Good day, and welcome to the Europcar H1 Results and Special Announcement call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Caroline Cohen, Head of Investor Relations, Caroline Parot, CEO, and Luc Peligry, CFO. Please go ahead. Thank you, Catherine. Dear everyone, welcome to Europcar Mobility Group H1 2021 Results and special announcement today conference call. In a moment, I will give the floor to Caroline Parot, CEO of the group, and Luc Peligry, CFO. They will take you through the presentation, and then we will open up the line for questions. As today's presentation may contain some forward-looking statements, we invite you to read the important legal disclaimer of this presentation. This presentation is available on the company's website, and a replay of this call will be available shortly on our website. With that, it's my pleasure to pass the floor to Caroline Parot. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Sorry for the delay in our call tonight for the H1 results. I am today with Luc Peligry, which will guide you through the H1 results with me. Before that's the reason of the delay, we want to guide you through an important announcement that we have just posted on our website, a specific announcement regarding a tender offer on the company. I'm delighted to announce to you that our company has reached an agreement with a consortium of potential buyers led by Volkswagen Group, in which are also Pon, and expanding international mobility services, and Attestor, which was a key expert in our financial restructuring. I won't go on all the details which are on the presentation. I want to say to you that our board of directors has favorably welcomed an offer of EUR 0.50 on the group. You can see the details of what is about the offer in the slide in front of you. This is following some rumors which were coming since the beginning of June. We have finalized this negotiation, and we are going to enter in the process over the next few months regarding this tender offer. If we consider not the financial metrics that you will appreciate and will be progressively measured by an independent expert that has been appointed and will work through the finalization of the assessment of this offer, I want to go to the strong strategic rationale behind this contemplated tender offer. If you go on the next slide. In a nutshell, regarding the strategy of the company, we are joining forces with a member of this consortium that will put us in an even stronger position to capture growth and expand our mobility solutions offering in a context of increasing customer appetite for on-demand services, such as subscription models based on usage. Besides, together with the consortium members, we could have a big impact on our mobility ecosystem, transform and adapt to mobility current and future challenges. This has definitively promising and exciting perspectives for the consortium, for the company, and for the group going forward in this fantastic economical mobility system. I will be able to answer all your questions at the end of the call regarding these specific announcements. Now, I will guide you through our H1 results in the mobility space as well. We start with the second presentation, with an agenda which is more traditional here. Our Q2 highlights, an update of the Connect rollout, the strategic roadmap, a presentation of H1 results, which Luc Peligry will guide you through, and finally, an outlook for the second half of the year. If you go to slide five. Our Q2 activity, despite some travel restrictions which were still in place, leading to a no Easter effect for the second year in a row, was characterized by revenue growth and, most importantly, by return to positive corporate EBITDA. This achievement was mainly driven by volumes and prices, both in Europe and in the U.S., that will be commented later on in this presentation. What made this return to corporate EBITDA possible is also, of course, our continued tight control on our fixed cost base, which, as already stated at the occasions of our Q1 publication, is paying off. With greatly increased agility, we are confident in our capacity to keep on adapting our variable and network cost base to business level over the course of 2021. In terms of cash management, we are still improving compared to initial planning. This is becoming better and better and more efficient quarter after quarter at prioritizing and rightsizing investments while enhancing our liquidity profile. Regarding the rollout of Connect, our strategic roadmap, we are well on track with new go-to-market approaches implemented and the successful launch of the new services solutions that I'm going to go through now. Please turn to slide seven. Over the course of H1 2021, the group made good progress on its Connect roadmap, in line with our global rollout planning. Let me first remind you that on a long-term perspective, Connect aims at significantly transform the model and profile our group, enabling a rebalancing of our revenue streams with less seasonality, leaner organization and operations, paving the way for enhanced cost efficiency, profitability, and improved free cash flow generation. Finally, at scale digitization of the customer experience we deliver, cross-brands and geographies. Let's go into our H1 achievements now. With our organization by service lines, we have developed new go-to market approaches so as to design and launch offers and services tailored around customers' needs and expectation in a context where some of them have been amplified by the COVID crisis, especially regarding contactless and fully digital solutions. This is why our Key'n Go solutions, operated