JCDecaux SE

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the JC Decaux 2026 Half-Year Results presentation. I will now hand the call over to Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2026 Half-Year Results conference call. The speakers on this call today will be Jean-François Decaux, Co-Chief Executive Officer, David Bourg, Chief Financial IT and Operations Officer, and I. Remi Grisard, Head of Investor Relations, is also attending today's conference call. We delivered a strong performance driven by digital in the first half of 2026. Our revenue reached €1,953,000,000 with a continued solid revenue momentum as organic revenue grows 5.7% despite an uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical environment. Organic digital revenue grew double-digit by 14.5% and now represented 42.8% of total group revenue. Within digital, programmatic organic revenue was up 30.9% and accounted for 12.3% of our digital revenue. This confirms, once again, that digital and especially programmatic is a powerful growth engine and a key growth driver for our group. Leveraging our revenue growth and focused and disciplined execution, we achieved double-digit growth across all our key operational indicators demonstrating our strong operating leverage. Our operating margin was up 16.8%, reaching 359 million. Our recurring EBIT was up 53.5% at 136.2 million. Our net in group share was up 84.7% at 140.1 million, and our operating cash flows were up 41.8% at 218 million euros. Finally, and importantly, we delivered a 91.1 million year-on-year increase in free cash flow, reaching 26.2 million in the first half, which is a positive free cash flow despite the usual seasonality of our business. David, obviously, will comment on this strong financial performance in more detail later in the presentation. H1, are strong, profitable growth trajectory with digital as a key driver. Moving now onto the slide number five and looking at our top line dynamics for H1 and Q2. For H1, we delivered 5.5% organic revenue growth, confirming a solid start to the year as Q1 grew also by 5.7% organically. This performance reflects growth across, again, all segments and geographies, with digital as the main driver of this great momentum. Turning to Q2, organic growth was also 5.7%, which is well above our guidance of around plus 3, despite the conflict in the Middle East. This strong Q2 was driven by digital and by the 2026 FIFA World Cup beyond our initial expectation, which supported advertising demand in several key markets. By segments on the next slide, street furniture maintained a very strong momentum with reported growth of 5.3% and organic growth of 7.3%. This confirms the robustness of our core business supported by both analog and digital in a context where urban audiences remain highly attractive for advertisers. Transport continued its rebound with reported growth of 4.8% and organic growth of 5.3%. Hillboard returned to growth with reported growth of 1.2% and organic growth of 0.8%. This reflects a more disciplined and selective approach to our inventory, particularly in France, while still capturing opportunities in the most premium location and in the most digitized markets. Slide number seven, you can see that growth in H1 2026 was well balanced across geographies. North America at 19.6% organic growth supported by the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in the United Kingdom at 12.8%, were the fastest growing geographies, both driven by digital. Rest of Europe grew 7.8%, confirming solid momentum across our European footprint, including in the southern part of Europe. Rest of the world grew by 3%, 18.3%, excluding the Middle East. Asia-Pacific grew by 2.3%, including low single-digit growth in China. France declined by 1.9% impacted by the high non-advertising revenue comparison base, while advertising revenue grew by 1%. This, again, demonstrates the strengths of our geographically diversified model, especially relevant in the current environment, marked by geopolitical and macroeconomic tension in some geographies. As you can see on the next slide, we are not only well diversified geographically, but also by activities. Street furniture remains our largest segment, accounting for 51.3% of total revenue. Transport represents now 35.3%, still below its pre-COVID share, but continuing to recover. while Billboard is at 13.4% in line with our focus on premium and increasingly digital assets. On the right-hand side, you can see our geographical footprint. Europe represents 47.7% of total revenue, with France at 16.5% and the UK at 10.8%, making them our two largest countries. Asia-Pacific accounts for 20.3%, including less than 10% in China, the rest of the world, 13.1%, and North America, 8.1%. This, again, confirms our unique, balanced, and surely global OH Media footprint. Turning to the next slide, our client portfolio remains, as you can see, highly and well diversified, with our top 10 clients accounting for less than 12% of our group revenue. We continue to see, obviously, a healthy rotation between categories. Telecom and technology, up 19%, was particularly dynamic, driven by campaigns from tech companies, including generative AI brands, as pictured here in the metro of Sao Paulo, which accounted for up to 30% of sales in the tech capital of the world that we cover such as San Francisco in the US and Shenzhen in China. We see a comeback of branding for consumer goods as shown in the 13% growth of food and beverage and the 9% growth of retail. Meanwhile, finance