Hello, everyone. Welcome to the presentation meeting for the half results of Alten. For those of you who follow us online, you can ask your question directly on the platform. For those of you who are in the room, of course, the Q&A session will be held at the end of the presentation. I give the floor to Simon Azoulay, Chairman of Alten. Thank you, and hello, everyone. I'm very happy to be here to present to you the results of the first half 2022. I was hoping that I had a full room today. We thought during the board meeting that in a period of post-COVID, everybody could be here. I'm very surprised to see that people are still following online and not attending in presence. I believe that there'll be probably 30% of us in the room and the rest following us remotely, which give us a trend for the next meetings. In any event, you are all here, even online, and we're very happy to present to you the results and the strategy for 2022 and the two coming years. The results were published yesterday. As you can see, and I hope it is not a big surprise for you, the growth is here. The results are good. We've already published the revenue at the end of July. We have a very good surprise. However, our forecast that we presented to you a few months ago did not allow us to hope such a high level of 11.4%, considering the pressure that we had on the headcount since the beginning of the year, so we didn't know how it would affect the OPA. Two phenomena helped to produce this number, a very strong demand and a deficit of engineers that is everywhere in the world, including in low-cost countries, Asia, Eastern Europe or North Africa. That has led to the fact that clients had to do something about it because they were facing this deficit of engineers. It limited the number of internal contracts. We can announce 11.4%. The calendar will be less favorable on H2, and Bruno will talk about it, but it's gonna be between 10% and 10.5%. We end the half year with 43,650 engineers, which means 49,600 employees. This number has been outgrown already today, and our ambition would have been to present to you the magic number of 50,000 engineers in December 2022. We hope it's still gonna be possible. It's gonna be difficult. Depending on the M&A activity, it might be possible. Our international growth is getting stronger, even in France's very good results. As you can see on the map today, our international footprint is at 67%. If we have these 50,000 engineers, we'll be at 30% in France and 70% internationally. All the scopes, all the geographic scopes have grown at different paces. You could see that, it's very positive, the organic growth and external growth as well. External growth has been less strong than last year. It's been mostly recovery from organic growth. France, that has not had external growth, has recuperated, as you can see on the graph, going from 6,550 engineers up to 10,800 engineers for this year, which is quite a miracle for such a year. Of course, you will have this chart later on, and you'll have a chance to analyze it deeper on our site. Globally, you have to remember that there's no geographic difference. All countries have the same issue of not finding enough engineers, and this is gonna stay, unfortunately. The loss of engineers, the deficit of engineer is going to be here to stay. I would like to insist on the breakdown between two types of activity that really characterize the peculiarity of the ALTEN Group. For those of you who I have met before. We have two jobs in the world of services. There's a blue job and a yellow job. This is what ALTEN calls them, and the blue métier is the all the engineering services, everything that is design and deployment of products that are going to be sold. It's a core business of our clients. The yellow métier is everything that is IT enterprise services, apps, databases, networks, deploying the networks, the cloud, cybersecurity, et cetera. Blue is technical management and production management. Yellow is internal needs that you find in most companies. Blue is engineering, it's Alten. Yellow is all the companies, the subsidiaries specialized in consulting and expertise. If we are in the blue, if our core business is in the blue, why are we doing in the yellow part? Because since the digitalization calls for specific development and very technical developments, we're requested from banks, insurance or retail to develop particular apps that we know how to do in the world of products, the embedded software that we have developed for the last 30 or 40 years in the Alten Group. It's mostly the engineering companies that are requested to develop specific products in the world of IT services of companies. There are many things that we'll not do in the yellow world. We won't do what is called BPO. It's taking a whole payroll, a CRM, with the audits and the analysis and training and deployment in India. This is not our core business. Our business is to design, with teams of engineers, products with their specifications. Same goes with the networks of companies who are requested many times to do something about this, but would say that Alten is an engineering company at 70% and uses its technical skills to offer specific developments and technical developments to the world, to the internal functions of companies. In the world of the engineering, there are two branches, the branch R&D, design up to the prototypes, and the manufacturing branch. The manufacturing branch, Alten was not present on that branch 15 years ago because the plants were 2.0. It was a lot of blue collars, a lot of people management. Since the factories have become more and more digitized, it's the automation of plants with the IoT and everything that it generates has helped us think about it differently on how we can deliver our industrial equipment. We have, again, need for engineers, and we develop more and more on the world of manufacturing. In the 70% that we have today, it represents maybe 45% for R&D and 25% for manufacturing and production engineering, whether it's rail, telecom, energy sectors. I hope that helps you understand better how Alten is positioned and the fact that Alten is the only real world operator, independent, with a mindset of an engineer. It's a reality of today that our clients are very aware of, and that's why they want our services. What characterizes Alten as well, it's two other points. I often present this slide, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but I always insist on the fact that Alten focuses on specific studies, whether it's for R&D or for manufacturing or for special applications of IT services on the jobs of engineering and specific developments. We recruit only engineers, and they are all on our payroll. We have a very high investment in recruiting and managing the careers of these engineers. We help them grow to functions of specialists, of experts, project leaders, or business unit managers, which is what you see on the level two and three of the slide. We work in technical assistance with the clients who ask us for additional resources, but more and more, the clients are giving us the entirety of the projects that we manage in our premises or sometimes in the development centers abroad if they ask for low cost prices in Romania or in India. At 70% of our revenue in France, and 100% worldwide, we have the responsibility for the project, for the management of the project. We don't do the level one, which we call staffing. Freelancing. There's a market for it. There's some freelance companies, staffing companies. It's grown quite a lot in the U.S., because of a much more liberal work law. We don't do the level four either. That could be compromising us with our clients because some of our clients do it themselves. We have our own test centers. We don't want to be competing with a tier one if they sell their own services to industrial companies. We're not on level four. Level four would not allow us to manage on a semester basis the profit rates depending on, we manage all that from an accounting point of view. Over the four possibilities of the service offer, we are on level two and three. We want to work with industrial companies in banks and for major industries for 72% of our revenue in the area of technical products and services. I think it's clear enough, but I'm happy to go back on it. Now on the breakdown by sector of our revenue, this is the logical consequence of the strategy. As you can see, we're at 70% in the world of technical and engineering products, 20% in, approximately, land transport, automotive, and rail. It's about pretty stable. We grew a bit even in the aerospace and security and naval world department. Then you have all the other technical equipments around energy, life science, telecom, electronics, where you have about each of them representing about 10%. Then you have the remaining 25%. 