Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for being here for this Annual Results 2024 Web Conference. As always, I'm with Bruno Benoliel, and we will try to be as brief and concise as possible to give you the main highlights of the performance in 2024, as well as our forecasts and trends for 2025, especially in a rather complex context. Now, before I give you the figures, I'd like to tell you that 2024, we already had the performance for the end of the year, but it's a rather weird year. We're not in crisis. The stock market is doing well, and yet the context and the feedback that we get from most of our clients are quite cautious.
So we had other clients ask us to be cautious at the end of 2023, telling us that they were going to slow down, postpone, or freeze some of the projects for different reasons. In IT services, it was mainly related to the increase of a certain number of things, such as licenses and hyperscalers , including the high cost of cloud migration that comes with them, which has led to a major increase of DSI and IT services. W e suffered a lot in IT services. As for the industrial sector, for reasons that may not seem logical on an economic standpoint, a lot of clients in civil aeronautics slowed down, really slowed down, and postponed as much as possible their projects. Now, thankfully, some sectors, and I'm going to name a few, have managed to grow and to perform quite well.
in this context, our organic growth was 1.8%. It's unprecedented outside of a crisis mode. Growth, rather, is 1.8% and minus 0.2 in organic growth. Of course, we've had the M&As, but it's unprecedented for the past 36 years when the company was created. So in 2003, of course, there were crises that prompted in 2009, COVID in 2020. Of course, it's a one-year crisis that's really hard. We have negative growth then. We struggle with a 5% EBIT, with a 10% negative growth. T hen it starts again really strongly, and that's what we were hoping for. That's what we were wishing to have after the COVID crisis, especially when we saw the incredible recovery in 2022, which has allowed us to have an incredible year 2022 with organic growth around 18%, I believe, and an operating margin that was incredible above 11%.
Unfortunately, it didn't last because in 2023, there was a situation that is not a crisis per se, but it's stagnating. It's flat, probably because of different changes and evolutions that I will talk about in service and technology, more specifically. So 1.8%, including minus 0.2% in organic growth, one-third, two-thirds breakdown, one-third of the revenue is thanks to France and two-thirds abroad. W e continue to grow there. As you will see on the left-hand side of this slide, you see that France has grown quite a lot, up 4.8% in organic growth because we haven't had any acquisition in France in 2024. Abroad, however, we're struggling more. Germany, of course, with a major restructuring in the automotive sector. F or other reasons, the Nordic countries and Southern Europe are struggling as well.
Now, the margins have, thankfully, maintained their level, especially in France, where in France, in our work package, technical management has put into place productivity processes that were quite significant. I'm not talking about AI for now. This will come later. We'll talk about it later. T hese productivity processes have allowed us to improve our margins for our projects, transformed into work packages versus technical assistance, and this transformation is around 72% of it in France, which is a country of work package, and the margin mainly comes from the way that we're organizing our project and our technical department, and thanks to the fact that this margin has maintained its level, we've managed to also get an operating profit. It's disappointing because in 2023, it was 9.4% of the operating profit on activity, so the operating profit on activity is 9.1% of the revenue.
Knowing that in 2024, we had a rather favorable calendar compared to 2023, so it's disappointing. On a like-for-like, on a profitability level, we should have done better than what we did, especially because in 2024, we had a good pipeline, and we should have done better in 2024 than in 2023. It wasn't the case because margins went down on technical assistance, especially in Europe. Decline in margins and work packages in France, and despite a G&A improvement, because we got around 30-40 bps on G&As, on our strategy at the beginning of 2024. We considered that we were not in a crisis mode. There was no major crash. Of course, there was war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, but we didn't have any structural reason to be in a crisis, which is why we boosted recruiting a lot.
We've had an inter-contract bench or occupation rate below 2023. For all these reasons, we have an operating profit on activity at 9.1% of the revenue. We'll see for 2025. Now, the calendar won't be as favorable, especially for the first semester. Hopefully, we will catch up for the second semester. As for the headcount in terms of engineers, you can see the figures here. We've been able to keep, to maintain for the first semester of 2024. In the last quarter of 2024, we've had a major slowdown in a number of projects. If you look at the number of engineers in December 2023 on the right-hand side, 50,000 engineers, 47,500, that was in December 2022. We're starting the year in 2025 with 50,900 engineers.
Worldg rid has not yet been integrated, but this is also due to the four acquisitions we've made for 1,300 engineers. So in organic growth, we have 400 engineers less outside of the M&As than in January 2024. I hope I'm clear. W e are waiting to see what our clients will tell us, to see if this 2024 situation is over, where everything was sluggish, where we were stagnating, and that prevented us from boosting recruitment, which is our DNA, as you know. Now, if we look at the map now, if we want to see what's happened over the different geographies where we're present, you see that North America and Asia have grown, have gone up, thanks to the M&As in Asia. T he high demand in low-cost offshoring projects to India and Europe, however, has gone down, not as significantly in France, but still.
In France, IT services, banking, finance, retail, luxury, telecommunications have slowed down significantly, and a lot of projects were slowed down because of higher other costs in IT services, including licenses, so they postponed a lot of projects, to be honest. That's what we're doing as well within our own information system department at Alten, Bruno. For the rest of Europe, we're really sanctioned. Negative growth that's unfathomable. Car manufacturers in Germany are struggling. The four largest German OEMs come from Bosch. They've gone down by 80%-90% their outsourcing activities. They've gone from 600 people to minus 1,000 people. Just on this kind of client in Germany, it's really, really tough. Now, this is not the only explanation that we have. There are other geographies, including Southern Europe, where we've had good performance.
In Southern Europe, we do have a lot of banking and finance, but we've struggled on these segments. This is a quick explanation by geography. Now, at group level, if we include the M&As, as I said earlier, we've gained 900 engineers between December 2023 and December 2024, thanks to the M&As. It has a cost that does not include Worldg rid, because if you add Worldg rid, it would be an additional 1,100 engineers. In organic growth, we would have lost 400-450 engineers. If we look at the ventilation of our two activities in the group, here you have color code. It's for engineering and industrial equipment design or deployment of industrial networks, such as telecommunication, energy, public transportation.
So where you have R&D, you have factories, manufacturing plants, deployment infrastructure, such as the different utility networks, and you have support and customer services. T echnical documents. So when it comes to 70% of the activities of the grid, we could even break it down further between 50% for R&D and around 20% for manufacturing and deployment. As for IT services, which accounts for 30% of the group, addresses mainly, of course, tertiary accounts, such as retail services, banking, finance, insurance. We've split the needs into two sections: applications and infrastructure and networks with cybersecurity. We also have another brick of data analytics. T his 30%, 26% is from tertiary activities, and the rest is mainly addressed to the industrial world and engineering. I f you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them on that.
If we look at the breakdown per sector of our activity, again, you have your 26% that I mentioned for the tertiary world on the right-hand side, with banking, finance, insurance, and retail services, media, and public sectors that have struggled a lot. That's where we struggled the most, really. As for the other sectors, I'll take a look at them one by one. I n the next slide, I'm not going to detail everything, of course, but we've looked at each and every sector and the different events in the market and where Alten would be concerned sector by sector. The automotive sector is a difficult market because right now, beyond the shrinking of the market, the difficulties and the transformation of the automotive sector, including electric and hybrid cars, there's still a lot of work. T he automotive sector doesn't know any nationality anymore.
If you look at Renault, for instance, and Stellantis, for them, it doesn't really matter whether they roll out a project in France or in Europe. It could be in the U.S. with Chrysler or Italy with Fiat. Car manufacturers have an international DNA now, which is not the case for other sectors. So optimizing for these sectors means putting their R&D or support centers in the most appropriate location, if possible, and the cheapest location as well. So we see, and we've been seeing this for five years. We're in France. We've been offshoring towards Morocco when you want French-speaking people, or towards Romania or Poland for the German market, Mexico as well, towards Mexico, for American clients. So it's up to us, Alten, Bruno Benoliel, to be able to meet this demand and to put into place the research and development centers in these countries.
