Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's Legrand 2021 first half results conference call. All participants are in listen-only mode. Later, there will be a question and answer session, sorry. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to hand over the call to the CEO, Mr. Benoît Coquart, and CFO, Mr. Franck Lemery. Sir, please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning to all of you. Franck, Ronan, and myself are happy to welcome you to the Legrand 2021 H1 results conference call and webcast. As you know, we have published today our press release, our financial statements, and a slideshow to which we will refer. Those documents are available on the Legrand website. Please note that this conference is recorded and webcasted on our website. After a few opening remarks, Franck and I will comment into more details the first half results of 2021. I begin on page four with the three takeaways of today's release. First takeaway, in the first half, we recorded a steep rise in sales of +21.9% year-on-year or +7% over two years. This performance was driven primarily by organic growth in sales of +22.6% or +3.9% over two years. Adjusted operating margin came to 22% of sales. Net profit also increased by a very good +68% from the first half of 2020. These achievements clearly confirm the continued improvements of Legrand competitive positions on its markets, as well as our capacity to take full advantage of opportunities for growth in buy-in segments linked to the building of tomorrow. They also testify to the relevance of Legrand unique model for profitable and responsible value creation. Second, on the back of the H1 very good showings, but also a persistently uncertain health environment and strong and rising pressure on upstream supply chains, Legrand is revising its full-year targets. Third takeaway is regarding external growth. Following three acquisitions announced in early 2021, we are announcing today two new acquisitions in our core businesses as well as in electric mobility. Before entering into more details on the three takeaways, I would like to add that our group has also continued to strengthen its other fundamentals by investing in innovation, including rollout of a host of new products since the beginning of the year. Also confirmed its ESG commitments with the publication of our latest materiality survey results and the recent validation by SBTi of our carbon emission reduction trajectory, which is aligned on holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Moving to page six, let's dive into sales trends recorded in the first half of the year. Our revenues showed a steep rise in all regions with, at group level, a strong organic growth of +22.6% over the period, with very nice trends in both major countries at +19.4% and in new economies at +32.8%. Over two years, group organic sales grew +3.9%. As I previously mentioned, this reflects clear, stronger positions in our markets. This performance is notably driven by good demand in residential and data center markets, as well as connected products in many countries. It is also the result of the moves we made since the beginning of the pandemic. For example, the fact that we give first priority on servicing our customers, continue to launch many marketing initiatives, keep an upbeat pace of innovation, and also step up all digitalization initiatives. Additionally, acquisitions contributed to an increase in sales of +4.6% thanks to the operations we made in 2020. Based on those, the external growth for the full year would reach 2.5%. Exchange rates, on the other hand, had a negative impact of -4.9% for the first half. Applying June average Forex rates for the rest of the year, this effect should theoretically be about -3% in 2021 as a whole. Let's move now to page seven to go into more details regarding the like-for-like evolution of sales by geographical zone. In Europe, organic sales were up +30.6% in the first half of 2021. In Europe major countries, sales rose +32.1%, with organic growth of +55.6% in the second quarter alone. In the first six months of the year, many countries, in particular France and Italy, reported sales up sharply from 2020. While benefiting from favorable basis for comparison, these gains reflect many commercial successes, including user interfaces and power protection solutions in France, connected offering in Italy, and more broadly, data center ranges in Europe. Sales in Europe new economies were up +23% organically from the first half of 2020 and up +36.2% in the second quarter alone, with very good showings in Turkey and in most countries in Eastern Europe. Moving now to North and Central America, organic sales increased +11.7% in the first half of 2021. In the U.S., organic rising sales was +9.9% over the first half of the year and +15.3% in the second quarter alone. Since the beginning of the year, business has been driven by sustained demand in residential offerings and in data centers. Sales in other non-residential applications were nearly unchanged over from the first half of 2020. Let me now move to the last zone with rest of the world, where organic sales rose +31% in the first half of 2021. In Asia Pacific, sales rose +27.4%, including +19.1% in the second quarter. Over the six month period, China saw double-digit growth. In India, sales rose sharply, but were nonetheless down over two years against a deteriorated pandemic background. Sales rose in Australia. In Africa and the Middle East, sales rose +22.5% and were up +26.2% from the second quarter of 2020. Over the six month period, sales rose in the Middle East and marked a very steep increase in Africa. Last, in South America, sales increased +55.6% in the first half and were up +126.4% in the second quarter, with significant growth in many countries in the region. On these notes, I'm now passing the mic to Franck Lemery for an overview of our financial performance. Thank you, Benoît, good morning to all of you. Going to page eight now. Adjusted operating margin before acquisitions in the first half came to 22.4%. This represents