Bonjour. Merci de vous être connectés, and hello, and thank you for being with us for this presentation of the results of the first semester 2023. I'm Simon Azoulay from the Alten Group. We are going to be presenting these results with Bruno, who's with us also. With Bruno, we are going to go on through the different evolutions over the course of this half year. Looking ahead, of course, as published, we have published the results. The revenue, you had that. And a good, interesting growth, mainly organic. Unfortunately, difficulties were encountered accelerating the M&A on the first semester, given the extraordinary level of prices, which encouraged us to be more cautious with regard to certain operations.
Let me reassure you, that will stay, that will start up again. Plus 12.2% of growth, 11.4% thereof organic. You've had that figure since the end of July, of course. This growth of 12% is broken down into, as you can see on the screen here, growth of some 13.5% internationally and 9.4% in France. Just organic in France, very satisfactory, of course, with regard to our general rate outside an exceptional year or big, any big merger and acquisition or outstanding years like 2021, we're around 12% organic growth and 4% of organic growth. That gives you an idea of that, that we've had outside one-off years.
Good organic growth, notably internationally. As you can see, internationally, that represents 32%, 68%, sorry, 68% of revenues, 32% in France. So that trend is going to continue to go like that. France will continue to grow organically, 12-13 thousand engineers in France. And internationally, we're going to be accelerating faster still, and we believe that that will be much higher than 70%, maybe looking to attain 75% internationally with regard to the French revenue, which should attain 25% with regard to the overall revenues. So operating profits on activity, 9.2% of revenue. If we compare that with 2022 year-over-year, which once again was a one-off year linked to a number of parameters.
Bruno will be commenting them in much more detail later on over the course of this morning. For the same period, we had 11.4% in 2022. But let me remind you that, and this is important, the normal rate of performance over the past 15 years, our business model, puts us generally in the first semester between around 10%, 9.7%-10%, and the second half of the year, generally speaking, between 10%-10.5%, to give an average annual ROA of over operating profit activity over 10, 10.5% good years, and 10.2. Here, we're at 9.2.
As we were expecting, there was a correction linked to a number of components and phenomena. First, it's... and this is good news. The mix, salaries, and sales price. We thought it was going to be very difficult, and we have managed to play with this gap between the big increase in salaries in 2021, 2022, 5%, and how that has impacted our fees. This impact will only cost us 0.3% of this difference, 0.3%.
That is to say, we have managed to pass on, if you will, in our sales prices, in our quotes, in our work packages, in our fees, the increase that we have put in place, the increase in salaries, which is over 5% last year. That's very good news because, to be honest with you, it was a parameter that I was the most fearful of. The impact, as I was saying, will be 0.3%, no more than that. That is also linked to our capacity to improve productivity levels in our work packages, in our major projects, where we have succeeded in delivering on projects with fixed fees, thanks to our technical direction. So good results. So where does the gap come from?
The rest of the gap comes from an increase of the inter -contract. We had anticipated a lot of recruitment for the end of the year and the beginning of the year, this year, in spite of some warnings that we had seen at the end of 2022. As ever, we prefer, as we have done when we have lived through the different crises, the internet bubble, 2003, the subprime crisis in 2009, or to a lesser extent, the COVID crisis, in 2021. We thought to ourselves: This is, this is the time. The time has come to recruit massively. We did it at the end of 2022, but the market did not follow.
There was a sort of a calming of the situation, so we found ourselves with a rate, an occupancy rate, which was less satisfactory than we would have hoped for. We lost approximately 1% of occupation rate, which corresponds to 0.7% on the OPA. That's the second parameter. The third parameter is the impact of acquisitions and M&A, which was down 3% over the acquisitions of last year, for an impact on 2023, that's 0.3%.
And finally, and this is something new, the final parameter, it's the cost of sales, cost of recruitment, which has increased substantially and which is going to be reduced for the second semester 2023, and looking ahead to 2024, because we invested substantially in the recruitment forces, and in the training of new business unit managers, and also the SG&A, because the group are becoming very heavy. As you can see, 54,500 employees. 57,400 employees, all our major customers are global, international, over EUR 50 million. They have at least if they're over EUR 50 million revenue, they'll have three, four countries involved, Airbus, other such companies.
A lot of international recruitment and the deployment of models in countries, growing models, like in Poland, for instance, in Asia also, where we're going to attain 8,000 engineers. In Japan, we're developing very strongly and in North America, where we have major ambitions. So it's those overcosts and it's HR, SG&A, and sales investments cost us some 0.9% and we're going to look to reduce that in 2024. We're going to reduce that by 0.5%.