by Goldcar and deployed in 35 key leisure airports in Southern Europe, met such great success. It is fast, as it allows customer to go directly to the key dispenser when they land and receive their keys in one minute. It is hassle-free, as coverage and roadside assistance are bundled in the rental fee. It adds an extra safety dimension, as it is 100% digital and contactless. Two elements particularly illustrate the success of Key'n Go in H1. Its Net Promoter Score, which is way over the low-cost segment average and close to Europcar's one. Its revenue progression doubled versus last year. For B2B customers, in order to meet their increasing need for greater flexibility in the context of the pandemic, we launched innovative offers to facilitate their day-to-day life, thanks to flexible mid and long-term subscription models: Flex, SuperFlex, DuoFlex. In a nutshell, these brand-new solutions are modern and disruptive alternatives to fixed-term leasing and to vehicle ownership, as they are based on the convenience of a monthly subscription without the need to commit on a set long duration. Here again, this launch was met with great success. Thanks to these new offers, our fleet services increased by 19% versus last year. With these new highly flexible solutions, combined with our expertise in fleet management at scale, we are convinced that we have a developed competitive advantage over other rental players as well as leasers with good growth perspective ahead of us. Building on this success, our proximity service line has designed for B2C customer, a very innovative subscription offer that we will launch in one of our major countries for a pilot phase over the course of H2. I won't go into details here, clearly intend to make this offer one of our flagships, as it is clear alternative to vehicle ownership in a market context where usage is the new consumption model of all kind of services, including, of course, mobility. Please turn to Slide eight. On transversal programs, which are also part of Connect, we have also made good progress, here, too, we are on track with our rollout planning. First, our One Connected Fleet program. The connectivity and tech backbone topics have been tackled, we are now in active deployment mode while developing in parallel our data management capacities. 10% of the group fleet is already connected with the ambition of having 100% of it fully connected by end of 2023. On the sustainability front, we made good progress as well. As part of the One Sustainable Fleet program and in line with our ambition to have more than one-third of our fleet made of electric, hybrid, or plug-in hybrid vehicles by end of 2023, we crossed the 5% line in H1, going from 3.9 end of 2020 to 6.5 in H1 2021. This may appear quite low, but the limiting factor is infrastructures, and as their number increase, so we will share of the green vehicles in our fleet. Finally, the step one of the group brand new unified and strongly integrated IT system were successfully reached and resulted as planned in the June launch in Portugal, allowing for a global implementation cross-brand and countries in the next future. This is a key milestone in the group journey towards at scale, fully digitized customer journey and operations. Please go to Slide nine. Let's focus a little bit on One Connected Fleet for a few minutes. As I told you, our ambition is to have 100% of the group fleet connected by end of 2023. Today, at group level, 10% is connected in the program, despite its inherent complexity. We are really on track. Our pilot market, the U.K., has already connected over two-third of its vehicles and will reach 100% milestone at the end of this year. In H1 2022, in addition to those in the U.K., our van and trucks will also be fully connected in France, Spain and Italy and Portugal. End of 2022, we will reach two-third of connectivity threshold, paving the way for the 100% target of 2023. This program is strategic and of paramount importance both for operation and for our business. Thanks to seamless access to vehicle telemetry data such as geo-localization, fuel level, mileage, and maintenance alerts, we will be able to continuously improve customer experience and optimize business applications as well as internal processes such as fleet inventory management, fleet delivery and collection, maintenance, and so on. As a result, we should be able not only to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, but also our efficiency and our profitability. I now hand over to Luc Peligry, who is going to guide you through our detailed Q2 and H1 results. Thank you, Caroline. Good evening, everybody. I will go on slide 11. As you see from the revenue profile has been contrasted between the two quarters of 2021 with a 36% decline in Q1 and a solid rebound of 88% in Q2, despite no Easter effect on that quarter. In Q2, we see volumes and price picking up in domestic markets in the U.S., in Australia, and progressively in Europe from May onwards. Price increase is no doubt linked to the demand and cautiousness of the increasing by all car rental companies, including us, but also spurred by the shortage of supply of chip components, which affect the OEM and their production. Compared to 2019, where we have a more steady base of comparison on a like-for-like basis, we have naturally not recovered the 2019 levels, but the performance has clearly improved month after month from -47% in April, -37% in June 2021, and breaking the 40% threshold, which is clearly positive signs as it demonstrates a will from customers, particularly from leisure, to travel when travel restrictions are lifted. Slide 12. If we look at Q2 2021 