an increase of +4.9 points from the same period of 2020. This increase in profitability reflects, in particular, the leverage linked to both sales growth and a selective resumption of costs. At the same time, the rise in raw material and component costs continued to accelerate. It was close to +4% in the first quarter of 2021 and over +9% in the second quarter. Now, when acquisitions are taken into account, the adjusted operating margin for the first half of 2021 was a solid 22.0%. All in all, the adjusted operating profit was thus at EUR 761 million, up +53% from the first half of 2020. On page 9, I'm now commenting the net profit attributable to the group. It was up +68.5% compared with the first half of 2020. This performance reflects primarily the strong growth in operating profit. The financial results were favorable over the period. These favorable trends were partially offset by an increase in the group's corporate income tax, while the corporate tax rate was stable at 28.5% compared with the first half of 2020. Moving now to the cash generation on page 10. As a percentage of sales, cash flow from operation was up +4.5 points at 20.2% of sales or EUR 698 million. The working capital requirement reached a historical low level. As you know, a better reading of the free cash flow generation should be done normalizing working capital requirement variation. On this basis, on the right-hand side of the slide, normalized free cash flow was EUR 577 million. This means up +22.9% in the first half of the year. This concludes the key topics of the Legrand 2021 first half very good financial performance that I wanted to share with you today. I'm now passing the mic back to Benoît. Thank you, Franck. Moving to the second part of this presentation for an update on the targets of the year. We are on page 12 now. Given very good first half showings, but also persistently uncertain health environment and strong and rising pressure on upstream supply chains, Legrand is now aiming for the following full-year targets. Organic growth in sales of at least +10%, scope of consolidation effect of +3%, an adjusted operating margin of about 20% of sales, including acquisitions consolidated in 2021. As a reminder, the dilution of acquisitions is usually between -10 and -40 basis points. The group also aims to achieve at least 100% of its CSR roadmap for 2021, testifying to its ongoing deployment of a bold and exemplary ESG approach, with a particular focus on the fight against global warming and the promotion of diversity. Let's now move to the last part of the presentation regarding external growth on page 14. Following the three acquisitions announced in early 2021, Champion ONE, Compose, and Borri, Legrand is continuing its strategy of targeted external growth with two new acquisitions announced today. First, Ensto Building Systems, a Finnish leader in low-voltage solutions, a company that offers a comprehensive range of electrical and digital infrastructure products. With sales of around EUR 120 million, with significant presence in Northern Europe, especially Scandinavia, Ensto Building Systems rounds out our existing strong position in Southern and Eastern Europe. The second company is Ecotap, a front-running Dutch specialist in electrical vehicle chargers for homes, businesses, and public charging points. Its sales are expected at around EUR 40 million in 2021, primarily made in the Netherlands and in Germany. These two new acquisitions strengthen group position both in core businesses and in segments driven by the rise in green mobility and the fight against climate change. That's it for this release. Franck, Ronan, and myself are now ready to open to questions. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. We have a first question from Daniela Costa from Goldman Sachs. Madam, please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. I hope you can hear me well. If I may ask two things, actually, but first I wanted to clarify on your second half. The implied second half margin in your guidance seems much lower than you have ever had historically. Can you just argue how much of that is just a statement of, you've always said you just want to go to 20% over the medium term, or any very specific headwinds that are particularly high in the second half, if you could quantify those? Just more a general question regarding price and raw materials and sort of what are you seeing in terms of the ability to pass through? Shall we still assume that you can 100% pass this through over time with a lag like you've done in the past? Just those two things, which I guess are related. Thank you. Hello, Daniela. If I take your two points. The first question, as far as H2 is concerned, I'll discuss both let's say top line and bottom line. Our guidance of at least +10% organic implies, as you can compute it, sort of floor, where H2 sales organically would be slightly down. We believe that the more likely scenario is that the sales could range from, let's say, slightly down to slightly up in H2. Compared to a strong +22.6% in H1. The difference coming from a couple of factors. Number one, of course, the basis for comparison. You remember that our sales were down about 15% last year in H1, and they were down only -2.5% in H2. We have a more demanding basis for comparison, especially in Q3, which was flat last year. Number two, the usual uncertainties coming from the health situation, even though it's always difficult to predict the consequences it can have. If you look at the past, let's say 18 months, there were countries and times during which the pandemic had a strongly negative impact on the top line. Take, for example, Western Europe in Q2 last year or India as an example. There were other times during which light lockdown, if I may say, or light curfew, actually led to a surprisingly sort of surge in demand for residential products. It's a bit difficult to predict the impact the health situation can have, but it's never a good news to have this kind of uncertainty. Third, we know that the residential market has been booming for almost