Good morning, good afternoon all. I am Loïc Jenouvrier, Global Blue CFO, and I will present to you the group's financial performance for the period Q2 and H1 2022, 2021, 2022. I will then hand over to Jacques Stern, our CEO, who will take you through the latest tax-free shopping trends and the recovery scenario. I will start with the key messages for the H1 financial performance. I will then take you through the Q2 income statement, followed by an overview of the segmental revenue and an update on the group's operating expenses in the Q2. I will then present the H1 detail, including the income statement, an overview of the cost structure, the net financial debt development, and conclude with a summary of the company's liquidity. I should remind you that our financial year runs from April to March, hence this is our Q2 H1 results announcement. Let's move to slide four for the financial performance. To begin with, here are the main takeaways for H1 2021/22. First, although COVID-19 continues to disrupt the travel industry, we are seeing signs of recovery with a significant increase in revenue of 139% in H1 2021/22 versus H1 2020/21, and an increase of 86% in Q2 2021/22 versus Q1 2021/22. Second, the savings program implemented by management in March 2020 continues to deliver, and our fixed adjusted operating expenses, excluding the scope effect of CRTS, have reduced by 45%. Finally, because of the increase in revenue and strict management of the cost base, we have seen a significant improvement in adjusted EBITDA, where we recorded a loss of EUR 11.1 million in H1 2022 versus a EUR 19.5 million loss in H1 2021, and we are pleased to report an adjusted EBITDA break-even in Q2 2022. Moving now to slide 6. Here, we present our adjusted P&L. We adjust our P&L to exclude all exceptional items which are non-recurring in nature, as well as the amortization of acquired intangible assets, mostly related to the purchase price allocation made in 2012 when Silver Lake and Partners Group acquired Global Blue. You will see in appendix all reconciliations with the nearest IFRS metrics. As mentioned earlier, our revenue increased by 86% to EUR 31.2 million in Q2 2021/2022 versus EUR 12.4 million in Q2 2020/2021. Adjusted operating expenses have been reduced by EUR 33.8 million compared to pre-COVID levels, and it's a result of management action taken early spring 2020 when travel restrictions began. We have also seen a significant improvement in our adjusted EBITDA and are pleased to report adjusted EBITDA was flat in the quarter versus a EUR 4.6 million loss in Q2 last year. The improvement is due to the significant increase in the top line and a strong focus on the cost base. After D&A, finance cost, income tax, and non-controlling interest, adjusted net income for the group was a loss of EUR 15.7 million in Q2 2021 to 22 versus a loss of EUR 13 million in Q2 last year. Now let's turn to slide 7 for an overview of the segmental revenue. Starting with TFS and AVPS, revenues are now at 20% pre-COVID levels. When comparing recovery between AVPS and TFS, AVPS is recovering quicker as it is less exposed to international travel. TFS is now at 21% of pre-COVID level versus 11% last quarter. You will see from the regional breakdown that we are seeing a significant improvement in Europe as countries have eased COVID restrictions and most corridors were open. Jacques will go through this in more details, but typically in Europe, we are seeing good increase in nationalities from Gulf countries and the U.S. There has been a slower uptick in APAC as border control remains strict across destinations. AVPS is at 31% of pre-COVID levels in Q2 versus 20% in Q1. Again, a significant recovery in Europe offset by a slowing in APAC as border in many regions were closed and Australia returning to lockdown in Q2. We have also two point nine million revenue from CRTS, reflecting the acquisition of ZigZag in March 2021 and the consolidation of Yocuda from September 2021. Turning now to slide 8 for a review of our adjusted operating expenses. As you will have seen in our adjusted P&L, our adjusted operating expenses reduced by EUR 33.8 million from EUR 65.4 million two years ago to EUR 31.6 million this quarter. Variable cost reduced by 83%, in line with the revenue decrease of 78% in AVPS and TFS. Besides the volume-driven cost reduction, there has been a reduction of 39% in the adjusted fixed operating expenses. As for the last quarters, these savings were achieved by leveraging on any government support that are still available, as well as the company's cost saving program. For personnel cost, we applied for any available government support, furloughed staff or reduced working hours, and we have also applied for employee salary support schemes that were introduced by certain governments. We also reduced permanent headcounts through business restructuring in different countries and functions. For non-personnel costs, we negotiated contracts with business partners and reduced local level third party employment or advisory services. As a result, we have been able to materially reduce both personnel and non-personnel fixed operating expenses. Finally, we show the scope effect of CRTS for a total of EUR 4 million operating expenses. After this Q2 highlight, let's now turn to H1 figures