28%, which, because it's grown in the services sector, banking and insurance. How does it work with all these sectors? They're all doing very well, but I want to insist on the fact that during each crisis, only one or two sectors were hit. It's very strategic for the Alten Group to have this diversity of sectors. We're number one in the engineering sector as an independent structure, but we are also one of the only companies that is multisectoral in the engineering world, which is that we work on a number of sectors, and that has prevented us from being hit during all the crises. We were hit pretty bad by the crisis of the internet bubble because we worked a lot in the telecom sector. We suffered for a semester, but because the other sectors were doing fine, we could overcome that. The 2009 crisis as well, automotive as well. At the same time, the aerospace sector was doing well, so it saved us. The crisis, the COVID crisis, we were hit, of course, in the aerospace sector. We had a drop of 60% of the revenue in aeronautics and for the equipment manufacturers. The automotive company suffered a bit, but the other sectors held up pretty well. This diversity of sectors is fundamental for us to protect us from the crisis, and so we're not depending on only one sector. It's a form of guarantee, but it implies that we have a critical size in each country and each sector. We have... That's why we need this number of 50,000 engineers. I'm gonna say a word on each sector, but in the next slides, I'm not gonna wanna take them all of them. You'll have more details on how each sector is characterized. Defense. Defense sector is a market that is doing very well. We have a lot of requests from most defense operators, Safran, Thales and the others, or Leonardo. Aeronautics. The sector came back to the level pre-COVID with new projects such as the hydrogen plane, the revamping of a number of existing models, which means, in fact, that they're completely redone from the inside, even if the outside is not changed with new engines. It's a sector where we have quite a good visibility, and we can expect a nice growth for the next two years. Regarding the sector of automotive and rail. In the automotive sector, we have a lot of requests. We managed to work with most of French, German, American, and Swedish car manufacturers. That protected us because it's a tough sector, very high pressure on prices. They consider in the automobile sector that engineering is part of the cost, the production cost. Before they look at the quality, they look at the price first. There's a big pressure on offshoring of all the car services. The R&D of the automotive sector is not strategic as it could be in the aeronautics or defense sector. They go to Manila, Philippines, Morocco, India, and we have delivery center in those countries. It's a little less true for rail and naval sectors. We have many requests from the sector on the engines and the network, and also on the layout. There's many big sites. We're working with major players, and that opens some very nice perspectives of development as well on this sector. For the other sectors that we call other industries, which is energy, life science, telecoms. Energy is. Do we have a major project on nuclear energy, as you can imagine? We operate in France very well. We know that we're gonna have some major investment in the South of France, England, and Nordics. We're preparing for that. We are expecting, for the nuclear side, a growth of 50%. An increase of 50% of our revenue in this sector because we have the right skills, and we must conquer new activities in the energy sector where we are less present, which is more network, deploying the grid and renewable energies. We have a footprint in this network, but not enough. Regarding the life science, we can imagine how busy the sector is. It's mostly pharmaceutical industry and medical instruments. We decided seven or eight years ago to be present on this market that we believed first was more meant for different type of companies, because we're not biologists, we're engineers. We realized that there are many big needs on the two sides of the pharmaceutical groups. On the one hand, data treatment of the clinical trials, where we grew very strongly. It's data and certification together. On manufacturing, because they need quality and traceability, such as in the space industry, and we realized that we were quite needed in those sectors, and we grew them quite a bit. The only limit to our development is not the market, is its capacity of training specialists and business managers to develop those products. In terms of industrial equipment and electronics, VLSI, tool machine tools, we work on two countries, mostly never on all of countries, and we need to deploy what we know to do in our flagship countries. What I say also applies to the telecoms industry. We operate mostly on deploying 4G, 5G networks on two countries. Those two sectors offer a very nice perspective. We don't expect any crisis to come. It's up to us to capture all this potential. Everything that is digitalization in the retail sector and services, media and public sector needs a lot of services and engineers. It's completely underserved, and it's up to us to get into this market. In this new world, we can see that the wages have been going up very much because the CIOs need the company to run. Everything that is web and web marketing, they have to put in place no matter the cost. This is the organization per sector. I'll let you read over what I just said on those 2, 3 slides that are coming up. It's the same thing, but it's just broken down, and you have the percentage of our activities in percentage of revenue. You have to just keep in mind that everything is going well, and if there's a major crisis in a sector, despite the warnings that we have, when we hear, "Oh, the economy, the world economy is gonna collapse, there's gonna be a global crisis," but on our own positioning and on our specific DNA, which is to conduct projects with engineers that we manage from A to Z. Our market is our limits and our clients are asking us to do more and more. Okay. A word on the competition. Of course, things have changed a bit in the last 4-5 years. You find there are new actors now. There are two different types of major players. You have the big IT companies, Capgemini, Accenture, they try to penetrate our market. They have made some acquisitions like Altran. They are penetrating the market with a business approach that is very different than the one that we have now. They are used to, as a major player of the world of the IT services and management IT, to take BPOs, what we call BPOs, which are processes with 300-400 people, by telling, "Okay, we're gonna handle all your payroll, your accounting. You're gonna manage all your tools, including the CRM, from top to bottom with, in all the countries that you have worldwide." It doesn't work that way in the engineering sector because we look at the core business of the clients and specifics. The client only externalize 30% of his needs for additional, resources because his needs, evolve depending on the new projects and the new equipments that he's working on, and for technological, needs if he doesn't have them. But we stay in his core business and he stays in charge of his business. A car manufacturer is not going to externalize a car or full engine. It's not the way it works in the industry. Globally, this competition is not scary to us because it doesn't fit the approach to the engineering world. What we could be frightened of with these new competitors is their offshore capacities, mostly in India, because these are not companies. They're not French companies anymore, American companies anymore. They are legally Indian companies. Half of their payroll are in India. They come to the market and they tell the clients, "We can do anything you want in India, from India." We said that there's 10% of offshoring in the engineering world, but we're not letting it frighten us. We gained a lot of new markets in the offshoring, including in India, against these actors because the clients know us locally. Our local footprint in Europe, in France or in Europe or in the U.S., is very reassuring for clients. You have the Indian clients. Their strategy is to do nothing locally. If you address the engineering sector, the client needs a minimum at least 30%, if not 70%, of local activities versus 30%-70% offshoring in low-cost countries. The strategy of the Indian actors is to do nothing locally, to have sales, local sales, that bring back all the countries to India. The strategy that generates less overhead, of course, because all the overhead are in India, they have 20 points more versus the engineering, the local engineering model, and we are first in class. It's 10% of our RA because all our structures are local and the HR management is done by local engineers based in Europe or in the U.S. It's a different type of competition. The question is, are we going to see everything being brought back in India? It's not. The model is I gain the market and I bring it back to India. Then we saw interim and staffing companies. I don't wanna make any comments on that. We are watching them, and we're gonna see how they evolve. The engineering is not compatible with staffing. If you're doing project management, you need a super strong technical management. It won't be done by staffing or freelancers or people who will not be loyal to the company. I'm