Rexel Sa Unsp/Adr

Good evening, this is the conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Rexel Q3 2026 sales conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during a conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Texier, Group CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our third quarter 2026 sales presentation. I'll start with the key highlights of the quarter and our progress on M&A, and Laurent will then take you through the sales performance by region before I come back to discuss the outlook. And then we will obviously open the line for your questions. So let me start on slide 3 with the headline. Rexel delivered same-day sales growth of plus 11.4% in the third quarter. This is our strongest quarterly performance since 2022. And this is not an isolated good quarter. It is a continuation of a clear acceleration from plus 3.4% in Q1 to plus 6.7% in Q2, and now double-digit growth in Q3. And three things make us confident about the quality of this growth. First, where this growth comes from. Our growth segments, data centers, energy transition and industrial automation are visibly driving the growth. And this is exactly the repositioning we have been working on with our Accelerate 2028 strategic plan, being where electrification is happening with more value-added services. Second, how the growth is built. Growth is well-balanced between volume and price, and all three geographies contributed with double-digit growth in both North America and Asia-Pacific, and solid progression in Europe. And third, what lies ahead. Our North American backlog stands at a record level, which gives us visibility going forward. And with that, we are raising our full year guidance for the second time this year. I will come back to that at the end of the presentation. Moving to slide 4, our second key message is about M&A, which is a core level of our strategy. This year, we have completed four acquisitions in North America, TC360 in Canada, Revere in Illinois, and D-Electronics in Iowa, and on September 25th, we announced the acquisition of GCG based in Chicago, our largest transaction in more than 15 years. And what I would like you to take away from this slide is the consistency of our acquisition criteria. Every single target strengthens our service capabilities, increases our exposure to fast-growing segments, is also accretive to our EBITDA margin and is acquired at a synergized multiple below Rexel's own EV on EBITDA ratio. In other words, we are further driving the group transformation and we are doing so with financial discipline. And GCG is a great illustration. It has the largest exposure to structural growth markets and the deepest value-added content of any business we have acquired. The financing is already fully secured. We successfully completed a capital increase of 500 million euros at the end of September at excellent conditions, highlighting the strong support from our shareholders. We confirm our ambition to close the deal by year-end. With that context overall in mind, I will now hand over to Laurent, who will go through the sales review.

Thank you Guillaume and good evening everyone. I am on slide 6. Our Q3 sales reached 5.4 billion euros, up 14.6% on the reported basis and 11.4% on a constant and same-day basis. Let me focus on the organic growth as it remains the main driver of the quarter with a good balance between volume and price. Indeed, volumes contribute to 6.3%, more than half of our organic growth. Prices contribute to 5.1 points, split between 2.2 points from non-cable and 2.9 points from cable products. The acceleration compared to Q2 is driven by both volumes and price. Moving to the other key items of the bridge, the scope effect, which is the second growth engine, added plus 2.1 points with Revere, TechnoContact and DE Electronics. Lastly, FX turned positive and brought plus 1.2% thanks to the appreciation of the USD and Australian dollar. I'm now on slide 7, putting the quarter into perspectives. At group level, growth has accelerated every quarter this year and this is against increasingly demanding comparables since Q3 last year was already up plus 3%. North America, now representing 51% of the group sales, is a main contributor with plus 17.4% in Q3 after plus 7.8% in Q2. Europe, which accounts for 43% of sales, has confirmed its recovery with 4.5% growth, a four consecutive positive quarter after a difficult 2025. And Asia Pacific, 6% of ourselves, continues to deliver double-digit growth at plus 15.8%, and more specifically, Australia was up plus 13.1%, notably supported by solar activity and the industrial segment. China and India grew by respectively 19% and 15%, supported by industrial automation activities, mainly manufacturing, logistics and electronics robotics. I'll now go into more detail on North America and Europe in the next slides. North America grew by 17.4% in Q3, more than doubling the pace of Q2. All three markets were positive, with non-residential and industrial automation as the main contributors. The acceleration is mainly volume-driven, while the pricing environment remains favorable and similar to Q2. Let me provide more details on the US, where same-day sales were up plus 18.2%. Data centers grew in triple digits and now represent around 13% of our US sales. This brought circa 11.5% to the country's MDSS growth. Two points to highlight here. One, we are outperforming a market which is itself very strong. Two, we are moving upstream in the value chain, with lead times increasing and supply chains under pressure. Customers come to us earlier in projects. And beyond data centers, industry automation was up around 20%, contributing to circa 3%, driven by industrial projects and OEMs. And other segments grew mid-single digits and contributed for circa 3.5%. This is a net effect between positive momentum in aerospace, hospitals, and residential, and the decline at Talley due to high base effects. Canada was also strong, up 13.4%, with data centers, now around 10% of Canadian sales, making a strong contribution and low single-digit growth in the rest of the business, driven by utilities, industrial automation, and oil and gas. Moving to Europe on slide 9, same-day sales grew plus 4.5%. The key driver was the energy transition. HVAC, solar, and EV charging were up circa 13%, supported by electrification plants in a context of energy price volatility. Pricing was also supportive in both cable and non-cable products. And more specifically, France grew plus 3.6%, a very resilient performance in an uncertain micro-environment, thanks to our value-added HVAC offer and our EV charging solutions. The dark region accelerated to plus 6.4%, driven by solar business in Germany and first positive signs in industrial automation Benelux was up plus 7.5% driven by HVAC, solar and EV in the Netherlands UK and Ireland were stable but improving sequentially with strong growth in Ireland in solar, EV and datacom while the UK is still slightly negative but improving sequentially and Sweden grew plus 4.8% A sequential improvement driven by residential and infrastructure. With this, let me now hand back to Guillaume for some concluding remarks and our outlook. Thank you Laurent.