Good morning. I am Eric Bazile. I am in charge of finance and administration at Econocom. I have also taken over the responsibility for investors' relations from my colleague, Benjamin Pehau, that you used to see in this moderator role in the previous meetings. I'm very happy to welcome you for this session on this 25th of July. We are going to share with you our figures at the end of H1, and also our good achievements of the first half year 2024 in line with our strategic plan. Before that, as you can see on the agenda on the screen, we will comment, sorry, the governance changes that we announced yesterday evening in the press release you saw. As usual, we will finish this meeting with a Q&A session.
To do so, we will have two speakers, Jean-Louis Bouchard, our Chairman and Founder, and we will have also Angel Benguigui, our CEO. So thanks again for your presence here, for your participation. Now I leave the floor to Jean-Louis Bouchard for this first part of our meeting. Thanks a lot.
Eric, if you can read very well, I'm Operating Chairman. What does it mean? I'm not going to retire. So operating means I'm going to be in charge of communication. That's one of the reasons I'm here today. And also of the M&A, which is part of the strategic group, as you know, our plan, One Econocom. So acquisition, M&A is very important. Angel will give you some details later on. But first, I like it very much, and also I like communicating, and I like traveling. So I'll be around for a while, and I'm not going to retire. But if I'm not going to retire, I have a very important announcement to confirm today, because you're aware of, which is the nomination of Angel Benguigui as the CEO of the group. Please stand up.
Okay, I've read something in the newspaper today saying, "Once again, a change at the head of the group." Well, also we work now with a big agency called Havas, and I met with Fouks, Mr. Fouks, which is the head of Havas. And we were having coffee together, and he said, "Well, Econocom. You're a strange animal." I said, "Yes, we're a strange animal." He said, "Well, today it's 50 years that you were created." "Yes." "You created yourself." "Yes." He said, "In fact, you are a 50-year-old startup because you're changing all the time." Well, changing, but we come from zero to EUR 2.6 million or EUR 2.8 million and 8,500 people, and changing, as you will see, and going to face a very strong market ahead of us and having a lot of fun. So I need to explain to you what's happening.
We have learned every time in 50 years from our mistakes. So when we don't do mistakes, we grow, we grow, and suddenly, boom, things happen. Not as anticipated. The market change. We do some wrong decisions. Then you have a crisis like 2008 or first 2003, then 2008, 2012, then we had the COVID, et cetera, et cetera. But still, the company keeps growing, except in the last five or six years where it was stable in spite of all the problems we faced, not only the COVID, but internal problem, a growing problem, a market problem, Europe being more and more strong and existing.
So we have been the last five or six years working hard, but maintaining our revenue and our profit and fixing a lot of different areas of the group in all areas to make sure that we will be ready to grow again for the next five years. This was announced to you last November here in Brussels. Angel will discuss you and show you the numbers and tell you where we are and why we're happy that we are here and why we are very confident that we will achieve our plan.
But I need to explain to you what the mistakes we did, I did 5-6 years ago, and what led me to make the decisions today or to propose to the board yesterday this decision, which was accepted unanimously, and explain to you why I'm much more optimistic this time than I still was optimistic 6 years ago, but I did not know the mistakes I was doing and the choice, which were not the good choice if you take into account the state of the group 6 years ago. Six years ago, I proposed to nominate my son here at the first floor, Robert, as CEO of the group. Robert was 47 years at that time. He was already a successful entrepreneur. But he had joined the group very recently, a few months only.
So he did not know the way Econocom was operating, and he did not have the background of the group, and he did not have the credibility enough to face strong winds. So he joined the group, and he hired a group of management, and this management was very new in the group, as he was. And so what was going to happen did happen. It did not work. It did not work. Not because of the group, not because of Robert, because since then, Robert is still more than ever in the tech industry. At that time, he had a company that was about 15 years old. He had been managing this company, and the company's size was probably EUR 10 million. Today, it's EUR 60 million. In 6 years, he grew that company. He owns the company himself. He has the majority of the capital.
That reminds you of something. The company has grown from 20 skilled engineers to more than 200 today, close to 260. So how many?
At the end of this year, it will be 260.
At the end of this year, his company, APL, which is working in Europe and in Africa, is going to be so the company he's running is about 10 times what it was six years ago. So what we faced in 2008 was not due to Robert and his ability to manage and to be a real entrepreneur. It was due to the state of the company. We had grown a lot in the previous nine years from EUR 700 million revenue to close to EUR 3 billion revenue. We had made 36 acquisitions. Now, out of the 36 acquisitions, about three of them failed, and we closed them. The other 35, 15 of them were integrated in the group. The other 15 were sold, which made our debt go down significantly. And Angel will give you much more detail of the state of our debt.
So half were sold, half were integrated in the group. So this is done, and this had to be done in 2018. So the situation in 2018 was so that it could not work. So I came back and asked Angel to come with me and Philippe Goullioud, which is in Brussels, first to help Robert try to straighten the situation, but it was too complicated. So he decided to work on his own company with a lot of success to stay as vice president of the group. And we started with Philippe, Angel in the first row, to straighten everything. So when you see the numbers, the revenue is kind of slowly flat or slightly decreasing. The debt has been going down significantly, as you will see later on. And the operating result is kind of stable.
