Hello, everybody. I would like to thank you very much for attending this conference, which is for ALTEN for the presentation of the activity and the turnover by the end of December 2025. The situations are different according to different geographical sectors. By the end of December 2025, the turnover is at EUR 4.143 billion compared to last year, more than 100, roughly. In France, the activity has—I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was mixing up with the global level. The activity has increased by 4% out of France with a decrease of 7%. The activity has been reduced by constant change rate by 4%. Our activity has been penalized by less working days than last year.
This had an impact that we have estimated by 0.25% of the turnover on internal growth. The organic growth would have been lying at 4.2%. To the contrary of the precedent quarter, the fourth one really is marked by a slowdown of the overall activity. The turnover is at EUR 1.23 billion, a decrease of 35% compared with 2024, where it was of EUR 1.26 billion. At constant rate, the activity decreases by 2.4% at the fourth quarter, decreases by 2.4% in France and 2.2% out of France, which is a decreasing rate, a decline which is inferior to half of the precedent decline. We hope that this means, at last, a stability of the activity before starting again in 2026.
The activity rate is relatively stable. It lies at 91.4% for the last quarter, equal to 2024, 91.1% for the whole year, which is identical to the year 2024, which was at 91.2%. Our headcount in a decreasing perimeter has decreased less during the last quarter than the one before. However, you will see that by the end of the year, by the end of December 2025 year, by the year of 2025, had a headcount that has slightly increased, where we have a splitting up between engineers and overall employees.
Globally, from the 51,000 engineers that ALTEN had by the end of 2025, 8,000 are, and a little bit more are in France and the rest out of France. At a constant scope since the beginning of the year 2025, the engineering part has diminished by 960 persons. On 1st of January , we had an increase of engineer, which means that we have... And thanks to the acquisition, we have compensated the decrease of the group. The increase of our activity in the last quarter, as contrary to what we had anticipated, has generated a supplement of EUR 28 million, 1/3 in France, 1/3 internationally.
The splitting up of the activity according to geographies is the following one: in France, the organic slowdown is of 3.6%. Next slide. Next slide, please. But only 2.2% compared with the last quarter. The activity is penalized by a decline in the automotive sector, car building activity, which is very important for France. Telecom, -20%, with 5% of the activity for France, and the bank also, which is declining and decreasing by 17%. Aerospace, on the contrary, is booming again. It represents 1/3 of the activity in France, and it has increased by 3.5% year-over-year. The defense sector, 12% of the French turnover, 12% organic growth, and rail, 5% organic growth, have remained dynamic.
At the last quarter, in sequential version and not year-over-year, the activity has stabilized in the automobile industry, finance bank, and growth has increased in aerospace and defense beyond what we had anticipated. For Iberic zone, we have a good growth of 5% for the overall year and 6% by the end of the year, except the automotive sector that represents 6% of the turnover. All the sectors are booming. An increase, which is very good by the end of the last quarter. In Italy, the activity has increased by 2.4% and 2.9% for the last quarter, after a slowdown during the first quarter. Again, we have an increase of 2.8%.
With the exception of the telecom sector, all the sectors have increased. Some have been better off than others, like aerospace and defense, as well as automobile, that has increased again. In Germany, year-to-year, we have 13% of the activity, and you will see the rhythm of growth in the appendices that we have published according to the different quarters. You will see that by the last quarter, the rhythm of the decline in Germany has slowed down. It moved from 20% by the end of 2024, to 90% at the beginning of 2025, and it is close to 3% by the time of end of December. Automobile represented almost 4% of the automotive turnover. It's declining, but the sequential decline has also diminished.
This sector declined till the end of the third quarter, but the activity went up again in the aerospace sector that represents 20% of our turnover. It is an activity which is has an organic growth during the last quarter, so year-over-year, but also in sequences. The same for telecoms, 9% of turnover. In Germany, the activity is developed very quickly. In the field of defense, it has increased, where it has increased considerably, and now it represents 7% of the German turnover. A last quarter that reveals to be much more favorable than anticipated, also in Germany, even if the activity remains very complicated in this country, which is not over now with all the problems around the automotive sector.
