Good morning, everyone. We're delighted to present the first half results for the year twenty twenty four. Even if they're not extraordinary and not at the level expected because of the current situation, as was already published yesterday. So we have results that are exceptionally lower than what we usually obtain. So the first half of this year, we had a EBIT above 9% for the past years, above 10% usually, and we always target an EBIT at around 10% for our business. Last year, we were close to this. We intended to get back to the norm during this year, twenty twenty four, and we were hoping for a recovery, an interesting recovery on businesses, sectors that had been blocked or delayed during the year twenty twenty-three.
We suffered a lot during 2023 for IT services and in some specific sectors, and I will comment on this a little bit later on. But we thought that engineering would make up for that because it was promising, but the promises that even our best clients had made were not honored because our aeronautics clients decided to delay many projects. We thought we would be able to carry out these projects at the beginning of the year. So this first semester, 8.4% in results. The decline in the EBIT is mostly linked to not a penalization of margins or a reduction of margins, but rather because there is a decrease in the level of business. And at international level, there's an increase in SG&A, even though we've made a lot of efforts, and I'll get back to that later.
This H1 result is 8.4% of revenue, with less than one business day everywhere throughout the world, so 0.3% penalty for our EBIT. For the second semester, this business day that we lost during the first semester is compensated by the fact that we will win two business days during the second semester, so that will make up for this business day that we lost. World revenue organic growth was quite flat. It was better in France than elsewhere, and with M&A, we have a 2.9% global growth. For the second semester, the trends are similar to those of the first semester. There were cuts between June and July that we are making up for, and that we will make up for before the end of the year.
It's exactly what happened in the first semester. As for the number of engineers, it is growing. As you can see, since December of 2022, we went from 47,000 to 50,000, and to 51,000 engineers. We sold an activity that was not structuring in India with 1,500 engineers, which means that we started this year with at 50,000. It was transferred rather to a client, and they integrated them. What we need to bear in mind overall is that we started with 50,000 engineers, and we ended with 51,480 engineers. There's a caveat, though, because there is an M&A effect of 1,200 engineers.
We are still growing, and I guarantee that it was very difficult to maintain this growth in light of the decline in business between December and January, and we've had to compensate for that on February, March, April, and May, June, because many projects have stopped in all sectors, and we managed to be above the headcount that we had in December, thanks to mergers and acquisitions. I'll let you have a look at each of our regions on this global map, so that you can see how our headcount is distributed. This growth of one thousand four hundred engineers is distributed about everywhere. It's flat on France. It's growing in North America, growing in Europe, growing in Asia. It's not only in one place in particular.
If you look at the total headcount of Europe, so slightly under 34,000 engineers. So that still represents 75% of the business of our group, and our strategy is to boost Asia, so mostly India, which is more and more pivotal because of the low-cost offshore outsourcing of our clients. India and U.S.A., we have this offshore, low-cost offshore phenomenon that had already taken place about 15 years ago. For linguistic and cultural reasons, there's a lot of Indian front office in America. And this is helped by language, of course, English. So this is a phenomenon that is very common in the U.S.A. Five years ago, there were a lot of questions about this. Even seven years ago, we said it was not something that would happen in the engineering world.
Other sectors, of course, not so much aeronautics or defense or energy, but all of the other sectors are outsourcing. Our clients are looking to outsource, and India is going to thus be very important in the years to come. Out of the twelve thousand seven hundred collaborators, engineers in Asia Pacific, India has about eight thousand collaborators, and it's going to go up to twenty thousand through M&A or through outsourcing businesses, activities we have in Europe. It weighs on our revenue. Our automotive clients are mostly in France, and they've asked us to massively move our headcount that was in France, and also in the rest of Europe, such as Rome. This means that there's a loss in revenue. Regarding Alten's position in the IT services sector, for several years we've formalized a clear split between two types of businesses.
You can see them on the slide in blue and yellow. In blue, we have the engineering activities, so we are manufacturing equipment and products for the aeronautics, space, defense, automotive, railway, and industrial sectors. So this is our engineering business. So this is R&D. In factories for our clients. So we have two types of clients in this engineering business. They don't have the same problems. You can see them here. We are deploying and supplying energy for energy producers. So we design products for the grid, same for the telecommunication sectors, and then we have the life sciences, where we do regulatory business, traceability in production, and a lot of data science to analyze clinical trials. So these are the products that we provide for our engineering business, which represents 73% of our company.
And then we have another business, which is IT enterprise services, so a client management, lean invoicing, marketing, websites, and so on and so forth. It's what we called customer management. Of course, with many specific apps, many softwares that we integrate and we use, such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, and so on. And there are also businesses' internal needs. The second line is everything to do with infrastructure, networks, cybersecurity, cloud migration. These are the two main blocks or ESN or IT enterprise services. We used to call it IT management systems for companies, so mostly apps and solutions for corporations, so invoicing, billing, HR, and the infrastructure deployment with the cybersecurity and cloud migration, and everything linked to data management, data processing with data analytics teams. So these are two clear-cut blocks, so the engineering services and IT enterprise services.
73% of our business comes from engineering, and 27% of our business comes from IT enterprise services. For the engineering aspect, Alten is the third leader throughout the world. We're independent. We have Cap above us. Accenture, they're mostly present in the U.S. Third is Alten, then we have local players. It is difficult to assess, but you have all of the big Indian companies that provide IT enterprise services, mostly dedicated to the U.S., so TCS, Infosys, HCL, et cetera. They provide engineering activities as well. It is hard for us to assess, but Alten remains in the top five across the world for engineering services, and we have a lot of clients turning to us because we are independent. We provide local business and pro-productions.
80% of our engineers are close to our clients in all of the countries we are present, in Europe and in the U.S., as well as in Asia. We can also provide offshore services, offshore, local, with projects that are mixed, so both offshore and local. So they don't turn to us for the same type of projects as our competitors. I hope that I've been clear on this. We have players who can provide local services, and there are five of us who are international players. We have pure Indian players who only provide services that are 100% in India, and there's only one salesperson in the country. That's for engineering, of course.
But of course, for IT enterprise services, there are many more competitors, and Alten is nineteenth in the ranking, so still worth 14,000 engineers. Category recent IT services. For IT services, we are still a significant player, but not as high in the list as for engineering. We kept the same color code for sectors because, of course, the lion's share of our IT services, you can see in yellow, come from retail services, the public sector and banking, finance, insurance, and not so much in the industry, from the industry sector. Technical, industrial. The industry sector turns to us for technical and industrial issues and manufacturing. So when you look at trends, sector per sector. Our revenue has grown, but this is mostly linked to M&A. For the automotive and rail sector, so ground transportation. Transport, we've grown. The group has grown. Sector.
based. The share of that sector has grown, so the aerospace defense has also grown. The other industries that you can see at the bottom are the ones that are suffering. Not for energy, where we've grown, but life sciences, industrial and telecommunication equipment are really suffering because there's fierce competition from the Chinese. The OEM. And the OEMs are now in charge of their own businesses, such as ADAS propositions. So OEMs now have their own system. They want to be in charge of their systems for their vehicles. Example. That's only an example. As for the telecoms, offshore there's a lot of pressure for offshore. It's been the case for five years for technical support and support to deploy their infrastructure, so this, of course, has weighed on our revenue.