not saying that they are competitors, but financial operators, private equity funds. We have seen that the IT market is developing, of course. There are many private equity funds carrying out the buildups, of course. These are not all success stories, but they are gaining in size, and the objective is to be bought back at a very high price. They basically present operations with 4, 5, 10,000 people with basically no added value trying to make profit, to make profit on the first acquisition. M&A usually are 30%-50% more expensive than we are. This has really impacted our growth potential, especially externally, because when they do an acquisition, they lock management and with absolutely crazy systems, which is not something that we want to do when we design our strategy. These are not fully-fledged players from a technical point of view, but rather they are troublesome players when it comes to carrying out our own policy. Let me repeat that Alten is in a unique position, and we should make sure that we seize this opportunity to develop ourselves because the market is present, is responding correctly, and we have to make sure that we will be able to respond to the changes. We have implemented over the past 4 years this approach. We have a crosscutting structures. We have a worldwide approach, especially at the sales level. This is absolutely necessary. We cannot come up with these methods in all of the countries, of course. We had to invest massively in France, for example, to be able to then develop them in Germany, the U.K., and the rest of Europe. The sales direction is also something that has to be thought through. It cannot be done in an independent manner because the majority of our clients are multinationals. We can't have Airbus in France, in Germany, in Spain, in the U.K., and so on and so forth. We have one global client, Airbus. Stellantis, the same. When it merged with Fiat Chrysler, we had to adopt our methods. We have one unique approach. We had to coordinate our actions with the Italians and the Americans, which was not an easy task. This is the real challenge that we have, but it is also an opportunity for us to attract more international clients. We also need to take stock of our assets worldwide so that we can present them to our clients. Alten is not only a service provider, which until a few years ago, actually, had the capacity to carry out projects with robust teams. Alten has also now become a company which has a very strong offer in various sectors, and our offering is really impressive to our clients. We need to do better when it comes to marketing so that we can actually step up our A game. We will need to concentrate on our crosscutting structures, which will have to be further developed. The financial health of the ALTEN Group also allows us to carry out all the acquisitions that we want to. This, unfortunately, doesn't mean that we always use it to its best. All the companies that we could be interested in today are already in part managed by private equity funds or are very expensive, or sometimes their price is way beyond our value on the stock market, so this would be very damageable for us. If it were a very strategic move, then we would be ready to do so, but it has not been the case so far. We would need to find a very strategic move to move forward with this, and maybe it will happen in the future. As you can see, the M&A includes a headcount of between 300 and 800 people. This is not really what happened this year, with the exception of an Indian company, or rather an American company which carries out projects with a delivery center in India. This has come and complemented our offshore capabilities. There was a larger company in the U.K., and then we had two other acquisitions of more modest-sized companies in Spain and Australia. We are currently negotiating with some companies, and we want to strengthen our position in some sectors. As I said before, we do not have the critical size or mass in some countries, in some sectors, for example, U.K. or Spain. In the U.S., we need to make sure that we can strengthen our position. Many companies are used to working with delivery centers in India, so this is something that we have to think about. We also have an advice company and local engineering companies. In this sense, we need to think about our positioning. Usually, we concentrate on engineering and not advice because the average age of our engineers is around 30 years old, and our image is to provide engineering solutions and not advice services. Again, this is going to maybe change our positioning or our activities. I hope that we will be able to give you some good news in the future. We have a lot going on in the pipeline, but unfortunately, negotiations are sometimes difficult. We are hoping that the current situation internationally will benefit us. Now regarding our capital, our shareholder base, it has not changed. Approximately 83% in the public sector. Then we can see also some shares being owned by FCPE Alten. So employees and leaders, managers, and approximately 15% of the capital is detained by our founders. I said a few years ago that I wanted to cede at least 5% of my shares to benefit charities, but unfortunately, I can't do that given the current situation. Now I'm going to give the floor to Bruno so that we can have a closer look at the first half results. Good morning. As usual, I like to start with this slide because you can see the developments and the growth of the group. You can see that there was a slight slowdown in 2020 for obvious reasons, but you can see that since 2015, the group as a whole has almost doubled in size. You can see the evolution of our revenue. You can also see that in terms of headcount, the group has significantly grown in 2022 because we went from 42,300 in 2021, and we are almost at 50,000 today with 43,650 engineers. In the first half of the year, we have recruited 6,500 people. 3,500 people have joined us, mainly in the MENA region, because we bought a company in China and India, and they represent 2,700 engineers out of the 3,500 that I mentioned. In the first half of the year, we also recruited an additional 3,400 engineers, even though we would need more. 450 in France, less than internationally, because internationally we have recruited approximately 3,000 people. As usual, here you can see the analysis of the changes in revenue on a like-for-like basis. You can see that, since the first half of the year in 2021, the growth has been robust and has not declined. We are around 20%. The organic growth is the first growth driver of the group because it is the main driver, as I said, while it was different last year. 30% of our activities happen outside the euro area, so this is why the Forex impact is particularly high this year. You know that the euro has lost some of its value, especially vis-à-vis the dollar. In France, organic growth is satisfactory. Of course, it is lower than at the group level because we have a 20% growth at the group level. In France, growth was mainly driven thanks to civil aeronautics with Airbus, for example. It represents 26% of the French revenue. It has grown by more than 46%, and I think that we have exceeded our pre-crisis level. The growth has also been driven by nuclear activities in France and energy activities overall, and represent approximately 10% of the revenue, with a comprehensive growth of approximately 20%. The automotive industry, which represents 10% of the French revenue, has only grown by 6%. The growth is mainly due to projects executed offshore, mainly for OEMs. We have not yet recovered the pre-COVID levels, and the projects increasingly rely on near and offshore. Internationally, like in France, you can see that the organic growth is robust. At 23%, it represents two-thirds of the overall growth, and we will see later on that the organic growth is strong in almost all geographical areas where we operate. All right. Here you can see the various geographical areas, and the details, the majority of them at least, and the development for the first half of the year. You can see that the overall average growth is around 20%, with two exceptions, Scandinavia. In Scandinavia, activities concentrate on heavy trucks. Bouncing back was more difficult in this region. Second was Switzerland, which represents a very small share of our revenue. We can see that in other regions, the situation is positive. In the Iberian region, the growth has reached 23.5%. In Germany, activities had started picking up in the last semester, in the last half of the second half of the year last year, with a total growth of 23.5%. This has been unprecedented for the past 10 years. Italy, sorry. I beg your pardon. We have seen strong growth in the automotive industry in Germany with + 35% growth, and it represents a big share of the German revenue, and it has recovered from the crisis. In Italy, 27% growth, and this has been the case for several years consecutively. In Benelux, the growth is picking up again, as we had seen at the end of 2021, has reached 17% at the end of June 2022, mainly driven by the Netherlands, where activities are increasing in the semiconductor and