Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Welcome to the ALTEN call for the Q4 financials 2020. My name's Val. I'll be your coordinator for today's event. This call is being recorded. You'll be in listening mode during the presentation. We'll open it up to Q&A after that. If you have a question, press star one to record your question. If you require assistance, press star zero, you'll be connected to an operator. Over now to Mr. Bruno Benoliel, Deputy CEO, to begin today's call. Over to you, sir. Yes. Good evening to you all. Thanks for joining us for the call on a review of 2020. At the end of the year, the situation has changed little versus Q3, as I indicated earlier during the October call. A lot of wait and see, a pretty sluggish and mixed uptake. Tech and aerospace heavily impact. We had organic decrease in 2020 of 13%, of 12.9% thanks to a Q4 slightly better than expected. Q4 turnover of ALTEN rise to EUR 167.4 million, down 17.5% versus Q4 last year. We anticipated 18.5%, hence the slight improvement that I mentioned. You can see that activity remains markedly down versus last year at constant rates, down 17.4%, -24.4% in France and 24% out of France. Full year 2020, EUR 2,340.9 million, down 11.1% versus 2019. It was EUR 2.624 billion. Like for like, scope and constant perimeter activity is down 12.9%, down 19.5% in France and 7.9% international. Very sluggish response activity rate increase gradually remaining lows, 77.2% in Q2, 84% Q3, 86% for its final quarter, well below the normative rates. Year- to- date, it's 84.6% in 2020. It's against 92.1% in 2019. Furlough schemes were reduced because of an improved activity rate. It's still present in a few European countries, essentially France and Germany. All geographies headcount in furloughed was 13% in 2020, was brought down to 80% in Q3 thanks to leave taking, and 5% in Q4. Obviously, it's not added to the inter-contract rate and taken into account in the activity rates I'm giving you. They're part and parcel of the inter-contract rate because it's an inter-contract that's subsidized. Headcount continued to decrease, 37,200 at the end of last year. 32,000 engineers, consultants, end of December 2020. 33,000, 29,000 engineers. Excluding acquisitions, disposal engineer headcount would've been 29,000 headcount. That's an organic drop of 3,000 people, 2,017 in France and 2,418 outside France. By geography at the end of December, the situation is as follows. France remained penalized by auto and aero. Auto represents 13% of France turnover, declined by 35% in Q4 after -40% in Q3. Aerospace, 21% of French sales, down 34% in Q4 after a peak, so to speak, of -50% in the Q3. Energy, thanks to nuclear, railways, naval, life sciences, telecom in total, just over 40% of turnover is still growing. International, no change of trend in Q4 versus Q3. Changes by country are dissimilar. Activity is down 7.9% annual year-to-date, 12.4% international in Q4 after -14% in Q3, -11% in Q2. North America, U.S., 80% of NorAm's. The main sectors, auto, oil and gas, and service finance picked up slightly. Less decrease in Q3, -20% versus 25% in Q3. Canada resisted well, up 13%, 2020 services up 15%, telecom 5%, life sciences +90%. All sectors in Canada are up except for aerospace, of course. Germany, country where activity decreased the most within the group. The organic drop reaches 24.5%, decrease that was slightly reduced in Q4 -30% versus 34% in Q3. Activity didn't pick up in the auto aero sectors, even if the decrease of Q4 in both those sectors is lower than in Q3. It does remain very significant because in auto, -30% in Germany at Q4, whereas we were on levels higher than Q3. Auto, still 45% of turnover. As to aerospace, only 25% of German turnover. Let me remind you of the numbers, -4% in Q4, -60% in Q3. Once again, -40% in Q4. The other sector, finance, energy, life science are up. Scandinavia, at constant scope and Forex, activity is down 19%. In Finland, a small quarter of Scandinavia activity improved in Q4 thanks to the pickup of industrial equipment preponderant in that country. In Sweden, activity stabilized. A decrease of 20% of constant scope on the back of the strong decrease in the auto and trucks, very major in Sweden. The decrease full year is the order of 40%. Benelux activity decreased slightly, but in Belgium it decreased by 10%, stabilizing in Q4, essentially owing to the service sector, whereas the pharma sector continues to grow significantly. In the Netherlands, activity grew 3% thanks to semiconductors. All the other sectors are up. Spain now, activity down 5% but contracted slightly in Q4 owing to continued lockdown. Defense and space, automotive, civil aero are down whereas activity is up across all the other sectors. Asia Pacific scope grew 65% but leveled off overall in Q4. Growth driven by India, where local activity grew. Posted growth about 10%, notably in electronics, semiconductors, and in the tertiary sector in China, EUR 27 million in turnover. Activity is down by just under 10%, 8% to be precise. The auto accounts representing a significant part of the Chinese business. Activity had picked up as of Q2 and picked up more vigorously into Q3 and leveled off in Q4. Now Italy is a specific country in 2020 for ALTEN. Double-digit growth across sectors, save telecoms owing to the decrease of a