Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the FDJ conference call. I now hand over to Stéphane Pallez, Chairwoman and CEO. Madam, please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon or good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I should say that I'm Stéphane Pallez, the Chairwoman and CEO of FDJ, and I'm with Pascal Chaffard, Executive Representative in Charge of Finance, Performance, and Strategy. I hope you are well. We're going to commence the press release that we published at the close of the market today. The presentation that we're going to commence is going to be available online in the investor section of our corporate website. We will therefore have a brief presentation and we'll of course leave you some time for Q&A session. In terms of key highlights, I think we can say that we are in a good business momentum. We have achieved a strong first half of 2022 with revenue and EBITDA up respectively 12% for revenue and 18% for EBITDA. And an EBITDA margin of 25.4%, up 130 basis points. Of course, this positive results illustrate the success for our games with the public, and is reflected in the nearly 10% increase in stakes, which is both true at point of sale and online. We'll come back to that. I want to draw your attention on the fact that this level also reflects a significant COVID catch-up impact. When particularly you remember that nearly 10% of our point of sales, especially bars, were closed until June 2021. We have a base effect when we compare this 2022 semester to the first semester of 2021. Particularly since these closures had very strongly impacted our Amigo games, which were down 50% in H1 2021, but also our instant games. We have definitely this strong effect that might explain, I would say, two-thirds of the growth of the lottery in the first half of the year. We have, of course, a very good growth of the lottery, but maybe even higher due to this base comparison effect. Therefore, the trends that you see, of course, cannot be just extrapolated to the whole year. Of course, we'll come back to that, especially with Pascal presentation. I want also to strengthen that at the same time, we've also been strengthening our CSR commitments as we always do. Of course, we've been beefing up our excessive and underage gambling prevention. I will also come back to that. We've also been giving a specific grant to restore French forest after the big burn that we had. We worked on our environment strategy, and especially we obtained a new carbon rating. In terms of further developments and investment in our future growth, we also made two small acquisitions to accelerate the development of our payment and service strategy. We'll also come back to that. Also, I want to state, but I'm sure that you will ask questions anyway, that in fact there were no further developments on the side of the European Commission. Of course, I'm sure you will ask questions, but actually there are no news on that at this point. It will be more, I think, in the first, in the second half, and that we will get more into this. To give you a little more details about what I said in terms of CSR being at the heart of FDJ's business model. I only mentioned that we have decided to give a specific grant to the French National Forestry Office. This is the context of our biodiversity strategy, which is actually one of the commitments that we have in our environment strategy. Of course, this is a continuous effort. We have strengthened the prevention of excessive underage gaming with the launch, particularly of a large TV information campaign entitled The Player Rules. In four films that remind the good gaming practices, specifically be over eighteen, set a budget, monitor gaming habits, with a, I think, a very nice and well-done campaign. Of course, this is in the context of our commitment to allocate 10% of our advertising and promotional campaigns budget to responsible gaming campaign, which means actually a significant increase as of 2022. We have also strengthened our initiatives to fight against underage gaming in our retail network. This is very important for our regulator. It's important just because it's the law. We are conducting a new campaign to control our points of sale. We have a new information for the public, and we have applied some sanctions to our retailers to definitely enforce this law. As I said, we have developed our environmental strategy, and we have been recognized as being part of a very good company by a new index that has been published recently by [The IC 40]. To turn to what I said in terms of acceleration of our strategy in payment of services, I want to explain to you a little bit in the context in which we developed this strategy. As you know, this is one of the three diversification activities alongside international B2B and entertainment, in which we invest to get future growth, future profitable growth. We have already started to develop this payment and service business with a clear ambition to become the leading proximity payment and collection network in France. We're using our assets, of course, our large network of 30,000 points of sale, our know-how in transaction management. We have, as you know, in 2019, won a tender to be the partner of the French Treasury to offer