Ipsos

And thank you for attending this presentation of the half-year results. We'll tell you about our main figures and achievements for the half-year, as well as the ramp-up of some of the initiatives taken as part of the Horizon Program and then the outlook for the rest of the year. We will take a look at some of the key figures. Olivier Champourlier, CFO, will give you more details about that. Then we'll move on to recent developments with the Horizon Program and then the outlook for 2026. And so let's start with the main lessons learned from this half year on revenue for Q2 standards, 615 million euros so that's a total growth of 4.9% compared with minus 2.4% in Q1 of last year and then if we look at organic growth I don't know if you attended previous sessions but that is indeed the main criterion that and makes all the difference the differentiating factors are service compared to others is organic growth in 3% to be compared with minus 1.4% in Q1 and so this we are returning to growth but which is noteworthy and Olivier will tell you more about that if you look at all three geographical areas the Americas, the NBA and Asia Pacific and indeed In the four main audiences, we are growing on all four fronts, and that's the first time since Edison has been here, at least since 2023. But anyway, if you look at the numbers, so revenue standards, 1.1 billion, so that's 1.3% up. including 0.8% of organic growth. So this means throughout the first half year we've been growing organically. If you look at sales, new orders, most of which will be performed this year, they were up 1.6% compared to Q2 of last year. And so if you combine that with Q1, which was up 1% compared to 2025, we're looking at a growth in our order book for 2026. Our order book is up 1.2% compared to the same period last year. The main growth drivers for H2 come to increase that trend. In public affairs, we're having rising demands in our orders, which shows the counter-cyclical aspect of public affairs. Then there's significant traction with the CPG clients. We've seen it in Q1, and this is confirmed in Q2, and then it rebounds in China as well in terms of orders. There are two boosters which were not as clearly seen in Q1. Acceleration of business in pharmaceutical companies and that applies both to syndicated surveys and indeed ad hoc surveys and market surveys for anything to do with oncology and we call GLP-1 and then finally in the UK sustained growth in Q2 and this is all the more remarkable because Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jean Laurent. Good morning to all. Thanks for joining us. Let's start with the breakdown of revenue by region. Jean Laurent presented organic growth of revenue came in at plus 3% in Q2. Net rebound versus the Q1 negative at 1.3. So we're ending the first half with organic growth of 0.8%. It's notable to see that all regions in Q2 Q2 return to positive organic growth. That's a significant improvement over the situation at the beginning of the year. EMEA is posting revenue growth of 5.6%, of which organic growth of 0.5%. That's accelerated because we're at 0.1% in Q1 and 0.2%. 9% in Q2. Total growth of EMEA was positively impacted during the half-hiver consolidation of the BVA family. You'll recall that this is a group that we acquired last year and that was consolidated a few days at the end of June in age 125 and fully so in the first half of 2016. The positive scope effect of the integration of BVA family offset by the exit of Russia, representing 4% of the region in the first half of 2025. Unfavorable forex, notably linked to pound sterling. Organic growth in the EMEA region is penalized by slowdown in the Middle East, but A limited impact of several million euros at the end of June. The Americas posting organic growth of 0.7% in H1. LATAM is solid, 6.3%. North America organic growth is stable at the end of the half. In the United States, we note several contract wins in public affairs driving recovery in H1. The second half, Asia-Pacific, this region is posting 2% organic growth on first six months of the year, benefiting from a sustained recovery of activity in China. This uptick is driven by the spend of local clients in the tech and automotive sectors, as well as major international clients for China. Consumer Goods. This geography has benefited from innovative offers developed in China, notably those that incorporate AI. Like the regions, we see the same momentum when we look at growth across audiences. In the second half, we see that all audiences Delivered positive growth in Q2. All in all, we have growth during the half of 0.8%. Diving deeper, consumers, clients and employees, total growth of 0.6% in the half. Q1 and close 2% in Q2. Activities driven particularly