So we are talking about low-cost countries. Morocco, let me remind you that we have over 2,000 people there. Romania, over 600 people there. India, we have over 8,000 people there. Mexico, we have 800 people. So this is to meet the needs of automotive players. I f we're able to accompany to support this movement, we will gain market share. Now, we've managed to grow, actually, in the number of engineers that we have and in the number of projects within our clients that were well-positioned, especially French clients and other clients as well in the U.S. and in the Nordic countries as well. I t's an important trend that has only started in 2024 in Germany. So we need to be careful. This is going to be a massive change.
I hope that we will be able to increase considerably our number of engineers like we did in France. I n terms of revenue, you need three engineers working on a project to get the equivalent of one engineer locally in France or in Germany. So it's really, really tough to have a revenue growth, even though we're increasing our activity volume. So this is for the automotive sector. So it's up to us to make sure that we're able to support this trend. We have different sectors, of course. Accenture, Capgemini will be there. They're already big Indian players because most of their troops are already in India. Y ou have the few players, the Indian few players as well, that are present there who already have their sales forces in Germany and in Northern Europe, not as much in France.
So we will have to fight against them in Germany, English-speaking countries, and the U.S. As for the railway sector, it went quite well or quite robust, and we've had slight growth in this sector. Regarding the aerospace sector compared to civil aviation, of course, the biggest player is Airbus. In spite of the impressive order backlog that they had, they've had to postpone and delay many projects. O f course, we bore the brunt of this because it's our main client. So we suffered because of that in 2024. We hope that we hit rock bottom in 2024 and that we'll be at least stable and maybe growing in 2025. For defense, security, and naval, these are mostly projects linked to defense and security. We've had good growth.
It is a market that is in strong demand, and we have a leader position among all stakeholders in that sector or in other European countries. In France and in other European countries, we have promising forecasts for this sector. The energy sector, we are quite present. Even before we bought Worldg rid, we already had a significant role in that field, aiming to increase our presence by 50% linked to the economic balance that needs to be done with the nuclear players that need to also choose the EPR2. It's not the best situation in France to get investment budgets, so there are several criteria that we need to take into account, and we can hope for either a strong growth in 2025 or a delay up until 2026 in the energy sector.
As for life sciences, Alten is very present in that field, in particular for R&D, for processing analysis and certification of clinical trials, what we call CRO, so it's a lot of data analytics, statistics, and regulatory aspects. The main French players are looking for other providers outside of France. So the French R&D doesn't seem as profitable in France as elsewhere, and there are many reasons for that. Because of the way medicines are sold, there are two to three times more sales outside of France, so this means that these study centers are likely to be outsourced to other countries, probably to the U.S., who are themselves also going to use subcontracting, so we're going to have to support the CRO activity, maybe outsourced to India for different reasons compared to the automobile sector. It's not to seek for low-cost providers.
It's to be close to the countries where these medicines are going to be sold at the highest price. Factories remain in Europe for now. The whole process, certification, follow-up of what is produced in these factories, we are very present, and we hope that this is going to remain the case. For all of the industrial equipment, we added all of the industrial accounts to that category. They produce equipment. Everything that is not automotive, rail, or aerospace, defense, energy, life sciences, this means any devices, IoT equipment, industrial equipment that is produced. ASML Netherlands for the machine components, electronic components, medical equipment, Schneider. We are making interesting progress in this field. We even have strategic partnerships. That's very promising. The telecommunications sector, last sector I'm going to comment, we suffered a lot in that sector, just like the automotive sector.
Everything that can be offshored will be offshored, either nearby, such as in Morocco, where we have a lot of business for the French telecommunication sectors for linguistic reasons, or in India, to India, when it's about the expansion of a telecommunication network where it can be done remotely and in English. Of course, I am available to answer all your questions. Following our presentation, you will see in the coming slides that I'm not going to comment everything because I've already mentioned all of these different sectors. There are more details, but you can read through the slides, and so I am moving on directly to comment our M&A activity within Alten, so merger and acquisitions, this is one of our biggest disappointments. All companies that have more than three or four hundred engineers, 75% of them are already at the hands of private equity.
For seven or eight years, they have considered that this sector of IT services or engineering services represents a market that is interesting for private equity, and they can have times three, times four returns. So they massively prospected all of these small companies from 300-3,000 people, and they entered their capital as a majority shareholder, usually. So you can imagine that to buy this type of company, there's a timing because they buy a company and they sell it back four or five years later. Then over the past two years, they slow down investments to show an EBIT of 11%-13%, which is not the norm because SG&A are very low. W e know that if we were to buy this company, we would immediately have four or five points of EBIT that would be scrapped.
They try to have between 12 and 15 multiples. So this means that you have to buy a company at twice its turnover. So it's impossible to buy them. So it's very complicated to go negotiate acquisitions with companies that we would like to buy that are already at the hands of private equity. We should buy them at 70% or 80% of their revenue rather than twice their revenue, which is why M&A is very difficult. So we're still looking. We go to places where private equity hasn't taken hold of all companies, such as in Asia, in Japan, in Vietnam. In India, there are still a few available, which is why we've managed to carry out a few acquisitions there.
The acquisitions we have done, except for Worldg rid, which was, of course, a lot more significant thanks to Atos, we have one in Vietnam, one in Japan, and one in Poland, which represents between 1,300 and 1,400 engineers. We've talked about it earlier. It is the non-organic rise that we talked about earlier. So we have an extra 1,100 engineers as of 2025. They have a ratio that is much higher than that of Alten because there are many experts and specialists, and they deliver. So it's worth 170 million EUR of turnover. They also deliver derivative products. We consolidated our existing activities in the nuclear sector, which was already significant with EDF, and we're becoming a significant stakeholder in that sector, in the nuclear sector. In Asia, in China, in Japan, as well as in Korea, we have engineering business.
We had less than 300 people in a very old acquisition. They were developing a software for a Japanese bank. We divested because they had no strategic interest for Alten. Of course, we're going to continue to look at the market and hope to get a hold of companies that are not already at the hands of private equity. We are currently looking at six files, and I hope that we are going to buy at least 2,000-3,000 engineers in strategic countries in 2025. Last word on the capital allocation that hasn't changed at all over the past five years.
There is a small retention by staff because we provide free shares, but it doesn't make a huge change. I say the same as I said last year, the year before, and the year even before. I want to give at least 5% of my shares to charities, but they are not going to keep Alten shares. So I was going to do that before COVID, and I didn't because of the pandemic. Our shares had gone down. T hen I prepared to do it before the Ukraine war, and I didn't because of the war. I am waiting a little longer, and I hope that our shares will be significant enough to make this donation. I now give the floor to Bruno, who is going to comment on all figures and results in 2025.
Thank you, Simon. Good morning. So I'll try to comment on these results, and I'll try to be as brief as possible because Simon already provided a lot of information. So this is our usual slide with our business progress and the progress of our headcount as well. You see that our activity has gone down in 2024 following several years of growth. Our headcount is now of 57,700 staff.
It was 57,000 in 2023. Worldg rid was consolidated as of the 1st of January 2025, so it's not taken into account. This headcount takes into account the integration of M&A, 1,600 people who were consolidated throughout 2024. We divested 230 engineers in China, which means that because of LZT, we have a net contribution of 1,350 engineers. Our recruitment policy. We had recruited 520 engineers in Q1. We stabilized these figures in Q2 and 184 engineers down in Q3, and then 794 in Q4, 290 people less in France, and 450 overall. There's 11,010 engineers in France, 39,290 outside of France.
