enabling us to outperform the market once again, booking total $12,602,000,000, representing a book-to-bill ratio of 1.04 and reflecting solid commercial momentum. And this performance demonstrates the strength of our positioning and our growing relevance as organizations increasingly move from AI ambition to AI execution at scale. Now, AI has become the leading driver of new demand. To capture this opportunity, we are building AI enterprise hubs around each of our co-partners, bringing together our capabilities, assets, and expertise to deliver enterprise-scale, outcome-driven AI transformation. We continue to enrich our portfolio of AI offerings to help our clients accelerate adoption and realize business value faster. We are also benefiting from the acquisition of Cloud4C and WNS, which I will come back to shortly. Now, this momentum is translating into market share gains, both in emerging AI-driven demand and with new clients. It's visible in the strong performance of North America and the UK, both growing around 20%, and its strategy and transformation up 9.2% year-on-year. These results confirm that as AI reshapes the enterprise, Capgemini is increasingly The partner clients choose to turn ambition into measurable business outcomes at scale. Turning to how the market is evolving, clients continue to invest, but they are becoming increasingly disciplined in how they allocate capital. Across sectors, spending is being directed towards initiatives that deliver clear business value, measurable outcomes, and tangible results. Now, this is particularly evident in AI. Clients are moving beyond isolated use cases and pilots, focusing instead on end-to-end business processes and enterprise-wide transformation programs that can generate impact at scale. Their ambitions remain intact, but the approach is increasingly outcome-driven. And against this backdrop, the underlying demand drivers remain broadly consistent with previous quarters, and our momentum is the strongest precisely in these areas of strategic investment. A good example is Intelligent Business Operation, our new global business line built around WNS, which delivered double-digit underlying growth in the first half. This validates our conviction that combining AI, industry and domain knowledge, as well as data operation expertise is becoming a critical lever for enterprise transformation. We also continue to benefit from several structural trends that support our medium and long-term growth. Defense and security, which now represent 7% of group revenue and more than 11% of our business in Europe, maintains strong momentum with double-digit growth in each one, reflecting sustained investment in resilience, modernization, and strategic autonomy. Also on sovereignty, which is becoming an increasingly important consideration for clients worldwide, what initially emerged in Europe and later expanded across the Middle East and Asia Pacific is now becoming a far more systematic requirement. Organizations are increasingly assessing sovereignty as part of major technology decisions, seeking the right balance between resilience, risk management, strategic objective, and cost efficiency. Geographically, we continue to see encouraging signs across continental Europe which accelerated further in Q2 to reach 2.8% constant currency, demonstrating improving momentum across the region. Together, these growth areas provide support. Clients continue to invest in transformation and AI, but with greater focus on business outcomes, operational impact, and value realization. This evolution plays directly to Capgemini's strengths, given our ability to combine strategy, technology, operations, and industry expertise to deliver transformation at scale. Turning now to profitability and cash generation. We remain firmly on track to deliver our full year targets. Our operating margin performance in the first half is fully aligned with the trajectory we set at the beginning of the year. The anticipated margin contraction in France is compensated by North America and the UK. France is a key focus area for the Fit for Growth program, which is progressing well. We expect to see the first benefit materialize in the second half of the year, providing a foundation for further margin improvements through 2027. Turning to organic free cash flow at 37 million euros, performance is fully consistent with the seasonality of our business and leaves us on track to deliver our full year objective. Finally, normalized earning per share came at 5.29 euros compared to 6 in the first half of last year, reflecting higher financing and tax expense. Let me now turn to how we see the market expanding around AI. As we outlined at our capital markets day, we have identified five major AI value pools that are reshaping technology and business transformation opportunities. Enterprise tech modernization, around helping clients address years of accumulated technology debt and prepare the environment for AI scale. The reset of the tech stack, as application data platforms and infrastructure are redesigned for AI-native work. The adjusted control plane, which provides the governance, orchestration, security, and observability required to deploy agentic AI safely at scale, agentic products and services enabling notably new customer experience and offerings and revenue streams, and the identification of enterprise processes where AI agents augment and increasingly orchestrate end-to-end business operations. Together, these five value pools significantly expand our addressable market and reinforce the relevance of Capgemini end-to-end capabilities So let me start with enterprise technology modernization. Now, every organization today wants to become agentic. But before they can become agentic, they must become AI ready. And most are not. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. have become strategic imperatives. As a result, we believe the industry is entering into a multi-year modernization super cycle, driven by the need to establish a technology foundation required for AI native enterprises. And we are already seeing this reflected in a growing funnel of opportunities. For a major European automotive manufacturer, we are leading the modernization of a large-scale mainframe estate, re-hosting and transforming legacy Qobol application onto AWS cloud. For HMRC in the UK, we are migrating a critical tax platform to SAP S4 HANA on a sovereign cloud, creating a secure, resilient foundation ready to support future AI capabilities. And for AXA, we are delivering an AI-enabled cloud infrastructure modernization program designed to strengthen resilience, increase scalability, and support the group's long-term transformation agenda. Now, taken together, These programs illustrate a broader shift. AI is not only creating demand for new business capabilities, it's also accelerating the modernization of the technology foundation on which those capabilities depend. Let me now turn to agentic enterprise processes, including intelligent operations. Now, this value pool is not about deploying AI for the sake of deploying AI. Nor is it about embedding a few agents into processes that were originally designed for a purely human workforce. This is about something much more profound, redesigning how enterprises operate. We work with clients to reimagine end-to-end processes, create step change in business outcomes, and build operating models where humans and AI agents work together seamlessly. These agentic systems can understand context, make decisions, orchestrate workflows and increasingly execute actions autonomously. Put simply, organizations are moving from companies run by people supported by software to processes orchestrated by human AI workforce. Now, this is where the real value lies, optimizing the total cost base that bundles operation and technology while improving speed, quality, resilience, and customer experience. Now, let me illustrate this with two examples. For a leading North American insurer carrier, we are delivering a multi-year transformation of underwriting and claims operation by moving from manual document-intensive workflows to real-time AI-driven decision making. We expect to reduce underwriting cycle time by 30% to 50% and claim cycle time by 20% to 40% while improving consistency and service quality. And for a major North American automotive manufacturer, we are redesigning integrating and operating enterprise-shared services through an AI-enabled global business services, model spanning, finance, HR, procurement, supply chain, and IT. And by moving from a fragmented operating environment to a unified agent-enabled platform, we expect to deliver 50% to 54% productivity improvement over seven years and generate up to a billion dollars in cost savings. with additional value creation opportunities in working capital, logistics, warranty management, and compliance. Now, this example demonstrates why we believe agentic enterprise processes represented one of the largest value pools created by AI. The opportunity is not simply to automate existing activities, it's to redesign how work gets done across the enterprise and unlock a new level of business performance. which brings me naturally to our value-realizing acquisition and in particular to WNS and the launch of Intelligent Business Operation, our new global business. Intelligent Business Operation combines two highly complementary strengths. On the one hand, WNS brings deep industry and process expertise built over decades of designing and operating critical business processes, leveraging an asset-led service model for leading global enterprises. And on the other, Capgemini contributes its global scale leadership in AI technology Modernization and Business Transformation. Together, we have created a unique platform to help clients redesign, transform, and operate their most critical processes in the age of AI. This business is organized around industry sectors, allowing us to speak our clients' language and address a specific value change, regulatory environments, and operational challenges that matter most to them. These capabilities are reinforced by horizontal functional expertise across areas such as Finance, Procurement, Supply Chain and HR, supported by proprietary assets, industry-specific platforms and AI accelerators that can be deployed repeatedly and at scale. Now, this combination positions us as a partner of choice for intelligent operations. Our ambition is not simply to run processes more efficiently on behalf of clients, it is to deliver measurable business outcomes with clear accountability for performance, productivity and value creation. And what we have seen since the acquisition closed is strong early validation of this. Our combined opportunity pipeline has expanded to 13.3 billion euros, reflecting growing client demand for this integrated proposition. The business is delivering double-digit like-for-like growth, demonstrating the strength of the underlying market opportunity. And both revenue and cost synergies remain firmly on track, reinforcing our confidence in the value creation potential of this transaction. So more fundamentally, Intelligent Business Operations embodies what we believe is one of the most significant shifts taking place in our industry, the convergence of operation, technology, and AI. As clients move toward an agentic and outcome-driven operating model, they increasingly need a partner capable of transforming and operating these processes end-to-end. And this is exactly the position we have built with Intelligent Business Operations. So let me now turn to our outlook. So given the strong momentum we delivered in the first half, we are raising our revenue growth target for the year. We now expect constant currency revenue growth of 8.5% to 9% compared to our previous guidance of 6.5% to 8.5%. This includes an inorganic contribution now narrowed to around 5 points. For the second half, this implies growth of 5.5% to 7% at constant exchange rate, despite a significantly higher comparison base in the second half of 2025. Turning to profitability, our Fit for Growth program is progressing as planned, and we expect to see the first benefit contribute to margins in the second half. And this supports our confidence in delivering our operating margin of 13.6% to 13.8%, representing an improvement of 30 to 50 basis points year on year. Finally, we are confirming our organic free cash flow target of approximately €1.8 to €1.9 billion for the full year. Overall, our first half performance reinforces the confidence we expressed at the beginning of the year. We are benefiting from strong momentum in AI-driven transformation. Our recent acquisitions are performing well and our operational initiatives are progressing according to plan. As a result, we enter the second half with confidence in our strategy. Confidence in our execution and confidence in our ability to deliver on our commitment. And with that, I will hand over to Nibi.