specifically, as you can see, our car segment more than doubled at EUR 106 million versus out of the first EUR 380 million of rental revenue, mostly driven by our leisure service line, which benefited from the low-cost segment in Spain with Goldcar and in the U.S. with Fox. Volumes went up strongly, as well as positive pricing in Europe since May this year. Traditionally, you know that we have Easter launching the season. In fact, we suffered from a weak April, which was still affected by numerous lockdowns and curfew measures. On the Van and Truck side, we performed extremely well with a +32%. This BU returned to its 2019 levels as they did in Q1, driven by the strong demand and the success of our Super Sites towards corporate customers and our new long-term solutions offers. As for previous quarters, the BU benefited highly from home delivery, increasing home delivery, and e-commerce. Switch to slide number 13. MDC, the Margin on Direct Costs, is improving month after month. We are at the end of June 2021 at 28.6%, less than 5% behind our 2019 performance. As we just saw, on top of the activity rebound, we are continuing our cost optimization and performance programs that I would like to highlight to you through three main KPIs. First, on the fleet side, for the first time since August 2020, we are increasing. You can see the rebound from the 187,000 vehicles on average in Q1 to 210 vehicles on average. That's plus 37%. We have even a higher position of 251,000 vehicles at the closing of June, which is a strong performance. This shows our ability, agility, and knowledge from our fleet teams to refleet significantly in a short period of time, despite a tense market due to the chip shortage. The second very important KPI, of course, is the utilization rate. You see that we are just 1% behind 2019, despite a very contrasted, volatile, and uncertain environment. This is a very strong performance from our revenue capacity management team and fleet team as well. As a result, when you see on the right-hand side of the graph, you see that the direct and variable costs have decreased by 17% in H1 2021 versus H1 2020. While revenue were up 4% or close to -38% versus H1 2019. One of the reasons is coming from the fleet with the flexibility of our business model, able to follow the revenue trend, and some benefits from a good used car market for resale in the countries where we had high rate of fleet at risk. Overall, it is the consequence of the buyback model. As a consequence, this is only 3% down versus a decrease in revenue with some costs like the airports, which bear some main piece. Slide 14. On the second part of the cost, we've got the fixed and semi-fixed costs. Here we are particularly proud of the strong reduction, minus 34% versus H1 2019 we achieved in this H1. This means that we adapt our HQ and network to a lower level of capital activity, and this is the payoff of all the implementation of the adaptation plan in 2020. We took, of course, advantage of temporary state-driven measures that also cut costs on a permanent basis, closing some station and transferring others to agent, as well as implementing restructuring plan on top of further measures in some cases. This is a great achievement and the results, especially when you look at Q1 and Q2 figures in the context of the strong growth between these two quarters. A reminder, the revenue between Q1 2021 and Q2 2021 grew by 37%, from EUR 366 million to EUR 486 million. The cost base grew only by 5%. This confirms the permanent reduced fixed cost on HQ with very limited follow measures. The reduced increase of network cost leading to the increase of rentals at very limited, thanks to the efficiency recovery and taking advantage of the network rationalization, the good control of this cost base. Again, this is a very strong level for the group to improve mechanically our profitability for this year. Of course, with the future and the top line recovery. Let's go to slide 15. First, it's a very positive result from all these efforts and achievements on top line and cost control, with a positive corporate EBITDA for Q2, as you see, at EUR 20 million for Q2 2021, with some improvements month after month. I will not go in detail already because we commented already on the fixed and the variable cost. I will look at the full through, which means that we look at the variance in corporate EBITDA versus the variance in revenue to illustrate the work done. If you take the comparison between Q2 2021 and Q2 2020. Q2 2020 was, of course, probably the peak of the crisis. The performance is amazing. +88% in revenue in Q2 2021, with variable cost going down by 14% and fixed costs decreasing by 21%, leading to an improvement of EUR 230 million of revenue, for EUR 160 million of corporate EBITDA. The second comparison that we can do is between H1 2020 and H1 2021. EUR 26 million of revenue improvement for EUR 184 million of corporate EBITDA improvement. The last one, for H1 2021 versus H1 2019, the revenue are down by EUR 600 million for a limited impact of EUR 100 million. Meaning that it's a 16% of pull-through. This is, I think, a self-explanatory performance of another evidence of the agility of the business model and the solid contribution of all teams to achieve these solid performances. Switch to slide 16. The profit before tax has strongly recovered, compared to last year, with a EUR 233 million improvement from EUR 363 to EUR 130. The bulk of it coming from the EBITDA. You can see that the depreciation of sale of fleet has decreased, mainly due to the network rationalization and reduced rents. The non-recurring charges outside of the financial restructuring are on