is getting very competitive with the rise of online platforms, and we benefit from higher marketing budgets as this category grew by 15%. Patient, personal care, and luxury, our largest category at 17% of revenue, was stable year on year. On slide number 10, as you can see, DOH remains a key growth driver. with organic digital revenue of 14.5% in H1 2026. Digital revenue penetration continued to increase. It reached 42.8% of total group revenue in H1 and 43.7% in Q2 2026. Our digital revenue mix also closely mirrors our overall business mix with street furniture representing 49.1% of digital revenue Transport 39.6 on billboard 11.2 as shown on this slide. Over 10 years, our digital CAGR reaches 16%. Digital penetration increased again across all three business segments in H1 2026. In street furniture, digital revenue reached 41% of segment revenue up from 37.5% a year earlier. In transport, our most digitized segment digital grew from 44.5% to 48.1%. And in billboard, digital penetration edged up from 35.4% to 36.1%. This confirms the steady rollout and success of our digital assets across the portfolio. Let's move now on to the programmatic advertising, which remains our fastest growing revenue stream. In H1 2026, programmatic revenue reached 102.8 million euros, up 30.9% organically versus H1 2025, and now represents 12.3% of our digital revenue compared with 10.1% a year ago. This growth is supported by our announced capabilities. We are now connected to 50 DSPs and over 3,050,000 screens, including more than 35,000 G-Celoco screens in 48 countries across five continents, as well as 48 third-party media owners on view and eight third-party SSPs on display. As you can see, programmatic revenue remains largely incremental, especially from smaller advertisers and highly targeted campaigns, such as the campaign picture here, which shows only during the Marathon of Stockholm on key locations for the runners. We anticipate also continued strong growth for programmatic revenue, and this is illustrated by the important gap today between countries where Germany at 42.7% and the Netherlands at 30.8% are well above the group average of 12.3, while some major digital markets like the UK and the US have not yet fully embraced programmatic. The PDOH campaign you see on the right in Oslo is a good illustration of this momentum in our most advanced markets. We expect programmatic penetration to continue to rise in the medium term to represent more than 20% of our digital revenue. While the contract activity has been quite limited in this half year, on this slide, we wanted to zoom in on one flagship example of our commercial momentum, the renewal of our longstanding partnership with ISRO, where we have secured a new eight-year advertising contract which means we will continue to operate the media in what is both the UK main international gateway and the world's most connected airports with more than 80 countries served and close to 85 million passengers last year. This, again, renewal is a good illustration of our ability to not only retain key strategic contracts but also to further strengthen our leadership in the airport growing segment. On this slide, Number 15, we highlight the strong potential of DOH retail media for JEC Decaux. Our new exclusive partnership with Carmilla Carrefour, now being deployed with Unlimitel, is a key milestone. It will create a new data-driven DOH network across shopping centers on retail access points in France and Spain over the next few years, as illustrated by the example you see here in the Carrefour Carmilla Mall in Toulouse. Retail media is already, as you know, a dynamic and mostly digital activity for JEC Decaux, with around 90% of revenue coming from digital across 44 countries, leveraging our partners' data to deliver highly targeted, contextual, and programmatic DOH campaigns. Globally, retail media represents the 174 billion U.S. market, including online and remains underpinned by the fact that around 84% of retail sales still happen in stores. DOH, retail media, is expected to grow at around 11.6% CAGR between 2025 and 2031. Combined with our broad portfolio of leading retail partners, these positions J.C. Decaux very well to capture the acceleration of DOH retail physical media. On slide 16, we have once again confirmed our excellent EAG performance. Our extra financial ratings remain based in class with JC Decaux included on the CDPA list 2026 on 80 over 100 gold, top 5%. Rating from ECOVADIS, the highest AAA rating from MSCI and an 11.1 low risk score from sustained analytics, all significantly above the media sector averages. More broadly, I would like to emphasize that OOH continues at GSEDECO to be one of the least carbon intensive media for advertisers. On the slide 17, This slide illustrates the strengths of our corporate culture through a selection of awards won by our teams across the world. You can see that our subsidiaries are being recognized on multiple fronts for innovation and technology, for example, in AI-driven tools, media tech, or digital experiences, for creativity and campaign effectiveness, including international creative awards, or for commercial excellence, with several sales house of the year type distinctions. This recognition from Europe to Asia Pacific and the Americas demonstrate the high level of engagement and expertise of our teams and support our positioning as a premium innovative partners for cities, transport authorities, and advertisers. I will now hand over to David to comment on our financial highlights.