And IT services, which represent 27% of our business, there is also a lot of pressure. Our clients are trying to reduce budgets for IT services. All of our clients in the banking, finance, and insurance sectors, as well as in the retail and services sectors, in spite of the fact that some of these companies have excellent results, but moving to the cloud globally and moving to global solutions around Microsoft most significantly have significantly increased the price of licenses and external costs, because now they have big operators in charge of this. Non-negotiable. And it is difficult for them to negotiate on this, so of course, they exert a lot of pressure to reduce the prices to deploy and provide IT services, which once again are worth 27% of our businesses.
So a huge amount of pressure for this, and this is mostly where we've suffered, both in operating results and in growth. We knew that we would have better results in the blue sector than in the yellow sector. Sectorial. These are our sector presentations. Sector per sector. You have comments to the right. So if we look at the automotive sector, in spite of significant technological challenges. There have been many postponements. There is a decrease in volume. There are delays from all of our clients. So our two big French clients, all of our German clients are also in a difficult situation, and they are outsourcing, and even India is considered like an expensive country today. This is not because of needs or technological breakthroughs, it's because of the financial situation on these markets.
For the rail sector, things are going well. Many new projects, we've had a good amount of growth in that sector. Now, moving on to aeronautics and space. It is one of our most important sectors. We're in a good position for the engineering sector. At the end of twenty twenty-three, things were stagnating a little bit, but we are expecting things to recover over twenty twenty-four. Well, this is what we expected in any case, and it did not happen. We even have projects that we were expecting in twenty twenty-four that are postponed yet again for twenty twenty-five because of many different problems, because there are problems in the supply chain. There are cash strapped...
This sector which is doing well, the aeronautics, the sector still has postponed and delayed many projects, so this has an impact on Alten to the southwest of France, of course, but in the U.K. as well, and in Germany, so space, there have been a few accidents, but still we're doing okay, and the sector that really did well, and that developed quite well, everything to do with defense, security, and naval. For political reasons that you can, you can imagine, there's a lot of demand, and we've had strong growth in that sector.
So of course, this makes up for other sectors, but overall, our IT services, the delays and the outsourcing in some sectors such as telecommunication and automotive sector, the postponement of projects in aeronautics, and the boost in defense and the rail, means that overall, we've managed to have some amount of growth, but we did not improve on our business level compared to last year's, and we were expecting to improve it significantly in twenty twenty-four, and I hope that it will be the case for the second semester. As for the energy sector, we count on it, thanks to nuclear projects, and we deployed a lot of efforts to sign the exclusive acquisition of Worldgrid to the Atos company. We'll get back to this.
So we have growth here, and we want to boost this growth and accelerate to ensure that energy is a sector that is not at 7.5%, but that is far higher is in all countries throughout the world. As for life sciences, there was a decline because of the situation, but we've maintained our business, thanks to the data analysis of clinical trials for certifications and everything that is linked to production management. We also have specific activities, such as traceability.
In life sciences, and this is different to what we see in the rest of the industry. So it's been flat, so not too good, not too bad either. It didn't grow. Delay in Europe compared to the U.S., most of the stakeholders are in the U.S., so the challenge is to be present in North America and in the U.S. in that sector in the years to come. Telecommunications, I've mentioned it, so there's a strong price pressure which is pushing our clients to outsource, or some countries have already outsourced to Morocco, but it seems too expensive now, so they're willing to go even further, and sometimes there's a language barrier. And for other industrial equipment, so there's telecommunications equipment, MedTech equipment, devices, tools, everything that is not a sector per se, or even automotive equipment.
As for IT services, there's a very strong pressure. They're asking to reduce the development costs for IT, this is linked to the increase in the price of licenses, and same for retail services in the public sector. So that's where we're suffering, and we've lost 1-2% of our revenue. So that's it for my comments on sectors. Now, to get back to our M&A policy, well, things are not looking too good either. We had hoped in 2020 and in 2019 that when the situation is not doing so good for a sector, you might think that we would be able to buy companies, that more companies would be sold, that the prices would be favorable, but it's exactly the opposite. It is more difficult to buy companies today than it was two years ago.
The first criterion that you have to bear in mind is that all companies today, or 90% of them, 90% of companies that have more than 400 engineers, are already at the hands of private equity. It is extremely rare to find companies of between 400 and 2,000 engineers that do not have owned 70%, at least, by private equity. This means that our target companies, so companies with between 400 and 2,000 engineers, are at the hands of private equity with complicated systems between their selling price or their actual price. It's triple the price. We have to sell it back between 2 years to 5 years, so it's not open. Then they're at auction without earn-out. It's very complicated, very expensive.
Even in spite of these very high multiples, sometimes eighteen times, well, there are buyers. We've seen in France and abroad last year companies where we were positioned, such as in-tech in Germany or Scalian. The multiples are unbelievable, far higher than the multiples on the stock exchange. It's extremely dilutive, and sometimes it's dangerous because they have business plans that we have no idea if they'll stick to them. It's difficult to have precise due diligence, so these are complicated acquisitions. I try to find the targets that are still independent and that want an industrial acquisition rather than to be owned by a private equity. There's one acquisition in Vietnam, a company that works mostly for Japan, and that would consolidate our Japanese business. We have about two thousand engineers in Japan. Thanks to offshore in Vietnam and...
or the local market in Japan. So this would complete our presence in Japan, and there's a company that consolidates our activity in Warsaw, where we were already present. We're present in other cities in Poland, so this allows us to reach a critical size. We're at 1,300 engineers with that company in Poland. So of course, we will have one that will happen before the end of the year. We want to make sure that everything is compliant within this company because it had been divided by Atos in the past. We've already had discussions to consolidate our partner position with EDF. This should provide us with EUR 170 million revenue and 1,800 employees. But 1,600 engineers would be working on it because we also have subcontractors.
We might have to re-internalize part of that business. It's a good thing that we've had these acquisitions. It's allowed us to grow by 1,400 engineers in the first semester, but clearly, it is not satisfactory. In light of our financial results, we could have many more acquisitions. We could buy EUR 500 million or EUR 800 million more without being in too much debt and with a very healthy equity result. The problem is that we don't find anything to acquire, or it's at a prohibitive price, or in companies that are not ideal for us to position ourselves. That's it for this. Before giving the floor to Bruno and getting back to the outlooks, our capital hasn't changed. Most of the capital is owned by the public, as we call it, so mainly investors, institutional ones.