electronic components. In Belgium, growth is above 5%, but you can see that the growth is lower compared to other countries in the region. In the U.K., the activity is doing very well as well, with + 25% growth. We have seen a significant growth in the aeronautics sector and the automotive sector as well, with 100% and 40% growth respectively. In Eastern Europe, growth is sustained as well, with an approximately 40% growth, thanks to Poland, which has driven this growth with a plus 50% growth, and Romania plus 20% growth, thanks to the automotive and the energy sectors. North America, which includes the U.S. and Canada, the United States represents approximately 80% of the area. We have recorded a +2 5% growth in the U.S. and + 30% growth in Canada, thanks to services and aeronautics sectors. Asia Pacific, this region has been growing steadily. It represents today a significant share of the group's activities. The pace of growth has accelerated in the second quarter with an average of more than 40%. China represents a big third of the area and has grown by 25%. India represents 30% of the region and has recorded a 40% growth, and Japan represents 10% of the region and has grown by 10%. Singapore, we mention this country seldom only, but actually this country has recorded a +60% growth. When I talk about China and India, I of course mention local activities because activities carried out in China and India, the delivery centers. The activities carried out in the delivery centers are not taken into account locally because they involve the foreign markets, for example, the U.S. Now, the income statement. You can see that our margin has increased. The operating profit has increased by 52%. I'm going to give you the main components. As you can see, the margin has increased by 40%, 40 bps. There was a significant increase of our activity levels, as Simon said. This represented 140 bps, and we had to face, as it was expected, a worsening of the ratio income wages, unfortunately. G&As had decreased by 15 bps. We decided to start investing in the commercial and HR structures. This has been the case since the end of 2021. We will have a closer look at this in the second half of the year, the results of the second half of the year. You can see that, overall the situation is satisfactory and much better than what we had anticipated. Free shares have achieved EUR 15.4 million this year. It should increase next year as well. Free shares have increased when you look at the total amount. We have also seen a strong increase of the value of free shares because of the changes on the stock markets. We have a EUR 6.2 million result as well. This includes our various acquisitions. Past acquisitions with EUR 6.5 million and the restructuring cost of 0.8. We have also won some legal proceedings against the URSSAF, which has reimbursed EUR 1.5 million. ESF has reached EUR 48.2 million. This is something that will have to be taken into account. It should be lower in the second half of the year. Our financial income analysis. IFRS 16 is for accounting purposes, of course. You can see that we are in the positive bracket with EUR 1.8 million. Alten is financing its activities through structured banking activities and through its own capital. We have reached a balance when you look at the cost of net financial debt. But you can see the figures on the screen and the other net financial income represent 0.4%. Here, let us look at the income statement by a region. You can see some differences between France and international and overseas, of course. In France, we have seen some increase and some improvements in the figures. The operating margin grew by 14 basis points, thanks to an increase of the projects for France. Our activity level that has picked up very strongly because the activity level of the Q1 of 2021 was still penalized by the aerospace activity and business. The increase of the activity level has generated 10 basis points from the gross margin. We had to take into account the wage ratio in France. The wage ratio has progressed by 10 basis points, and its G&A rate that remains stable. I wanted to say that France, because of the maturity of the country and its organization and its critical size, is integrated in its P&L, a number of overhead corporate that we'll call corporate costs that will be broken down over the whole group, and that are, because of the positioning of France, and the group activities supported by the French business. If we need to think in economical terms, the operating result of France would be around 10%, and the international will be just slightly below. There are no effects on the credit for taxes. It's about the same than last year. At about EUR 7 million to EUR 8 million for the first half of the year. Internationally, an operating margin that keeps growing for the same reasons, and that goes from 11.5% - 13% in 2022. Gross margin that progressed by 16 bps because of an improvement of the productivity. An activity level that grew as well in a little less because it was higher internationally at the first semester of 2021, which explains an increase of 120 bps. G&A that is diminishing as well by 20 bps in the first half. A result that goes over the 13% internationally by geographic areas. Without getting into too many details, but to give you the major trends, we have North America that sees its margin with a double-digit growth. Germany, a very high activity rate, and that has a net debt of about 5% for the first half of the year. It hadn't happened in a while. Scandinavia, that maintains in a profitability structure between 7%-9%. U.K., Benelux, Southern Europe have improved their profitability that was way above 10%, and Asia Pacific has improved its profitability. That is over 10% now. The balance sheet of Alten, a very healthy structure. No major comment on that. The analysis of our figures are the same. You could see the consequence of the policies of M&A policy. Our equity are getting stronger consistently. That represent 40% of the total of the balance sheet. EUR 156 million to the liabilities of Alten at the end of June. EUR 117 million that are to be repaid within a year, and the rest, EUR 30 million, in less than a year. The net cash has shrunk for the reasons that I will explain to you in the next slide. The gearing was at -5%, is now at -4.1% at the end of June. Small parenthesis, the influence of the IFRS 16 on the P&L and the balance sheets, the impact is nil on the accounts, none on the income statement and the financing statement. Of course, the IFRS 16 are majorly real estate because that represents 85% of that line. A quick analysis of our free cash flow and Alten's cash on this first half of the year. Alten has generated in the first half of 2022 a cash flow outside of the IFRS 16 of EUR 113 million, which is operational cash flow that represents 11.7% of the revenue, and that is aligned with our operating result, which is 11.4%. This cash has helped pay for taxes at 46.4%. It's like more higher than I thought. So the cash flows has become normal again, which is not the case before for reasons of decreasing revenue. It's aligned with the tax burden that is in the P&L. It also financed the evolution of the BFR – the WCR with CapEx at 0% of the revenue. Our free cash flow is slightly positive, and it is at EUR 1.1 million. The financial investments represent EUR 116 million, among which EUR 107 linked to the M&A strategy, acquisitions and earn-outs. The rest is corresponding to the company's associated companies. The dividend that went from EUR 1 - EUR 1.30 has explained the outflow of EUR 44 million. Logically, the ForEx effects on cash flow for the subsidiaries in the foreign currencies has generated a variation of the cash flows in currencies. This is what you see in what we call other financial flows for EUR 1.6 million. At the end of June, the cash flow was positive, with a number of EUR 62.4 million net cash. Considering regarding the WCR, you're gonna have questions on that. I'm gonna try to anticipate your questions on that one. We have a growth of the WCR that is quite significant. It is linked on the one hand to an organic growth that is very sustained. At the second semester of 2021 or the first semester of 2022, we have an organic growth of 20%. At the end of June, it's the time when the cash flow is at its lowest point and where the key accounts are at the lowest point. If we want to explain this evolution of WCR, you have an organic growth that generated a growth of EUR 102 million for accounts receivable. The pickup of activities at the clients, with the clients and the negotiations on rates that lasted longer than usual, have led to receive their POs late, and so they invoiced late the activity of the first semester, which pushed back the invoicing and increased the receivables. Our DSO rose because it went back to its pre-COVID level, which is 94 days, so it increased since December 2021. It should go down by the end of the year. I cannot tell you exactly what number it is going to be at, because a lot of clients ask us to push back the invoicing for a few days to improve their presentations, their financial presentations. It may