point-of-sale payment services that have been developing quite well since we have 13,000 points of sale that distribute this service. We aim to extend this service to other private billers, such as water and energy suppliers and landlords. We have all the authorization also granted by the French regulator, ACPR, and we have created our own brand to develop those services. We have the opportunity, and this is what I want to mention now, to acquire 2 rather small but interesting assets to complement our internal assets, particularly to be able to provide the point-of-sale system to our network and to complement the network to which we can develop these services with an extended network, cafe, hotel, restaurant that is quite comparable. We acquired Aleda and L'Addition. We actually just signed those acquisition. Aleda is a specialist in payments and collection equipment and services for local business, notably tobacconists, bars, and news agents. L'Addition is a specialist in payments and collection equipment and services for cafe, bar, hotel, and restaurants. Those acquisitions will be completely definitive in the next weeks, and we will integrate them in our strategy. To answer already to one question you might have, the total amount of those acquisitions is a little above EUR 50 million for both of them. It's not a transforming acquisition, but it's a nice way to strengthen our expertise and capacity to develop those services in the short term. Now I will hand over to Pascal, that will comment more deeply our financial figures for this H1. Thank you. Thank you, Stéphane, and good evening, everyone. Let's have a look at the key figures of the first half. Revenue rose by 12.1%, more than the increase in stakes, which rose by 9%-10%, which is a drop in the player payout ratio to 68% from 68.7% a year ago, and this decrease is solely attributable to sports betting, which I will return to later. EBITDA, it has been said by Stéphane already. The level of the EBITDA, I don't repeat again. As Stéphane mentioned, in addition to our historical normative growth trajectory, if I may say, this very good performance reflects also favorable comparison that is linked to the COVID context in the first half of 2021, which was still considerably disrupted. Now, let's look at the performance of each business in detail. For lottery, the +17% increase in revenue to EUR 946 million is based on identical growth in stakes supported by both draw games and instant games. Stéphane spoke to you earlier about the COVID catch-up. We estimate that overall two-thirds of the growth in lottery is attributable to this. Most of the annual growth and a part of instant games growth also. The remaining third is attributable to the sole success of our games, fueled by marketing initiatives, both on draw games, including Euromillions with boosted jackpots, and instant games with the launch and relaunch of games, notably Cash, the most emblematic of the range in February. Draw games were up 19%, driven mainly by Amigo. If we exclude Amigo, gross stakes were up by a low single-digit figure. Instant games increased by 15%, also benefiting from a 2021 base impacted by store closures. For sports betting, the decline in the player payout ratio to 76%, sorry, versus 77.5% in H1 2021 explains the variation difference between revenues -5% and stakes -11%. This player payout ratio is one of the lowest recorded on the semester. The change in stakes mainly reflects two things. First effect is the high comparison basis Q2 UEFA Euro soccer championship, which had started on June 11, 2021. Excluding this, Q2 2021 stakes would have been nearly unchanged. The second effect is a less busy schedule and a less attractive offering in H1 2022, amplified by a low player payout suffered from December 2021. Globally in France as well as internationally, the current online sports betting market dynamics softened. You may have seen the recent financial communication from some certain of our peers. The good news for FDJ is that end-of-May figures on our online sports betting were about 10 points ahead of the French market. We continue to gain market share. Given the World Cup at the end of the year, already Q3 with a busier schedule than usual on football, and then Q4 will be key to determine annual performance. It's a good thing for us to enter the second half of the year with a player payout level that will allow us to have an attractive offering over the competitive period. This is a very good thing for the second half. The growth in stakes of nearly 10% was driven both by points of sale and online channels. In points of sale, stakes grew by 9.8%. We've returned to normal, both in terms of football and number of points of sale open. On lottery, the increase in points of sale stakes was higher than we had anticipated. Online stakes grew by 9.1%, representing 12% of total stakes. After being stable in Q1, in Q2, online stakes were strongly up compared to Q2 2021. We said that we expected Q2 would be much better than Q1, and that's what happened. The rebound in Q2 online lottery stakes of +31%, visible in the graphic on the right, is entirely driven by the growth in the number of players. It means LFL growth. Over a running twelve-month period to the end of June 2022, more than 4.5 million