on slide 10. Here we are showing the adjusted P&L for H1 21/22 and the previous period. You can see the significant increase in revenue to EUR 47.9 million in H1 2021/2022 versus EUR 20 million in H1 last year. Adjusted operating expenses have been reduced by EUR 67.4 million from pre-COVID level of EUR 126.4 million, and as previously mentioned, is a result of management action taken in early spring when travel restrictions began. On EBITDA, again, we are showing the significant improvement with an improvement of EUR 8.4 million to a loss of EUR 11.1 million versus EUR 19.5 million loss in H1 last year. A reminder that adjusted EBITDA was flat in Q2 2021/2022. After D&A, finance costs, income tax and controlling interest, adjusted net income for the group was a loss of EUR 39.7 million in H1 2021/2022 versus a loss of EUR 43.1 million in prior year. Let's turn now to slide 11 for a review of our adjusted operating expenses. You will have seen in our adjusted P&L, our adjusted operating expenses reduced by EUR 67.4 million. Variable costs reduced by 84% in line with the revenue decrease of 81%, in AVPS and TFS. Besides the volume driven cost reduction, there has been a reduction of 45% or EUR 35.6 million of adjusted fixed operating expenses, and the savings are the result of the initiatives taken, which I outlined on slide 8. Finally, we show the scope effect of CRTS for a total of EUR 7.5 million operating expenses. Turning now to slide 12 for a summary of other costs. Here you can see the detail on adjusted D&A as well as net finance cost. On net finance cost increased slightly by 7% to EUR 12.5 million in H1 2021, and was mainly due to less favorable foreign exchange results. Net finance cost decreased by 23% versus H1 2019/20, mainly due to the more favorable interest conditions under the new financing facility of senior debt. To D&A, you see D&A reduced slightly by 5% to EUR 20.2 million. The reduction is driven by the reduced level of CapEx as a result of the COVID environment. Compared to H1 2019/20, D&A increased by 14%, primarily due to the increased investment in technology in the prior financial years and consistent with the management team's focus on digital innovation. D&A of roughly EUR 20 million reflects the expected P&L impact going forward. Now let's move to slide 13 for an analysis on our net debt variance. After an adjusted EBITDA loss of EUR 11.1 million, the level of CapEx was EUR 10.2 million in the period and is essentially related to technology development. We have slightly reduced the level of CapEx versus EUR 11 million in H1 last year and down by EUR 4.2 million from H1 2019/20. We do continue to invest in strategic projects for the company's future. The fifty-three point... The 55.3 million working cap outflow reflects increasing volume in the business. Those increased volume drive an increase in working cap as tourists get refunded upfront, and about a month later we collect the VAT from merchant or authorities. Finally, interest paid in the period was 10.7 million. In summary, our net financial debt increased by 100.1 million. Turning now to slide 14 for our net debt as of September 2021. Here, we have an overview of our net financial debt, which amounted to 646.3 million, consisting of EUR 630 million of senior debt, EUR 99 million of revolving credit facility, and EUR 82.7 million of cash and cash equivalent. Both our senior debt and the revolving credit facility have a maturity date of 28th August 2025. On October 2021, we received an extension to the covenant waiver previously obtained in February 2021. With this extension, the first testing date of the total net leverage financial covenant will be 31st of March 2023. It will be a semiannual test and will start with a leverage ratio not exceeding 4.75x, stepping down progressively to a 3.5x by maturity. We have agreed to a liquidity floor of EUR 35 million, but this condition will cease to apply if the revenue of the group for any calendar month returns to 40% of pre-COVID level. In addition, to the waiver agreement, our loan agreement with Silver Lake was extended to 8th of April 2022, and this was undrawn as of September 2021. Finally, let's move to slide 15 for an overview of our liquidity analysis. Our liquidity stands at EUR 166 million, consisting of 83 million of cash and 83 million of additional liquidity. The 83 million of additional liquidity includes 75 million USD of supplemental liquidity facility provided by pre-transaction shareholders in connection with the combination with FPAC. The additional liquidity is available until April 2022, and as mentioned earlier, this was undrawn as of 30th of September 2021. On the left-hand side of the slide, you can see our average monthly cash outflow, excluding working capital dynamic in Q2, which amounted to EUR 4.7 million cash out. This comprised EUR 10.4 million revenue and a break-even EBITDA, EUR 1.9 million of CapEx, EUR 1 million of lease payment, and EUR 1.8 million of normalized interest paid. Normalized because interest are paid twice a year in Q2 and Q4. In summary, with EUR 166 million of liquidity, this implies our expenditures are well covered into calendar year 2022. This concludes the financial section, and I will now hand over to Jacques Stern to present the latest tax-free shopping