But in the meanwhile, what you don't see, and you will see in the next coming months or year, the result of all what has been done to make it work. So why Angel? Angel comes from the banking industry. He joined the group 19 years ago in Spain. And when he joined the group in Spain, we had 10 people of the total number of people 19 years ago. He was for 19 years the manager and head manager of Spain. Today, Spain is how many people?
1,700.
Okay. 1,700 people from 10. Not so bad. Very profitable.
EUR 500 million turnover, and the most profitable unit in the group.
Okay. The choice was easy. I was very lucky that Angel, 10 years ago, went at the top of the group, met me, and said, "I'm ready to help the group." He was not chosen at the time, which was one of the mistakes in my life. Now he's chosen. His only challenge is to do at the group level what he has done in Spain. We'll meet in 19 years and see where we stand. The choice seems to be very easy today, it seems for me, because now I sleep very well. I would like to thank Robert for what he has done. In the last 6 years, he has kept being a very strong supporter of the group. He's the vice president of the board, and he's really helping us.
I would like to welcome Angel that will give you the status of the group today, what's going on. Since I'm in charge actively of communication and M&A, I will answer some of the questions later on about what I see as my job and I'm doing, and he will answer some questions on his part. Angel, please come and take the stand.
Thank you, Jean-Louis. Thank you, everybody, for being here in this presentation, the ones that are here physically with us, and of course, the ones that are assisting through video. First of all, of course, I want to thank Jean-Louis Bouchard and the board of Econocom Group for my nomination as Chief Executive Officer. What I can tell you is that I will do the best efforts in order that the One Econocom strategic plan will be a great success. So this is my main concern from now on. And then we will be speaking about the H1 results and the achievements and the outlook.
First of all, I'm glad to tell that the results in H1 are in line with our expectations for this 2024, because we are starting the strategic plan, and we already explained in November when we disclosed the plan, and in February when we presented the results of 2023 and the outlook for 2024, which were our main objectives for this year. So in that sense, globally, you have all the figures in the press release. Globally, we have grew 3% in the first half of the year. Global growth equal to organic growth, because there were no significant differences in the perimeter of the continued activities. 3% globally, pushed by the three activities for the first time in many quarters, and compared to 2.6% grow in Q1, so an acceleration in Q2, that it's quite good to see.
That operating margin that you see there is not for us a surprise. It is a consequence of the decisions we made, because we decided to invest, and we already said that we were investing in 2024 in order to be able to get the 70% organic growth that we want to reach for the whole strategic plan of the group. So remember, we want to go from EUR 2.8 billion turnover to EUR 4 billion turnover, 70% organic growth, and 30% acquisitions. And then, in order to be able to get this 70% organic growth, we have also to invest. And we are investing in sales, in agents, in all the activities, in IT, in security, among others. So in the first half of the year, we invested around EUR 6 million. So this is in order to compare with the previous year results.
Also to compare with the previous year results, in 2024, we had EUR 1 million more expenses and factoring costs that are included in the operating margin, as you know. So the increasing in volume is coming with also an increasing in operating margin. Okay? And then, if we go through the different activities in products and solutions, slight upside, but we are back to growth after some quarters where we had problems because of the environment, because of the market. You know that the distribution market in the B2B in Europe around the workplace mainly is not good. It was expected that it would be improving during the year, but the big players of the market are already saying that they will be not reaching the objectives they had for this year, competitors like Bechtle or Computacenter or some other ones.
So we are happy to be back to growth in this environment, because it means that we are getting some market shares in some countries, and compared to the first quarter where we were -2.5%. So we consider it's a good result in that sense, and with an operating margin that is not so far from the one we had last year for the reasons I already told you. In the TMF activity, it is a completely different situation. We are keeping on growing strongly. The growth in 2023, I remember, was 10% compared to the previous year, and 6% this first half of the year compared to the first half of 2023. We consider is a good continued growth, with many investments done, because in TMF, you know that we will be targeting very ambitious numbers in the strategic plan, but 100% organic.
So we are not planning to buy, to acquire TMF companies, because we think that we have the business model that is the best one in Europe, so we don't have to look for TMF companies. So we have to invest in order to grow. If we grow, it's because we are hiring a lot of sales, because we are hiring a lot of agents, because we are investing in tools. And in tools, I have to say that Quentin that will be in the new Comex of the group was in charge of the global tech at group level, and he's finalizing. The teams of Quentin are finalizing a very important upside on the TMF tools. Then, at the end of this year, we will have the same tools all over the group for the TMF activity, which was not the case since 2010 when Econocom bought ECS.
So we had separate tools, obsolete, and so on. Now, the tools are organized and upgraded and modern tools, and it will be a pleasure, because we will be able to do international deals and to get much more information about KPIs, about sales performance. So this is very good news. For the service activity, we have a moderate growth, but we keep on growing. So it's an activity that is keeping on growing in the last quarters. And we have a 4% profitability rate that is not bad. Of course, you know that one of the main objectives of the strategic plan is to improve our profitability rate. I remember that if in terms of revenue, we were speaking about going from EUR 2.8 billion to EUR 4 billion. In terms of profitability, we are speaking about doubling the net result from 2024 to 2028.
