Welcome to Bureau Veritas Half-Year 2026 Results Presentation. For the first part of the conference, the participants will be on listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants will be able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Hinda Gharbi, Chief Executive Officer, and François Chabas, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining us for our half year 2026 results. I'm joined by François Chabas, our Group CFO. The first half of 2026 demonstrates disciplined execution and the accelerating impact of our LEAP | 28 strategy. Operationally, we delivered 5% organic growth in the first half with a sequential acceleration in the second quarter to 5.5% in a complex geopolitical environment. We also expanded margins, increased adjusted EPS, and maintained solid cash generation. Regarding the compliance deviations that we disclosed in April 2026, we have completed our review, informed the authorities, and stopped the contracts in question. Based on our current assessments, we recorded a EUR 32 million provision as of June 30th, 2026, reflecting our best estimate to date of the full financial impact we may face. Our portfolio transformation is on track.
During the first half of 2026, we continued to reshape our portfolio. We announced the acquisition of LotusWorks, a leading specialist in mission-critical assets, and signed an agreement to divest our oil and petrochemicals and coal activities. We confirmed our decision to exit the legacy government services sub-segment. The exit process is already underway, and it will be almost completed by year-end. This will be done in strict adherence with our contractual commitments to our clients. When sharing our full year 2025 results end of February, we have committed to complete a portfolio rotation of approximately 20% compared to 2023 baseline. I'm pleased to report that we reached this milestone in the first half. Bureau Veritas is now gearing its portfolio towards higher growth, higher margin, and more resilient markets. As a result of this portfolio rotation and aligning with our organization, our reporting structure will evolve.
Excluding the activity planned for exit, namely the oil and petrochemical and coals and government services, our 2026 organic growth outlook is upgraded. We now expect mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth, and we maintain our commitment to margin improvement and strong cash generation. Before moving to financial highlights, I would like to thank all our colleagues worldwide for their dedication and contribution to these strong results. Let me start with our financial highlights for the half year. In this first half, we delivered revenue of EUR 3.3 billion, with 5% organic growth. Growth accelerated in the second quarter to 5.5%. We also delivered margin expansion with adjusted operating margin reaching 15.5%, up 29 basis points at constant currency and up 15 basis points on a reported basis.
Adjusted EPS increased by 9.8% at constant currency, supporting our objective of delivering double-digit shareholder returns over the LEAP | 28 plan period. Cash generation remained healthy and leverage was within our 1-2 range even after the early dividend payment was completed this year in Q2 compared to Q3 last year. Moving now to our revenue performance by business and by geography. In this first half 2026, we delivered an acceleration in the second quarter. Organic growth increased 10 basis points to 5.5%, bringing first-half organic growth to 5%. This improvement confirms the positive momentum we anticipated and reflects both favorable market trends and disciplined execution across the group. All regions contributed positively. Asia Pacific remains the fastest-growing region. Mature Europe continued to deliver solid growth well above GDP. The Americas benefited from sustained investments in energy and digital infrastructure in North America.
The Middle East and Africa remained resilient in a challenging geopolitical environment. Looking at our businesses, we maintained a strong momentum in Marine & Offshore and in Buildings & Infrastructure. Mixed performances were recorded in our commodities activities, reflecting the disruption from the Middle East conflict to the oil and petrochemical business. As expected, both industry and certification had a slow start this first half and are projected to pick up in the second half. What is important to keep in mind is that a number of new strongholds and mature sub-segments continued to perform above expectation. As you can see on the slide, we delivered double-digit organic revenue growth in data centers, oil and gas CapEx, and metals and minerals.
When we launched LEAP | 28, we committed to actively reshape the portfolio, increasing our exposure to higher growth and higher margin markets while exiting activities with lower strategic relevance. Today, we are doing exactly that. Year to date, we completed or announced five acquisitions totaling EUR 138 million of revenue and signed an agreement to complete a major disposal. Total divestment amounted to EUR 489 million of revenue. The acquisition of LotusWorks significantly strengthens our position in mission-critical assets, one of the most attractive growth markets. At the same time, the planned divestment of oil and petrochemicals and coal activities represents a decisive step in optimizing our portfolio. Since the launch of LEAP | 28, we have now executed approximately a 20% portfolio rotation, which is accelerating our exposure to businesses with better structural growth prospects and stronger margins.