And I haven't sold-
... shares, even though I have announced that I was counting on doing it in recent meetings. I wasn't planning on selling them, I was planning on making a donation to charities, but I wanted the price to reach a higher price, above EUR 240-EUR 250. That was my goal, and I hope that that will be soon, and then I will donate 5% of my shares to charities. And we have also a free share system, as voted in the different general assemblies. They were always voted positively, and 350 people at least are concerned by this system, for an equivalent of 150,000 shares, which is why we have this incentive for the Alten employees and the capital.
About the CSR policy, it's a major investment approach that we have here. We've been working on it for ten years. Not so much because it's mandatory and that we need to pass certifications and so on and so forth, but also because it's in Alten's DNA. When you look at the CSR program, we have three main pillars: people, environment, and sustainable innovation. Our strength at Alten, of course, is the fact that we have people, we have training centers, internal universities, the consultants, the support, the engineers, and the diversity of our projects. We make our engineers loyal. That is one of our key skill. We work with schools, and we offer a good private professional life balance, good working conditions.
The international environment as well is a major asset, and this guarantees diversity within the Alten group, and we're really, really proud of it, so that's for people. As for the environment, of course, we don't produce anything, but we consume different resources for our internal use, so we've been really, really strict in the past few years, and we also raise awareness among our teams. As for sustainable innovation, we've created a department for innovation 10 years ago. It's very costly, over EUR 10 million , and it's working on different innovative projects, smart cities, and so on and so forth. And they make sure that we are in compliance with the commitments of the group and the ways that we're working and what we produce. So this is an important approach for the Alten group. But above and beyond the words, we walk the talk.
As you can see, we have certifications, as you can see on the right side of the slide. You can see that we've actually upgraded in the past ten years or twelve years all of our indicators. We're always in the top five of these different indicators. CDP, number, we're top two in the sector. EcoVadis ranked 84 out of 100, so we're in the top 1%, and so on and so forth. We have Gaïa, GEEA. It requires investments, but we are really working on this. I don't want to give you too much detail here with the different activities and actions put into place, but you have a few examples here. For instance, carbon initiative. We have a carbon initiative. You have also the gender equality and feminization of engineering professions. Unfortunately, this is not really successful. There's only life science, where I...
In IT services, where we're nearing the 50% of women. However, in the industry, we're still in the top 17%. Even though we've mobilized all of the engineer women at Alten, so that they would go to schools to promote the position of engineers in France, for instance, and they go to high schools in partnership with organizations. In France, we used to have a scientific program in high school that doesn't exist anymore, but they promote the engineer function for women, and we're working on it, working really hard. We also have a program to incentivize women to take on executive positions. In sports, we also contributed to the Paralympic Games through a sponsorship program.
I don't want to really dwell on this, but we have programs, and this is really important, and that's part of our DNA at Alten. Now, let's take a look at the first half results for twenty twenty-four, and I'll come back later on. Hello.
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As-
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... post-COVID, the international activities that used to account for half of our activities now account for two-thirds of them. You see the growth of the number of engineers. We're now reaching between 2023 and 2024, we have an increase because we used to be at 50,550 engineers, and now we've reached 51,390 engineers. And the share is actually growing for medium cost and low cost. Okay. And speaking the fact that the slowdown of our activities since the second quarter of 2023, we only have 510 employees additional in the first half of the year. Now, for the growth in business, a slowdown of the activity that has continued following the second quarter of 2023, organic growth around 1% this year, with still strong growth in France, 5.7%, when it was less than one. It was minus 1.4% out of France.
Heterogeneous performance in the different regions. The foreign exchange impact is none, which is surprising. France, for the first quarter, had a good performance. Business was dynamic in automotive area, dynamic security, utilities, energy, defense, while retail, telecommunications, and BFAs were down. The Iberian region, 85% of the activity is represented by Spain. It's recovered in the second quarter, 9.5%, even the growth was 7.5% for this semester. All the sectors are up except for the ones in yellow. Finance, mainly for Spain. In Italy and Southern Europe, growth has still slowed down, but it's still high, with 10% in the second quarter and 11% over the whole semester. All the main sectors were down except for banking and finance. Germany, the situation is much more complicated. The business has continued to erode 10% for this quarter.
The automotive sector accounts for almost half of our activities, and it's down by 15%, not because of OEMs and manufacturers, because the manufacturers are still growing, but mainly because of equipment manufacturers that are down by 50% over the first quarter. Aeronautics has recovered and is growing slightly, and tertiary and electronic sectors have gone down. The U.K. business was heavily impacted in the first semester, down by 12% organically speaking, mainly because the aeronautics , civil, and public sectors, which account for 45% of the revenue, that was impacted by the decline and the freeze of public budgets. However, the automotive sector, which accounts for 15% of our revenue, and defense, security, are growing, and Benelux low growth, 2%. Across the different sectors, they're up except for electronics and semiconductors in the Netherlands that are down for the semester.
Scandinavia, business has continued to deteriorate by 9% this semester because of the tool machinery in Finland and tertiary sector in Sweden, which is a small part of our activity there. Eastern Europe slowed down by 6%. Poland represents two-thirds of the region and is growing, but in Romania it's down 10% because of automotive and tertiary sector. If we leave Europe now, North America, we have a recovery in the second semester, even though it's still a little down over the semester. In the U.S., we're back to organic growth, but it's very low for the second quarter. Canada, pretty much the same situation. We're recovering in the second semester, even though the banking and finance sectors are declining. Aeronautics, life science, and automotive are slightly up.
Mexico, which accounts for a low part of the area, 5%, is growing and developing substantially, especially in automotive, banking, and finance sectors. Finally, if we look at Asia Pacific, up 1.5%, but Singapore is weighing down on it with 4%. Outside of Singapore, and China is penalized by the telecommunications, so but it's up by 10%. India, that represents one-third of our growth, of our revenue, 13% growth, thanks to automotive and industry. Japan had slowed down but now is fully declining because of the tertiary sector. Korea, 10% of the area, slightly up also, thanks to semiconductors and electronics. If we now look at the analysis of the results of the first semester 2024, Simon has already given the highlights. Operating margin down 8.4% of revenue.
The semester that accounts for 0.6% business days compared to 2023, so one day less internationally. Business level is also down from 91.8% to 91.2%, which weighs down on the gross margin by EUR 50,000, and the ratio price salaries and productivity is stable. Nominal gross margin has been preserved or has declined. This is rather encouraging for the upcoming semester. As for cost, even though Alten has put in place a cost-saving policy, the slowdown of the business has had an impact on the SG&A that are up in absolute value, but the relative value is 10 basis points.