client, Vodafone. In the U.K., activity began to pick up in the final quarter, even if it's heavily impacted by the drop in aero accounts, -35% auto, -30%, both representing just under 40% of U.K. turnover. Like what's happening in the rest of the world, diversification of enterprise and other sectors in the U.K. grew significantly. If we look at the activity by sector, I won't repeat that auto and aero remain heavily impacted by the crisis. All the other sectors suffering from marked growth, save for rail, naval, energy, thanks to nuclear and life sciences. If we home in sector by sector, automotive, 70% of turnover today, down 30% sequential improvement, -40% Q2, 36% for Q3, 33% for Q4 for OEMs, PSA, Ferrari, all are down. Equipment suppliers, only ZF is up. As I said last time, we don't anticipate a real pickup before mid-2021 at best. Rail activity and naval activity is still growing by over 10%, driven strongly by naval, rail reaching 10% in activity. That slowed obviously in Q2, that picked up in Q3, and accelerated in Q4 for long-term projects. Aerospace now 12% of turnover, down 33% with a strong decrease in Q2 and amplified in Q3. A slight uptick in Q4. Visibility remains reduced, and for us, no genuine uptick of activity will occur before 2022 or even 2023 in the aerospace sector. In aerospace, the subsector of space is less severely affected. It's only slightly down and should pick up faster. We expect it to have picked up by the end of H1, what with new launches, INS bus, and the SpaceX launches. Defense and security, 5% of our business, down 7%, severely impacted by Q2, -14%, has picked up slightly in Q3 and Q4. We expect that to remain the trend over 2021 because budgets haven't been brought down. The mix shows that oil and gas represents about half of the business industry. It's stable over the year, down at the end of the year, having been affected by the crude oil impact. Nuclear seems fairly stable given the projects that are long-term projects, for the main part. As for energy-related equipment, it's still increasing more than 5%. Life sciences, which account for some 8.7% of ALTEN's business, it's slightly up. Pharmacy up 10%, medical equipment up 3%. This should go on growing over 2021, obviously. The other industries account for slightly less than 6% of our business, down some 10% over the whole year due to industrial goods mainly. Lastly, telecom, 7% of our business, down 3% over the year, but with very different scenarios for our various customers. All growing apart from Vodafone in Italy and Ericsson in Sweden. We expect this to be one-off. As for Altice in France, given the fact that they want to bring these services back in-house as they started to do in 2019, and this is a trend that has increased over 2020 with the crisis, we expect business to pick up over 2021, what with the switch to 5G. Electronics and multimedia. It's started to pick up again over Q4, even though it is down 20 points in Q3 and down over the whole year. As for Amadeus, we had 100 or so consultants there, and that has had an impact, but semiconductors and electronics have still gone up. Services and finance up 20%, thanks mainly to retail and services, with banking up 5%. If you look at the various businesses by sector or by geography, even though the full year has been significantly down with two sectors having driven that in a number of countries, but on the whole, the other markets are resisting fairly well. External growth now. Many things have happened there with acquisitions both in France and internationally, mainly outside France, actually. Nine acquisitions this year. Each of them fits in with the strategy of the group, and as I told you last time, the purpose is to speed up international growth on buoyant markets and/or to achieve critical mass on sub-markets and in France, increase our position on data science, infra cloud, and data security, which will be growth drivers over the next few years. Let me maybe review the nine acquisitions over the full year, give you a few numbers, and tell you when the consolidation occurred. I know that you always ask for that. We purchased a Chinese-Japanese company early in the year, 380 consultants, IT and software development, consolidated as of the 1st of April. A little later, a Korean company, AP Solutions, 200 consultants, also specialized in software development, PLM. 200 consultants. Sales, EUR 18.5 million. Consolidation much later due to the fact we wanted to get the information in the right kind of format, so it was consolidated on the 1st of October 2020. In the U.S. and with a Ukraine-based delivery center, one company specializes in software development, 100 consultants, EUR 7.5 million in revenue, also consolidated as of 1st of October. Germany now, two companies purchased, both in engineering consulting, mainly for the automotive industry. Onboard software in an electronics environment. One of them is a company we'd already made an announcement for, EUR 19 million in sales, 200 consultants. We got a 70% stake and will consolidate it as of the 1st of January this year. The other company was purchased at the end of the year, 100% stake. We've been working on that for some time. There were significant losses in 2019 and 2020. Company was restructured, and we purchased it as it was undergoing final restructuring. It should