Thank you, Jean-Charles. Hello, everyone. On this first slide, you can see the main financial KPIs for the first half of 2026. As you can see, we delivered a strong set of results with a strong growth across all our key indicators. Revenue reached almost 2 billion euros, up 4.6% on a reported basis, with organic growth of 5.7%, which has been already largely commented by Jean-Charles. FX had a negative impact of circa 100 basis points, around 21 million euros, but with no significant impact on margins due to our natural hedging. At the same time, our operating margin, EBIT before impairment and net income grew much faster than revenue at plus 16.8%, plus 56.1%, and plus 84.7% respectively. Cash flow also improved significantly in the first half, turning positive despite the usual seasonality of our business and leading to lower net debt year on year. In summary, this clearly shows a strong operating leverage of our business model. Let's now have a look at each item in more detail, starting with the operating margin on page 20. On this slide, you can see the evolution of our operating margin. It increased 16.8% from 307.4 million to 359 million euros. This is a strong result, especially when compared with revenue growth of 4.6%, and shows, once again, the strength of our operating leverage. There are two main reasons for this improvement. First, our rents and fees increased at a lower pace than revenue, at plus 3.4%, despite new contracts, such as Barcelona and Stockholm, which has which are still in their start-up phase and also some pressure on prices due to the macro and geopolitical situation. Second, we kept tight control of other operating costs with an increase limited to 0.9% year-on-year. As a result, our operating margin rate improved by 190 basis points from 16.5% to 18.4%. And as you can see from the chart on the right-hand side, this improvement was visible across all segments, mainly driven by top-line growth in street furniture and transport and for billboards by the rationalization of our inventory portfolio in France and our most digitized markets. Let's now move to EBIT. On this slide, you have the EBIT bridge. Starting from an operating margin of 359 million, we deduct net amortization and depreciation as well as spare part maintenance, both increased year on year by 4.8 million and 0.8 million euros, respectively, or plus 2.4% and 3.2% which is again slower than revenue growth. This brings us to recurring EBIT of 136.2 million euros compared with 88.7 million last year, an increase of 47.5 million or plus 53.5% year-on-year with a margin expansion of 220 basis points from 4.7% to 7%. Below recurring EBIT, we have positive non-recurring items for 60 million euros, including a 47.5 million capital gain from the sale of a stake in APG SGA. The year-on-year increase in non-recurring items was nevertheless limited to 23 million as H1 2025 also included some one-off asset sales and reversals of dismantling provisions linked to contract expiries. After non-recurring items and impairments, EBIT reached 192.5 million euros, up 52.4% compared to last year. In summary, a strong operating leverage, not only on operating margin, but on EBIT as well. Let's now move to net income, page 22. On this slide, you can see the bridge from EBIT to net income. Here again, the message is clear. The strong operating improvement also led to a strong increase in net income. Between EBIT and net income, there are two main points to mention. First, the financial results improved by 8.9 million euros, mainly due to lower interest expense. thanks to lower IFRS 16 lease liability and financial debt. Second, we had a higher tax charge reflecting our improved results with an effective tax rate of around 16% compared with 16.4% in H1 2025. As a reminder, H1 2026 benefited from the Non-taxable capital gain on APG, SGA. Excluding that effect, the 2026 H1 effective rate would have been around 22.4%, an increase from last year reflecting the geographic mix of profit generation. So at the bottom of the table, reporting net income group share reached 140.1 million. up 84.7% year-on-year and up 23.3% excluding the APG capital gains. So overall, a solid underlying earnings. On the next slide, we move to cash generation. As you can see at the bottom of this slide, the free cash flow improved Strongly in the first half by 91.1 million euros. The first reason is that higher operating margin led to higher operating cash flow, which improved by 64.2 million euros year on year. The operating cash flow also benefited from favorable impact in the line of other items compared with last year, mainly due to Higher dividend received from affiliates, one-off bank fees paid in H1 2025, and lower restructuring costs. The second reason is better working capital management than last year. This is a good result, especially because in June, we had a higher level of revenue linked to the FIFA World Cup, and also The higher level of inventory linked to new contract rollout, mainly Carmilla in France. Last but not least, net capex came to 115.6 million below the same period last year, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of revenue, at 5.9% versus 6.4% in H1 2025. partly reflects lower sales of assets than in H1 2025 that I have mentioned before, and also some delays in the rollout of new contracts, which also explains the increase in inventory that I have just commented. So our free cash flow turned positive in H1 2026 at 26.2 million euros, which is quite positive at this period of the year and confirms our ability to generate strong free cash flows through strong profitability combined with strict discipline on capex and working capital. It is also worth noting that the cash flow before changes in working capital requirement almost tripled, rising from 35 million euros in H1 2025 to more than 100 million euros in H1 2026. Finally, on this last slide, page 24, you can see our strong financial structure. First, net debt increased by 284.1 million euros compared with June 2025, and by more than 200 million euros after excluding the 79 million euros proceeds from the sale of EPG. Compared with the end of 2025, December 2025, net debt increased by 41 million, but this is quite normal at this period of the year given the dividend payment in May for 150 million and the seasonality of the activity. Second, our liquidity remains very solid with 1.28 billion euros in cash, a fully unused 825 million euros revolving credit facility, Our debt profile is also solid with an average maturity of 2.6 years and 92% of the debt at fixed rate. Finally, both raising agencies improved their outlook from stable to positive, which is a good sign of the strength of our financial profile. So to conclude, we delivered a strong first half with A very good combination of strong revenue growth, strong profitability, strong cash generation, and strong balance sheet. That's all from my side on the financial, and I will now end to Jean-François Decaux.