players have played one of the games offered online. The overall momentum in Q3 should continue to be strong. As you know, online lottery benefits from a very good elasticity of stakes in high jackpot levels, especially Euromillions. When we have seen this again in recent days with 230 million jackpots leading to a year-to-date online lottery stake growth above 20% end of last week. For Q4, the comparison basis is more challenging. Q4 2021 had benefited from exceptional long cycles, we will see. We saw in the key figures that EBITDA increased by 18%, represented a margin of 25.4% up 130 basis points. Let's see how the main cost items evolved in H1 2022. Cost of sales are mainly made up retailer commissions, which increased by 10% to EUR 474 million in line with point of sale stakes. Marketing and communication costs include advertising, communication costs. As well as those related to the development of the games and service offering. It is this last component that largely explains the overall 16% increase. The tight control of our general and administrative expenses is reflected in the decline of 4% of those costs. In the second half, the football World Cup in November, December should result in higher player payout ratio than in H1. Higher marketing and communication costs too. A World Cup is an investment period to recruit new players and gain market share. The cost will be visible in 2022 and the return in 2023 with the value added by the new recruited players. Moreover, the new sponsoring deal with PSG is beginning in H2 also. We anticipate also higher costs in cost of sales in H2 with the beginning of the deployment of the new visual identity in our point of sale. In comparison, point of sale activity had not totally resumed in H2 2021. We will reinforce our investment in IT context of the development of the omnichannel experience, and also in our acceleration business units at a higher level than before. For example, we prepare to enter to new tenders with expanded operations service proposed. Now let's have a look at the breakdown of EBITDA by business unit on the left hand side graphic. For Lottery, the contribution margin is EUR 346 million, or a rate of 36.6%, with a rebound in advertisement and promotion better distributed throughout the year than last year. For the whole full year 2022, lottery contribution margin should be close to the H1 level, that's above the 35.9% of 2021. For Sports Betting, the contribution margin was EUR 69 million, hence a rate of 29.5%. This cannot be extrapolated over the year. As we said it before, the player payout ratio in H1 is low, and it will not be the same in the second half of the year. In addition, we will have some specific advertising information costs for this World Cup and also the launch of our poker offer in second half. Acceleration business unit contribution margin is negative by EUR 10 million, and all the costs are broadly stable at EUR 97 million. If we now look at the year-on-year EBITDA margin bridge. On the graphic on the right, we see that the 48 increase in EBITDA, EUR 48 million, obviously, between H1 2021 and H1 2022 is mainly driven by lottery. Let's now detail the EUR 308 million EBITDA bridge to the net income of EUR 160 million, with main pre-items: depreciation and amortization, costs of EUR 63 million are stable. The financial result deficit of EUR 22 million reflects the highly volatile financial market. Thus, the valuation of the group's various financial assets at fair value generated a negative effect of EUR 20 million in the first half of the year, compared with an income of EUR 3 million in the first half of 2021. We have EUR 14 million on the bond portfolio, EUR 8 million on the equity, and EUR 2 million on the diversification portfolio. Importantly, more than a third of this mark-to-market is attributable to dedicated fund bond funds, which the group intends to hold until maturity during 2024, in which case there will be not any impairment finally. The tax charge of EUR 58 million implies a tax rate of 26.8% that can be extrapolated over the full year. Before commenting on the side, I would like to remind you that it's not appropriate to extrapolate the half yearly net cash surplus over the year as there is a strong calendar impact at the end of the year with an advanced payment in December for the public levies for the month in addition of those for November and a possible accounting for a large prize not yet paid. You know this bridge. Now also let us go to the main point. One of the indicators of the group cash position is the net cash surplus, which is EUR 891 million at June 30, compared to EUR 916 million at December 31, 2021. Our available cash still stand at a very high level of nearly EUR 900 million, and after considering our other investment securities and our gross financial debt, the net cash surplus reach an almost identical level close to EUR 900 million. Thank you for your attention, and Stéphane and I am now available to answer your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad. We have our first question from Ed Young, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got a couple. First one is on, you said that you're not changing guidance for the year at this stage, given uncertainty in H2. That's obviously