a year now, and nobody can predict how long it will last. With the opening of the economy, it's possible that people reallocate part of their savings to other things than works at home. The last piece, which explain a softer, if I may say, H2 compared to H1, is clearly the scarcity of raw materials and components, which did have some impact on Q2, not a big one, and which potentially can have some impact also on H2. The fact that it is an everyday fight to get the raw materials and the right components to manufacture products. All these set of facts explain that we are shooting for something ranging from small decrease to small increase in sales in H2. As far as the profitability is concerned, you have rightly computed that our guidance of 20% adjusted EBIT margin all-in, so including the dilution from acquisition, implies more or less 18% EBIT margin over H2. We need a 22% margin on H1, it implies an 18% margin on H2, which is indeed a decrease in margin compared to the 20% or so we achieved H2 last year. Well, it is coming from a couple of factors, where the one input which has a significant influence on this profitability is obviously the price of raw materials and components. We gave the sort of sequence in H1, close to +4% in Q1, more than +9% in Q2, it's highly likely that it will have a double-digit negative impact on H2. As you know, raw mats and components, it's about one-third of our sales. It's a significant part of our customer base. In front of that. There are two things that we are doing. We will do a bit more pricing in H2 than in H1. In H1, our pricing was +1.9%. While it's always difficult to shoot a number for H2, we have already started to implement a number of pricing actions which should lead us to achieve a pricing, let's say between +2% and +4% in H2. At the same time, we are managing carefully our SG&A level to mitigate impact of the increase of raw material components in OP&A. Let's make it clear. We are not shooting to achieve, at all cost, a better margin than the one we are getting for in H2. Our objective is clearly also to prepare year 2022, 2023, 2024, by doing a bit more pricing, but doing it carefully. Not just inflating prices without lot of care and by cutting expenses that would be useful to grow. We are also in H2 preparing the growth of the year 2022, 2023, 2024. That's our clear strategy. If we look at the year 2021 as a whole, ultimately, if we do our targets, we would achieve a top-line growth excluding FX of at least 13%, so that's 10% plus 3%, at least 13%, and adjusted EBIT margin all-in of about 20%, which would not only be above 2019 levels, both for top line and for bottom line, and at the same time, completely consistent with our midterm guidance. That's the sort of the mechanic for H2, from slight decrease to slight increase in organic growth. About 18% adjusted EBIT margin, with the sort of mix I explained between raw mats, pricing, and SG&A. As far as the pricing and raw mat question is concerned, I gave the numbers, but maybe I can repeat them again. Pricing for H1 was +1.9%, and it was +1.10 in Q1, +1.9 in Q2. Raw mat and components, +6.7% in H1, close to +4 in Q1, a little bit more than +9 in Q2. Those are the numbers. You may wonder why didn't we do more pricing in Q2? It was a deliberate strategy on our side. We didn't need to make a long story short. We delivered, as you could see, a very nice margin in Q2, and we really want to manage our well-known pricing power on a very careful manner. Again, our objective is to fuel growth in the years to come, to keep our competitiveness, while maintaining, at the same time, this sort of long-term guidance of 20%. We are not shooting for 21%, 22%, 23%, we are shooting for 20%, as you know, and as fast as possible, growth in top line. Does it answer your question, Daniella? Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Lucie Carrier from Morgan Stanley. Madam, please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. The first one, I was hoping if you could give us a little bit of color around the situation in non-residential in North America. I saw in your slideshow you were mentioning that business was stable versus the first half of 2020. Can you maybe comment on the recovery dynamic you are seeing there, which so far haven't really materialized? Yes, sure. You are completely right, Lucie. It has not fully materialized, and the fact that it is broadly stable in H1 is clearly basis from, let's say, the easy, if I may say, basis for comparison in Q2. You remember the sequence. It was -20 in Q4 2020 against previous year, -10 in Q1 this year, and plus in Q2. If you look at the sales themselves, we can hardly say that we see a clear improvement in sales, a sequential improvement in sales between Q1 and Q2. Now, we see a number of positive signs, not only in external indexes such as the famous Architecture Billings Index, which is improving month after month, but also in our own non-residential business units. We see the pipeline of projects piling up. We see the number of quotation increasing. It is true that it is not yet materializing into sequential improvement in sales. Our teams think that it will come at some point. It's not yet the case. Our sales in non-resi in the U.S. are still very significantly down compared to 2019. It is not yet materializing in it. Just on that, if I can have a follow-up. Are you able maybe to kind of highlight which area you see most impacted, whether this is on the commercial, institutional side of things? Also, are you seeing any update regarding state-driven energy code, which historically had been quite a big of a drive for your business? Well, it's difficult to provide you with more clarity on the split between verticals, because most of the time, the products are the same, whether they're sold in office buildings, education, hospitals, governmental buildings, and so on. We don't have a lot of clarity on whether what product is going to this or to that type of buildings. What I can tell you is that it's across our product families. We don't see a huge difference between product