Thank you, Aiman, and good morning, everyone. Before going into the details, the key message from H1 is clear. We're progressing in line with the trajectory that we set out earlier this year. Growth momentum is solid, margin is resilient, before the fit for growth benefits, and we continue to make progress in the value pools that underpin our medium-term ambitions. Starting with the H1 headline numbers, revenues reached €12,082 million, up 8.8% on a reported basis and 11.3% at constant currency. On profitability, operating margin reached 12.5% up 10 bps year-on-year. This is consistent with what we outlined for the year. A broadly stable margin in H1, with the benefits from our Fit for Growth initiative starting to come through progressively in H2 and building further in 2027. As expected, the Fit for Growth initiative also translated into higher restructuring costs. This is the main driver of the €227 million increase in other operating income and expenses, which I will come back to shortly. As a result, group net profit came in at €498 million, with basic EPS at €2.96. Normalized EPS, which excludes other operating income and expense items, was €5.29, down 11.9% year-on-year. and finally organic free cash flow was 37 million euros in line with our usual seasonal. Let's now look at the quarterly growth trend. After a good start to the year, Q2 was also slightly ahead of our expectations both at constant currency and at constant scope. Constant currency growth reached 11.6% in Q2 and 11.3% for H1. This includes a scope contribution of around six and a half points in each quarter. Before moving into the detailed H1 analysis, let me briefly touch on two factors that will affect reported revenue growth over the next couple of quarters. First, on FX, we continue to turn positive in H2 2026, bringing the full year FX headwind to slightly below one point. Second, on scope, the impact will mechanically reduce in Q4 as we annualize the consolidation of WNS and cloud proceeds. For the full year, we now expect Scope to contribute around 5 points. Turning to bookings, we reached 12.6 billion euros in H1 2026, including 6.5 billion euros in Q2. At constant currency, bookings were up 9.2% in Q2 and 7.8% for H1, which is consistent with the good revenue momentum we are seeing. The book-to-bill was 1.07 in Q2, in line with our historical standards, bringing the H1 ratio to 1.04 overall. This sales momentum is already visible in some of the value pools that will support our medium-term growth ambition. As Aiman mentioned earlier, we notably see good traction in enterprise technology modernization and in agentic enterprise processes. Overall, booking growth in generative and agentic AI are double-digit. From a sector perspective, Q2 showed a clear improvement on a like-for-like basis. Financial services, our fastest growing sector in H1, remain strong. At the same time, sectors that were softer in Q1, notably consumer goods in retail and manufacturing, improved visibly. This performance was also supported by the contribution from the acquisitions of WNS and Cloud4C, which was most visible in services, financial services, energy and utilities, and consumer goods in retail sectors. For H1 overall, at constant currency, financial services and services remain the most dynamic sectors, growing 20.5% and 19.1% respectively. All other sectors posted mid to high single-digit revenue growth. Geographically, the underlying growth trends remain robust in Q2. Most notably, France returned to growth and the rest of Europe continued to improve. North America and the UK and Ireland also maintain strong momentum, although slightly below their Q1 levels. The contribution from WNS and Cloud4C remains most visible in North America, the UK and Ireland, and Asia Pacific. In Q2, this lifted their growth rates close to or above 20% at constant currency. For H1 overall at constant currency, North America was up 19.8% year-on-year with strong underlying performance, mainly supported by financial services and manufacturing. The UK and Ireland posted growth of 21.1%, underlying performance was robust, driven by strong traction in public sector and consumer goods and retail sectors alongside a dynamic financial services sector. France was slightly positive at 0.4%, momentum in financial services and renewed growth in manufacturing more than offset weaker activity in the public sector. Rest of Europe grew by 2.6%. Public sector performed well alongside services and consumer goods and retail. Manufacturing remained soft, but the trend is improving. Finally, Asia-Pacific and Latin America delivered the strongest growth at 26%, mainly supported by financial services, consumer goods and retail, and energy and utility sector. On profitability, North America expanded its operating margin by 20 bps to 16.5%, while the UK and Ireland remained very strong at 18.1%. As previously outlined, France and rest of Europe did not yet benefit from the fit for growth initiatives in H1. Both regions therefore continue to be impacted by pockets of underutilization with operating margin down 230 bps and 80 bps respectively to 7.7% and 9.6%. and finally, Asia Pacific and Latin America delivered a strong improvement with operating margin up 410 bits to 