This planned disposal of oil and petrochemicals and coal activities is fully aligned with our LEAP | 28 strategy. This business generated approximately EUR 450 million of revenue in 2025, but operated below the group average in terms of growth rate and profitability. At a net enterprise value of EUR 470 million and enterprise value to EBIT multiple of 11x , this transaction represents an attractive valuation. Most importantly, proceeds will be redeployed into high growth and higher margin markets. The transaction also reflects a disciplined approach to capital allocation, strengthens our portfolio quality, and enhances our growth profile. As mentioned in my first slide, our portfolio and organization are evolving in line with the LEAP | 28 strategy. Our reporting framework is also being adapted accordingly, reducing our reporting lines from six- four.
The new structure provides a clearer representation of the group's business mix and strategic focus and aligns our external reporting with our new organization. From July 1st, 2026, our portfolio will be organized around four key reporting lines and excludes the activities of oil and petrochemicals and coal and Government Services. Both of these activities are planned for exit. Industrials & Commodities support the development of economies. It contains energy, minerals, and shipping businesses. Buildings & Infrastructure will benefit from structural trends around urbanization and infrastructure build-up, both physical and digital. Business Assurance will bring together certification solutions and digital assurance. It is a transverse business across all sectors, managing existing risks and emerging digital risks. Product Testing & Services is centered around products that feed consumption and industrial activities with an increasing focus on technology. François will be providing some more information on this new reporting.
Moving now to business highlights, starting with the Marine & Offshore division. The division delivered a strong performance in the first half with an 8.7% organic growth. New construction remains very strong, benefiting from sustained activity across most vessel categories and an ongoing conversion of our strong backlog of new ships. In service, ships in service activity or OpEx also delivered statement growth against challenging comparables, driven by regulatory inspections and increasing demand for decarbonization-related services. In this segment, market fundamentals remain supportive with a strong order book and continued investments in new and more efficient ships. For Agri-Food & Commodities, this business delivered a 3.3% organic growth in half one 2026. Metals and minerals was the standout performer, growing double digits in the low teens organically, supported by higher exploration activities and sustained mining investments, particularly in precious metals and copper.
These positive trends were partly offset by weak activity in oil and petrochemicals impacted by the conflict in the Middle East, while agri activities remained soft. Moving now to Industry. We delivered a slight sequential improvement in quarter two, resulting in a 1% organic growth in the first half. Growth at constant currency reached 3.3%, supported by the contribution of recent acquisitions in renewables and nuclear. Within the business, we had different growth dynamics by subsector. Oil and gas delivered low single-digit growth overall. CapEx activities remained very strong, however, growing at double digits, reflecting a supportive investment environment. We recorded a strong momentum in North America and resilience in some key projects in the Middle East. Power and Utilities was slightly down overall.
Continued growth in power distribution, storage, and renewable projects in Asia and Europe was more than offset by weak OpEx activities in the Middle East and Latin America. Industrial Product Certification delivered high single-digit growth, supported by strong demand in transport and logistics and pressure vessels across Europe and the Americas. For Buildings & Infrastructure, this business was one of the group's best-performing businesses, delivering 8.7% organic growth in the first half with a sequential acceleration to 10.2% in the second quarter. Growth was broad-based, reflecting the successful execution of our LEAP | 28 strategies in this space. Building CapEx delivered double-digit growth led by mission-critical assets. Data center activities remained very strong, with QA, QC, and commissioning services growing by more than 40%, supported by continued investments from hyperscalers and cloud providers.
