Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Elis 2021 full year results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Xavier Martiré, CEO of Elis. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Elis 2021 full year results call, which is also webcasted and recorded. I'm Xavier Martiré, CEO of Elis, and I am here in Paris with our CFO, Louis Guyot. I will start this presentation by sharing the main highlights of our full year results, then I will hand over to Louis. He will detail the full year financial performance. I will then come back to provide you with an update on our CSR advances, present an acquisition we also announced this morning, and then share with you our views on 2022. Finally, we will have a Q&A session to answer all of your questions. After our call, Nicolas Buron will be available to answer any of your questions offline. Before we start, please take the time to read the disclaimer. I'm very happy to report a very satisfactory 2021 performance by Elis. We saw some pickup in activity leading to organic revenue growth of 7.4%. The group also improved its profitability, with EBITDA margin up 70 basis points at 34.5%, and EBIT margin improvement gaining 240 basis points at 12.7%. Headline net result was up 60% at EUR 223 million. We delivered record free cash flow after lease payments of EUR 228 million, enabling the group to decrease its net debt by EUR 135 million, and to reach a financial leverage ratio at 3x at year-end under the new definition. These good results enable the resumption of a dividend payment of EUR 0.37 per share with the option of a payment in Elis shares. This good financial performance was notably driven by the improvement of Elis' growth profile on the back of the crisis. We have clearly identified an increasing need for hygiene, traceability, employee safety, and for more responsible products and services. Elis has been very active commercially to provide adequate offers to its clients in both the workwear and hygiene and well-being segments. We also benefited from the sharp recovery of the hospitality industry that started in the spring of 2021, with a very limited impact from the Omicron variant. I will provide a detailed view on our 2022 outlook later in this presentation. In a nutshell, I want to say that I feel very confident in our capacity to deliver double-digit organic revenue growth this year. The current situation in Ukraine is not something that should have an impact on our 2022 top line, unless things really get out of hand, in which case, I am afraid we would have other concerns than Elis organic growth evolution. With no surprise, our main uncertainty today is the gas price, which is an important component of our cost base, and that has recently evolved very erratically. It is therefore difficult to have an educated view on the rest of the year. Nevertheless, assuming that this price should remain at a high level, temporarily impacting our EBITDA margin, we believe we will deliver EBIT of around EUR 500 million, and that 2022 in-line net income per share should increase by more than 40%. Altogether, the group's strong deleveraging is expected to continue in 2022. I will come back to this later. Moving on to the next slide, let's first take a look at healthcare, with activities now back to normal levels due to some structural activity drivers. One example is a textile contract we signed for surgery blocks in replacement of disposable items. The switch is driven by at least three main reasons. First, the need for hospitals to secure the supply chain. Disposable garments were being sourced in Asia with many unreliable suppliers. Second, the will to improve employees' comfort, textile garments being way more comfortable to wear than disposables. Third, environmental consideration, as our offer is obviously much more competitive in this area than disposable garments. Another structural growth driver for healthcare is the increasing need for hygiene, translating into more linen consumption at our clients, which means they would get a clean change more often than they used to. We were also very active commercially in the nursing home market, leading to strong activity growth with these clients. Finally, we managed to convert some of the exceptional overgowns contracts we signed at the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil into long-term contracts. Industry, trade, and services now, where the need for hygiene and traceability is very strong, too. Our offers for soap, hydroalcoholic gel, pest control solution are perfectly aligned with the new needs of our clients. We also noted a marked increase in linen consumption at our clients, with a higher number of changes since the beginning of the crisis. Furthermore, Elis is able to efficiently address the growing part of our clients that is looking for more responsible products and services with a limited environmental impact. Finally, outsourcing is another strong growth driver for us in Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and LatAM, where more and more companies decide to manage the washing of their employees' uniforms and do not want to take the risk of letting their employees do it or not at all. As a leader in the industry with a very strong network density, Elis offers second to none reliability in supply. This is a key factor, given that without our uniforms, most of our clients simply cannot operate their business. We still see some additional rebound potential going forward, as working from home still has an impact on our collective catering clients and on our facility management clients. Moving on to the next slide, let's look at hospitality, our third end market. The graph on the slide clearly shows a strong activity rebound that started in April 2021. This was driven initially by strong domestic tourism, and then by cross-European tourism. The summer season was good, and we started to see some activity related to professional travels in September, including business trips and trade shows. On top of this activity pickup, we managed to pass on some material price increase to our clients to reflect the inflation we started to see early in 2021 on some components such as wages. Moving on to the next slide, we provide details on the flat linen volume evolution for the three main contributors, which are France, Spain, and the U.K. and Ireland. The dark blue lines are for 2019, the light blue for 2020, the light green for 2021, and the dark green for 2022. You can clearly see the sharp recovery from mid-May 2021 following the lifting of lockdown measures in Europe, along with the reopening of borders. You can also notice that the impact from Omicron was very limited and that activity continued to improve in Q1 this year, nearly returning to pre-crisis levels, which is obviously very good news. Moving on to the next slide. The crisis has been an acid test of supplier reliability, and it is indisputable that Elis demonstrated both strong service reliability and commercial proximity. We have maintained above par quality of service, even during lockdowns or recent labor shortfall, thanks to the strong commitment of our employees and our operational flexibility. Furthermore, the sharp and unpredictable pickup of volume in plants during recovery phases can sometimes be challenging, too, but we have been very efficient and successfully delivered to our clients. We were also flexible and adapted our invoicing terms to the reality of our customers with discounts or temporary suspension granted. This will very likely durably reinforce our relationship with our clients. They view us as a local, reliable partner who listens to their needs and who can act as a trustworthy partner in difficult times. All the efforts put in place over the last year to improve service quality are bearing fruit. It was a real area of focus, notably for industry workwear in the U.K., and we are very happy with the progress made, which led to the normalization of the churn rate in the country to circa 7%, underscoring