14.2%. We also maintained good momentum in Q2 across all business lines, both at constant currency and on a like-for-like basis. Strategy and transformation accelerated to 12.2% from 6.2% in Q1. This is another encouraging sign that clients are looking at AI beyond a technical lens and to a broader business transformation needed to capture its value. And this is exactly where Capgemini's industry expertise and consulting capabilities are particularly relevant. For H1 overall at constant currency, strategy and transformation was 9.2% in H1 2026 with growth across the group's main regions. Applications and technology grew by 5% benefiting from the acceleration in technology modernization spending in clients' early investments to build new agentic tech stacks. Finally, operations and engineering posted a growth of 24.7% with double-digit, like-for-like growth in intelligent business operations, which combines Capgemini and WNS's digital business process services. Coming to headcount, headcount closed at 417,600, up 20% year-on-year, mainly reflecting the integration of WNS since Q4 last year. Offshore leverage stood at 66% at the end of June. Now, since January 1st, headcount is down 5,800, including 2,400 onshore. Let me now update you on Fit for Growth. The initiatives are progressing according to plan. Important milestones have been passed in key countries, and the benefits will start to come through from H2 and continue to build through 2027. As we reshape our capabilities, training and upskilling remain at the core of our approach. This is complemented by the normal rotation of skills through attrition, which now stands at 18.6% over the last 12 months. It is also worth mentioning that we are using subcontracting selectively in fast growth areas where we don't need these capabilities necessarily in the medium term. Let me now walk you through the operating margin bridge. Gross margin was 26.1% in H1, down 30 bits year-on-year. As discussed earlier, this mainly reflects profits of underutilization weighing on profitability in France and the rest of Europe. The benefits from Fit for Growth are not yet visible at this stage, but with important milestones now behind us, they will start to come through from H2 onwards. At the same time, we're seeing the benefit of initiatives launched in 2025 to improve the efficiency of our own operations, notably by simplifying some operating processes. This is visible in selling expenses, which are down 70 bits, while GNA reflects some technology investments and higher WNS-GNA mix with temporary increase of 30 bits. Operating margins therefore increased by 10 bits to 12.5%, which is consistent with the trajectory we outlined earlier this year for 2026. This puts us on track for margin expansion. We see traction in our AI and innovation portfolio, which is accretive to margins. Bits for growth is progressing according to plan, and WNS synergies are on track to deliver their targeted run rate by the end of 2027. Together, these levers give us increasing flexibility to reinvest part of the benefits and accelerate our growth profile in the future. As we create more value for our clients, we aim to get our fair share and expand our margins. Moving on, the financial result and tax. We moved from a net financial income of €16 million in H1 last year to a net expense of €65 million in H1 2026. This was mainly driven by the increase in our financial debt over the period, including the €4 billion bond issuance in September last year. On income tax, the effective tax rate increased year-on-year to 37.5%. This includes some items which mean that each one effective tax rate is not necessarily representative of the full year rate. Now, moving from operating margin to the bottom line. As anticipated, other operating income and expenses increased year on year by €227 million to €628 million. This increase is mainly driven by restructuring costs, which rose by €210 million in connection with the Fit for Growth initiative. These initiatives are expected to bring the total restructuring costs to €700 million over 2026 and 2027 and we remain on track for the majority of these costs to be incurred in 2026. This takes operating profits to 878 million euros or 7.3% of revenues compared with 8.8% in H1 last year. After the financial and tax impacts we have just discussed, group net profit stands at 498 million euros compared with 724 million euros in H1 2025. Basic EPS was 2.96 euros while normalized EPS was 5.29 euros, down 11.9% year-on-year. Turning finally to cash generation and capital allocation. We generated 37 million euros of organic free cash flow in H1 2026 compared with 60 million euros in H1 last year. This is in line with our normal seasonal pattern. As usual, cash generation will be heavily weighted towards H2. Now in terms of capital allocation in H1, the group paid 570 million euros in dividends and used 315 million euros per share buybacks under its multi-year program. On the balance sheet, we redeemed in full at maturity an 800 million euro bond in April, which was successfully refinanced in May for a similar amount. We closed H1 with 6.5 billion euros of net debt compared with 5.3 billion euros at the end of 2025. So on that note, I'm going to hand back to you.