Other services such as code compliance or project management continued to grow on par with the divisional growth. OpEx Building achieved mid-single digit growth driven by demand for building safety, compliance, environment, and HSE services. The activity was strong across Europe, supported by regulatory requirements and sustainability-related services. Infrastructure also grew mid-single digit, benefiting from transportation projects in North America, major projects in the Middle East, and public infrastructure investments across Southern Europe. The Buildings & Infrastructure business continues to benefit from powerful market structural trends, including digital infrastructure build-up, urban development, and climate resilience programs. In certification, we had a slow start with 1.9% organic growth in the first half against very challenging comparables. The business recorded a strong momentum in sustainability solutions or transition services, as we call them, and digital assurance activities, which achieved high single-digit growth.
Environmental and carbon services remains a key growth driver, supported by increasing demand for decarbonization, carbon footprint assessment, and climate-related compliance services. On the digital assurance front, we continued to expand our cybersecurity services and geographical footprint. This reflects growing customer focus on cyber resilience and operational continuity. QHSE and specialized schemes delivered a low single-digit organic growth. Activity was softer in some developed economies, while demand continued to grow in emerging markets, particularly in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. We're not pleased with the performance of this division, and we have initiated since Q2 sales plans and operations reviews to ensure steady pickup in half two of this year. For Consumer Products Services, the division delivered a 5.1% organic growth in the first half, including 5.7% in the second quarter. Performance was led by CPS Technology as the sub-segment benefits from our strategy diversification.
Services were related to product innovation cycles and increasing testing requirements across consumer electronics. Growth was high single digit organically. Supply chain and sustainability also delivered high single digit, driven by strong demand for supply chain resilience services. Within softline, hardlines, and toys, growth was low to mid-single digit despite energy supply disruptions across several sourcing markets. Performance was driven by China as major brands and retailers reverted back to the country, leveraging its scale, speed, and flexible manufacturing ecosystem. The business benefits from three structural trends: product innovation, supply chain reconfiguration, and rising sustainability requirements. I will now hand over to François for the financial review. François?
Thank you, Hinda. Good afternoon to everyone. Let's have a look now a bit more in the details on our financial performance for the first semester. We have delivered 5% organic growth overall, it's an acceleration compared to the first quarter. We continue to expand margins both at constant currency as well as on a reported basis. As you can see, the adjusted operating margin improved by 29 basis points at constant currency. The adjusted EPS increased by almost 10% at constant currency as well, and our leverage remains comfortably within our target range, despite the impact of the early dividend payments in the second quarter compared to the usual third quarter over the last three years. Taken together, these results confirm that Bureau Veritas remains fully on track to deliver the ambition that we set out for LEAP | 28.
Having a look at the revenue, the group generated EUR 3.2 billion of revenue in the first half. Organic growth reached 5%. Scope was slightly negative as the contribution from acquisition was offset by recent portfolio exits. As a reminder, from August 1st, LotusWorks will be included to the scope onwards, and it will contribute indeed to the positive effect, which is not the case yet. We just closed that deal a few days ago. Foreign exchange impact is improving quarter to quarter from a 5.2% in the first quarter to -0.6% in the second quarter. And even for the first time, I think, for the last two years, the months of June in isolation was reporting a slightly accretive amount in term of FX. Which I think brings us to some more positive outlook for the rest of the year on FX.
Overall, revenue grew 2.1% on a reported basis and 4.8% at constant currency. Again, it's a good demonstration of the resilience of the portfolio and the quality of the underlying market trend. If we zoom on the second quarter, which is on the next page, organic growth improved compared to the first one. We moved from 4.5% in the first quarter to 5.5% in the second quarter. And it is supported by continued strength in our services related to data centers, energy investments, and mining-related activities. If we take a bit of a closer look by division. As mentioned previously by Hinda, all divisions grew with several delivering very strong performance. Including scope, four businesses posted double-digit growth, reflecting both solid organic trends and the impact of our disciplined M&A execution.