So to say that the normalized OPA, we believe, we'll get back in 2024 to the figures that I indicated, which is to say over 10%, with a small possible variation between the first and second semester, but to be above 10% in 2024, as in previous years. Naturally, we have a lot of acquisitions, and those will be the good news over the forthcoming month, notably in Asia and in Eastern Europe. So the impact can be variable according to the EBIT of said companies.
So those are the comments that Bruno will come back to in detail, but those are the comments I can make with regard to the operating profit on activity of 23, and we look back to being on our normal figures soon. With regard to the number of engineers, and with regard to the growth in revenues, as you can see, we've had a growth of some 3,000 engineers, essentially, mostly outside the borders of France. It's interesting now to look at the world as a whole, to see the different geographic areas and how growth is has occurred and is occurring. As you can see, there's growth everywhere throughout the whole world, whether that be North America, massive project there.
We have 2,600 engineers, and North America, let me remind you, 2,600 engineers between Mexico, the States, and Canada. There's some 2,000 engineers who in offshore countries such as India, so it's over 4,000 engineers provided with work. With regard to revenues, it's higher than what you may imagine looking at just the number of employees. If you look at France now, growth there of 500 engineers, approximately 500 engineers. In reality, the revenues increased more because a lot of revenue was gained in France, and notably in the automotive sector, which has gone offshore to low-cost countries, countries such as Morocco, India or Romania, notably.
And you can imagine with the, for the automotive, manufacturers, notably, but not just to them. So when you look at, the growth, the number of engineers does not always represent to the growth in revenue. And you can look at to the growth of the current number of, engineers corresponding, numbers in Africa, notably in Morocco. When you look at the rest of Europe, with a growth, over 1,500, notably on local markets, South Europe, Benelux, Scandinavia, things went, well, and good growth, in Asia also. And all of that, let me, reiterate, with the first semester, which was practically just organic growth, very little external growth.
All the external growth projects that we're looking at currently or have looked at, we have been following them for some, for some month, even several semesters, and they will be rendered public in the forthcoming month and will impact the year 2024. Let me come back now to the positioning of Alten. Very important. It's evolving a bit, but what needs to be retained in the Alten jargon, there's a blue activity, which is product engineering, engineering services, with the design, design of industrial equipment, whether that be in the space, defense activity, automotive, transport, shared transport, public transport, trains, or in industrial equipment, whether we're talking telco or research, for life sciences.
That's what we call engineering services, which characterizes Alten, where we're one or one of several, one of the world leaders, which represents 70% of our activities are engineering services. We'll see in the following slide, that's our brand image, it's our know-how, our original know-how. Essentially, crucially, we're in project or work package mode. That's to say that our customers, they give us part or all of the design of their industrial equipment, to design it, everything around planification, organization, or whether that be with the design of their plants on the right, manufacturing and engineering with the rollout of their infrastructure and customer support, technical documentation. That's in blue.
In yellow now, on the right, Alten is not just about engineering, and we're not just IT services, but we have this activity which pertains essentially to banking, financing, insurance industries, which has suffered a lot, this sector. It's the activity which has impacted us the most, and retail and services and public administration. So 70/30, it's separated in every country and managed in a different manner within the Alten Group. It's important to really understand that, that Alten is organized in this manner. Looking at the different industries now, breakdown of turnover per sector, you'll find practically the same figures because the world of Alten, we're looking on the right. As I say, you've got service, retail, bank, and public sectors, and represents approximately 30%. You can see in yellow there we have, to a certain extent, in the industrial world, 2% no more.
In the industrial world, you can see that all sectors have functioned, well, because you can see the growth in the automotive industry with a lot of offshoring there. What we make in France, Germany, a lot goes into delivery, into realizations in India, Morocco, Romania, Mexico now for the United States. Growth in the aerospace, defense, security, and naval, where there's practically no offshoring for results which are easy—for reasons which are easy to understand, and stability of the, the percentage, that is to say, growth of 10% in absolute terms for all the other sectors: energy, life sciences, telco. Energy, a lot of projects around the nuclear with the accompaniment of EDF, with everything pertaining to the EPRs. Life science activities linked to processing of stats of the clinical tests, notably, and the 5G, of course, in telecoms.