This is something that we can only achieve by improving the profitability rate of all the activities. It's not a bad profitability rate, but it has to be improved. Here you are with the P&L of the group, 3% continued growth, all the activities contributing, operating margin driven by the investments that we decided to do. The operating margin would be higher than the one last year without these investments. An operating profit that demonstrates that all the other expenses are under control. Expenses under control, investments decided. On the net profit, not very far from the one we had last year, we are benefiting for EUR 7.5 million capital gain of the selling of the subsidiary Les Abeilles.
If compared with last year, we had also in these continued activities, a capital gain of 4.5% of another subsidiary, so the EUR 3 million upside explains what we are very near from the net profit of last year. We also show the simplified income statements with the EBITDA and EBIT that are aggregates that are very used by the financial community in order to make valuations of companies. If you speak about EBITDA, we are better than last year, and the EBIT is not so far. This is just for you to know and for information to be shared. If you want to have exactly the aggregate definitions in order we are all on the same page, I think that you have the footnotes on the booklets you have. We spoke about the P&L. Now, we will be speaking about the balance sheet.
In the balance sheet, we are very happy, because the impressive decrease in net financial debt is about more than EUR 140 million, thanks mainly to the selling of Les Abeilles, and also because of very big improvement in the free cash flow generation. So you see EUR 88 million improvement compared to EUR 11 million last year. So impressive decreasing in net financial debt. We love it. We don't like debt just for very good investments. The breakdown of this net financial debt at the end of the year, we had EUR 260 million cash. We had EUR 200 million about our short-term, EUR 118 million medium term with recourse contracts of TMF deals on booked, and EUR 46 million credit lines and short term, and EUR 76 million on the other corporate financing, meaning medium term lines. Also, you always ask for the factoring and reverse factoring.
We are at EUR 210 million at the end of June, so just EUR 18 million more than last year the same date. These are the last 10 years in net financial debt at the end of June. We see that in June 2024, we are at the lowest level for the last 10 years. The trend is good. Now, we will be speaking about the non-financial indicators. We improved 2 points on the EcoVadis rating. The SBTi organization validated in June 2024 our targets for carbon footprint reduction, and we improved 8 points our gender equality index in France. France is more than half of the employees of the group. We also improved in France 4 points on the rate of disability. You know that we have important commitments in the strategic plan about the ESG indicators. Achievements and outlook 2024.
So first of all, a reminder of the 2024 targets. This is a slide that we showed in February this year. So the first block is on an M&A. We said we would divest on non-strategic subsidiaries and activities, and that we would keep on having a pipe of targeted companies all over Europe to be acquired. And then, the plan will be funded by our sales. In the second block, we have related to the organic growth objectives, clear ambitions for accelerating recruitments in the key regions, recruitments of sales, recruitments of agents, recruitments of managers, because we are not able to have a plan with 70% organic growth if we don't recruit a lot of good people at the beginning of the plan. Also, to deploy new and integrated offerings, what we are doing.
Finally, we said the guideline for this year would be growth in terms of revenue between 3%-5%. On the first block, we finalized in June the closing of the selling of Les Abeilles, and you see with an impact in the reducing of the debt of EUR 108 million. I want to underline that this is a company where the selling is bringing us EUR 108 million, but we are just losing around EUR 20 million revenue and EUR 1.1 million EBIT. So we think that we can invest this EUR 108 million buying companies that would fit with our strategy and that would be much more profitable. But it's not because it's not a good company. It's a very nice company, but it's not a services company. And this is like property. The boats are valued, and the boats had a very good value.
So the one who is buying is one who is in the industry, specialized in that. And it's a Spanish group that is already working in France and had already a subsidiary in France, and it's a good business for everybody. But for us, it's a very good one, because it's not in our strategy. So we get a lot of money, and we lose just a few million EUR in terms of revenue and EBIT. This is more than half of the EUR 180 million we said was our estimation on the divestments that we were doing to fund our strategic plan in terms of acquisitions. So the result of the deal is very good for the company.
Second, on the second block, on the organic growth, we invest in this first half of the year in a European campaign for hiring agents, sales, including a communication campaign, including hiring many headhunters all over the group in different countries, including LinkedIn actions and so on. At the end, if you see the pipe of applications, we started from scratch in January, and we are in June at 420 with a net result of 28 new sales and 16 new agents hired and onboarded in H1 2024. So this is also an investment, but we really think that it's a good investment and a necessary investment for the strategic plan. And then, third action, we are implementing a long-term incentive program for the main key executive managers of the group. This long-term incentive project that we are putting in place will be driven by the strategic plan.
The performance criteria will be related exactly with the objectives of our financial trajectory on the strategic plan from 2024 to 2028. It will, we think, encourage the share value of the group, because the incentive is based on the value of the share at the end. We will finalize with confirmation of the guidance in terms of revenue. We will be between 3%-5%, and the trend is good, because we were at 2.6% first quarter, 3% first half of the year. We think that the market conditions will allow us to be between 3%-5%. We confirm a new guidance on net financial debt, because we want to be very serious and very strict in terms of debt. We don't want to increase the debt.
