Thank you for holding, and welcome to Engie's Half-Year 2024 Results Presentation. For your information, this call is being recorded. It will take place in a listen-only mode, and you will have the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation by pressing star one on your telephone. I will now hand you over to Delphine Deshayes, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to welcome you to ENGIE's H1 conference call. Shortly, Catherine and Pierre-François will present our half-year results, following which we will open the lines to Q&A, and with my polite request of limiting your questions to one or two only, please. With that, over to Catherine. Thank you, Delphine, and good morning, everyone. I am delighted to report that ENGIE has achieved strong first half results, enabling us to upgrade our full year earnings guidance. We have become greener, cleaner, and more flexible by adding renewables and BESS capacity and cutting our greenhouse gas emissions. Our CCGTs and storage units are playing a full role in absorbing the increasingly intermittent supply in our main power markets, in which conditions look to have settled as a new normal. Otherwise, our earnings are solid and resilient. In April, the Belgian parliament voted a law adopting the final agreement relating to the 10-year extension of the Tihange 3 and Doel 4 nuclear reactors, as well as to all liabilities concerning nuclear waste. The European Union in July opened a formal inquiry procedure, fully in line with our expectation. We are satisfied with the process so far, and we still aim to complete the procedure by the end of this year. Some headline numbers. Although we have seen weaker pricing and volatility, a soft volume environment, and the non-recurrence of factors that in particular boosted GEMS last year, we have still succeeded in delivering robust EBIT, net recurring income, and cash flow. EBIT, excluding nuclear, was down 16% year-on-year versus a record high. We again generated strong cash flow from operations at close to EUR 9 billion. Our balance sheet remains robust, with only minor changes in net debt since the start of the year, and economic net debt stable at 3.1x EBITDA. Following our strong H1 performance, supportive market conditions for Flex Gen and retail, and lower than expected financial expenses, we are upgrading our guidance for the full year. We now expect net recurring income group share in a range of EUR 5 billion-EUR 5.6 billion, versus a previous range of EUR 4.2 billion-EUR 4.8 billion. I believe that we are proving that we can deliver strong and resilient results, whatever the underlying environment, by leveraging on flexible and integrated structure to make the most of market opportunities. As this year, we are indeed upgrading our guidance in a far more testing environment, and I would say despite it, it's true that we benefit from abundant hydro and several elements that are exceptional or temporary in nature. But I would emphasize that you have to have the expertise to grow capacities fast, whilst delivering good returns. You have to hedge well and at the right time. You have to maximize and increase the flexibility of our offer. You have to manage price fluctuations that we can exploit for ourselves and for our customers. You have to match sourcing with accurate anticipation of customer demand, and you have to act at the right time to benefit from differing trends in interest rates. If I was to pick up an example, I would talk about our European CCGTs as an example of our expertise, as they have been a driver of stronger than anticipated Flex Gen earnings. In the face of markets where intraday prices are moving substantially, we have learned to maximize the flexibility of the plants to capture high average spreads, EUR 55 per MWh in the first half, up from EUR 36 per MWh year-on-year, as we capture more value from our portfolio on top of still benefiting from hedges booked in the past when prices were still high. We do have the expertise required in these very different but inextricably linked fields. All of these bring challenges that foster a culture of performance and motivation at ENGIE that makes me indeed very proud. But none of it comes quickly or easily. There is still much work in progress, and you can be assured that we are, we will never stand still as we work on additional ways to improve. As you know, it's been an eventful few months on the macro and political front. In the European elections in June, parties in favor of the energy transition retained an overall majority, which is a positive outcome for the energy transition. For Europe to decarbonize in a secure and affordable way, we need a fully functional Europe-scale energy market, integrated, robust, maximizing the complementarity of the national production mixes and boosting interconnection. In France, the political situation has not yet fully stabilized, and it's fair to say there is a level of uncertainty as the new government hasn't yet been formed. But I'm confident that the short-term financial risks are limited. Moving to the next slide, with an update on our main ESG targets. Greenhouse gas emissions from energy production in the first half were 23 million tons, down from 26 million tons in the first half of last year. We moved a step forward in our target of a full exit from coal by 2027, with a Chilean regulator approving the conversion to gas of one of our three Mejillones units in 2025. You will recall that we already announced that the other two units will close in the same year. Moving on to the operational highlights of the first half, our Renewable business continues its inexorable expansion. We've added another 1 gigawatt of new wind and solar capacity, and at the end of June, we had 63 projects under construction, with capacity of almost 7 GW. We are fully focused on our target of adding 4 GW per year on average to 2025, supported by a diversified pipeline of 95 GW, up from 92 GW over the first half. We commercialize our Renewable business through GEMS and sign 1.5 GW of PPA, the large majority of which longer than 5 years. In Offshore Wind, our Ocean Winds joint venture achieved three major milestones, with the first power output at our Moray West plant in Scotland, the inauguration of the substation for our Iles d'Yeu et de Noirmoutier project in France, and the award of exclusive development rights for a 1.3 GW project in Australia. Our battery business is developing very strongly, particularly in the U.S., where we made this pivotal acquisition of the Texas-based standalone battery company, BRP. That was last year. So why Texas? The Texan power system, or ERCOT, is getting increasingly stretched. Look at the chart, and you see that hourly price differences are widening considerably. On top of that, the ERCOT regulatory body estimates a 75% or 65 GW increase in demand in 2030 versus 2023, and that is compared to a much lower forecast of a 25 GW increase at the time when we acquired BRP. So the market is only improving. What this means is an urgent need for new flexible generation, and crucial for us, as we are an early mover, it implies that the market will stay tight for longer, which adds to the competitiveness of our batteries and delays any risk of saturation of batteries further into the distance. So what do batteries provide to that market? First, they are instrumental towards