The U.K., their profitability is much lower than it was last year, and the operating margin is around thirty-five basis points for the semester. EUR 9.8 million in the share payment, EUR 10.5 million outside of the new plan that will be paid in October, November. So for the year, EUR 21-22 million will be paid as part of this system. The share-based payments are EUR 7.6 million. Restructuring costs EUR 5 million, most of which located in Germany. Operating result, EUR 159.8 million, so 7.6% of the revenue is the same as last year for operating profit. The financial income will be detailed in the next slide. Income tax expense for down 43.7%. The financial income for Alten is quite simple.
Cost of net financial debt has gone up from EUR 1.6 million to EUR 3.8 million. The interest on leasing contracts was down last year. As for financial products, they're well-balanced this year, so globally speaking. Before IFRS 16, the financial result is much better, from minus EUR 1 million to plus EUR 4.2 million in 2024, and then they go from minus EUR 2.7 million to EUR 2 million after IFRS 16. If we look at the breakdown per geography, in France, despite business down, we have a 20-point basis. SG&A is up 30-point basis. Let me remind you, as always, that France supports all of the corporate costs of the group, and the economic results in France and the operating margin is 9%, operating margin up compared to last year.
Activities that are down compared to last year, but internationally, we've continued investing in technical businesses, and some of our geographies have a performance that's down. In Benelux and South Europe, the operating profit on activity is down, but it's still above 10%. North America, APAC, Nordics, and Eastern Europe, the margin is slightly declining as well, but it's still between 8% and 10%. Germany, the economic situation in the automotive sector and the U.K. and the public sector have led to a decline, and the operating margin is down because it's below 5% in both of these countries.
In non recurring profit is mainly in the international geographies because of restructuring and acquisitions, and now the tax rate is 26.3% internationally and 23% in France, which leads to a tax loss. Now, the balance sheet. The financial structure is really healthy, comparable to previous periods. Two comments, however: assets goodwill is at EUR 39 million because of the acquisition of the Polish company and the exchange rate impact on goodwills, for goodwills that are not in euros in another currency than euro. Non-current assets are significantly up by EUR 136 million, thanks to the Vietnamese shares that haven't been accounted for yet, and the fact that we have EUR 85 million-EUR 90 million in MTN. So investments that are at least one year investments.
Now, equities and liabilities, it accounted for EUR 46 million in December 2023. Now it's EUR 50 million at the end of June 2024, including three million euros for actualization. So in nominal, they are three, up three million. EUR 43 million. Our cash position for this semester, we've generated EUR 98 million free cash flow, so 4.6% of the revenue, up by EUR 83 million compared to last year. After we've removed exceptional taxes that were paid in 2023 because of the sale of Cp rime. Financial investments, EUR 79 million, are almost exclusively the perimeter variation. Dividend accounted for EUR 52 million. And finally, the other financing are interests and exchange rate impact on our cash flow, especially for products in currencies other than euros.
We've gone in net treasury from EUR 297 million at the end of December 2023 to EUR 267 million at the end of June 2024. Now let's zoom in on free cash flow, operating cash flow, operational cash flow, rather, that is in line with our operational cash flow on activity. Taxes paid in 2024 will be normal again, because 2023 was exceptional. Working capital is up by EUR 23.4 million only. The low increase in working capital is mainly related to the fact that the business is stabilized, you know, that we're extremely sensitive to the working capital variation with organic growth because of our DSO. The DSO has increased by 1 day between December 2023, which was 94 days, and now it's 95 days in 2024.
It's up, it's up two days compared to June 2023, because it was 92... 97 days, rather. So it's improving by two days, rather. 11 million EUR, also thanks to the fact that we're outsourcing less. Variation of other positions because of the variation in activities. EUR over 12 rolling months, it accounts for 6.5% of the revenue. To summarize, a slowdown in activity has been observed for the second half of 2023, and this has continued into the first half of 2024. Unfortunately, as Simon has explained, and, contrary to expectations, there's no rebound that can be anticipated for the second half. Activity is expected, therefore, to remain sluggish for several months. Some projects have been postponed for the end of the year.
Operating margin has therefore contracted in the first half, mainly because of the current situation. Of 0.3 in SG&A, but we've kept the price-employee ratio. That is something that is worth noting. As for the SG&A, this is also thanks to... because of the consequence of the stabilization of, in the activity, and we also have low operational profitability of some recent acquisition, acquisitions. Now, for the rolling twelve-month free cash flow, it accounts for 6.5% of the revenue, allowing Alten to self-finance its growth, internal and external growth.
The outlook for the year, given the fact that some projects have been postponed, as we've just been informed, because they will be scheduled for September, October, our organic growth outlook for 2024 should be between 0.5% and 1%, and we're hoping that there won't be any more postponed projects. The operating margin of activity will therefore be better, thanks to the seasonality. Over 9% in the second half of the year, so we should have one working day difference, and we believe that we will reach for the year 8.7% to 8.9% of operating margin of activity over the turnover compared to last year. But the group needs a rebound either beginning of 2025 or 2026, but we continue to structure our activities.
I'll give the floor to Simon again for the development strategy, and of course, we will remain available should you have any question.
Thank you, Bruno. One financial and economic comment before talking about the market strategy. From the purely financial point of view, the different parameters that allows to understand the deterioration of EBIT. This is new for Alten. We've maintained or even improved our potential margin for our projects in some countries. The good management of our work packages have allowed us to improve our margins significantly. There are countries where technical assistance was contracted significantly, which created a deterioration, but we maintain our margins, and the mix of salaries and productivity of projects is very good and improving. So this is the optimistic side of things. Why has our operating results gone down? This is linked to two parameters: the occupation rate, which has slightly decreased because of the market. We stop recruiting. There's also a much lower turnover. It's usually at around 27%.
We would like it to have it at 25. It's at 22 now, so it's rather because of the business rate. And as Bruno was saying, it's because of spending, SG&A, sales and HR. So we've lost 0.5 point there, too. This is the message that I'm trying to convey. In a normal situation, in a normative situation, our margins are there, and if we maintain this occupational rate, we're going to be fine. So this is what we're working on. Unfortunately, and contrary to what we were expecting, we are suffering because of postponements, so we have too high headcount. We've not reduced our headcount significantly, both for production engineers and salespeople. This is what I wanted to tell you. Other than this financial aspect, Alten is entering a global and international era.
We are no longer considered as a sum of geographical business units, a U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and so on and so forth. Our top 50 clients are transnational clients, where we have projects in all countries, in the automotive sector, in the aeronautics or energy sectors, or even other sectors. So the challenge is not for Alten to reach 70,000 engineers. We—I know that we will get there. And even if organic growth has slowed down recently, we will do it also through M&A. What we need is to have this international structure and to abide by the four criteria on this slide. So the HR aspects, to strengthening the number and the training, as well as the mobility of our managers. This is absolutely crucial. We cannot recruit managers elsewhere in our job. It's extremely complicated.