Our organic growth for 2024 has slowed down in almost all geographies throughout the year, going from 6% at the beginning of the year to 2% in France between the first and the last quarter, -1.9% in France, -1.6% in the last quarter, 4% in the first quarter to -1.7% in Asia-Pacific. In North America, our business has remained stable. There was an increase, but then many projects in the automobile and life sciences sectors were postponed. Overall, for the group, our organic growth was 0.8% in the first quarter, went to -2.7% in Q4, so an average over the year of -0.2%. The first quarter was not as bad as expected. Our perimeter variations allow us to have a positive growth nonetheless, and you can see that the currency effect is very low this year because it represents 0.007% of our turnover.
Per geographic area, we commented these figures in January, but I'll get back to them quickly so that we can talk about the different dynamics for geographical areas. France has a satisfactory performance in 2024. We have an extra business day in France. All sectors have grown except for BFA and telecommunications, but there was a significant decline in the third quarter. It was a surprise, in particular in the aerospace and automotive industry. Life sciences, defense, and energy have remained dynamic in France. In the Iberian area, so 16% of Portugal and Spain. About 10%, our business has stabilized. All sectors are sensitive except for bank, finance, and life sciences. In Italy, for the first year after five years, growth has slowed down throughout the entire year, 9% on average over the year for all sectors. In Germany, Simon already mentioned the situation.
Our business has declined all throughout the year to reach 14% in cumulated data at the end of the year. The automotive sector, which represents about half of our business in Germany, is struggling, and it has declined by 18% overall. Two-thirds of our turnover comes from automobile manufacturers in Germany, and they're growing. However, OEMs, and Simon has mentioned that there's a significant decline of their business, more than 45% of their cumulated turnover. I n sequential data, we have a decline of about 60%. So in Germany, the civil aviation, 20% of their turnover, it's stable, but it has gone down in the last quarter because of projects being postponed. The UK, we have two main businesses, one in the public sector, which represents 45% of our turnover. It is significantly declining by more than 12%.
It has been a constant decline over 2024, and it even reached 22% at the end of the year. Civil aviation, 18% of our turnover. So this is the engineering part. It is declining by 8%, but it's stabilized in the second quarter. O n the other hand, the automobile sector, which represents 15% of our turnover in the UK, growth has also gone down in 2024, but it remains significant since it has reached 15%. Organic growth has reached 15%. Benelux, stable activity, but a decline in the second quarter because of Belgium that has been significantly impacted by life sciences at Sanofi and in the automotive sector because of GSK, rather. I n the Netherlands, our business is stable. Our semiconductor business at ASML has started growing again in the last quarter. Scandinavia, it is similar to Germany.
Our business has declined constantly throughout the year, and it's reached 20% over the last quarter for two reasons. The automobile sector has been strongly impacted by projects being canceled or postponed, and the tertiary sector, as well as tools and equipment sectors, have been strongly impacted. Eastern Europe, 5.5% decrease. Poland represents two-thirds of the area. It is growing, whereas Romania is declining because of significant struggles in the automobile sector and in the tertiary sectors. In Switzerland, we have a decline of 1%. In North America, we have two-thirds of our business that comes from the U.S., 75% of our turnover. We have a decline of 3.5% because there's a decline of business in the automobile sector, in particular in Stellantis at the end of the year, and in the life sciences activities.
In Canada, 20% of the year, strong growth in all sectors, and in Mexico, representing 5% of the area, activities are growing by more than 20%, including for the automobile and bank and finance sectors. Lastly, the Asia-Pacific area, stable business, but still many projects that have been stopped last year, in particular in Singapore. If we were to remove Singapore, we would have a 3% growth in that geography, and I think we need to bear this in mind because it's the economic activity of this area. We have a 5% growth in China, which represents two-thirds of the area. This growth has gone down in the automobile sector and the telecommunication sectors, which represent 60% of our business in China.
India, 30% of the area, an 8% growth, but this growth has slowed down towards the end of the year because of the automobile sector and the electronic sector. Japan, 20% of the area, it's stable at the end of the year. There was a slight improvement of business in the tertiary sector. Korea, 10% of the area, slight decline, minus 3% because of the automobile sector. [Foreign Language] Alten had an activity operating margin of 9.1% of the revenue. Operating margin that remained at a satisfactory level given the economic context. It's reached a better level than anticipated, which I think we had in mind 8.9% of revenue, I think. [Foreign Language] which has improved our revenue. T he activity revenue went from 91.8 to 91.2.
The productivity and ratio between wage and revenue has remained stable. The salary ratio was stable with a better margin on French projects. On the gross margin of the group, given this mixed effect, it's gone down by 10 basis points and has assessed in the first quarter. The technical management have continued to work outside of France. We wanted to also better manage our costs throughout the year. The SG&A ratio in relative value went from 30 to 15 basis points throughout the year. So it was 30 basis points for Q1 and 15 basis points all year. So if you look at the semester, without any surprise, the margin was higher than the first quarter, which was anticipated, despite the shrinking of the activity, mainly because of the calendar, because we had 127 working days in this quarter when we had fewer in the first quarter.
The work on the SG&A has borne fruit in the first quarter. The M&As haven't had any incident on the margin, but the lower profitability in some geographies has impacted the margin of the group. The non-cash payments were 20 million EUR lower than last year, given some significant plans ending in 2023 because they've been initiated in 2019. The decline in the share price may be due to that as well. [Foreign Language]
[Foreign Language] is closer to last year, even though it's higher than what we're used to: EUR 5 million in acquisition fees, EUR 3.7 million costs related to acquisition, so additional earnings paid or bonuses, EUR 8.5 million for tax audits, and restructuring costs, half of which are for Germany. The EUR 3.2 million are for an activity that was sold in China, as mentioned before. So there's a decline in the activity in Germany, and the performance is not as good as expected in Germany. Methods, the public company, we've reduced the goodwill for EUR 44 million. The goodwill is irreversible, which means that even though the performance improves, we can't backtrack. W e wanted to take this into account. Operating results is EUR 277 million, down 13% compared to 2023. The full tax rate of 27.24% has progressed to EUR 5.9-6.8 million.
Our result has also ameliorated, passing from 0.8 to 1.9 in 2024, and we've also improved our other net financial income going from minus 2.6 to EUR 1 million. If we factor in IFRS 16, we've gone from 41 to EUR 7.7 million. By geography now, France has had a very good performance in 2024, with an operating profit on activity up 7.6%. You have to remove the corporate costs, of course, that are non-allocated costs, that would bring this operating profit on activity to 9.5%. In France, the SG&A ratio has improved by 35%. The non-recurring result is mainly thanks because of restructuring costs and acquisition costs, EUR 20 million for taxes, 22.05% as the effective tax rate. In Germany, the operating margin is down almost 2%, and in the U.K., in the public sector, we're at 0.
These two activities, which have led to a goodwill depreciation, have sanctioned the margin of operating margin. If it wasn't for that, we would be at 9.6%. In North America, Eastern Europe, and in Nordic countries, operating margin is down but remains between 7 and 8%. Benelux, UK outside of public services in Southern Europe, have operating margin higher than 10%. The APAC region is slightly down with an operating margin that's slightly below 10%. The non-recurring result is mainly abroad, where we have restructuring costs and acquisition costs. Taxes, 76.8 million EUR, as because of a 29.10% effective tax rate abroad, mainly because of tax deficits that were not activated and deferred, taxes that were canceled, and the U.S. bit. Overtaxed.
Now, the balance sheet, as you may see on the screen, the goodwill has increased given the acquisition of VMO and Vietnam, and Poland, and a valuation of goodwill labeled as Forex Alten's account. Owner debts that are provisioned have continued to go down. They were EUR 46 million at the end of 2023, now they're EUR 18.6 million at the end of 2024, EUR 1 million. [Foreign Language] . Only for one year. Cash generation satisfactory. So the free cash flow operating cash flow if we remove IFRS 16 represents 8.9% of the revenue. So for. [Foreign Language] EUR 370.7 million. We've paid more taxes because of the calculation and the working capital variation has allowed us to generate cash flows. Cash generation is, unfortunately, due to organic decline.