If we go through that briefly, Buildings & Infrastructure first, together with Marine & Offshore, were the two strongest contributors. Buildings & Infrastructure, which is the largest segment of the group by the size, grew at 10.2% on the second quarter. It's again a sequential acceleration versus the first one, and the two main drivers remained sustained strong activity in data center-related services and the sustainability transition services that we offer to our clients more broadly. Marine maintained its growth trajectory and capitalized again on favorable shipping market dynamic and vessels investments. Consumer Products delivered solid growth supported by the expected rebound of technology-related activities, especially in Asia, and the development of a supply chain diversification throughout the segment. Agri-Food & Commodities sustained growth momentum, especially in metal and minerals, which has got traction over the first semester. Moving now to Industry.
I mentioned before the growth was somewhat soft due to the impact linked to the Middle East conflict and some weaker OpEx activities, both in that region and in the Americas. Growth at constant currency of 3.3% reflect the positive impact of two acquisition made in Europe, in the renewable sector and the nuclear sector, which both are developing as planned and will, from most probably year end Q4, will start to get into the organic development of the business. If we turn now to the margin bridge. As you can see here, on a reported basis, we delivered 15 basis points of margin improvement. We closed the half year at 15.5% versus 15.4% at the end of H1 2025. Organically, it's a seven basis point improvement.
Here it's a combination of the benefit of our 2024 restructuring, tight cost discipline, and it largely offsets some of the Middle East impacts, especially in our oil and petroleum division. Scope had a positive impact of 22 basis points. It does reflect the portfolio pivots Hinda was mentioning, exiting less profitable activities and acquiring more profitable ones. In line with our LEAP | 28 commitment, we deliver altogether 29 basis points of margin uplift at constant currency compared to the same semester last year. If we look at the divisional margin now on the next page. Marine & Offshore, another strong improvement. It's a story of favorable expansion of our CapEx activities and the end of some low-margin consulting activity that we've decided to stop.
Buildings & Infrastructure, the margin expansion of 132 basis points on the largest segment of the group is actually a blend of three elements. One, the operational leverage driven by our performance programs, especially in Europe. They have been started at the end of last year and are fully in effect over the first semester this year. Two, the positive mix effect of our commissioning services related to assets such as data centers. Three, the accretive contribution from M&A, especially the acquisition made now for the last two years, which are slowly getting into organic numbers and are here in average, having higher margins at the average of the division. Overall, we are pleased with the development of this division, which is the largest again of the group. As far as consumer products is concerned, the margin continues to improve.
Here we benefit from two years of our growth and performance strategy execution. We have expanded the geographical coverage, restructured several sites, delivered multiple performance programs, and we now start to see the positive outcome of recent acquisition, notably in Latin America. The picture is here as well, pretty encouraging. Finally, Agri-Food & Commodities, and Industrials and Commodities. Agri-Food & Commodities here, the main adverse impact is the conflict in the Middle East and the contraction of our oil and petrochemical activities. We have deployed several programs to retain staff and preserve margins. We are ready to resume operation when conditions will allow, of course. To close, Industrials and Commodities. H1 reflects the impact of lower volume from softer activity in the Middle East and delays in the ramp-up of several OpEx contracts.
Finally, this time, certification experienced temporary pressure on margin linked to softer growth in H1 and slower-than-expected ramp-up of recent acquisitions. We expect the revenue to pick up from Q3 and the margin to recover from H2 onwards. Several programs are being put in place, as Hinda just mentioned in her first comments. Overall, as you can see, the company continues to deliver on margin expansion semester after semester, and it reflects indeed mixed effects and the result of our performance program at large. If we now have a look into the other financial metrics. Bottom line, the adjusted earnings per share continue to grow regularly. It grow 9.8% at constant currency, which is again encouraging and in line with our LEAP | 28 trajectory. Net financial expense remained broadly stable, EUR 55.5 million.
The higher cost of refinancing from October 2025 were largely offset by significant lower adverse foreign exchange effects. On the tax front, the adjusted effective tax rates will be broadly stable at 29%. If we turn now to cash flow generation, we delivered another solid cash performance in the first half. Free cash flow amounted to EUR 158 million, up 3.2% organically. As is shown on the chart, we maintain a disciplined management of working cap. Represents 6.8% of revenue at the end of June 2026 and reflects what is very important, the sustainability of the efforts we have deployed throughout the group for a number of years to optimize cash collection and working capital management. We put here some numbers to help you manage those changes. As announced by Hinda just a few minutes ago, we are updating our reporting structure.