The blue sectors, engineering, have had good results, good growth, notably pertaining to automotive, to aerospace, space defense. A bit harsher, a bit harder in the yellow: bank, finance, and retail, and services. I'll let you look at and discover rapidly this split of our activities. This breakdown of our activities is strategic. We do not want to be pigeonholed as Alten, as just linked to one industry like a lot of our competitors, whether that be in France, Germany or elsewhere, specialized in aerospace, specialized in the automotive sector, et cetera. The industry split and breakdown is fundamental to Alten's strategy in the sense that it enables us to withstand crisis without suffering too much. The 2000 and telecoms crisis. Telecoms suffered in 2003.
2009, it was the automotive industry and the banking one, which suffered a lot. The 2021 crisis, the COVID crisis, it was the aeronautical sector which suffered a lot. So this breakdown, being present in so many sectors, is a guarantee of Alten's durability and its permanence, which is one of the big groups, at our level, to have this specificity of being a multi-sector. I won't go into the details or the stakes sector by sector. You'll have seen in the sector split what has occurred in the previous slide. So automotive, things looking good. A lot of moving of engineers to low-cost countries, but the automotive sector is still running after the, the sectors. But a lot of new projects, a lot of, a lot of reorganizations with the manufacturers, and they're putting ever more their trust in us.
Rail, we have big contracts there, which are allowing us to believe that there'll be big, big projects, worldwide ones, a replacement of rolling stocks, notably. Aeronautics, space, very well-positioned with all manufacturers in Europe. Unfortunately, we're not present or practically not with the Boeing in the United States, so that lets you imagine the field of investigation that can lie ahead of us and the possibilities where we're going to get, possibly very aggressive, to move further into that market in the United States. But a lot happening, notably around the improvement of production and supply chain efficiency and manufacturing. And in space, a lot of new projects, defense and security.
Naval, a lot of projects are there, and we know that in spite of what has occurred in with canceled projects in the naval sector, but a lot of new projects, in spite of that, are being are in the offing, and we're told to prepare for good growth. Energy around the EPRs, renewable energy, we're going to look at organizing ourselves in a transborder manner, transnational, to not just be responding in France, but also in the UK, other countries. Life sciences. Life sciences, a group of quite flat over the course of the first semester, but now there's a good bounce back, a good recovery, launching the transnational activity at Alten level. And we're looking to boost, and I hope so, to accelerate development.
Telecoms are quite flat, a lot of looking for cost savings and limiting spend, but not in a dramatic manner. We are maintaining—we have maintained our activity from a percentage point of view, slight growth, therefore. Industrial equipment, electronics, a lot of interesting points going on there with some equipment to some OEMs who have decided to become partners. Bank, finance, insurance, difficulties, we're looking to maintain our existing activities and indeed our existing margins, but it's a challenge, and we're looking to have the same rate of occupancy and not have the inter -contract periods too much. That is what weighed on the rate of inter -contract, which increased over the course of the first semester.
CSR policy, a few words now, and our approach, very important. As you can see, the pathway has... We've traveled a long way between 2010, 2023. A lot of resources allocated to it, substantial ones, in order to respond to all the regulations, certifications. So you can see the certifications that we have on the right, there. We have all the major certifications, and I'm just talking here at CSR, because I could also talk about the other certifications, pertaining notably to safety of IT systems, with ISO 27001. The different isolation, the different quality indexes.
But now just talking about RSE and CSR, you can, you can see, how proud we can be under the different teams to be able to present all these results, that you see, on this slide. Next slide. And now we're looking, I touched upon it earlier on, growth, the strategy. We're not very proud or indeed, happy, with the result, over the first semester. We have succeeded in having some acquisitions, to assign some acquisitions, which had been in the pipeline practically since the beginning of 2022. Structure in, U.S., Canada, not a major one, 185 consultants. As I was saying, now we're looking for companies which, will have between, 300 and 1,200 consultants. So this is about under the target.
Poland, a very good company specializing more in IT and telecoms. Others in the offing. A company also, which works in India a lot, for the United States and for Germany, offshoring, which has joined our activities, our Indian activity, in effect, because that's where the consultants are. A small activity in aeronautics in Spain, Germany, and this is maybe the most interesting one in the first semester in Japan, of some 720 consultants, which brings us to above the 1,400 consultants, engineers on the Japanese market, and others will follow.
Because Japan, just like Germany and the United States, the UK and India, are strategic countries, and we hope to have, at one stage, over 10,000 consultants. So Japan is going to take off. But once again, I believe that other publications are to be expected. There's other statements will be expected in the forthcoming years to talk about the non-organic growth of Alten. With if we'd had we could have attained 16%-17% of growth, had we had more external growth rather than just organic, and I hope that's what's going to occur in external growth over the forthcoming semesters. We're investing a lot, and the price levels seem to have calmed down a bit.