the success of the measures that were implemented. Moving on to the next slide, EBITDA increased by more than EUR 100 million in 2021, corresponding to a 70 basis points increase year-on-year and to nearly 100 basis points more than in 2019, demonstrating strong operational leverage. The group benefited from the structural long-term cost-saving measures implemented in H2 2020. The lighter cost base therefore partly explains the good profitability performance. We have also continued to deliver strong operational performance with significant variable cost adjustments and productivity gain in our plants. Finally, we were able to maintain a good pricing dynamic in our markets despite some impact from inflation at the end of 2021, especially the sharp increase in gas price in November and December, and some wage inflation following labor shortage in some countries, notably in the U.K. Let's now take a look at our M&A activity in 2021, which had +1.2% impact on revenue last year. We maintained good momentum and closed five deals. Two deals were acquisitions in the pest control segment to start the service in countries where we were not offering it, Pellgar in Ireland and Krydal in Denmark. One deal in washroom in the U.K., where we acquired PureWashrooms in September 2021. One deal in cleanroom in Belgium, where we acquired Scaldis, one of the European leaders on the ultra-clean market with EUR 13 million of revenue. Finally, we acquired the textile part of Blesk-InCare in Russia, bearing in mind we already acquired the mats part of the company back in 2019. This leads me to say a few words on our operations in Russia, where we operate nine small plants and generate revenue of around EUR 20 million. We obviously are monitoring the situation in the region extremely carefully and have complied with international sanctions that have been enforced. Our business there is cash positive and has enough inventory to be autonomous for a year. Furthermore, we are not present in Ukraine, and we are hoping for a quick resolution of this conflict, of course, and we'll provide updates if necessary. To conclude this first part, let me remind you that M&A is a very important part in Elis's DNA. It allows us either to consolidate our existing position or to strengthen our market share, enter new geographies, or launch new services. This table provides a summary of what we have done in terms of M&A over the last decade. I would like to underscore the very successful track record we have built year after year in terms of both acquiring and integrating assets, and by doing so, creating value for our shareholders. I will now hand over to Louis to comment further the financial results. Thank you, Xavier. First, let me go through the usual revenue breakdown by activity and market and geography to illustrate the group's high level of diversification, which provides us with a highly resilient model in times of crisis. In terms of activity, flat linen, workwear, each represented 40% of total 2021 revenues. In terms of end markets, industry, trade, services, healthcare represented combined contribution of more than 80% of our sales, with hospitality significantly lower. Finally, in terms of geographies, our well-balanced footprint was very helpful over the last two years. Scandinavia, Central Europe, Latin America proved to be very resilient and acted as strong buffers for the group during the pandemic, when the decrease in hospitality impacted France, Southern Europe and U.K. Either way you look at the graphs, you will see that Elis's positioning is well-balanced, which significantly contributes to its resilience through the crisis. This good diversification in terms of activity client geographies does not come about by chance. It is a consequence of a long-term strategy backed by product innovation, commercial efficiency and M&A. Next slide, let's take a look at the 2021 monthly organic growth evolution. We clearly see the sharp increase from April onward, which is a consequence of, first, the 2020 base where activity started to drop in March. Second, the 2021 restrictions that were put in place in January and February before being progressively lifted. Additionally, we clearly see that Omicron had virtually no impact on our business. Another way to look at it, revenue by region now, the performance of France, U.K., Ireland, Southern Europe is mostly a consequence of the level of hospitality in those regions' mix, with activity significantly picking up on the back of easy comps. The growth is not limited to that, and it's worth mentioning that in 2021, outside this recovery in hospitality volumes, the core organic growth is above 3% as a result of what's mentioned, Xavier. New services proposed to customers, development of outsourcing and better retention of the clients. The best example to illustrate this dynamism is certainly Latin America, where organic growth was +14% in 2021, after already +5.4% in 2020, which with almost no hospitality in the region. Now, looking at EBITDA margin. One of our main satisfaction in the way we handled the situation during the pandemic is a very efficient operational adjustments quickly implemented by our teams to maintain a high level of productivity. This resulted in 2021 EBITDA margin being 90 basis points above pre-pandemic level, which is 219 basis points. We have been able to improve our maintained margin in most geographies, reflecting Elis operational excellence with a real knack in optimizing logistics and factory efficiency. This also reflects the in-depth and sustainable cost savings efforts achieved in the second half of 2020, which generated significant operating leverage in 2021 with 90 basis points margin expansion at group level compared to 2019. I would like to stress that our sales teams were not affected by the cost savings efforts, so the commercial dynamism going forward remains intact. Before looking at the full P&L, let me quickly touch base on D&A. As a reminder, linen CapEx normally represents 2/3 of total CapEx and is depreciated over a three-year period. It implies that the evolution in linen CapEx can have a material impact on next year's D&A. Looking at the graph, you see that the columns represent yearly CapEx, the blue being the industrial CapEx, the green being the linen CapEx. The decrease in industrial CapEx between 2019 and 2020 was due to the end of the three-year CapEx program dedicated to Berendsen, as well as some cancellation of capacity projects after the crisis started. The decrease in linen CapEx, however, was solely due to the sanitary crisis, and you remember that linen is a strong amortizer for cash flow. All in, there was a EUR 95 million decrease in CapEx between 2019 and 2020. With a three-year depreciation cycle, it means that the group D&A, the orange line, will remain broadly stable between 2020, 2021, 2022, although linen CapEx increased in 2021 as a result of activity pickup and workwear contracts won. The D&A stability contributed to improve EBIT margin from 10% in 2020 to nearly 13% in 2021, and you understand that this trend will continue in 2022. Let's now look at the full P&L. We already have commented on revenue, EBITDA and D&A, so let's start with EBIT, which was up 240 basis points in 2021. I have just explained the strong improvements reflects both the increase in EBITDA margin and the stabilization of the D&A. Below EBIT, the decrease in amortization of intangible reflects the end of the Berendsen trademark amortization scheme in 2020 following the Elis rebranding in all our countries, including Scandinavia. Non-current operating income and expense is back to normal after a very high number in 2020 linked to COVID-19 incremental cost on some first restructuring costs. In 2021, it corresponds mainly to acquisition costs and some usual restructuring costs. Financial result is almost normative. It includes EUR 80 million of refinancing costs occurred in H2 with the revolver and the bond refinancing. Tax paid is also nearly normative. It correspond