not get back to the 86-day point, but I hope we'll try at least to bring it down to 90 or 91. Specifically, this increase of the DSO has led to an increase of the accounts receivable by EUR 96.5 million and a ForEx effect of EUR 100 million. Considering the growth, the liabilities have increased by EUR 44 million. On this slide, we're not gonna stay on it very long. I wanna present that to you because of the seasonality of the activity, it's very important to look at the evolution of our free cash flow over rolling twelve months. Just a few conclusions here. Of course, the cash flow is systematically aligned with our operating income. The seasonality is, you can read it through the variations of changes in WCR, which is more clear over 12 months and 6 months. The organic growth, of course, is everywhere in the numbers because it has a clear impact on the clients points. The CapEx are very low because they are between 0.6-0.8 of the revenue. On a like-to-like basis, with an ROA of about 10%, our free cash flow is around 6%-7% of the revenue. You have here the information that I gave to you. At constant DSO, our free cash flow would have been at EUR 100 million. To sum up, what you need to retain from these figures from the first half of the year, Alten has largely exceeded its pre-crisis activity level thanks to a very sustained organic growth since Q2 2021. Taking acquisitions into account, business has grown by over 30% in two years, so a very significant growth. The operating margin reaches 11.4%, thanks to an improvement of the gross margin based on a high activity rate, productivity that is enhanced on projects despite an adverse price salaries effect and a relative decrease of the SG&A. A very strong organic growth. We start investing on structural projects and reinforcing, of course, the teams for recruitments, HR and sales teams. The organic growth and seasonal effects have hindered free cash flow this semester. However, we self-financed all our activity, whether it's organic activity, M&As, financing the dividends that increased, and so we end with a positive cash position of EUR 62 million. Gearing is at -4.1%, so a very healthy structure that will help us carry out the acquisition policy in the next semester. The operating margin is at 11.4% because of difference between working days between S1 and S2 are less favorable. We only have two days, so over the years we'll have probably one more day, practically two maybe, versus last year. People, you know, took a lot of time off over more over the second semester than the first semester. The activity level is about the same, so the gross margin should grow, should drop, and the structuration effects, effort, sorry, have helped us to pick up the SG&A rate. We'll have a S2 margin that will be lower than the S1 margin, and that will leave us with an operating margin for activity that is very satisfying. I'm now going to give the floor to Simon, who will comment to you the development strategy, the growth strategy. Thank you, Bruno. To conclude this presentation and answer your questions very quickly, everything has been said. No worries, no concerns on the business for the years to come. We are looking at a market where demand is higher than the offer. We have a deficit of engineers, and we have to adjust to that, and then with quality recruiting and to attract talents to fill up those needs regardless of the economic situation. Despite the major crisis that I mentioned early on, we always managed to get through them. In 2020, we thought that this health crisis that was quite spectacular would be different from the other crisis, and we haven't taken advantage enough of the situation to recruit heavily. If we had a crystal ball, when we're sitting at home with our masks on, we made the mistake of not anticipating that. In 2002, 2003, we recruited massively, and that gave us a formidable advance on our competitors. There was only a few of us in 2003, 15,000 engineers, and we recruited heavily as well in July of 2009, despite what's going on. This time, this crisis, this COVID crisis, we didn't do it, and we can only regret it, and we have to draw the lessons for the future. We'll always be facing a loss, deficit of engineers, and we'll have to valorize our offers and our market is our limit. Regarding the challenges for the future, we have to keep our margins, of course, with the pressure on wages. It went a little better than planned. 70% of the clients agreed. 30% are keeping the pressure on or trying to push us to delocalize, which is not a good thing. We have to generate enough managers and directors to conquer the critical size in all countries and new sectors that are not yet existing or not yet deployed in many countries. That's the challenges with cross-cutting structures that are gonna cost money. Managers, sales managers, a team of 50 people that will have to improve the technical management, international coordination, tenders management. All these new things are gonna cost money, but they're gonna add added value, and they're gonna help us keep our margins. Third point, what are the competitors doing? Then we might have a trump to play, which will bring to Alten a different view from the clients that like us to be Alten, and we have to deliver in some areas where our competitors don't have the advantages that we have. Our offshore capacity, we have to double it, and we work a lot on it right now. We're quite satisfied. We need to congratulate ourselves because in 2019 we had announced for 2022 a goal of 44,000 engineers. Despite the year 2020 and the first semester of 2021, there were major crises. We're quite scared. We went above this goal through the M&As, but also through organic growth because we are now today at over 46,000 engineers and if the M&As allow, we'll get to 50,000. Despite COVID, we went over the goal that we set for ourselves. For the next years, of course, if we manage our transnational organization and the production of managers because we're actors and leaders in our very specific positioning, so we need to produce these resources, we'll go above the 70,000 engineers mark. That's for our strategy. No major surprises. It's quite simple. We need to be up to our size and our goals and challenges. I thank you for your attention, and Bruno and myself are here to answer the questions that you may have. Hello, my name is Thomas. I have a few question. Can we have the staff turnover for the first half the year? In a slide, you said that the operating result was much broader in technical assistance than work package. Is it due to some sort of volatility? Is there a notion of productivity that can actually impact this margin? What about the rise in interest rates? Isn't it impacting downwards our activities in some sectors? Or maybe it's too early to say. Well, regarding the staff turnover, of course it has increased because usually on average over the past 20 years it was around 25%. So this means that usually engineers stay for 4 to 5 years with us. We recruit 50% of young engineers with between 0-2 years of experience, and the rest have between 2-4 years of experience. We try to retain as much as possible those individuals who can actually manage a team or offer some significant experience. Now we have exceeded 30%, but this is not homogeneous, depending on the years of experience. We see a gap between the two groups. This means that there is one group on which we are concentrating. We are investing in terms of communication follow-up, support and training. This is the 2-4-year experience engineers because the staff turnover had reached almost 40%, while it was slightly below 25% for the younger engineers. Of course, this staff turnover meant that we had to invest more in our recruitment activities. It has been marked by a 5% increase. Now, regarding the margins between the work package and the technical assistance, the fees that we negotiate when we are in a short list are on a 2-3 years timeframe. It is approximately around EUR 400 per day. It's really cheap, to be honest with you. It's 10 times less than what a lawyer would charge. This is not fair given the level of training and education and the level of quality of our services. This is our positioning, you understand the pressure that we are under. We are constantly negotiating our fees when we renew a contract. We have deals with companies which are currently struggling on the market and which are also trying to reduce their prices by 5% to try and win a contract. This is a way for them to try and force us to lower our fees, of course. The two main competitors on the market are doing much better, are resisting much better, but they concentrate on offshore. Our margin is between 10%-12%. We are first in class, of course. If we had a better margin, it would be even better. If you look at local markets, we are first in class. Our resilience is strong. The fact that more than 60% of our revenue comes from the work packages means that we don't have to negotiate our fees on a daily basis. This is why the margin on the work packages is better, because we no longer talk about daily fees, but rather we negotiate our fees for a project as a whole. You