If we want to develop in the U.S. or in Germany, we're not going to find competitors to go and hire people, even if we offer very high salaries. We have to train people, and we have to put them in France or in countries where we are developed already, and then send them abroad or integrating foreign people in France to then send them back. So this is one of the challenges that we're faced with now, both for managers, directors. Our technical management is already almost worldwide. It doesn't cover the Asia-Pacific area yet, but it's everywhere else throughout the world. It's been difficult. It took us fifteen years to get there. Similarly, for our commercial organization, it shouldn't be based on local business units. The energy team should be able to tap into mechanical resources or software development or cybersecurity teams elsewhere.
So our salespeople shouldn't focus on the sector that they are working on. They need to be global sales, as we call them at Alten now. So they sell the entire Alten catalog, and we have different expertise and skills centers everywhere. This is the most difficult task, and it means that we need to take down the current system, and we need to finalize this new organization by the end of next year. Now, the analysis of what Alten can do in all countries is impressive. We have incredible capacities to offer to all of our clients if we know how to use our marketing. Many of our clients in our sales team say, "This is what we can do in IT services and engineering. We can do this and that," and our clients say... Oh, yeah, Alten can do this.
So we really need to formalize our offer and our capacities to sell it, including in our offshore centers that are becoming very good. They're distributed through all countries: Mexico, Morocco-
Romania
... Romania, India-
Vietnam.
- or, China, Vietnam. For HR, we have incredible delivery capacities, but we need to be able to sell them to train our teams, our sales business units, not to only sell what they have in their environment, in their region, so this is a new mindset that we need to work on, so I'm not talking about the financial aspects, I'm talking about the organizational aspects here, and of course, in our offer, AI is, of course, very important. We have a program for... our executive committee has an AI plan. We are going to train all of our engineers. We have to go over all of our projects in our package, and those whose productivity can be improved via AI, we need to offer that to our clients. This represents about 20% of the projects that...
where we can include AI, where we can include these concepts. We need to buy the adequate tools. This work is underway at Alten, but it's not a revolution or a major disruption. And we need to reach a critical size in the countries that are worth it. So two thousand engineers for the U.S., three thousand for Germany, four thousand for Japan, nine thousand in India. We need to double or triple our headcount in the countries that are promising, where there can be significant growth. So here we have the four items that Alten is working on. So we need to improve our EBIT, and I hope that we will soon be above 10%, and we will have an interesting rate.
We need to organize the company, which when we will reach seventy thousand people, we will be able to go a lot further, reach a hundred thousand, because we will have this international structure. Thank you for your attention. Bruno and myself are available to answer all your questions. We are going to move on to the Q&A session. Do not hesitate to ask your questions directly in the Q&A module below, or you can raise your hand and take the floor. If you are using your phone, you can raise your hand and type, star nine. To turn on your microphone, star six. So we have a first question, Mr. David. We cannot hear you. Maybe your microphone is not properly set. I will take another question while you solve that issue. We have a question by Mr. Aditya Budhavarapu.
Hi, Simon, Bruno, can you hear me?
Yes, it's okay.
Great. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. So firstly, I want to ask, the new guidance implies organic growth of anywhere between flat to 1% in the second half, so, somewhat similar to maybe the first half at the top end. Just given the commentary you made on the different countries and the end markets, can you maybe just talk about what gives you the confidence on that outlook for the full year, given, you know, all the end markets or at least majority of them as they seem to be facing headwinds? Second question is on the competitive landscape. Thanks for the color on that.
Could you just talk about how you look at that landscape, especially in India, where you have all the local players who have lots of onshore presence? How do you differentiate versus those players because they have a lower cost structure? And also related to India, how do you think about the ability to hire more engineers there, and showcase the Alten brand, compared to the local players?
Okay. I will begin to answering to your second question: What about our development and brand reputation and strategy for India? As I told you, India is today around nine thousand engineers. And for our strategy to reach one day 70 thousand engineers and grow to 100 thousand, we have to grow to more than the 12 thousand engineers in India and perhaps 20 thousand. Because even Alten, at the opposite of the pure Indian players, who have strong local delivery capacity and pure sales and front office are mostly local in countries. And then it's mostly a local country in Europe or in U.S., Canada, and so on.
Less than 20% of the engineers of Alten are on lower-cost country, like India, Morocco, Romania, Vietnam, and Mexico. So, we have to grow. We receive demands from customers in Europe and U.S., and naturally, with a new technical management, we have now in India very strong. We organize a very strong capacity with 10 delivery centers in four cities and so on. In India, we can grow just with the running business and the voluntary of many customers to deallocate local business in Europe and U.S. to India to grow to 12,000. And we were expecting that for 2025, but it will be late and later, because of what we explained about the demands of customer.
And we are also to push M&A because we'll accelerate to reach 20,000 volume of engineers in India. So the dealing situation will be to buy five, six companies, 700 people, 1,000 people, and so on, to complete the natural movement we have with our customers and the new business we win with our customers. But the M&A in India, it's incredibly expensive. The price by an Indian company because we are not the only company, so the group to have this strategy, obviously, it's two to three time the annual revenue. Sometimes it's much more. So we will make effort to pay the price, and we will do that.
So, this is our strategy. Most of the customers we have in India today are international customer, are not Indian customers. They are French, German, American, and so on. So we are even they have a two-way to work. There's some business of transformation for the original country, France or U.S. or U.K., or they have their own delivery centers in India, and then we deal directly India to India. So, today is mostly Europe and U.S. to India decision. Let's say 70% like that, and 30% begin to have big centers in India and working India to India. I hope I answer to your second question. I will ask you for the first question because I didn't understand very well your first question, please.
Sure. And thanks for that on India. That was very clear. The first question was more that the new organic growth guidance implies flat to 1% growth in the second half of the year on revenues. So maybe can you just talk about what gives you the confidence on achieving that, given most of the end markets are still facing technical slowdowns?
Yeah. In fact, this is very simple. We have some countries, and some customers, big ones, who have decided to postpone projects that normally should have been launched, in September, October, mainly, among civil aeronautics and also auto, in France, in Germany, in other locations. So, we prefer to be cautious, because this was not expected, and those projects have been postponed, I would say, the Friday for the next Monday. So, we ask all the business people to make a deep review of their expectations for H2, let's say, for the last four months of the year. And I hope that we will at least achieve zero point five for organic growth.
Projects are not canceled, they are just postponed because those customers are facing cash issues. They are managing their free cash flow very carefully, and this is why they have decided to postpone the projects in 2025.
Understood. Thank you.