get EUR 24 million in sales for 2021 in the scope we've got, 205 consultants, consolidation January 1st, 2021. In Italy now. One company for which there had been a specific press release, SDG Group, data science and analytics. Headquarters are in Italy, but the business is also in Spain and the U.S. Their sales were EUR 76 million for 2021, 885 consultants. Consolidation January 1st, 2021. The other company, IT Infra and Services, purchased over the new year, 300 consultants, also consolidated as at the beginning of the year. In France, one IT infrastructure business, 100 consultants, 100 of them outsourced, expected revenue for 2021, EUR 32 million. Lastly, Portugal, still on IT infrastructure and data science. A company geared for the local market, but which might be a platform for nearshore in Europe. Their revenue for 2020 is expected to be EUR 27 million, 400 consultants. Consolidation, at 1st of January. All in all, 3,000 people acquired for EUR 240 million in revenues. We have also divested. That's more unusual, I suppose, but we have decided to pull out from three non-strategic businesses, one in China, in the automotive industry, mainly on mechanical things or design. EUR 6 million in sales, 154 consultants when we sold it on. It was deconsolidated as of April 1st. In France, a telecoms company, or doing business in telecoms that I mentioned last time, 264 consultants, EUR 16 million, and that was deconsolidated as of 1st of September. Lastly, also in France, process manufacturing, 60 consultants, and we will deconsolidate it as of 31st of December. Total revenue for those companies divested, EUR 10.5 million. If you do forward-looking comparison, you'll have total sales of EUR 2.3134 billion. Outlook for 2021, we expect the automobile industry to pick up in the second half of the year, and we expect some insourcing as PSA or Renault have done. The things being what they are, there will be investments in rail, naval, aerospace, aeronautics. These will enjoy growth once more in 2021, with obviously the visibility is not very sure, and everything will depend on the state of the health situation. Q1 should be fairly stable as compared to Q4 2020. Significant drop as compared to Q1 2020, which was a record high, and the gap will be bridged at the end of S1, and we expect or we hope some recovery will occur over the course of the year. However, we don't really expect that to happen before the second half of 2021, and it's therefore much too difficult to say anything about when we will enjoy organic growth once again. Onboard growth is probably 5%, strong seasonality. The acquisitions for 2020 and 2021 will at least in part offset this drop in growth. There you have it. I hope that I was clear enough and compact enough. If you do have any questions, I'll be to answer. Participants, if they have any questions. Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press star one on your devices. Please make sure that you are unmuted and I will tell you when you can ask your question. Again, star one is what you need to do. We have a first question from Alexandre Plaud, CM-CIC Securities. You have the floor. Yes. Hello, Bruno. Hello. Just to make sure I understand. Organic negative growth for 2021 to the tune of 5%, as you said, with some offset from the acquisitions. What does it mean exactly as concerns the upcoming scope? Answer. What I've said is that the negative growth onboard is 5% or thereabout. The sales would be slightly below EUR 2.2 billion. I've told you about the acquisitions, I've told you what the sales figures are and the consolidation dates. Some of these were at least in part, consolidated over 2020, and you can work on that to try and get a potential sales figure for 2021. It won't completely offset the negative growth. It will offset at least part of it, because some of it has already been consolidated over 2021. Unfortunately, the speakers are speaking over one another. Question, second question. I'm not sure I fully understood the sectors pie chart on the service IT. There's a growth over 2020, I'm not sure I understood. In fact, what we did if I just revert for finance services, all the data I'm giving you, it's of course like for like across these sectors. It's obviously like for like, otherwise acquisitions, obviously lead to misleading conclude down 4%. Essentially, well, owing to retail and service activity, insurance is flat, banking plus five. Okay. Great. That's clear. Thank you. Thank you. No further questions in the queue. Let me remind participants that you can use your keyboard by pressing star one to record your question. Thank you. We have a second question coming in from Derek Makan from Soc Gen. Over to you. Hi, Bruno. Best wishes for the new year. We're still the 29th, so let's hope that there are fewer COVID-related announcements. Wishing you good health. First on the furlough scheme, part-time layoffs at the end of February, do you think that the scheme will stop and be far less generous for corporates enjoying these furlough schemes? If so, how do you plan to address the remaining stock of furlough schemes at the end of December? That's my first question. The second question's concerning the embedded growth on H2, the math for that obviously if give or take your H2 is similar to Q4 2020, it means that you've basically taken up