to a circa 26% tax rate, to which we add around EUR 5 million of the French civil tax. Finally, net result is EUR 115 million on the headline net income 223. At 60% year-on-year, it correspond to around EUR 1 per share. Moving to the next slide, I remind you of the way we calculate the current net results. The method has not changed ever. The main items restated for the calculation are the same, PPA depreciation, non-cash IFRS 2 expense for purchase plan, and non-current operating income and expense, including mostly restructuring costs and acquisition-related costs, all these restated from the tax effect. Let's now take a look at the cash flow statement, which is one of the biggest satisfactions of the year. It stood at a record level of EUR 228 million in 2021, despite the fact that the top line was not yet fully recovered from the pandemic, 2021. Starting with the top of the table, EBITDA was up around EUR 100 million. Then we see the cash effect of the non-recurring items we previously discussed. CapEx was up EUR 76 million. It stood at 18.7% of revenue, mainly due to linen as a result of the needs to cover the recovery of hospitality during summer peak and the implementation of all the new workwear contracts Xavier previously mentioned. Change in working capital was up EUR 10 million despite good activity at year-end. With a very strong performance of cash collection, the DSO stands at a record level of 51 days. Net interest paid is almost normative. It embeds a small amount corresponding to the setup cost of new financing. Tax paid corresponds to a yearly rate of circa 28%, still above the normative of 25%. Due to the mix of countries, you have still some loss-making countries ending up not paying taxes. Below free cash flow, we spent nearly EUR 95 million on M&A. This amount includes around EUR 10 million turnouts from previous transactions. The group did a small capital increase reserved with employees, which turned out to be very successful and had a EUR 11 million impact on cash flow. Finally, the other aggregate encompasses some technical effects that has a full FX effect on the accounting treatment of the debt, including the convertible bond. At the end of the day, debt decreased by EUR 135 million in 2021 and by EUR 227 million since the beginning of the pandemic, which is, of course, a great achievement. Now, looking in depth at the debt structure, as a reminder, we took advantage of the excellent conditions in the market in 2021 to reshape our debt. It means we have now a debt which is long and cheap with only fixed rate, circa 1.5%. You can also see on the chart that the next significant maturity is 2023. The bond debt is only used for liquidity, and our strategy is simply to roll over the next maturity forward with the objective of maximum EUR 500 million maturity per year, which is an amount quite easy to refinance. As far as financial leverage is concerned, the refinancing of the revolver line led to a new leverage ratio calculation to take into account the evolution of the IFRS standards since we signed our previous contract. The calculation is more straightforward, simply corresponds to the net debt divided by EBITDA pro forma of the acquisitions. It stands at 3x year-end 2021, whereas the old leverage formula would have been 3.26. Moving to the next slide, it's fair to say that our financial profile has shown strong resilience during the pandemic, highlighted by the EUR 227 million decrease in debt since 2019. We also optimized both the cost and the maturity profile of our debt structure. I also would like to remind that we obtained some waivers on our debt covenants at the beginning of the crisis quite easily, and it was purely precautionary, as it turned out that we could have lived without said waivers as our leverage ratio always remained below the covenant through the pandemic. In 2021, we reinitiated our debt rolling forward strategy and partially refinanced a bond in Q3 as well as our bank revolver line. This very sound financial profile is recognized by the different rating agencies. DBRS maintained its BBB rating through the pandemic, and Standard & Poor's improved our rating to BB+ last October. Well, to conclude this section, top-line growth was very strong on the back of both hospitality recovery and our improved growth profile mentioned by Xavier. The operational adjustments and structural cost savings made during the pandemic generated significant operating leverage, leading to nearly 1-point EBITDA margin increase versus 2019. We have a record 2021 free cash flow at EUR 228 million, which led to a total decrease in debt of EUR 227 million over the two years of the pandemic. Finally, financial leverage stands at 3x, and we will be significantly below 3x by the end of 2022. Now, I will hand back to Xavier, who will give you an update on our CSR achievements. Thank you, Louis. I will now spend some time talking about our CSR policy, which is a real asset for Elis. As you probably know, Elis is a real actor of the circular economy, promoting usage rather than ownership, which creates a real virtuous pattern. It means that we always search for longer durability when conserving our products. This can be achieved through maintenance and mending, and we also work very hard on the reuse and end-of-life articles. We are totally convinced that these efforts will bring further organic growth opportunities in the future, given our clients are increasingly concerned about these subjects. Moving on to the next slide. Our circular approach is an alternative option to far less environmentally friendly offers that exist on the market, such as do it yourself washing and disposable or single-use products. We are fundamentally convinced that our CSR approach will be an increasingly important growth driver as we see more and more tenders with significant CSR components. As an example, we recently won contracts with Amsterdam Municipality in the Netherlands and with Gävleborg region in Sweden, many thanks to the quality of our value proposition on this environmental criteria. Moving on to the next slide. We help our clients reduce their CO2 emissions, and some in-depth studies clearly demonstrate that. As an example, using a reusable hand towel decreases CO2 emissions by more than 30% compared to a disposable paper solution. In the same vein, our rental and washing solution for workwear allows our clients to decrease CO2 emissions by 37% compared to a situation where they would buy and wash their uniforms themselves. Moving on to the next slide. We continue to work on many other different CSR aspects in 2021. Let me give you a sample. As you can see on left-hand side on the slide, we have many internal and external initiatives and commitments to further promote the circular economy. The group is also conscious of the environmental challenges with regard to climate change. Year after year, our efforts are being recognized by good and improving grades with counterparts such as CDP, EcoVadis, MSCI or Gaïa. Elis wants to commit to an approach to reduce its emissions that is in line with the Paris Agreement to contribute to keeping the increase in temperature below 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. The group will thus present climate objectives that are aligned with the methodology of the Science Based Targets initiative at end 2022. Once defined, this climate objective will be submitted to the shareholder approval in a Say on Climate resolution. At the coming AGM on May 19, 2022, the group will propose to its shareholders a non-binding advisory resolution in order to validate this approach. Moving on to the next slide. It is fair to say that CSR is taking a major role in our day-to-day business. To illustrate that, we significantly improved CSR governance in 2021 with the creation of our CSR committee and the appointment of a CSR director who directly reports to me, underscoring the importance of these subjects for the group. We have also deployed an ambitious plan across the group to further