Dassault Systemes Sa Adr

Good morning, everyone. Marie Dumas from Dassault Systèmes. Thank you for joining this presentation. Pascal Dalloz, our CEO and Chairman, and Reuven Bergman, our CFO, are on the line with me to discuss our first quarter 2026 earnings. During this presentation, results are prepared in accordance with IFRS. The financial figures discussed on this conference are on a non-IFRS basis with revenue growth rates on a constant currency basis, unless otherwise noted. Some of the comments on this call contain forward-looking statements that could differ materially from actual results. please refer to today's press release in the Risk Factors section of our 2025 Universal Registration document. All earnings materials are available on our website. I'd like now to hand over to Pascal Dalloz. See you in chairman.

Thank you, Marie, and good morning to all of you. It's always a pleasure to be at this time of the year physically in London, and thank you for the one being with us today. I know it was not so easy because it's Friday in London. So, again, thank you for being here. Before handing over to Reuven, I really would like to put this quarter into the perspective of our trajectory. So remember what I say, 2026 is really the year of execution. Not vision, not strategy, execution. Execution to strengthen the foundation for sustainable growth, but more importantly, to accelerate our transition to subscriptions, and to deploy our industrial AI strategy. Let me start with where we are. So back in February, we set a clear commitment. Today, we are, I think, delivering on them. Q1 is on track, revenue up 3%, no surprises, no deviation. We confirm our full-year outlook, 3% to 5% growth, with an acceleration in the second half. But I think beyond the numbers, what matters is really the trajectory we are building. And the key question is really how we are delivering this. And I think we are doing it through three priorities. The first one is transforming our existing clients. The second one is expanding into new frontier to conquest new domains. And the third one is scaling industrial AI. And I think we're executing them consistently. Now let's zoom on the first one, the install base. If you look at it, globally, our clients, they are not slowing down. Because I heard you many times saying, you know, you have a large install base, but most of your customers are slowing down. I don't think so. But they are changing. They are transforming. They are adapting themselves. So why I'm saying this is because they are not constrained by the demands, but they are constrained by the complexity. Too many systems, too many regulations, too many geopolitics. And at the end, this is creating a lot of frictions between design and executions, between sourcing and supply. And this is really where we come in. And the proof of what I'm seeing, if you pay attention and you look at clearly what is underlying the performance, I would encourage you to look at the annual run rate, which is up 6% this quarter. The cloud is up 8%. It's more than twice the total growth. And 3D experience is up 7%, despite, if you remember, a high comparison base. But this is not just a shift in terms of tools. It's really a way how these companies are operating today. The second lever is the new frontier. And the new frontier is really where the growth will come next. Let's zoom first in life sciences. The environment remains challenging. But I think our platform approach is starting to deliver results. And I will come back later on this. In the consumer space, we see discipline, spin and scale, and strong growth in apparel and growing momentum in food and beverage and retails. And I think we are building strong positions. And the third lever is obviously 3D universes, which is one of the most important shifts, because this is where AI moves to promises, to reality. Not anymore pilot of proof of concept, but real use cases in productions. And all of this is powered by our AI architecture, which has been designed purposely for the industry. Now, if we step back and we look at the industry, there are a few things I want to share with you. One thing is clear. I think we are increasingly acting as a critical partner for many, many of our customers. The first comment I want to make is the performance of mainstream. Mainstream is really broad-based. And solid waste continues to drive the momentum. And why this is important? Because you know, usually it's an early indicator of the underlying demands across industries. So this is extremely important to have this momentum still going on. Now, if I zoom in transportation and mobility... Demand is holding despite the volume pressure, and I think we remain the reference for most of programs around the world. And more importantly, this quarter, we continue to expand in America. In aerospace and defense, after a strong comparison last year, you remember we had this large deal with Lockheed Martin. The next wave is ahead and we see budget increasing and we are starting to see some traction, especially in the defense part of the marine and offshore. But beyond the core, there are interesting things going on. I told you in the consumer, growth is really strong, driven by Centric, with sizable wins in apparel. I could mention Nike, for example, and growing momentum in food and beverage and retails. And this quarter, we signed landmark deals. We signed Amazon for the retails. We signed James Mucker. Ferrero in Italy. So those are really very flagship customers, and this is a good illustration of the momentum we see in this. In the high-tech, I think our solutions are benefiting from the global scale-up of AI and cloud infrastructure. I think it's something which is more and more visible in our revenue streams. And in life sciences, we are transforming a fragmented and slow environment with the platform approach. And finally, in infrastructure, growth is really driven by the complex energy program where I think sovereignty matters. There is one common piece across all the industry. I think we are helping our customers to move faster, to improve quality, and to use their capital much more efficiently. Now let's zoom on some customer examples. And let's make it concrete. The first one is Eaton. I don't know if you know Eaton. It's one of the global leaders in intelligence power management. But more importantly, they are the center of electrification. And their challenge, very simple, scale execution without adding complexity. And their answer is unifying everything on 3D experience on the cloud. As a result, today it's over 20,000 users working on one single system. And the net benefit of this is faster time to market, optimized costs, and value creation in the hundreds of millions. Another example, and I use it, I take it because we are here in London, is