the grid stability and reliability, as they provide ancillary services such as frequency regulation and responsive reserve. And second, they obviously shift energy between midday and evening hours, which are peak demand. If I want to zoom out for a minute on the acquisition of BRP, it is indeed a big success. The integration process has gone very well. We've been able to retain over 90% of BRP personnel, and we are already using BRP's platform to optimize our full grid-scale battery fleet in North America. Also, it's fair to say that market conditions have turned out slightly above our initial assumptions. BRP's construction schedule has proceeded at pace, with 800 MW completed so far this year, of which 775 MW in Texas. And beyond construction, as we have mentioned in the past, value creation relies on the basis of strong hedging. The cash flows from BRP assets have been hedged on average at 50% for the next 5 years, with 60% for the remainder of 2024 and 2025, and declining gently after that. For our non-BRP-based assets, we aim to raise our hedging to similar levels. Obviously, these hedges are important as they provide visibility, and they are executed using a wide range of products, including ancillary services and energy swaps. Very important to note that one of the key success elements in our battery business is that we are able to leverage our integrated position that we already have in Texas. We are big, both in upstream, in which we already operate over 3 GW of renewables, and also in downstream, where we have an extensive portfolio of large customers. With that, turning now to Pierre-François, who will discuss our first half financial results in detail. Thank you very much, Catherine, and good morning to all. We are indeed pleased with our H1 results, because they are good, but maybe even more, because it comforts the strategy and they demonstrate the quality of our portfolio of assets, and also our increasing ability to capture profit all the way through the energy value chain, even at the time energy prices are actually landing in normalizing markets. EBIT, excluding nuke, stand at EUR 5.6 billion, which is a decrease versus last year that was expected, due, of course, to the market condition I just mentioned. It is worth to notice the contribution from added capacity and renewables and the good performance on Flex Gen, but also the strong increase in energy solution due to a large negative one-off in H1 2023. We have generated a strong cash flow with CFFO at EUR 8.9 billion, and we have maintained stable credit ratios and net debt. Based on this strong start, we are indeed upgrading our 2024 guidance with four main reasons. The first three are linked to our operations. First, we had a good hydrology in H1, good volumes. Second, Flex Gen is enjoying supportive market conditions in Europe, and at which we can capture high spreads when providing flexibility services to the grid and to customers. But also, we had good conditions in Chile. And third, albeit lower than last year in H1, retail benefits from our reviewed sourcing strategy, including options to hedge volume risks, which are proving to be a tailwind under current market conditions. Then, last but not least, we also expect lower recurring financial costs due to high cash generation in Q1 2024, and also short-term interest rates staying high longer than expected, which are, of course, helping our returns on cash. As said earlier, EBIT excluding nuke stands at EUR 5.6 billion. The EUR 1.1 billion organic decrease versus last year is mainly coming from GEMS and reflects, once again, the energy market normalization. I will not elaborate on that one, and as I move on with a more detailed review by GBU. Starting, of course, with Renewables. Renewables, EBIT increased by EUR 133 million, half and half. Let me highlight four key topics. First, we had two headwinds. Price. Price impact was negative, at -EUR 265 million, as a result of lower capture prices, notably on hydro in France and in Portugal, to which we add up higher hydro tax in France due to high volumes. We had also other effects, penalizing EBIT for -EUR 128 million, including a lower one-off in Brazil on hydro concessions extension that we had last year, and higher OpEx, consistent with the growth of the business, not fully compensated by performance improvement. On the positive side, first, we continue to add capacities that translate into additional EBIT contribution for about EUR 250 million. It includes scope effect for about EUR 65 million from acquisitions, notably in South Africa in 2023, and in Brazil, early 2024. But it also include plus EUR 184 million of organic growth, a number, a figure which is quite compelling. On the positive side also, we benefited from excellent hydrology conditions in France and Portugal, resulting in positive volume effect of EUR 250 million. For France, hydro volumes increased from 7.9 TW in H1 2023 to 10.2 TW in H1 2024. That is a 30% increase. Overall, a good start of the year, with a 6% organic growth when prices permit, and great to see the contribution in the P&L of all the investments that we have made. Networks' EBIT is down EUR 168 million organically, that is -13%. Most of the decrease relates to Q1 and the adverse climate effect we had. It is worth to mention also that volumes were impacted by customer sobriety for about 2 TW in France. If you look at the waterfall, GRDF EBIT is down EUR 50 million versus last year, mainly due to mild weather in winter months and low volumes. GRTgaz and LNG decreased by EUR 106 million, due to the premium sales to Germany made last year, not repeated, mainly again, a Q1 effect. Storengy is down EUR 69 million due to lower market spreads in U.K. and Germany, as we enjoyed high volatility in 2023 due to exceptional market conditions. And internationally, we are growing a bit, + EUR 20 million in gas, + EUR 37 million in power networks. This is mainly due to the increased performance of our gas assets in Latin America, and to tariff increases and indexations in Chile and Brazil for power. Energy Solutions EBIT margin stands at 5.4%, in line with our plan and improving significantly versus last year. EBIT is up EUR 131 million organically, as a result of the recovery from the EUR 150 negative one-off we had in 2023 in the U.S., partly offset by price and climate headwinds in 2024. A remediation plan is progressing to deal with those contracts in the U.S., notably with strengthened project management. Excluding the 2023 one-off, the local energy networks EBIT is down EUR 9 million organically, mainly because of warm climate impacting volumes, partly offset by higher contribution of French district heating and cooling networks. Onsite energy production was impacted by lower solar EBITDA so margins, due to a business model change in the U.S., and also by lower solar production in France and Europe. Energy performance management benefited from higher contribution of our decarbonization activities. It was offset by lower energy sales margin in France, due to drop in gas prices. So all in all, a strong recovery from energy solutions with a 5.4% EBIT margin, despite climate and price headwinds. Flex Gen EBIT increased by EUR 232 million organically, that is, +32%. Performance is supported by higher capture spreads in Europe at EUR 55 per MW on average, a 53% increase versus last year. [It] may