improve security at work through the implementation of 10 safety golden rules. We also launched a plan to accelerate the transition toward electric or biogas vehicles based on a precise roadmap. Finally, we signed our first EUR 900 million Sustainability-Linked Revolving Credit Facility in November, demonstrating that CSR touches all the fields of the company. To conclude this CSR section, let me provide you with a quick update on our different objectives set for 2025. Overall, the 2021 performance is in line with our roadmap for every item. I will give just a few examples. Since 2010, we decreased our energy consumption and our water consumption by more than 20% and 40% respectively. We are also working on parity, and women now account for more than 1/3 of our managers. Finally, nearly 75% of our textile products are being recycled, meaning that we are perfectly in line with the 80% target set for 2025. Let's now talk about the acquisition we are also announcing this morning. We are very happy to announce that Elis is entering Mexico and is therefore further developing its footprint in Latin America. As a reminder, the first big move we made in LatAm was in 2014 in Brazil. We then entered Chile in 2015, Colombia in 2017, and so Mexico in 2022. This development strategy in Latin America has reinforced Elis' growth profile. All markets in the region have very strong outsourcing potential, and as you can see on the top right graph, we have constantly delivered high single to double-digit organic growth rates over the last six years. The markets in Latin America are all very fragmented, which give us the opportunity to further consolidate our positions and continue to increase our market share. Our activity in the region is also very stable, thanks to the high share of healthcare clients in our mix, which represents around 75% of total revenue in LatAm. Most importantly, we have a very good track record in integrating assets in the region through the implementation of Elis' best practices across the newly acquired businesses. This is clearly demonstrated by the impressive EBITDA margin improvements we have been able to deliver in the region since 2015, from circa 21% to more than 33% today. In particular, our expansion in Brazil perfectly illustrates our success in the region and our capacity to deliver profitable growth in new countries. We entered the country in 2012 with the opening of a commercial office to better understand and test the market. Once convinced of the potential of the market, we made our first acquisition in 2014. Since then, we made 10 acquisitions in the country with good organic revenue growth rate, along with profitability improvement from nearly 22% in 2016 to nearly 36% in 2021. Meaning that the margin in Brazil is now above group margin, and we will do our best to replicate the Brazilian success story. Moving on to the next slide, we enter Mexico with the acquisition of the market leader, a century-old family business. It is the only player in the country with a national network. Its management has been in place for more than 20 years and will stay on board in the coming years with some earn-outs to align their interests with ours. The company delivered revenue of EUR 74 million in 2021, with historical organic revenue growth generally above 10%. It is already a very profitable business, with EBITDA and EBIT margin at 38% and 18% respectively. Activity is very resilient and stable, with healthcare clients accounting for more than 85% of total revenue. The next slide shows a map of the country with the plant networks the company's operating. There are 11 plants and 12 distribution centers to optimize the coverage, with a total of 2,600 employees who will join Elis with this acquisition. Mexico is a country with more than 130 million inhabitants. Historical inflation has remained fairly limited, and the unemployment rate is below 4%, underscoring the solidity and stability of the economy, which ranks number 15 in the world. It is steadily growing, directly driven by U.S. activity. Therefore, with this acquisition, Elis will be indirectly linked to the dynamism of the U.S. economy. Finally, it is interesting to see that the pandemic had only very limited impact on the country's economy. Going forward, our objective is to continue to deliver double-digit organic growth in the country, and by doing so, to further improve the group's organic growth profile. The outsourcing potential in the country is big, especially in workwear. The vast majority of industrial companies are still buying their uniforms, so we will do our best to open the market like we did in Brazil and to accelerate the move towards the rental model. Hospitality is also a very big market in Mexico, with 25% more rooms in the country than in France. Most of the hotels still don't outsource the washing of their linen, and so we also see some significant growth potential there. The healthcare end market is also growing on the back of public funding, with modern hospitals and clinics being constructed, which therefore represent another area of potential growth for us. Furthermore, as I said earlier, the Mexican market is very fragmented, so we will have consolidation opportunities going forward to further boost our growth. Moving on to the next slide. The multiples paid for this acquisition are very reasonable, 5.6 x 2021 EBITDA and 12 x 2021 EBIT. We will rely on the very experienced management to drive the development of the company in the next thre. Years, with aligned interests thanks to earn-outs at lower multiples than the acquisition multiples. The closing of the transaction should be before the end of July 2022. Now, before moving to our 2022 outlook, I would like to show this graph that we have been presenting twice a year since 2007 and IPO. There you see the evolution of the top line and the group performance over the last two decades, underscoring the resilience of the group. The backbone of our resilience is twofold. First, the diversified geographical footprint with France representing less than 1/3 of our business. Second, the diversified portfolio of clients in terms of size and end markets. It is worth noting that this resilient profile was significantly improved with the acquisition of Berendsen and the acquisition of new countries in Central Europe and in Scandinavia. Consequently, you can see on the graph that margins are constantly evolving at high and stable levels with a 200 basis points range, regardless of external events and taking into consideration the impact of IFRS 16 from 2019 onwards. On top of that, one very interesting characteristic of our business that we saw in 2020 is that linen investments come hand in hand with top-line growth. That means that conversely, they mechanically go down during bad top-line years with a favorable impact on cash generation. Speaking about cash, we are on a very good trajectory with a steady improvement over the last three years from EUR 154 million in 2018 to EUR 228 million in 2021. Moving on to the next slide. I would like to return to our significantly improved growth profile compared to before the pandemic. We have already discussed our better churn rate, the structurally increasing need by clients for hygiene products and pest control, and the acceleration in uniform washing outsourcing. I also want to mention the steady development of the nursing home markets because of the aging of the population and the increasing share of Elis' fast-growing market in our mix, which mechanically helps to accelerate group overall growth. Finally, it is worth noting that an increasing number of tenders come in CSR components, a field where Elis, as an industry leader, is well advanced compared to its small competitors. Therefore, without even considering the strong effect on top-line growth from the rebound in hospitality, which I will detail on the next slide, we believe that Elis normative growth will be structurally above 3.5% in the future, up from the 2.5%-3.5% range that we