Welcome to everyone. Now we can present first, you know, the business model of Touax. As a reminder, the company is involved in the investment of in mobile assets related to international transportation infrastructure. We have three standardized asset class where we invest: rolling stocks, freight wagons, river barges, and containers. We manage today EUR 1.2 billion of assets. We are 243 employees. Those three markets are quite large. As you can see here on the right of the slide, EUR 75 billion of freight wagons are operated in Europe, EUR 30 billion of barges in the Americas and Europe, and almost EUR 100 billion of containers worldwide. The operating leasing business is really playing a very important role in the circular economy.
In fact, we also provide to our customers assets helping them to reduce their CO2 emissions. Here you see some examples, with, for example, rail car transportation in Europe, nine times less emissions than road, or barges, which is three times less emissions then road . On the next page, you see that also in 2025, we did increase our extra-financial ratings. We enjoy two gold medals, one from EcoVadis. This is broadly used, you know, for our customers. We obtained a score of 81 out of 100. Then from EthiFinance, which is used mostly with our financial partners, a very good rating, nine out of 100. In fact, we are part of the top 3% of the best-rated companies in our category.
On the next page, you see here the various platforms managing those assets. The first one is Touax Rail. As a reminder, Touax Rail is 51% owned by Touax and 49% owned by DIF, which is a famous private equity investment firm and also very involved in infrastructure. Touax Rail is a No. two lessor of intermodal wagons in Europe, has also a presence in India, and we are also No. two in India. As you see here, we manage more than EUR 640 million of assets, including 69% owned and 31% managed on behalf of third parties. We also have 114 barges. We are No. one in Europe, and we rent them in Europe and South America.
We are also number one in Europe for the leasing of containers with EUR 448 million of containers. In total, you see here the EUR 1.2 billion under management, including 56% owned and 44% owned by third-party investors. Here it's a very good summary of our three sources of revenues. Three sources. Two are completely related to leasing. The first one is, of course, the recurrent leasing revenue we obtain when we sign those long-term contracts. In 2025, this is EUR 83.6 million. Then, this is normal, at the end of the economic life of those assets, we are selling them. By the way, for example, Touax Container is the largest trader in Europe of secondhand containers. The sales revenues are EUR 58.4 million in 2025.
We also manage those assets on behalf of third parties. Here it's EUR 13.8 million of revenues in 2025. All those assets are rented to a very large number of customers. Here we indicate a few. In the freight car leasing activity, you will have three categories of customers. The first one are, of course, the former or still you know, state-owned railways like DB, so the German railways in Germany, or you have also CFF, Swiss Federal Railways, or Rail Cargo Austria in Austria. We also have a strong relationship with all the private rail operators. As a reminder, the rail activity was liberalized in 2007, and since then, there is a development of new operators, private companies like DB Cargo, for example, or LTE or Freightliner.
You have also a third category of customers, very large conglomerates, very large industrial companies using a lot of rail, like Tata Steel. In the river barge activity, we have two main categories: logistics companies like Imperial Logistics or Rhenus, very active on the Rhine River, or PASA, very active in South America, but also industrial customers like Cemex, the fourth-largest cement company in the world. In the container activity, mostly one category of customers for 99% of the revenues. They are the very large shipping lines, and they became, as you know, very large conglomerates in logistics. Here it's a nice way also to, you know, summarize the business model. First, you know , we invest only in highly standardized and mobile assets related to transportation infrastructure. They are really long life assets.
It's 15 years for containers, but then 20 years when you use them for storage or 30-50 years for barges or rail cars. They are extremely green and low carbon assets, very low risk of obsolescence. We deploy a strategy of long-term leasing, you know, bringing recurrent revenues. The levers, how to also maximize performance first is to have a balanced risk management, ownership versus management. This is key, and this is why we invited already 30 years ago, you know, third-party investors to co-invest with us. We are also very well geographically diversified, you know, in Asia, in the Americas and mostly in Europe. We always have strong competitive position, at least in Europe, and then recurrent revenue and cash flows.