We want to reduce the debt, and we will only have debt for investments in new acquisitions, meaning that our new guidance on net financial debt is that we will be close to 0 within the next 12 months outside of new acquisitions. Okay? And that's all on my side. Now, we are very happy to be at your disposal for the Q&A session, and we have a lot of time for that. So I think that the questions is the most important, because you have the numbers. So the questions is the most important.
Thanks, Angel. We have mics in the room.
Oui.
If you have.
Oui. Thank you. So David Vagman from ING. Lots of questions. I'm going to try to control myself. Maybe on the first, to start with the last guidance on the net debt. So you said, "Okay, in the next 12 months, the net debt going to zero, excluding investment." Can you reconfirm, let's say, what you could spend on investment, on acquisition? I know the timing, of course, can shift, etc., but maybe ballpark figure in general, maybe not with a super precise timing of the M&A.
We said EUR 200 million in the strategic plan. What we want to say through this new guidance is that we prefer to keep on divesting before acquiring, or at least acquiring a significant target. We still have two medium-sized companies that we want to sell, and we are working in that. We would prefer first to sell and after that to acquire. Of course, if we find a very good acquisition possibility, we will do it. This is the reason why we say we have a target on reducing the debt, but we will not be avoiding if we find a very good opportunity for acquiring, we will not avoid it.
Yeah, I can ask some comment, even though you didn't ask these questions. But as you see that Patrick Van Den Berg, which was co-manager of the group for two years, is not here anymore because he resigned. First, I'd like to thank him for what he has done in the group, a very good contribution, especially in the Netherlands, because I thought it was smart on my part when since he was Dutch that he would go to the Netherlands to help Chantal De Vrieze on the first row here that was struggling with Belgium and the Netherlands. We had a very difficult contract going on in the Netherlands. She had fixed it with arrangement, but Patrick took over, and he discovered the group with all its specialty.
In two years, he made it so that now all the numbers in the Netherlands in all activities are positive and back on track and going significantly. So thank you, Patrick. But Patrick joined the group two years ago. You might remember that at that time, we had thought that we would ask for an external investor to buy shares of the group, minority or majority, but we would be managed by an external fund. And he came from the audio industry, and he had worked with PAI, yes, difficult this morning, but anyway, still awake. And he has a very good souvenir of this way of operating, and this is one of the possible plans that existed two years ago.
So he went to the Netherlands to learn the group, but it happened that the share price went down, our debt went down, so we were able to buy shares, buy shares, thinking that if some investor would come someday, we would sell those shares and put the money in the group. But it did not happen. And after two years, this did not correspond to Patrick's expectations. So he told Angel and I that he would prefer to leave the group and to start again with a company that was a property of an external investor instead of being some kind of family company. That's why he left. So this is what happened. So what Angel did not say is that concerning the mistakes that were done six years ago, the team that was gathered by Robert was not seasoned people from Econocom.
Some of them were very young in Econocom. Today, Angel will give you a few words of how he's going to operate. Angel, can you?
Yes. We are building a new committee of direction that we will be announcing in September, the end of September. But I can already tell you that Quentin Bouchard will be in the new committee of direction as general manager, global group tech, meaning all the tech of the group and the strategy of the tech of the group. I can also tell you that Israel Garcia, that is managing director on the business development at group level, will be in the COMEX. Philippe Goullioud is already in the COMEX. So you know Philippe that is in charge of the services and the distribution in France. And we will have some very top newcomers coming in September and October. So this is the reason why we will be disclosing the new organization at the end of September. I think that it will be able to do it.
I can tell you also, and it's very important, that we have an instance of governance at group level that we call the group management committee. Group management committee, we are about 15 people in the group, the main PM managers of the group. So the ones you are calling at the end of the month saying how much. Okay? So how much in Germany, how much in Spain, how much, Philippe, how much. And these how much are 15 around the group, very good managers.
We will improve our communication, I think, internally in order to give in our website information about these managers, because it's very important you to know that we have a very good country manager in Italy, a very good country manager in Germany, a very good country manager, of course, in Belgium, because you know Chantal, a very good country manager in the Netherlands, because Patrick will be replaced. We have very good PNL managers in France, of course, Philippe and also Mathilde. So this group of 15 people is the management of the commercial activity and the commercial strategy of the group. So these two levels of management, we have a strategic committee of direction and a very operational group management committee.
To try to answer completely your question is the following. Remember that our strategic plan is twofold. First, organic growth, significant organic growth, and acquisitions. So it's both of them. What we have launched since 9 months now with Hélène Lorie-Delambre and her team, the Mission Impossible plan, where we are hiring 100 new agents. And so far, we're on track for this year. We already hired 16 agents, I think.
Yes, at the moment, 16. And we have a target of about 30 for the year, and we think that we will get it.