by our service lines linked to innovation as well, optimizing marketing spent, reflecting corporate resolve to accelerate their launches and maximize the success of their investment. Our activities focused on citizens is posting strong organic growth, close to 8% in Q2. Driven by contract wins over several years, his performance confirms the contracyclical nature of the business and the renewed interest of public and private decision-makers for a better understanding of citizens. Also, Ipsos's ability to conduct large-scale complex surveys with robust face-to-face collection, also through telephone interviews. Lastly, doctors, patients, audience sharply up too with organic growth close to 3% in Q2 reflecting the good commercial momentum of that service line. The pharma sector is driven by oncology innovation also in rare diseases and GLP-1 obesity treatment too and I'd like to recall that our Ipsos digital platform continues to record double digit growth over the Q2 level similar to their Q1 initiatives are underway to continue to grow the number of surveys conducted on this platform. We're going to enrich the platform with further functionalities in H2. Let's now Move to the income statement. Having discussed revenue, I'd like to tell you about the gross margin. Gross margin coming in at 67.7% on the half against 68.4% in H125 and a Level almost equivalent to that achieved during full year 25%. The drop in our gross margin of 70 basis points in Q1 is due to two things. Dilutive effect of the integration of BBA family leading to an impact of 30 basis points but also effects linked to our business mix for 40 basis points. Indeed, growth was more sustained this year over last year through public affairs projects whose murder collection face-to-face by phone has a lower gross margin. Turning to operating costs, personnel costs up 1.2% and the half due to acquisition. This increase remains slightly lower than that of revenue. Growth is continuing to adapt its cost structure with effects that were down 1% since the start of the year. General expenses down 2.2% on the half. This reflect savings achieved as part of continued cost optimization efforts. Lastly, you have other expenses in the income statement, a balance of 10.9 million. That's essentially severance. So for H1, the operating margin comes in at 7.9%, down 40 basis points over H1 last year. As with every year, it's important to note the seasonality of this activity will lead to a markedly higher profitability in H2. Lastly, the operating margin below you have the non-recurring Thank you very much. Thank you very much. and managerial change. In conclusion, adjusted net profit attributable to the group, 1.66 euros, pretty much stable versus that of H120.25.

Turning now to free cash flow.

145 million gross operating cash flow in H126 up 6.8 million change in working cap is negative to the tune of 6 million in line with the seasonality of our activity PPE intangible and financial assets 33.5 that's essentially IT infrastructure as well as tech infrastructure and then just to focus on net interest paid up by just over 13 million reflect the payment to the first coupon of the bond issue that we raised last year and the first interest payment was dispersed in January this year for 14 million euros To conclude, we generated free cash flow FCF for 44.4 million euros, up 4.6 million euros versus the same period last year. Under free cash flow, you have key financial items such as share buybacks for a total of 54 million euros of 11.2 share buybacks, for employee free shares and also 43 million of share buybacks for cancellations. Turning now to the group financial position, Ipsos has a particularly strong balance sheet on net debt versus June 30th, 2025 debt. is reduced down to 225 million euros. Our leverage remains very low, 0.5 times EBITDA. The group continues to post excellent liquidity with over 450 million of undrawn credit lines with maturities over one year and no major maturity for Ipsos before 2030. This financial structure is a key asset to drawing the execution of our strategic plan horizon. Lastly, I'd like to conclude this financial presentation to remind you that our good financial performance goes to a record return to shareholders. We distributed a dividend of 2 euros per share, up 8% over the last year in parallel. We continue to execute our share buyback program for cancellation. As of July 22nd, we've achieved half this plan for 50 million euros. We're going to continue to execute this plan to reach 100 million euros for FY26. The shareholder return policy is made possible through the strength of our cash generation, the quality of our balance sheet, and our low level of debt. Thank you for your attention. Back to Jean Laurent.