understandable. One of your elements of your guidance is growth of online stakes above 20%. It was obviously a bit below 10% in H1. Are you essentially expecting a similar kind of growth you saw in Q2 for the rest of the year? Yes, you've got some comps here and there, but is that the right way to think about, you're basically expecting +30%, that's where that guidance still stands? Was your comment around the guidance more around the revenue growth than the EBITDA margin? Maybe to start, as you rightly understood, we're not changing our guidance because, well, because we think that there are, as we said, some elements of comparison in the first semester that you have to identify. And therefore, there is no reason again to extrapolate what we have in first half to the second half. Second, because there is, I would say, as for any business, even if we are a business that is used to being not very sensitive to a macroeconomic environment, there are some uncertainties that are too high today to, I would say, to take a firm view about what's going to happen. In terms of digital, I think that you have seen. I think this is something that you have to take into consideration, that growth on online lottery stakes can be quite different from one quarter to another one, because it is still quite well quite directly related to the growth of some of our digital offer and specifically to the long cycle that we get or not in for Loto and Euromillions. We have here some elements of uncertainty also in terms of prediction of the rates quarter by quarter, which of course are mixed with comparison effect when we compare two quarters when we add that type of effect. All in all, what we think is that we're still in the type of growth. We're still aiming at the type of growth that we have in our guidance for the whole year. With that type of volatility, I would say from one quarter to another one with obviously quite a good quarter in on this for the second one with over 30% growth. We are of course aiming at continuing at a dynamic trend for the third quarter. For the fourth quarter, we have a quite strong base to compare with. At this stage, we believe that there is no reason not to continue to aim for that type of 20% growth, which is a kind of midterm guidance that we are aiming at anyway. Pascal, you want to comment on that? Yeah. I can comment on the EBITDA margin you talked about also. The EBITDA margin will be a little bit less high in the second half because we will have an effect on the sports betting activity. We have a particularly high margin in the first half, but it's not a good way to think about this margin because it's a margin made of a very low player payout and also a low cost. In H2, we will have, we think, higher player payouts due to the World Cup especially, and also more expenses due also to the World Cup and the launch of the poker. This will have something like 1% margin effect in second half, but really the first half is exceptional. It's not that the second half is questionable. It's more that the first half is exceptional. We have a usual effect that our margin in H2 is always a little bit lower than the margin in H1, something like 0.5%. We also have some costs in H2. For example, we are beginning to deploy our new visual identity in our point of sale. It will begin in September, so it will cost a little bit. We are also continuing to invest quite heavily in our IT and in our roadmap for diversification activities. We are confident that we will be at the level of the guidance, which is, if we recall, more than 23.5%. But it's too early to say if we would be higher, and we think it will not be possible to be much higher. On our revenue, we will have a clear view at the end of Q3 to know how will react our customers in September and how will react the sports betting market when the championship will resume in August to September to see what is the dynamic of this market and if we can extrapolate a little bit more than we have in our guidance. It's too early, really too early to commit on something that would be higher than our guidance. Understood, and thank you for all that detail. That's really useful. I guess what I'm reflecting on is that your online or your digital mix actually very slightly reduced in the half, and yet you had very strong margin growth. You called out a lot of reasons, you know, Pascal, about all the kind of moving parts to think about, but if you are gonna be doing ballpark 30% growth in online in H2, presumably your online mix is obviously going to go up. Won't that also be reducing your cost of sales mix? Won't that be sort of accretive to margin? I'm just trying to think about what kind of impact that will have if sort of online and sort of behaves in terms of growth as you expect. Yes, you are right. The online mix, when it is better, is good for the margin. As you see in H1, we had also some other things that are good for the margin. For example, the growth in points of sale, which is really interesting also, in terms of margin. On the online margin, what is also important is to see that we are doing a lot of efforts to recruit new players, and it has a certain cost also. It has to be seen not quarter by quarter, but on a global trend. This is what we explained when we explained our midterm