This view provides first a clearer picture of the group in terms of future operating parameter and obviously the underlying performance of Bureau Veritas going forward. It highlights the fact that this new parameter would enhance both the group growth profile, as you can see here, and its profitability. We concentrate further on businesses with stronger structural growth drivers and higher value-added services. This change will be effective starting July 1st and will be reflected in our Q3 revenue publication, both on the quarterly and year-to-date basis. To enable you to update your models, you will find in the appendix some qualitative and quantitative elements on the few moving pieces from the six division to the four division. Obviously, Laurent, Colin, and the entire Investor Relations team is here to help you to get your numbers right.
It's relatively simple in reality. And these numbers here give you already an illustrative view on what the new Bureau Veritas is looking like. Once we have taken into account the discontinued activities, which are both government services on the one hand, and two, our oil and petrochemical and coal testing activities, for which we have announced a few weeks ago that we will divest to a third party. Most probably, we expect this to be completed at the very beginning of 2027 at the latest. I now hand over back to Hinda for the outlook for the year 2026.
Thank you, François. An update on our outlook. Our first half performance was robust and demand across our businesses remains healthy. We continue also, as you have seen, to make good progress on LEAP | 28. As we actively reshape our portfolio to increase our exposure to high growth and higher value businesses, we are essentially enhancing the group's growth profile. Taking out the oil and petrochemical and coal and government services, we have now a new scope, and on this new scope, we are upgrading our full year 2026 outlook as follows. We now expect to have a growth mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth. We will maintain margin improvement as a guidance, margin improvement at constant currency, and we will maintain our strong cash flow generation targets.
In conclusion, we have delivered a solid performance in H1 2026, as we have forecasted, a sequential quarterly acceleration in quarter two. We also recorded margin improvements at constant currency and on a reported basis. This was achieved in a volatile business environment and with geopolitical uncertainties in key geographies and disruptions in energy markets. As we have shared earlier, the LEAP | 28 strategy is on track. Our portfolio rotation is progressing at pace, and we are continuing our M&A programs to meet our portfolio reshaping goals. We remain fully committed to our LEAP | 28 ambitions of growth and performance, and we will take the opportunity of the Capital Markets Day update in September to share with you our progress in terms of portfolio, performance, and people programs.
We have elected in this busy call not to discuss AI matters as the next phase of development for LEAP | 28 will integrate AI, and we will give you then a comprehensive update. Before opening the Q&A session, I wanted to remind you that we will be looking forward to welcoming you to our Capital Markets Day on September 22nd in Paris. This will be an opportunity to update you on the next phase for our LEAP | 28 strategy. Thank you. François and I are now happy to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six. The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Hinda. Good afternoon, Hinda and François. I have two questions, please. Firstly, on the margin guidance, which is unchanged, despite the higher growth guidance and the exit of those lower margin businesses. I appreciate the wording hasn't changed, but do you actually now expect perhaps a bit more margin improvement versus before? Then secondly, on certification, where you mentioned you're not happy with the performance and you're doing an operations review, could you expand on what that involves, and could that review ultimately end with contract exits or divestments? Thank you.
Sorry, Annelies, could you repeat the second question, please?
Yes, of course. It was just on certification, where you mentioned you're doing an operations review. Could you expand on what that is expected to involve, and could that review ultimately end with any contract exits or divestments, or is it more of a sales program? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for repeating that. I think our margin guidance in general, when you look at since the inception of the LEAP | 28 program, is based on two things. One, on our performance programs, which if you recall, we have talked about our operational leverage programs. That includes some process improvement, but also performance management in a very granular and rigorous way, then functional scalability, and there are a number of programs there. We have also talked about our portfolio reshaping and the mix that we wanted to have at the back end of the strategy. I think we're doing both, and that's what we are executing at this point.