It means when you do that, we have 80% of our leasing revenues, which are recurrent. In fact, on January 26th, we know that already 80% of our leasing revenues are secured under long-term contracts. Yeah. I turn now to Thierry to present the financials for 2025.
Thank you, Fabrice. We have seen and we had to navigate as everyone in 2025 in a very unstable geopolitical and economic environment. Despite that, we have seen only a moderate decrease in our revenues by 5% only. This has impacted our operating EBITDA by EUR 6 million and then decreased our net income group share, where we reach a positive net income of EUR 1.7 million. If we look at the breakdown of those numbers in the profit and loss statement, we can see a mix of diversified activities where we have the own equipment leasing activity that has been decreased by 4%. This comes mainly from the freight railcar activity and especially in the intermodal sector in Europe.
We've seen a decrease in the own equipment sales activity also, but this comes from the secondary activity of the modular buildings we still own. You know, we still have a small residual activity there. We benefited in 2024 from a very good activity in that modular building that has not been the same in 2025. We can see management and other activity quite a good and strong performance in 2025 compared to 2024, where we have done many new syndication. We have managed our operating costs because in this kind of you know, environment, we do care a lot about the operating costs. Despite the reduction of the operating costs we have been able to do, we've seen a small decrease in the current operating income by EUR 5 million.
Depreciation decreased a little bit also this comes also with a reduction of, you know, revision. Then we have a decrease in operating income. If we look at the financial result, it's very stable. In fact, in that financial result, you have interest charges that has decreased a little bit with the decrease of interest rates. But we benefited in 2024 from other revenues, financial revenues we didn't in 2025. That's why it is stable. Then you have the corporate tax. You can see that in 2024 we have a positive corporate tax, which is quite weird, I would say. In fact, we were in dispute with some Asian government for the container activity about taxes we paid 10 years ago, about an amount.
We dispute them, and we won that case after a long process, and we receive a check. It's really a cash positive amount of cash in that corporate tax we had last year. If we look at the breakdown by activity, we can see a mix of performances. The freight railcars, as I said, there was a decrease in leasing and especially in the intermodal sector in Europe. We see that India was very, very good this year, in 2025. Small decrease of EUR 1.7 million in the EBITDA of the freight railcars. River barges decreased by EUR 1.8 million. This is an unfavorable comparison effect from 2024. We will see the details, but we have done some good syndication and management activity in 2024.
We have not syndicated the same volume of barges in 2025. This is wha t we have the decrease. In containers, even and despite this, very difficult environment and very volatile, you know, war, economic war, stop and go, we've been able to increase the performance, increase the revenues, increase the performance, increase the EBITDA. This come thanks to the sales activity. We can see the biggest decrease comes from the secondary activity, which is a modular building activity that were very favorable in 2024 and less in 2025. Let's look at the freight railcars. We, in freight railcars, manage about 13,000 railcars. We increased the fleet by about 9% compared to 2024. 64% of the fleet is owned by Touax.
28% is owned by third parties, and 9% is in technical management. The economic life of this is 30-50 years, where we do amortize these railcars at 36 years. The weighted average age of the global fleet or owned fleet is only 13 years, which is very young in that industry, and especially in Europe. The average utilization rate is 80.5%. This is a very low number. We consider it's very low. This comes especially with this issue in the intermodal European market. There is a big potential here to increase the revenues, and especially in Europe, in that area. Average lease term is 4.5 years, which is quite long for that industry.
Consequence of that, especially of this utilization rate in freight railcars, is a decrease in the revenues by about EUR 2.6 million and a decrease in the EBITDA by about EUR 1.7 million. We can see in details the decrease in leasing activity and ancillary services. That has been offset by the management activities because we have syndicated some portfolios in 2025, but partially only. If we look now at the river barges activity, we still grow our fleet under management. We do manage 114 barges, 66 in Europe, 38 in South America, and 10 in North America, so seven barges more than last year. Just to remember, a barge costs about EUR 1-2 million, so it's a big equipment.
