Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this telephone conference for the Sopra Steria 2023 half year results presentation. At any point during the presentation, financial analysts can dial star one on their keypad to be placed in the waiting list for the Q&A session. I'll now hand the floor to Cyril Malargé. Over to you. Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this webcast to present the 2023 half year results for Sopra Steria. I will lead this presentation with Etienne du Vignaux, the Group CFO. I'll start with the highlights of the first half of 2023, then the operating position in all of our 5 reporting units. Etienne will give us the details of the financial results, and I shall conclude with our 2023 priorities and our financial targets for the year. We will have a Q&A session. What are the highlights of the first half of the year? Sopra Steria generated a solid performance in the first half. Consolidated revenue increased by 11.6% to reach EUR 2,840.1 million. Organic growth was 8.1%, thanks to Q2, which was sustained with 7.1% organic growth. Group profitability increased, with operating margin on business activity up 0.8% when compared with the first half of 2022, and it reached 8.8%. Net profit attributable to the group was EUR 112.5 million, and it was stable when compared with H1 2022. Given that there was a temporary increase in non-recurring costs linked to recent acquisition announcements and decommissioning of low-margin activity. We also had a good cash performance over the half of the year, with a free cash flow of EUR 122.9 million. Growth in this half of the year was driven by volume and sales prices. Volumes continue to be bolstered by our customers' digital transformation projects. Sales prices are obviously bolstered by our value ramp-up strategy, and this dynamic is confirmed in the second quarter, even if it was slightly less favorable, because it includes 2 less working days than the same period, 2022. Performance is explained by the positioning of Sopra Steria in very dynamic verticals. The aeronautics sector, which is up over 10%, defense up over 20%, and the public sector, which is at approximately 8% growth. Consulting increased 11% over the half of the year. Despite the start of a slowdown, this activity did generate growth of 7%, which is similar to overall group levels. Growth dynamics came with solid operational performance. Operating margin on business activity was 8.8%, an increase of 0.8 points when compared with the same period in 2022. This also reflects a clear improvement over the past three years and places us on track to hit our 2023 and 2024 targets. This raise in profitability came with an increase in free cash flow, which was negative in the first half of the year, just a couple of years ago, and now the free cash flow is very much anchored in solid territory, right at the first half of the year. H1 2022 was at EUR 122.9 million, compared with EUR 66.3 million last year, even if this does include EUR 50 million of prepayments. From a business point of view, we had a first half, which was very dynamic, buoyed by our digital transformation challenges that our customers have, and I'll highlight a few victories now. We had Airbus, which is the group's top customer, with a contract that was won against two global consulting firms, addressing major issues. Airbus has got big challenges to accelerate the delivery of their aircraft, and we have a transformation project with them, aiming to overhaul the supply chain. Other success now with health insurance, the Cnam, good consulting assignment, supporting them with simulation of a cybersecurity crisis. In the UK, we won the biggest contract in the private sector for several years now, EUR 100 million TCV with NS&I. This is good news for our business in the financial services domain. I also wanted to highlight momentum in the first half with our new digital offers. In the banking domain, 25 contracts with Pure from Sopra Banking. This addresses regulatory reporting matters. We should also note that we won 3 big deals, so wholesale digital finance for a major contract with NextGear Capital. This is a leader in dealership financing in the States, and this was worth approximately $20 million, full SaaS contract for 20,000 dealerships across the world. Growth momentum generated in H1, 2023 was also thanks to our growing presence in the tech ecosystem in Europe. Cybersecurity, cloud, AI, digital twinning, quantum computing, digital services dedicated to sustainable development, and this is starting to pay off. In cybersecurity, firstly, where just as a reminder, we generate EUR 250 million, thanks to 2,000 expert consultants. We've been listed last year as leader in cyber resiliency services by NelsonHall. In the cloud, next, ISG ranked us as a leader in public cloud across Europe. A leader again in cloud native applications and application transformation services, according to Quadrant. We've developed our partnerships. They continue to develop, so with Amazon, Google, OVH, Azure, and then Numspot. In artificial intelligence, ranked in the quadrant, again, leader in intelligent process automation. We are also very active in the domain of. In the digital domain, so helping our customers produce immersive virtual reality solutions for industry, and we've set up partnerships with NVIDIA and SkyReal. We've also rolled out efforts to develop IT for green, these were congratulated by the market. PAC INNOVATION RADAR identified Sopra Steria as one of the best-positioned groups in Europe, best positioned for improving their environmental impact and their sustainable development as part of their operating model. Now, let's just spend a couple of moments on AI. It has the potential to significantly impact production in several different business lines, so our customers' business lines, but also our business lines. We're convinced that this paradigm shift should be integrated. We should integrate AI. We've decided to accelerate our investment in this domain. For Sopra Steria, AI is nothing new. We set up our first skills center based on IBM Watson. That goes back to 2016. For 