families. Where the product family is geared at a non-resi building, it has been under pressure for a year and a half now. It's about commercial AV, commercial wiring devices, floor boxes, lighting fixtures, and a few others. I don't have more color to give you. Maybe just one comment. We are not very exposed to logistic centers. It has been a piece of the non-resi which has been doing pretty well since a couple of months. When you look at the logistic center, you don't have a lot of Legrand product that fit into it. We are more exposed to office buildings and to a lesser extent, schools, governmental buildings, and health buildings. We are also quite exposed to big metros, a little bit less exposed to the countryside. We have sort of specific exposure in non-resi, but unfortunately, I cannot give you more color on that. Just a word to say that I'm not pessimistic for the non-resi in the U.S. I think that in the quarters to come, some improvements will materialize. What I cannot tell you, Lucie, is how long it will take, because it's not fully in my hands, and the timeline between the good statistics in the Architecture Billings Index and actual sales can be six, 12 or 18 months, depending on the type of building. It's not such a mechanical effect whereby it would be three months and a half, for example. It will materialize at some point. A question mark on when. Well, as far as building energy codes is concerned in the U.S., well, it is a never-ending game. You have one code replacing the other and being progressively implemented, starting from a few states which are usually leaders in terms of green thinking, and typically the West Coast in the U.S. It is indeed having a long-term impact, and it's sustaining our business. If you look at businesses such as lighting controls or shade controls, for example, in the U.S., it's not doing bad. Now, the effect is not strong enough per se to compensate for depressed or difficult non-residential markets. Now, beyond codes, there are a number of topics which make us positive on the non-residential market long term in the U.S., especially at the green side. Number one, of course, the fact that the U.S. joined back the Paris Agreement, which is indeed a positive sign. Number two, the fact that in the various plans, and especially the last one, which was voted by the Congress. You have a couple of positive things about getting building and the fact that overall local states, metros, are increasingly pushing the fight against global warming. All that set a sort of positive spirit beyond codes for energy saving solutions in the U.S. Again, the improvement in non-res in the U.S. will at some point materialize. It hasn't so far. Thank you. Maybe a last one, if I may. I saw that the working capital requirements were very, very low, despite the strong growth that you have seen and possibly higher demand also in the second half. Is that because basically everything you kind of manufacture just goes out right away because of high demand, or how we should think about that in terms of the cash flow development for the second half? You are completely right. If you take the last 12 months, the working capital ratio as a percentage of last 12 months sales is at 7.9%, which is indeed low. If you look at the past three years, 2018, 2019, 2020, it was slightly above 10%. It's pretty low. It's coming from mainly two factors, where number one, our inventory level or inventory turn, if you want, is quite low compared to the last two or four months' level of sales. Well, it's coming from the fact that it's difficult to get the raw mats and components. It's difficult to cope with a strong, fast-growing demand. We don't really have the ability to build our inventory up the way we should. Number two, our accounts receivables increased a bit in H1 last year as a result of the crisis. As a result, we have quite a favorable basis for comparison for accounts receivable. Those two factors are leading to this quite low level of working capital ratio, which will somehow normalize in H2. We believe that the level of inventory should increase, and we believe that last year we tightened a bit the accounts receivables in H2. We don't believe that this level of working capital is sustainable. Let's say H1 non-normalized free cash flow is a bit inflated, if I may say, by those two factors. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Gael de-Bray from Deutsche Bank Equities. Please go ahead. Oh, thanks very much. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Perfect. Thanks a lot. Good morning, everybody. I have three questions, please. The first one is, looking forward, based on your discussions with installers, architects, distributors, and so on, do you feel more optimistic about the residential or about the non-residential demand going into the second half? The second question is on the expected demand deterioration in the second half. Could you help us understand perhaps a bit better, maybe give us a range on how much you're ready to invest in SG&A in the second half of the year, in your willingness to fuel future demand? The final question I have is on the growth side of things. If I look at the performance in Q2 on a two year basis, growth was up 3%, right? The full-year guidance of, if I take the low end of it, 10%, it does imply that the organic sales would only be flat compared to two years ago. It basically implies a 5% sequential deterioration in activity in H2 versus H1. What's exactly the message here? Do you really think that you were already running on peak demand in Q2? Thank you very much. Okay. On the first question, between resi and non-resi, well, it is difficult to sort of give a clear winner. On top of that, it clearly depends on the geographies. My assumption is that at some point, the resi market, which has been booming for a year, especially in Western Europe and the U.S., will cool down a little bit. This assumption is based on the fact that specialists believe that the surge in demand for residential products is coming from a number of factors, especially the stay-at-home