Economic life lifespan is about 30-50 years. Same, I would say, as the other equipment. Book depreciation is 30 years. The weighted average age of the global or own fleet is about 15 years. Again, we do have, or we do own or manage a young fleet. Average utilization rate is very high at 98.9%. The average lease term is 2.7 years in that activity. If we look at the numbers of that activity, which is something different than the other, we can see an increase in revenues where there is a decrease in EBITDA. In fact, this comes with the mix of activities we have in river barges. We do lease river barges, but we do some affreightment and also some syndication. We've done less syndication.
Syndication margin is about 100%. Less amount of syndication means less EBITDA. It goes directly to the bottom line. When you increase the affreightment, the affreightment margin is 5%-10% only. We increase the affreightment, but the impact in the EBITDA was lower than the impact of the decrease of the syndication. That's why we've seen this operating EBITDA decreasing despite the increase of the revenues. If we look now on the containers, that's a fleet management, very dynamic. It depends on the market. We manage about 300,000 containers, but here you can see that there has been a decrease by 9%. It's quite dynamic because effectively last year in 2025, there was not really a big demand in terms of leasing.
Why? Because in fact the shipping lines, they purchase, and they didn't ask the lessor to finance the containers. We have been able to sell a lot of containers, so you can see that there has been a very high amount of containers sold, 55,000 containers sold, so it's +36% compared to end of 2024, and especially in second-hand containers. The economic life span is 15 years plus 20 years. 15 years in maritime, so almost like the other equipment. Book depreciation, 13 years with a residual value between $1,000 and $1,400, depending if it's a 20 or 40 or TEU.
The weighted average age is about 5.4 years, very young fleet also, with a competitive average rates of $1,220 per TEU. The average utilization rate, very good also 95%, with a very long-term of lease, which is almost six years. If we look at the numbers, here you can see that, in the revenues and profitability, this has increased. Increased in revenues, increased in operating EBITDA, and not because of the leasing, as I said, because of the revenues. Because of the sales , each time we sell containers, there is a pick-up. There is pick-up charges. We can see that there has been an increase in pick-up charges. With the volume , there has been an increase also in the margin of sales.
Management activity has increased also in that activity. Management activity, this is something which is, we can say , the fourth activity of the group, which is quite transversal. We can see, and it's very important for us, and we can detail now in the next slide, this asset management for third parties. That's a cross-functional activity. It contribute to revenues and growth without the need to invest on our balance sheet. There is a growing demand of investors in real assets, especially linked to infrastructure or transport infrastructure. All our assets are considered in infrastructure now. The investor, they seek diversification, and especially diversification from the financial markets, which is quite volatile.
They want to have some real assets that is a natural hedge against inflation that provide recurring returns, low volatility and sustainability. We know that all our assets are in the sustainable transport. We do sign with them long-term management contract, 12-15 years, and we align our interests because we pool our assets, own and manage together. If we look at the type of investors, we do have, next slide, a unique expertise with the transport infrastructure of type of investors. About 30 investors, different type of investor, insurance companies, pension funds, family offices, finance company, and infrastructure funds. They invest through two funds.
The real asset income funds, which manage about EUR 180 million of assets today, and a set-up fund, which is backed by the European Investment Bank, which manage about EUR 200 million of assets. There is also direct investor managed accounts, about 10 investors, which is spread over about 20 investment pools. In 2025, syndication has been, as I said, at a good level, EUR 34 million globally in freight railcars, river barges and containers activity. We do manage more than half a billion of assets under management on behalf of third parties, and we have identified already several opportunities in these three business lines for 2026. If we look now at the balance sheet. So here we present the economic balance sheet.