Thank you, Olivier. And so, let's look at the latest developments in the Horizon program. Horizon is the name we give to our strategy that we announced back in January. So, it's been fully designed now and it has been implemented for the past two quarters and looking at the past. Half here we are already seeing some of the results and we are now looking forward to H2. So we are implementing a strategy. This business is all about collecting, processing, analyzing data and that very much involves artificial intelligence which goes to show we are going to invest in analytical tools either on behalf of our customers or our own production teams whose work is augmented by AI combined of course with the expertise of our own people. This is also due to our need to be fast and to complete most of our surveys in under 48 hours. This strategic plan is also based on ESOS's global footprint and in view of all the Capital expenditure we've engaged in, but indeed all the work on surveys involving artificial intelligence. We were able to capitalize on such investment in all territories. I'll give you an illustration of this, and this is an area very much in demand on the part of our customers, and that is understanding, especially for CPG clients, but there are other areas as well. This, I mean, a large language model such as GPT, Claude or Mistral, what these LLMs tell about their products or their brands, there's a company called Synthesio, which we acquired, it works on social media, and it is known for its ability to process data, and we have one area in particular for CPG clients, and through these We read the languages but we see what questions are asked by customers of this CPG company and finally the answers that are produced by the LLM model and based on that we can see on what source these answers are and we keep up taking this for the customers so that at the end of the day we can have we can bear some influence to bear on the image of these customers so what's being said about the companies on social media and LRMs is also being used in the public sphere so this is not just for the private sector a case in point is the European Commission. We've been working with them. We've been supporting it in its ability to monitor in real time what's being said about this in social media worldwide. And so we use AI to listen, analyze, and Learn lessons as well as emerging risks related to this or that publication or the implementation of this or that regulation or indeed any other events related to European policies. But we combine this with the expertise of our people, people who are very much specialised in European policies with a view to providing a summary which is then Produced to the European Commission so that they can see the results of the day's developments on the image of the Commission and of European institutions. And so we can produce results that are produced in real time. Every single morning we provide that report to European Commissioners and Ipsos is the platform that makes it possible to meet these and so on. or quantitative advances but actually an actual verbal exchange well that which is now being done by human operators we are also now using agentic AI to do the same and then we provided new functions in the assessment of commercials of advertising so these functions make it possible to design faster new advertising concepts before prior to their launching. And then there's yet another development. We try and run communities of respondents that have a shared interest and indeed to enhance our ability to conduct surveys with our own customers, not just the e-source panels which are automatically Thank you very much. and many more. is in Q2, we launched what is known as Product Studio. So this is a platform that speeds up the whole, I mean, that's how we call the match between new products and customers' desires. We have statistical inferences, in other words, we increase the number of responses from human responses, and then AI can generate summaries of what these tests arrived at, but also we can have more sophisticated cross-analysis and we make it possible for customers to discuss in natural languages the data that we provide and all this is done in much faster time. and to a much more detailed level and so this is an indicator of our transformation indeed we've appointed one of our most experienced leaders he was the CEO of Ipsos France but he was one of our leaders in the US and he had operating responsibilities there. So his name is Alexandre Guérin and he is in charge of this acceleration program which is basically transforming the tools we provide to our people and which we use for our service to reduce the lead time to less than 48 hours to complete surveys in under 48 hours. So this is being launched. We finalized the charter. We have a road map and we know exactly how we will in H2 2026 and indeed in 2027 how we will meet our objectives under Alexander's stewardship and so the outlook for 2026 then clearly the first achievements of H1 resumption of growth we now expect a stronger business in H2 than in H1 Well, first because the initiatives I've just illustrated with a few examples from the Horizons program, these will be scaled up. We will be rolling out globally managed services worldwide because we have all our teams and all our territories working on that. We've also enriched the functions of the digital services that we also significantly promoting this commercially so as to support and speed up this double digit growth. Solutions provided by AI give you a few examples there but there are new initiatives making it possible for all our staff to have tools that using AI can improve productivity and then there's specific initiatives for China in particular we're using AI there but we're also using it in the US where we capitalise on the way that business model is being technologized and then we have this will result in terms of improved order book for H2 and we also expect that we will be spending more time with our large accounts so all of this means that we expect Our business to step up in H2 in a market environment which has been hampered by the protested conflict in the Middle East and the uncertainty as to its outcome we have seen here and there A wait and see attitude on the part of our customers. That was not the case at the beginning of the conflict, but now we have seen some programs being postponed. It's not very significant as yet, but there has been a downwards revision of growth outlook by the IMF from 3.3 to 3%, so 30 basis points right there, with a significant increased 1.1% in H2, so this means that for the whole year we're looking at organic growth of about 2%, and we may remember that initially we were looking at between 2 and 3%, but with keeping costs under control, our operating margin should be similar to what it was in 2025. So that's what I had to say about the outlook for H2 2026. On 23 October we will present the numbers for Q3 and now if you have any questions at all this is your chance to ask them. So ladies and gentlemen if you want to ask a question please press star A on your keyboard. Question number one comes from Marilyn Ford. from Bear Stearns. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. I hope you can hear me loud and clear. Right there. Regarding your order book, it has been growing at end of June. How does that translate in terms of revenue expected for the full year? and then question number two is about the development of ancillary activities. You mentioned that during Capital Markets Day. Where do you stand now? Where are things going? Are we looking also at possible acquisitions in 2026? And then question number three regarding the share buyback program. Part of that is... Targeting, well, will be for the benefits of employees and others will be cancelled. When do you propose to cancel the shares that you propose to buy back? Well, thank you, Marilyn, for these three questions. I'll answer question number one and number three. Regarding the order book, we did point out that the increase stood at 1.2% at end of June. and that accounts for 75% of our annual revenue. You can do the math. That answers question number one. Regarding the share buyback program as of 22 July, we're halfway through. We've purchased 50 million euros worth of shares and by the end of the year, we propose to buy back the rest, the balance. and so we propose to cancel all these shares by year's end. As to the question regarding external growth and acquisitions that might enable us to strengthen our ancillary activities, well, we started in acquisition strategy, well, this was a message heard by a number of companies that might be We've been talking with intermediaries and bankers, so we have a deal flow. We've been looking at some, and talks are underway, but of course, before anything happens, I cannot divulge much, but the main categories of acquisitions are technological bricks that will enable us to buy what we will not be able to build by ourselves, Implement our strategy using artificial intelligence and other technological tools and then there are other acquisitions that enable us to go to neighboring markets and particularly anything relating to data analysis and the integration of multiple sources for our customers, sources not just provided by Ipsos itself but our customers' first party data and indeed external sources from other origins. And then the third type of acquisitions are those that look like ESOS but in markets where we propose to broaden our footprint by acquiring companies that are engaged in the same business regarding the ancillary activities and indeed that's what refers to data integration and analysis so we don't even have to have acquisitions because We've already strengthened the business using data labs with data scientists and AI experts who work on behalf of our customers and this has improved our ability to provide predictive services based on analytics in a number of areas. Regarding prices, rates, do you propose to find that rates are going up? Is that an impediment or in fact Do you believe that this is a chance for you to seize pricing opportunities? Well, this varies from case to case. You have to remember that Ipsos is an extremely broad company in terms of services. There are 16 business lines, indeed 70 separate lines. We have found that our ability to provide services faster and cheaper in terms of unit prices, this usually is of course compensated by higher volumes because of course if customers may have views on more markets more detail on brand perception well then they turn to us if they want higher volumes and case in point with the Ipsys Digital when we find that Ipsys Digital makes it possible to have a lower unit price in terms of per question asked, the increased volumes more than makes up for these lower prices.

Next question, Emmanuel Cheval from CICFDU. Yeah, hi Jean-Laurent, hi Olivier, I hope you can hear me. Yeah, we hear you. Very good. Thanks for the presentation. A few follow-up questions. Just return to the audit book. You said that it's accelerating in March. When we look at the audit book, we have the impression that we remained on the March level, but when I read the release, it seems to be accelerating further. Can you give us color on the trend, April, May, June? Second question. would be to return could you explain what the 11.6 million of depreciation linked to IT projects but just to kind of illustrate and give us some illustration type of project because the amounts are quite sizable on the projects that were halted and the final quote more on the use of cash on this half we see a decrease in capex seems to me that in your plan between acquisition of CAPEX, we were looking at stability of CAPEX versus the previous pace. Does that mean that your AI CAPEX is more in OPEX than CAPEX? If we could have some color on that, thanks. Fine. We're not, we give information on the order book in the Q1. gave some in queue to the commercial dynamic is good across the quarter. We're not going to give monthly numbers, otherwise it becomes too specific and it's not very relevant because our business is a degree of volatility. The only thing I would repeat is perhaps more over the past six weeks, We're seeing markets in which clients are beginning to say, shouldn't we wait a bit? It doesn't mean that all in all purchasing decisions are cancelled, but there's a form of wait and see. However, we consider that full year we'll be seeing an H2 that will fare better than H1, so it's a positive trend. Secondly, regarding depreciations, of course, without going into the detail, but essentially it's one project that we noted would not be delivering expected results and two tech assets of a smaller size that ceased to be utilized at scale and we considered it would be more reasonable To hold them, that was the technical side, and therefore to depreciate. As to capex, opex of investment in AI, Olivier, well, I'll discuss this section. Indeed, the capex level in H1 is lower than last year. Now, there are two factors to be borne in line. Last year in H1, there was a kind of one-off effect. We acquired a platform. So that's for this year. So half of the drop is a one-off effect of a purchase. The rest is also linked to a redeployment of our tech strategy. And so we paused a number of programs that are currently being redeployed. And so this CapEx drop, H1, and so on, and so forth. The work undertaken as part of Horizon focused on AI solutions and tech platforms. We've done a substantial Perth work with the advent of Nathan Brumby as Chief Technology Officer to revisit Everything. We've worked with the board. These are substantial investments and now have a strategic framework to know exactly where we're going to be redeploying to and what is of lower priority. We have increased clarity to redeploy our investment and to leverage or move to OPEX depending on the nature of the expenditure.