For information, 90% of companies of over 500 people that we contact for M&A are already, are already helped by private equity, or, business banks, which are looking to multiples of 15, which is too expensive. We believe, especially, with EBIT, which is, with the corrected EBIT, which corresponds really to the, the EBIT or, or prepared one or two years, before looking for, resale. We can't, just, look to, work with such companies. There really need to be EBITDA, which are normalized, and that's rarely the case. That's a major issue, to find the, the right targets, in Europe, also in Asia.
We need to identify companies who are, well, still with the founders who would look to be accompanied by the Alten group. So that makes the waters a bit murkier, but things are looking better, I must say, and I hope that that is indeed the case that things will improve at that level. Before I give the floor back to Bruno, maybe a quick word with regard to the shareholder base, which has not moved at all, so very simple. I still hold around 15% of the capital. Some year once, 12 months back, I announced that I would transfer a lot of those shares, some 5%, possibly, at the right moment to a charity foundations.
So if there's movement, you'll know where that is going, the organization or the investment, with regard to the development of the Alten Group, and I think we'll change at that level. I thank you. I'll be back at the end of this presentation to talk about what we can expect and perspectives for next year, and I'll now give the floor to Bruno to go into more detail.
Bonjour.
Hello. So moving on, Simon, of course, has provided you with a lot of indications around the activity of the first semester and the overall results. On the slide that you have on your screen now, you can see that Alten has pursued its growth in a practically uninterrupted way since the very beginning and has doubled over the five years. International revenues are at practically 70% of the group, which is a target that we had for 2024, 2025, and that we have attained earlier than scheduled. Alten started 2023 with 53,600 staff on the first of January, and 47,200 engineers.
At the end of June, the group had 57,400 staff, 50,550 engineers thereof, which represents, over the course of this first semester, a growth of 3,310 engineers, 2,625 through organic growth. The first semester, Alten has continued to grow, to grow beyond the growth of the, of the growth of revenues. The sequential growth of the staff of Alten, which translates this dynamic of growth for the forthcoming semester and beyond. The sequential growth of staff has been 7%, 5% of organic growth, just with the first semester figures looked at.
On this current semester, the organic growth continues, represented 90% of total growth, so less contribution through acquisitions. Generally, we're at a ratio of 2/3, 1/3. Organic growth, which represents 90% of total growth, 12.5% in France and the foreign exchange impact, because of the recovery of euro with regard to some other currencies, accounts almost 1% in the total growth. Internationally now. The figures, the detailed figures with regard to the explanation for growth because of the sale of an activity last year, which was Cprime.
The Cprime, the reference, the reported revenue progressed 12.5% to like-for-like basis, organic, which represents 80%, foreign exchange, which is weighing more because internationally, minus 1.5%, but an international growth, which is not homogeneous, according to the different geographical areas. So first semester, global growth, which remains satisfactory, even as several of you will have noted, it decelerated in the second quarter. That had been anticipated, and we had communicated around that back in 2022 already, and which should continue over the second semester.
In France, in spite of a base effect, which under one working day less than last year, the activity progressed by 9.5%, so it would have been 10.5% with... if it had been a like-for-like of working days, remains dynamic. Automotive, defense, security, and civil aeronautics, and plus 20% in those sectors in each of them. In Europe, outside France, a growth which is satisfactory, over 16%, even if you'll see, Scandinavia and Germany have slowed down in the second quarter. So, without too many going into details... Activity and progress of 17%, all everywhere.
In Germany, slowdown, which is due to the stabilization, progressive stabilization of the activity in the automotive industry, which is still growth of 10%, year-on-year, and a deceleration of growth in aeronautics. The two sectors in Germany representing 70% of the turnover.
In the UK, so, growth is, well, around 16%. This is due to, automotive and aeronautics. In Italy, growth by roughly 26%, all sectors, and, Benelux growth by, 15%. So rather even between, Netherlands and Belgium. The Netherlands, we have more IT, and then in Belgium, we have a big increase in automotive and rail. Scandinavia, more or less the same as, Germany due to automotive and trucks. In Eastern Europe, 27%, so that's quite satisfying, even though, well, in the second quarter, it was slightly down. Poland, representing, big chunk of this, part, grew quite, substantially, so quite interesting. Then if we look outside of Europe, in North America, growth by 7% like-for-like.