In the U.K., the activity has declined by 12%, and to the contrary of other countries, the fourth quarter has not been marked by an improvement. The decline has even increased in the automotive industry. It represents 15% of turnover in the U.K. Decline also in aerospace, civil aerospace, 20% of the turnover, - 6% decline. The same for public sector, which is decreasing by 20%. To the contrary of that, a sector that develops in a significant way is the one of defense with an increase of 11%, and represents now almost 10% of the global turnover of the country.
Benelux countries, the situation is almost identical to the one of U.K., a decline of activity which has been accentuated during the last quarter, carrying all the problems of this zone, -2%. Belgium represents 40% of Benelux, has a decline of global activities by 9% because of automobile and tertiary activities. Netherlands, 60% of the zone, the activity has declined by 13%, because of sectors out of industrial and energy. They do represent 40% of the turnover. Semiconductors, which is the best known in the for the Netherlands, is very stable. In Eastern Europe, the activity remained very stable, with a growth of 3.5%.
Romania has a decline of 10% because of the automotive and bank and finance sector. In the Nordics, the global activity has declined by almost 20%, and the rhythm of decline has slowed down in Sweden. That represents 30% of the overall turnover. Difficulties in the automobile and truck activity in Finland, the decline is of 12%, but in the field of tooling machines, the development is good. If we move from the Atlantic to Northern America, the activity has a decline of 6%. The growth has almost, has also slowed down. We have a sequential slowdown.
In the U.S., 60% of the zone, automobile, life science and retail have declined, but are stable progressively, stabilizing by the fourth quarter. Canada, the activity has increased by 5%, thanks to automobile, aerospace, bank and finances. For Asia Pacific, we have a slight decline, 0.7%, and the activity is globally stable for the second half year. The chemical activity is increasing. All the sectors are increasing, apart from telecom. In India, we have a decline of 3% because of automobile and offices. The other sectors are increasing. Japan, 23% of the zones, an increase of 12%, thanks to the automobile industry and also office and offices development. Korea is declining strongly because of automobile and also because of the loss of an important customer.
Now, let's have a look at the activity as we usually do per sector as a percentage of revenue. You see that the automobile industry has globally declined by 7% for the same scope and change situation. For a decline of 12% for the builders and for equipment providers, 27% decline. As you know, it is the strongest decline in Germany, which is really accounting for this very strong decline for the OEM industry. This is due to Germany. This decline is now, I think, over. We have figures for the third and fourth quarter, that reflect upon progressive and by and by, a stabilization of the activity. Rail is stable. It should develop for 2026, if we listen to our customers.
Aerospace activities represents 15.5% of the activity, is again on a good trend for organic growth during the fourth quarter. The decline is at 2% , and even the space activities, which were strongly impacted, is growing again. We had communicated around organic growth for 2026, but in fact that started already during the last quarter, 2025. Defense and security, naval, as well as naval, represent 8.8% of the turnover, have increased by 4%. The growth rhythm has reached 16% by the end of the year. Energy, 11.9% of turnover, has grown thanks to nuclear activities as well as energy, and oil and gas is stable.
Life sciences, a decline, a decline of 1.2% only for the fourth quarter. Medical equipment, pharma sector is declining by 2%. The activity in absolute value tends to reach a certain stability in a sequential way. Industrial equipment, semiconductors, and electronics, is declining by 1.1%. Similar to other activities, we have an activity that has started to stabilize in the field of electronics and semiconductors, and it has deteriorated in other fields of the industries. Telecoms are declining by 8.8%. The activity has decreased by 10% for equipment providers, and 7.5% for providers. It is still marked on year-to-year, but the absolute value is supposed to stabilize around 4%. And then bank finance and insurance remains stable.
It decreased by the first half year, but the activity gained back in stability during the third and the fourth quarter. The situation improved everywhere in the world during the last quarter of 2025, and mainly in Southern Europe and Canada. It is only in those countries where, and regions where the growth is really important. Then we have retail services and public sector, a decrease of 7.7%, with a stability, which is remarkable for the fourth quarter. As to M&A, ALTEN has acquired four companies this year. The three first ones, between July and December, have been communicated about. No, sorry, between July and September, have been communicated in October.