Next question comes from David Amara from Barenburg. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, and thank you for this presentation. I had three questions, and I hope you can hear me loud and clear. All right, then. Question number one, you said that Acceleration H2 will be... basically driven by such new initiatives as AI solutions, GMS solutions. But what other developments are you expecting for your legacy portfolio? Can you tell us how much of your revenue is covered by such core business? Another question, Q2 showed significant performance in the Americas and that was driven by the business And then regarding China, you give us some idea about Q2 and H2. What sort of acceleration are looking there? Because geopolitical developments are hardly encouraging there. Do you think you will gain market share vis-à-vis the competition? Can you give us color on that? Thank you. Regarding growth and the share of growth related to global managed services, digital services, and indeed and many more. And I think it is important to enhance businesses with our large accounts, that is commercial efficiency both in the Americas and in China. That is indeed where we expect the largest growth. But I gave you other examples, the pharmaceutical industry, was a case in point. This is another growth driver, although this is not strictly speaking related to Horizon. So there is more business, as I said by way of introduction, that is fairly evenly distributed in terms of geographies, in terms of audiences. Of course, that is being, as it were, Enhanced by Horizons, GMS is worth several hundred millions, Ipsos Digital is worth just under 200 million and then the commercial business with large accounts, if you look at our main, most of the key account managers are working with about 25 large accounts regarding business in the US not outside public affairs well public affairs indeed is of course a significant portion of our business in the US and of course that is what we look at the business as a whole but and we don't want to leave out public affairs of course there are a number of developments in Other contracts, but it doesn't make much sense to leave out one contract and look at the rest of the business. We look at the business as a whole and that business as a whole picked up in Q2 and remains stable at the end of H1. Regarding China, and to answer that last question, we have been seeing stepped-up business in China, and that was quite significant in Q2, and in terms of revenue recognition, this trend is being confirmed. Last year, actually, we started a number of initiatives, new platforms involving artificial intelligence, meeting new market needs, enabling us to grow faster than the market, and so we're in a position to confirm that indeed we were able to secure Thank you very much. Shenzhen in Shanghai, we had to give a presentation to about 400 clients. Technological innovation, artificial intelligence has only enabled us to support strong growth in China where we are in fact the leading player in this industry, but also this has enabled us to understand what is going on at the, as it were, one of the, well, the edges of technology with artificial intelligence which enables us to measure what we can do worldwide.