You can see in assets all the non-current assets in inventories, which means that all our equipment. There is also some intangibles, but the amount of intangibles is less than 2%. There is only EUR 8 million of intangibles. About EUR 500 million of assets and owned by the group. In liabilities, you can see the equity and the debt that are financing those assets. The net debt is financing only assets, and there is no financing of working capital from the net debt, because the working capital is negative in Touax. A second thing which is interesting to note here is the decrease in assets and especially in liabilities, and especially in the shareholders' equity. This comes from the translation adjustment for the U.S. dollar.
You know that all U.S. dollar and in assets and in liabilities are converted with the closing rate in 2024 and the closing rate in 2025. U.S. dollar was 1.03 in 2024, and it has been 1.017 in 2025. A big decrease of the U.S. dollar, meaning a big decrease in the valuation of those in assets and liabilities. In the shareholders equity, it has been a decrease by EUR 11 million. In the asset, it has been a decrease by about EUR 30 million. You can see that there is a big difference. However, we have a natural hedge, and we do not cross the currencies.
When we do act in U.S. dollar, we purchase in U.S. dollars, we lease in U.S. dollars, we finance in U.S. dollars, and we sell in US dollars. There is no issue in the profit and loss statement. When we do the conversion in the balance sheet, there could be some volatility. Let's look at the debt now. 72% of the debt is without recourse to Touax SCA. We have EUR 358 million gross debt, EUR 258 million without recourse, about EUR 100 million with recourse, EUR 47 million of cash. To a net debt of EUR 310 million. 76% of this debt is asset-backed financing secured by assets, where 13% is debt capital market and 11% is corporate debt.
The weighted interest rate at the end of 2025 was 5.4%. It was 5.43% at the end of 2024. We can see that we still have high interest rate in U.S. dollar. This comes from the U.S. dollar rate, which is quite high, 6.38%, 5.58 in sterlings, and cheaper in euro at 4.53%. If we look at the maturity of the debt, as usual, we have some maturity coming every year. 2026 is the maturity of the containers activity. We are on the way to refinance that, and we have a good demand from a bank or good offer from banks to refinance the containers activity. 2027 will come with a corporate debt to refinance.
We do have refinance the railcars activity last year, and you can see this has been pushed in more than five years. One refinancing was for seven years, and one refinancing with the European Investment Bank was for 14 years. We pushed that maturity quite a long tenure. The financial ratio we comply as usual with our financial ratio. We can see a small decrease in the interest coverage ratio, less EBITDA, as we've seen before, and a small increase in the LTV. If we look at the cash flow, the operating flows still and always positive. It would be very weird to have a negative amount here. That would mean that we have a very low, I think, quite impossible utilization rate.
Positive operating cash flow, small decrease, and that's a decrease in EBITDA, because here almost is the EBITDA. The change in working capital, we can see a negative number. It was a big positive number in 2024. We can consider there is no big variation usually in the working capital. It's just cut off, so meaning that something has been paid before the 31st of December, something has been paid after the 31st of December. Big amount, and then we have this swing, but it swings from one or two days. I consider normally the change in operating working capital is quite nil. The net purchase of equipment, you remember that as a lessor, we do record the purchase of equipment, not in investment, but in operating flows.
That's why, in fact, we present this from the operating flows, well detailed. Net purchase of equipment decreased from EUR 47 million to EUR 34.8 million. Here, it's in the end of tax, so we decide if we want to invest more or less. We said last year that we will be prudent, and we will really invest depending on the market. We decide to invest a little bit less, and that's why, in fact, at the end, we stay positive in operating flows. Investment flows is nil. Financing flows come from the debt, so financing, new financing or reimbursing some debts. We have a small positive or small negative net cash, quite stable, of EUR 1.4 million.