A last one in the field, life sciences, has been acquired during the fourth quarter. A company where the turnover is estimated at EUR 20.4 million, with an important growth rate. So to sum up, the perspective, this, this is the year 2025 and the perspective 2026. Even if 2025 has a global decline by 4.5%, it seems that the last quarter really indicated that stabilization is possible, like, for aerospace, like bank finances and insurance businesses. As always, by the end of the fourth quarter, the activity following the end of the year celebrations is always a little bit slow, but we will have to wait till the end of the first quarter to get an idea about the dynamism of 2026.
Supplementary working days are limited to one for the year 2026. Of course, the decline does not mean that we observe for the year 2025, does not mean that the decline is going to happen for 2026 and hold on for 2026. The last quarter 2025, which is better than anticipated, helped us to generate more turnover, which is going to be accounting for the operational result. We had indicated an expectation of 8.2 for by the end of 2025, but it will be higher than that, and we will talk about it when publishing the results on the 25th of February. Now I'm going to hand over to our participants. If you could open up the conference to help the questions to pop up.
We have Nicolas David.
Next slide.
Hello?
Um,
Hello, Nicolas.
Two questions. As regards the fourth quarter, it's a little bit better than expected. Do we have to consider that customers have just finished their budgets because they were a little bit late, they hadn't been—they hadn't consumed it all? Or is it more fundamental than that? So this is the first question. The second one is the decline. If you look at the first quarter of the year 2025, it had been decreasing strongly.
So—Sorry, we are losing Mr. David.
Quarter-over-quarter.
It is... We can't hear Mr. David anymore.
Nicolas, le-
Sorry, Nicolas, your second question can't be understood. I don't know what happens with the network. Maybe it holds on, so. Okay, let's try to understand. As regards the first question and the fourth quarter, it's not only about spending the budget, be it for public sector or elsewhere, that could have generated an overgrowth of activity or surplus of activity. There is indeed a recovery. More projects were released in the field of aerospace, for instance. A certain number of projects had been postponed from one quarter to another, and then all of a sudden, it started not only in France, but also in Germany, and it participates to the improvement of the situation in Germany. An increase also of aerospace activities in Spain.
So I believe that this is a re-increase of activities for Airbus in particular, like what had been announced. And these projects are spread over a certain number of months, and so it will really reveal the full potential in 2026. As regards the second question, extremely difficult. Indeed, from a mathematical point of view, it's okay. Is it possible to envisage 0% organic growth year-over-year in 2026, if I got it right from your question? It means that we will have to compensate the embedded decline of 2025. It's not impossible if things go on like that. We have the up-ramping of a certain number of activities already.
So if it gets, if it reaches stability, we will have an increase by the end of the first quarter. And then it will be possible to imagine reaching zero for the whole year, but it's a little bit too early to do that, because if you look at the activity before the end of March, it's difficult to have a very clear vision of what the dynamism of activity will be for the year. We have a few periods, key periods, end of February, beginning of March, and then end of September, beginning of October.
Okay. I had the feeling that we could even reach that in May or June.
We will see. It is not my assumption. If this is a question, it's not my assumption. We start the year with a certain number of projects which are less important than the end of 2025. We have to remember that. I mean, we are by the end of January right now, and we haven't caught up the delay we had. So I don't really understand how it could be possible.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. And we have a question from Laurent Daure. You may raise your question, Laurent Daure.
Bruno, can you hear me?
Yes, very well. No, sorry, we still have the echo a little bit for everyone.
First question, it's a little bit early in this year, but as regards recruitment headcount, what are the guidelines which were given to the teams? Is it a wait-and-see attitude? Simon was, Oh. And Germany is almost able...
It is extremely difficult to hear Mr. Daure.
What about degradation of Germany, and then could you make a comment on that?
Recruitment only if necessary, and just in case we do not have the competence, the internal skills to do and to work on the projects. We have set no objectives in terms of recruitment. The activity has not started again. What is important is to have a terrestrial activity.
We lost Mr. Benoliel for a few seconds.
If the activity grows and goes on growing, then we will recruit. Now, for Germany.