I personally follow this plan with Hélène. I have a meeting with her every 15 days, and she's very active in every country. So keep in mind that one agent, a normal salesman in Econocom, brings revenue between EUR 6 million and EUR 7 million per year. An agent is more like 9 to 10. So 100 agents is between 900 and, if they were all successful, and EUR 1 billion when they are full speed. So the growth of the organic growth will not be only agents, but you see this number should participate very significantly. Oh, I have difficult to make it today, but I will make it. This will be a part of it. The other part is acquisitions.
Patrick was in charge of acquisition, but he was so busy in the Netherlands, so busy in the group, that the acquisition and also he was M&A, M&A, which is also deficient. So he also helped on his team to sell the Abeilles and to start selling the other subsidiaries that we are selling. So we did not acquire any company in the last 12 months. But we will start again. And Angel, later on in September, will come here to present you his new committee executive, or comité de direction, plutôt, CODIR, we say in French, the comité de direction. This CODIR is made of very seasoned managers, but one of them is coming from outside. He's somebody 53 years old, very seasoned in M&A. He has a very good track. He already has signed his onboarding on Econocom.
And his task will be not to finish what Patrick had started, which is to selling the three last subsidiaries that we want to sell, which will be done within 12 months for sure, and also to start to build the pipe of new acquisitions. And I will be touring with Angel and him in September in the different countries to restart the search of very strategic acquisitions for Econocom. The total investment we want to do is EUR 200 million, roughly. I think if we do this, we could borrow about EUR 300 million for specific acquisition. And the total volume could be bought in 5 years could be close to EUR 1 billion.
The market is improving for us because it's not improving for our share price, which is always going down, which is good when we buy shares, but it's not so good for the shareholder that sells our shares. But for acquisitions, the price of the companies used to be more like 6, 7, 8 times the EBITDA. Now it's down to 5 or 6. So we see the prices are improving for the people acquiring. And so that will make some acquisitions much more possible than it was a year or two years ago.
And if I can complete, Jean-Louis, speaking about the debt, we have to say that if we are speaking about EUR 180 million of net financial debt at the end of June, we are not speaking about the EUR 210 million of leasing deals that we have in the balance sheet and that could have to be seen as operational debt. So we have in the balance sheet, in the asset, EUR 207 million of rents that have to come directly from clients. If we compare that with the EUR 180 million of net financial debt, we would have a surplus of EUR 30 million.
Did we answer your question?
Yes.
More than my question. You anticipated on a few. So excellent. Yeah, if I may add maybe just one or two. On the investment in the Salesforce, the IT tools, I understand it's mostly about leasing. Is that correct? And the impact we saw in H1 on the profitability, the profit margin, it's so the EUR 6 million you talked about, the impact is correct. It's mainly leasing. We don't really.
It's EUR 6 million. We have EUR 4 million related to new recruitments and EUR 2 million related to IT and security investments. We can calculate that in the second part of the year, it will be more or less the same amount.
Okay. And all in leasing?
Sorry? And? We did not understand your question.
A new CODIR member will answer your question.
Hello, good morning. It's not only in leasing. Leasing, we started three years ago, and we are finalizing the plan. EPS activity, whether in France, in Belgium, or Germany, we started this year as well. And this is the first year of investment for this project that is smaller than the leasing project. And IT and security, sorry, this is the first full year of the whole security department that we put in place with the SOC management, with many solutions to strengthen the security of the group. And this is the first full year of this OpEx impact that we have.
Okay, thanks. And so if I need to think in terms of normalized profitability of the three activities for this year, what could we expect if we put aside, let's say, these growth investments, so these organic growth investments?
5, 4, and 3. 5 in TMF, 4 in Services, and 3 in P&S.
Okay. That's very clear.
This is what we have to improve along the strategy plan. This is the reason why we have a very important meeting on managers in the beginning of October. One of the main issues, 220 managers meeting, one of the main issues will be the improvement of the operating margin.
Thanks. That's super clear. For the coming years, I have the impression that you need to continue to invest, in particular in leasing, given you're saying you won't do M&A in leasing. You want to achieve all of the growth organically. Is that correct, that we should see more of these, let's say, these impacting growth investments in, let's say, 2025, 2026, etc.? Or should they come down and so actually help your margin going forward?
As Quentin was explaining, the investments in terms of tools for TMF are almost finalized. So the new investments will keep on being mainly for sales.
Okay. So mainly for sales. So there should still be some investment.
Yes. But what we want to do is to invest in sales at the beginning of the plan, not at the end of the plan, because if we invest in the plan, the results will not be there. So if we invest in 2024 and 2025 in sales and agents, we will have the results in 2026 and 2027, 2028.
Okay. That's clear. So this year, let's say you have EUR 12 million of growth investment still, let's say coming down a bit probably in 2025, and then gradually declining, basically, over the course of the plan.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'll go back in.
We have other questions online. First, concerning the market trends for Econocom at the moment. Angel, how do you see these trends for B2B businesses, and how do you see the growth Q2 versus Q1, and then for the rest of the year? That's one of the questions.
I will ask Israel to tell you about that, because he is the one following the strategic plan and the specialist for the business development and the strategy on the markets.
Okay. I introduce your brand new member of the CODIR.
Thank you.