come a bit as a surprise, but it illustrates the efficiency of a hedging and trading strategy, and our ability to capture value from new market volatility, including hourly shape and new ancillary services. Good market environment as well in Chile, had also a positive price impact, with a drop in supply prices due to a very good hydrology. EBIT benefited as well from the growth of our CRM activities in Mexico, and from several positive one-offs, most of them discussed during our Q1 presentation. These elements have largely offset the impact of the Infra-marginal Tax in France, and the decrease in load factors of our CCGT in Europe, linked to the normalization of market conditions. You can, you can see it's another very strong quarter and half year for Flex Gen. Don't get carried away. Don't extrapolate another EUR 1 billion EBIT for H2, as H1 was benefiting from one-off, and also we are expecting negative price effects in Europe on our hedge position for H2. Looking at retail, EBIT amounted to EUR 304 million. That is a EUR 182 million organic decrease versus a quite high comparison basis last year. Organically, the EBIT decrease was mainly driven by volumes, with warm winter and client sobriety, leading to long positions monetized at lower prices in 2024. It was partly offset by cross-year impacts for +EUR 129 million, related to sourcing, tariff shields, and several settlements. Those cross-year impacts are expected to remain by year-end. You can see that price effect is very limited in the context of drop of energy prices, as you could expect, given our stringent hedging policies. It's good to see that retail is delivering a sound performance in H1. H2 2024 should land well above H2 2023, because the second half of last year was penalized by a non-recurring negative effect on the French tariff shield, and by the cost associated with the strengthening of a hedging policy. This cost is now completely integrated into our supply offers. So you should expect a good H2 in 2024, more consistent with the H1 performance. Let's now move to our nuclear activity. EBIT stands at EUR 770 million, that is a EUR 531 million increase versus previous year, due to the infra-marginal tax in Belgium coming to an end on June 2023. You can see in the slide that Belgian nuclear and infra-marginal taxes had a positive impact of EUR 622 million on year-on-year EBIT variance. This was partly offset by lower volumes, due to the decommissioning of Tihange 2 in February 2023, and lower availability in Belgium due to plant revisions, notably on Tihange 1. Capture prices were down 7%, impacting EBIT by EUR 24 million negative. Let's now move to others. EBIT decreased by EUR 1.2 billion, driven by GEMS, due to an exceptional comparison basis in 2023, and again, normalizing energy markets, leading to lower prices, and more importantly, to lower volatility. We have landed H1 2024 in line with expectations, with an EBIT excluding timing effects, excluding market reserve reversal and one-offs, slightly above EUR 1 billion, supported by high-margin contracts signed during previous years in our supply business. It compares with EUR 1.8 billion of underlying EBIT in H1 2023. It is, of course, a significant decrease coming from the new market conditions. Activity-wise, customers risk management and supply has recorded solid commercial order intake and high sales margins, while asset management and optimization has been impacted by the slowdown on trading activities with lower market volatility. The strong performance of GEMS, with EBIT at EUR 1.9 billion in H1, was notably underpinned by the two main non-recurring slash timing items we already mentioned in Q1. First one is a normalization of energy market conditions, leading to reversal of market reserves for about EUR 400 million, although smaller than in H1 2023, of course. The second one is a positive EUR 0.3 billion timing effect related to winter-summer seasonality embedded in summer supply contracts. This timing effect is expected to reverse in H2. To be complete, we also had some non-recurring items impacting EBIT in H1 2024 for a limited amount. For 2024 full year, we confirm the indication provided before of an EBIT for GEMS close to EUR 2 billion, excluding market reserve and reversal. Turning now to performance. Our continuous actions to improve performance contributed to EUR 87 million in EBIT during H1. The main contributor is operational excellence, with concrete actions ranging from PPA renegotiation to asset and contract portfolio optimization, and everything in the middle. Strong and sustainable momentum on that stream, which is, of course, very important for us in the long run. And then, while many loss-making entities are tracking well on their turnaround plans, especially in energy solutions, we have taken some one-off hits in very few, which are turning the net contribution negative. Bad news, but it is not expected to spill over in H2. All in all, we are on track to reach our objective to deliver EUR 200 million per year on average. Let's have a look now on the net income and mainly below EBIT items. The net financial expenses are actually down compared to last year by about EUR 100 million. We had a higher cost of gross debt. The average rate is increasing from 4.27% to 4.75%, nearly a 50 basis points increase on the gross debt, but it was offset by better cash remuneration, supported by high interest rates and strong cash generation in Q1 2024. The recurring income tax decreased by EUR 0.2 billion, with an effective tax rate at 24.2%, down from 25.1% in H1 2023. As a result, the net recurring income group share stands at EUR 3.8 billion, while reported net income amounts to EUR 1.9 billion, mostly due to the -EUR 2.2 billion non-recurring mark-to-market on energy derivatives. Please note that non-recurring items related to EVBox amount to about a -EUR 0.2 billion, half of it representing restructuring costs, so future cash out. The solvent liquidation process is on track, and all financial impacts, all of them, have been booked at the end of June. Let's move on to cash flows. Cash flow from operation amounted to EUR 8.9 billion, a decrease of EUR 0.6 billion compared to previous year, which was, you remember, a record high. CFFO benefits from strong operating cash flow. Again, also EUR 0.6 billion lower than last year. The change in working capital is increased by EUR 0.6 billion versus last year, with a few contrasting elements to mention. Here, be mindful that we are comparing variation of working cap, which doesn't make life easy. So the - EUR 2.3 billion on inventories is mainly driven by a higher decrease of gas stocks in 2023 versus 2024, which was led by the significant drop on gas prices during H1 2023. The net receivables decreased by EUR 4.4 billion, is a result of the lower energy prices and volumes that we had in 2024. The supply tariff shields negative impact EUR 2.1 billion is coming from France, where we had a very strong cash-in in H1 2023. Last, taxes on interest paid had a positive EUR 0.6 billion effect on year-on-year CFFO evolution. Let's look now how it translates on our net debt numbers. The net financial debt stands at EUR 30.2 billion, which is up EUR 0.7 billion compared to December last year. This increase is mainly driven by the capital expenditures for EUR 5.2 billion, the dividends paid to shareholders, and also some