guidance. It's really not to be seen quarter by quarter. I think it's not the right way to see it. Okay. Thank you. Final question. Just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about poker. I think you were reticent to say much at Q1 because there was various things yet to be finalized, but obviously it's launching in H2. You mentioned there'll be some marketing costs attached to it, but I just wondered if you could give a bit of a view over, you know, your ambition to that business, what you expect and just, you know, for us, how to think about how that might affect the shape of your, I guess it'll be booked within the sports betting business. You're talking about online poker. I think what we announced, and it is still absolutely the case, is that we are working to be able to have an online poker offer that would be up and running before the end of the year. It's not going to, I think, change our business for this year. It is really a midterm strategy that we're putting in place in order to be present in a more comprehensive way on the online market. Particularly to be able to, I would say, manage and retain our customer in a more efficient way. We'll give, of course, more details when it will be launched, but it won't be material in terms of, I think, business very much ahead of the end of the year. It will be done definitely before the end of the year. Okay. Thank you very much. We have another question from Kiranjot Dhillon from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hey. Afternoon, guys. Just a couple questions from me. Firstly, on the cash, I know you've been aiming to do an acquisition. If you still don't find something which is suitable, what do you think you'll be doing with the balance sheet? Can we talk about inflation, and particularly cost inflation? I realize given your sort of point-of-sale model, it puts you in a relatively better position to deal with inflation. You know, as you focus on online and growing out that business, how are you seeing cost inflation develop there? Thank you. I think your question on cash is a kind of a classic question, so we're going to give you kind of a classic answer, if I may. We are at this point still actively pursuing some opportunities that we might find to use our cash and balance sheet in a profitable and strategic way. We are still on that base. We have not changed. I think we also explained in a previous call or meetings that, given the level of our accounting reserves, we don't have much margin to redistribute a large amount of cash, given the structure of our balance sheet and accounts. We could come back to that. Basically, there's no change to that and no change envisaged at this point. Of course, we'll come back to that, and you will ask us to come back to that in next meetings. At this point, no change to our willingness and optimism about our capacity to invest in a profitable way the level of cash that we are generating. To your second question, which is about inflation, just maybe one note. Just to say that at this point, we've basically no direct impact on inflation. Not to say that we're not going to get some in the future. Actually we are more working on assessing what the potential impact that it might have in 2023. Why are we protected at this point? It's Well, first because inflation is definitely lower in France than in other European countries and in the States. I think we don't have exactly the same type of potential impact. Second, because our business is, I would say our costs are not in majority directly impacted by inflation. Third, because the parts of our costs that are impacted by inflation are, at this point, have been protected by the type of contracts that we have specifically with our providers of tickets. Again, we might get some impact, but not at very high level, and they are not visible yet. I don't know, Pascal, whether you want to comment. Yes. Yes, exactly that. It's really very low in 2022. In 2023 it will be a little bit higher, but it's manageable and it is not putting in danger our guidance, our midterm guidance, clearly. Maybe another reason why we are more protected than other business. In France, there is quite a protection of customers, and with a recent law that has been voted to protect the people from the impact of inflation. It will cost a lot to the government. Yes. Principally on energy. We think that it's quite an important view when you compare the French context to other context in other countries. Our lottery business, at least, has demonstrated its relative resilience in the past in economic crisis. Maybe we have to be more cautious about the sports betting and we will see in the next months. To date, no impact. Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot. We have another question from Andrew Tam from Redburn. Please Please go ahead. Hi there. Thanks for your time and taking my questions. Just touching on that last question on inflation. To what extent do you have the ability to pass on, price rises on the tickets, or are they on, fixed contracts as well? That's my first question. I think in our business there is no. Well, first, as we just said, it will be a little bit strange to have answered that we are not very much impacted by inflation in our costs, and to argue to pass it to our customers. That I could stop here at this point because it would be quite, I think, difficult to explain. In our business, I think we have a range of different games with different prices, and in fact, people do not buy one product, they actually buy several of our products. I think if we were to just pass inflation on one type of our product, it would probably have some consequence on the whole basket of products that people are buying from us. I don't think it's really first again. I don't think there is much sense in doing it at this point, and I'm not sure it would be a good strategy. That's where we stand at this point. The concept of price in our business is a kind of different. There's no price. It's a relation between win and loss. The price is the prize payouts. So it has not to be taken like other businesses. The question is whether our customers can. If the value of the currency is going lower, are they able to adapt the volume of euro that they put in our activity? The answer is yes. The answer is yes on draw games because a single bet slip on draw games is EUR 2 or EUR 2.5, depending if we talk about Euromillions or Loto. On other games, it's from EUR 1-EUR 5, so they can adapt the price. On scratch cards, they can choose between tickets that are at a price of EUR 1-EUR 10, so they can change their basket as Stéphane explained. In sports betting, it's even better because the customers is choosing the level of bets. So we can adapt the level of bets. So you cannot see this activity as a classic activity regarding impact of inflation. Sure. No, thanks for that. Another question just on your guidance, obviously, with this stronger first half, just to touch on Ed's point. Obviously, implicitly, is it fair to say that second half will be weaker? And then if I wrap in your comments around continued momentum around the lottery business, is it fair to say that a lot more weakness will come through that sports betting business then, specifically in the second half, despite the fact that there is going to be more activity in the space with the FIFA World Cup? Is that a fair comment? Yes. The first half was quite weak sports betting and a very strong lottery, because also of the COVID catch-up. Second half will be more the opposite. It will not be a weak lottery, but a weaker growth on lottery because we will compare to an exceptional Q4, 2021. And on sports betting, we expect a larger growth in the second half because we expect growth in the global European stakes as we are -11% at the end of H1. It means that we expect quite important growth in H2. You are perfectly right. But as sports betting is 20%- Sure. Of total activity, the global mix will be a weaker level of growth in second half of the year. It's not a problem, it's just the way the year is distributed. You also mentioned macro uncertainties, quote-unquote, in terms of maintaining your guidance. How much of that would potentially relate to potentially softer lottery sales, you know, heading in towards the back half of the year? Are you seeing any of that to date? No. Again, as we said, first, we're not seeing any effect of that as of today. I think that's. Okay. That's one. Second, when we turn to the past, actually to a long historical series, we have not seen that relationship between lower growth and lottery sales in the past. However, I think we are cautious because we are entering, I think, into an environment that in fact is not easy to compare to other periods with, as you say, as you see, higher inflation. No one knows exactly how high it will go and how long it will last. Moral of the consumers seems to be lower today. Again, even though we don't see any sign. As Pascal was saying, actually, we don't expect that to be much visible if it would happen in the lottery. We believe sports might be a little bit sensitive to that environment. Actually, at this point, again, it's very difficult to see some impact of this in our current figures or activity. It's really because as a lot of companies, we have very good results on one side in the first half. We believe that the environment is changing very rapidly. That's where we should be a little cautious before thinking that things will just stay the same. Understood. Thank you. We have no further question. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial zero and one on your telephone keypad. Okay. Well, if there are no other questions. I'm sorry. We have another question that. Oh, you have another one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. I don't have the name of the attendee. Introduce yourself and ask your question. Sure. Yeah. It's Simon Davies from Deutsche Bank. Can you hear me okay? We don't hear you. Um. No, we don't hear you. Sorry. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yes. Now, yes. Now, yes. Now, yes. Yeah. It's Simon Davies from Deutsche Bank. Just a couple quick ones from me. You talked about the World Cup in sort of negative terms, i.e., reduced margin and higher marketing costs. Presumably, as an event, it should be accretive in the fourth quarter. I mean, historically, the guidance has always been, it's like the equivalent of an extra month of trading. Do you think that is a reasonable guide in terms of the level of staking you would expect from-