know, some groups, when they are too cheap, they can also scare away some of the clients. This is about the margin. Bruno, for the third question, I'll let you answer. Yes, of course, the interest rates, the increase in interest rates is going to drive prices down, of course. This is not yet visible, but I think it is going to happen. Let's say that the slowing down of investment funds and buildups or acquisitions in our sector is something that we have noticed, but not in our sector, to be honest. Private equity funds are very much present. In an M&A company, this is the case. There is a lot of competition. There is no exclusive negotiations happening, and private equity funds are very much present in our sector. That's for sure. What we can say over the past three years and the changes in the international environment has impacted IT startups. Some of these startups had some very good ideas, for sure, but they wanted a seed funding starting from EUR 1 million, and their wages and salaries were almost double the... What we can ourselves offer, but they were using money which they did not even have, and they were asking for it to start an activity. This has changed, and this means that the playing field is leveling out. Hello. Grégoire Maman, Garnier. I wanted to talk about prices again and the offshore. We see that the economic situation is compounding at the moment. However, demand remains very strong in all sectors and industries. That's fine. If we look at 2023, let's say that the situation worsens considerably. Some industries are stuck with some investments that they will have to carry out in the automotive industry, for example, or the energy sector. Is there going to be any additional pressure on costs, for example? This is not something that you are seeing or noticing right now, but maybe this could be the case next year. Could this lead us actually to concentrate more on offshore for R&D as well? You are planning to move from 15%-20% of offshore R&D. Is this linked to the situation or are you maybe going to have to accelerate your offshore roadmap if the situation goes in the right direction that I mentioned? Well, all operators who can actually concentrate more on offshore will do so, no matter whether or not there is a crisis or not. It is not about the key services or externalizing or outsourcing a complete admin service offshore. This would not be a strategic. It is. It's feasible. In the aeronautics industry or in defense industry, there are some things that cannot be outsourced and placed offshore. There are some activities which will have to be protected because of their very nature. The automotive industry does not have these kind of constraints. You look at Stellantis, for example. Actually that's not really the case for German constructors because they don't really like to go offshore. They only go as far as Romania or Bulgaria, for example. It may be the case for other constructors. European offshoring, which concerns 2,000 engineers, may increase to 3,000-4,000 engineers in the next 2 years. This is the case for Europe, of course. This is true as long as we remain in our blue pillar, so everything about engineering. The situation is different in the U.S. The shortage of resources is even more marked than here, and they have a lot of front offices in India because they can be the intermediary person between American companies and their clients. Unfortunately, we are not really present in the U.S. This is not our main market. We have some MSA with 400 Indian engineers working in India for the U.S. For the U.S, they can be offshore for up to 50%. In the U.S., the situation is different. It is not a massive change because this is already the situation, and it is different from what happens elsewhere. We are not worried in this sense. We know what our clients need, and we know that we can win more contracts. Hello, Laurent Daure-Estève. I have four questions for you. I know that it is still early to talk about 2023, but earlier you mentioned you said that some sectors were hit harder than others in previous crisis. Have you had any feedback from your clients regarding their potential investments for 2023, or is it too early? In your opinion, which are the sectors in which you feel less confident? Other question, the performance is really good in Asia Pacific, in all the geographical regions, of course, but can you tell us a bit more in details what is happening really in Asia? What about the clients? Now that we have some experience in this area, in this region, do you think that this area can actually generate some significant revenue in 5-10 years? Our margin is at 11.4%. We are increasingly turning towards the international market, but what about the margin? Aren't we becoming too cautious? Is 11 the new normal? What about the pace of the recruitment for the second half of the year? What about Q3? What is your ambition? Are you still looking to recruit more engineers in September and through the third quarter of this year? Well, a lot of questions. I'm going to try and do my best to answer all of them. In 2023, what are our concerns? There will be some hardships in some sectors, but this is not going to be linked to some specific needs or activities, but to cultural aspects in these sectors. Let me take the example again of the automotive industry. The automotive industry is constantly under pressure, even when everything is going well. In the automotive industry, the pressure is constant. They are trying to harmonize their activities internationally, and they have no problem going offshore because there aren't any specific safety or legal restrictions. Even if we increase our headcount, it doesn't mean that our revenue will increase by so much. Because when you have 500 engineers in India, Morocco or elsewhere, this corresponds to a loss of 200 engineers in France, for example, and the revenue which will move from one region to the other will be divided by three. Offshore has a higher margin, because if we manage this correctly, we can have between 15-20 points. This is what I said. If we have offshore sales points and delivery points as well in Asia, for example, delivery centers in Asia, we can reach higher margins. The revenue is actually moved from one region to the other. We have to do a careful analysis to see what this means concretely. Maybe we could reach 12% if we had 27,000 engineers, including 20,000 offshore. I laid out our plan for Europe. We said that maybe 3,000-4,000 would go offshore, but the impact would not be so significant. This is for Europe. You know that overseas, it works differently. When our presence is limited in the U.S., and in the U.S., this offshoring phenomenon is massive. Because of our limited presence, this is not going to impact Alten's very much. Regarding your last question, we are first in class. We are doing very well. Our presence is around 10%, while our competitor is far around 6%-7%. We have to make sure that we nail everything, HR, sales representatives, CapEx, management of work packages, and so on and so forth. This 10% figure is incredible, and we could maybe reach 11% of margin if we went a bit more offshore. I prefer to remain cautious because I do not want to disappoint anyone, and I'd rather be realistic. The model for Alten is not to go from 11-12, but rather to reach a 10%. 11% would be great over the next 10 years. 11% would also mean that the situation is very bright. If there are any unfavorable events, for example, a deadline or a problem hitting a sector, maybe we could go down to 9%. We would be very happy with 10-10.5%, and this is what we are doing this year. We have reached 10-10.5%. We are very happy about this, and we will make no promises about reaching 11%-12%, of course. Another sector which could be problematic is that of services, tertiary services. This is not our main area. It is part of the yellow pillar that we mentioned at the beginning. It is part of services, retail, banking, finance, so we know that there are going to be some pressure on this sector. We'll have to make the most of it because we are present in this sector, of course, but our footprint is very specific because we are an IT supplier and not a BPO supplier. Now regarding the specificities of Asia and our development in the region. There are three areas in Asia, so India, China and Japan, Korea. India represents half of the local market, which still has to be developed. The remaining half is delivery centers for the rest of the world. We have more than 7,500 engineers in India, as I said. Thanks to the local market, which represents 50% of our local activities in India, we will reach 10,000, I think. The local market, like any other local market, you have an Indian engineer working for Indian clients, and we reach a margin of 10%. This is true everywhere. The offshore market will add something to it because it is not really a fully fledged Indian market. It is a hybrid situation. I mentioned already our offshore strategy. Regarding China, we have never had any intention to concentrate on China only. We were lucky to find a very positive advantages IT acquisition in China, which works on onboard equipment and