From a global point of view, activity has increased in the field of aerospace, telecom, defense activities; they start to recover. However, automotive industry still represents 40%. In the automotive sector, the situation has not changed fundamentally, which means that the call for tenders that we receive are still extremely demanding. They also require systematically offshore activities, and so we will need to balance out the projects for the big projects. The Germans are increasing in terms of outsourcing of engineering thanks to their suppliers in a much more rapid and massive way than the French did 10 years ago. And if we look at the German P&L, the automotive sector will go on declining.
I have no specific figures, but... And then it will probably stabilize a little bit more during the year, and then- but the P&L of the car industry will remain negative in terms of contribution. Today, we have projects, and our offshore activity obliges us to consider that at the beginning of the project, which is in a deficit situation at the beginning of the month. So there is no major change of paradigm, except that globally, because of Germany, we have an automotive contribution, which is lower. The growth is going to slow down because, you know that for OEMs, it is extremely difficult to do something. And this is true for Germany, but not only, it's also true for all the European car builders.
Since the commission set new rules, and in a certain way, the horizon has lit up for the all-electric by 2035. We had a certain number of automobile builders who were waiting for that, and instructions to stop just to define the final strategy. And this really contributed to-
... to enroll us in a certain number of projects, a certain number of projects are also going to be reduced. So I think the activity is going to stabilize from a turnover point of view, even if globally, the offshore contributes, within the mix, to reduce the generation of, turnover for a certain number of projects. However, I can't imagine that Germany is going to make money in this field in 2026. But the increase of defense, as we said before, aerospace, et cetera, will hopefully, compensate. And, we should have an overall improvement of the situation in Germany by 2026. So you can see that today we've got about 10 companies, not major companies. Most of them have perhaps several hundred people, some consultants, maybe 1,000 consultants in Europe.
All the countries, if we group all the countries together in North America, in South America, equally, principally in Brazil, in order to support European manufacturers. In Asia, equally, India, China. So it's a fairly dynamic market, but there are no major targets at the moment. But it was an activity that dried up at the end of 2024, but I think it bounced back quite nicely. And since we're talking about mergers and acquisitions, the four companies acquired in 2025, and you can see them in the communiqué, the press release, they consolidated as of 1st of January 2026.
But nothing has been consolidated up until now.
No, no, it will be the 1st of January, as of 1st of January 2025, no.
Could I add something, please?
If you take the hypothesis that, you know, this business is going to stabilize, can we have a rough idea how we're going to manage the cost base? And given this hypothesis that the activity is going to stabilize, what can we expect in terms of margin? Do we have to rework the sequential turnover?
No, there will be a margin in 2025, which will be slightly up on the one announced, because we have a cost structure which is very similar. It's equivalent. So this means, of course, that we're going to have to look at the margin, which will be okay in 2026. Perhaps we should wait a bit before we ask this question, but if the activity stabilizes, then we should have a similar structure. So we have a slight appreciation on the margin.
If the activity kicks off again, if we have to increase the structure, there's going to be a positive effect on the margin in 2025 as well.
Thank you, Bruno. Thank you. Now we have a question from Derric Marcon.
Derric, ..., normally.
Derric, over to you. Derric Marcon, excuse me.
Good evening. I hope you can hear me. I have four questions. Can you hear me? Hello, Bruno. The first question is: Can you give us an idea on the importance of quantifying this passage from the December to January, in terms of the staff members that we've lost, projects we've left, an idea of the rhythm? Do you think you're going to be able to pull these figures back up? Is it going to be comparable to previous years, where you have a situation on the 1st of January in 2026, which might be better than anticipated? And the second question is on what is related to what you were talking about in Germany, major references. The automotive industry has had a huge industrial impact on our margins.
Can you talk about the flows? Can you talk about the possible impact on this turnover in terms of financing? If you look further, where could we go if we take BMW, Volkswagen, if we take them as, as customers? Can you give us an idea, does this multiply the, the turnover that you might have just now, or is it 20% more? If everything goes well, obviously. And third question... In fact, I've only got three, says the gentleman. The third question, when we look at constant OpEx, you talked about EUR 30 million of a delta, compared to what you thought. So that's like 50-60 basis points on margin. It's like that, we must look at things, I think, this upcoming year. Don't you agree? Thank you.