Thank you, Nivi. So let's now open the Q&A. Again, to allow a maximum number of people in the queue to ask questions, I kindly ask you to restrict yourself to one question and a single follower. Operator, could you please share the Q&A instructions?

Thank you so much. Dear participants, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, one, one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star, one, and one again. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A. We'll take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes to the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Great. Good morning, Nivi. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on another good quarter. Maybe you can help us a little bit on the phasing, the second half. The comms are very different between Q3 and Q4. and then secondly, you were very clear that the gross margin was impacted by pockets of underutilization. Can you help us here a bit understand how this should develop in the second half? Does the fit for growth initiative resolve this completely or do you require also some increase in demand in some of these areas where you have these underutilization? Thank you.

Thank you. So I mean, listen, it's clear that We're keeping some level of cautiousness around the fourth quarter because of global macroevolution, inflation, what's happening in the Middle East, etc. So we're going to remain cautious around Q4. I mean, I think we are. We're definitely going to have the impact of the base effect. Just to give you an idea, we were organic at minus 0.4 in Q2 last year. We ended up there at 4%. Of course, it's going to play, but overall we have good confidence on Q3 and Q4. But yes, comps will play, and again, caution around basically what happened on the macro side.

So, Sven, on the gross margin, yes, you're absolutely right. The gross margin is, of course, impacted because of the under-absorption in continental Europe, as I just mentioned, and yes, As we start to see the fit for growth benefits start to kick in, we'd expect gross margin to improve progressively. And I'd also say that we'll also be further supported by an improved utilization as well as a continued shift to higher value activities.

So yes, you should see improvements in the second half coming for the full year compared to H1.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. and the question comes line of Frederick Boulang from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hey, good morning, Aiman and Nivedita. Thanks for taking the question. If I can follow up on the demand side and, you know, whether you've seen any macro competitive dynamics you want to point out, any comments around how pricing is evolving, considering, you know, two factors, one AI deflation, but also new demands around Agente Capability. And if you can share the level of margins you see on current contract, current RFPs versus where you've been historically, that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, so I mean, listen, microdynamics haven't seen much of evolution. Of course, there's always noise in the system with inflation situation with the Middle East. Again, I remain cautious that so far we haven't seen significant changes in decision making. I'm not saying that certain things have not been delayed, but there's always some of that, always have some right shift. But there's nothing that's substantial for the moment in the market. You know, on the pricing, there's no change. You know, there's anticipation with AI, and yes, you know, clients are anticipating some of the benefits. We price them, and then we have to deliver them. And the maturity we're getting bit by bit in terms of how to make that happen is increasing. So, you know, I think we, from my perspective, it's stable. We're seeing stabilization compared to expectations from that perspective. And, you know, whatever expectation came into the market, they've already been absorbed. And right now, you know, I don't see any evolution quarter on quarter from that perspective. So it's competitive, but stable.

Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question.

And the question comes from Laurent Deur from Cap Le Chevreau. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, Aiman and Nivi, and congrats as well. So two questions. The first is you said the Fit for Growth plan was on track. Could you be a bit more specific by the end of the year how much you think will be completed and If it's fair to say that still the majority of the savings should come mostly in 2027, given that it's back-end loaded. And the second question is on the bookings that you have delivered in the first half. When you look at them and try to estimate the profitability they will bring in the coming quarters, do you see some changes? I know you already commented on the pricing side, but Overall, do you believe what you book today has at least the same profitability as what you've been delivering in past quarters? Thank you.

The first question for Nidhi, she's driving the program.

Yeah, so in terms of the Fit for Growth initiative, you're right, Laurent, we will see of course some A benefit start to come through in H2, but as you can understand, because of the nature of some of the continental European countries, some of the benefits, the full benefits, you'll start to see more in 2027 than you will see in 2026. But the plan is progressing according to plan. And, you know, we believe that we will be able to, you know, get those benefits in H2, but more in 2027.

So, on the property of new bookings, of course, it's important, you know, we do an estimate always in terms of what we think the profitability of what we sell, you know. We had seen pressure in previous years, you know, year on year because of the expectations of clients and our estimation of our ability to be able to deliver them. But right now, I think we see stability. That means today we are pretty much aligned year on year in terms of what we see in terms of some of these new bookings. I think we can deliver better over time because, again, it's an estimation at the time where you sign the deal. but we had some erosion previously and now it really starts to stabilize. One, because more confidence in our ability to deliver some of them and the second thing is our portfolio is also improving in terms of what we deliver. So I think we have bugged the trend and now we are getting more into stabilizing and potentially more positive territory as we move forward along this.

Great, thank you.

Thank you so much. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes line of Balaji Tirupati from CTO. Line is open. Please ask a question.

Thank you. Congratulations on the good quarter from my side as well as Aiman and Neve. One question and one follow up from my side as well, if I may. Firstly, on AI, we have started to see a shift in enterprise approach to AI adoption to focus more on efficient way of using the technology. Could you share how that is defining your engagement with customers and implications for IT services industry in general? And second, on the restructuring program, with almost half of the planned restructuring provision made in first half of 2026, could you share if the progress is as expected as you see today? or you see possibility to do more than you had initially expected?

Okay, I think what's changing, there are differences. First, I think everybody's realizing it's a lot more complex than what people initially thought and quick savings, some agents, a small platform and suddenly the world is going to change. and this people start to realize as we developed at the capital market day there are a lot of elements you know people are first it was oh we need to get the data ready oh it's not just the data ready and now now we need to to create the context and semantic oh there's a control plane or there is a cyber part or there is which model we should use oh there's a sovereignty aspect you know so people realize the complexity of that and I think this is where our value also increases as people realize the complexity of the transformation The need to see how to optimize multiple variables. There's a lot of arbitrage around different decisions to be made, you know, and that's more and more, you know, our value becomes more pertinent to clients and they realize that this is not as simple as some people portrayed at the beginning. So what is changing is there is a lot of subject being discussed with clients because a lot of variables to be taken into account now as you make some of the decision around AI is which platform, which LLM, You know, which solution, you go for SLMs, you go for LLMs, what you put, how you manage the control plane, you go for a big control plane, you do for control plane initially by sub-process. So there's a flurry of decision making that helps not only ensure that the program is successful, but also ensure that you have something that makes sense financially and from a risk perspective. and we are dealing with these complexities now as we really engage with clients and that's why you cannot make small things of saying I'm going to just introduce an agent on a process. Why? Because the amount of risk and complexity you're doing by just trying to do that is so high that it's much better to start looking at real end-to-end transformations because the amount of variables you have to deal with whether you introduce an agent or do an end-to-end transformation start to become similar and that's really where people start realizing and The second aspect, which I think is important, because that's also experiencing internally as client zero, is it's good to have all of this, but where is the money? And we realize that you need to redesign work, you need to have a very disciplined approach about how you're going to extract value. If you don't do that, you will not see any value coming out. So, the realization of what it requires to drive this AI skill in terms of transformation, and how What you need to put in place to be able to capture the value is complex. And I think we're going up the learning curve and that's what we're bringing to our clients.