Just to conclude, here, we can see that, at the end, we have been quite resilient in an environment which has been, quite, I would say, volatile, in 2025. I will not say it will not be better in 2026 as we have seen the beginning. I will let Fabrice to discuss about this new environment.
Thank you, Thierry. Indeed, let's now turn to the business outlook. To do this, we wanted to first in 2026, as we were in 2025, we are definitely in a VUCA environment. VUCA environment means volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Therefore, we wanted to present you a risk and opportunity analysis. Always interested to you know to have a look at it. When you look at rail, if you look to Europe, definitely still today, you have a European economy impacted by a slow growth and therefore the demand for new wagons is low. But this environment also creates some external growth opportunities. We also see an opportunity as soon as the Ukrainian war will end.
Of course, no one can predict when it will happen. What we can say is if it does happen, the corridors, rail corridors linking China and Europe will reopen fully. Therefore will increase again, strongly the demand for freight wagons. We are also in India, as you know. Here for 2026 is very positive. Market is growing, 6.5%-7% growth. On that part of the world, very promising. On the river barge activity, what we see today is still in 2026, a very strong support from the customers, but also from public authorities.
I think we lost Fabrice. Me, I will continue myself. On the river barges, we've seen some strong support from public authorities, and especially for the sustainable transport. There is some impact of geopolitics on South American export also that may favor the river transport.
For the containers, the question mark is the events in the Middle East, and that may complicate the supply chain. It could create opportunities. We know that when there's complication in supply chains, it could create opportunities. Also there is this oil price rise that could impact the consumption, household consumption and then therefore the volumes. For modular buildings, there is a growth in social infrastructure needs in Africa, and we are very well in that activity and especially positioned in the provisioning sector, which is healthcare, hospitals, education, schools, or base camp. It could be also positive over there. Our activities are based on infrastructure business model. Historically, they are less cyclical. We do have a leadership position. We have a stable customer portfolio. We try to do prudent management.
We have our diversification. We've seen a diversification by division, by activity, by equipment, and also by geography. We own tangible assets, low obsolescence fleet, that lease on long-term, generate recurring cash flows. We have this systematic natural currency hedging, as I said, because the activity, generate revenues in U.S. dollar, finance in U.S. dollar. That's what we have. Difficult then to say more about what will happen in 2026. We know that it will be maybe more complex than in 2025. That's the situation, and we will try to manage that situation very prudently. If we look at the freight railcars goals we have, we continue to have the same goal, which is to increase the profitability and to grow the fleet up to 16,000 wagons within five years.
Lessors account for 70% of new wagons purchased in Europe. Now we do finance railcars because the state bodies, they have no cash to finance them, and they need to renew their fleet. We are there to help them to renew the fleet. There is a positive with the green agenda and especially in Europe. Also in the short term, we can see a decrease of the volume in Europe when we see this in the intermodal sector. On a medium- and long-term forecast, it should be an acceleration. Especially with the end of the war in Ukraine, we hope that it will come soon. We don't say short term, we say medium- or long-term forecast.
You can see on the right all the major infrastructure project in Europe, with all the corridors, very big corridors that will help in fact to push volumes on the rail activity in Europe. In India, very positive, very strong development, a lot of needs, very correlated with the GDP growth, which is about 6% every year and forecasting in 2026. Our ambition is to support our customer. We offer a diversified range of railcars. We reinforce innovation, Internet of things, you know, IoT, predictive maintenance, and we try and we want to constantly improve the customer experience. You know that we have an operational excellence program in terms of Touax, and we push that, and we continue on that.
Increase the fleet, seize opportunities to buy out also existing fleet, because in this kind of market, there is also opportunities, and for sure pursue our growth in India. For the river barges activity, we will, and we have the goal to increase also the profitability in the fleet to more than 200 river barges within five years. There is favorable condition for transportation of grain and energy commodity. Strong momentum in the Americas. Green agenda in Europe. The question mark is about the climate. We've seen some water levels very low in South America. It's coming back on the Danube with the grain harvest, and the conflict in Ukraine for sure, with the cereals and the energy commodities. Our ambition is to increase the fleet under management also, owned and under management.