The one point I want to make, then I'll pass to François on this point, is that part of our performance program's output was improvements in margin that will allow us to invest in the modernization of our business, that's a very important point to keep in mind. We continue to invest, you will see when we talk about our update in September, we'll be talking about investments in AI in particular, that will help us accelerate some of those programs. Keep that in mind as you think about the margin, our guidance indeed didn't change in terms of continuous improvement, we haven't really given a specific quantum on that. On the trajectory, we're not deviating from that. François?
Just to add one thing, Annelies. We try, and after all the exercise of the LEAP | 28, to time everything, whether it is the M&A, the portfolio pivot, the investment, the growth, the performance, so that ultimately we reach the 17% margin kind of, while you guys will not see ups and down during the journey. I think you could recognize that from 2024 onwards, we've managed to put everything together, but year-on-year you get incrementals in margin while we don't see suddenly a big investment in year two, and we expect a recovery in year four. That's not the way we are doing that plan. Just reinforcing the message of Hinda here. There is a number of investments happening.
It's necessary, we're going to use whatever room we have from sometimes performance, as we've seen, for example, in B&I, for some time portfolio reshaping, to make sure that at the end of the day, by 2028, you have a stronger Bureau Veritas, well-equipped, well-structured, and capable to sustain its performance for the years to come.
Thanks, François. On the second question, Annelies, on the certification, what we meant by operations review is really around sales efforts. Just to give you a bit more color on that. The mature markets, I talked about mature markets and emerging markets. In emerging markets, our growth is on track. Can we do better? Yes. We're trying to get the team to capitalize on possible upsides there. On the mature markets, that's where we have seen really a performance that we don't like. Keeping in mind that mature markets tend to be large in terms of QHSE and voluntary schemes. QHSE is the traditional schemes that we have, and that's where we're pushing the sales efforts. We're aggressively doing that in key markets. Across both mature markets and emerging markets, we're pushing new services, in particular transition services.
That's in the sustainability space, everything from decarbonization solutions to supply chain resilience to life cycle assessment. We are going on all fronts, but as I said, we weren't pleased with the performance, and all hands on deck on this going forward. We are planning on delivering on that pickup in half two.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Two from me as well, please. Can I just clarify, I know that at the time of first quarter results, you had indicated that 1Q would be the low point on organic growth, and that growth should improve through the rest of the year. Clearly, 2Q has delivered on that. Is that still your expectation for 3Q and 4Q? Specifically maybe on industry, where growth was a little bit weak in first half. Do you expect projects to start again in second half and therefore help with the sequential improvement? My second question is on margins and certification, please, which did lag a little bit. Can you help us understand what changed there beyond just the slowdown in growth?
Is part of your portfolio review, et cetera, is that something that's going to help deliver margin expansion in second half of the year? Thank you.
Yes, thanks. Hi, Suhasini. Thanks for the questions. I'm going to let François answer after the margins on certification. Let me start with the growth side. You're absolutely right. We did expect quarter one to be a low point, certainly in half one, and we worked to make sure with our teams to deliver a sequential improvement in Q2. As you can see with our guidance, of course, we expect half two to be a sequential improvement over half one. I'm not going to dive by quarter. We remain in a somewhat complex environment. What is clear is that we are working on delivering a half two improvement over half one. For industry, I think it's important to pause a bit on industry to explain the dynamic in half one. Half one, what's important to understand is we actually had a good resilient performance across our CapEx activities.
I'm going to say it generally like that, both in oil and gas and Power & Utilities. For the simple reason, these tend to be long-term projects. People don't pull the plugs on capital projects for any disruptions. They have to take their time and decide. Very resilient. You've seen the oil and gas is growing double digits. The P&U CapEx also is doing well. Where we have seen indeed a reaction, and some of it actually was predating the half one, particularly in OpEx oil and gas in the Middle East. What we have seen is we have seen two dynamics in OpEx. We have seen the Middle East that slowed down in OpEx initially because this requires a lot of people on sites, and there were concerns on safety and all that.