4 years now, we've been a founding member of a consortium with 13 industrial partners, Confiance.ai. We've been able to address challenges in terms of industrializing AI, today, these efforts have been integrated into our development platforms. We've decided to accelerate our efforts in this domain with the rAIse program, which aims to amplify production of AI across our activities, using AI to develop reliable solutions, and we've got 4,000 experts, in data and in AI within the group. We're creating a new center of excellence with 200 specialists, and we've got 3,400 business consultants who are specialists in the domain, and they are the group's ambassadors to develop use cases, which will enable them to improve and overhaul their business processes. With this outlook, we're obviously updating our office. We're integrating AI into our methodology and our tools. Through this program, we've decided to use these components in our internal platform called Engine, which can already be accessed by 10,000 of our developers. We are convinced that Sopra Steria has a major role to play for our customers when it comes to using AI with transformative and responsible usage of AI. We are here to help them deliver the promise. The first semester 2023 had good external growth to reinforce our European status and our positioning on our strategic vertical markets. The acquisitions of Tobania, and the upcoming acquisition of Ordina, address this target, and they enable us to expand our presence in the Benelux with the creation of a new region with EUR 700 million of revenue and over 4,000 employees. We're obviously balancing out the group's geographical portfolio with the Benelux, will become the third biggest region for Sopra Steria. Our revenues include the recent acquisitions of CS, Tobania, and Ordina, which is upcoming 39% in France, 15% in the UK, 11% in the Benelux, 8% in Scandinavia, 7% in Germany, 8% in other Europe, and 12% in software activities. As you know, the acquisition of CS Group is generating a genuine change in status in the defense and security and space sectors, and it enables the group to reinforce their positions in aerospace, nuclear, and cybersecurity. Now, I would like to suggest that we review the operating position by reporting unit. Let's start with France. Revenue reached EUR 1,198.9 million in H1, organic growth of 6.9%. The most buoyant verticals were aerospace, defense, transport, and public sector. Should note the contribution of CS Group, which is consolidated in the company's figures since the 1st of March, so contribution over four months of EUR 106.5 million and organic growth of 8.7%. Operating margin on business activity was EUR 108.8 million, or 9.1% of revenues, compared with 9.7% in the first half of 2022. This difference is a result of the dilutive impact of CS Group. As we move to the United Kingdom, revenues reached EUR 461 million, organic growth of 8.3%. A double-digit growth in two JVs, SSCL and NHS. Good growth in the aerospace, defense, and security sector. I'd also like to highlight that we won and renewed major contracts with SSCL and NHS, beyond these JVs, we've also confirmed growth, return to growth in the private sector, growth of 3%. The operating margin on business activity was EUR 52.4 million, or 11.4% of turnover, a 0.9% improvement when compared with the same period last year. Other Europe. Revenues reached EUR 819.8 million, organic growth of 11.4%. The most buoyant entities were Scandinavia, Spain, Italy, and the Benelux. We should note that in Germany, there was a return to growth at 8.2%, a return to nominal levels of operating performance, going back to 2022. Operating profit on business activity was EUR 72.8 million, 8.9%. A clear improvement, both given the performance in Germany, but also an improvement in profitability in other countries in this reporting unit. For Sopra Banking Software, revenues of EUR 218 million, organic growth of 4%. Operating profit on business activity, EUR 2.8 million, 1.3% of revenues, this comes from arbitration. We decided to support sales, that's starting to yield positive results in the digital domain, more sustained investment to revive our sales of digital offerings. As I mentioned, organic growth of 4%, mainly driven by subscriptions, which almost had 10% growth. For all our digital offerings, Digital Banking Suite, regulatory reporting with Pure, 25 deals signed in the first half, wholesale digital audit, and instant payment based on our PM2 digital platform. Licenses up 5.3%, services revenue also increased by 5%. If we hand to other solutions, revenue reached EUR 142.4 million, organic growth of 5.3%. Growth in human resources solutions was 4.2%. Good return to growth in real estate, which grew by 7.6%. Operating profit on business activity was EUR 14.3 million, 10%, an improvement of 1.2% when compared with the same period in 2022. I suggest we hand the floor to Etienne, who will go over the financial results. Thank you, Cyrille. Hello, everybody. As usual, we're going to start with the consolidated income statement. Cyrille has told you more about the main aggregates. First, the consolidated revenue is at EUR 2.84 billion, therefore up 8.1%, organically speaking, operating profit on business activity at EUR 251 million, therefore an 8.8% margin rate, therefore 80 basis points more versus H1 2022. Between this and the profit from recurring operations, there are share-based payments, expenses, EUR 28.4 million, therefore 1% of the half year revenues. This includes the WeShare plan that was launched again during the first half of 2023. Given the share price, these expenses will represent 0.7% of our revenues this year. Amortization of allocated intangible assets are down a little, a bit less than EUR 50 million for this half year, therefore 0.5% of total revenues. This does not include amortization for the acquisitions made this year, for which price allocation will be done in the months to come. Profit from recurring operation is therefore EUR 207.8 million, therefore 7.3% of our revenues, therefore up 50 basis points versus H1 2022. Other operating income and expenses, EUR 30.7 