We cannot imagine to continue such a situation where our customer, instead, of developing and investing for their new programs, are waiting and pushing later all their programs to make to generate more, more cash or to have, or for many other reasons, internal reason and so on. So we are okay in such a situation today. It's a problem. It's not a crisis. This is very strange. I created Alten thirty-five years ago. I never saw such a situation. I saw big crisis. We know it was one year, and then after, we are running very well the year after, okay? And suffering only one year. But something flat like that, no growth, no crisis, is the first time.
So I hope it will be finished, at minimum, after H1 2025, and everything will be okay in H2 2025. But I don't know.
Great. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Foreign language]
We are now going to give the floor to Mr. David, if his microphone works.
[Foreign language]
Good morning. Forgive me for earlier.
Good morning, Bruno. I have three questions. The first one is, can you give us more details on the discussion you have in regarding the automotive sector? Because the first semester was okay with OEMs. Now you're telling us that projects are being postponed in the automotive sectors. Is this with OEMs or with equipment manufacturers? Can you tell us about recurring businesses that could decline either in France or in Germany? Are you discussing with this sector? What are the risks that you envision in this sector? Second question: in the IT sector, you are top three in engineering, but you have much lower market shares in the IT sector. There's pressure on budgets. Is there a strategic action plan to change this? Because this sector is not as resilient than engineering.
Can we continue to make this sector grow, to make it more visible via M&A, or do you want to remain at this level in the years to come? As for margins, if we exclude the calendar impact, there's still a stronger decline in the second semester compared to the first one. And I want to really understand why, because the gross margin is quite good. So it was in S1 that you were surprised, and the bench has gone up. So was there more inter-contract in S2? Why is it that this margin will decline more in the second semester than in the first one, year-on-year, of course? So with regards to the automotive sector, of course, there's a difference between Tier 1 and OEMs.
For Tier 1s, it's been a catastrophe, which is why Germany has suffered so much, because we were very present in Tier 1-
ZF.
In ZF, Schneider, and so on in Germany. And there was a stark stop. We were among the first to work in the sector, and everything just stopped overnight, so this was a disaster. It has recovered in Germany, mercifully, and you cannot see it in the figures yet. But there's one sector that is collapsing in Germany, which is that of equipment manufacturers. For OEMs, to answer your question. The American and British manufacturers, as well as the Swedish or French ones have implemented. We have an offshoring rate of almost 70%. So only 30% of the design, R&D resources or follow-up of factories, so the process manufacturing, which has nothing to do with the supply chain and IT services are outsourced, except for Germany.
The Germans have always been a little more protectionist for HR and know-how, which is why there are very many Indian players that are turning to German companies, offering very good prices to try to get a foot in this German market by offering their services. So we need to support this movement in the automotive sector. We were in very good position over the past two years, and we have expectations in Germany. Things are slowing down, not because of strategic reasons, but rather for financial ones, for cash flow reasons, with our usual players in the U.S. and in France. To answer your question, we hope that it's only temporary, just like for the aeronautics sector. Airbus has gone down. They've postponed several projects, not because they needed to, but for strategic and financial reasons. That's it.
So for management IT, ITS, this represents fourteen thousand people at Alten. And even if it's not Alten, we can look at what happened when Alten integrated Capgemini... they separated both of them. They now have Altran Engineering, and they removed all of the IT services part that was reintegrated in Capgemini, and this became two different worlds. At Alten, we've been trying to do the same, two sectors, two worlds, because it doesn't work the same at all. In some cases, we work with the R&D and technical management, with the program management or production management for the product activities in the industry, and in the other case, we work with IT companies that are in charge of billing clients, management. So we're not talking about the same at all. So it's fourteen thousand engineers, and we intend to reach thirty thousand in the midterm.
So how are we going to do? We need to make offers. We're not looking for the best engineers coming from the best schools for R&D and to design equipment or factories. It's a world where we have IT engineers, where we deploy Salesforce, SAP to manage data. They want to roll out Microsoft and so on. We are looking for specific skills that is not strategic at all for IT directors. It's the same in all banks. It will be in bank A, bank B, and bank C. This means that we need to organize the IT service world per competence center around development in software testing, around the deployment of infra network, cybersecurity, and everything to do with data. So this trans- ...
Everywhere throughout the world, we need to have these skill centers, one on cybersecurity, one on data analysis. Overall, we have 3,000 people in the world that are working on data at Alten. We need to have them in within one entity, one skill center, and of course, we need to have a low-cost capacity in India, it's not the case for data. So you see that our action plan has nothing to do with the engineering action plan, which will allow us to escalate and to go up five tiers in the ranking, and this is what we're working on. We have hired a direction team that is dedicated to this universe with 14,000 engineers. That's for your question. I'll let Bruno answer your third question. Second semester.
No, I think this is, this is the right, translation of your question, indeed. So the calendar effects are not the same in semester one as in semester two, because there are a lot more holidays during the first semester than the second one, so we don't count the same. In reality, the decrease of the margin in the second semester compared to the first one, is not as significant as it seems. But it's true that we have more conservative theories on semester two for the margin forecast or activities. We'll see if we've been maybe too cautious, but there's no structural margin difference between both semesters that... ... that are much lower sometimes.
We have restructuring plans where we've maintained the same level of business as during the first semester, and sometimes we have inter-contract levels that are slightly lower because of the postponement in projects. It always takes two to three months to see this translate in our recruitment rate, but there's no major change between the way we counted the margins in S1 and S2. There's one thing I would like to insist on that I said earlier. It really helps us understand what the ROA will be for Alten, so the return on assets. I would not have said that in twenty twenty-one. It was the opposite. We are maintaining our theoretical margins. So the salaries, selling price, and productivity of our package allows us to be capable of having 10 EBIT points easily.
In 2021, wages had gone up, and it was difficult to increase prices, but if we had the right SG&A and the right occupational rates, we would have been fine. But we did not, so this is where we have a problem.
... It's in the dimensions at Alten. We've reduced it in 2024, but not enough. We still don't have the right occupational rate and the right SG&A cost in light of the revenue and revenue growth today, and it's a shame because we have the fundamentals.
It's clear. [Foreign language]
Thank you very much. That was very clear. We're going to take a question by Mr. Laurent Daure.
Good morning, Bruno. Good morning, Simon. I hope you can hear me.
Okay.
I have a few questions regarding the operating margin of the group at 10%. I understand that for the gross margin, our fundamentals haven't changed, but we have had structural investments to support the group internationally and to have higher range offers and more verticalized offers. But to reach 10, does it mean that we need a higher gross margin than what we had before? Or is it the volume growth that's allowed us to structure the group a little bit over the years? So as soon as the business will be stabilized or slightly growing, will we have an effective return to a 10% margin? That's my first point, and the second thing, there are many questions on India today. Can you give us more details and have more granularity regarding what India offers in India?