the UK Fusion Energy. You know one of you, you know them, because they are the one having the ambitions to deliver the fusion power plant by 2040. It's one of the most complex engineering challenges in the world. And in fact, they choose 3D experience as well as an operating system to connect the ecosystem, on one hand, to ensure the data continuity across all the different domains, all the different disciplines, and they build a secure infrastructure with this. So I think this is really a very interesting example how the transformation could be at the frontier of the innovations. Now, let's look at the second lever with concrete examples, the new frontier. I spoke about the semiconductor. And you know there is a race for AI infrastructure right now. So designing advanced chips is extremely complex. And I think with our multi-physics simulations, companies like Annapurna Labs can design and validate faster delivering the next generation of cloud infrastructure. In this specific case, Annapurna, it's an Amazon company, and they are the one developing the specific chip for the AWS data center. In life sciences, I think there are interesting things going on, and I'm sure Reuven will come back on this. We are reinventing the CRO business model. And why so? Because we are shifting them from a labor-intensive approach to an AI-driven operating model. And I think with our AI-powered media data platform, companies like WCT, Worldwide Clinical Trial, one of the largest CROs, they are moving from thousands of fragmented systems again to one unified enterprise's solutions. And this is important because for them, this has enabled them to do faster studies, better executions, and really real-time insights. And this is driving both their top lines but also their margin improvements. Now, in the consumer, speed is critical. And with Centric PLM, a GM smoker really accelerates the product development while they are maintaining the quality and the control. And the result, again, is faster innovation, better products, and a model that can scale across the industry and across all the product lines they have. Now, let me make some comments related to 3D universes, the third level. I think this quarter we are delivering tangible value. For the one who had the chance to be at NEXT last month, we demonstrated how we are connecting the full life sciences cycle from the discovery to the clinical and to the real world outcomes. How we do this? We are using virtual twins to synchronize, on one hand, the drug lifecycle, you know, all the different steps the drugs need to follow in order to be discovered, tested, produced, introduced on the market. And we do it also by synchronizing with the patient journey. This is where the drug is applied, where basically you collect the real insight. We have also introduced DOT. DOT is our virtual companions for clinical intelligence. And the results are very promising. You know, it's between 30 to 40 higher enrollment rates. And as you know, when you do clinical studies, I mean, the ability to enroll the patient is really something extremely critical. And I think this is changing the game. But more importantly, we have witnessed also the ability to create the clinical data corpus in a much faster. And in fact, we have divided the build time by five. So it's really a step change in the performance. Another thing which has been extremely important, you know, we were participating to the GTC. the larger, basically, ecosystem even around AI in San Francisco, and we showcase our industrial AI architecture. And you can see on the slides, you have basically all the different layers. But the takeaway is what? This has been built on 40 years of science, industrial data, and this is connecting design simulations, data, and the workflow with one unified systems. And the key differentiation is at the core of this system, we are putting what we call the industry world model. In the same way, companies like Anthropric, they have their foundational model with basically the language model. The ASSO system is building the entire AI strategy, putting the industry world model at the core. And it's not on the top, it's really at the core. Finally, we are releasing our virtual companions. I spoke about it many times. And you can see you have the lists there. They are becoming more specialized, more intelligent, and more connected. And why so? Because, in fact, we have this double approach. They combine industry know-how on one hand, and the domain expertise, the domain knowledge on the other hand. And we do this also by leveraging the real-time data. This is how those virtual companions are really helping us to scale intelligence across the company. If you are okay, I really want to make a quick demo just for you to see it. And if you can launch the video, please. So here, what you see on the screen, is a clear illustration of the shift underway in engineering and the market opportunity it creates. You still know that there are several millions of professionals still working in 2D, even if the 3D is already an industry standard. Now, AI helps us to make the move from 2D to 3D possible. And how do we do this? Because we are lowering the skills barrier to move. And here is a good illustration. Probably you recognize Manish. Manish is the CEO of SOLIDWORKS and the VP of Research and Development. And he's performing the same design with and without AI. So on the left is the traditional model. Extremely powerful, but in fact reserved for the experts. On the right, Manish generates an editable 3D model and interact it in a natural language with the virtual companions. And the virtual companions is the one proposing the designs, is the one basically knowing how to read the 2D to create the dimension automatically into the systems, creating the structure and configuring the 3D model to be ready for the simulations. So if you know a little bit this industry, you need to master a lot of skills in order to do these simple things. So why I use this example? Because it's more than a productivity story. It's about broadening access. It's about expanding the usage from the specialist to everyone and growing, at the end, the addressable market. So remember, with 3D universes, every object you add into the systems, every simulation makes it smarter, and every workflow makes it more valuable. This is really the power of the learning platform. To conclude, you know I already announced it, we're going to have a capital market day, but now I have the date. It will be November the 17th this year in Paris. We will go deeper into these visions, and obviously we will disclose the roadmap related to AI and how we are making the link with the financial plans. I think now it's time for me, Ruben, to over to you for more details on the financial performance and the outlook.