In the US, well, what we had already noticed and attended into was confirmed the second-- in the first half of this year, especially in the automotive, where the situation is rather flat. In Canada, the growth is also down due to the aeronautics and finance sectors. In Asia, we already had seen a slowdown last year, and the explanation here is mainly Singapore. Singapore representing 12% of our revenue. The growth in Singapore is explained by a certain number of big projects in oil and gas and in the finance sector also. I share this information because, I mean, in order to understand the figures, this is important.
But so Singapore only represents 4% of the Asia-Pacific sector, where last year it represented 12%. And the-- without Singapore, the Asia-Pacific growth would be at 18% and not 6%. So yeah, the situation is quite good in Asia-Pacific, given the situation. So in China, which represents 35% of this area, growth is slowed down 7%. India is up by 15%, Japan up by 30%, in Korea, up by 35%. So results for the first half, as Simon mentioned this, well, a certain number of reasons explain why the operating margin moved from 11.5% to 9.9%. 9.2%, sorry. So it's kind of comparable to the margins that Alten would generate before COVID.
Just to explain, M&A cost us 30 basis points. We explained this in July, the activity rate is 92%, so well, that's slightly down, which represents 70 basis points. The other impacts, price raises, and so on, cost us 30 basis points, and the SG&A cost us 90 basis points. I want to insist here that we have to include a certain number of non-recurring expenses, namely the publishing of certain number of offices, information systems also that we had to work on. As you know, I mean, most of the solutions that we go for are SaaS, where they used to be assets. Yeah, the result is, all in all, quite satisfying, and the margin of 9.2%.
If we look down, the share-based payments, so this is non-cash, right? So this is to be taken into account, representing EUR 16.6 million, which is in line with what we did in 2022. Given the plan that is projected for October, for the year, this will represent roughly EUR 31 million. Operating profit is over EUR 15 million. Sorry, the non-recurring profit is over EUR 15 million, but this is due to M&A. We have EUR 1.7 million that's due to a certain number of fees and acquisition costs, and we have EUR 7 million of bonus pools, which are kind of earn-outs, but cannot be, let's say, counted as goodwill due to a certain number of management rules.
And then we have a certain number of earn-outs, complementary expenses that have to be counted here. So the real non-recurring profit is roughly EUR 3 million. The financial income, right, is roughly EUR 3 million. And then, the financial result will be explained on the next slide, and then, our tax, EUR 42.5 million. And for 2023, you can roughly count to 25%. So our income result is 5.4% of our revenue, 5.4% of the revenue due to the M&A, right, and operating expenses. So, what can we say about this financial income? Not much. If we look at a certain number of aspects, namely the interest on the leasing contracts under IFRS 16, so we'd be at, down by EUR 1.7 million.
The cost of the net financial debt is EUR 1.6 million. The exchange result is down -EUR 1.8 million, and then the other net financial income is down by EUR 0.8 million. Then if we look at this by geographical area, so you can see here that France, as actually for the international, have lesser performances compared to last year. Let me draw your attention on the fact that in France, we have to bear a certain number of corporate expenses which are not invoiced to the international because they cannot be due to the nature of these expenses. Having said this, the revenue of France, given the way France is structured, this, yeah, this, the impact of this cost is quite important. And this is important to understand, right?
Then the operating profit down by 2% for France, 2.3%. So one working day less in this year, this year compared to last year. So this costed us 60 basis points. And then other impacts on the growth margin, well, you have the certain number of income and payroll impacts that need to be taken into account. So yeah. If we take SG&As, they increased by 70 basis points. This is quite temporary, for the reasons I explained. If we look at the international now, well, margin is quite high, close to 11%. The impact here is from M&As, by 45 basis points, as we said. And we are down due to so activity rate, which is below 2022, and also the increase of restructuring expenses.
Just to summarize, per geographical areas, we can say that we have three big packages. We have North America, the U.K., Nordics, and Germany, where we're down by 10%. We have APAC and Eastern Europe, where we have a 10% margin, and Benelux and Southern Europe with, let's say, a very high, high margin, over 10%. The impact of M&A is a lot in the international and the tax rates is of 27, and for the international, 25. This takes into account the rate in the U.K., where we moved from 19 to 25. Well, the balance sheet, you know it. Only the figures have changed, right? From one half to the other. Total assets are still the same.