After that, it was a matter of capacity to deploy versus with the flow stopping, preserving cash, and if you could delay some of that discretionary spend, you would do it. For other parts of the world, what we have seen is people really wanted to rather keep uptime. You don't want to shut down your facilities when you can produce at those kind of prices we've seen for a number of months. That dual dynamic there impacted, in particular, our oil and gas. I would say OpEx in general for P&U, for Power & Utilities and oil and gas was slow in our two key markets, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Those are the two markets where we have seen that. If I look at half two, for me, industry in half two, we are expecting a pickup for two things.
The other thing to add for half one, we are really going against very tough comparables in half one, double-digit growth last year. As we move to half two, the comparables are easier for sure. Also there is a pickup why we believe in that. Our backlog is clear. We have a huge focus on this activity. Our teams on the ground are prepared to execute that backlog. Ultimately, we are not building on our half two in industry, banking on some rebound in activity or rebound from the war. We're building this on existing backlog, existing execution capacity and clear oversight from our managers to deliver on our plans. That's really our plans for industry. François, would you like to comment on that?
Yes. Good afternoon, Suhasini . On margin of certification, we're not super pleased about it. That's been said clearly. I think we should not over-interpret it. Two things which differ a bit from just being a bit slow in H1 in term of review. One, we have a couple of acquisitions that took more time to scale. A couple of years ago, we're expecting them to be at higher level. They are not yet there. Two, we have a couple of operational, very localized situation that we need to solve. I think you guys been very clear on the fact that this would be addressed in H2. Let's do not draw definitive conclusion on this. It is in good French. We will recover in H2.
Thank you very much. That's very clear.
The next question comes from Geoffroy Michalet from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thank you, and congratulations for the good set of results. Two question for me. The first one on the exit of Government Services. You mentioned that you will have ended it by the end of 2026 in respect with your contract commitments. Can you elaborate a bit on that since some of your contract are multi-year contract with duration above the end of 2026? Is it about, let's say, paying an exit early termination fee or something else? The second question is on Marine & Offshore and on the margin. Is there a kind of limit on the margin you can reach? Can you come back a bit on what drove it really? Is it somehow sustainable, this kind of margin in Marine & Offshore? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Geoffroy, for the questions. On the exit of Government Services, you are correct, that a number of contracts, in fact, most contracts are multi-year contracts, but they also have clauses for us to exit contracts at some point. Not all of them, but most of them. Generally, when we're saying strict adherence to customer expectations and contractual expectations, we are essentially working with the customers as we express our desire to exit these activities. We work with them to make sure that there is business continuity, that they have plans with other players, that they might onboard the activity themselves. It's not a one-go transaction. You have to engage with the customers, understand the parameters they will work with, understand the sensitivity of the activity.
In general, I would say where I sit today and with the plans we have in place, by end of 2026, we pretty much would have done most of the contracts. There's one or two that might have to flow to early in the year with the understanding that it would be completed and it wouldn't surpass quarter one at the latest. We have a team, a task force, fully focused on this, working with the regions, working with the countries, working with the customers. We have very clear effort, the steering committee driving this, we have full visibility on what's happening. We take the business continuity of our customers very seriously. François, you want to comment on the Marine & Offshore margins?
Yeah, sure. Good afternoon, Geoffroy. You know the company for a while, so you know that the limits for Marine & Offshore in terms of margin has been achieved a couple of years ago at a higher level than this one. That's a way to answer your question. The second way to answer your question is to say, I mentioned, recognize rapidly the fact that we've stopped some micro consulting businesses that were nice to have and not bringing much value in terms of bottom line. It does help a little bit, I would say, the picture at the end of June, and it will continue to help the picture at the end of the year. What we try here to balance is the necessary need to recruit engineers, non-engineers, to be able to feed the level of service our clients expect.
We don't have a specific objective, but I would say you would expect that this type of margin is the one of an M&O business that is in full swing in terms of business cycle and in terms of deployment of resources. For the max number, I just encourage you to look back at your archive and you will see. You will find it somewhere in 2010 or 2011.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Virginia Montorsi from BofA. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions. I just had two quick ones.