requirements, the fact that people had little possibility to spend their savings because many activities were closed. With the sort of the opening of the economies and again, with the vaccination speeding up, people might be willing to spend part of their savings to travel, go out, dining, and dah, dah. All that should, at some point, lead to sort of cooling down a bit of the residential market, which will remain very well-oriented mid-term. The question mark is the impact it will have on the next couple of quarters. Mid-term, we believe that the COVID-19 has accelerated a number of trends which are set to last, stay from home, cocooning, and a number of other factors. At some point, we cannot explain forever a growth of 20, 30% compared to previous year. As far as the non-residential market is concerned, you would probably have to make a difference between the concerns of geographies. It's not in such a bad shape in Europe, in a number of emerging countries. It is true that it has been quite depressed in the U.S., as I was saying earlier, and I believe that the trend could possibly be the other way. It could progressively improve. It will progressively improve. I cannot set a sort of mid-term target for that, but I'm pretty optimistic on the fact that in the coming quarters, the U.S. non-resi will catch up with people returning to the office. By the way, as we were saying a year ago, you can see that most of the people will return to the office, not full time, but will. It will progressively lead a number of commercial offices to perform some renovation work, put some AV systems, renovate the lighting fixtures, do the buildings more energy efficient, and so on and so forth. Now in 2022, if this is okay, in H2 and in 2022. What will precisely be the gross rate of resi and non-resi? Well, I have no clue. It depends on the graphics. Last, one shouldn't forget data centers, which is, as you know, about 10% of our sales and about 20% of our sales in North America, which has been booming since the beginning of the year. On a given quarter, it can always be either positively or negatively impacted by a big project or a big customer. Midterm, it is a fantastic opportunity for Legrand to further accelerate the growth. I believe that the data center piece will keep growing in the quarters to come, because it is answering to structural needs for bandwidth, capacity, network of the various countries. Second question, expected margin for H2. I gave you the answer, about 18%. Your spreadsheet are bigger than mine. I will let you do the math. Take a double-digit increase in the raw materials and components pricing in H2, take 2%-4% pricing, take a little bit less restructuring than last year because we are back to the sort of run rate of EUR 30 million a year in restructuring. Take -10 to -40 basis points in dilution coming from acquisition. Take, depending on your scenario, a slight decrease to a slight increase in top line, and you will mechanically derive the evolution in SG&A in H2. You will see that it is not a huge boost. We are not investing back into the business tens and tens of million EUR. This is not my point. My point is that rather than further cutting SG&A, I prefer to maintain SG&A at the current level and to possibly increase a little bit here and there in order to fuel growth. What are those investments which are not extraordinary or one-off investments, which are in the ordinary course of business investments, if I may say? It's sustaining the R&D efforts, it's investing into additional salespeople and advertising expenses. It is doing powerful new product launches and so on and so forth. I'm not talking of one-off huge reinvestment into businesses, but the fact that I do not intend to further significantly cut SG&A in H2 because I believe it would be detrimental to the business in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Last, if I may say, part of those SG&A additions, if I may say, will also be financed by the structural savings we made last year. Don't forget that last year, we had restructuring expenses which were close to EUR 80 million against, again, a run rate of about EUR 30 million. Almost three times a normal year. It has generated a number of savings, and our objective is also to reinvest part of those savings into the business. I think you have all the sort of moving parts, Gael, to make your calculation. As far as growth is concerned, I could come back on what I told Daniela, but the sort of slight decrease to slight increase in sales is coming from all those factors, base for comparison, which indeed doesn't come into play if you are comparing over two years, but also pandemic, residential with a question mark, and scarcity of raw material and components. Well, now we'll see. At the end, I want to emphasize, Gael, that even at the sort of floor of our guidance, i.e., +10%, it would imply that we would have come back to 2019 level in just a year, which is pretty different from what we did in the last financial crisis. It took a lot of years to come back to 2007 level of organic sales. I think it would be a pretty healthy performance. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Andre Kukhnin from Credit Suisse. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Can I start with one on your data centers exposure? Could you give us some idea of what growth rates you've achieved there in first half and then second quarter? Also somewhat related to that, but a more broader question, I'm talking about sort of related to your pricing strategy for second quarter. Could you let us know how you feel your market shares have evolved during first half by region? On the data center exposure, so it's about 10% of our sales. It's growing significantly faster than the average of the group all across the regions. We did a very good performance in the U.S. and Europe and the rest of the world. If you want to have a bit more color on what type of products, what type of spaces in the data center, what is our strategy and so on, I kindly invite you to join our Capital Days in September, where we'll have a bit more time to discuss those things. I can confirm that in H1, it grew significantly faster than the rest of the group. As far as pricing in H2, I gave a sort of order of magnitude, which is a 2%-4%. Well, Legrand, we would have the ability to do more than that, but we believe that it would be at the expense of our competitive position, and pricing is not mechanical. You don't wake up in the morning and increase prices by 2%. It is a very professional and very tactical approach where you're looking product family by product family, country by country, customer by customer, and you are playing on all the leverage. It can be a price list, it can be a discount to customers, it can be rebates to distributors. It has many components, pricing, and you are playing on all those leverage with in mind the best compromise between profitability and competitiveness. We believe, I believe, that the best compromise for Legrand between competitivity and profitability for H2 is this sort of tactical 2%-4% price increase in H2, which, as you can compute, will not be enough to offset the increase in raw material and competitiveness. Again, this is a deliberate decision in order to prepare 2021. Again, it does not prevent us from reaching a 20% adjusted EBIT margin, which is, again, our midterm guidance. As far as our competitive position is concerned on H1, well, it's always a difficult question. I could, if I wish, proudly compare Legrand with what you may call its listed peers, and looking at the various regions, well, we did probably better than everybody in Europe with a 30.6%. I see that if I look at people like ABB, Schneider, Rexel, Signify, they did a bit less than us. For Americas, we are pretty well-positioned, even though we are not the fastest-growing company. If I compare to, again, Schneider, ABB, Hubbell, Signify, Vertiv, guys like that, we are doing pretty well. Again, I'm insisting as always on the fact that comparing Legrand with its listed peers might not be the best measure for market share because all those very reputable and nice companies do not have the same scope of activity than Legrand. I can give you the same example as last time. Analysts love to compare us with Schneider, for example, where in the U.S., only 25% of our sales are overlapping with Schneider, which is a data center piece, typically. It's always difficult to look at our competitive position just comparing the numbers between Legrand and its so-called listed peers. We did a much more interesting exercise. Every quarter, we are doing what we call a quarterly performance review, which is a review of our countries representing, I don't know how much, 90% or 95% of our sales. We are looking not only the financial performance, of course, but we are also looking at all leverage of the performance, commercial, marketing, industrial, and so on and so forth. Following this two weeks review, which happened last week and the week before, I am very positive on the evolution of our market share in H1. Obviously, not in all countries and not in all product families. Market share is always a result of losses and gains, but the net of that in H1 is very good. Very good in Europe, very good especially in Western Europe, including in core countries for Legrand such as France, such as Italy, such as even Germany, which is a smaller country for us, such as Russia. Good in the U.S., including non-resi, actually. The fact that non-resi is down over two years is not coming from a market share issue, it's really a market perspective. When we are looking at products such as wiring devices, for example, in the U.S., or audio-video is doing well in terms of competitive position. The rest of the world, it very depends on the countries. There are two zones or sub-zones which I can name as being very good in terms of market shares. One in China, is China. We are up very significantly in China, even over two years, because we are up 17% over two years in China. We are not a big player in China, but on the few verticals in which we operate, namely wiring devices, hotel business, and data centers, we are doing very well. Second sub-zone where we are growing fast, it's Africa. It's Africa where we are growing over two years, almost 10%. To answer your question, and I understand that from an analyst standpoint, it's a bit difficult to really value that because you don't have the granularity we have as far as markets are concerned. It has been a pretty good millésime H1 in terms of market share. That's a really helpful and detailed answer. Thank you. May I just ask the last one related to your acquisitions that you announced? Yeah. They're clearly EV charging focused. Yeah. Could you maybe talk about how the multiples on these deals compare to your normal acquired growth multiples? I knew you would ask this question because, just for the anecdote, but I was with a banker yesterday who told me that an EV charging station company was sold for, I think it was 6x 2025 sales. Be reassured, this is not the multiples we've been paying. A couple of words on Ecotap, which is a very interesting company indeed. Together with the rest of our EV charging businesses, namely the Legrand one, which is small, but has been growing very nicely, but also the Ensto Building Systems piece, which has EUR 2 million in EV charging, and Ecotap all together, this would represent pro forma about 1% of Legrand Group sales. It's not huge business, but it's a good platform to start with. With Legrand plus Ensto plus Ecotap, we are covering now the full scope of products, starting from light power, residential reinforced sockets coming from Legrand to DC charging for public spaces with Ecotap. We have quite a broad range of product now, broad range of customers. Not only we are selling to the traditional distributors, contractors, but also we have a lot of relationship with CPOs, for example, charging point operators, with a number of municipalities and public bodies and so on. I believe that even though it's not big, Ecotap plus Ensto plus Legrand, it is a very interesting platform to grow. To zoom