So Balaji, coming back to your question on the restructuring. So clearly we'd announced 700 million envelope over 26 and 27. And we'd also said that the sooner we executed, the sooner the benefits would start to contribute, if you like, to the margin trajectory. So in that context, clearly whatever we can do this year, we would do. The program, of course, is absolutely progressing to plan, but as I just sort of remind everybody that clearly when we book it in the P&L doesn't necessarily mean, of course, the benefits necessarily accrue at the same pace, so it comes later. So we see some benefits in H2, and of course we will see more benefits as we go into 2027. Very clear.

Thank you, Nivedita. Thank you, Aiman. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from Nushin Nijati from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. On the intelligence business operation pipeline that now stands at 13.3 billion euros, how should we think about the conversion of that pipeline into revenue over the next 12 to 24 months? relative to the traditional caps looking. And also on France that is returned to growth while manufacturing also improves. Would you characterize that as the beginning of a broader recovery or are those still isolated pockets of strength? Thank you.

The first thing on the conversion, of course, you know, it's a pipeline. So first it has to move from qualified opportunity to actually client making decisions. We have to win, we have to start the transition, we have to ramp up. So some of this, you know, we're talking 12, 18, 24 months, you know, in terms of basically cycles. So it doesn't convert overnight, but definitely it's positive. But this is a pipeline, positive to see also what we signed and what we expect to sign, you know, in the coming few quarters. So, I mean, it gives more growth sense. It's a growth, right? The growth of that pipeline is more than 30% in the beginning of the year. And we have new opportunities coming in on an ongoing basis. So the value proposition is strong and could really sustain a pretty strong growth for that intelligent operation business over the coming years. We are quite confident on that. On the French side, listen, There are pockets where I consider we're still underperforming the market in France. So I think overall we have managed to address some of the challenges we had notably on the manufacturing. I think we still have work to do in the public sector. You know, it's still a headwind. But underlying overall, I see really an improvement in France, which I think is good. We should keep progressing over the coming years. Over the coming quarters, I think with that, we also have to work and the Fit for Growth program will be on the recovery of the market, which weighs quite a bit at the group level right now. So that's kind of the two axes, is the growth, but also the profitability axis that we should keep in mind.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Now we're going to take our next question. and the question comes line of Toby Oak from JP Morgan. Your line is open, please ask your question.

Morning. Yeah, hi, good morning, Aiman and Nivi. Thanks for the question. Just on the growth and margin dynamics, clearly we're continuing to see organic growth outperform with Q2 and the growth guidance upgrade. How do we think about that in the context of the unchanged margin guidance? Are you having to invest a little bit more to generate that growth and so the operating leverage isn't as high? What's preventing that growth upside from translating into margin upside? And when do you think we'll sort of reach a point where the growth outperformance can drive margin outperformance in terms of your expectations? Thank you.

Thank you. Listen, it's a good question. First, the operating leverage is not as high you know as we expect always in that business you know of course when you really if I go from three percent to ten percent you have operating leverage but an acceleration of one or one and a half point doesn't give you lots of operating leverage in that business and yes you're right we are investing because I think the AI transition in some cases accelerating we have a lot of open fronts you know these enterprise hubs we're building with every technology partners and we are investing in them because that's what basically setting up All the practices that we're now shaping up and basically all the future growth. So there is an acceleration in some of this AI transition and we have to bug the trend and that requires some investment. So yes, we are really managing that arbitrage between profitability improvement and the need to continue to fuel the growth quarter after quarter. But we will see that margin improvement already, as you know. I mean, we still talk about 30 to 50 bps improvement for the full year. We did confirm that guidance and further in the coming years based on what we gave you at the Capital Market Day. So there is confidence in terms of, you know, bit by bit, really seeing that growth and that improvement of mix translating into improvement in the margin.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from Charles Brennan from Jefferies. So the line is open. Please ask your question.