[Foreign Language] 94 days. O f course, this is due to the stability of the situation. Globally speaking, there's an improvement of the working capital. That's mainly related to the DSO. EUR 30 million related to organic decline. [Foreign Language] . EUR 16 million because of DSO. CapEx, as you can see, has remained low, 0.4% of the revenue. Our free cash flow was EUR 333.2 million, so 8% of our revenue. [Foreign Language] M&As and acquisitions and earnings, EUR 1.50 per share is the return for investors [Foreign Language] .
And we have the Forex impact for the work that we do in different currencies. So as we often say, cash flow, free cash flow analysis over 12 months, rather. Here you have a slide on the analysis of our free cash flow situation. F inally, before I give the floor to Simon to talk about CSR. [Foreign Language] . Here's a recap of our activity. What you need to understand is that there's a slowdown in the activity that was more pronounced than anticipated, particularly in the second half of the year due to certain geographies: U.K., Germany, Scandinavia, all different sectors: automotive, tertiary, and civil aeronautics, banking, finance as well. Operating margin was therefore penalized by a slightly lower than normal activity rate and by lower coverage of structural costs.
France achieved a good performance, and it was actually the difficulties encountered in the U.K. and in Germany that weighed on our operating profitability. Thanks to a favorable calendar and measures to reduce structural costs, operating profitability has remained satisfactory at 9.1% of the revenue. Now, the significant decline in sales and profitability in the U.K. and in Germany, the group has decided to write down part of related goodwill. The free cash flow was very satisfactory, up by 81%, mainly thanks to the improvement in DSO, which has allowed us, despite the acquisition, to still finance our external growth, our dividends, and end the year with a net cash flow level almost unchanged compared to the previous year. The CSR policy of the group, I'll talk a little bit about it. As you probably know, Alten has a CSR commitment, and we've had it for several years.
Even before it became important for investors, we had programs starting 2010 on gender balance, reducing carbon footprint. Scandinavia [Foreign Language] notation type Gaïa, Vigeo, and EcoVadis assess our performance. So we have a, for a number of years now, so we have a CSR plan that's detailed and that you can find. So I'm not going to get into the detail, but we have three pillars: human, environment, sustainable innovation. Alten is regularly assessed by different rating agencies. As you can see on this slide, we're making progress year on year. We're amongst the top 1%, top 2% [Foreign Language] All agencies, all rating agencies, which makes Alten one of the most recognized, amongst the most recognized companies in terms of ESG performance.
And this is actually a message that we get a lot from our customers, as you know, and corporate vendors paying close attention to that. [Foreign Language] . Most of the time, following our audits, we get congratulations. 2024, the roadmap now. Improved all our scorings we partaken in the ISO 56001 standard on innovation management. Partaken in the drafting of this new standard. Of course, we will be impacted by the CSRD regulation. So we've worked on our double materiality analysis and strategy, and it's confirmed the changes needed for the group. Of course, CSRD will be enforced with the publication of a different indicator starting this year, a reassessment of our EcoVadis and CDP assessments. W e are planning on having our integrated management system certified again, given the more recent standards.
Now, in terms of achievements, we haven't published our indicators, but you will find it in the URD. We've reached our objectives in terms of carbon emission reductions. We've improved our collaboration with our suppliers and clients as part of the taxonomy and Scope 1, Scope 2, and soon Scope 3. We've already started to put into place action plans to tackle the material challenges of the group as per the analysis of our double materiality. F inally, we have partnered up with different players to drive sustainable innovation. Simon, over to you for the development strategy for 2025 and beyond. T hen we 'll answer your questions.
Thank you, Bruno. T o conclude this presentation, I just wanted to let you know about our main challenges for all of the direction of Alten for the three years to come. We've reached a size of about 60,000 people now and an international deployment that we can improve. It can be improved in many countries. Makes Alten one of the main players in service providers throughout the world, and it requires implementing new structures and changing our mindset in the way we're organized.
This is what matters: changing our organization. This is what we are trying to implement at the moment. It is very important, and it is no mean feat. Up until now, Alten for those of you who have known us for 20 years or more, Alten was an excellent company. We were best in class for the local services we provided in engineering and also in IT services, the R&D products, and so on, and our organization was three country managers, which is why it was important to have a critical size in all these countries.
Today, markets are changing. All of our clients are cross-border players, and it wasn't the case 15 years ago. They want us to enter Work Package quickly. They want us to prepare them for several countries to offer new technologies, including AI solutions. This changes the way we work within our group, which is why our four pillars for success, in order to be among top players, we are the third or fourth player in engineering services throughout the world. Let's say that we're within top five with Accenture, of course, and you might have a couple of Capgemini, of course, and a couple of Indian players who are about the same size as Alten. To remain in this top five, we must not be an Indian pure player because we want to have this local culture, proximity culture.
We don't want to be a technical assistance company either. We need to change our mindset to provide a Work Package, part of it low cost in India or elsewhere. All of this comes from a vertical organization in countries, which means that because of this organization, we have a lot of costly structures, HR structures, among other things. Clearly, if we want to deploy our model in the U.S., in India, in Japan, in China, we need to export our know-how. We're not going to hire people locally and they're not going to know our business model overnight because there are no similar players in these countries. So we have to train people, and we have to adapt. We want to target the U.S. We have deployed six directors there. It doesn't work every time, but we have to do it.
We need to carry out HR work to create management mobility and to stop working in silos in vertical organizations in each country. We must help our clients who want a cross-border international player. We don't want to have one for an automobile account or an aviation account. We need to have worldwide players, including for big aviation players, automobile players who are present in 12 or 13 countries and would like to have one single point of contact. So key account management, we've started doing that for four years. Remember that key accounts are becoming international as well, and they're rarely national. They represent the top 70, represent about 60% of our turnover. So we need to develop that model, this cross-border management of key accounts. L astly, Alten has a wide array of skills. It is impressive.
It is shared between different countries, and each country is only exploiting locally what they know how to do in their countries. Now, we have an offer that we want to market to all players in all countries throughout the world, regardless of skills. L et me tell you that our skills are much more impressive than what other players offer in the engineering sector in particular. Of course, this represents a lot of work. We need to also support our AI upscaling. We have been working on this for four years. We stepped this up last year. We have a significant team in charge of this, both to identify the added value that can be provided by AI in realizing our projects.
Out of 10,000 projects, 1,000 projects rather, so 30,000 people in Europe, we have observed that 30% of our projects or 30% of the bids that we take part in should include the new AI capacities, either GenAI for the development of softwares or the automation AI for all things linked to testing and support, and the analytics AI for data analysis, such as in preventive maintenance, life sciences, analytics, so on. So for these three types of AI, 30% of our projects or the bids that we take part in include AI skills already. W ith our own POCs, we trained our technical directors. We invested with our innovation direction and the productivity rates or performance improvement thanks to AI in these projects. From 15%-50% of improvement, depending on items. It's mostly automation, so testing, and support.
Everything generative in the very specific studies that we carry out, it's between 15%-20%. So we have to market our know-how and ensure that all of our managers that we have in all countries stop only looking at what they have locally and start looking at the entire offer of our group, and this is the third work that we're trying to do. Lastly, and I've talked about this earlier, try to buy skills or extra positions in M&A, and I will explain why. We need to continue to do it, even if it is complicated, to include 3,000 engineers outside of World grid that's been consolidated since January, so new engineers with new clients for this critical size of 5,000 people per country and to improve our offshore delivery capacity. It's 10,000 people between India, Morocco, Mexico, and Germany mostly, as well as Vietnam now.
It goes from 10,000 to 20,000, and we have skill centers. These are the four goals. If you look at the last slide, I summed this up again. We are getting there. We are optimistic. We are going to maintain and improve our ranking in the top five thanks to these four items out of the difficulty that we've mentioned in this weird context that we're in, reaching 70,000 engineers, which will prove that we now have our new organization because 70,000 represents a success. I was hoping that it would be next year. It's going to be complicated. Hopefully, it will happen quickly. O f course, getting back to our 10% ROA or more. Thank you for your attention, and we are available should you have any questions. We have a first question by Mr. Nicolas David [Foreign Language] Simon.