Net cash, EUR 396.5. The gearing is down by 17.9%. Then the impact of the IFRS 16, well, kind of flat. Here, you have the detail here. So, 85% for real estate, 12% on vehicles, and 3% on others. Cash generation for this first half, well, and you can see then the treasury bridge. So Alten generated a cash flow, so outside IFRS 16, EUR 35.4 million. So that's 9% of our revenue. So this was used to pay 81.9% of tax. We namely have to take into account, so the Cprime sale.
We paid, so the increase of working capital requirements of EUR 111 million, CapEx, which are not that high, EUR 12.8 million. The free cash flow is negative by EUR 35.4 million for this half. For the financial investments, we have EUR 53.5 million, so EUR 14.5 million payback of plus our cash in, right? We paid EUR 21 million of cash out and EUR 47 million of acquisition price for the acquisition of certain number of companies. Dividends, EUR 54 million and Forex. This is rather technical, let's say, not that high, representing EUR 1.8 million. For free cash flow, well, you have the main elements which allow you to understand what is... the presentation, right.
We have it for the half year and over 12 months, right? Because obviously there's a lot happening in the first half. So anyway, so the cash flow business, which is in line with our ROI, ROA, sorry. We paid taxes, EUR 37 million. So the tax that's been paid is only, EUR 44.8 million. The working capital change, right? Is higher in the first half. So we see here the increase of our customers, so from the 112, 111, are due to the, to the customers. And then we have an increase also, with the, the work in progress, right? And namely, for the Eurozone.
As for each first half, this increase of the DSO is due to a lag in the orders and also the complex situation, right, with our clients, and which obviously will just creates lags in the a lag in the invoice. We have some of our clients that allow that ask us to help them manage and their working capital requirements, and so, yeah, well, this has an impact. Then, not that many payment delays. So obviously we always invoice, right? But this all in all costed us a few days of DSO. So of the EUR 116 million, we have EUR 55 million due to the organic growth, because organic growth, obviously, well, this uses up cash. And then the rest, so we have DSO lag, so 92 days.
That's two point five days more compared to last year. For the rest, well, there's not much that needs to be said. CapEx represents EUR 12.8 million. The free cash flow at EUR 22.4 million, 1.1% of our revenue, it would have been EUR 14.7 million, so 0.7% of our revenue, so higher than 2022. If we had restated the one-off tax impact, right? What you see here, the main information that I just mentioned, and then just a summary concerning the results of this first half. What you need to bear in mind is that the organic growth in our activity remains solid, right?
Even though it is slower as expected, right? As a result of the normalization of the economy, it's expected to be somewhere around 10% at the end of 2023. Perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less, depending on how the Q4 pans out, especially October, November. The operating margin, which includes the dilutive impact of M&A. This was for the first half, this half, too, and for the whole of the year, actually. The impact of the—actually, we could say satisfactory activity rates, lower than 2022 did, but which was at an exceptional level. We have a certain number of operational and organizational initiatives and spending, technical department, sales, hiring, information system, et cetera. The price, price-wage ratio, which remains stable overall, right?
The free cash flow, which restated, right, for the one-off, tax, impact paid in 2022, right? Of EUR 14.7 million, so 0.7% of revenue, and the net available cash, of EUR 299 million, which allows Alten to continue its, development, namely M&A and, international. So I'm now happy at the end of the presentation to ask any, questions you may have. And with this, I give the floor back to Simon, who will take us through our growth strategy. Thank you, Bruno. So, our development strategy is rather clear, as it consists, in going over the 50 million... 50,000, sorry, engineers, to 70,000 engineers, right? In a, a breakdown, France, international, 25% France, 75% international, and the blue, yellow split.
So blue, 70%, and 30% for the yellow activity, so try to consolidate. So, which gives us a, let's say, for today, a 35,000 people split for engineering and 15,000 in the IT services. So we need to sustain the international expansion of Alten, right? So this is our challenge for the three years to come. And to do so, and this is actually what we work, work on on a daily basis, so we need to manage our management with this to have the right development of the company. This management will not come from elsewhere of Alten. We could hire people outside, right? So for support functions and finance, why not?
But for the positions that are really, really Alten, let's say, so technical function, sales, business management, we do not have any competition which could allow us to recruit people at the level we need, right? So we need to make these people then, so this is exactly what Alten's development is all about. We need to maintain our talents. We need to have a great employer brand, and we need to push the people with regards to mobility. Our problem, right? This can seem odd, but our problem is not so much the market, the problem is management. We need to have enough managers, and we cannot go find them outside because we are leaders, right? So we just need to push for training and push for manager mobility. This is the main, main issue.