Great. Thanks very much. Just two for me, actually. Can I continue on the margin question? I'm struggling to understand the full dynamics of what's going on here. You're attributing a lot of the weakness, I guess, to underutilization in France, but But France was relatively weak last year and you managed to manage the margin. Why is it rolling over now? And then you pointed to relative stability in the U.S. and the U.K. But on an organic basis, I guess that we're looking at margin declines in the U.S. and U.K. as well. Can you talk about why we're seeing those underlying margin declines in the U.K. and U.S.? Thanks.

So, Charles, actually, if you really look back, and while you thought that we had maintained the margin for France, I specifically did talk about the fact that the underlying operational performance in France had not improved, and there were one-offs, etc., which had held the margin up. And so we were very clear that there were pockets of that underperformance for some time to come, and of course there's been a revenue decline as well for some time to come. So this is sort of catching up and caught up with us, and therefore, you know, we have because of the underutilization, we're not able to improve the gross margin in this particular case. But as you can see, we had announced the fit for growth and we're absolutely clear that we expect to keep our margin guidance. And there's no underlying margin decline in the US and UK. I don't know where you're getting that from, Charles.

We are on a historical high in this region. Yeah, it's 18.1, so it's not... We are on a historical high in this region, so I'm not sure why you're saying you see an underlying margin decline in the US and UK. The challenge is really Europe, and primarily France. It weighs significantly on the Q1. We have anticipated that by launching the Fit for Growth program. This is the biggest program we have in France. It's being addressed. We anticipated it. and I think we are on track to be able to recover the margin difference so we feel good about it.

I thought W&S was 30 basis points roughly accretive to margins. Have I got my numbers wrong there?

It's 20, it's 20 bips accretion and that 20 bips accretion did not come through in H1 because of what we just talked about, which is the France weighing quite heavily. But clearly as we go into H2, we'll start to see the benefits come through.

We'll get it in the full year. So, I mean, we're not saying that the full accretion did not come in H1. Yes, it should have been the full accretion of WNS did not come in H1 because of the margin headwind in France. That's significant. That's it. But overall, we increased by 10 bips. We still plan the 30 to 50 BIPs, which will include the full accretion from WNS for the full year's chance.

Okay, thank you.

So, we'll take the last questions.

Yes, of course. Now we're going to take our last question. And it comes from Mohamed Mouawara from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Great. Thank you very much. Hi, Aiman, hi, Nivedita, and congrats on another good quarter. My question was really around sort of this outperformance you're delivering relative to your peer set. I mean, you sort of talked about sort of market chain gains already. Can you sort of pinpoint the specific areas of sort of strength that you're seeing? And then my second question is on WNS. Have you started to sort of recognize some of those synergies in Q3 already, sorry, Q2? or is that something that sort of still comes either in the second half or is that more next year? Thank you.

So I would say on the revenue synergies, I think yes, because it played in some of the deals that we won. I think some of the deals we won would not have won them without WNS. I think that stays. On the core synergies, no, we just moved to the new integrated operation on 1st of July. So really the synergies that are in front of us, it was It's important to design the right organization to see how we're going to fit that together, how to make it work, how to fully benefit from the strengths of both organizations. And I think that's what we have done successfully with the launch of the integrated business line globally of intelligent business operations. We're going to start focusing a lot more around how to achieve some of the cost synergies now that we have put the operation together, and that's coming in the next 12 to 18 months. So as we said, we expect to achieve the runway from cost by the end of next year, so we should see some limited by the end of this year, but really getting into next year, we see a bit more impact.

Thank you.

Thank you. On some of the strengths areas, I think, you know, we highlighted them. I think one really on a good wave on the AI thing, I think the combination of capabilities we have, and as we say, the two big things that we saw initially that's really impacting the top line right now is on one side the tech modernization, and we give you some example of some of the deals. We have even some client names. And the second one is re-intelligent business operation, you know, intelligent operation. And that's really another fuel. I mean, this business is growing double digits and definitely it supports France. And don't forget the defence and security play in Europe, which is really also helping us and the sovereignty that we start picking up. So, yeah, I mean, there are good growth drivers that we highlighted that we really expect to continue to strengthen in the coming quarters. Thank you all. Thank you.

Dear speakers, sorry for the questions for today. I would now like the conference over to the management team for any closing remarks.

No, thank you. I just, you know, hope to see you in the coming weeks. I think we are on track to deliver our upgraded guidance for the future.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.