Good morning, Simon and Bruno. I hope you can hear me. Congratulations for the management of this company in this difficult environment. First question regarding the outlooks that you've described in your press release. Of course, Q1 is difficult, but you seem optimistic for the second semester. You're talking about growth that should be positive with the improvement of the macro environment. Can you give us a little bit more details about this positive growth? So it means as early as Q3 growth, or is it through the entire semester, or is it because Q4 is going to be much better? What are the quality items that allow you to remain optimistic? Would there be a further deterioration in the automobile sector? Is it just a feeling, or is it because of your talks with clients? For the operating results that you mentioned, there has been restructuring in Germany in 2024.
The accounting impact is included in the 2024 figures, or is it something that's going to have a positive impact in the 2025 results as people will start leaving, and when you published the turnover of Q4, margins are stable in 2025? You said that if margins were stable in 2025, it would be good, or do you think that these margins might improve thanks to restructuring?
Let me answer your first question. What we notice right now is a stabilization of our business, so following months or quarters where business has gone down, there was no acceleration of this deterioration, by the way, in the second semester of last year. Now it is stable, so in terms of number of projects managed, we no longer see any deterioration, so that's good news. Now, when talking about growth, let me explain things. We talk about sequential growth.
We talk about when growth starts again. If we start having growth again, before obtaining positive growth, it means that we would have compensated the embedded growth. I don't know if I'm clear or not in my explanations. It does not mean that we expect a positive organic growth in the second quarter, the second semester, rather. We expect the second semester, if business is stable, to stabilize. If the macro environment improves, it should be the case for interest rates at least. I f some clients, such as in the aviation sector, which made encouraging comments recently, if they start investing again, we hope that the curve will back the trend and that we will start having sequential growth again. Does that mean that we could have positive published growth and not only embedded growth? We have no idea for now, honestly, no idea.
Now, regarding Germany, in particular, but also in general, when we talk about restructuring costs, let me tell you one thing: when we talk about non-recurring, it's really non-recurring. Our business model, we have people who leave every year, who are in the margin of gross margin, and it's not non-recurring. Only for the non-recurring part, so the one that is linked to decision-making that aims at reducing costs and managing intercontracts or lack of activity. So it's an adaptation of our structure to this activity. So in 2025, it means that unless a business gets worse in Germany, we should have stabilized our intercontract rate, which means that we should have a normal business level. I don't know if this answers your question.
Yes, specifically for Germany, and at group level, it sounds as though it's not conservative.
You have to bear in mind that the calendar is not favorable in 2025 compared to 2024 because we're going to lose slightly more than 1.5 business days in France and two days throughout the world, including in Europe, especially in Europe, so there's a mixed effect, which is not neutral either. We're going to lose it mostly in Q1. We're starting from Q2. It's about stable compared to 2024, so this means that you know this really well.
We're going to have a margin that will be in decline, so if we manage to maintain margins at the same levels as in March 2024, it means that economically we would have improved our company's margins, and since for H2, we will have a more favorable calendar identical to that of last year. Of course, the improvement of rentability will be seen. Then, just to give you figures, we're at 8.4% operating margin this year with 3.5 days less in H1. The margin will probably be under 8%.
Okay. This is an important piece of information. Thank you. Very clear.
So to get back to what Bruno was saying, overall, the perception we have of the market is that we've hit rock bottom. T his means that in January, we have less headcount compared to what we had in September 2024, for instance. So 2024 was not all rosy. We've lost 300-400 project engineers. External growth compensated for it, but it's not satisfactory. So at effective headcount, we would not be doing as well because we're at a lower level in 2024 than in 2025. So we don't know if we're going to have growth again. It's stable for now.
We have a lot of promises from our clients telling us that there are going to be projects. We see that there are bids for more and more massified projects, and Alten is a major player. We have called for bidders on much bigger volumes and references with most small companies that are not a reference. So we need to be able to bid against Cap, Accenture, and win these bids. T hat's what clients like us for. They know that we now have the means to provide abroad, even if we're still a small player abroad. In India, for instance. So rather optimistic. We're not going to decline. N ow we're looking for signs to see if things pick up again. Thank you very much. On [Foreign Language] . Thank you. Question for Monsieur Laurent Daure . [Foreign Language] Bruno. [Foreign Language] Simon.
Yes. Good morning, Bruno. Good morning, Simon. I had several questions. The first one is the margin performance last year. In FY24, compared to the margin at 8.5, 8.7, we're one point above that. How can you explain this gap? Because our Q4 turnover was slightly over the low bracket. D o you know where these good surprises come from? Second point on turnover and the sequential recovery of business in H2. Can you give us a little bit more information? Because seasonality means that Q4 is always better than Q3.
So is it just because of that, or is it because there's an improvement over H1 that is higher than H2? T he third point is on our recruitment strategy. In your narrative today, we hear that things are improving offshore. There is demand for offshore. Does it mean that we're going to be cautious in our recruitment? We've seen this in the past. Maybe we need to buy a company in India, even if the price is higher than usually. Thank you.
[Foreign Language] . Who's going to take the question on the margin? I talked about 8.7% margin or more, knowing that we were at 8.7%, 8.9% before. We did do a little better. It can be explained quite easily. First, gross margin that did well during Q4, better than anticipated, which is in line with the bracket that we had given, -0.4% to -0.9%. We did -0.2% in the end. So mechanically, the volume in gross margin was the reflection of an activity that didn't erode as much as anticipated in the continuity of Q3.
Project productivity, because we're quite cautious on the way that we manage our projects. So project productivity that was made final at the end of the year, an SG&A ratio that proved to be better thanks to actions that accelerated during Q4. That's what explains the fact that we did slightly better than anticipated. Is there a country in particular where you were pleasantly surprised? Or is it really across the organization? It's really across the whole organization. It's across the group. The management that we do is on a granular level, company by company. It's decentralized. Each company manages its own results. Then we reanalyze everything and we challenge everything. That's everywhere, but there's not one place, one country or region, where we had a very, very good surprise.
It could just be a little bit better everywhere to get a much better result at the end of the day. France, being one-third of the revenue of the group, is more represented. T he pressure we've applied on the first quarter to reduce the inter-contract rate and improve the occupation rate avoided an increase in the SG&A, because the revenue didn't go up. So we didn't have to recruit anyone, of course, in business or support functions, back office, etc., knowing that when we're used to growing, heads of department will tend to continue on this trend. So we froze that. Now, things did a little. This has helped better and more than we would have expected in the first quarter. Now, of course, we're still working hard on this 2025. A gain, I insist on one thing, Laurent. Here?
The headcount is below that of September if we don't take into account the M&As. So that means that at the end of the day, it will be slightly down in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the second semester of 2024. Now, I hope it won't be because I'm talking about non-organic growth here. Because with two M&As, we'll have global growth at the end of the day. T here's no specific sign telling us that we're going to be able to catch up with the 300 or 400 in earlier growth in the second half of 2024. Nothing is telling us that we're going to get back to that level. W e feel safe enough to think that we've hit rock bottom. It's not great. It couldn't get worse. I n a way, it's almost comforting. [Foreign Language]
That means that the recruiting strategy will be decentralized for the BU of the group. We're very cautious, of course. [Foreign Language] Messages you're sending around? [Foreign Language] offshore? Do we foster offshore recruiting or not yet? Well, offshore recruiting a lot. We know that we're going to have to grow significantly in all the offshore geographies, not only in terms of volume. We need to organize, send our technical management there, which large Indian players already have it, because our technical managers and everything is in Europe, in the Western world. So we need to train Indian managers, which is no mean feat. For us, especially because we're French. W e're doing it.