Then we have to take into account the evolution of our international customers. We need to work on the commercial and technical organization. This has an impact on the SG&A, obviously. The SG&A did not increase just because of that, right? It's half of the increase of SG&A, but the other half is the investment in the HR structures. But anyway, so to go abroad is a good thing, and but then working on the impact of sales management on 5, 6 countries for certain projects, right? To push our top clients to over EUR 100 million for the top 30. Well, this is, yeah, what it takes.
So anyway, then we need to improve the profitability of our centers, right? We need to consolidate the technical department to maintain our level of margin, taking into account the increase of salaries or wages. But our wage strategy has been obviously very important, considering our margin. And then, the financial situation of the company allows us to go for acquisitions. So, well, given the situation, M&A is perhaps going to be, let's say, it's going to slow down. So we need to, let's say, go find these companies that will allow us to consolidate the countries: Japan, Germany, the UK, namely. So we have a lot of work that we need to do to achieve what we want by 2026.
So this is basically what our challenges are about. Now, we are confident that this will happen smoothly. We've implemented what needed to be implemented to allow this to generate the margins that are necessary. So, yeah. And now we have, as I said differently, all the necessary assets, right, to manage this development. The organizations, the... let's say, the financial situation. Yeah. Perhaps the first item, and perhaps the most complex, by the way, in given the fact that the geographical organization needs to be consolidated by a transnational organization. So this means that even though we have this P&L manager, we want to have transnational offer managements or managers, so to better manage this, right? So this is regarding strategy.
This is really great, right? We really believe and are confident that we have all the assets, let's say, to do so. With this, thank you very much for your attention. Bruno and myself are very happy to answer any questions you may have for us. Okay, I'll take them as they come. Okay. I'm not going to say who asked them. They'll just know, right? We talked about Boeing, right? Boeing, which could generate as much business as Airbus. Actually, well, Airbus, you know, we had these four clients: civil, aeronautics, space, and Airbus Helicopters. Yeah, sorry. So Boeing, why not? Yeah. Now, before we go for Boeing, and this is obviously a strategic decision, right?
We need to be ready in the U.S. We need to be set, right? We just can't go... I mean, even though Alten knows, you know, what it's doing and we're good at what we do, but then, well, we have France, we have Germany, and we need to have the right capacity in the U.S. and the neighboring countries, so Mexico, namely, or Canada, why not? To be well set. So we have an existing sales structure, and what will actually give the go to the Boeing strategy is once we have consolidated the technical department in the U.S. We don't have this department per se, and since the reorganization in end of 2022, North America has been reorganized.
The idea is to make North America benefit from the European system and structure, right? I hope that we will be ready, let's say, before the end of the first half of 2024. The person that is in charge of aeronautics, space, defense in France, and which coordinates it, the international, has been appointed manager of the US for this reason specifically. This is for Boeing. We hope to go for Boeing next year. We know that we are capable to present to Boeing our offer. We have certain number that say to go to India, but they're not too happy for certain number of issues.
Even though, you know, in some cases, okay, well, they have their teams in India, but, there is a know-how, right? And the know-how needs to be sustained locally. But then, Boeing and, and the U.S., they could go for freelance, but we don't believe that's the case. No, no. Anyway, yeah. Then another question here. We have a lot of question concerning the margin. Okay, well, I'll let Bruno answer regarding the margin. So concerning the margin of this year, and actually only for the first half, so, the question is regarding the gap between 2022 and 2023. So the second half, right? Let me remind you that we had 1.3 working days less than last year, which is important and needs to be taken into account.
We have the dilutive impact of acquisitions, which, due to the consolidation of new acquisitions, should increase slightly, and then, everything will depend on the September activity. Then, what we actually... I think we were at 10.5% last year. We wouldn't have a 2.2 differential as during the first half. If we were to give you, let's say, an idea, it should be somewhere between 0.7 and 1.5 negative, right? And so this could allow you to compare H2 2023 with H2 2023. So can we have a global operational margin for 2023 below 10%? That will depend on Q4. But if we take, so the assumption, the high, right, we would be below at 1.5.
So one, we're at 0.5, we would be just slightly below 10%, yeah, overall, for 2023. Concerning the acquisition in Japan, as you know, we do not publish the price of the acquisition. It was sold by a private equity fund. There are no earn-outs, right? So, because of this, well, the... Let's say obviously we are higher than the usual situation, right? Roughly, it's somewhere between 6 and 8, right? But with an earn-out, as there's no earn-out, obviously we'll be slightly higher.