Israel Garcia.
But not so new for Econocom.
How many years now?
From 2018.
Yeah, you know why we're coming back up.
Well, regarding the trends of the market, when we study the trends of the market, I think we're in a good moment for that. We have to review two parts for me. One is the short term, and the other one is the medium-long term. In the short term, I think Angel already explained that we saw in the market many news that the situation of the market is bad. It's not really bad. The product is delaying a bit.
Sorry, you don't hear? Now it's better?
The situation of the market that I was explaining is companies, as Angel explained back then, so explained that they are not going to grow, but Econocom is quite resilient on this. So you saw that we grew a lot on that. For the future, the market is going to grow, and we're going to be there. That's the situation.
Thank you very much.
Why is the market going to grow?
There are three main points to make the market grow. First of all is Windows. You know that Windows 10 is going to Windows 11. Second one is that we have many barriers for the AI. And the third point is the change from the COVID. These three main points are going to change.
Maybe we can bounce back on this question of the AI, because it is also one of the questions we have from the participants online. What are the expectations from the development of AI for Econocom?
Well, I think that the good one to answer this question is Quentin, which is in charge of the global tech investments at group level.
Thank you. First point of AI is the change in hardware and all hardware that we need to replace. Second point, and it's not breaking news, is that AI will change the way we work, all businesses. We were talking with not a colleague, but a partner for ABN AMRO. In ABN AMRO as well, you are using AI to improve and be more performant with the way you work on analysis. You're starting to do it. So it's for many businesses. In Econocom, we are working a lot with my colleague Philippe Goullioud, service responsible for services in France. Every day, we are working on AI to see the way we change, the way we work, and the improvement of the performance of the collaborators.
But there are also some challenges regarding security of data, because if we ask AI to do some things in the system, then it has access to data. Customers, they are not ready to give it to big cloud services. There could be some impact. We lived it two weeks ago with CrowdStrike. We must be careful before giving everything to AI. But it's a really exciting topic, and it will have an impact on the performance. We will be there to reach it and make the most of it.
If you allow me one minute just to go ahead with the AI, in the last months, I had some different conversations with the main players in the future. For example, it's Microsoft. They had a clear picture of what's going to happen in the next months. The problem is that the situation is that really the vendors, we are talking about Lenovo, HP, and Dell, they were not really ready for this change. The last laptops we found in the market, the people, the customers were thinking they are not ready. The situation is that at the end of this year, there's a clear announcement of this improvement. That is going to grow the market a lot.
Do you have any questions in the room? If not.
Yes.
Do we have any questions for?
We are talking about IT, but I know that Econocom is also involved in financing other assets, such as green assets. I would like to know what is the portion and what is the ambition of the group to develop also the financing of those industries.
Thank you. Yes, we are financing what we call strategic assets. We have a specific division specialized in that: industrial assets, logistics, and many kinds of different industrial assets. Yes, we want to develop this activity, but we want to develop it with the same percentage on the global TMF production. So if we are now speaking about EUR 1 billion or EUR 1.1 billion global TMF production, we will be speaking about 10%. Globally, we can speak about 20% of the global assets that will not be IT, largely speaking. From this 20%, 10% that are much more on our own books assets financing division. So IT becomes the main. Workplace becomes the main. But we also want to develop infra and network and AV.
But we also want to keep on developing the non-IT asset financing, but with a certain percentage of the whole that will be more or less the same all along the strategic plan.
Thank you.
Deuxième round, Société Générale, Fidel.
Pas besoin de me présenter. Just two questions, very different. First one is there are two pillars you usually mentioned, which are refurbishment and second-hand businesses, and especially the one you bought, plus media, visual. So the two pillars you used to present, and they are not mentioned today. So first question, what is the reason? And the second one on a different topic, is there anything you can share of the untold story behind the Atos movement and discussion you had for the offer you made with your partner?
Thank you.
If you may, I can answer the first question.
The second one, I think.
And both.
Both.
Both because the first one looks to be a bit difficult, but it's not as difficult as you think. Second-hand equipment is a B2C market. It's not a B2B market. And we thought it was very important on the B side because we recover from leasing contract a lot of second-hand equipment that have to be refurbished and put on the market. But why it's not a B2B market is because companies that want to acquire or lease second-hand equipment, they usually ask for a large volume of equipment. And you have the electrical company. Typically, they will never buy 3 or 4 second-hand PCs. They will buy 1,000 or 2,000 of the same equipment in the same color at the same time. So there's not such a market. But it's a very good market to have a B2C market.
We had to learn the B2C, and we have learned it. The company that we bought is profitable, is improving its business, and we are not going to retire from this market, but we have to adapt. Is that right?
Yes, of course. We are just finalizing the operating model around leasing and reconditioning. We launched an offering that is Econocom as a service for impact that is including the distribution, the services, the financing, and the reconditioning. This is an offering that was launched in France, and then we are launching also in Germany and in the Netherlands. We are learning from reconditioning from the first company we bought in France. We are looking for other reconditioning companies in other European countries.
The second question was concerned.
Atos.
What is your question concerning?
Any feedback you can share about the untold story, what we have read in the press, but what was the motivation behind your move and your strategy?