Okay, cool. Thank you, Pascal. Also, it's a pleasure to welcome you for our first quarter earnings call here in London and everyone following us online. As Pascal, as you mentioned, Q1 was a solid start to the year. We delivered revenue, margin and EPS well aligned with our objectives and clearly demonstrating continued focus on execution. Our recurring business continues to perform well. It's very much reflected by the consistent annual run rate growth of 6% year over year and a net ARR increase of 35 million sequentially. Also, we saw good operating discipline, which translated to strong operating cash flow performance of nearly 1 billion in the quarter that we generated, which is up 22% at constant currency. The bottom line is we are laying the foundation for acceleration throughout the year and into 2027. Now let's take a look at the details of the financial for the quarter. Total revenue reached 1,510,000,000. It was up 3% XFX, with software and services revenue all up 3%. On revenue mix, upfront license revenue came in slightly better than anticipated, up 9%, driven by a number of significant multi-year deals. Subscription revenue grew 3%, reflecting a tough comparable from the landmark Lockheed Martin deal, which we closed in Q1 of last year. Turning to our recurring business growth, the annual run rate, or ARR, as you know, provides a consistent view of annualized growth at a rate of 6%, independent of the timing of revenue recognition. And in the quarter, we added 35 million in annualized value sequentially, which brings the total ARR to 4,371,000,000, encompassing all active subscriptions and maintenance contracts, also including the annualized value of multi-year subscriptions, where IFRS requires us to record the revenue upfront. What drove ARR this quarter? A growing share of cloud bookings and continued expansion of multi-year subscription deals with higher total contract values. The broad-based momentum translated into double-digit subscription ARR growth. Turning to our growth drivers, 3DEXPERIENCE platform is at the core of our growth strategy. In the first quarter, 3DEXPERIENCE saw a 7% XFX growth and now makes up 42% of our eligible software revenue, up three points compared to last year. Cloud revenue grew 8% overall, with strong momentum in the take-up of 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud up 30%. And you heard Pascal earlier discuss some of our key wins, Eaton and UK Fusion. But there are more. We are executing on our growth drivers with a rate of growth more than two times when compared with our total software revenue. Now let's take a look at the geographies. Europe delivered healthy growth of 7% in the quarter. It was broad-based across regions, with strong contribution from home and lifestyle, as well as key deals in the energy sector. This is a clear illustration of our diversification strategy at work, delivering impactful solutions across an expanding set of end markets. Asia posted mixed performance, up 3%. with a slight decline in revenue in China, which was the primary headwind we faced. Outside of China, the business remained resilient across our geos, with Korea, Japan, and India all contributing meaningfully in core industries. America's was down 1%, reflecting the tough comparable from the Lockheed Martin contract expansion in Q1 of last year. Excluding this effect, America grew mid to high single digits. The underlying performance was strong, with double-digit growth in transportation and mobility, as well as industrial equipment, and even stronger momentum in the consumer industries. Now let's take a look at the performance of product lines. Industrial innovation was flat in Q1, mainly due to the tough comparable as mentioned before. Adjusted for this, industrial innovation was up mid-single digits, with the growth replicated across our core manufacturing brands such as Delmia, Simulia, Inovia and Catia, and driven by good traction on subscriptions. For mainstream innovation, as you see, we had an outstanding quarter, up 14%. Centric delivered a particularly strong return to growth this quarter, driven by notable new client wins, including a significant competitive displacement, and brought momentum across strategic verticals such as food and beverage, retail and sports apparel. This is a meaningful inflection point and a testament to the new leadership and the entire Centric team. Clients are validating the strengths and differentiation of our offer as they look to transform their business in a fast-moving consumer industry with AI at the center. This performance supports our full-year outlook of mid- to high-teens growth for Centric, with Q2 mainstream growth expected to normalize sequentially from this quarter's level. Also, SOLIDWORKS' momentum continued with high single-digit growth in revenue and double-digit growth in units. The performance was broad-based across geos, and it underscores our strong value proposition in the mainstream market, where short sales cycles and time to value are essential. Now to life sciences. And as expected, Q1 was still negative as Medidata's business was mainly impacted by lower revenue contribution from partners. This reflects a carryover from lower 2025 bookings, while in the quarter, we saw bookings volumes and value trending positive versus last year. Also important to highlight, as Pascal mentioned, we signed a strategic multi-year partnership with Worldwide Clinical Trials, a leading CRO, standardizing clinical activity on Medidata's platform and leveraging AI across all workflows to speed up and simplify study build and execution. We see this as a first-of-a-kind deal. For 2026, we expect H2 to improve over H1 with the objective to reach a positive run rate growth entering 2027. Now turning to cash flow, clearly a highlight of the quarter. We generated a strong 949 million in operating cash flow in the quarter, up 17% and 22% excluding the currency impact. As anticipated, this was mainly driven by positive working capital dynamics over the quarter. As account receivables decreased sequentially, reflecting strong cash collections and a favorable impact from contract liabilities due to higher billing activity. Free cash flow was up 27% in the quarter, driven by the strong operating cash flow. Cash conversion in the first quarter jumped to 208% versus 167% in Q1 last year. Seasonally, we know Q1 is a strong cash collection quarter, but at the same time, the progressive transition of our business towards subscription and cloud creates an opportunity for continued improvement in cash conversion. To complete the picture, our overall cash and cash equivalents reached 4 billion 875 million as of Q1, which is an increase of 750 million versus Q1 25. And looking at the investments in the quarter, it's also worth highlighting that we completed an acquisition of a startup to expand our cyber system strategy with ALM capabilities, application lifecycle management. Combined with 3D experience, this acquisition offers a unique advantage for companies developing software-defined products. We are excited to have a very talented team joining our Cyber Systems Katja team. Now to finalize, our net cash position remains strong and stood at 2,396,000,000 as of the end of Q1. Now to the outlook. We are confirming our full-year outlook for total revenue of €6,290,000,000 to €6,410,000,000 or 3% to 5% gross XFX with an operating margin in the range of 32.2% to 32.6% and an EPS of €130,000,000 to €134,000,000 representing 3% to 6% gross XFX. For Q2, we expect total revenue in the range of 1,518,000 to 1,568,000,000, up 2% to 5% XFX. Software and service revenues are expected to grow in line with total revenue by 2% to 5%. We target an operating margin between 29.5 to 29.9 percent, an EPS of 29 cents to 31 cents, growing in a range of 3 to 7 percent, excluding currency. And this is all based on our FX assumptions for an average rate for the year of dollar to euro of 1.18 and yen to euro of 173.37. To conclude, we had a solid start to the year. We delivered performance at objectives and confirm our full year guidance. Our growth drivers demonstrate that our strategy is working, providing the tailwinds for future growth. Focus on execution and operating discipline drove solid margin and strong cash conversion. This provides the foundation to invest in our long-term growth and accelerate our AI strategy to deliver tangible value for our clients, employees, and, of course, to our shareholders. Now, Pascal and I look forward to take your questions.