used to communicate on. Let's now turn to the mechanical effect that the rebound in hospitality will have on our 2022 organic growth. The graph presents the difference between the level of activity in 2021 compared to the normative level of 2019. As you can see, there was still around EUR 350 million of revenue shortfall in 2021, which represents a very strong growth pocket for 2022, as we believe we will close a large part of this EUR 350 million gap with a very strong effect expected in H1 this year due to the easier comp. Now let's talk about our 2022 guidance, starting with organic growth. We expect organic revenue growth to be very strong between 13%-15%. In hospitality, we currently assume that activity will be circa -20% below its 2019 level in H1, and that activity will continue to steadily improve in H2. Looking at the current trading since the beginning of the year, we feel comfortable with our assumptions. On top of that, we believe the group will benefit from the improvement of our growth profile that I commented on in depth earlier in this presentation. This concerns healthcare, industry, and trade and services only. Finally, the price effect will also be very material in 2022 as a consequence of the strong inflation, which is a good transition to the next two slides, as I want to give you more color regarding our pricing power. It's very important to bear in mind that non-volatile and anticipated inflation, such as wage inflation on salaries, is easy to be passed through to our customer as early as first January, with sometimes a second increase as of first of July. In this situation, the lag effect between the time our costs start to increase and the time our prices increase as well is very limited. This means that the margin impact is very limited, too. This is typically what we saw in 2019, where wages increased very significantly in many European countries. Nevertheless, we kept the margin stable that year. What makes things more difficult for us is when inflation is more volatile, which has been the case over the last few months for energy costs. The most important factor for us is gas. Currently, we hedge circa 50% of our gas consumption for the year, meaning that we pay spot the remaining 50%, which corresponds to 1 million MWh. Gas price started to soar in Q4 last year, especially in December, and this continued in Q1 this year, meaning that the impact of this increase will only be accounted for in our pricing index at the end of 2022 and in 2023. Furthermore, most of the one-on-one negotiations we had with our large customer, where no pricing formulas are involved, took place in the last months of 2021. Therefore, the price increase implemented with this customer from January 1st, 2022, embedded a limited impact in gas price. Consequently, the lag effect will be very significant in 2022, but we shall catch up in 2023. Moving on to the next slide, let's take a more in-depth look at the gas situation. Over the last decade and until July 2021, the gas price per MWh has remained in a corridor of between EUR 15- EUR 30. In Q3, we started to see the price begin to increase to abnormal levels following the decrease in volume coming from Russia in H2 at around EUR 70 per MWh. Gas price started to really soar mid-December to reach more than EUR 100 in February. The war in Ukraine obviously contributes to maintain them at a very high level. As far as our 2022 numbers are concerned, we have to make an assumption regarding the evolution of gas price, even though the current situation in Ukraine makes any prediction very difficult. Nevertheless, we assume that gas price will stabilize for the remainder of the full year at the average price recorded between January 1st, 2022 and yesterday, so at a level around EUR 100 per MWh. Looking at 2022 EBITDA now, due to the sudden increase in gas price seen at the end of 2021, which we have not yet passed through to our customer, we expect 2022 EBITDA margin to decrease to 33.5%, which corresponds to the 2019 level. As I just said, this corresponds to a scenario where gas price would stabilize for the remainder of the year at around EUR 100 per MWh. Now, should gas price remain significantly above this EUR 100 level in H1, and should therefore call into question our assumption for the year, for the cost of the gas, we would act on our pricing as early as this summer or even before, with an additional +1% increase passed on to our customer for every EUR 30 tranche above EUR 100 per MWh. In that respect, we have a review clause with most of our customer as of July 1st. Let's now look at our 2022 outlook for EBIT and EPS, which are very strong. EBIT should be up nearly 30% at EUR 500 million, with D&A only slightly increasing, as Louis explained earlier. Headline net result per share should show around 40% improvement at circa EUR 1.35 per share. As far as 2022 free cash flow is concerned, it should be at circa EUR 200 million. There will be two negative effects this year. The first one will be on linen CapEx, with cotton price and freight costs showing strong inflation. The second one will be the effect of working capital requirement of the strong increase in activity. Nevertheless, this should not modify our deleveraging trajectory, and we expect our net debt to EBITDA ratio to decrease by 0.4x in 2022 to 2.6x at year end. Now, let's look at the mid-term beyond 2022. Let me first remind you that excluding any effect from the catch-up in hospitality, the group will deliver at least 3.5% organic growth on a normative level. As far as EBITDA margin is concerned, we believe the 2022 decline will be reversed in 2023. There are two paths for this. If the gas price go down to a more reasonable level at around EUR 60- EUR 70, which by the way will still be around 3 x the 10-year average, then our margin will mechanically return to the 2021 level. If gas price happen to remain where they are today, this will then constitute a new normal and stabilized situation, and the price increase will be implemented from H2 2022 onwards would bring 2023 EBITDA margin back to the 2021 level. To conclude, I would like to highlight the main takeaways of this, long presentation. First, the very good operational and financial performance delivered in 2021. Second, the enhanced organic growth profile of Elis in a post-pandemic environment is a major asset, enabling the acceleration of the group deleveraging. Third, even though gas prices are something we will continue to monitor, we expect 2022 to be a year of double-digit organic revenue growth and a strong earnings improvement. Last but not least, Elis continues its expansion in Latin America with the acquisition of the market leader in Mexico, a company that delivers both strong organic growth and high profitability. This concludes this very detailed presentation, but we felt it was important to provide you with all this information. I thank you all for your attention, and we can now move on to the Q&A session. We'll be happy to answer your questions. The first question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my question. A couple of follow-ups regarding gas increases. You mentioned that 50% is hedged. If you could kindly remind us a little bit of your hedging policy. If I'm not mistaken, you also use framework agreements. When will they expire? And also for your 2022 EBITDA and free cash flow guidance, as you said, you are assuming that the average gas prices will remain at EUR 100 per MWh. At the moment, we are significantly above that. Can you give us maybe, if you have run a sensitivity analysis on the impact on guidance both for free cash flow and margins in case, for example, it is like 10% or 20% higher, and what it is implying also in terms of average price increases applied to clients and the average, wage inflation. Thank you. Yes. If we start with gas hedge policy, it's a good question. What we used to have is a balanced approach in the past, where you can see that the volatility of gas price was very limited in the past. We