What type of services is in high demand in this country? And third question on the automotive sector, in terms of headcount for Alten, can you give us the breakdown of what is done offshore, so in India, Romania, and so on, and a five-year vision of this mix? And consequently, the risk for the automotive sector, which is worth 18% of our revenue, to be vertical, to be a lot less significant, so 13%-14% in a few years, because I think that this is where there is a real important topic for our investors today.
Clearly, investment to become more transnational in our offer, et cetera, this is something that has just been added to the traditional cost, and I think it can be assessed around 0.6% of the revenue. So 0.6, that is necessary, so we can present ourselves as a global group. We need an international technical center, mobility programs, transnational office. This is costly. This is something that we didn't have, a cost that we didn't have when we were more local in different countries in the past. So that's something that we need to compensate for, and for that, we need a return on investment. And theoretically, it should be natural.
Having these structures should allow us to limit, sometimes, the number of business managers, because we have work packages that are larger, to negotiate better margins, and so on and so forth. So we should consider, otherwise, if we're wrong, we're completely wrong, that the implementation of these cross-disciplinary, transversal structures, even though it's 0.5% or 0.6% of the revenue, it should generate at least an amortization and double or triple... compared to the other SG&As, but it's not the case today. So clearly, this weighs down on us, and I hope that it won't be the case very soon with the international deployment. As for India, what kind of activities do we have?
As I said earlier, we only work with international and global players, clients, the big names that have decided to go to India, and in our sector, so engineering, for the most part, we have a little bit of IT services, but most of our activity there is not for to serve the local market in India. The only activity that we used to have for the local Indian market was for a large, very large Indian group, and it's the one that was taken over by that large group that decided to insource again these 1,500 people, and it was the only purely Indian contract that we had. Strategically speaking, it probably wasn't a great move because it was transferred and then re-insourced for them internally for them.
But all of the deals that we have there are international players in the automotive sector, but also public sectors in the U.S.A., and demands that come from abroad. India, in terms of direct orders from abroad, we have delivery centers that are working or locally because the player that places the order, Renault, Stellantis or else, have infrastructures there. So it's still an international player, international players that we work with, but 95% of them are international players that have activities in India. So that's the type of activity that we have there. As for the sectors that we're working on, of course, there's hardly any aeronautics or defense. For aeronautics, we mainly work on technical documents, so engineering work, where a lot of AI is applied, but no R&D.
The sectors in where we have engineering activities are mainly automotive, railway. Also, we have for land transport, but also propellers, telecommunications. These are the type of clients that we work for in India. We mainly work in engineering. We're really strong for system design, global project, and design for mechanical structures via ANSYS. And out of the 9,000, we have around 2,000 Indian people that are working for IT services, and mainly for the U.S.A., and marginally also for Europe, which we need to increase because we have delivery centers for IT services. Laurent, I hope that answers your question? Yes, absolutely. It was perfect.
Do you also have a type of service that you're really good for in that area that people want you for in India, or is it quite well distributed across the different activities? Well, our clients prefer us to pure Indian players when they want a mix of services or projects in India and in the Western world as well. So a Stellantis project, for instance, you could have part of it in Morocco, one part in France, and another part in India, and why not another part of the project in Mexico, and another one in Detroit for a new model or a new integrated system or embedded system. This is typically where Alten would be solicited, because we're everywhere, and we have a technical direction that is worldwide. We can do local, onshore, offshore.
So if it's a 1,000-people project, the support, or software development, where everything is in India, like a black box of sort, you have companies such as KPIT, Wipro, that are able to do that, and Alten may not be solicited for these kind of projects. So yes, our clients, depending on the type of project that they have, want us. Now, it's up to us to bid for both of these type of project, but given the size that we have in India, that's what's going on. And for support to roll out, that's not engineering per se, but strategically speaking, we don't, we don't do that. We're not end-to-end on BPOs. So there are projects that we won't bid for. Okay, that was very clear. Thank you. Last question was for the automotive sector.
As for the automotive sector, well, as I was saying earlier, we're able to increase the percentage of revenue in the automotive sector within Alten for one reason: we've been able to grow really well over the past two years in France, the U.K., the U.S., et cetera. Despite the fact that, so in terms of the number of engineers, we could say that we're almost up 50% over the past three to four years. However, in terms of revenue, and given the fact that there's a lot of onshore demand, it's between 10%-20% up, so it's increased more than the rest. So increases the rate, the share of the turnover in the revenue. But we've reached almost 70% for offshore, and 30% local project, so inshore.
I don't know how, if this, ratio will reverse more. I don't think so, but if we look at what Alten's activities, we need to continue to develop our automotive activity. But we won't lose much of the ratio because of onshoring. I think we've reached that limit. However, there's Germany. Germany, there's a lot of inshore yet, still. But. The last point here, this discussion over the past few weeks and months with part manufacturers that you've had, are some of them telling you that you need to have a plan so that in the next three years, or within three years, to reduce the R&D budgets by 20%-30%, because otherwise we're going to be under pressure because of the Chinese market? Or are you not having this kind of discussion with our clients?
I'm smiling because actually that's the only thing we're hearing. That is the only thing that they're telling us. "I want down 20%, down 30%." We're only talking about the automotive sector here. So yes, yes, clearly, that's the only thing we're hearing. That's the only thing that they're interested in. India and Morocco have become too expensive. What about Vietnam? They're talking about Pakistan, Bangladesh. So it's nonsense. We've been able to consolidate in our delivery centers, and they're really stable in Morocco, India, and Mexico, and Romania, and we're already working on delivery centers elsewhere. In order to be able to be even cheaper than low cost, you need to go super low cost. Now Romania has become too expensive, when it used to be the Grail, the Holy Grail for nearshore.
Same for Airbus, it used to be in Romania, now it's in India. Yes, sure. Yes, sure. The technical documentation. But yes, of course, and this is nonstop, and we won't go super low cost. Low cost. And the super low cost won't account for one-third of the low-cost segment. There's a lot at stake, especially given the savings that you can get from that. Okay.
[Foreign language]
Well, great. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Now, we actually have a question from Mr. Parra. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, very well. Yes, loud and clear. I have three questions. First one, about the Q3 activity recruitment, we said that there was a slowdown for Q2 compared to Q1. Given the current context that you've described, should we anticipate an acceleration of this slowdown?
Understand that September is not over yet, but what should we anticipate? Second question, the capital allocation, given the fact that you've described that we have a lot of cash flow, but you're not able to make acquisitions, would you be tempted to accelerate on dividends and share buyback? What is your policy? Third question, do you have more visibility on the organic margin? Because last time you didn't have so much, so. You didn't have that vision, so. Q3? September is not over yet, so it would be difficult to answer. You'll have the answer to your question in the publication on the twenty-fourth of October for net staff evolution. As for the capital allocation, EUR 217 million cash, that's what we have right now. EUR 270 million is going to be outlaid for Worldgrid.