I'm going to start with the room. I think they will give you a mic.

Online remote.

And we'll do the online questions later on.

Thank you. Two for me. First of all, obviously there's been a slight improvement of growth relative to where we were in Q4. The guidance calls for this gradual acceleration as we move through the year. Can you just help us better understand, again, the building blocks by the different business segments and in particular around the pathway for recurring revenue, given that's still at a fairly depressed level? And in terms of kind of... What is driving this? And linked to that is obviously ARR has been fairly steady at 6%. So how should we think about the link of the required run rate in ARR to kind of underpin this revenue growth? Second question is... You talked about sort of AI being more complementary and kind of growing the base. How should we think about also the further evolution of the model of the medium to long term, particularly as we move to kind of consumption and outcome based? I know your goal is to move to more subscription based, but... You know, how much volatility, you know, could this potentially bring? Or how do you think about pricing some of your product? Because the feedback we hear is budgeting can also be very difficult for customers, right, with this unpredictability. So just curious to get a sense from your perspective what this means and how does that, you know, evolve your model. Thank you.

Take the first one.

Yes, happy to. Thank you, Mo, for kicking us off in this Q&A session. First, to the building blocks of the guidance. It has not changed entering into the year. Let's be clear. Q1 is a solid start to the year, as we said. It's categorized by... Strong momentum, as you see, in mainstream innovation, with strong performance of SOLIDWORKS, which was very broad-based. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, it's a time where... Sales cycles are very short, and time to value needs to be delivered quickly, and I think SOLIDWORKS is fitting very good into this mode. From an enterprise standpoint, we signed large deals, more and more cloud-based, so you don't see them yet in revenue, but they are reflected in ARR. UK Fusion is one, but Eaton was also cloud. The big metadata deal is cloud. It's not in revenue. It's in backlog. So we're really, step by step, really driving the execution towards the new business model. Nevertheless, we delivered the revenue as expected at 3%. We had a tough comparison coming into the quarter with a landmark deal of Q1 last year, which created a bit of a bump to achieve coming into the year. We did that. We talked about Centric. Centric is definitely a contributor to growth when we compare it to 2025, where we had a lot of headwind in the consumer-centric industries. We see a very, very strong start to the year, but I want to be also clear that Q2 will be more in line with our full-year model. So we are going to see a bit of an effect where Q2 and Q1 will balance off to a good start in H1, but it's not like what it was in Q1. So metadata is as expected in our guidance. We have a lower contribution or negative contribution in the first six months. And we expect to see a break even as we enter into H2. The bookings momentum of the first quarter are supporting that thesis. Q2 execution will be important, you know, to continue to go this path. But I think WCT is a deal, I said, first of a kind, because here we are transforming the first year role from a time and material and study by study model into a platform model and AI. And that's very exciting. And it really is a demonstration of the strategy that has been laid out at NEXT. Now, to ARR, what's important to keep in mind with ARR, and it's in line with where we are going, right? ARR is a forward-looking metric. We are looking at the next 12 months run rate of the deals that we are closing. While we know that in revenue recognition, according to the standards, we have to recognize revenue up front. and we cannot present it in a 12-month run retroactively. It's mainly true for all the multi-year subscription deals that we are signing. So that's also why we have that revenue mix fluctuation with a higher upfront license portion in the first quarter, which is a result of large multi-year subscriptions or a number of larger multi-year subscriptions that we have signed in the first quarter, which we saw in the upfront license but not in subscription according to our conventions and policies. But the ARR shows the normalized trend on a 12-month basis go forward. And that is really the underlying strengths and the acceleration that we anticipate. The ARR is consistent 6%. 35 million sequential growth coming out of Q4, adding to the ARR basis, which is much more than what we did in Q1 last year. So we're adding more subscription deals that build the ARR, and we expect the ARR also to grow from there. In fact, subscription AR was up low teens, while the maintenance AR was more flattish. So we are going to reach disparity of subscription AR exceeding maintenance AR probably sooner than what we have modeled, and it will be an inflection point.

Related to the second part of your question, Mo, it's a very important question. And I could give some examples just to materialize this discussion. I remember a year ago discussing with the CIO of Ford, and he was pissed off by some software vendors basically forcing their AI usage as part of the subscriptions. And at the end, he was exactly telling me what you say. It's becoming unpredictable for them. So based on this, what did we do? In fact, remember the category of new products, new solution we are developing are not replacing the existing one. So the role and the process portfolio are still there and they will stay. Why I'm saying this is because if you are a customer, You have a choice to use a role and a process and to put people to use them. Or you could decide to use virtual companions and generative experiences. So point number one, I'm giving them the choice. The second thing is, what do we price? With virtual companion, we are pricing the reasoning. If you are a mechanical engineer, if you are a scientist, your reasoning is not the same. So that's basically, and the way to materialize it, we are developing what we call unit of knowledge and unit of know-how, which is basically a token having a certain value. But the more sophisticated is your reasoning, the more we charge. From a packaging standpoint, obviously, the companion will be delivered with a set of tokens. And we will give the flexibility to consume more token and also to put limits if they are reaching the limits. That's the idea. The generative experience is very different, is when you want to automatize certain things. So here, what we are pricing is a unit of work. is not the unit of knowledge or the know-how, it's really the unit of work. And same thing, we have a currency, which is a token, we put a price, and depending how much processes you want to optimize, we basically package it with a bunch of tokens. And same thing, we are giving some flexibility on top of it. And the last approach is, you remember, when we do the virtual twin as a service, meaning rather than to sell the tools, the virtual companions, or to automatize the work, we do the work on behalf of our customers. And in this case, what we are pricing is the outcome. So this is the way. It's very robust. I think you heard me in my introduction saying that really our customers, they are moving from experimentations and pilot to now in production. And they start to ask the right questions. This one is one of them. And obviously, I think the choice we made three, four years ago are the right one. Thank you. Thank you.