sequentially on the invoice volume of consultants, an increase at Q4 versus Q3 because it's true the staff hiring. When you remove people from the bench, maybe you could give the number of those billed in Q4 versus Q3, and is there a sequential difference, and is there a kind of cumulative effect that needs to be taken into account to better read? If we could just have the Q4 level alone, that'd be good. I think you gave it for the year 3,000 odd. Yeah, I gave - 3,495. - 1,478 internationally. Let's start with the last question. Q4, we have a net staff - 704 people. That's purely organic, obviously not taking into account the scope exits, the disposal, - 704. On the split, to be specific, - 556 for France and - 148 for international. The other question was on what was invoiced. Well, we've never really disclosed that in detail, but give or take, what we can tell you between Q4 and Q3 is that we've increased the invoiceable headcount by about 2%, between 2% and 2.5%. That's what backs up the onboarded growth plan. After that, there are impacts. We can't model everything on the rates, on the activity rates. With activity rates that are fluctuating so sharply, we took also as an assumption that we'd be invoicing more because we invoiced more. Improved invoicing, put simply, isn't linked to recruitment, it's linked to the improved activity rate. We took as an assumption that the activity remained flat. For what's on the onboarded rate, it's purely theoretical exercise. Activity rate rises. Inevitably, if you reduce your stock. We took as an assumption that if we take the same number of people with the same activity rate, consequently, and an equivalent external volume with no inter-contract, then the volume of revenue of projects invoiced, consider on an onboarded reasoning, remains flat. If mechanically we continue to decrease the headcount, consequently, the inter-contract will shrink. If we reduce the headcount on the inter-contract, not the case. There are people who resign but are in project, we can't necessarily immediately replace them, in which case we'll have an accretive impact on the activity, which won't have a knock-on effect on the invoicing level. Next, the question was on the furlough, the temporary unemployment scheme. Well, we took the assumptions that today are in our forecast, even if we haven't finalized, because I'm currently looking at that again. In theory, we should have an end, I'm talking about France, an end of the furlough scheme for people who haven't opted for the scheme by the end of August. For 2021, yeah. By 2021. We have to exit for six months. We should have exited the compensation scheme for partial layoffs that's been lasting in France for a year, receiving 70% of your gross pay. We have to top that up because of the collective agreement that we've entered into. The day that system, that scheme stops, we revert to a system in France, which is the ordinary law system in France, which basically, we're compensated. I said taxed, actually, we're actually only compensated at 38% of gross pay, that lasts for six months. Today, the assumption is through the end of February, we'll continue to benefit from compensation of 60%. In March, that would drop to 36%. That's for France. 36%, in other words, that's your out-of-pocket. No. Yeah. The out-of-pocket obviously skyrockets necessarily. You have the calculation and there are assumptions that really depend on the operating prospects of an uptick in activity or outsourcing transfer skills to other projects. To see if the curves can converge at some point. If the furlough scheme is going to less subsidize the P&L and will taper out at some point, we'll be converging towards an inter-contract rate that's manageable and realistic for the time being. It's decreasing slowly, decreasing nevertheless. The other possibility is to have a redundancy plan affecting some few hundred people. Trouble is they are highly concentrated in places where the aerospace sector is heavily located. It costs a lot because there are competitors who are putting in place that the ROI is of one year. It disrupts the company. In terms of labor relations, it's really the last decision to be taken when there's no other alternative. For the time being, we expect that we will gradually get the inter-contract curve to meet that at the end of the furlough scheme. I don't know if you've listened to the transport minister the other day before yesterday, where she clearly contradicted the budget minister by saying that the furlough scheme and the whatever it takes mantra would continue as long as necessary. This 60% compensation furlough scheme that in theory should have stopped September 2020 and is carried over month by month will linger for a lot of 2021. As to Germany, well, in Germany, we'll have a small redundancy plan, but really a mini one, about 100 people in Hamburg. As for the rest, that's to say Munich, the South, and for the rest of the other inter-contracts in Hamburg, we're going to operate with German furlough scheme, which very generous with an out-of-pocket of the order of 15%-20% max, depending on the situation that will last for sure until the end of 2021, probably into part of 2022. The third option, long-term furloughs, isn't that an option? Because you didn't mention that. Well, obviously, we looked at it, for us, it's