million, therefore a bit more than 20% of revenues. I'll come back to this in a minute. The operating profit totaled EUR 177.1 million, therefore 6.2% of our revenues, and is up 9% versus the first half of 2022. Between this and the net profit. We have the cost of financial debt, which is under control, EUR 6.4 million for the first half, we have an increase of EUR 200 million in debt versus H1, 2022. The other financial income and expenses are interest expenses on the pension obligations and IFRS 16. The tax expense is almost stable in value, that is EUR 42.5 million. If we deduct the minority interest, the net profit is at EUR 122 million. Other expenses and operational represent well, half of those EUR 50 million represent the acquisition expenses, during the second half, these expenses will be below 1% of our total revenue. If we look at effective tax rate, it's 25.8% effective tax rate. The normative rate, as we said at the beginning of the year, was 26%, more or less, for the full year of 2023. The cash generation, as Cyril said, was very solid during this half year. The main items that are worth talking about is EBITDA, EUR 53 million more than during H1, 2022, and a very good performance in terms of WCR, as you can see, which is offset the prepayment due to restructuring costs, for instance. This includes EUR 50 million of anticipated net prepayments. That's due to the operational teams. Even with stated from the number, free cash flow is up versus 2022, therefore, a very good performance. Thanks to this good cash generation, the financial debt is under control. If we take into account these cash outs, due to the different acquisitions and financial investments, that represented more than EUR 438 million during the first half. The dividends, EUR 85 million, more or less. The net financial debt is at EUR 558.9 million at mid-year. This translates into a number of ratios. As the gearing ratio, that is net debt to equity, is 30%, and the net debt to EBITDA, that is pro forma before IFRS 16, is slightly above 1 and well below the maximum authorized, which is 3, in the credit contracts of the group for which we have covenants. The situation is very solid, very solid balance sheet. On the following page, you have the debt structure of the group. We have EUR 1.3 billion in available undrawn amounts, including an RCF, maturity in 2028 for EUR 1.1 billion. That's not been drawn upon so far. That's for the main figures. Here's a quick reminder about the main acquisitions of the year, was after the offering, and the group has 100% of the capital structure of CS Group that was consolidated on the 1st of March. That's when we took control. For Tobania in Belgium, we have 100%. It's been consolidated since the 1st of March. For these two entities, the integration process is underway. As far as Ordina is concerned, the takeover bid was launched on the 19th of July. That's the public offering, really in line with our timeline, and is open till the 26th of September. The next technical milestone is the AGM for Ordina on the 6th of September, 2023. This is in the AFM document, the Netherlands Market Authority. This will be finalized before the end of the year. Finally, before I hand over to Cyril again, here's another reminder about our SSCL joint venture in the UK. As you know, Sopra Steria today has 75% of the joint venture. The remainder, 25%, is in the Cabinet Office. SSCL was set up in 2013. They're celebrating their 10th birthday, and as is originally planned in the contract, we started discussions with the Cabinet Office on the put option that they have as a stake. SSL is a real success in terms of quality of services. Economies and savings are generated for the different administrations. It's one of the main supplier of shared services for the government, Ministry of Defense and Met Police and other customers. They've increased their revenues threefold over the period to generate last year, EUR 337 million, with a net earning of EUR 36 million. Of course, the decision to exercise this option is in the hands of the government. No decisions being made so far. If the Cabinet Office decide to sell in favor of Sopra Steria, the group would own 100% of this entity, and such a transaction would be accretive on the EPS of the group. I'll hand over to Cyril again, who's going to tell you more about the outlook and objectives of 2023. Thank you, Etienne. I'd like to suggest that we look at the 2020 outlook. Clearly, we see that we have a broadly solid market, but in an increasingly tense, uncertain microenvironment. I'd like to remind you that we have quite a resilient profile. The group has a resilient profile, focused on the top 100 key strategic customers, representing 70% of our total revenue. We concentrate our best results and resources and solutions onto them, and this means that there's less variability with regards to our business mix. Our activity has, our business has got almost 40% of recurring revenue, supplication and application maintenance, infrastructure as well. The share of our customers in the semi-public sector, obviously, this has got fewer cycles. This represents 36% of the group's total revenues, and our positioning on the aerospace sector represents over 23% of the group's term revenues. These sectors seem to be solid for the future. Now, subcontracting also provides us with a certain level of flexibility with regards to the macro environment, so we can adapt our positioning when necessary. We confirm our priorities for the second half of 2023, performance, so transforming our offers and then our human resources. With regards to performance, we are focused on performance, resolutely determined to manage our HR pyramids offshore. We're working on productivity, reducing real estate footprint, integrating acquisitions. Now with regards to our office, we're obviously going to keep the momentum going in consulting. We obviously want to change our operating model by setting up expertise and skills centers, which will provide more structure so that we can develop our technological expertise, and all of our major customers will be able to benefit from this. With regards to human resources, we'll obviously remain focused on the right level of recruitment, on gaining loyalty, and retaining employees and training employees. Against this backdrop, we have decided to raise all our organic revenue growth targets, and we confirm all of our other targets. For revenue, we're aiming at at least a 6% growth, when our initial guidance was between 5% and 3%. For our other targets, we continue to target operating margin, our business activity of just over 9%, and a free cash flow of at least EUR 300 million. For 2024, we confirm our target of reaching an operating margin on business activity of around 10%. There you go. We've come to an end of the presentation of the 2023 half year results. I thank you for listening, and I'd like to suggest that we move on to the Q&A session now. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please enter star one on your phone. Laura Metayer, Morgan Stanley, the floor is yours. Hello. Congratulations for this good first half. I have three questions to ask. The first one, on your margin in the UK, it's higher than the historic levels. What are the reasons? Are there one-off effects that you've seen during this first half? Second question: What are the reasons for the operating margin to reach 10% next year? I know that there are a number of drivers. Could you tell us more about this? The third question has to do with organic growth in France during Q2, that was slower than Q1. Do you think that there's going to be another slowdown during the second half of the year? Thank you. I'll try and answer these different questions. First, our margin in the UK, what are the drivers? Well, that's quite simple. There are two main drivers. The first one is that if you look at our platform, BPS business, it's mature nowadays. We have some platforms that are up and running, that generate volume, this volume leads to an improvement in profit. That's the first thing. Secondly, if you look at IT services, we have worked a lot so as to look at the low margin projects to deal with that, this is paying off today. Question number 2, you have said the 10% objective in 2024. Well, we have 5 reporting units, each of these 5 reporting units will be able to improve their margins in 2024. This improvement in 2024 is not just based on the performance of one reporting unit or several, but all of these reporting units will be contributing. The main drivers, well, that is we're going upmarket for digital services. We've changed our operating model so that we have more digital with more value added, and also consulting. The consulting business, which is quite fruitful now, and the selling prices, the price at which we sell our products and services, which is going up quite a lot during the first half, and this momentum will last for a certain while. We zoom in on the profit we get from our operations. At the end of the day, each main reporting unit will be able to contribute. Your third question was about organic growth in France. I don't think there's going to be a sharp decrease during the second half, so this will be more or less what we've seen on the market. "Yes, I can add something," says Mr. Duvignaux, "on France. You saw there were 2 days less versus the second quarter of 2022, and therefore this is weighed on the organic growth in France. It was at 9.6% during Q1, 4.5% in the Q2. This is to be corrected from the working days that we will no longer have during the second half of the year. Thank you very much." Thank you. Next question, Nicolas David, ODDO BHF, the floor is yours. Hello, Cyril. Hello, Etienne. Congratulations for these excellent results. I have 3 questions. Your guidance upgrade, as far as your growth is concerned, is this upgrade clearly linked to a better half year than expected, or were there other conditions, more favorable conditions that you're thinking about during H2? If yes, from which regional zone and from which business line? Question number 2, You was talking about the low profit contracts that will be terminated. Which contracts and which zones or regions, please? Next, will you continue during H2 and next year, will you continue with these low margin contracts? Third question, what about the impact of these actions on the adjusted operating margin and the negative impact on the growth of your company today? A technical question on the calendar effect, I'd like to come back to this. Could you give us an estimate on Q2 growth and first half margin, if you have the numbers, and the swing in the second half? I think it's going to be a positive swing during H2. Okay, good. I'll answer the first question to start with. Well, this guidance upgrade, as far as growth is concerned, it comes from two things. To be clear, first, the beginning of the year was really good, and Q2 was probably better than the one that we estimated when we worked on our guidance at the beginning of the year. Also, we made our own forecast, and the visibility we have for the second half of the year is really correct. Therefore, we thought that we have enough confidence to upgrade our revenue guidance for the year. Etienne will answer the second question. The ending of the low-margin contracts, this is something that we've managed proactively. It's not new. We always do this, we tend to zoom in on that. During the first half, more particularly, we stopped, we terminated a number of historic operations. For instance, in Singapore, it's a small business activity, this had its own effect in terms of restructuring costs, as I said earlier on. We closed down this business, this was a really tiny thing in terms of revenue, the effect will not really be negative on our growth. It will not be really visible, we do this throughout the company, throughout the group. We look at our portfolio, that's what we call portfolio management. We look at low-margin contracts. We take systematic action plans on that. We sometimes need to renegotiate, and sometimes we terminate these contracts when we look at the contract and we see that, structurally speaking, this is dilutive for the group. What about the calendar effect? The third question, Etienne. Yeah. It's