Go to Frédéric. You have the microphone already.

Frédéric Boulon from Bank of America.

Thank you, Fred Boulon at Bank of America. Two questions, please. Firstly, on the kind of current macro, can you specify if you're seeing any specific impact on demand, in particular around the auto industry where we've seen some restructuring at some of the OEMs, particularly Renault? And secondly, to follow up on the Gen AI discussion, are you seeing some clients rethinking how they approach software build versus buy approach using some LLMs themselves, reintegralizing processes, or emerging competition from Gen AI startups? We've seen project promoters out there emerging. So we're keen to see if you're seeing any changes in terms of customer behavior on that. Thank you.

You take the first one.

Yes, happy to. Thank you. On the macro part, yes, of course, we are not immune to any macro changes. However, I think we reflected coming into the year that the auto sector could be a weak spot for us in 2026. So to this, there's no incremental update. For sure, European auto sector is going through a tough transformation. We know that this also creates opportunities for us, but the timing of closing of those deals could, as a result, vary and be less predictable. We know that by experience. We have dealt with this, but we have been carefully reflecting that in our outlook. So I don't have any incremental things to flag to you. Maybe to give you a piece of how have we managed that in Q1, you see the numbers in Europe were very good, despite the challenges that we were facing with some European auto, and I can... referred to some deals in Europe that we wanted to close, but we didn't. But nevertheless, we ended quite strong in Europe. But those transactions, we continue to work, and they will materialize throughout the year. We're confident about this, but not in Q1, as we know. But that's... was compensated with very good performance in consumer-centric industries. And that's the way we need to manage this, that we have a broad portfolio and the diversification strategy is paying its dividends. The auto sector in North America was healthy. We had a good deal with Ford. In Asia, it's the same. We signed with BYD. So it's broad-based. The auto sector continues to play an important role, and we are well set up on a global basis.

Maybe one specific comment on Renault, because you mentioned them. For the one who you have not seen, the CEO announced his strategic plan a few weeks ago, and as part of it is reducing significantly the engineering capacity. So automatically, the question probably you are asking yourself, does it impact the number of licenses we have within Renault? The answer is no. Why so? Because, again, we are expanding, in fact, the usage of what we do. The second one is they need to do more with less people. And this is what is really opening the door for the virtual companion generative experience I was speaking about. That's really how we are handling this. Now, the second part of your question, Also very interesting, what is happening with Gen AI? On one hand, the temptation for certain customers to develop themselves certain things, and the ability for newcomers to come and to change, basically, the landscape. Let's speak about the first one. Point number one, I met a lot of customers, and it was really the starting point of my discussions. What do you want to do with GenAI? How far do you want to go, especially in our space? All of them are telling me, Pascal, the GenAI story is not a story to disrupt the PLM, the CAD, the simulations market. Why so? Because the level of science, the level of physics, the level of knowledge you should put into the system is such that it's a huge barrier to entry. And we have other things which are much more easy to replace with generative AI. That's point number one. Point number two, they say most of the AI system right now are based on the text. A large language model is how you basically, it's written into the name, it's a language model. What we are manipulating is not language, it's biology, it's physics. So there are a lot of limitations of what you can do with a current LLM. Nevertheless, nevertheless, there is some connection we can do. And we see more and more customers willing to develop their agentic platform And the way to answer to this is very simple. You have seen in the architecture, we have our own agentic platform and we are relying on the protocol called MCP, which is allowing agent to agent collaboration. So the way we are making it possible, we do not get access to agents to our systems. We say, if you want to have an agent, for example, for the customer support, we need to get access to the deep information you have in the PLM systems. It has to go through a layout, which is one of our agents. And to make it happen, we have this protocol in place, which is simplifying the life. That's point number one. Related to startups or newcomers, yes, we have some. I would say especially in the simulation domain where we see people coming with what they call the surrogate approach, which is a way to approximate basically the physics. But there are a few things you should keep in mind. It has been a long time that the core value of what we do is how we are integrating the different pieces together. And specifically for the simulation, how we do the multi-physics. And right now, what you can do, you can maybe approximate some mechanical behavior. You can do the same for the three dynamics. But if you have to connect and to bundle the two in order to find the right trade-off, this is a very difficult thing to do. That's point number one. Point number two, at the end, the simulations is more and more guiding the modeling. So you need another level of integration between the modelers, the core CAD capabilities, if you want, and the simulation space. And again, this is also where we are making a big difference because it's native in our case. So I have met many, many customers, especially in the auto sector, where they are working with some startups. And when I was making my introduction in common, now it's time for them to not anymore do proof of concept. They want to deploy it at scale on the real use cases. They come back to us and say, Pascal, could you please help me either to develop an equivalent or to integrate what they do? Because otherwise, it will be isolated. And it's not industrial. So this is where we are, and that's the reason why I think I'm pretty confident about our way to move forward and also to create a new type of ecosystem, if you want. Because at the end, you remember, we have more applications developed by third party on top of the platform than we have developed ourselves. So there is no reason not to do the same with the AI as well.

Hey, Pascal. Hey, Ruben. It's George. Welcome over, Stanley. A couple of questions, maybe just continuing on this theme of AI. You've talked about this shift of enterprises now looking to engage, to deploy industrial AI at scale in 2026, moving outside of that experimentation phase. I guess in the CIOs and decision makers, many of your customers are excited by what AI can unlock, but they're also grappling with that very high pace of change and trying to work out what the right decision pathway is. And as much as 3D experience might be that right decision pathway, are you feeling any hesitancy in your customer base to commit to larger 3D experience transformations? And how can you kind of adjust your sales motion to get customers comfortable with that? And then maybe one on the metadata side, still obviously running down 3% year over year, perhaps reflecting some of those booking trends from last year. You talked to bookings perhaps starting off in 2026 on a better footing. Could you add any color on the magnitude of that better footing? And ultimately, how confident are you that metadata now is on a sustainably better track going forwards?