track with our planned reboot launched last year. We have notably some expenses linked to the finalization of the merger of our German entities between Europcar and Buchbinder, which has been finalized in May this year, to give birth to one single operational entity in Germany, operating the two brands, Europcar and Buchbinder. On the cost of the non-fleet financing, we enjoyed significant reduced level of corporate debt, thanks to the restructuring, which occurred at the end of February, which balanced some higher costs. We have isolated the impact of the restructuring on specific lines. You can see on the net restructuring results, which is positive for EUR 22 million, mostly of it is non-cash. As far as tax is concerned, we kept a cautious view on tax losses carry forward. We activated only tax losses for EUR 14 million, compared to EUR 77 million in H1 2020. This give an ETR of 7%, translating a good utilization of tax losses in a respective concern country in application of the existing local rules. The net loss is limited to EUR 122 million, improving by EUR 165 million versus last year. We'll go to slide 17. The cash and liquidity remain at the heart of the way we manage the group and our business decisions. This is something which is already shown by our operating free cash flow, which is positive at the end of Q2, even if we attach the cost of the corporate debt, which is a very strong and solid achievement for the company. Usually, our business profile shows the highest cash burn of the year during Q1. For H1, we managed to reach a negative operating free cash flow of EUR 84 million, where we were at minus EUR 100 at the end of Q1. We are still behind 2019 performance by EUR 126 million, and the main reasons are the following. The bulk, of course, is coming from the EBITDA, with EUR 107 million, despite the strong improvement delivered, but let me remind you that we lost EUR 600 million of revenue over the period, considering only EUR 100 million loss at corporate EBITDA level. On the non-rec item, we are aligned with the finalization of our restructuring plan started in H2 2020, and we limited to EUR 18 million of non-rec cost. We have numerous operation initiatives ongoing to schedule cost optimization, namely, rationalization of network, finalization of the German merger, and some layoff as well. On the CapEx side, you see the CapEx are EUR 26 million for the H1. We have a strong focus on the product and tech project, which we've already some deliveries on the connected cars, as mentioned by Caroline, which is a strong lever to improve a combination of revenue, improvement of the cost at the station, and the customer satisfaction. As far as the non-fleet working capital is concerned, H1 2021 is on track with our expectations, but below 2019 for two main reasons. First, the reduced level of leisure customers implying reduced prepayment from tour operators and brokers, while the lever on this cash improvements. The second topic is the progressive normalization of the non-fleet working capital to recover standard practices. On the tax side, there are no major changes. Overall, we confirm that our corporate operating free cash flow will improve significantly compared to our original frame one. Switch to slide 18. As you can see, we are closing H1 with a corporate debt of EUR 266 million, which is a strong achievement to finish this financial review. The corporate debt increased by EUR 106 million in Q1, and we said at the time that it would be the peak for the year. Starting with Q2, the change in corporate debt is this time limited to EUR 67 million, reflecting positive cash generation on operating free cash flow, but somewhat offset by a strong fleet timing impact linked to the strong in-fleeting to sustain the peak season. As far as liquidity is concerned, the corporate group's position remained robust at EUR 447 million. The decrease of EUR 70 million versus Q1 2021 reflects the corporate cash put in fleet to sustain the in-fleeting. Finally, a very good news. We managed to refinance the EUR 1.7 billion securitization program with the SARF, which has been signed this week, extending the maturity until July 2024. As a consequence, between the low level of net corporate debt, the strong existing liquidity, the low level of cash burn in Q2, Europcar Mobility Group has all financial means to sustain the recovery of the business. Thank you. Thank you, Luc, for this analytical review. Now, I would like to share, before the conclusion, our outlook for the rest of the year on slide 20. A few words regarding Q3 first. We are reasonably optimistic, faced with quite contrasted picture. While our U.S. operation are still experiencing a strong recovery, the situation in Europe is a little bit more volatile, if I may say, mainly because of how fast the Delta variant is spreading, leading states to implement new restriction or unlock them progressively. In both cases anyway, we expect the positive pricing environment to continue, and we consider that we will have a significantly positive increase in the revenue for the rest of the year. Given this context, we are not in position to provide a full guidance for 2021. However, assuming no further deterioration on travel restriction and shortage of semiconductors, as I said, we are confident that our revenue will significantly increase. Besides that, we expect that our corporate debt will be contained in the range of EUR 300 million-EUR 250 million by year-end. With that, thank you very much for your attention. I will open the floor to the question. Obviously, we have two special communication this day. The start of the recovery in our business, which is growing strong proof of increase in both profitability and cash generation. We are not exiting from the COVID, but we are back on the more regular growth profile we were having before. Second, the long-term vision for the group, with the announcement of the contemplated tender offer, just along with the consortium led by Volkswagen. With that, I'm happy to handle your questions. We do now have a question from Jemma Permalloo at J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Hello? Can you hear me? Yes. Now, yes. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. I just had two questions. That's probably more specific to the credit. Do you have an update on the fleet note, the one maturing in 2022? Secondly, in light of this announcement with the consortium led by Volkswagen, and I understand it might be early days, but what's the longer-term strategy in terms of maybe bond issuance, and what's the strategy there, really? Thank you. This is Caroline. I will leave the floor for the fleet bond questions to Luc, but for the long-term strategy, as you mentioned. We have a contemplated tender offer, which is ongoing and starting today. This transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. We do expect to close the transaction late Q4 or in Q1 next year. Even though you have seen that the main shareholders of the group, representing approximately 68% of the share capital, have entered into undertakings to tender their shares into the offer. Giving the view and the magnitude of how the offer is perceived by our shareholders. We are, during the next six months, running as a standalone view. We will continue business as usual, including regular financings for the fleet. Luc has mentioned that we have refinanced the SARF yesterday, and we'll give you some views on what are the next steps for the other normal course of business fleet financing lines. Yes. As mentioned by Caroline, we refinanced the SARF yesterday, and the SARF is working with the fleet bond, of course. The fleet bond is maturing in the EUR 500 million fleet bond, which is maturing in November 2022. We will refinance probably the fleet bond in the second half of the year, one year before it matures. We managed as well to refinance on the normal course of business. We are finalizing as well the financing of the U.S. activities, and we are, as well, in the process of refinancing the U.K. as well. Things are pointing well, so that's very positive. Thank you. We'll now take the next question from Patrick Jousseaume at Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Yes, good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, Patrick. [Foreign language] Patrick. Good evening, Caroline and Luc. My first question, you have 68% of the shareholders, main shareholders representing 68% of the share capital, that are happy to tender their share to the offer. Who are the 30 other%? Could you give us some information about them? Second question, have you talked, I think it's a complicated question, talked with other potential groups which are interested in the company besides Volkswagen? Third question, you mentioned corporate net debt, expecting in the range of EUR 300 million-EUR 350 million, it's quite precise. I guess that in order to get this level of precision, you've got also a decent level of precision on corporate EBITDA for the full year. Could you comment on that? I will leave the floor for Luc on the last question. Who are the other shareholders, in fact, the group of shareholders, we trapped under their shares are the most important one. We have a float for the rest. We have identified positions. We have also nice discussions, and we will discuss with all of them, I'm sure, after this call today. We don't provide a list because they are below the thresholds for most of them. Your second point of have we discussed with other potential bidders? The leak is in the market since mid-June. The company was in play for M&A since 2019, so we are pretty familiar with the potential bidders. If they were on the radar, they have not been really around so far. The process is public, so we will see what could happen or not. We do believe the discussion with Volkswagen and the consortium, we are managing the very strong way for the best of the shareholders and the company. Patrick, as far as the corporate net debt is concerned, we put this range because we think that this is a key metric for the group, that it gives a confidence that with the SARF renegotiation, it's a good example of positive sign on the cash side, and we're giving confidence. I think that the corporate net debt, we feel that after the H1, we are at EUR 266. With the next two quarters, what we see from the activity, that we should be able to drive the debt on that range. We are not communicating any of the guidance of any figures on corporate EBITDA side. Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, please press star one. It appears there are no further questions at this time. Thank you, Catherine. I think that we can end up the call. If there are any follow-up question, please call us back. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to attend this call. Sorry for being late due to the announcements we have just made, us and the consortium. We will be happy in the next days to engage with each of you on a need-be basis. The company is back on the profitable path. With the current agreement on the consortium, we see also a path strategically for the future, which is strengthening the company position in the mobility area. Thank you for that, and talk to you very soon. Thank you. Good evening. That concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.