not necessarily a good way of doing things because it requires a two-year commitment. It requires not being able to, if necessary, make layoffs for the time being. Situation being what it is. We have to give activity over a two-year period to 60% activity to all people, to all employees. It's more kind of designed for industrial activities where we can get people to rotate on positions, but we can't, on projects, have someone 60%, 40% on a furlough. It doesn't work that way. Okay, that's clear. If I could add a quick one on the slowdown of international Q4, the base effect. Those are base effects. I put you in the annex, the revenue change, organic growth rates quarter by quarter. It's clearer than on a year- to- date. Where we compare Q3, Q4, even though Q4 was stronger than Q3, we should have had an unfavorable base effect that should perhaps have amplified the comparison negatively. You'll see that across the board, the decrease rate is better in Q4 than it is in Q3. With the exception of Spain. Because Spain went back into lockdown. Switzerland. You said Q1 2021 and Q4 2020, you're talking absolute terms, right? In number of projects. That means that isn't it the same rationale as Q3, Q4 2020? There's an increase in the number of people you're billing because Q1 traditionally, historically, has always been slower than Q4. That's why I'm reasoning on number of projects that are billed or invoiced. Number of people billed. Business days, we don't have the same number of days, paid leave, paid holidays. Sequentially, you look at the number of projects, generally in Q1 and end of December, there are a lot of projects that ended. In the end of June, they kind of step up quite strongly, and generally we recovered generally mid-February, but usually towards the end of February. This year, that step was smaller. These are projects that already ended. Those that continued did so. End of January, number of projects billed, well, the number began to increase again, we expect to have as many in Q1 as Q4. Now it'll be a strong organic decrease in Q1 to end of January. You are already square. There's every likelihood that you'll do even better than that. Right. Well, we recovered a few. We're not square yet. I thought that at the end of January. Right. Okay. I'm with you. Thanks, Bruno. I'm sorry. Thank you. Next question from Stefan Slowinski. You have the floor. Evening, Bruno. Good evening. Two questions. One on the acquisition strategy. You acquired nine businesses in 2020. What can we expect for 2021? Similar numbers or similar numbers of people acquired or similar sales or do you expect a step change compared to 2020? On your offshore strategy, I expect that most of your acquisitions will be there. What about onshore, or is it going to be just organic growth? Right. 2020 was big on acquisitions, and we have got a rather significant pipeline of due diligence or negotiations with LOIs being discussed. Sizable numbers, not all of that will lead to acquisitions. I think we can expect, at this point in the year, given the number of companies we're looking at, we can expect, as I was saying, probably to purchase a similar number of companies in 2021 as in 2020. Obviously, as concerns headcount and sales, there's not much we can say because some of them will only have 30 or so consultants, but make sense to bolt on to what we have somewhere else. Others might be bigger. At this point, you can't really say yet which one of these two options might be more likely. We really are either at the very beginnings of the due diligence process or involved in an LOI already, there's no way we can say yet. As for strategy, we're looking at companies both in France and outside of France and are abroad. Well, there are a number of companies working on offshore, mainly, incidentally, China and India. Okay. Bruno. Obviously, these are companies we're looking at, but if there were to be a real increase in demand on onshore, say, with Renault, for instance, we won't have any problem ramping up our delivery centers in India or Romania, say. We have recruitment processes in place. It wouldn't be much of a problem. Question, that's not really underway for the moment? Bruno, what? Question. This is not really happening in Morocco or onshore or nearshore? Answer, no, not really. Just another question about the state of lockdown in Europe and elsewhere. You said many businesses were still buoyant and had significant growth, and your numbers are sort of directly linked to the market. Does that mean that if the health situation improves significantly, that would lead to projects picking up? Answer. Lockdown doesn't really have any direct impact on the way aero or automobile would pick up now. Remote working is a fairly efficient form of work. People have grown used to it. The slowdown in business isn't so much due to organization or practical issues, it is more for commercial reasons. Actually looking at prospects and potential clients, et cetera. You might be able to run a few on Teams or over the internet, whatever app you want to use, but clearly, fewer meetings means fewer bids and less business. Okay. Maybe one last question, more directly related to operational margins. You said it was slightly better than expected. Can you say anything about H2? Are you able to say anything about profitability in H2? Answer, I think I said that last time. I think I said that profitability for H2 would be better than expected, and I can confirm that. Question. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Laurent Daure, Kepler Cheuvreux. You have the floor, sir. Question. Thank you. Can we mention government aid, 36%, is it regardless of sectors, or is it different for aero and automobile? Answer, no difference. Question, you don't expect a difference between the various sectors? Answer, no, it really is something that applies to all the businesses at business levels that are below standard. But in some sectors, automobile or aero, there are specific provisions, but that doesn't apply to us. Question, you said 5%, so 1,500 people. What about the normal attrition rate, so to speak, per month? How many people can we expect to go so we can forecast anything? Answer, well, I don't know. Question, and what happened over the last few months? Answer, look, there are some months where it might be 150, some other months it might be a bit more, and other months still it's below 100. Question, over the quarter, it's somewhere around 300 people, is that right? Answer, yeah. Question, that's 600 over the year, plus the 100 people. Basically you've got 700 or 800 people that you have to reallocate and train. Is that right? Answer, well, we've not actually said that like that because it's really something that's managed on an almost day-to-day basis, depending on the various operations. There might be 800 or 1,000 people leaving, and then we want to be able to reallocate, so to speak, the various consultants. We might just decide to agree to people on downtime in between consultancies in greater numbers than we usually would. We might want to develop a different strategy. In any case, it's just so long and so costly that it might not make sense to do it, because business might have picked up by the time we finished. Obviously, at some point in time, you'll get to the dregs, basically. Not the best way of putting it, still. Nowadays, an engineer might leave after a couple of months being paid doing nothing, because that's not what their career prospects are or expectations are. Some people might move on. Rather unexpectedly, we had quite a few people resigning in and around Toulouse, and we didn't expect that because of the way the aerospace business has been wrecked. In fact, we saw that many people have either been relocating, moving to other parts of the country or changing industries. There's no way you can forecast that. I'm sure that in the people who are still with us in sort of downtime might be people who are looking for a job somewhere else and staying with us until they find one and are not finding, so we'll have to see how that goes. As I was saying, it really is a day-to-day management, basically. Question. You were talking also about the number of projects that were being invoiced, and the numbers had been improving slightly from the beginning of the year. I suppose you meant organically here. Basically you'd be saying that you have growth down for Q1, but still improvement over Q4 to double digit. Yes, double digit. Question. Outside the automobile and aero, have some customers in other industries that try to push prices down more than usual? Answer. Well, actually not in auto and aero. No. Some people have postponed their call for and their tenders because they're doing something else. There have been some clients in the banking and insurance sector who have asked for fairly significant price drops. I said asked, I didn't say they got them. Question. Excluding people in downtime, what about the gap between average salaries and average prices? Is it going to be a bit of a problem? Answer. No, it will be managed fairly easily. There are no salary increases apart from those who have been promoted. Question. Thank you, and goodbye. There are no further questions in line. Let me just remind participants that if they do wish to ask a question, they should press star one. Derek Makan, Societe Generale, you have the floor. Yeah, Bruno, sorry to come back. Just two quick ones, if I may. The first one you were saying the visibility going forward is what it is. It's not crystal clear, but in terms of what the picture is six months back, do you have greater visibility on project launches than six months back on the spending volume, what's expected going into 2021? In your scenario for H2, have you factored in the auto pickup as a certainty and that gives you kind of a stock of the furlough numbers from 2020? On these 1,500 people, is there a profile emerging? Are these people who cannot really be reemployed aside from the auto aero sector because that's where the change is coming from? If that's the case, given the very prudent tone that you have on the pickup short term, that's obviously a burden that you're carrying. Obviously, you kind of reduce some of them, but 300 per quarter, that's a load that you're going to carry into 2022. Well, visibility is when I said it's reduced, it's hugely reduced. We have no visibility on our client budgets for 2021, and usually they don't have any before February or even March. Here, when people who are managing the accounts talk to their counterparts, they don't have any either because the accounts, the budgets are kind of on leash run of the river. Most, and