Thank you. Reverse order this time, Pascal?

Again, it's a very good question. What we discover, this AI and Gen AI story is in fact helping the platform. Why? Because if you look at the way most of our customers do, anyway, they have to unify their systems in order to create the proper data set to train their AI engines. And in our space, creating a high-quality data set costs a lot. And with the platform, it's built in. So for a long time, they were seeing the platform as a way to connect the different domains together and in a way to create the collaborations within the company and within the ecosystem, the supply. Now they see also the platform as a foundation basically to be at least in our space for the AI strategy. So it's giving a new perspective on the platform we didn't have. And what we see, in fact, it's a different way to go. and your point is extremely valid. For a long time, you know, we were basically selling the platform as a big transformation programs. Now we can also sell the platform on very specific use cases to say, okay, you want to tackle this quality issue. You want to do it with an AI based approach. Let's use the platform and all everything we do on this scope. And then after we come six months after with another use cases. And to give a concrete example, this is exactly the way we do at Eton. Eton, you know, they say, okay, the time to launch a new program for five years to do the big transformation is basically not the right time for us. However, if you could come with a very quick win on very focused use cases and progressively we build the foundations, that's the way to deploy you. So that's the reason why we are also evolving our go-to markets in order to give this flexibility, if you want. But the takeaway is it's helping, in fact, the platform story, the platform positioning, and the platform game. And it's a way to penetrate the company without having to structure the big projects first. that's also something very, very important. And at the end, we do a sizable deal. I mean, Etern is one of them.

Okay, and to the second question around life sciences, I capture a little bit broader to really give you the picture on Medidata Plus, because we're serving a sector holistically, not just with clinical trial software, but at the enterprise level. And that's an important part of our strategy and course driver, to really implement a strong enterprise model and be less dependent on volume and volume fluctuation. WCT is a great example of that in this context because it shows we are putting an end-to-end platform to operate their business and help them transform and be less dependent, in fact, on volume-to-volume or quarter-to-quarter fluctuations on trial starts. So we're putting that strategy into place. This is in this segment a first deal of this kind that we have transformed. Overall, the... The metadata revenue and life science revenue was impacted, as you said, in Q1 from lower bookings levels from 2025. So the transition into 2026 was, in fact, difficult. We knew that and anticipated that in our outlook. That will also persist in Q2. But the improved... Business and booking trends starting 2026 are going to have an impact in the second half of the year. Also, the WCT deal is not reflected in our revenue numbers of Q1. It will be starting in Q2. We'll be ramping up throughout the year. So we are building with this a sustainable model to be more enterprise-focused, less dependent on volatility, but focused on strong execution and go-to-market. We also mentioned last time that we changed our go-to-market approach. We also have new leadership in go-to-market, and we are very pleased with... you know, the start of the year and the traction that we can already see and the governance and the focus on execution. So that is... That will show its result in 2026. We're confident about that, and our objective is to reach more of the pre-given point in the second half of the year, Q3, Q4, to improve the numbers, and then enter 2027 with a run rate where we see growth versus 2026. That's the trajectory on what we are on. From an overall business activity and volume, clinical trial starts are still a bit volatile in the market. So I'm not expecting that there is a boost in 26 from a surge in clinical trial stats. That's not what we are modeling. We are looking at this in a way that starts out fairly flat, and we continue to win market share, as we said, and we are expanding our mode towards enterprise and AI. That's where the growth is coming from. When volumes start to improve, that will be another factor, but that's not what we are counting in here.

Maybe, Ruben, you can, because you were part of the negotiation of the WCT deal, and you have been at least in front of the customer on their feedbacks on the assessment of what we do. Maybe you can share a few things with the folks.

Yes. Of course, this was very competitive. This company is also... expanding and growing very, very fast. They just completed an acquisition of Catalyst. It's another CRO. So they're growing very fast. I'm sure they're going to expand further organically and inorganically from here. without having details, but it's a fast-growth company. I don't want to preempt anything on their behalf. That's not my job. But they are really looking for a platform that they can scale and grow their business in the future and transform, really transforming from a service business into an outcome-based business and create an edge in this industry. And as I said, it was very competitive, and I think we did very well in this contest compared to the competition. and beat them. And that's why we're confident that this strategy and our AI strategy is really core to transform clinical trial operations. Clinical operations, data management, that's what we master, and that's what Clinical Data Studio really opens up a new growth vector. They were very focused on Clinical Data Studio in combination with AI. For them, it's a game changer, including payments, because they facilitate lots of payments to investigators and sites. And all of that needs to be automated and planned. So it's a real enterprise transformation.

Yeah, and just to add a few things, you remember we are repeating this all the time. This industry is still document-based. And we are transitioning them to be model-based. It took some time just for the people to understand what we were saying. And since AI is coming, this is changing the game because the way to unify the system is not anymore through the workflows. That's what Viva is doing. This is now having a unified model across the different steps of the life cycle of the pharma sectors. And this is, again, where we are extremely relevant, extremely advanced compared to most of the competitions. And this WCT is a good example of this because they did the benchmark at least for almost a year, right, serving all the different solutions on the market. Yes. And they did it very seriously because it's a significant investment for them. So just keep this in mind.

Good morning and congratulations on your results this morning. Two questions from my side. First question on pricing. And I understand Dassault's long practice of pricing. retaining their fair share of value. Still, how are you seeing clients approach to price negotiation in wake of AI as some checks would suggest that clients are using this more as a negotiating tool and possibly is it leading to longer negotiation cycle? And second question on margins. Your headcount is down around 2% year-over-year, while first quarter margin is flat in constant currency basis over the last year. Looking at the rest of the year, your target is to grow margin by 50 to 60 basis points. So should we expect continued contraction in headcount? And... Also, if you could share color that in which areas these savings are being reinvested in. Thank you.