trends and recovery scenario. Thank you, Loïc. Hi, everyone. You know this slide, which is the slide that we have shown now for a couple of quarter and which illustrate our vision of the recovery in terms of tax-free shopping with five phase. You see that for Europe, we stand on the phase III, well in phase III, which mean that most of the corridor are reopened and in particular, the long-haul flight have restarted. It's not yet the return to normal, which is only when, if, and when I would say the COVID has totally disappeared. But you will see that it translate an interesting recovery already shown by Loïc and improved in the last couple of months. In Asia, as you will see, this remains in the phase II, i.e., a very low level of restart in terms of travel. If we go to the detail and we start by Europe, Loïc has already commented the performance of our Q2 financial year, which you remember corresponds to July to September. You see on this chart that in October, our issued sales in store, so the volume of the business that we manage on behalf of our merchant, have increased to 43% and 52% respectively. An average of 47% on October and November. You see on the right of the slide, where this performance in Europe has been accounted for with in particular a good performance of France, which is 57% of 2019 figures, but also the south of Europe, which like in summer was performing well in Greece and in Turkey. An overall performance in all the country in Europe, which is progressing months after months. Obviously interesting to understand from which origin country this recovery is coming from. You have here the presentation week by week of the performance. So the Gulf country, I remind you that it's the Saudi, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait is performing quite well. On the October, November, we had a performance of 145% of 2019. An acceleration from Q2, 86%. Same noticeable improvement for the United States. Travelers coming from the United States and shopping in Europe with a recovery of 87% compared to 71. The cross-border business for European travelers which are not EU, but who are shopping in the EU, such as the Swiss or more recently the U.K., were capable to shop tax-free in Europe, you see, have a recovery, which is also above 2019 figures. Notably also to mention the mid and long-haul rest of the world without Asia, which is also performing well at 55% compared to the summer at 38. Asia remains low, but there, also, we are seeing signs of recovery, in particular, with an acceleration in the last two months, in the last two weeks, of around the reopening of some corridor like Singapore, which has been reopened to enter in Europe, in the last few weeks. We mention also what has been the performance of the first week of December, not so much because we believe it's relevant, but obviously with the noise of the fifth wave in Europe and also the Omicron new variant, we thought it could be interesting to show that at least for the first week following those announcements, we are seeing no signs of slowdown. To be very direct, this should come, but we are not seeing that for now in the figures. If we go a little bit more in the details of the main nationality coming in Europe, you see on this slide, page 20, the nice acceleration of Americans, and you see that in terms on the right destination market that all the markets in Europe are benefiting from the return of Americans to the shopping in Europe. Obviously France is leading, I would say the pack, with very quickly behind Italy and Spain. More interestingly, we wanted to give you a bit more color on the 71 performance during the summer in terms of how to explain this performance. On this chart, you have on the left side, the airline passenger recovery, which has been during the summer of 39%. You see that it's almost totally correlated to the number of Global shoppers that we have seen back and shopping in Europe at 43%. How to explain the performance of 71% during the summer? Very simple. Pent-up demand, which in our business is more transaction for the same shoppers and also an increase of value, which is noticeable 42%, when they are shopping. More transaction and more spending per transaction explain this 58% impact of pent-up demand, which explain the difference between the number of shoppers and the spend that we are recording during the summer. Things also which is noticeable when we take all the American, we have seen that the elite which is defined by us as recurring travelers who are spending per year pre-COVID more than 40,000, and you know that because we have the passport number that we are capable to track those consumer. We see that the recovery of this elite, which are, you know, more keen to travel quickly and returning to Europe is even more important. You see that the 71% is to be compared to 133%, meaning that for the elite American, we are already well above the 2019 figures. There also it's coming from an acceleration of number of transactions and a number of value per transaction, but also you see more shoppers coming. In summary, when we look to the Americans, pent-up demand is very important, and elite travelers and frequent travelers are leading the recovery in Europe from an American standpoint. If we look to the Gulf countries, residents, we