always try to have a part of the consumption hedged and a part floating to be sure that we will not miss any big event. We had to decide summer 2021 what do we do with the hedge policy, and as you can see, if we come back to the graph of the evolution of the gas price during summer 2021, when it was time to take the decision for 2022, the gas price was above EUR 40 per MWh. That means by far above the last 10 years' range. We decided then not to cover everything, only the half. Of course, when we have the result of the curve after, it's easier to see that it was not a good decision. It doesn't change significantly the situation for us on the midterm because every hedge system you can have is limited in time. To answer to the second question, the second half of the consumption is hedged until the end of 2022, and in 2023, we will be back to a situation where we pay the gas at the level of the market of the spot price. Like the other players, by the way, even if they have a part hedged in 2022, everybody will have to manage this in 2023. The question now, the second part of your question is, of course, what happen if the situation of the gas remain very high above what we said with EUR 100 in average for the year. We perfectly know that the current situation is today above the EUR 100. We are this morning around EUR 200, a little more than EUR 200. By the way, it was quite interesting to see that it has decreased yesterday by 5% despite the announcement of U.S. to stop to buying Russian products. Nevertheless, the market decreased a little. Nobody knows what will happen in Ukraine, so we don't know. Nobody knows. We have seen, for instance, if you remember what happened in December, during one week in December, the price was above EUR 180, and three weeks after, it was close to EUR 70. That means that you have a huge volatility in the energy price in gas. We have proposed on the slide 48, we have disclosed what is our assumption for the evolution of the gas price for the year. By the way, we expect to finish the year close to EUR 70. 70. It's not so far from, globally speaking, the future expectation of the market. Starting with a crazy price in March, probably, in a range close to EUR 180 and slowly declining to reach this EUR 70 for the end of the year. It is how we estimate the average of EUR 100 for the full year. Now, if it is above, it's not impossible, of course. What we say is to give you the magnitude of the effort we will have to do in terms of price increase. We explain that to protect the margin of the group, we have to increase by 1% in average every EUR 30 on the gas price. We are quite comfortable with this effort to deliver if we compare what we have been able to achieve in the past. We did it in 2019 quite easily. By the way, we have been quite efficient also in winter 2021 and beginning of 2022 to implement extra pricing to both take into account wage increase quite everywhere in Germany. We know also that in October, the new minimum wage will significantly increase in Germany. It was the same in the U.K. due to shortage of people, and on average, we are paying much more our our employees in the U.K. Every country has increased their minimum wage. Due to inflation, we have also more cost in wages in every country. We have been able to pass on average; it's always an effort, by nearly around 4%. The price increase on average in 2022, already decided, already accepted by the market and the customer, represents an extra growth of 4%. If you compare with the past, we were able to pass around 1% linked to the level of inflation. For now, what is already negotiated is 4%. That means that if we need to do the same kind of effort, let's imagine we stay at EUR 200 for eternity. It's more or less a new effort of 3%-4% to make, and we will do it. We will start some new negotiation, and not in July, even April. We have already some internal meeting to define the action plan of the group, and we'll start to talk again about price with customer during spring. Because if the energy stay at this level, it is a new normative level, and we will make the effort to adapt our pricing policy. Of course, we will have some lag effect for sure in 2022. We will have some lag effect, in comparison to this volatility in gas price and our ability to increase our price. That's why it was important for us to give you some comfort with the mid/long-term view on the group. Because for 2023, we have absolutely no doubt about our ability to adapt the price increase to the situation. We could have some lag effect in 2022 in case of a crazy situation for the gas, but with a very limited impact in 2023. Thank you. If I may, just one more question, and that is related to hospitality. In 2022, your organic growth guidance is based on the assumption that hospitality will be 20% below the 2019 level in H1. Can you explain why are you expecting this division sequentially deteriorate versus the -15% in Q4? Thank you. It is linked to the small impact of Omicron for the first month because we. It's clear you totally. It's true that we were better than that in the end of the year 2021. Nevertheless, in December and January, we had also some countries with some difficulties linked to Omicron variant. You know that in U.K. you have some measures to decrease the level of activity. The same small impact also in France and in Spain. It will be limited, and that's why we say that when we see the beginning of the year, we are very confident with this estimation of -20% for the full semester. Because we provide, by the way, in the presentation, you have the evolution of the volumes registered in our key countries, so France, Spain, and U.K., Ireland. You can see that in the last weeks, we were quite close to 19%. It's clear that we can be quite optimistic. Nevertheless, it's more cautious to take this assumption of minus 20% for the first semester, taking into account that in January the gap was, of course, above the 20% due to Omicron. It is now lower than 20%. That's why we consider that in the second semester, we will start to see and continue to see a regular improvement in the activity. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Nicolas Tabor from Stifel. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. The first question would be, could you give us more visibility on your relative difficulty or ease to pass on price increase depending on the different segments? I mean, is it easier or more difficult in hospitality, in healthcare, and what are the key drivers there, and how should we think about them? Just coming back on the risk on the price increase of the gas price. So basically what you mean is that if you have an increase of the average price for the full year of EUR 3, you will have compensated in H2, but not completely in Q2, right? Because you will only go back to your 33.5% margin target in H2 with a small lag effect. Is that right? As a last question, can you give us maybe more visibility on what was the rationale for the sellers to sell the Mexican business? I mean, it looks great in terms of growth, in terms of margin and so on. Why did they sell? How did you get that deal and not a competitor, for instance? Thank you very much. Okay. In terms of price increase, perhaps it's time to come back to the key question. Why are we able to pass to the market the level of inflation? I think it is the key question that everybody shall have in mind, why we are able to do it. Let's come back to the fundamentals. What could be the risk? First risk. Do we have a competitor with another way to do the business that could allow him to avoid the inflation? The answer is no. Everybody have exactly the same way to operate. We need some labor, we need some energy, and you don't have a new technology somewhere that could give to a competitor a key advantage. It is even the opposite. We know that we are more efficient than the other due to the size of the group, the industrial efficiency, and so on. No risk to see a kind of maverick coming with a