Okay, so we'll start with the first one. Again, I almost already gave part of the answer on the pricing. The main concern for our customer is to, in fact, when we do the negotiations, to be forced to to take AI on top of what they have without controlling basically the investment case, if you want. So the fact that we are giving them this, I will not say as an option, but as a complimentary of what we do, it's extremely important, point number one. Point number two, we do not disrupt the core value of our current portfolio because you still need the role with AI. If you have a virtual companion, you still need CATIA to create the geometry. You still need Simulia to do the simulation and the certification. So why I'm saying this is because at the end, the case for the virtual companion, the case for the generative experiences, are much more made on how they want to operate in the future. That's the reason why we have this unit of knowledge and the unit of work. So it's a different conversations compared to what we used to have for the capabilities. So that's something very important because you're right. One of my biggest concerns was, does it jeopardize all the negotiations we have currently? Because people want to anticipate this discussion. But the fact that we have been able to segregate the core value of all different categories of solutions, it's helping a lot. A lot. And we have, for example, a concrete case right now. We are negotiating an extension of... installed base within a large automaker in India. And they have standardized on the platform and they say, but we also want to have AI as part of it. Fine, but again, it's a different discussion. It's a discussion about how much you want to standardize and to automatize, how much you want to scale using virtual companion rather than to hire people. versus the price for Ketia or the price for Enovia. And this is very well accepted in facts. This segregation is well accepted. Now, the thing they have in mind is, okay, but we do not want to, again, to be forced and we do not want this to be out of control. And this is where I think we need a little bit more practice to package it with a level of confidence that we will not come back six months after to them to say, hey, guys, in fact, you need to spend much more compared to what we have anticipated. So that's the reason why in some of the engagement we do right now, we are probably giving more flexibility than what they need because we also need to build our learning curve. Right.

And Balaji, coming to the second question on margin, I'm very pleased with the margin for the first quarter. It's a good start. The effect on lower headcount really comes from our strategy to capitalize on some investments we did in 2025. Namely, we expanded the growth in people and resources a lot in Centric. And we are in a year where we capitalize on those investments before we are reinvesting in the second half to really build the growth trajectory for 2027 and beyond. So there are some cycles that we are going through. And the lower headcount entering into 2026 will then have an effect also on quarters to follow in terms of the ability to expand margin while revenue starts to accelerate. So we'll see that effect. OPEX growth... is just below 3%, with payroll being marginally up, considering that ACR or your annual compensation increases and inflation already has to be factored in here. So we're offsetting that almost. Where are we spending, to your question? In cloud, AI, infrastructure, outscale, this is where a significant portion of the cost increase is. Nevertheless, overall, it's sub-3% level, so it's well managed in line with our current revenue growth, but as revenue starts to pick up, we'll see margin expansion throughout the year. That's what is reflected in our guidance. Now, one additional comment I would like to highlight, when you look at the IFRS statement and you look at the IFRS operating margin, operating income has significantly increased due to lower stock-based compensation. And that, in the IFRS statement, of course, we have a negative FX impact that we are more than offsetting. So from an operating standpoint, I think you see good improvement coming into 2026, and it's under control.

Maybe I want to add one thing, because you're right, we are slightly decreasing in terms of number of people. And why so? Because there is, I think, a different path for the software company right now. Either you do the snap way, you cut massively your workforce, or you do what we do, which is, and the reason we do it this way is because, you remember, we have engineers, we do not have coders. There is a big difference. And what we do with AI, we use this as a way to redistribute the people within the company on different roles. And that's the way we do. So by doing so, we, in a way, use the natural attrition. And we are replacing one people a month, too, right, for the natural attrition. But more importantly, internally, we are forcing the realignment of the resources according to the needs where we need to invest. That's what we are currently doing.

We will now take questions online. Thank you. To ask a question via the telephone, please press star 1 and 1 on your keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. We will now take our first phone question from the line of Laurent Doré of Kepler Shoeuvre. Please go ahead, Laurent.

Yes, thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. Two for me as well. The first one is on the life science. If you could, for the year, break it down between Medidata and Biovia. And also more precisely on Medidata, I hear the catalyst for the second half. But I'm more keen to see what could go wrong that could lead the second half not to improve. from the first one. What is the main risk according to you? What do you lack in terms of visibility? And my second question is that if I take the midpoint of the first half and full year guidance, basically 3% for first half and you would need 5% second half, if you could give us the building blocks, how you get better from the first to the second, I hear probably a life science, but what else? Thank you so much.