...If it's not a call that carries on the margin, je vais commencer par la dernière question.
I'm going to begin by the last question. When you have extra turnover, the top line doesn't go down immediately. You have costs between the two. The salaries, for example. So mathematically, you can't have 50, 60 points more on EBIT. Well, salaries, yes, but you already have them considered.
You don't do that with employees.
I'm afraid the sound is very poor, I can hardly hear the gentleman. You have to look at cost of sales. We don't, we're not working with a luxury gross margins.
No, uh.
We mustn't wait for these margins to go up and to that degree. It will be better, it will be substantially better, but perhaps not as well as you think it may be.
When you look at the gross margin-
When you look at the gross margin, we have to look also at performance. Performance has to be better, perhaps a bit more commission taken. You know, there's a rub between EBIT and turnover, which must be taken into account. Now, with regard to referencing the articles, this is a question perhaps which is slightly more complicated. We have one new references, but we can see through the calls for tender, that there's a real concentration, particularly in Germany, which is going to have an impact on several players. Because since you don't have any offshore, then we can participate freely in the calls for tenders. But these calls for tenders are used for a volume of activity, and these volumes of activity may or may not be assured. There's going to be status of work and purchase orders which come into play.
Then you have technical services direction, the, and it calls for tender, and at the heart of these references and volumes of activity, which could account for tens of millions of euro with production objectives in place, then it will have to be considered project by project. So currently, we can't see any significant increase, even as there are calls for tender in place, we can't see any significant increase in turnover related to that with the car manufacturers in Germany. Not in the way we might imagine the turnover improving with to 10%-20% with some activities next year. Perhaps that will happen, but today, we don't have any real concrete element which allow us to forecast that accurately.
Uh, ski, ski, uh.
What we do know is that we, we are consulted secretly.
We are going to win a certain number of projects, a certain number of tenders.
So we're going to see that the costs are going to have an impact on the bottom line. Others, where we're going to do better more quickly. This is a change, and it's a significant change in the way we operate business in the automotive industry in Germany. But this has been for about a year and a year and a half, before we received calls for tender, with the average price of EUR 50-EUR 60 per hour, and now we're looking at EUR 30-EUR 35 per hour. With this demand to be close at hand for the technical interfaces with the clients, that meant we couldn't outsource everything we wanted to do, obviously, because if you have to be close at hand, you can't outsource elsewhere. So that means we have competitors who are 100% German.
We don't know if this will work or not, but they are 100% German. Others, like us, who are French, perhaps, and have to assume the ramp-up costs in an initial period.
And, ensuite.
An idea about the end of the year. Well, every year we're going to pay what, 1,300 and 1,500 engineers will have that for projects. It was true this year, last year.
It was less so at the end of June.
We've got a bit of an identical phenomena. We call that recovery. A recovery.
Uh, recovery.
We're in a progressive recovery, and that's why I indicated that we have to wait for the end of the third quarter to see how much time we need to recover fully. Because afterwards, that's when we're going to regenerate growth. In the interim period, and that's why I explained to Nicolas, of course, that I didn't believe positive organic growth as early as June, because we've got, we've still got a dip in January and February.
However, as opposed to last year, if you had to compare the two, what I've done, that's what I've done, the recuperation, the recovery phase is going to be quicker this year.
... Well, that's what I wanted to ask.
I believe he's talking about framework agreements.
Can you quantify what that represents in terms of challenge? Are we talking about EUR 50 million, EUR 100 million a year? Can you give us an idea of what it represents? I know afterwards, I know this is hypothetical.
No, no, actually, no, I can't. Because we don't have any indications, not operational ones, which are specific enough, which would allow us then to have this kind of projection.
Okay. Well, thank you, Bruno.
Now we have a question from Aditya Buddhavarapu.