Next question. O'Connor O'Shea from Kepeshev Lodi. Yes, sir. Hi, three questions from my side, if I may. So, first... Question just to reconcile expectations in terms of organic growth during H2 globally in line with Q2 of the order 3% with the order book growth which is half less during Q2 and just your thoughts Comments about clients being a bit more wait-and-see, I mean for six weeks just to kind of reconcile the expected consensus, the expected growth for QH2. Second question, could we have more granularity on growth notably in China during quarters one and two, UK for Q2? and North America for Q2. And third question more for Olivier if we could. The non-recurring costs, I mean restructuring costs that weren't expected in H versus 19 million H1. Thanks. H2 growth Olivier said we have about three quarters of the order book to be executed in the year that was booked during H1 so there's one quarter remaining and I repeat the fact that our revenue produced on the one hand about 75% of our activity already booked with total growth of H1 of 1.2 and what will be Booked as new orders and executed in H2 will amount to about 2% growth. As to what will drive this growth, you asked about China, UK, North America, I'd say that we're expecting to see growth. across the three regions, but we're giving our numbers on the broader areas that are America, Europe, EMEA and Asia Pacific. Olivier, do you want to just give more detailed geographic growth and non-recurring costs? First point, quarterly growth, if you do the math, we have revenue growth 0.8% at the end of the half and so to land at around 2%. need to continue to grow by about 3% over the next two quarters, so at a level equivalent to what we saw in Q2. That's the maths to land around 2% continue to grow the revenue at 3% equivalent level in Q3. As to the growth of Q2, in the UK we have broadly similar growth to Q3. Q2 versus Q1, the Americas acceleration as we showed, America plus 5.5% and inside there's the US on China, we have growth that's broadly similar. It was already quite high in Q1 for revenue and it continued on the same trend. On the restructuring costs, there were restructuring costs, $19 million In H1 included in that we have 11.6 million that concern the depreciation of IT projects. We're not expecting to continue to book a similar level. In H2 we've performed a full review of our IT projects. And we're not expecting an equivalent level of depreciation in terms of amounts in H2. And just to specify on the wait and see, I spoke about kind of one-off wait and see. It wasn't as material up until about six weeks ago, but it remains one-off.

So the final question from Emmanuel Matteau from OdoBHF.

Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning Jean-Laurent and Olivier, sorry I came in a bit late this morning, but did you say why public affairs seem to be declining? You said you had more contracts but then you have budget restrictions in those Geographies, where you offer the services and about the digital platforms, would it make sense for Ipsos to join forces with AI models now being developed in companies? And then finally the question about the BDA family, did you achieve the synergies or do you find there's still solutions on the profitability of that business? Regarding public affairs, that business line, we find that we have a unique ability to win and indeed execute contracts with high operating efficiency, not just online but also on the phone and indeed in actual presence in a number of countries including Britain and and many other countries and that unique feature means that this particular business is not as fragmented as is at the other end of the spectrum when we do product tests or advertising tests where you have almost individual tickets. Here we're looking at large size contracts. I've mentioned the work we do on a daily basis for the European Commission. One reason why public affairs, that business is so buoyant is that we can not only just win but actually execute contracts which gain significant increments of our revenue per contract. Now, regarding our ability to process data using Ipsos Digital and more generally our ability to work with AI players, There's one item, point I need to remind you, I can't go through this point by point, but the main 10 technological players They are of course very much involved in AI and so this complementarity in between what expertise we provide especially for our panels and access to respondents which of course these individual technological players do not have direct access to these respondents and are a rigorous process to select respondents and avoid issues say of fraud or that can affect the quality of responses means that we have a very good relationship with these people, good complementarity which can open up new lines of business if and when the situation arises. As to the last question about the integration of the BVA family, the one thing we should remember is that the BVA family was acquired at the end of June 2025. That was essentially being implemented in France, Italy, and the UK. When we made that acquisition, our business plan, well, the business plan then has been basically fully implemented by end of June. So there is some dilution. It makes sense on H1 because you compare H1 2026 with BVA compared with H1 2025 where the business was only consolidated for six days and so last year there was only six million consolidated in H1 which is almost insignificant. Last year when we gave our numbers there was a 50 basis dilution effect basis for the dilution effect Now we don't have the dilution effect this year because you only have BVA fully consolidated so of course if you compare the situation where it was not there at all of course you will mathematically have some dilution but that effect is slowly but surely vanishing and it will be completely absorbed by year's end so this absorption is being done according to plan. The teams have been merged. The people work basically in the same premises in most of our countries. And so, as I said, everything is going according to plan. And that is the full implementation of our development plan. And as to the integration of BVA, if I may add, we worked on the and similar cases before. Ipsos is in a position precisely because it was to a large extent built through the acquisition of as many as 150 companies in its existence and at Ipsos there's a common technological backbone to integrate all companies so both at back office level and indeed In operating integration we find that the integration of teams is working satisfactory and will deliver the objective of our business plan. Anyway, I would like to thank you for your attention and for your questions and we'll see you again on the 23rd of October. Thank you.