Okay, Laurent, thank you for your questions, and good morning to you. So the first one, the breakdown is pretty simple. Medidata was down minus 3%. Bayouia was slightly up, but the aggregate is still minus 3%. On the second question, what could go wrong? Well, we are creating a momentum in an uptick in business activity, which is reflected in bookings. When I see how those bookings translate to revenue in 26 and 27, it's improving versus start of the year. That is the good outcome of, I would say, a good start of the year in Q1 that has its positive effect on 2027, but it's not reflected in the Q1 numbers. So there is clearly a structural improvement that is visible as a result of Q1. But in Q2, we have a decent pipeline of Q2 opportunities. that will then build our transition point from H1 to H2. And that's what we are now focused on executing. Laurent, which is making sure that we are hitting our targets for the second quarter of business. And that will really be the translation point from H1 towards H2. And then we execute the rest of the year. We mentioned that we have strengthened our go-to-market. I feel we have a better distributed and better control from an account and standpoint, including our direct business, enterprise business, mid-market, as well as partners. We have made the necessary improvements as it relates to our contracting model to be less dependent on volatility and volume. All of those things will take effect as we execute 2026. We cannot go backwards. We only go forward. So we'll see that improvement gradually happening as we move forward. But overall... I think, as I said, Q2 is probably around in line with Q1, and then we will see an improvement in H2. That's what we are currently focused on. So coming back to the second question, if I may, which is the guidance. Q1, you mentioned Q2, and the rest of the year. So Q1 was 3% growth. For Q2, we are focusing on growth. 3.5% to 4%. To be precise, you can model the midpoint between 2% to 5%. That's where we are. This is where we are anchored towards. And then as you go from Q3 and Q4, for H2, we are looking at 4% to 6%. And when you do that math, we are landing safely around 4% growth. What are the building blocks of this? Clearly, within industrial innovation and 3D experience, that's a continuous growth driver. We know we had the strong year-over-year comparison in the first quarter, but that will be behind us. We have a more favorable year-over-year comparison in H2 versus H1. We are... From an industry standpoint, I think Pascal gave a good overview on where we see growth, as well as from a geo standpoint. We have a healthy pipeline in the Americas. We are well diversified in Asia. China is a bit more bumpy, but we are working on that. And in Europe, we are mastering the headwind from the auto sector with diversification. So overall, The pipeline reflects this. It's that diversification. We mentioned that before. We have less of a dependency on auto than we had in 2025, in 2026, which is good. So these are the building blocks, Laurent.

Very clear. Thank you, Robin.

And I forgot one thing, which is SOLIDWORKS. should not have forgotten that because that's on a strong momentum with very strong partner engagement. And you also saw the demo from 2D to 3D. It's a strong catalyst for SOLIDWORKS.

Right. Thank you. We will now take our next phone question from the line of Michael Bruce of UBS. Please ask your question.

Good morning. Thank you. Good to see the re-acceleration in Centric. I seem to recall last year, though, you were talking about a SaaS transition. I'm assuming that that's not the way these deals were signed. Can you just give an update on how that business looks between on-premise subscription, perpetual license SaaS, and how you expect it to develop? And then an update, Pascal, maybe on what the chief transformation officer, chief operating officer are sort of doing and the plan for the rest of this year. And then also on Bernard's role as chief architect, what sort of involvement does he have in product strategy or R&D? Thank you.

Hello, Michael. Thank you. I take the first question. You're right. The focus of Centric is to transform to a SaaS and cloud business. From an architectural product standpoint, we are very much focused on that. In fact, we also signed deals last year and including this year that are not reflected in revenue because they are building as... As cloud models are, they're purely retable. But we had some large on-premise subscription deals in the quarter. That's right. So we'll continue to have to master this mix. and the transition from the on-premise to cloud. From a product standpoint, this is our number one focus, our 2030 model for Centric that we have to achieve a billion plus in revenue. It reflects a large share of SaaS subscription, cloud subscription. well aligned within the objectives and is our focus to achieve that. But you're right, in Q1 there was also a good contribution from on-premise deals. It's ongoing.

Okay, the second part of the question is, you're right, Pierre Barnabé took these positions within Dassault Systèmes and the primary focus for him is the indirect channel. specifically CPE. You remember we have two different indirect channels. One is the one historically selling SOLIDWORKS and the one historically selling CATIA, CRE for SOLIDWORKS and CPE for CATIA. And I think this is where we need to re-dynamize. And why so? Because, again, if you look at our ecosystems, there is a big topic going on. Most of them, they know how to sell applications. Not all of them, they know how to sell the platform. Because selling the platform, in reality, you need to be a kind of system integrator. You need to have these kind of skills. Then after, if you want to sell the cloud, you almost need to be an hyperscaler. If you want to sell the domain specializations, you almost need to be an engineering services company. And if you want to sell the transformation, you need almost to be a consulting company. Where I want to go, in the past, we have only one model for them, which was the reseller model. And I think this model, the time is over to have only one model. We need to have a different ecosystem with different category of partners, having different roles in order to foster the adoptions of everything we do through this, what we used to call CP. So this is clearly the main mission for Pierre. He's coming with a lot of background on this. Basically, he knows extremely well all the IT ecosystem. He has already all the connections, whatever is with the hyperscaler, the consulting firm, the IT services, the engineering services. And he will be the one having the responsibility to build this model and to orchestrate the operating model. Related to Bernard, I think Bernard is a product guy since day one. No one will argue one thing that he was very instrumental with V4, V5, and V6. And given where we are, I think it's extremely important for me as a CEO of this company to accelerate the AI roadmap. And this is where Bernard is focusing right now. To accelerate the AI roadmap, not only with the development team, but also with some early advanced customers. because they are the ones also driving, if you want, the roadmap in conjunction with us. He has not only the credibility, he has the leadership, he has the will, he still has the energy to do that. And believe me, he is more happy than he used to. So I think it's really for the benefit of the company. Thank you. I think it's time to conclude. Thank you very much for all of you being there. I think we try to reduce a little bit the time for the presentations to give more time for the Q&A. I think you will appreciate. Now, coming back to my closing remark, I think we deliver Q1. We are on track. But more importantly, I think we are building something fundamental with 3D universes. Our AI starts from physics, simulation, industrial data, and really a decade of expertise. And remember, we don't just digitalize the workflow. We capture really the way industry works. And every technology wave is making this promise to simplify. And I think this is more and more important because, as I was telling in my introductions, The problem for many of our customers is not the demands, it's the complexities they have to master. And this is really, and I'm insisting on this, this is really where we make the difference. So hope to see you in the coming days and weeks on the road for the work show and for the one that we'll have a chance to see and probably Ruben and Marie will see most of the people and look forward to the next quarter. Thank you so much.