We're recruiting because we know that no matter what, even if we have the same level of activity in Europe, moving towards local countries is going to go up. So that's why we're recruiting. T o be really clear on what you were saying earlier, we are extremely cautious when it comes to recruiting locally. We used to have a quota for France, for instance, where we used to say, "We're going to recruit 4,000 engineers to include turnover and diluted growth." Now, we're recruiting. We have very agile teams that are recruiting based on the project that we're winning, which is new as well. Simon, [Foreign Language] . Does that mean that we may make an exceptional effort, not buying a company that's worth several billions?
Would you consider acquiring an offshore company for several million EUR to accelerate this growth?
Well, let me give you the example of a competitor that's bought out a 20,000-people company, I think. Yes, 12,000, I think. EUR 2 billion. We won't do that. Why not? Well, because we've identified Indian targets between 5,000 and 15,000 people. They exist, but they're worth three times the revenue. So the pure Indian player model, remember that it's a 20-point EBIT model, because all the SG&As are based in India. There's no expenditure, there's no nothing. They're not spending anything in the Western world. So they're saving almost 10 points on cost compared to Alten. We know it, and our customers know it, which is why we're not on an equivalent level in terms of EBIT compared to these Indian pure players.
When they have five or six captive customers in the U.S., everyone's in India, and they only have salespeople that are Indian and that travel every other week to the U.S., of course, the SG&A are below 10%, and their gross margin is slightly higher, allowing them to be profitable. T hese companies, we're going to buy them between two and three times the revenue, which is not sustainable in the long term. What kind of clients do these companies bring?
That's a good question as well. They're not going to bring Airbus to us. They're not going to bring Renault, Atos, Ford, General Motors, or customers such as these. It brings you different kinds of clients that are American clients, for the most part. When you look at the example that I was mentioning a second ago, what are the actual synergies when it comes to the transformation needs of our clients? They're really low, actually. So right now, we're betting more on the growth of what we have in India.
We want to go from 8,000 to 15,000 in India, maybe by acquiring companies between 200 and 300 employees, but that will be enough. W e already have two or three companies in mind like that. B uying several billion European companies in India will only do it if they have clients that are interesting to us, because finding a 5,000-people company working in American aeronautics or American automotive, I don't know of any. We've screened the whole market. Maybe they have European clients, but not American ones. There's one that's slightly present in North America, but it's already quoted really high on the stock market. So we won't try and buy it. Now Mr. Aditya Bhartia over to you.
Hi, Bruno. Can you hear me?
Yes. Yes. Okay.
Great. Thank you. Just a few questions from my side. Firstly, could you just clarify the working day impact on your growth in H1 and H2 once again, please? Maybe I missed that. Second question on the improvement in the structural cost on SG&A that you mentioned for 2024. What are the further efficiencies you have for 2025? C an you also talk about how much you need to reinvest that into some of the initiatives we talked about on internationalizing the salesforce and the offshore exposure as well? T he final question is on AI. You mentioned that you're seeing efficiencies of 15%-50% on projects. Can you talk about whether some of that is being passed on to clients, or actually, are you able to keep some of that in terms of better margins? Thank you.
I will answer first about our AI deployment. So we are more or less ready to integrate all the AI capacities we can implement in most of the kind of projects we are working with customers. As I told before, we have three kinds of AI, and we identified, and we are talking with customers on that. You have two situations. You have the situation of the existing projects who are already signed on the traditional technology, let's say.
So we have just to deliver, but to renew or to continue to work with such customers, we have all the time to propose the integration of AI capacity and to evaluate the level of economy we can provide just integrating these tools. Obviously, we are fighting with the big players, Indian players, Capgemini and Accenture on these proposals, and we cannot integrate all the investment we did internally on top of buying specific licenses or partnership with the hyperscalers and so on. T his will be an additional cost who won't be really reflected on the first margin negotiation we will have with customers. I t's impossible today to avoid to win a project without negotiating with the customers the level of economy we did. A s I told you, it's between 15% to 50%. It depends on the topics.
Fortunately for us, most of the projects who are involved are mostly R&D, so embedded software, mechanical design, whereas the EI expectation is not so and reduction is not 50%. It will be around 20%. I t can be an opportunity for us because if we take market shares to small players who cannot have these kind of proposals, we can increase our revenue with such customers, and the market will be split between the big players, and the smaller players will suffer or die. I hope I answered your question if I understood well. So what will happen about AI? So we don't expect decrease of revenue.
Thank you. Okay. So my question is more about those efficiencies. Are you able to share those efficiencies with the clients or do you actually see that that path to your own margin?
]Aditya] it's difficult to hear you because the sound is very, very bad. No, but I understood more or less. If I understand your question, will AI have an impact on the margin for us? I don't think because when we negotiate a new project with customers, we obviously try to bid and win the project with always the same level of margin, with more or less around 35% before bench. The project where we can have, let's say, 50%, 70% savings with AI, like in testing or customer technical support, calling services, and so on, we are not involved there. So we cannot have significant. We cannot sell a reduction of 30% to customers, but in reality, realizing 50% economy in our business, engineering design for industrial products, it doesn't work like that. So, price will decrease a little bit, but we will have to, but the daily rate will increase because we will have to integrate higher costs of people and tools and perks. So, at the end, we don't feel we will have a decrease of revenue because of AI in our specific business.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
You had a question about margin, Bruno.
Did you have another question, [Aditya]?
Yes. The other question is you talked about the improvement in structural costs and the SG&A efficiencies. Is there more you can do on that in 2025? H ow much of that do you need to reinvest into the business in terms of the international strategy, etc.?
As Simon explained, we need to hire people to manage transversal organizations to cope with worldwide customer wish to have worldwide supplier organizations. So we are currently hiring people for sales, technical divisions, etc., to be able to manage those, I would say, worldwide accounts such as, for example, Airbus, Stellantis, etc. T his is an additional cost, of course, which is absolutely necessary if we want to continue to grow and to address international projects.
On the other hand, we are reducing and trying to reduce as much as we can SG&A cost at local level in order to, I would say, support twice the same cost. I don't think that we will go much further in 2025, at least as a percentage of the revenue, because, as you saw, our at least H1 revenue will decline because of the embedded growth. So our target is to maintain or to slightly improve the whole efficiency on structuring cost and SG&A.
Got it. Thank you. Then finally, can you just repeat what you said on the working day impact on growth in H1 and H2?
Well, in H1, we're going to lose roughly one and a half day, and it will be the same number of working days at group level in H2. So the impact you can compute, it's above 1% in H1.
Got it. Thank you, Bruno.
[Foreign Language] . We have a question by Mr. Valentin-Paul.
[Foreign Language] Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? [Foreign Language] So two things on my side. [Foreign Language] . One regarding solutions and one regarding Germany. Maybe I'll start with solutions. [Foreign Language] Can you give us more granularity regarding the 2024 trend per type of project? So technical assistance, whereas work package, compared to work package, so the growth or decline rate on the one hand and on the other hand.
If things are very different per country or per sector, maybe you can tell us in which country or in which sector there's more technical assistance or more work package. [Foreign Language] There's still different types of activities with different margins, maybe different competitors as well. I would like to understand. [Foreign Language] work package. Technical assistance is dropping more than work package, and if there's an impact on gross margin. [Foreign Language] Isn't also what explains the fact that in Q4, you had a good surprise regarding margins. So that's my first question.
[Foreign Language] The surprise doesn't come from there, really. It's not a huge surprise either. [Foreign Language] It comes from a good management of inter-contract. A good control of SG&A. This is where the main difference comes from. [Foreign Language] It's not so much the improvement of margin in projects. [Foreign Language] Either for technical assistance or for projects. Just to give you a few elements. [Foreign Language] . First of all, we really need to divide the engineering sector that is in blue. Du monde des IT services. From the IT services sector. So it's the IT directions that need IT services for administration. So it's the industrial services versus the administrative services. So in the industry.