important during the second quarter, 2 days fewer than the first, and it's almost neutral during the second half. There's 1 day less in Q3, to be specific, and otherwise, no other difference for most of our geographies for Q4 of the year. I have another question. This had an impact on your first half margin, I think. This calendar effect, I think, because that's 1 of the reasons why your performance has been really good. If we restate the numbers from that, if you smooth out the numbers throughout the year, you will see that this is not the only effect. It's not just the math, it's not that easy if you look at working days, and there are many business activities, like in the UK, they're not very sensitive to the calendar effect. It's mainly the activities, it's the other activities, with more materials at stake. There are geographies that see no effect of the calendar effect on their business in general. Okay, thank you very much. The question is from Gregory Ramirez. Gregory Ramirez, Bryan Garnier, the floor is yours. Hello. Thank you. I have several questions to ask. First, we've seen an improvement in your profitability in Germany. Could you give us more colors on that, and how big is the improvement? For instance, the positive impact on SFT with the unraveling of a number of operations. I had the impression that this is something you would deal with next year. I have another question on SBS. When I look at your revenue growth for software, 3.4%, and licenses are growing and subscriptions are growing faster, does that mean that there's some type of erosion in the maintenance revenue, in the revenues coming from maintenance? The third question: I'd like to come back to the levers that you've used to improve your margins by geographic area. You've improved everywhere, there are levers everywhere. Could we consider that for your different reporting units, there are levers that you can still use? How much can you use them still in 2024? 10% or 11% in France, is that something you could think of? Is that feasible? The margins, the CS margins are diluted a little, and there's also the integration of Ordina for what you call Other Europe. Etienne will answer the first question. Hello, Gregory. Your question on Germany. We have a service integration, historic business in Sopra Steria. We suffered during the first half last year. There were some losses during the first half of the year, and now they're back to the normative level, and that's the first thing. Now for SFT, it's, if you look at volumes, the volumes are more or less the same, EUR 80 million in six-month revenues for EUR 160 million for the full year. We're back to the black, if you look at their first results, and there was a slight deficit last year during the first half. The biggest impact is the fact that there's a recovery in Germany with a historic activity that had suffered due to one contract, more particularly. That's the past. I'll answer the second question. Sopra Banking Software, SBS versus the maintenance revenue. No, there's no erosion, which is a good thing. No erosion as far as maintenance is concerned. You should look at the full year as well, and you can't get this when we have the first half results. No, I'd say, well, of course, we're paying attention to this, Sopra Banking is paying attention to this, and then the levers we can use to improve our margins. Well, if we think about 2024 and make the forecast or projections, you've asked about France and the integration of Ordina. Now, for France, I can't give you numbers, it's too early, but we could say, yeah, we have potential. We can target 10 and even more than 10%. Of course, we have what it takes to reach that. Yet there are things we have to be careful about. There's the integration of CS. That's what we announced. When we made this acquisition, we said, well, we'll have the same margin levels as we have in France for 3 years. We've said EUR 13 million to be delivered in 3 years, 20% the 1st year, 50% the 2nd year, and 30% the 3rd year. We're deploying this plan. That's something to be remembered as well. The impact of Ordina. Well, first, we have to finish this type of process, as Etienne was saying before, we have to go to the very end of the process. That's an area with EUR 700 million in revenues. They'll have the same levels of margins compared to the other region called Other Europe. The integration of Ordina will contribute as well to the margins in 2024. There you are. Mr. Ramirez, is it okay? Yeah. Good. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next question, Emmanuel Parot, Gilbert Dupont. Hello. Thank you. I've 3 questions to ask. The first has to do with Sopra Banking. I looked at the variations in growth between SaaS and licenses, and it's more or less the same. We could have expected a bigger variance or gap, and the trend is rather flat or flattish. How come? Question number two, the put on SSCL, the put option. What about the multiple in the contract for the transfer? Is that something that's in the document? What about the potential cash out? Is there also a put option on the JVs? Third question on the KPIs. Net recruitment, could we know more about Q1 and Q2 if we set aside acquisitions to know more about the momentum? What's your objective for Q3, perhaps? What's the momentum you are thinking about? The pricing policy versus the wage policy. I suppose that this KPI is rather good. Could you perhaps give us more numbers on that? To answer your first question, the growth gap between SaaS and licenses. No, it's not really surprising. Not that surprising. Etienne wanted to say something? Sure, Etienne. Well, the numbers are: for the first half, for licenses, the growth is more or less 5%. Well, of course, we'll have to look at the yearly number, which really is very much based on Q4, and growth for subscription is 10%. That's the difference between the two. That's something we expected, and this is very much in keeping with our forecast that we gave you at the beginning of the year. The put option for SSCL. Yeah, Etienne. It's a very crystal clear contract. There's no value that's in the contract, no multiple in the contract, and then the parties have to appoint an independent expert who will be giving value to or will be doing the valuation exercise for the company. That's what we have in the contract. There's no other put option on the other JVs, NHS, SBS, for instance, there's no put from either of the parties. Third question about the recruitments. During the first half, we recruited a bit more than 5,600, almost, new people. 