Develop the asset rotation, trading and syndication to renew the fleet also in tracks. Focus on investment in Europe, on the Seine, on the Rhine, on the Danube. Take the advantage of the European Green Deal, and take the advantage of our presence in the U.S. and South America. If we look at the containers, the idea is to consolidate the leasing income, and the associated services, management and trading. In terms of market long-term leases, we have a good visibility on cash flows, a utilization rate which is high. There is a demand for new containers that is estimating in 2026 at about 5 million TEUs to replace the old containers and equipment of new ships.
Question, is it from the lessors, what would be the market share of lessors and the market share of the shipping lines? The traffic continue to grow, expected by 2.5% in 2026. You know, container is a standard logistics asset, and this is an intermodal equipment because it is transported by sea, by train, by truck, and by barges also. Question for sure about all these geopolitical uncertainties, war, election, customs barriers, and so on. That's a negative point here, and we don't know.
Our mission is to expand the portfolio of the customer, increase the volume of the new containers traded, because you've seen that we've done some sales of new containers, and we want to continue to increase that activity, trading of containers. Trading of containers is not a different activity that we've done in the past, because we were purchasing, leasing, and selling assets. Trading activity, we purchase, we lease, and we sell. The difference is instead of leasing for 15 years or 13 years, we do this for 6 months only. It's a very short cycle and positive amount in cash. Take the advantage of low container prices. Today, our prices are quite low. Reinvest our free cash flow to increase our fleet.
Develop the use of third-party management for sure, and diversify the range of assets on a global scale. For the group , I don't know if Fabrice is back again. No. Let's continue on our Touax Group. We have structural strengths for sustainable and profitable growth. Our business model and that's what we've seen since few years and especially last year is quite resilient. We do have real yield assets, standardized assets, carbon-free logistics, long-term contract, recurring cash flow, good diversification, as we said. The green transport is really supported by public, private, and financial players. The expansion in infrastructure and e-commerce.
The outsourcing is very important because we've seen, for example, in the rail cars activity that the state body, they do not want to continue to finance the fleets, and they need and they want, and especially in Europe, the lessors. Outsourcing is favorable to leasing companies. We have this good support from investors. Our ambition in the group is to continue to build our customer loyalty. We want to continue to have the best level of satisfaction above the industry standard. This has come from the Lean Six Sigma program we have in Touax. We want then to increase our financial performance, and this come also with the market, the bottom of the market, but we want to be above the market.
Create steady growth, continue to invest and reinvest our cash flow, to continue to create value for our shareholders and pursue the objective of this sustainable development. We are in the green transportation. The idea is to create a regular annual shareholders return at around 10% per year. This is about the dividend distributed plus the growth in the book value per share, because it's difficult to look at the stock market, if you want to do that. We look at the book value per share then. Touax and the stock market, Euronext. Here, this is something we have not been able to achieve, the 10%. You can see that it has decreased in 2025.
The earnings per share at 6.77% on a compounded annual growth rate since 2019. This comes from the decrease in the equity with the conversion of U.S. dollar, because you've seen that we've been positive in net income. This come from the U.S. dollar and then we hope that it will not continue like that. We will propose and we can see this in the next year, thanks to the positive result, a dividend of €0.10 per share. We try to pay a dividend every year. We have resumed the dividend since four years now. We adapt the dividends to the net result and so we decrease a little bit in dividend because the net result has decreased that year.
Thank you very much. I'm sorry that we had an issue with Fabrice that was not able to stay in the meeting. Maybe a connection issue. I let you the floor if there is any question.
Thierry, I'm looking at the chat. There is no question in the chat today.
No question, no problem. Don't hesitate to send us a question by email, as we know each other, if you have any question. Thank you very much, and good day.