have also seen an acceleration in October and November to a point which is well above their figures of 2019. We also see that most of the countries have benefited from the GCC shopping, France being there also leading with also Turkey and Switzerland. A noticeable element for the GCC, which is the fact that the airline passenger recovery is around 50% and totally align with the number of shoppers which are returning 55%, and the extra performance of the GCC is coming from a pent-up demand, which is 56%. They are spending 56%+ compared to 2019, which explain the 86% recovery during the summer. An interesting point to have in mind for the GCC is that part of the extra performance of the GCC compared to all nationalities, including the Americans, is explained by the partial relocation of the spending of this nationality who used to spend a lot in the U.K. and who are spending now more in continental Europe. As I was mentioning, we are tracking the passport number, so we are capable to define three categories today on the consumer who shop tax-free in Europe. The first on the left are the shoppers who used to shop only in continental Europe and who continue to do that, and it's 50% of the current shopper, where the second group of people is the shopper who used to shop in Europe and in the U.K., which represents 30%, and the third category, which is the one who used to shop in 2019 only in the U.K. What we notice is, at first, during the summer, the one who used to shop in the U.K. when tax-free was available, and because it has been abolished, you may remember on 1st of January, they have shift their spending in Europe. We have an extra spending of 80% of the people who used to shop in both country. Even more interesting, we see that there's 20% of shopper who used to shop only in the U.K. who are now shopping in continental Europe. In summary, the performance of the Gulf country is accelerated by a relocation of their spending in Europe versus U.K., but also, like the American, an effect of pent-up demand. These are the main element for Europe. In APAC, I was saying that we are seeing a kind of flattish recovery around 10% in November and October comparable to the previous months, and this is really explained by the lack of reopening of the border of the main three country where we are present in APAC, Singapore, Japan, and Korea. We have heard recent announcement from the Singaporean government that they are reopening, so let's see what happen in December. For November and October, it was similar than the previous quarter, i.e., very low level of recovery compared to 2019. Let's have a quick focus now on added value payment services, where we see in October and November that the performance was a bit above the performance of the summer. There also, as mentioned by Loic, previously in his comment, what we are seeing is that Europe, and France in particular is recovering quite quickly, France being at 73% in 2019. APAC is suffering by the lockdown, in particular of Australia, which has been removed in December, but which was there in October and November. Let's move to our third section, which are what are the driver to be considered for the recovery. We have seen some of them already during the summer and in October and November, but let's dive on that. Remember that basically in our modeling we have basically three driver that we are considering. One, the projection of the vaccination coverage, which mean when the vaccination will hit threshold of 70%, 80%, 90%, which is where the confidence of the consumer is starting and where government are reopening. Second, the driver, the reopening per se of the corridor, very important because we have seen in some corridor like China to Europe, despite the high level of vaccination of the Chinese population, the corridors are politically not reopen. A couple of element on this. The third one, which is a consumer sentiment willing to travel and to shop again. A couple of element to consider there. On the first one, I mean, after almost now nine months of vaccination in the world, you see in this chart that in most of our origin country and destination country, we are reaching the 70%-80% mark of the total population. Obviously what we are forecasting based on the vaccination rate, including the third dose, is that in the coming three months we will improve substantially this level, which will be an important element to think about the reopening, despite the recent news of the Omicron variant. The second driver is around the corridors reopening. We're also projecting ourselves in December and more importantly in Q1 2022 and Q2 2022. What we are forecasting is basically in our scenario that China will remain until summer 2022 totally closed. We will remain with an activity of Chinese in Asia or in Europe around 5%, no more. Where on the opposite, the corridor which has been reopened during the summer, GCC, or the American or the English in Europe will continue to be open. We are also in our scenario having the Southeast Asia and Russian corridor, which will reopen progressively during the next Q2. I was mentioning a few minutes ago that Singapore in December have reopened the traveling to Europe. Very quickly we have seen in Europe a positive impact of that. The good news is when people can travel, we