non-controlling interest of EUR 3.6 billion, and the phase out of our nuclear facilities, the funding and expenses for EUR 1.5 billion. These elements were largely offset by cash flow from operations, EUR 8.9 billion, but also some other elements, EUR 0.7 billion, mainly linked to the partial disposal of TAG for EUR 0.4 billion. The economic net debt is reduced by EUR 0.8 billion, mainly due to the decrease in provisions related to nuclear funding and costs, which more than offset the higher financial net debt. The leverage ratios are quite stable, with a 3.1 economic net debt to EBITDA ratio, well below our 4x threshold. In light of the strong H1 and the updated assumptions for the balance of the year, we are upgrading our full-year 2024 guidance. I've been through the main reasons of this upgrade, namely better hydrology, higher than expected H1 results for Flex Gen and retail, supportive market conditions in Europe for Flex Gen, high value on our retailers, sourcing optionality under current market conditions, and also lower recurring financial costs. We now expect 2024 net recurring income group share in the range of EUR 5 billion-EUR 5.6 billion, based on indicative EBITDA, excluding nuke from EUR 12.8 billion-13.8 billion, and EBIT excluding nuke, from EUR 8.2 billion-EUR 9.2 billion. This guidance is made on current regulatory and fiscal environment, but it does include some contingencies to deal with potential tax uncertainties. The other parts of the guidance related to rating and dividend remain unchanged. With that, I hand over back to Catherine for the conclusion. Thank you, Pierre-François. So to conclude, we delivered a very strong first half performance, both financially and operationally, using our flexibility to adapt and to benefit from fast-changing market conditions. The fact that despite lower market prices and volatility, we are able to raise our full year guidance to a level similar to that of the tailwind year of 2022 and 2023, demonstrate that our integrated and flexible business model is indeed really well suited to the energy transition, but also that our teams are doing a formidable job. I am so proud of them. With that, we can open the Q&A session. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The first question is from Ajay Patel of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Good morning, and thank you very much for the presentation, and congratulations on the results. I've maybe just one question really to flesh out. So I can see the guidance, broadly 60% of the increase seems to come from the EBIT line and about 40% from the interest line. I'm just trying to understand what continues into future years relative to, just this year impacts it. It seemed that the Flex Gen performance, we shouldn't extrapolate into the second half of the year. Good hydrology obviously helped H1. It felt like a lot of those EBIT drivers maybe don't continue into 2025. Is that a fair assessment? And then just on the interest side, clearly your cash is making a better, a return, this year. What assumptions are you baking in the guidances in 2025 and 2026, so that we can model correctly if, say, the interest rate outcomes are different to what you did when you set these guidances originally? Thank you. Thank you, Ajay, and nice try to get us to update 2025, 2026, but we are not going to do that. Just let me give you some colors, of course. I think you picked it up pretty well. First, in the rise of our guidance, there is something not to forget, is that all our businesses have been performing well, and I think that you should not lose sight that we had a big commitment on increasing capacities in Renewables, and it is coming through. And you know that we also expect in H2 a strong contribution from network with the tariff increase, which is confirmed. So there are some underlying trend, which are very important, and they do support 2025, 2026 as well. So there is no secret that, the price environment has been changing quite a lot over the last few months, but all in all, on 2025, 2026, it is still a bit more depressed compared to what we had at the very end of December, which was the base of our, of our guidance on 2025, 2026. And there are, of course, some tax uncertainties around that. However, it is fair to say that indeed very pleased with, Flex Gen development. Clearly, we have shown some capacity to, to capture, some extra value of the, the new volatility in the market, which is coming through, and Catherine alluded to that, with the role of renewables and this new, need for flexibility, so it's good. Not always easy for us to forecast and to model, but clearly we can make our share out of it. That's very important. We are also pleased to see that retail now is pretty stabilized with good sourcing backing well our offers to customers. So that's definitely pointing in the right direction, so good news. Then on the financial part, it's not an easy one. I mean, we have been surprised, definitely, by the pace of the cash coming in. The big reason behind it, because was, of course, a decrease in prices, and it’s a bit of surprising, but when the price come down, we free up a lot of working capital that's been flowing in very quickly in the year, so a big cash pile coming through. That helps. How much of that is going to go through up to the year-end and could be a bit of a tailwind in 2025? Difficult to say. Clearly, we are positive and optimistic on the way we are going to close the year in terms of cash compared to our previous expectation, and that's not a big amount, so be careful with that. And then, of course, there is a big question on the rates. I mean, are we going to see a curve which is coming back to a usual contango? Are we staying where we are? I mean, that's a big discussion. Now, we expect the interest rates, the short-term interest rates to come down. When they will come down, we have clearly a big part of the benefit that we had this year fading away. So, long story short, you know that we have clearly reduced significantly our estimate for the financial interest in 2024. You have the numbers that we have shared with you. We revised downward our average financial cost in Q1. We decided to say for the three years, we came down from 2.5-2.8 to 2.4-2.7. I think that's still something that we stick to, but indeed, for 2024, we expect to be lower. Now, of course, if the rates were playing in the right way, that could help us a bit more. I hope it helps. Yeah, that helps very, very much. Thank you very much. The next question is from Wanda Serwinowska of UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, Wanda Serwinowska, UBS. Two questions from me, and thank you very much for the presentation, and congratulations on the upgrade. The first one is a call on the, basically, the British networks. The press is basically saying that ENGIE partnered with CDPQ to basically buy British Power Networks. Would you be able to explain the rationale behind it? Because you are not present in the electricity networks in the U.K., and when we look at the value of the transaction, based on the press speculation, it's pretty high. And the second question is on the EVBox. Can you please remind us what is happening? 'Cause I... Maybe I misunderstood it, misunderstood it, but it seems that you are closing down the business. I remember in May, earlier this year, in May, your message around EVBox profitability was pretty, negative, so any comments and clarity would be much, much appreciated. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, thank you for the question. So maybe just to give a little bit of context, first of all, in general on the positioning of ENGIE as regards to networks. Networks are a key part of our business. We cherish our utility status. It gives us a certain business risk profile, which we are very attached to. Traditionally, we have been very strong in networks in France, in gas.... And in 2021, we made this decision and that we shared with the market, that we wanted to rebalance our position in networks by developing a little bit more of our networks on the power side. So a bit less gas, more power, and a little bit less France, a bit more international. This rebalancing movement, we have started, in fact, as early as 2021. We made a few sell down on our gas networks, and you have seen some of them already, again, in 2024, we've announced that in TAG. So that's on the dropping or lowering our gas exposure. And then we're doing the second level, which is with developing our power networks position. We've done that quite a bit in transmission. Typically, we do that organically, where we have a presence and competency, so we've done that quite successfully in Latin America. For example, in Brazil, where, you know, we have won some series of auctions, et cetera. And then we have identified also opportunities in the world of distribution, and that is more difficult to do as a greenfield strategy. So here we are, very carefully looking at potential acquisition. However, to do an acquisition in this field, I think you alluded to, the price can be very high. So we are very strict, both on the, obviously, financial criteria, but also in terms of the quality of the assets, the quality of the country that this asset will be in, so it means quality of regulation. The performance of the asset is also very important, as often the regulations tend to be quite strict in the performance criteria that these assets need to deliver. We want it to be a manageable size. We want, obviously, to have the controlling interest, and it has also to deliver or to give us growth opportunities. Because one of the ideas behind this rebalancing between gas and power is that typically with the energy transition, there is more growth in power, so it helps us making sure that the regulated part of our earnings continue to be steady as we are growing the company, and obviously there is much less growth in our gas assets. So we have a list of criteria, as you can see, it's a quite stringent list of criteria, not many, many targets meet this criteria. And indeed, we had identified, and we have identified in the U.K., a target, which we have been interested in. And we actually did submit an offer, an offer that has not been retained, and I think it is simply a testimony to our determination in remaining very disciplined in our financial and capital allocation. So we will, of course, look out for similar opportunities, but as you know, as you said, there are not that many. So we are determined also to be very patient. This rebalancing, again, started in 2021. We have time, and we will be very careful and selective in delivering this rebalancing. I hope this helps. I think you also had a question on EVBox, so maybe just to say that indeed, you know, this has been a bit of a long story. We have had several attempts to dispose full or part of the EVBox activities. There have been actually quite a few significant losses incurred, and so we have decided to stop the financing of EVBox. We have initiated a consultation with the different works council, so we have basically a process to initiate what we call a solvent liquidation process. It's a bit technical, but we are going through the process. We now have the various local work councils being consulted. That was initiated at the end of June, and we are targeting end of November of this year to end the consultation process and to therefore proceed, if obviously the process is successful, with the solvent liquidation. Thank you very much. Just one, one very quick follow-up on EVBox. Would you be able to disclose the numbers? So how much you booked as a loss in H1? Is it included as a one-off at the EV level, or is it like non-recurring item, and how much it may cost you by the end of the year? Just trying to understand the impact on 2024 numbers. Yeah, I mean, EVBox has been bleeding hard for a few years. So last year it was a negative, about EUR 140 million at EBIT level. And it is trading a bit below now, so it's a bit less bleeding, but not great. So what you should expect for this year, I mean, we have two non-recurring items here in H1. One is a depreciation of any asset related to EVBox, and the other one is a restructuring provision that covers, of course, everything we need to do with our customers, because we have customers we need to take care of, with our employees, and with all existing contracts. So, I mentioned the number, it's all in all, it's a bit more than EUR 200 million, half-half, you could say. And then there would be for this year, again, some impact in EBIT, but less than we had last year at EBIT level. And then in 2025, of course, we expect to be off the hook of this support story, which is, as you know, a legacy of the past. Brilliant. Thank you very much for the answers. The next question is from Arthur Sitbon of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hello. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is actually on the rebalancing between gas and power networks that you were mentioning. I was wondering if ever you can't acquire a business this year and which seems to be the case, if I understood your previous comment correctly. So So what would be the other way for you to conduct this rebalancing in the coming years? Is it just looking at other potential acquisitions? Can it be also reducing the exposure to gas? I don't know if that would be in France or somewhere else, but some thoughts around that would be quite helpful. The other question is, I was wondering on the infra-marginal tax, if you could quantify the contingencies that you assumed in your, in your guidance for that development for, yeah, you know, in, in 2024. Thank you very much. Yeah, Arthur, so just, I would just repeat some of my early comments now, which is, we are patient, we have time, we have two levers to do this rebalance. We can drop a little bit our exposure in gas. And examples of that, again, you know, is when we did a sell down on GRTgaz back in 2021, we did a sell down in TAG. We also have announced a partnership with Macquarie in Mexico on some of our gas assets, with a direction to actually be also selling part of that to get to a 50/50 shareholding structure for our gas asset in Mexico. That's the direction that we are taking. So that's one of the levers. And then the second is indeed, you know, we would be looking both at continuing to develop organically in Latin America. I've talked about Brazil, but we also have Chile and Peru, where we have small positions. So there we have competency. There are auctions. Again, you know, the need for electrification supporting this organic development, and so we will be part of that, obviously being very disciplined when we participate in auctions. And