5,600. That's half of the annual objective, quite in keeping with our plan. A bit less than last year, because the attrition rate is totally different. The attrition rate... Well, we, you know, we adapt our recruitment policy to attrition rates and the needs we have on the side of production. It was 15.7% during the first half, and it was at 19.3, 9.3%, sorry, in 2022, first half. We keep a close eye on this, and we manage this on a weekly basis. The salary ratio, KPI. As you know, all of our business activities are not necessarily based on this ratio. I like giving the example we have in France. It is quite representative. For the first half, selling prices were up 6%, and the average salary increase was 4%. Yeah, Etienne. I didn't perhaps fully answer your question about the value of the SSCL put option. In the books, in the reference document, it's on the liability side of the balance sheet, which is EUR 130 million, more or less. Of course, we'll have to see which value is given by the independent expert that's be negotiated between the parties. What about the book value? The book value, will it change? On a yearly basis, yes, it will change. Year after year, it'll change. The book value will change, will evolve. Okay, thank you very much. As far as the hiring policy is concerned, recruitment, if you look at the same scope, what's the growth that you have for the first half of the year in your recruitment policy? Well, for the first half, let me have a look at the numbers. Net growth is 0.8%. That's for the workforce for the first half. That's the increase, 0.8%. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Parot. We have a question from Laurent Daure at Kepler Cheuvreux. Over to you. Thank you. Good morning. I've also got three questions. The first question regards margin targets for the full year. I know that there's a more favorable comparison basis for a first half with Germany, with 80 basis points. Do you have any information on the second half which might impact the margin? Is the margin going to be stable or will the second half go down compared with second half? That was the first question. Second question now on the performance of the different JVs. We weren't necessarily expecting growth, what are the areas or the activities that have performed well? With regards to the JVs, the put option, is there an obligation? Will this impact the contracts underway? With the acquisitions, Ordina coming along, could we have your feeling or a little bit of color on the 2, 3 coming years, with regards to the impact on the accounts, with regards to what we've seen in the first half? I'll take the first 2 questions, then Etienne can go over the 3rd one. Margin targets, what can we say? You mentioned the comparison basis isn't the same between H1, H2, given the situation in Germany. We've also got another factor which we should highlight. In the first half, we've consolidated revenue from CS to Tobania for 4 months, where we had 6 months in the second semester. We know that this is a dilutive operation, that's another bit of insight for you. This being said, I can't see the operating margin in the second half being below what we produced last year. With regards to the JV performance now in the UK, yes, obviously good performance driven by volumes. I'll remind you that we haven't got just one customer. We've got various customers, Ministry of Labor Office, Ministry of Justice, Home Office, Metropolitan Police, Defense, Industrial Construction, Ministry as well. We've outsourced, whether it be HR processes, payroll, recruitment, finance processes, HR processes, for all of these customers. We've renewed various contracts. All of these contracts are renewed up until 2025 as a minimum. We've got the MOD up until 2027. We've got a business here where we've got a certain degree of visibility for the coming semesters. Third question now on exceptional costs. For the full year, we should have a ratio under what we saw in the first half. Obviously, we've got the acquisition of Ordina, CS Group, and Tobania. For the full year in 2024, if we look forward, if the second half of 2024 should be like 2022, more or less, that'll be around EUR 55 million. If this is maintained in absolute value, the ratio will go down in 2024. That's what you should bear in mind. I haven't necessarily got a forecast for the next 3 to 4 years, but those are the figures that we've got in mind, about 1%. The EUR 55 million for next year, that's based on the assumption that you will close the Ordina deal? Yes. If we imagine that what if there are other external growth operations, is this gonna go down after 2025? Yes. I just wanted to come back to the put option, because it's good to have 1-year, 3, 4-year contracts, but the value of this put, is this directly linked to the maturity of deals? Are we talking about a put option with an absolute value, or will there be a negotiation? Yeah, obviously, it's not a mechanical calculation. There's no ratio. That would be too easy. Yes, it depends on contract maturity in contracting terms. Obviously, this is independent of the JV. SSCL is in competition. Obviously, every time we have a deal, they're in competition with other stakeholders on the UK market, and this will continue. We've got contracts with different maturities, different stakeholders, other players might come into the playing field. Regardless of the shareholder structure, we've got the contract maturity, which is independent of the structure. That's separate from a contractual point of view, and position on the market won't change. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Daure. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please dial star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question from Derric Marcon at Societe Generale. Good morning. I've got a couple questions as well. First, on early collection, could we have a snapshot of what happened in H1 2022 so that we can compare this with the same period for this year? We're talking about the EUR 50 million. Second question was on momentum in consulting. Are we seeing a slowdown in H2? In H2, do you think that you'll be able to have positive growth, maintain positive growth? The third question is on the private sector in the UK. If I've made the right calculation, it should be flat in Q2. Are you worried? Are you particularly worried about the second half of the year? My fourth question will be SBS. At 5% growth, so do you think services are going to be flat? Service growth with 5%, will it continue to be flat, or do you think it will be around 5%? Is the 5% sustainable? Could we have a bit of color for the H2 in coming years? Fifth question on the UK, you've announced the pipeline. You've announced a deal with NS&I. Are there any contracts which are in a ramp-up phase, so it should generate more revenue in H2 than previously? 5 questions. Do you want to start with the first one on the prepayments? What we've observed is that it is quite concentrated on the north of Europe. Over the semester, we saw the DSO, so this obviously reflects our collection capacity. This was deteriorated in south of Europe, so including in France, which has a significant impact. Conversely, we had a good performance in the UK, in Germany, and in Scandinavia. Obviously, we're watching this very closely. There are some factors that are structural, others that are less, but that's why we did mention the EUR 50 million of prepayments, and that is obviously a delta compared with last year. Now looking for the full year forecast is quite difficult, but what I can say is that we are aware of the guidance, which we've highlighted over EUR 300 million. We know how our customers behave. We know that the macro environment is more difficult with an increase in interest rates. This has an impact on cash. We're being... That there might be fewer prepayments than in previous years, but for the first half, despite this, we've had a very good performance. We do remain cautious given the overall macro environment. Second question now on consulting. Are we consulting, are we confident with regards to the momentum in the second half? Yes. This growth is driven by volume and sales, so this business or the market is experiencing a slight slowdown, so are we. We remain confident for the second half, and we should see that its activity is well underway in France, Scandinavia, and Germany. Private sector now in the UK. Am I worried about the second half? No. For years and years now, this business was contracting, and we've experienced a return to growth last year, 40%, private sectors with financial services, so there's genuine potential in the UK. This is linked to NS&I. Just be careful, I don't want any ambiguities here. NS&I has got various lots or batches that they put on, onto the market. We were chosen for 1 subsection, and we're waiting for the others. Haven't had a decision yet. We were selected for 1 batch. Have we got other contracts in the pipeline to sustain momentum in the private sector? Yes. We've got momentum, which is long-term momentum. We're not going to generate a couple of percentage points in growth overnight. Now, for services revenue at SBS, we weren't surprised. The more digital offers you sell, the more services you sell. This is correct. This should be sustained in the second half. Thank you, Mr. Malargue. Next question from Nicolas David from Oddo BHF. 2 additional questions. The first of which, UK private sector, NS&I, did this contribute to growth in Q2? If yes, was this a normative level or is there a ramp up here? That would be interesting to note. Number 2, in terms of net recruitment, we had a slowdown in Q2. Is this something that's steered, obviously, given the slowdown? Are any surprises? What about your recruitment capacity? I calculated 230 recruitments Q2, about 500 per quarter. First question, NS&I, no impact on Q2 growth. That is, that's the first question. Second question on recruitment, net recruitment. Yes, we do manage this. We've got our starting point, we have our needs, our production needs, and then obviously the attrition rate as well. Yeah, these were about the figures between Q1 and Q2, but this is something that we manage very closely. No alerts in terms of recruitment. We're aligned with our plan. What about NS&I? Any ramp-ups? This is a long-term program. We're talking about a 5-year program, so there won't be too much of an impact on 2023. Thank you. Thank you. We've got another question from Laura at Kepler Cheuvreux. Over to you. Yeah. I just had a follow-up question on SBS. Could we have an idea of the investment? You're invest plus EUR 7 million in revenue, we've got costs at EUR 13 million. Have we got additional R&D? How long will this investment effort be prolonged for? Could we have a little more detail on what you're doing? What has motivated your decisions to invest more? For SBS, I'll just come back to the plan that we launched in 2021. Savings plan with EUR 30 million of R&D savings. We've delivered EUR 4 million in 2021, EUR 10 million in 2022, we've covered half the ground. We thought that there was a lot of demand or appetite for our digital office, we wanted to boost them a little bit. I think we announced that at the start of the year. If we look forward to the future, we had an operational situation operating result on activity of 2.5%, went up in 2021, 6.5% last year. We should be between 4% and 6%, quite flat. Obviously with this return to growth, that's what we're seeking. The trajectory is to quite quickly seek double-digit operating margin. That's our target. We're not slipping in terms of the plan. If we can generate more growth, then obviously we'll take it. We're investing in R&D, we're investing in marketing, in office, because we are a software company, so we have to market our office, and it's that that's going to generate growth