You know the answer because you.
I know part of the answer, but probably you have something you can share.
Société Générale is a long-term friend of Econocom, not only because we bought ECS 14 years ago, but also we used to work a lot with Société Générale. And so did he, and we have a long friendship relationship. So the first thing when we talk about Atos, I realized that Société Générale might be a little involved into the Atos drama.
Well, like many banks, like most of the French banks.
Personally, I've been working with Atos for more than 40 years because Atos used to be Axime, and Axime bought Sligos about 40 years ago. Sligos was a big customer of Econocom because Sligos was the company in charge of the credit card. There was a bank group using Sligos to manage the credit card, which was booming at the time. We sold a lot of second-hand equipment, sold and leased to Sligos. So we've been working for Atos for 40 years. Not so long ago, we used to do like EUR 100 million of business with Atos. We are still today, we are bidding on two significant contracts with Atos to serve all the clients which are suffering from what's happening with Atos today.
Because what's happening with Atos today, Atos was like Econocom which had done a lot of acquisition until 2019, then Breton left, and nobody was put in place to sell a part of those acquisitions to recover zero debt like we have done. So I'm a much better manager, especially with Angel and the team, than the successor of Atos, which is David Layani that I had a tough conversation with him not so long ago, but he's still a good man, but not the character to succeed to Breton. So what happened really in Atos had too much debt and no management for five or six years. In Econocom, very little debt and less and less, and very good management on the board. So that's the main change.
But why did I stand up one time not so long ago and say, let's be a part of the consortium trying to buy Atos? First, we knew Atos very well. Second, we did not think that situation was as bad as we found that it was. And so we set up a team with Philippe Goullioud here to audit the part of Atos which is outsourcing. In outsourcing, people outsourcing the system and the workplace. It's a different job. Outsourcing the system is like the cloud internally or externally. You manage the system. Outsourcing the workplace is answering on the phone a lot of users around the world in all different kinds of languages on all the problems they might encounter.
So since Philippe and his team was very seasoned about outsourcing the workplace, today, for example, we are bidding with Atos to serve a very large European company, more than 7,000 users, because all those customers, even though Atos is ailing, they need support. It's our business to outsource. It's not their business. So whatever will happen to Atos, and I wish the best for Atos. So far, they have restructured and they are going on for at least a year or two, but I hope for 10 years, even though they're competition, the customers need this outsourcing to take place. And we are there to take a part of it together with Atos. So that job has to be done.
But what happened when we set up the auditing of the EUR 5 billion business of Atos, we have with strict conditions to see whether we would step in or not. Immediately, even before we had the time to audit, decisions were made at the top level of Atos and with an administrator that went too fast and we did not have time to proceed with our audit that could have taken one or two months to do something seriously. And so in the same business, we do EUR 1 billion when Atos worldwide does EUR 5 billion. The business of outsourcing of Atos in France is like EUR 1.5 billion. Philippe? Yeah, compared to our EUR 1 billion. So we are in the same court, as we say. But the conditions were not in place.
So we decided that if we could not do the audit as we wish to do, to step out, which was understood by the people. But now we are completely out of the Atos management shares. We have nothing to expect that, as we do with a lot of other companies, we have common bids. We answer questions for users and also with Atos for a part of it. But we are not at risk, any risk to do with Atos. The banks were very concerned with our Atos bid because not only Société Générale gave us a call, but you were not alone. But Lydia, you know that our confirmed bank lines are close to confirmed, close to EUR 400 million. It costs us about 1,500 points a year. When I'm speaking to you, we're probably using EUR 5 million out of EUR 400 million.
We are very, very less and less dependent on bank lines.
I'm sure our issue was not about liquidity at all. It was more about the implication of the group and how you intend to liaise with your strategy globally. But no issue on liquidity, of course.
We have a strategic plan. The good thing having a strategic plan is that you know what you have to do, but you also know what you don't have to do.
Thank you.
We indeed have other questions online. The first one is related to the TMF business. The question is to know what is the impact of the interest rate evolution on the development of this business at Econocom.
The impact is good, meaning that for leasing and increasing interest rates is good. What was not good was when we had several years with rates that were not normal, that were almost 0%, and it was not good for our business. When the interest rates are rising, all the companies are looking for other ways of financing, other sources of financing. Banks are becoming more tough for giving credits. And we don't foresee rates going down like they were some years ago. So we foresee a situation where the rates will be going down, but not so much. So from this point of view, we foresee good years for leasing in Europe.
Another question concerning TMF is related to the financing of strategic assets you talked about a few minutes ago. The question is, how do you see the development of this business in the coming quarters and years?
This is a business that we are pushing, first of all, because we have an excellent team on that. Second, because we have good profitability. Third, because it's a business that has a low impact in our debt, in fact, because it's a business we structure deals, but a big part of these deals are syndicated with our funders. So we share the risk sometimes. And we also have structures in order to de-consolidate a part of these risks. So to give you an example, the first half of this year, we have a production of EUR 85.5 million without no impact in our debt because in our portfolio, we are monthly rents that are coming in. We are also repayments of the contracts that we have. We have a part of de-consolidations through our reinsurance program and the impact.