in most industries today. H2, as things stand, we've taken assumptions of an uptick in the auto business. As I said, I haven't nailed down my 2021 budget, notably H2, because what's interesting after all is to look at the perception of each operational manager. There are some who think that things are going to pick up strongly because vaccines will crack the problem. Others are far more measured. There's, I would say in the numbers that we're getting that are supplied to management, there's a strong personal bias that's linked to the context and the way how individuals respond to the context. My take, my sense is that we'll pick up slightly in H2 in auto, but we mustn't expect a spectacular rebound, not in H2, unless things result spectacularly and that the sanitary crisis gradually dissolve. That doesn't seem to be the course for the next two, three months. There is some real issues for auto manufacturers of CapEx in batteries. Everything that revolves around electric vehicles of investing in fuel cells, of course, for autonomous vehicles, where the problem for the OEMs is that in electric vehicles, the price of the battery represents quite a significant portion of the price of the vehicle, it poses a problem of a value change. What we're seeing is that they're all investing, there's also CapEx that needs to go into alternative technology. I said two years ago that lithium wouldn't be the solution, the solutions around hydrogen, not only. Those are big investments, they don't have the top line to do that. Sooner or later, it's going to have to happen. That will only operate when the virtuous circle of an uptick in sales volumes will kick in, et cetera. This is my personal view on auto. I see a slight increase in H2, probably in 2022, when we'll begin to really emerge from the crisis, a stronger recovery. For people on furlough schemes, the remaining 1,500 people, well, they're not people who are unemployable or difficult to employ. If we keep them, people we decided to let go in Northern Germany, we looked at their skill set and a fit with market needs. We said that it would be very challenging, we're having a mini redundancy plan in Northern Germany. For the rest, these are skills that we had difficulty in hiring these past two years. They're young, well-trained, working on automotive or aeronautics issues. Germany, clearly, German managers see an uptick. They have longer-term visions because they're in a country where the perspective is more long-term. That's why the German government's decided to maintain very favorable furlough scheme at the end of 2021, and there's talk even up until the end of 2022 to preserve skills in companies. Germany, that's a real issue for us in terms of furlough, because we have several hundred people in Hamburg and Ditto in Southern Germany. In France, it's limited to Toulouse. We have an extra bench of the order of 350 people in Toulouse, and Nantes, about 150, and Sophia, a bit less. That's shrinking gradually. Next, we'll have to decide, you have to get the right timing. Sometimes it's too late to launch heavy-duty operations that are costly in labor terms. With the passage of time, the closer we'll get to the tipping point, the uptick. Well, what I don't understand, these people are linked to the geography. If you look auto and aero, it's actually growing in terms of the drop of the furlough schemes. That should really come from the fact that you gradually reassign these people where the market's growing, right? Yep. The market elsewhere isn't sufficiently dynamic today in order to absorb the surplus resources from the aero and auto sectors. That's just not going to happen. It's going to manage gradually over time, and it's not static. That is, there'll be people who resign, people who stay in furloughs in Germany, probably on a furlough scheme for over two years. The question is, down the road, and is that in 2021 or in 2022, will activity in those sectors pick up to absorb the remaining slack of people on furlough? Well, it's a bet, it's a gamble. We maybe change view during the course of 2021 in light of events. Today in Germany, there's no reason whereas we have people who are competent. We know the auto industry will end up by turning the corner, and they have no need to let people go when the residual cost is the order of 15%-20%, if we reason in terms of HR focus. These are people, obviously, if they serve no useful purpose, there's no point in keeping them, because we know that if the market picks up, they'll remain idle. For those, we've decided, obviously, to call it a day, but for the others, not. Well, it's true when you look at all these sectors, you have two that are hurting badly. That's not really sufficient to absorb those. Yeah, they're the two biggest sectors, absolutely. Yep, I understand you. Thanks, Bruno. You're welcome, Derek. Have a pleasant evening. No further questions in the queue. I'm now going to hand this back to Mr. Benoliel to wrap up today's call. Thanks. Well, thanks for joining the ALTEN call. Thanks for your questions. We'll meet again on the 24th of February, because that's the date on which we'll be publishing our 2020 results. Thanks again. Have a pleasant evening. Great weekend. See you soon. Bye. Thanks for joining today's call. You can now hang up. The organizers of the call will remain connected