telecommunications for international players and clients, and not only Chinese clients, of course. We decided to acquire this company. It has reinforced our footprint in China with more than 3,000 people in China. We will try to increase our footprint with 4,000-5,000 employees. Yeah, demand is very strong in China, but we are always scared of something happening similar to what is happening in Russia or in Ukraine. There may be a geopolitical crisis in a few years. This is why we are being very careful in China. Our strategic approach is different, of course. Our revenue and our EBITDA is around 10%, like in any other local market. For Japan and Korea, it's slightly different. It's like the U.S. or Germany or the U.K. We should have at least 10,000 engineers in Japan, given the importance of the country being Japan and Korea. In Germany and Austria, we should have 10,000 as well, and same in the U.S. We have three areas which should reach critical size. Only in France and India we have reached this mark, so we need to find a way to do this and to accelerate M&As, of course. We need to make the most of organic and external growth in these areas where the untapped potential is immense. Other countries, we have 2,000-3,000 engineers, Italy, Spain, Benelux, the Nordics, Eastern European countries, Canada as well. We are going to get there. We are already halfway there or even a bit more. We could increase by twofold if we do things right. Regarding Asia, we are going to have some organic growth in China, same in India with the delivery centers, and I think that we will do much better with M&As, thanks to M&As in Japan. Regarding a recruitment for the second half of the year, it should be okay, but it is tough. We may not reach the set objective because we are struggling with recruitment and staff turnover. I had fantasized I would be able to announce that we have reached the 50,000 engineering mark, but I don't think this will be the case, unfortunately. Nicolas David. I have three questions on my side. First one is on organic growth. At the time of the Q2 figures, an organic growth over 2%. Is it still? We had or more 12%-15% for the second semester. Second, the prospects on the margins, you talked about being over 10.5%. We expected you to be below that. I can see that H1 is much better than we expected. Is it above 10.5%? Can we reach the margin of last year? I would love to have the elements of the gross margin of H2. My question is on North America. You have a profitability that is just above 10%, below 10%. Considering that it's a country with the positive pricing and that does offshore, what is the rate of margin that you can expect for a company such as Alten if you include offshore? What could be the weight of this country for you? You talked about 10,000 engineers, but it's a bigger margin market than Korea or Japan. In the long run, we should be able to go above this number with a mix of offshore. What could be the revenue for North America? Would you... Is it something that you wanna grow, that you're following up on the long term? I'm gonna answer your second question on the margins of the second semester. We have two effects that make us be cautious on the S2, is the calendar effect that is gonna be unfavorable. That's the way it is. There's a very, very big inertia in the impact of the evolution of the average rate versus the increase of prices. The turnover is here. The recruitment is big. We have a big turnover. We have new recruits coming in. We have pressure on wages, and that impacts statistically the Alten population throughout the rotations of engineers in our headcount. There will be an impact that has not been shown yet in H1. It's only been affecting the newcomers, but it's gonna be more significant on H2. We're quite prudent on H2, and I don't think we'll do better than 11% on H2. I'd like to. I'd be very happy if we just over 10%. If we announce you the good news at the end of the year, it would be great, but I don't expect to do 11% on S2, considering these two phenomena that I just explained. Just to be clear, for S2, 10.5% is very likely. But it's not a perfect science here. Regarding the forecast for organic growth, I'm gonna let maybe Bruno answer you. We didn't give any figures in the release on the organic growth of S2. Generally speaking, we don't give them very precisely. There's nothing new under the sun, vis-à-vis the communication of July. We said that we'd have an organic growth that would be above 10%, on S2. This is confirmed. You mentioned the number of 12%-15%. It's quite possible. Concerning the strategy on North America, the United States, because Canada is a bit different and Mexico is as well. The United States work in a very different way than we do. They are culturally, for the last 20 years, have shortage of engineers, and they turned for reasons of shortage and not only for price reasons, to offshoring. They got used to delocalize, externalize strategically some entire businesses, subsidiaries in India, and who are local customers, who act as local customers in the country. Most industrial structures, American structures have their representation in India, and these Indian representations become local Indian actors. To tackle the American market and say that we wanna have 10,000 people, it's not dealt the same way than in Europe. It's a bit of a riddle for us. We're gonna buy companies, 500, 1,000 people who are already companies, with engineers that are in India who deliver projects with front sales, unique front sales in America. Those are not structures that recruit engineers in the U.S. to conduct projects in the U.S., except for the defense sector. They're not going to let us work in the defense sector in the U.S. being French. You imagine that. If we wanna conquer a local market, we may have a chance to have something in rail, energy, aeronautics with Boeing, maybe. We're not present there at all today, so we have hopes to ramp up there. If we could export French management to Dallas or Seattle, that would be great. We don't have people that mobile. They don't really want to go to the U.S., so we're not going to find American managers either. There's a lot of many little companies in the U.S., but no major structure. That comes in the way of us conquering the local to local market. For the market in the U.S., India to U.S., If we have 10,000 people, we'll have maybe three or four in the U.S.. And the rest in India. These two equations are quite complicated for us to solve. We may be good at what we're doing, but we're not geniuses, and we have to find a way to export some managers to the U.S. It may be easier to develop, strangely enough, Japan than to develop the U.S. In terms of margin, the local to local. There's always been settling at about 10 points of EBIT, and for the offshore, 10%-15% for the EBIT for the offshore. That's the general outlook of what would be a business of 10,000 people. We have competitors who bought some freelance companies. You could see what it boiled down to. It is not at all our strategy. We're gonna take some questions from the internet. Four questions from Eric Marcos from Société Générale. The first question is, what is the weight of manufacturing engineering in a percentage of the revenue for H1 2022? You mentioned 4% for H1 2021. Do you see any signs of slowdown in the automotive sector or other manufacturing sectors? Third question, could you give us some indication on the level of net staff at the date of Q3 2022? And do you think that this level at Q4 2022 be as strong as for Q3? Last question for Eric Marcos, in what way do you imagine the gains of productivity on the projects can be sustained? Regarding the volume of manufacturing, you have to be careful about the definition of manufacturing. In the presentation, I send you back to the presentation, slide 8. We have 75% of blue activity, which is engineering. That is, design engineering and manufacturing engineering and deployment as well and customer support. That's the second branch. You have the activity design and conceive the plant. A plant is a digital project. That's the way and you have a deployment of projects, trains and airports and et cetera, and nuclear plants or telecoms towers, and you have customer support. After the design and prototyping phase, you have three activities. Manufacturing, over the 75%, for about the total of these three activities outside of the design phase represents 25%-30% of the 75%, in which the manufacturing represents 20%. Industry 4.0, so sorry not to be able to be more precise, but it gives you a general perspective. There's some sectors and businesses that we're not gonna go into. In, for example, production manufacturing, we're not very present on the supply chain. Supply chain, big BPOs of managing, commissioning, that are more up to the Accenture and other companies like this. When they're developing in the IT services, we'll go for that. The margin, regarding the margin and the productivity of the work packages, we're quite proud that we have invested on methods and tools. This is our real know-how and expertise. Beyond HR and recruitment, this is our capacity to secure our clients in