But we don't have any intention to do a buyback of shares for that reason. And we're not going to increase the dividend either, Simon, correct me if I'm wrong. Even though this is a decision that will be made during the general assembly next year. As for the margin, we're trying to put into place a carve-out program, but this will have to be approved by IRPs and with Atos and the authorities, so our level of information has not increased much compared to three to four months ago. For Worldgrid, what we're told is that the gross margin is pretty much stable. So based on what we've seen in the due diligence, we don't expect to have any major discrepancy, given the situation and the analysis that we've done. But we have hardly any information, actually.
Especially given the fact that, as you, as you have heard, when we signed this deal, Worldgrid is a company that is fully integrated into Atos, operationally speaking, but also in the internal organization, finance, HR. So there's a lot of standalone structure implementation work that needs to be done. So this is something that we've... We have different scenarios for that, and we need to continue to analyze the situation in order to implement something. Thank you. But I can add to what Bruno has said, because this is an acquisition that is very costly and that is a significant one. We've analyzed the revenue, the wages, et cetera.
Beyond what Atos has presented, which is hard to read, we have bought shares within EDF, and we've bought specific skills: control, command, billing, B2B, B2C, to strengthen our IT services with SAP, Salesforce, for Germany and Spain, and for grid management. So these three interesting skills are going to help a lot, and we need to consolidate our position as well within EDF, given the gross margin. Just like when you buy shares, if you do your job, so you manage the occupancy rate, you manage the project well, Worldgrid, there's no reason why Worldgrid wouldn't quickly get back to a normal EBIT above 10%. Officially, it's 12%. It might be 8%, maybe 6%, but it needs to be back, squared up. So we-...
Don't want to buy a company that has a really high EBIT when you know that it's going to go back to 10%. And there are companies that we buy for 5% EBIT, and that's where and it could happen with Worldgrid, but that's where our work, our job is to bring it back to 10%. But it's really complicated. We know it. We need to recreate the entity. The structuring of the activity with Atos is complicated. So the target is to go back to a normal level for Worldgrid. One last question with Mr. Marcon.
Hi, I hope you can hear me.
Yes, we hear you loud and clear.
I have two questions. The first one is what about Germany? What happens in Germany if the automotive manufacturers go offshore like the others? What about your technical expertise? And I know that initially you had large manufacturers such as BMW, et cetera. Second question about the transformation of the Alten organization. This is something that we've seen in other SSII in the past. Alten was also in this positioning to have a different delivery model and a more complex structure. This is what we see with most in IT companies that are going global. Do you think that this complexity makes Alten slightly different from what it used to be in terms of operational management, inertia, capacity to capture the market growth when it arrives? The faults that we've seen at Alten four, five or six years ago, basically.
For Germany. In Germany, we already have two Altens there. We have the Alten that we call-
Consulting Solutions
... Consulting Solutions, ACS.
ACS.
It's AÜG , so technical assistance that can be in line with local needs from automotive sector clients, and from the automotive sector, that are going to stay in Germany because they have a coordination system, PMOs, et cetera, things that stick locally. It's the 70%-30% ratio that I was talking about for automotive. So 70% offshore, maybe 80%, but there's always a little part that stays. So this split has already happened. The other part is the work package part that's in ALTEN GmbH, and where we could expect a lot of offshoring and a substitution of what we have locally. And it accounts for 700-800 people right now. Ideally, we want to transform it into 2,000 people. We're not big, especially compared to the German market in India, but that's starting.
We've already won projects, but we're always against Indian markets. They're-
ALTEN GmbH is already in India. The work package is already in India.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The M&A part is promising, and last Monday, I talked to the German boss about this, and he was very confident for the local part. And he says: "I'm not faced with local competitors or world players." So just like we do in France or in UK for the work package or even in Sweden, we need to start to move towards India or low-cost countries. So if we do this transformation well, and we did it in France, we will win. We did it in England as well, and it's going okay in the U.S. as well. As for the delivery model, there are several things that are changing. There is a significant change. When there's a significant change, it means that there are new models to implement.
As we mentioned earlier, transnational structures that allow us to win the big transnational projects with strategy directors and at the lower levels, the managers are also going to change models because the nature of what clients are asking us is more and more work package in engineering or more and more skills offer in IT services. It's no longer, "I need three engineers for this, four engineers for that." No, now it's, "I need a specialized team for cloud migration. I want a cyber team." It's a skills offer, and there's also a coordination cost to that, so we need to take it into account. This means that manager teams are offering skills rather than resources. This is the real change on the market.
Compared to engineering, these are projects that are bigger and bigger, and today there's an average of 20 IT people per project. We're going to go up to 30, 40, or even 50. For the sectors that we've mentioned, such as the automotive sector, at least 70%-80% low cost, because now clients are no longer... not even asking-
... a detailed rate. They want an overall rate, and they say, "Just do whatever you need." So we need to put in low cost whatever we can. So it completely changes the education and the behavior of our managers, and it also changes the model. And indirectly, if we are to delve into more details, the business unit system where we had managers recruiting engineers, and then place them in a service center or in... It's no longer what they do because engineers remain local in certain sectors, but we need to have a vision to be able to sell and organize a project that is provided by skills centers that are not at the same place as the manager, but they're in France or abroad. So this is what I spend a big part of my time at the moment.
But Simon, we were already doing this using the capacities in other BUs, but the major change in this model, and tell me if, if you agree, but the downside that I see, and I'd like to know what you could do to counter it. It's the stop-and-go effect. There are ramp-up phases that are difficult to manage. If you implement big teams, then all of a sudden you don't manage to replace this big project by another one, while you have a lot of people on the bench. There are risks because it's becoming more industrial, and it's not so much the.... It wasn't so much the case 10-15 years ago for Alten. You're entirely right, and either we remain small and we remain a technical assistance team... offer big, pay for bigger international projects and for clients that are a lot more demanding.
Either we're in a capacity model or we offer skills centers, so we no longer manage business units and inter-contract. This is the risk, I entirely agree, but we're going to have to do it if we are to get bigger. That's very clear. That's it. Now, even if the occupational rate were to go down, it's the same as for international cross-cutting costs. The gross margin gain will allow us to compensate for this. Let me give you another example. If you take consultancies, it's not like for IT services, their occupation are- Why? Well, because they provide very high added value services at 900 EUR per day, whereas we sell at 500 EUR.
So we have to make up for this loss in benefits with a different way of managing risks and our occupational rate compared to an offer with more added value. Otherwise, we're not in line with our accounts. We're no longer a top player. Very clear. Thank you very much, Simon and Bruno. Well, thank you for your time, your questions.