new technology. Second risk: Do you have a customer that could find a new way to have our service by doing itself or a new way to find some internet and so on? The answer is no. They cannot insource easily the service. By the way, it would be stupid because in terms of cost, they would have also to spend money for labor and for energy. No risk of disruption with customer that could use another way to have the service. Third question, is it possible for our customer to not to use our service and to decide that they can live without the service provided by Elis? The answer is also no. You cannot imagine hospitals or hotel without linen. You cannot imagine industry players without uniform to protect employees or to give hygiene for their operators, so they cannot live without our service. The last question also, important to take into consideration, what is the weight of the service and the Elis invoice in their P&L? In every end market is very limited. Perhaps the sole exception is in hospitality, but then the beauty of hospitality, it is the freedom they have with price. It is their key subject. They are able to monitor their price every year. Every day, sorry. That means that, for instance, if let's imagine we have to double the price due to the crazy situation with energy. Instead of having a cost of between EUR 15-EUR 20 per room in hotel, it will become EUR 40. What will happen? They will not rent the room for EUR 150. They will rent the room for EUR 170. That's all. They have the pricing flexibility. That's why at the end, we cannot be disrupted by a competitor. We cannot be disrupted by a new way of providing a textile solution, and the customer cannot live without the service, and we have a limited impact in their P&L. It is the reason why, for the decades now, Elis has always been able to pass to the market the evolution of the inflation. Of course, we have from time to time some lag effect, and you can imagine that it's never easy to negotiate with a customer such kind of price increase, and we can miss some months, but not more. To give you, I think, a perfect example of the situation is what happened in the U.K., for instance. In the U.K., where we have the huge subject of both cost of wages due to the lack of workforce, we have been able to pay much more our employees, and the evolution of energy price. If you take our major customer, the biggest customer in U.K., so around GBP 24 million per year of revenue, so it is, it's hospitality player, 25% of the business of Elis in hospitality. You can imagine that the negotiation for price increase is always a key challenge with such kind of customer. We have been able to find an agreement with them for a price increase of 24%. They have accepted 24% price increase, of course, after three months of hard negotiation, but they have accepted plus 24% in the price because they need the quality of service of Elis. I think that it is a key example and a good example of our ability to pass to the market the inflation of our cost. On your question on H2 or Q2, of course the large part of an additional price increase would arrive in H2 if we still continue to have this crazy price of energy. Nevertheless, as I said, we are already working on action plans with our countries to be able to react immediately. That means that we'll not wait for July to increase price. If the situation in Ukraine remain so difficult and if the gas price remains so crazy, we will start to pass some price increase in April and May. The last question, Mexico. I think it is more a question for the families than for me on why they decided to sell. No, it's clearly also a subject of materiality to have the money in the pocket because the company was a result of a merger of the three main players five years ago, something like this, with three different families, and of course with some different interests, and they wanted to extract the money of all they have built after this merger. It's for them a question to secure the money of the family. And as you know, you don't have a lot of buyers of flat linen business in the world. To be fair, we were quite alone in the negotiation with the family. We have a... It's a long history with this company, the actual CEO of the company. He's working for more than 30 years in the company. As his family was friend with Leducq family, owner of Elis, 30 years ago, he spent six months in Paris in Elis plant to be trained 30 years ago. It's a nice story to see that for him, of course, it was quite obvious to sell to Elis. We had some close relationship and that's why we have been able to make this deal. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Sylvia Barker from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. Morning, everyone. Thanks very much. Maybe just on the organic guidance for 2022, firstly. Can you maybe just break that guidance into pricing? Sounds like that's kind of 3%-4%, then the recovery within that EUR 350 million shortage and the growth elsewhere. Secondly, just on CapEx and depreciation, as we think about 2023, which I appreciate, but I suppose in the hundred million incremental CapEx in 2022, I suppose roughly 1/3 of that will hit depreciation in 2023. Is there anything else to be aware of as we think about the 2023 EBIT and cash flow? Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you, Sylvia. As mentioned, we have the recovery of the hotels. It's a basic assumption. You see the graph where how much we have lost out of the EUR 900 million, how much we have recovered in 2021. You can make a simple kind of half assumption, it's in the region of, let's say, 8% of what you could get from hospitality recovery. Speaking about pricing, Xavier told you, we already got 4% full year effect in the beginning of the year, on which you can add another wave if the gas price gets up. If it does not, we may remain at 4% +, perhaps a bit more. It gives you a core organic growth which shall be above 3%, as mentioned, for 2021, even accelerating compared to 2021. Second question is depreciation. That's a tricky one because the linen is very straight with the three-year depreciation period. You understand that the other CapEx can have a very different depreciation timing between, I would say, 18 months to 50 years. Of course, the nature of the said CapEx is different. All that being said, the growth of depreciation for 2023 shall be much lower than the total growth of the group. So that the margin, EBIT shall improve again in 2023. Thanks very much. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. The first is just a clarification what you said on price. I didn't really quite got that. Did you say the price increase including price increase and recovery, you are expecting around 12% growth in FY 2022? Hello? I'm not sure I understand your question. It is going back to what I said about the split of organic growth in, say, let's say 13%-15% we mentioned. You can split that in theory between hotels recovery, pricing, and core organic growth is the rest, I would say. We mentioned something in the region of 8% for hotels. Something in the region of 4% for pricing. It's all of course rough estimation and depend again of what we shall do with the next wave of pricing. Okay. That's clear. Just first on second question is on the working capital really. I mean, you're obviously seeing a bigger unwind of the working capital as you go in next year. Is that also some of your sort of probably the payment terms normalizing because they remained all right during COVID? Or, like, what's driving that bigger working capital unwind? Because the core growth from your bridge is around 3%, right? As you know, the main driver is the clients, the receivables, which is a big, the bulk of the working capital in the balance sheet. You have to compare November, December billing one year and the other. You have to take an assumption of what will be the growth of November, December 2022 versus 2021. You remember also that you may have a small calendar effect as the last day of the year is a Saturday, which is of course not good for cash collection. That's what drives the assumption we described earlier. Okay. That's clear. Thank you. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Mourad Lahmidi from Exane. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the GDP growth environment that you are looking at in 2022. I understand that your assumption doesn't take into account any recession. Maybe you could refresh our memories in terms of what was the organic growth of Elis during periods of economic recession. Let's take the subprime crisis, for instance. Thank you for that one. The second question is on your interest costs in the P&L. What should we expect for 2022? Thank you. Yes. It's all very difficult at this stage to compare the two situations between the last big recession in Europe and in the world, 2008 or 2009, and the potential decrease of the GDP growth due to the actual crisis. Nobody knows. One can see that some analysts say that we should instead of having a 4% GDP growth in Europe, it could be only 2% in 2022. We don't know. It's not a big drop. It's not a minus or something as it was in 2008 or 2009, but a smaller decrease. I think that we are so resilient that honestly the impact for us will be quite limited. Even if you compare with what happened in 2008 or 2009, where it was the big mess in the economy, Elis has been able to maintain the turnover and the activity. I think that we were the worst year of organic growth was close to 0% in a context where we didn't have the rebound of the hospitality. We didn't have the price effect that we mentioned and so on. We were at zero. We didn't have also the so positive mix of geo- geographies that we have now in our portfolio of countries. We didn't have all the new drivers of organic growth that allow us to have at least one point more of growth, structural organic growth than in the past and so on. That's why we compare that, honestly, the potential slowdown of the economy in Europe for 2022 is not really a risk for the guidance of organic growth of Elis. On interest P&L, when we look at the exceptional of 2021, you can assume it's like low EUR 80 million. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Rahul Chopra from HSBC. Please go ahead. Hello. Yes, good morning, and thank you so much. I have three questions. First, in terms of the wage inflation, can you just remind us what is the kind of wage inflation that is baked into your current guidance? And, basically what is the number of employees in yours compared to pre-pandemic levels? That will be helpful. My second question is in terms of, you know, stickiness of price. Just want to understand if the gas price does normalize towards the end of the year, will there be a possibility that you'll be rolled forward, or it will be sticky, and will continue to stay the absolute prices with your customers on a more normalized basis going forward? My final question is, could you just also remind us the number of customers who are on automatic price pass-through versus how much proportion of customers which actually you have manual adjustments, please? Thank you. If we start, first subject, wages. Everything is taken into account in the guidance. That means that we perfectly knew that we had a huge inflation in Europe with impact in the negotiation, country by country. Quite everywhere, we have proposed to our employee a bigger wage increase than usual, taking into account this inflation. It was the case in France. In average, we were above 3% instead of 1% or 1.5% in the past. In U.K., we have a huge increase of cost of employees. It's a double-digit impact of increase of the salary in average in U.K., mainly due to shortage. It is in the south part of Europe also, the wages have increased quite significantly. We expect a new increase in Germany because the new government announced that the minimum wage will be at EUR 12 in October. Everything was known perfectly for months now. So it's fully included in our guidance. Number of employee before crisis, we were at around 50,000 employees in the world. We have made some saving in our fixed cost, and of course we have decreased a little, but now we have Mexico entering, so we will return quickly to this average level of 50,000 employees. Gas price. So we will continue to monitor the situation. If the price of the gas are increasing, we subject to still continue to increase price. Even if the price are stabilized, by the way, due to the increase, the regular increase of official indexes, because you have always a lag effect in the official index. They are taking into account the average last 12 months. So you can imagine, of course, that we will be in a very good position at the end of 2022 with the official index to pass through the automatic price increase formula that we have. Your last question, the threshold and the breakdown, sorry, between contracts with automatic index and the contracts where we negotiate and it's more manual, as you said, it's more or less 50/50 in the turnover of the company. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Next question comes from the line of Christophe Chaput from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning, I hope the line is good. Just to come back on the price increase by 4% you mentioned, which is supposed to offset the increase in the price of the gas on your margin. Does it also include fuel price and electricity? I assume yes, but just to be sure. Yes, yes. It takes into account every topics linked to NRE, so fuel for the trucks and electricity. Okay. Could we say that the price increase in 2022 will be more or less the same in 2023, if you consider that you are not going to be hedged, let's say, for 2023? Do you need further price hike above 4%, I mean? Is that correct? It will depend on the evolution of the gas price. If you have a gas price close to EUR 70 for 2023, it's probably that the impact that we will have on the price increase, you're perfectly right. Nobody knows. If we come back to EUR 30, as it was over the last 10 years, then it change significantly the situation. It will be linked to the evolution of the stabilized gas price for the midterm. It can be the magnitude, you're right, it can be the magnitude of the evolution of the prices in 2023. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Next question comes from the line of Benjamin Wildi from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a quick one from me. At the end of 2022, I believe the leverage ratio, given your guidance, is gonna be at the lowest level since IPO. Could you just remind me, do you have a clear target to get to on the leverage ratio in the medium term? And secondly, and related just on capital allocation, should we be expecting, following the announcement this morning in Mexico, higher M&A spend in 2022 and 2023 versus 2019, 2020, and 2021? Thank you very much. We are very happy to see the leverage coming back to this 2.6x at the end of 2022. We perfectly know that it was a concern of the market in the past when we had a leverage above 3x. We are very happy to see this deleveraging happening in 2022. The target is to be close to this 2.5x. That means that the question of what do we do with the cash will be more for 2023. In terms of M&A expenses, so in 2022, of course, we will have the cost of the acquisition in Mexico. That it is not a classical bolt-on, so it's a bigger deal. For the rest and for the future, today we have a quite normal level of activity in the M&A team. We should come back to a more regular level of M&A. Something around EUR 100 million per year in the future. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference back over to Xavier Martiré. Okay. Thank you, everybody, for your attention. It was a long presentation, but we had a lot of information to share with you this morning. The next communication will be for Q1 revenue on the 10th of May. I wish you a good day. Thank you. Bye-bye. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.