[Foreign Language] The migration towards projects or work packages. [Foreign Language] . Was quite slow between 2005 and 2025, and it doesn't have the same level of maturity depending on countries. [Foreign Language] Not mature since we are at around. 70%. 70%, as I was saying, which is work package in engineering in France. [Foreign Language] Everything else will be always at 25%, 30% of technical assistance. [Foreign Language] For specific projects. So we've reached a good balance. [Foreign Language] This is the most interesting maturity point with an offshoring rate that is going to increase. Towards low-cost preference.
There are sectors that are starting to do that, such as the telecommunications sector for some businesses anyway. For others, they've already moved to Morocco, Senegal, or elsewhere. [Foreign Language] Regarding margins. The work package mode, offshore or not. [Foreign Language] . We're doing slightly better. [Foreign Language] By 2 to 3 points on margins than for technical assistance. Why is that so? Well, because technical assistance is a proximity business that is highly competitive because there is a wide array of small companies with 200, 300 people. W e always need to fight against all of these companies that sometimes have inter-contract and are dumping people, and contracting parties make the most of that. O ur competition internationally means that there aren't as many small players.
We're fighting against Capgemini, Accenture, and big Indian players, and they are looking for 15%-20% margins. [Foreign Language] S ometimes they do that at a lower cost than we do. Prices are more logical. So we manage to have two or three extra points if our technical management is at the right level. We have an excellent management, which is deployed at 80% worldwide today. Year after year, they're taking over a few countries. The only country they don't have now is China and Japan. [Foreign Language] organisation. So they're capitalizing our whole organization, our methodology. [Foreign Language] So we have a margin that is slightly better for work package. Regarding maturity in engineering, so in blue here. Many countries have not reached that maturity yet.
We have it more or less with that of offshore in the U.K. and in the U.S. because they're used to doing business with the Indians because of the language barrier, of course. Whereas the Germans have not developed that yet, so they're going to undergo a brutal change in 2025 towards offshore and towards work package. In Germany, for instance, we're at 50-50. You have countries such as Nordic countries where you have about 50% of technical assistance, and they're going to undergo a big change. Same thing in Italy where they almost only had technical assistance, and they're changing significantly. The Italians don't have to change as quickly as we do because they already have a lot of offshore, but they have no choice now, and they want to go to India or Morocco to save 30% or 40% or even more.
So if I think worldwide, the maturity level of the work package, we're at about 50-50 for engineering worldwide, with France as a model, which is at about 75%. This is going to continue, and maybe margins will improve. O f course, we are going to change the existing business in technical assistance. The margins are going to go down. So I don't know if this will mean an increase in margins, but I hope at least that we're going to maintain our current margins because usually, technical assistance means that we decrease margins. Even countries such as Germany, where we consider technical assistance as staffing, it's not true. It's not staffing. All of the German engineers are employees. They have permanent contracts. They have social rules. Sometimes it costs more than in France, and there's inter-contract. So sometimes we tend to think that technical assistance is staffing.
It's not the case. We hire people. We train them. We integrate them. [Foreign Language] M argins are decreasing. Let me give you a clear example. There's one of the main German manufacturers in Munich. He imposed margins at 18% for the group. So it's not even 30% anymore. So it is urgent for us to change things there. [Foreign Language] It's not the case in France and in other countries. So that movement is going to continue. For IT services, it's a different story. You have two types of businesses. You have the big BPOs when an IT department is outsourcing payment or support for six years of most of their apps. We're not on that at all, Atos. It's not our job. We're not in BPOs of IT services.
We're not Sopra Steria, Capgemini, Accenture. We don't do this. So we have specific development, and we are bringing specific skills. We have different offers: software development, testing, cloud migration, cyber security, infra network, and strategic projects. Contracting support. We sometimes send offshore to Portugal. Or in Morocco for language reasons, or Senegal or Mauritius. We don't go to India as much, but we still provide a lot of technical assistance because it's really specific. It's really tailored. It's the new project. It's not the BPO management over six years that are maintained by big service companies. That's not what we do. So we've not won that type of project. I don't know if this answers your question. It's very clear.
Just the work package growth rate in 2024, if you have this information, if you can provide this information. I would tend to say we probably had slightly less than a 5% growth of the work package percentage compared to technical assistance for all sectors. So if it's 5% a year, one day we will reach 70%. Today, we're slightly below. [Foreign Language] I t's not homogeneous, depending on whether it's engineering of 50% of externalized R&D. So it's 50% of the whole group. It's slightly better for outsourced R&D and slightly less for IT services.
Thank you very much. T he last topic I wanted to mention was for Germany. You were saying that they're stopping outsourcing in the automobile sector because there is a decrease of less than 80% in some topics, and you've said that several times. You are expecting a massive movement. So my question is, don't you think that your clients have already gone to India?
Maybe you share your vision of the evolution of your market share. In Germany and in the automobile sector, there are two types of clients. We have the OEMs, so BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Daimler, with their software apps as well. We have manufacturers that I just mentioned and OEMs. So they've reduced their outsourcing, the latter, of almost 80%. They're big players. Bigger than French, so ZF, Conti, Bosch, and so on [Foreign Language] For you, these people have stopped outsourcing or have they gone to more low-cost people? No, no, they've stopped outsourcing, and they've fired people. They've decreased their cost significantly. You don't think you've lost market shares on these topics?
Overall, if we look at the competitive environment, you don't think that the fact that it's the first time in your history that outside of a crisis you have a decline of business, it's what you mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, you don't think that this might also be linked to a fiercer competition and maybe the fact that you're slightly behind on offshoring? We measure this, and of course, it's a question that we've asked ourselves, and it's very precise and very relevant. We're not losing market shares. When I give you the example of OEMs, which is such a brutal example that none of our competitors has done better than we have in Germany. They've stopped everything, and that's it. T hey don't even say that they're going to offshore because they are in competition for ADAS, infotainment, mobility, all of these apps.
They are fighting against Indian players such as a company that is offering specific apps. So they've had a violent decrease in fees for electric cars, for hybrid cars, for all of the onboard IT systems in cars. So I would have rather keeping my troops in Germany and telling them our competitors are doing better, but there is a market. We are constantly checking the market regarding these OEMs because it was violent, and it's the same for everyone. If you look at all the players from the automobile sector, whether they're Indian or Western players, they've all suffered the same way. [Foreign Language] manufacturers. It's different. We cannot say that there's a decrease in fees where we have the same in Germany as what happened in France seven or eight years ago, and France where there was a strong demand for offshoring.
Some projects [Foreign Language] We want to decrease costs. We want to do things ourselves rather than buying from the main OEMs. [Foreign Language] They have massive bids where we're in competition with big players such as Indian players, and they're really present there. We have our share there. We've even massively increased our market share among French OEMs. Our goal, and we'll talk about this again in six months or a year, is not to miss the turn that German OEMs are taking. [Foreign Language] Part of it should be in India, in Morocco, or in Romania. [Foreign Language]
So we're going to lose business locally. T ransform it. T o maintain the same turnover as we have now, we have to reach 50% or 100% more in volume because the prices are lower, of course, since it's low cost [Foreign Language] It's what we've managed to do with Renault and Stellantis. [Foreign Language] Betting on Germany and Sweden, we also have to conquer the U.S. We are behind with General Motors or Ford. [Foreign Language]
We are going to kick out the Indians ourselves because they are bad returns, bad feedback on some Indian players, and if a Western company such as Atos, which has references in that sector in Europe and elsewhere, it's always welcomed with open arms, and of course, there's a price question. We're negotiating with a UK big player right now. We're faced with two Indian players, but we will have our share.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The market has changed, but we have to be good with OEMs, and for manufacturers, everyone is in standby.
Very clear. Thank you.