as well. Those are the 2 key investment levers. Obviously, you know very well, we're very much focused on digital and then training our employees to be able to accelerate a rollout of our digital office. When can we seek this 10% margin? In 3 years, or what are the assumptions, or what is the level of growth that you need to reach to be aligned with your plans? It's not the general level of growth, which is the driver. Obviously, we've got a driver in terms of upholding certain volume of licenses. We've got the customers that we have, so tier 1. Obviously, that's very accessible. We've got this strong acceleration in subscription. That's where we've got a significant margin lever to activate. You can see that we're accelerating in terms of this lever. We've also undertaken work on rationalizing our product portfolio, which should enable us to generate savings as well, both in R&D and then in maintenance, product maintenance capacities. We're continuing with our maintenance strategy and development also in India. Axway, this is gaining in maturity, so that's another lever that will help us go and get those 10%. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have no more questions on the French line. Now we'll go to questions on the English line. Thank you very much. Next question comes from Aditya Buddhavarapu from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. This is Aditya Buddhavarapu from Bank of America. A few from my side. Firstly, on the full year guidance, you raised the organic growth to about 6%. That still implies about a slowdown to about 4% in the second half. Is there anything in particular which you see driving that slowdown? Anything based on your conversation with the client, or is that maybe, you know, you want to be a bit prudent on the full year? Second question on AI, you said that you are accelerating your investments. Can you talk about how much you're investing in that area? Is that already reflected in the guidance for 2024? When we should start to see some of the benefits of that come through on the growth? Third question, just going back to SBS. How sustainable do you think is the sort of return to growth? I mean, this year you're investing more, but do you think you need to keep investing, you know, in order to sustain this sort of low single digit growth? Do you think that growth itself could improve even further, going ahead? Well, since we have interpreters, I'll answer in French. First question about our growth. Well, I think you have the right numbers. That is what we can see today for H2 is what we have shared with you. Now, of course, H2 has to be what we expect, but otherwise we have a good level of trust. The second question, AI, and the impact of AI on our performance. It's too early to say. Everybody talks about AI today. We're probably ahead of the other players because we've started integrating AI. We've seen the impacts on productivity, et cetera, but it's a bit too early to give you any numbers to be certain of anything in that area. What's for sure is that AI is not just connected to productivity. It'll mean more efficiency, better quality of what we deliver. If we look at value in consulting, that means as well that we'll be able to better guide our clients as to the use we can make of AI to change their operations. We consider that AI is a cross-cutting thing for all the business lines, for the whole group, and that's why we've gotten started with the program, so that everybody in the company, in a native way, in their own business lines, would factor in AI so as to bolster performance. The third question has to do with SBS. Now, the R&D plan that we have, the savings plan that we defined 2 years ago, yes, 2 years ago, was confirmed. This is still our plan. What we expect? Well, it's been slightly... The investments have been earmarked for more digital investments, but we still have our savings plan, EUR 30 million by 2025. This is our trajectory. What we're going to do about this is a bit different from what we thought two years ago, and therefore we'll be able to generate growth in digital. Good. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have a question from.. The floor is yours. Sorry, I'm back again with another question or a couple of questions because we're talking about software. As far as SBS, do you need to rewrite your software codes? Quite a lot of codes have to be rewritten so that you have a growth margin that's low or hosting costs that are low, or that you'd be one of the best-in-class player versus the other players on the market. Second question on software. Real estate has had a growth of 8% during the first half. This is counterintuitive, given the existing environment. Is this sustainable? What about the growth outlooks for this business in the future? Well, for Sopra Banking, do we need to rewrite the codes? Because we know how to maintain our machines and software, we have upgrades in a classical way. We have also qualified our products and our software. Like any other vendor, there are products that we're going to invest in, others that will be phased out progressively. This is what we do. This is strategic qualification of our products. We've done that. There's nothing that would have a major impact on our performance trajectory. On property or real estate, this is counterintuitive if you look at the percentage, if you look at the real estate market today. I think this is due to investments we made in digital. We've been making these investments over the past 18 months, this is good now. We've seen more consulting contracts. Will this be sustainable in the quarters to come? Well, let's be very prudent. If you look at the trends on the market, they're not really that good, but the first half growth is based on the investments that we made in digital. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Marco. We have no more questions, so we have finished. Mr. Mallard, the floor is yours. The more words or to conclude? I'll conclude. Thank you very much for listening, and thank you for this discussion, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you very much, and goodbye.