are seeing very quickly the impact on our figures. Talking about APAC, clearly, the situation in our scenario will remain mostly closed, in particular China, but also partly closed for the Southeast Asian traveling in Asia, i.e., in Japan or in Korea. Why? Because those two destination country have strict border control. Even though if the Southeast Asian countries are reopening to travel, clearly Japan and Korea are not, for the foreseeable seeing Q2 reopening massively their corridors. Last point to consider in terms of element for the recovery is the consumer sentiment. Obviously we have seen in the last 3 months a rapid increase of the consumer sentiment. If we were at the bottom of our survey around 56%, we are now at 74% of people who are willing to travel in the near future. I remind you that we survey consumers on our 6.5 million database every month, and 15,000 of them are surveyed. Each month, we ask the same question, and you see the improvement of the consumer sentiment, including, which is new, the Chinese, where we are seeing now for the last 2 months that the Chinese consumer sentiment toward re-traveling and reshopping when traveling is now on the rise, which is a good news. By definition, border will have to be reopened. With that in mind, after the performance in terms of issued tax-free like for like in the summer of 38% in Europe and 9% in APAC, we are seeing a level of recovery compared to 2019 in our scenario for the Q3, our fiscal Q3, so from October to December, a performance around 35% to 45%. Which is in line with what we have seen in October and December. We are seeing a December which could be slightly affected by the fifth wave and the Omicron variant in December. For APAC, we are still at 10% of expected industry tax-free recovery. This is what I wanted to share with you in terms of top line. Obviously, remind you of two important elements when we are looking to our profitability, which is our break-even point is 25% of our 2019/20 revenue, and our cash break-even is at 40% of our 2019/20 revenue. A low break-even point. With that in mind, obviously, how do we project ourselves in the mid- to long-term recovery? Clearly, you have seen the chart from Loic. During this COVID period, we have implemented some very important savings plan. You see on the left side of the chart that, compared to EUR 190 million fixed cost base in 2019/2020, we have during COVID reduced by EUR 84 million our cost, so nearly more than 50%. How are we thinking about those short-term saving in the mid to long term? We believe that, after the fading of the government grants, which is the case now, we have almost no more grants, and all the people have returned 100% to work, after the fading of the negotiation that we have done with airport, and also the fact that we are rehiring some position which had been cut, the long-term saving will be EUR 50 million, which is around 30% of the pre-COVID fixed cost. Obviously we have some semi-variable, semi-fixed cost, however you want to call it, which will impact the long-term saving. As an illustration, we have shown to you that if we return to 70% of pre-recovery figures in terms of top line, we will have to add EUR 8 million to the cost. Typically we would remain with EUR 42 million of saving. Which leads me to an important slide that we have already shared with you, but which is illustrating the level of EBITDA per level of recovery. You see that at this 70% mark, we would go to a EUR 124 million EBITDA level compared to a pre-COVID of EUR 187 million. The way to read the chart is really to say that before any savings impact, our mechanical EBITDA would be EUR 83 million. Because of those long-term savings, we would improve the EBITDA to EUR 124 million for a 70% level of recovery in terms of top line. You see that maybe a good case to follow is at 100% recovery, we would be at EUR 221 million EBITDA compared to EUR 187 million, which would translate to a better operating margin of around 800 basis points, so at 50% EBITDA margin. Which is a very good transition for the conclusion. Just to remind you that our strong belief is that our fundamental growth drivers remain very strong. I remind you that there's four of them. First, the emerging market dynamic, i.e., more and more middle class formation in emerging countries who are traveling and then shopping in destinations like Europe. VAT dynamic is more and more countries adopting the VAT scheme and also increasing the level of VAT, which basically translates to a higher base of commission for the tax-free. Digitalization, which is true across our business for tax-free shopping, added-value payment services, but also our new business of retail tech solutions. Digitalization is a key element to increase the customer experience, and we know that in particular in tax-free, it's a way to translate a better performance in terms of PNL for us. The last but not the least is the e-commerce dynamic, to which we are exposed through our new retail tech solution. In summary, more than ever, we are solid in our fundamentals, and we will be very happy to share with you in the next quarter how the recovery is impacting Global Blue. Thank you very much for listening and talk to you very soon on one and one.
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