We have a question by Mr. Derric Marcon [Foreign Language]
Good morning, everyone. I hope that you can hear me. I had three questions. The first one is on the use rate in a more stable environment for Alten. Would this use rate be back to historical levels? If I go even further with the organizational change and the skill centers that are pooled, the delivery centers that are nearshore, offshore, which allows us to better manage engineers, could we have a use level that would be higher than 92%? That was my first question.
My second question was with regards to what you mentioned during the call, strategic partnerships with companies such as Siemens and Schneider Electric. [Foreign Language] are enthusiastic with these clients? Is it because you are in their favorite list of suppliers and you weren't there before? Or is it because you intend to go further and do what some Indian companies are doing, so create joint ventures, service centers that are dedicated to clients? W hat volume of business could that represent in a few years compared to today? And third question. The tax rate in France, if it increases, do you know how much it would cost you?
The last question is a painful one.
It's for Bruno. Don't worry. [Foreign Language]
So with regards to the activity rate, we are one point below the norm. We have improved that rate in the second semester of 2024. So theoretically, compared to the normal use rate in a normal context, we could gain an extra point. Unfortunately, in the current context, it's going to be difficult to gain it back because we're not going to fire people. When we have people, we try to keep them busy. So we're at around 91.5%. So going above 92% would be excellent news. It would improve our results for 2025 when we look at January and February for now.
[Foreign Language] It's never as good at the beginning of the year. T hat's always true. [Foreign Language] So we've not gained that point back. [Foreign Language] We're slightly below 91. [Foreign Language] We should do the same as S2 2024. [Foreign Language] We should get back to the norm we had in 2019. [Foreign Language]
Even if we try to do our best to get there. [Foreign Language] Compared to the potential partnerships or JVs. So do not mix up. [Foreign Language] clients. Partnerships with clients and partnerships with competitors. [Foreign Language] Now we have to talk to the client and show that we are a global player. Sometimes it's in our interest to be in partnership with a complementary partner. It's what we did in Germany for Renault. [Foreign Language] When we were in partnership with HCL, it was for a big market, for France and Canada, where we're quite complementary and we are both there.
So it's a contextual partnership that allows us to present ourselves, introduce ourselves as a complete group because we don't have everything and the other doesn't have everything either. So it's a win-win partnership. Atos was not used to doing that. [Foreign Language] nature. We have two or three partnerships of such nature. We might have other types of partnerships with consultants because they might allow us to have the change support aspect that we don't have. We have R&D and Capgemini knows how to do that. So we could partner with some of them when we need to have an end-to-end complete project. That is for JVs, partnerships. Or a global reference partnership over three years. T hen we have partnerships with clients.
We manage to have more value in our innovation branch with clients who find innovation aspects at Atos that they don't have. So they make us do it, which allows us to consolidate our client relationship with them. This is completely different. Sometimes they ask us that. Schneider, for instance, Siemens, Thales. They want to consider us not as subcontractors. We have a bid in India. Please give us your best offer. We're among the top three suppliers, and they ask us, "Well, there's such type of skills. Do you have something to offer? Do you have innovation?" We have 70 people in our innovation department. Put your innovation department in the topic and help us change. This is part of a client-provider relationship, and there is going to be more and more of that. We didn't used to have that five years ago.
With regards to the tax rate, Bruno, the impact, we consider that there's going to be a EUR 100 million tax cut in France. So it's going to be an extra tax of EUR 10 million . Is that what you mean? So this will have an impact on our cash flow of EUR 7-8 million because it's only for France. O ne question, Simon. You were talking about big calls for tenders that you're taking part in. You mentioned Volkswagen, two clients in the U.K. Do you be able to provide a figure or with the systems that you use to track business? Do you have stats that you could share with us? Regarding the commitment you have with clients, what does it represent in terms of volume? [Foreign Language] Bertrand Launay in Germany, your counterpart.
Mentioned that the amount of calls for tenders that they've worked on, if we compared to last year, was skyrocketing. It doesn't mean that they're going to sign everything. I t gives us an idea of the activity that they have. For future projects, do you still have this type of statistics?
So we need to be careful with this type of statistics because we have to see if it's part of a transformation of an existing business. We have the case on a Volkswagen project. Our clients ask us to bid on several projects that are about 150 FTEs each. Usually, it's 20 or 30. [Foreign Language] So this rules out many players that cannot provide this type of [Foreign Language] m anpower.
Then it doesn't say what part of business we would have done had it remained a local player that we will no longer have. So it can be huge, but not necessarily. [Foreign Language] T he decrease of what we could have done locally might also have been huge. So we need to be careful to that. So if it means that we take market shares to small players, then yes, it's an opportunity. If I bid on a project in Germany where it's a small player that has 100 people total that is likely to be rolled out, so here we are taking market shares if we win. [Foreign Language] It's not a matter of engineer volumes. It's not extra business, unfortunately. There's no technological demand.
That means that we're going to do new things and we're going to need thousands more engineers. It's just moving from local projects to offshore projects, and the players that might win might not be the same. This is where we have to take our part, and this is why the Indians are looking for that Capgemini and Accenture that I consider to be Indian players as well. They want to do everything in India, and now we're also looking at this closely. W e're against Bertrand for these topics, for instance.
Very clear. Thank you very much, Simon.
[Foreign Language] W e're going to take one last question by Laurent Daure . [Foreign Language]
Thank you very much. Just two quick follow-ups. First point, Bruno, you were supposed to tell us a little bit more about the margins and outlooks for Worldg rid for 2025. M y second follow-up is you were talking about the decrease in headcount and embedded growth. There are a few countries, such as France and Spain, where it's not the case. These areas did well in 2024, in particular France, but Spain as well. Shall we expect growth in a country like France? Maybe we can consider that there's a delay in this decrease.
That's a good question. [Foreign Language] When we look at headcount in France. [Foreign Language] They've gone down last year. [Foreign Language] Especially towards the end of the year. [Foreign Language] Even if the level of activity has decreased because there are many projects. [Foreign Language] There are many projects in France that are done offshore. [Foreign Language]
I think that growth should remain positive in France, even if it's going to slow down significantly in S1. In Spain, we still have positive growth. To answer your first question regarding Worldg rid. Indeed, I had said that I would give more information. Unfortunately, today I am not. I cannot do that because [Foreign Language] we don't have a budget for Worldg rid yet. We know that they're going to do the same turnover as in 2024. It's around EUR 170 million. Worldg rid's margins will remain the same as in 2024. Without delving into too much detail, because it's not only about Atos, but these margins are based on standard costs.
It's difficult to obtain the reality today, even at the end of January, of results. Results in 2024 don't mean much since we are reinvoicing Atos, and this is in Worldg rid's accounts, and we have to clean all of this up. Lastly, regarding Worldg rid, as you know, it's a company that is completely managed by Atos. We have 160 TSAs in place that we have to unplug little by little, and that's not going to happen before September. [Foreign Language] Our cost structure for 2025 will not be the reality of the cost structure for Worldg rid, which will be completely integrated in an Alten organization in terms of business model, process, and tools. Its functioning costs will be lower. I'm sorry, I can't answer your question, Laurent. For now, I cannot say much more.
For the business plan Laurent. [Foreign Language] The most important thing to remember for most of Worldg rid's business, for the strategic part in the case, Worldg rid has about three equivalent businesses. Everything to do with control and command of nuclear power plants, including EPRs with the evolution of the system, with EPR 2s, and the management and processing of the grid with all of the supervision software, is what we call the grid, and everything to do with SAP and Salesforce for billing, B2B, B2C, for the energy operators such as EDF. So there are these three businesses. Of course, the one that we're most interested in is the pure R&D part, so the control, command, and network exploitation.
It will only depend on one thing: the discussions between EDF and government to know when budgets will be open for deployment and the new structure of EPR 2. So it's in 2025, and it can happen very fast, or it will be 2026, and it doesn't depend on us. I n any case, it will remain the same as now. [Foreign Language] Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone. A s you know, we remain available at any time should you have any additional questions. Have a wonderful day. Goodbye.