We have a part of syndication with our financial partners. At the end, the impact is like in bank when you originate, you structure, and then you sell. We originate, we structure, we sell a part, and we consolidate, de-consolidate another part.
Thank you, Angel. I don't know if we have other questions in the room. If not, I go on with the questions we have online. The next one is related to the services activity. The question is, how do we see the development of the margins in this services business?
Maybe Philippe, you could tell something with Israel on that. You are a specialist.
Margin. I'm not going to disclose anything about margin in this meeting, for sure. Margin is always a subject because we have to defend margin to the competition, and we have to defend the margin through our customer. What I can say is that the services business is a service where there is value. The more you provide value to your customer, the more you get margin. This is my answer for the margin about the services business. I'm not going to disclose any information about the margin except the one we published in this meeting.
One minute.
You are too short for margin.
No, I think just please remember the first conversation that was explained by Chantal about the impact that artificial intelligence is going to have in the services business. For me, it's one of our best assets. And the group is right now, thanks to Chantal and the team, developing a special laboratory for the artificial intelligence where we are developing really nice projects, internal and external, that for sure are going to impact positively in the part of the margin. That's the only little disclose, okay? Little disclose.
Thank you. Yes.
Thank you. So I'm sorry for the word on the margin in services. If I look at last year, so 2023, sorry, in H1, you had a similar margin. In H2, it improved quite materially. So why the decline, sequential decline, so in this first half versus the last half year of 2023? If you can, is it because of investment? Was there something specific in the business? Thank you.
No, you go, Diego.
No, I think that more or less there. Remember that in the first part of the presentation that by Angel, it was really quite well explained that if you remember, the sentence was operating margin driven by investments. I think it's something we have to have really in mind every time. So in services, it's again the same. So there is a strategic plan. In our strategic plan, it's clear the picture that we have to grow in some business. Services is one of that. So we have to invest in that. The change in the margin is based to that, to those investments.
Thank you.
I'm sure that in the next years, we will see, as you know, inside the strategic plan, there is also a plan for improving the margin. New programs are going to start inside the group in order to improve that.
Thanks. Any other questions here? No? So maybe online, we have a last one related to the buyback of shares. What is the intention for the next coming 12 months given the new guidelines given concerning the net financial debt?
We have no intention of buying more shares unless the stock price would keep going down because I think it's a very good buy. Today, the profitability of the group schedule for this year is the net profit like a bit more than EUR 60 million. And the market cap of the group is like 6 times EUR 60 million, about EUR 360 million. So we have a PR of 6 when for a company 50 years old, which is a very old startup, but which is very lively, significant, very well implemented throughout Europe based on several businesses, but three key businesses which are very resilient. Maybe too much resilient. Can you say a word about your last yesterday, Israel was attending the board meeting, and I was very not surprised, but interested by his concern.
Some of the board members asked Israel, said, "But what is your concern about the coming years in Econocom?" Can you repeat your answer?
Well, I'm not concerned. The problem was of yesterday, okay? So no. No, the point here is, as I was explaining before, the situation we have in the market, in the short term, the situation is not good. It's not fantastic, I would say. So Econocom really explained our resilience in order to maintain our capacity to keep growing even with these winds in front of us. But the things are going to change. They're going to change very quickly. So for the year 2028, more or less, we are going to change, or we, I would like to be we. So the market is going to change more than 200 million devices. So that's a lot. And for me, the resilience should be only not to go down, but also we don't need to have a lot of improvement in order to grow the level we need.
That's my concern.
So if this happens, obviously, we won't be buying shares if they go up to, let's say, up to EUR 250. But if they go under EUR 250 or even before low, because everything is possible, we could buy some shares. But it's not the main concern. It's just we are entrepreneurs. I am an entrepreneur. I have my family around present here, Robert and Quentin. Please come up at the stage that you see that it's really family business. And I've been doing this for 50 years, not to stop in five or 10 years. I hope we will go on for another 50 years. And this will not be buying shares. Buying shares is to protect ourselves. We want to use all this money.
In the last, how many, 5 or—I've asked Angel to calculate the total return to shareholders in terms of dividends and in terms of share buyback in the last, what, 6, 7 years, how much was it?
In five years, since from 2019 to 2023, EUR 310 million in dividends and shares buyback.
So even a company which will have no debt soon, even with a company that has reserves like residual value reserve, the price of our portfolio, the new acquisition of the equipment buying price is about EUR 5 billion. The actual price is like half of this. It's probably EUR 2.5, EUR 2.6, today's price. The total residual value commitment is between EUR 200 million and EUR 300 million.
Yep.
The real value that we see at the end of those contracts is more like 6 or 7. So we have like a EUR 300 million reserve. Even with all this, the shares are going down. So why not buy? But this is not a strategic intention. The strategic is to use this money that we are generating for the next five years, this EUR 300 million that we were able to generate, is to use it to succeed in our strategic plan. And this is family business, as you can see. So thank you. This was the last question?
I think it is, indeed.
Let's have a drink and thank you for your.
Thank you very much.