The operational margin, let's say, is roughly 10%, slightly above, but as Simon mentioned, we are very suspicious, right, on these types of EBIT, because usually, well, there's a lot of, let's say, the margins that are not exactly the operating margins, especially when we acquire from a fund. So, okay, it could be somewhere over 10%, but it could be just 10%, depending on what exactly we do. And then each time a company enters the company, we need to structure it, and not only on the sales level.
So maybe I'll let Simon answer with regard to the M&A pipeline. What are the geographical areas where we have ongoing discussions and the possible size that we're talking about? As I was saying earlier on, the areas where we have satisfactory feedback some more towards Asia, India, and Asia Pacific, and Eastern Europe, too. And it's not because that's what we are focusing on. It's that's where we have managed to identify interesting companies looking to join us.
Our efforts are very focused on North America and Germany, but we are struggling currently for the reasons I explained earlier on, because the companies have private equity groups looking for multiples of 15x and sometimes 2.5% on revenue, which is absolutely unacceptable to us, of course. So, this is saying why we are not having that much success currently on such areas, but strategically, internationally, we are looking to identify acquisitions in every country. We could even envisage an acquisition in France, why not, to complete some sectors, industries, offers, but that's not where we are really concentrating our efforts.
The UK, very interesting, because sector, because we want to go beyond 5,000, but very expensive, but the policy of acquisition, nothing unveiled there, really. All countries which have a substantial capacity: Japan, UK, Germany, India, and... and the United States of America are our preferred targets. That's where things are the most complicated, of course. To come back now to other questions pertaining to impact, because I saw a number of questions asking: What are the specific impacts? I believe that with regard to the margin for the forthcoming semesters, I have touched upon, talked about the different parameters, rate of activity. Currently, rate of activity is normative. That's not where we're going to garner more points.
It's more the readaptation of our costs, of our M&A, on productivity of work packages, and the improvement and the reconquest of the margin mix, salary, price of sale, where we've lost approximately 0.3%. Where we've limited the damage, of course, but otherwise, it would be 0.6%, mitigated by 0.3% of improvement project, if you want the details. There's 0.6% of mix, salary, prices. We're really looking to bridge that gap, reconquer it, maybe over the second semester, 2023. At the stage where we are, we've already reconquered part of it, but as soon as we have the negotiations of the beginning of the year with... for 2024.
That's why we're confident that we'll get back to the normative framework with regard to our EBIT and our habitual operational result to be beyond 10, in other words. Let me insist upon one element. I said it early on, we were expecting worse in effect. Looking at the mix, price of sale, salary, that ratio, it's 5% of increased salaries, so it's difficult to pass that on in 2022 throughout the year. It's partly passed on in 2023 to the customers, and I hope totally so in 2024. And the fact that we only lost a 0.3% with regard to that ratio, thanks to the productivity of way of work packages, is good news.
We will say that the bad news is the 9% of SG&A, but Bruno explained that there was, it was really down to the, the situation, such as it was, and we have mitigated that, and we'll continue to do so rapidly. And we have a question now with regard to the date of consolidation of 2023 acquisitions, with regard to the operating margin, perspectives. So the normative that changes nothing with regard to Alten. It's a normative margin of approximately 10% over the years of the activity rates, the mix of activities, country by country, the number of working days, because you'll have heard that that continues to have an impact on the operating profitability.
But the operating economic model of Alten, even if last year the margin was under 10%, it's a margin of around 10%. With regard to the dates of consolidation of acquisitions, the question has come up a number of times. The companies, the first company that Simon mentioned that we bought in the United States and Canada, we're going to consolidate that from the first of July 2023. The one purchased in Poland will be consolidated from the first of October 2023, like, just like the company bought in India, and that will be on the first of October 2023.
The company that we bought in Spain, in the aeronautic field, will be consolidated from the first of January 2024, just like the Japanese company that we have just acquired. So that gives you the dates of consolidation of the provision al ones, of the companies acquired, of recent. In the companies that we buy, you can imagine that the internal organization needs to be looked at before the companies can be in line with the requirements that we have for consolidation from our side. The efforts for integration are substantial. They need to be implemented, so generally there's some three months between the date of acquisition and that of consolidation. I hope that we have answered two the questions that come in.
There are an array of questions, but we tried to summarize in our answers the questions that came in. But of course, we remain at your disposal after this meeting, and from next week we will have, we can commit to one-on-one meetings or in the smaller committees. And don't hesitate to contact us for any questions you may have. Thank you very much for your participation, your attention, and I say to you all, À bientôt! Au revoir! Thank you.