the conditions of delivery and respect of the specifications of the projects that we're being handed. The work packages of the project that we manage go from 5 to 40 people, an average of about 20 people for a year, a year and a half. That represents projects between EUR 2 million and EUR 3 million. This is not BPOs with 300 people for 3-6 years. This is specific projects. Everything is new every time. There's nothing that can be reused from a previous project because we're always looking at a new product. This talent to do something new, build up teams, we have capitalized on it for work, real-time software in a very relevant manner. We classify all the vectors of production, productivity improvement. You have optimization of resources in terms of talents. You have optimization of the occupancy rates. You have management offices managing equipment, flex office, offshoring the potential that offshoring represents for certain projects, even if sometimes the client doesn't even ask for it. Training of technical directors and managers. All these eight elements, it's not a matter of are we good or not on it. We've put in place a whole process, a quality process, and optimization of delivery and techniques on our work packages. We have obtained some major improvements in most areas. We'll have a bit more to get, but we've gained a lot already. We can maybe gain one point on the work packages if we improve everything that can be improved, but we're already in a good place, and we're probably one of the best companies in the world in this capacity of reliability, of delivery of the work packages, sometimes much better than our own clients. That's for the gain of productivity and technical assistance. It's just about negotiations of rates with our clients, and they're always very difficult. Question for you, Bruno Benoliel. There's one on the slowdown of the automotive industry. There is not one at the moment. The industry is growing. There are no signs that I'm aware of of a slowdown. It remains quite dynamic. Regarding Eric's question of direct staff hiring on Q3 and Q4, we'll give you an answer in October once we publish the activity of Q3. Another question from Maxence D'Hotelans from Portzamparc. Could you give us an update on the percentage of client who accepted price rises this year? I gave you a ratio. 70% of the clients accepted the new prices. We've had clients who accepted a raise of 5%-6%, some accepted 1%-2%, so that gives you an average of the raises that we had. It's not linked to a sector. It's linked to the personality of the team, of the procurement team, of the client, sorry, and the pressure that the technical or HR managers put on procurement and how the procurement teams is being incentivized. Knowing that, if you are in a work package mode, the client negotiations are not so fundamental. It's just being put in competition on a project of 20-30 people between 3 or 4 companies that have been selected. Depending on the technical quality of the answer that you provide, you're at 5%, then the client will take you or will not take you. It's not really a negotiation of rate. It's more like a real competition. If you have a dumper in front of you who's on the market, who wants to get into the market and is prepared to do -10% or -20%. We had this case. We have people who did that, and they entered at a loss. It's more linked to sales negotiation than real fees negotiation. If we're at the technical assistance in 30%, there's some costs that we cannot cut. Some clients who will not budge. They said, "We don't want any increase in the fees." They take the risk either to have a lower quality or have less offers that we could make to them. The automotive sector is always tough, but the other sectors, it depends on everybody's approach. A question on the recruitment topic. Can you explain to us what is Alten doing to reinforce recruitment, and how do you retain talents? How do you differentiate yourself from other players that you're up against? I don't know if we're that different from other companies. We have increased by 30%-40% the means we'll call DSI. It's the management for the engineers. We want them to be heard more, listened to more because of this fear of turnover that we had at the beginning of the year. We wanna know if they're satisfied with their projects, if they're satisfied with their compensation, and also if they're satisfied with their managers and career perspectives. We need to see them more often. We need to listen to them more often to provide to all our consultants, engineers, possibilities to grow in their career and to remind them of it. It worked. Well, of course, raising the wages was the fundamental element, and we could retain a lot of people who stayed getting a higher pay, a higher paycheck. We're just trying to do our job. There were some questions on the margin, but I think, Bruno, you answered that. A question on the economic situation in case we enter a recession, what do you think? What will be the economic sectors that will be the most resilient, and what will the growth and the margins of Alten look like? I would be surprised that we have a recession on transports, aeronautics or land transports. What happened in 2020 was linked to the COVID crisis that locked everybody down. Unless we go back to such a scenario, these sectors should not have any issue, and they're actually in quite high demand, including the automotive sector. The sectors that we fear could be creating problems is retail and finance banking, because they have to change all their tools. If there's maybe a slight concern, it would be more in that direction. A series of three questions on the level of demand. Can you tell us about what you can expect in terms of demand in your conversations with your clients? Are clients thinking about pushing back, carrying forward their their expense on R&D? Or how are the conversations on prices with your clients, how they've evolved over the two semesters of 2022 and in 2023? Last question, is it possible to reduce even further the overhead, on the middle term to compensate the increase of, employees increase and staffing increase? Regarding prices, we'll have less pressure on the negotiations, on fees to renew the referencing. It's done three times a year, every three years. That should be going fine, except again, for those who won't budge, but we're not worried about that. The only vector of economy that our clients have is the offshore, and they're limited in offshoring because of the strategic part of it. Because of all the works we do for them on their core business. I gave you the numbers early on and the forecast, so it remains in a bracket of volume that is quite well-defined. Regarding the demand, we have no warning signs today at the present moment despite everything we hear on the current environment, maybe because we have a small presence footprint in the U.S. It's hiding from us things that are gonna be coming to Europe next year. We still do go to the U.S., and it's difficult to hire there as well, to find people there. Those are gonna be the last questions, and then we'll end with a question in the room. Can you comment on the impact of the prices and wage for the first semester and for the second? For the growth of S2, can you comment on the strongest sectors and the weakest sectors, and what does it mean in terms of growth rates in general? Can you comment on the contractual negotiations and the impact that they could have on your calendar and the WCR? I think we've answered to those questions. The impact of the balance between prices and wages, it's valued at 50 bps at S1. It's of course going on through the year. The prices are negotiated once a year, and they rarely change throughout the year, even if it happens. We had anticipated an evolution of the ratio wages and the prices that was 70-80 bps for the year 2022, which means that it will have a bigger impact during S2 than during S1. The second question that was asked, if you could just read it out for me again. Sorry. The last question was on the contract negotiations. Can you comment on them and its impact on prices and how it could affect your calendar and your WCR? The negotiations have already happened for 2022. We'll start the negotiations for 2023 at the end of the year, at the beginning of next year. It won't have no impact on S2, nor on the WCR, nor on the margins. We may see some increases of rates that could be for clients where their referencing is less structured. For our major accounts, we have references that are annually. We'll talk about next year. No more questions online. If somebody has a question in the room, please speak up. Otherwise, Simon Azoulay, you can wrap up this presentation. I hope that between the presentation and the questions, we could address most of, well, the questions that you were asking yourselves. We remain very optimistic despite an environment that is challenging. One, because we're already on the work packages moved by two-thirds, and second, because we are looking at a market of shortages, which is quite unique and offer is somewhat smaller than demand. Thank you very much for your attention and your questions.