Hi, Bruno. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Great, thank you for taking my questions. Just couple of points I wanted to clarify. So on 2026, can you just clarify what you are saying in terms of the trajectory of growth during the year? Are you saying that Q1 and maybe Q2 will still be negative, and you might only see a return to positive growth by the end of Q2, and maybe flat for the full year? Is that sort of based on the embedded projects you have for this year? That's the first question on the growth for 2026. Second, also could you just clarify on the margins for 2026, how should we think about it if, you know, growth is stable or maybe growth is slightly positive?
How should you think about the margin outlook for the year, overall?
Okay. So, first of all, regarding the growth for 2026, as I explained, we don't give any guidance at this stage for two reasons. The first one is that we know what the embedded decline is, because it's not any more embedded growth because of what happened in 2024 and 2025 for the coming year. So it's -2%, roughly. On top of that, each end of semester, we are losing projects because projects are ending, and also we are facing people leaving the company. Okay, that's the way it works. So, end of 2025, we roughly lost 1,400 people for the company. I mean, whether internal or external, but that's the fact.
And we have to offset that loss by hiring people, and we can hire people only if we win new projects. Of course, customers having projects ending end of December, will relaunch new projects independently of their global budget portfolio. They will relaunch new projects during January, February or March. So, for us, it is very important to wait until we have offset that loss to know when we are back to the situation we faced at the end of the previous semester. Will it be mid-February, end of March, or later? In 2025, for example, we never succeeded in offsetting that loss because of the global, I mean, economic decline within our industry.
This is why we today cannot know if we will breach that threshold, and above all, when. Accordingly, we are unlikely to post organic growth, meaning that we will have not only offset that loss of the end of the year, but also the embedded decline of the company at the end of Q1. I mean, it's almost impossible. When we had positive growth in Q1 during the years, the previous years, before 2024, it was because we had generated a sufficient positive embedded growth to offset the people leaving the company at the end of December. And beginning in a very positive growth, we had customers launching many new projects in February and March.
Unfortunately, we will not be in that situation in 2026, even though the situation is probably better than the one we were facing Q1 2025. To be honest, I cannot tell if and when ALTEN will post a positive organic growth in 2026. What we just saw is that the activity seems stabilizing globally. If we think on a sequential basis, I mean, comparing Q4 and Q3 in terms of revenue, and today have some sectors growing, I mean, from an organic standpoint, which are aerospace, manufacturing and finance, defense and naval, mainly, and nuclear activity among the energy field. Okay, so the picture is globally better than it was one year ago, but still, we are not back to a positive growth.
Regarding the margins, of course, we will release the margin end of February, and it's much too early to talk about the margin for 2026. And we never give any guidance in February when we release the numbers, because it is linked, as you know, with the assumptions in terms of growth. Okay, because we have to deal with the bank and also with the cost base. And we wait normally until April, when we know better about what will happen in H1, and we know the mood of the customer, so we can make some assumptions for H2 before we give any guidance.
But for sure, the margin for 2025 will be above the estimation because we were guiding to a -5% organic growth and at the end it was -4.5%. So automatically, since the cost base is the same, we will slightly improve our margins compared with the guidance we gave in October. And we will see in April where we expect that the margins could, what the margin could reach in 2026, but we need two to three months more to have a better view.
All right, thank you very much.
Merci. Thank you. We have no other questions. Would anybody else like to say anything? We have another question from Mr. Marcon.
Bruno, just to be sure, I think you've already responded to the question, but the consolidation date for the fourth is the 1st of January 2026? Because I'm not in India and United States, it might not be the same.
No, no. No, it's the 1st of January 2026. But you're right to highlight this, because we had this forecast that a consolidation in October 2025. But when it came to management and accounting, it was very poorly organized, so the Indian colleagues were not able to respect that deadline. It's very marginal because this is a company that has EUR 7 million in turnover. It doesn't really change very much.
But you, you did well to ask the question, because too, we, we had to kind of move their first consolidation because of the state of affairs in the company.
Thank you.
Merci. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, I think that was our last question.
Okay.
If you have no further questions then, I'd like to thank you all for having participated in this conference on our 2025 fiscal year. We will have the results in just over three weeks. I wish you all a great evening, and if you do have any other questions, you know how to reach me. So I would say thank you very much, and hope to see you soon. Good evening.