on your question, Ecotap, number one, is a profitable company. In this space you have a lot of usually loss-making companies. This one is profitable company, like Ensto. Not as profitable as Legrand, of course, but reasonably profitable, if I may say. We are paying a multiple which is, well, slightly above Legrand traditional multiples or multiples that Legrand is traditionally paying for companies, but extremely reasonable. I can confirm that Ecotap, as our other acquisitions, will be value accretive. We will have EVA positive within three to five years of consolidation. Slightly above Legrand traditional multiples, but nothing crazy. Clearly not the highest multiples we have ever paid for a company. Well, last point on Ecotap, funny enough, because you may wonder whether it's a company that we could easily dock. I think we can, for many good reasons. We have a strong cultural proximity with this company and while it is a bit, let's say, an anecdote, but one of the two founders of Ecotap, the CTO, is actually a former Legrand employee. He worked for Legrand Netherlands a couple of years, and about 10 years ago, he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He wanted to have his own business. He left Legrand. He created his own company with a friend, developed it, and 10 years later, he decided to sell it back to Legrand. It is a sort of evidence that we can culturally fit because this is somebody who knows us well. He knows us well. By the way, the company is headquartered in Boxtel, Netherlands, which is the same city in which we are headquartered in the Netherlands. Nothing crazy in terms of multiples. Very helpful. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Next question from Martin Wilkie from Citi. Sir, please go ahead. Yeah, thanks. Good morning. It's Martin from Citi. Just a couple of questions. The first one is going back to the growth outlook and how we can think about it relative to 2019 levels, because obviously Europe is a lot higher now than it was in 2019. I know your guidance for the year is at the group level, not by region. Is there a reason to believe that the European business should see a big deceleration in the second half, given the strength that you're seeing in the first half? That was the first question. The second question was, you've obviously been investing in growth areas, EV chargers this morning. We've seen it in the past on data centers and so forth. You've made the comment now a couple of times that logistics and warehousing seem to be a white spot for you. Is that something that you need to move into given that presumably electrification and infrastructure rollout for warehousing is here to stay? Is that something that is an obvious area that you could then grow into? Thank you. Well, there's nothing specific in Europe compared to what I said a little bit earlier in this call. Yes, indeed, Europe has been booming in H1, a lot higher than 2019. It's coming from both resi, let's say, connected and data center, while non-resi is a bit more supportive than the U.S. There's nothing specific in Europe except that the basis for comparison will somehow be pretty demanding, especially on Q4. Number two, the other factors that I was mentioning would also come into play. The fact that you can see that all across Europe, the opening of the economies and the society, if I may say, is pushing, again, people out of their home. They've been staying home for almost a year, and so it's possible that the residential market will not be as supportive in H2 as it has been in H1. The same factors that will play elsewhere will also play in Europe. Now, midterm, again, I remain extremely confident on the fact that Europe will support ourselves. Number one, because structurally, Europe will be positively impacted by a number of mega trends, including actually the stimuli plans that will come into play progressively. Number two we have a very strong position in Europe, which we are currently rounding out with the Ensto Building Systems. We've done a number of moves in the past years, which some of them might not be very visible, which position us very well in terms of new product, positioning on faster growth segments such as assisted living, data centers, greens, and a few others. The smart home moves with Netatmo, which is mostly European play, sales of other connected products, a number of commercial reorganization, investment into digital, and so on and so forth. Midterm, I'm very confident that our European position will be a strong support for our top-line growth. Well, H2, you have all those factors that will come into play, basis for comparison, pandemic, health situation, residential question mark, and again, this scarcity of components which is also always something we'll have to manage in Europe and elsewhere. As far as warehousing is concerned, it is not that we don't think it is an interesting vertical. It is just that in terms of product families, if I may say, it is probably closer to an industrial building than to a residential or traditional non-residential building. You don't have a lot of circuit breakers, you don't have a lot of connected products, you don't have a lot of wiring devices, you have a bit of cable tray. It is just that the density, if I may say, the density of our products or the euro or dollar per square foot, is smaller in warehousing than it is in other type of non-residential buildings. If we see the possibility to acquire an interesting product family, which is a must in warehouse and which would interestingly be a good addition to our catalog, we will. Frankly speaking, it is just that warehousing does not have a huge content in terms of electrical and digital products. There are plenty of other verticals that are interesting. Again, data center, green, assisted living, connected, work from home, audio-video everywhere. I think we are backed up by enough mega trends to support our growth strategy in the next three to five years. Thank you. We have no more questions for the moment. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Next question from Eric Lemarié from Bryan Garnier. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Thank you very much. Just a follow-up one on data centers. You mentioned it's a very dynamic market, obviously. Do you start to see some new competition here, some new players wanting to grab a share of this market? What about competition pressure currently, and notably on the pricing side? You mentioned this possibility you got to increase pricing between 2%-4% in H2. Is it the case for data centers product as well? Well, we have hundreds of competitors in data centers which are different from one product to another. Of course you have the big guys that are active competitors such as Eaton, Schneider, Vertiv, and a few others. You also have, and they are usually the toughest competitors, if I may say, super specialist of a given application. You have specialists in continuous busbar, in PDUs, in fiber, in cabinet, in racks, and all those places. It is a competition intense business, as are other businesses. I haven't seen in the past couple of years a newcomer that would disrupt the business or that would make very significant inroads into this business. You have a lot of barriers to entry to data center, which we are sometimes fighting against because we are not a contender in all field of activities. It is an area where matter a lot because data center operator cannot take the risk of dealing with somebody which is not reliable. The depth of the product offering is extremely important. After sales service is important. Many factors come into play. For example, price is not such an important factor in data centers. Again, because when you are a data center operator, you cannot take the colocation or whatever. You cannot take the risk of having your data center down even for two hours, because you would have bought a cheap product alternative. You are more looking for reliability, technology, service, after sale and before sales than price. I don't see material difference in pricing between data center and other businesses, nor do I see different patterns in terms of profitability. There are countries and product families in which it is easier to increase prices than others, in data center as elsewhere, and in data centers as elsewhere, you have product families in which you can have a 25% or 30% EBIT margin, or where we have 25%-30% EBIT margin, and there are product families in which we have 10% EBIT margin. No structural differences, neither in terms of pricing nor in terms of margin between data center and the rest of our product offering. Okay. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Next question from Shane McKenna from Barclays. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you very much for the update on your own inventory situation. Are you able to give us a feel for what you're seeing at the distributor level? I think if we go back to Q1, you were saying neither over or under supplied, how that's looking currently. If we come back into sort of rest of the world, how are you viewing your China growth as you look into the second half following the double-digit growth in Q2 as sort of comps get a little bit more difficult? Are you expecting a slowdown there? If you can give us a feel for the different segments and how you're seeing that within China as well. As far as distributors are concerned, if you look at H1, we are not seeing any material restocking at the distributor level. I'm sure that they would like to, but given the sort of supply constraints we have been dealing with, it has been pretty difficult for distributors to build some inventory back. We're not seeing any significant inventory build-up. This being said, since they de-stocked a lot in H1 2020, mechanically, the difference between a strong de-stocking in H1 2020 and no stocking nor de-stocking in H1 2021 has, of course, a positive impact on our top line mechanically. We're not seeing any significant inventory building back. Where, of course, we are working closely with them in order to anticipate as much as possible the level of demand and servicing correctly our common customers, the contractors, has been a joint challenge between our distributors and ourselves. As far as the Chinese growth is concerned, well, we'll have, of course, in H2, a more demanding basic for comparison than in H1. You remember that Q1 2020, our sales in China were down 50%, and they were up more than 10% over the remaining nine months of 2020. We have a challenging basic for comparison or a more demanding basic for comparison for China in H2. We are still, of course, shooting for growth. Well, the level of this growth will depend on many factors that we don't control. I have no possibility to give you a lot more clarity on the level of growth we experience in China and whether the growth will come mostly from resi, non-resi, retail project, or data centers than for the other part of the world. What I can tell you is that the business which has been booming for Legrand in China and doing very well is mostly the project business. The retail business, to the contrary of Europe, for example, is not as booming as the project business because of the many restrictions that remain in China for people to gather for shopping outside and so on and so forth. The project business has been booming more than the retail business. Will it still be the case in H2? Number two, the data center business has also been booming in China and with Chinese contracting company outside of China. Will it still be the case in H2? We will see. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. No more questions for the moment, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. No more questions by phone, back to you for the conclusion. I know that it's a busy day for you. Thank you very much for attending this call. I didn't have any question on H2, but I can tell you that it's a very nice little Scandinavian Legrand, so very nice acquisition. I wish you a good day and hopefully a happy and relaxing summer break. Thank you very much. Bye. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.