you see that sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but sometimes we win. And then on the distribution, which are interesting also assets, here, we would be looking at a set of criteria. We believe that we can be competitive, but that we will not do not reasonable price. We want to submit very, very reasonable price when we participate in this competition, and we believe that, you know, one day we might be successful, but we will not do stupid things. So patience, and these two levers, both on the gas side and on elect side, is giving us some flexibility for action. You want to talk about your contingencies and, Yeah, on the contingencies, after, first, it's not very tactful to ask the turkey to write the menu of the Christmas dinner, so, we, we will not be too detailed on that. It is just normal for any company to have, at this point of the year, some contingencies, which are factoring the guidance. We do have these contingencies covering all kind of risks. And I would say, on the tax risk, that indeed that could fit into these contingencies, as long as it is kind of reasonable tax risk, kind of, as discussion, the ongoing discussion which have been there before before the Olympic Games. I mean, this is the kind of thing we can tackle. Now, if there is something completely crazy out of the blue, that's another story, but then you can imagine that we will react to that. But if it is something that is compatible with law and regulation, I think we believe that our contingencies are adequate. Thank you very much. The next question is from Peter Bisztyga of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to come back to Flex Gen, please. So, if I remember correctly, your guidance at the beginning of the year was for that division to be down around EUR 500 million, approximately year-over-year, and you're sort of tracking EUR 200 million higher as of the first half. So I was wondering if you could, you know, maybe be a bit more precise in terms of where your full year expectation is now. Should we be expecting it to be flat year-over-year or even up year-over-year in the full year? And could you maybe drill down a little bit more in a bit more detail as to what has been better than expected? I guess I'm trying to sort of figure out how much of your original guidance was just very conservative, given the, you know, rapid collapse and sort of volatility. Or how much has genuinely been driven by much better than expected, you know, asset performance. So just trying to sort of get a better sense of that. And also, I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but have you said what the EBITDA contribution of your U.S. battery storage business, BRP was so far this year? And what your expectation is for the full year there, please? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, maybe to start with, a short one on the second one, on BRP. We expect an EBITDA this year of a few tenths of million. You know, that we are just completing the building and the construction, so as expected, we expect it in H2, and that should come for a few tenths of million. And we indeed confirm that we plan to increase that EBITDA contribution by about $100 million per year on average for the next few years, as we complete the construction of the pipe. And by the way, the pipe is confirmed. So I think that we are on track on this EBITDA growth that will start in H2 and develop in the year after. On Flex Gen, yeah, maybe we are a bit conservative. We have also, you know, we have to be careful because I know, guys, you are also looking at the plus and minus and the arrows that we are sharing GBU by GBU to build your forecast, and that's only fair, and sometimes it's rounding, and it can be that indeed a couple of hundreds are maybe overstated. So probably we were a bit higher initially than what you could have in mind due to this rounding. However, indeed, we are much higher than expected. That's a fair comment. I think that what is key here is that we have been able. First, we knew that H1 will be much better than H2, so it's no news to us because this hedging that took place in 2022 and 2023, I mean, we knew that H1 was better. So it was not the same. The two halves of the year are different because the hedged prices are different by far due to the market prevailing at the time the hedging was contracted. So that was known, and you need to factor that, of course, very clearly when you plan your H2. So maybe we're a bit surprised at that. We are less surprised by that. What surprised us, definitely, is capability to grasp some further boost to this hedging, capturing some spreads in the market, which is linked to the hourly shape. And clearly, we are using today our CCGTs in another way. And even when it is hedged, we still. It is financially settled, so we keep the flexibility of the plants, so we can still use them in the way we want to do it and the way it can accommodate the TSO. And definitely, we are using these facilities in quite a few countries in Europe, and that is linked to the new market condition triggered by renewables. It's a bit new for us as well, to be very candid, and I wish we could predict more. We are working on it, but we are definitely strong in this, in grasping this number. So that's definitely one. The other one that came very favorably is the hydrology that we had in Chile, because we had this. You know that in Chile, we have a bit of a short position because we have PPAs, which are fixed price, indexed, but fixed price contracted, and we are a bit short on the supply. So when the prices are pushed down by a strong hydrology, it does increase our margin. That was not easy at all to forecast. And then indeed, we got some tailwind. We do not expect this to be repeated in H2, and the big tickets will be in Q4, so we don't know yet what would be the hydrology in Chile, and we don't take in account that it would repeat. So you need to factor these items, which are part of it. Then we have another dimension, which is that, you know, when we have this portfolio of hedges, we can also trade on this portfolio, and that's a part of the optimization, again, and there is volatility. So there is, we have a long volatility position that we can trade. Sometimes it is worth nothing, sometimes it is worth something, and we indeed plan usually carefully about that, and we deliver a bit more than expected on that. So that gives you some hints. So, first, probably, the market was a bit shy on what was expected due to the surroundings. The H1, H2 maybe was not fully understood, and that we here need to improve, definitely. And then we were clearly surprised in H1 by the items that I just mentioned. I hope it helps you and to also build your H2. Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you very much. The next question is from Louis Boujard of ODDO. Please go ahead. Yes, hi. Thank you very much. Sorry for the delay. Thank you very much. Good morning, and congratulations for the results. Maybe two questions on my side. The first one would be maybe to focus on the, on the retail business. I think that I heard you saying that you've been able to take some volume hedged in this activity during the 1H, and that indeed enabled to have quite a good result for the first half, and also that we could expect that it could remain quite good during the second half. My question would be to understand what kind of position did you take, and shall we consider that this is going to enable a better remuneration for the retail business also going forward in the next few years on top of 2024? My second question would be, and sorry for that, to come back a little bit on the tax issue in France. Of course, that could be eventually to peak in the second half of this year with some granularity that is going to be needed. I was wondering, considering the contingency that you took for 2024, I think it's, it's okay, but, did you take also some contingency for 2025, 2026? And, do you think that, the current level of prices enable you to remain confident as well into the different element and prospect in terms of discussion that you may have on this topic in the next few months? Thank you very much. On 2025, 2026, I'm not going to elaborate much further. There are plus and minus, and clearly, there is prices. There are also the operations and what we have seen in 2024. And clearly, I mentioned also that GEMS is doing well. That the trading today, I mean, the way we build, we interact with our customers and the margins that we are capable actually to lock in, is still running at a good level, so this is encouraging. So you have plus and minus, and we are not, again, going to update 2025, 2026, but if there was a good reason to believe that we would not make it, of course, we would share that with you. So, that's... So pack it, and we believe that we can handle what we know today for 2025, 2026. That's not a, not a big deal. On retail, I'm not going to elaborate too much. I think that what, what you, what you need to understand is, of course, the market is more volatile, more complex than before. . So, it is needed when you source and when you structure the portfolio, the sourcing portfolio, you need to make sure that you de-risk basically your offers. So that's the key point. And for us, you remember, in 2022 and 2023, we had some volumes. We were along with some volumes, and we incurred significant gains and then significant losses. This is not a very comfortable place to be. So that's what we are trying to address, which is de-risk part of the sourcing, which is coming with the portfolio. So don't expect this to be increased margins or things like that. It's just usual margins, but more secured and more predictable. That's what we are trying to work on, and that's all the point of these options that we are trying to build in the sourcing portfolio. Thank you very much. The next question is from Harry Wyburd of Exane. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks. So just, just one from me, and sorry to keep returning to the topic of electricity networks, but just a very high-level, fundamental question here. And you've, you've alluded to being very disciplined on pricing, but ultimately, electricity networks come typically at high multiples. Gas networks, obviously very dependent on the asset, but potentially could be sold at lower multiples if you're gonna use asset sales to fund acquisitions. So are you confident that you can do this portfolio rotation effectively out of gas and into electricity without creating earnings dilution? And have you factored any dilution into your plan for that? And then maybe just a final sub-question, specifically, would you consider selling your Middle Eastern gas assets? Because I, I guess they would also come with a bit of a, a carbon intensity benefit if you disposed of those. Thank you. Okay, so I think, obviously, very, very specific questions to answer, but maybe, in general, we have, and we've said that, you know, we would be doing this rebalancing, that we would be giving ourselves some times. What we like about electricity networks, indeed, is that they have a very strong growth prospect, and when and if we were to find the right criteria, the assets that meets the criteria that I've listed, in specifically, strong regulation, the strength of regulation, alignment with energy transition, the need to develop and obviously spend CapEx and do some smart development to enable the energy transition around the networks. We believe that, indeed, these assets would be very interesting for us, and provide us with a growth profile that would be very interesting, while remaining, you know, true to the characteristic of being strong, regulated assets, which are very nice, constitutional makeup of the mix of energy that we would like to keep as a utility company. So, you know, this is a bit theoretical, because obviously we would be talking at a specific times, if and when we have something to comment. Right now, we do not have something to comment, but obviously we would be looking at all factors and looking at earnings accretion over time, based on the profile of the assets that we consider. And then obviously, we won't comment too much on the gas-fired assets. These are contracted assets, very, you know, good assets, contracted assets. We have some flexibility in our portfolio, Harry, but I won't comment more on any of those, these questions as well. Okay, fair, fair enough. Thank you. The next question is from Meike Becker of HSBC. Please go ahead. Oh, yes, thank you very much for taking my question. And, if you don't mind maybe moving to the renewable side of things, but, also linking it back to the network. The focus has shifted, and we are talking more about networks. We're talking more about storage. Should we read into that, that your view on Renewables has changed as sort of like it has maybe in the overall sector, and some peers of yours have shifted, have shifted already? Not talking about it, us not asking the question. So if you could just sort of, like, talk about your renewables outlook, how, how do you think about your spreads? Maybe also your sort of, like, view on sort of, like, your development opportunities in Asia, that's big part of your pipeline, and if that changed in any way, relative to how you're seeing networks, that would be great. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, Renewable outlook continues to be very strong because we have a conviction at ENGIE that it is really, really important to be able to generate green electrons, and that they are gonna come in scarcity, and that we will need them, that they bring a lot of value. So we continue to be very bullish in Renewables. We are obviously always adapting our pipeline based on a series of constraints, evolution, and it can be sometimes your geopolitical risk, it can be a supply chain constraint, it can be technology risk, it can be... So we have a little bit of flexibility, and you will see indeed, you know, in our portfolio, a little bit of evolution over time. This gives us, by the way, you know, a good protection, as we are a little bit balancing our risk based on, on the evolution that I've just talked about.... but in general, we continue to be very bullish on, on Renewables. We are very focused on execution, we are very focused on returns, we are very selective, our criteria have not changed. And I think very importantly, you know, our Renewables development hinges on the needs that our customers have. And customers and market continue to be very demanding for these green electrons. Now, what has emerged from, from this, from this evolution or from this trend, is indeed that Renewables are very nicely paired with storage solution. So our battery strategy comes as a support to our Renewables, it's not a substitution to our Renewables strategy, if I may say. So they are very complementary, and, you know, the example of the Texas, where we have this very nice matching between our renewable development and battery development, is a testimony to that. In terms of opportunities in Asia, what we are right now looking at is Australia, and we've made, you know, some progress in Australia, particularly in offshore. We made an announcement on this, but not only. And we're also quite bullish on India, where we have some good development with good prices on solar, particularly. So these are some of the developments or evolution, but really not revolution in our strategy on Renewables at all. Great, thank you. The next question is from Juan Rodriguez of Kepler. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for taking our question. I have one remaining, if I may. It's on the economic net debt and the EUR 1.5 billion down on your nuclear funding and cost that you signal. If you can give us more color, that will be helpful. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. I mean, as you know, we are in the process of funding our liabilities, so, basically, we are committed, and that has nothing to do with the deals that we struck last year. We are committed to fund our liabilities, so every quarter, we are actually transferring some cash to Synatom, which is the subsidiary, which is investing the money to cover these liabilities, to hedge these liabilities. So, we do that on a regular basis, and so what you see in this economic net debt move, is the cash that we are sending to Synatom, and it is also the cash cost that we are incurring when we are dismantling. You know, now we started to dismantle two of these units, so we are also incurring some costs. The reason why it is shown into the variation of economic net debt is that the liabilities are already included in the economic net debt. So when we are cashing, it's an increase of the financial net debt, but it doesn't have any impact on the economic net debt. It was already accounted for. I hope it's clear, just a move, it's a cash move to Synatom and to the cost, but does not impact the economic net debt. That's why we have to show this when we bridge with the financial net debt. And since I have the mic, just to mention, I forgot to answer to Peter on Flex Gen. I forgot the one-offs that we had, especially at the beginning of the year. So we had, quite a few positive one-off in Flex Gen that helped us and that were also unexpected and explained this strong start of the year. Of course, they are not expected to be repeated in H2. The next question is from Piotr Dzieciołowski of Citi. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, everybody, and thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. So the first one I wanted to ask you, how would you compare the possible returns on investment from the batteries versus the renewables? Is this that the batteries give you probably a higher returns? And on this subject, when you guide to a EUR 100 million EBIT increase in the BRP, how much CapEx do you have to spend to achieve this target? And the second question I have on the supply, how do you see a current competitive landscape? Do you see a more of a churn and, that's the second question. Maybe just quickly, and to remind you on our investment policy, we always calculate our work based on the specific technology, but also the type of risk that the project entails. So typically, a merchant exposed project will require higher return on investment than contracted. So typically, on average, I would say that best return on investment would be higher than Renewables, because most of our Renewables development tend to be contracted either through CFD or PPA. So that's really on average, and typically, you know, batteries, they command... Therefore, they command higher return on investment, but also shorter payback, which is also a good protection against, you know, some of the market dynamics that could happen in the future. And then what do we need to invest? Sorry, what was the second part of the question? So I think it is, how much investment CapEx do we need to achieve that kind of growth of EBITDA? It depends, of course, every year, but as it's, you are talking about a low hundreds of millions. So, let's say $200 million-$300 million per year, depending, of course, on the year. Maybe a bit more next year, and the year after, a bit less. So that's, that's the kind of numbers. The payback on this asset is pretty quick, and it's pretty fast payback, as Catherine was alluding to. It comes with stronger returns, because it's more merchant, so there is a good reason for that, but also the payback is good. And at least less capital-intensive that indeed is a wide renewable. And then retail on the competitive landscape, I think it's fair to say that it is become, again, quite competitive. You know, prices have-- I mean, the market is a little bit more complicated, so we see some of the suppliers returning to the market and proposing offers, so a bit more competitive landscape. But obviously, we have a stronger commercial presence, and then we are taking the right actions to maintain a good positioning in this market. But it's fair to say that it's a bit more competitive than it has been in the recent past. Okay. Thank you very much. The last question is from Arnaud Palliez of CIC Market Solutions. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have two remaining questions on Renewables. The first one is about the additional 1.5 GW of PPA you signed in H1. I would like to know if there is any change in terms of conditions compared with previous PPA. Have you noticed any change in the market environment at this level? And the second question is about the M&A pipeline in Renewables. It is... There were some press articles mentioning your interest for Acciona Energía assets. So I would like to know if you can comment, and more generally speaking, how do you see the pipeline in terms of a potential acquisition in renewables? So maybe a general comment on the PPA market, we continue to see the market quite buoyant, translating into good price support, notably in the United States. A little bit less on the price side in Europe, so demand, but price, you know, obviously reflecting a little bit the market conditions. So that's one of the trend. And then what we are seeing, and that's very, very obvious among our GAFAM customer, we're actually happy to sign even longer PPAs. So now we are seeing and discussing, you know, terms of up to 20 years, which is a little bit of a interesting trend as well. So that's some of the commentary I would give you on the PPAs. And then, Acciona Energía asset interest, so no, no specific, no specific comment, and no comment on press speculation on this. My only thing is just, obviously we have a strong presence in Iberia. We have a really good portfolio, that we continue to develop, but I won't comment on the specific. So this is the end of the Q&A session. So thank you for joining the call today. And of course, if you have any follow-up questions, do not hesitate to reach the IR team. I wish you a very good day. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes this conference call. ENGIE thanks you for your participation. You may now disconnect.