Okay.
One is on the margins for Agri-Food & Commodities as the division in H2. I appreciate we're changing the reporting structure, now that we're considering oil and petrochemicals and Government Services out of the scope, can you help us understand how to think about margins for the remaining part of the business for the second half? The last question would be, can you talk a little bit more about your decision to change the reporting structure now, and kind of what are your priorities and what do you think you can get out of this into the Capital Markets Day and then obviously into the medium term?
Thank you for the questions, Virginia. François, you want to cover the Agri-Food margins and how to model all this?
Agri-Food & Commodities margin H1, as I mentioned, have been heavily impacted by our oil and petrochemical activities. To make it super simple, in terms of impact of the crisis in the Gulf, this is the one activity that suffers for obvious reasons. We have laboratories around the Gulf, and their business normally is to test oil. You need oil to flow so that they can test it. If there is no flow, there is no test. I think that's very simple to get. This activity, oil and petroleum, is driving the margin of Agri-Food & Commodities down in H1 in a significant way. When we look now ahead, I think as I mentioned, we have in the appendix the moving pieces from Agri-Food & Commodities that would go into the Industrials & Commodities.
You can read here that roughly at the end of H1, you have EUR 250 million of metals and minerals in agriculture which have respectively a margin of, for metals and minerals, a margin that is in line with the Agri-Food & Commodities divisional margin, and agriculture a bit below. Those one will flow into next year. There is no reason that those two sub-segments change dramatically their margin on H2. I encourage you to have a look at page 43 and reach out to Laurent and Colin for more color. I think that should help you to directionally being able to translate where the remaining part of the Agri-Food & Commodities segment will land in term of margin over the end of the year H2. Over to you.
Thanks. Thanks, François. On the second questions on why we are changing the reporting. First, why now? We are, as we announce the planned exit of oil and petrochemicals and coal and government services, it's a good time. We have that change. It allows us also to align with the current organization we have. It's a direct result, really, of us as we reshape the portfolio and go from a very broad portfolio to a diversified company with very strong leadership positions in our markets. We want to reflect that. That's why, Virginia, Industrials and Commodities also aligns with how we are organized internally, and it focuses on businesses that are very adjacent: energy, minerals, and shipping. B&I will continue to exist as it existed now.
Product Testing & Services, as we expand our testing activities in complex products, we are putting together businesses, the consumer side, the technology side, and the industrial product certification side. Finally, Business Assurance is essentially certification as it is. It's a way for us also to simplify our equity story. Just to give you an idea on the existing reporting, we actually share 20, 21 sub-segments, and in this new one, it will be 10. It makes sense. It aligns with the market segments we actually cover. It's really a need for us to make sure that we explain our multi-specialist approach and this diversified group much, much better.
Thank you very much. Very clear. Thank you both.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Victoria Chang from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two, both on the Consumer Products business. The first one is on the China-driven growth in softline, hardlines, and toys that you've mentioned in the press release. It seems like there's been shifts of sourcing away from impacting countries towards China. Can I clarify which of these are the impacted countries that you're referring to? Do you see this movement towards China as a trend that can continue despite the ongoing uncertainty around tariffs? The second one is on the technology subdivision. Do you see the higher memory pricing and shortages delaying and slowing down new product introductions in this space? Clearly, the division has grown very strongly in the first half, but curious if you expect any impact from this going forward. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the question. Look, in fact, what was very interesting, late in Q2, the reduction of oil flows from the Middle East impacted very quickly a number of countries in Southeast Asia and in particular in South Asia. What is very interesting in that is that the retailers and the brands, they quickly were able to move back to China. I'm saying back to China because at the start, their sourcing was China-centric. As they started to de-risk, they moved to Southeast Asia and South Asia. The minute energy became a problem and a bottleneck in the supply chain, they reverted back. To me, what I take as a conclusion from that is the amazing flexibility of the China production platform for consumer softline, hardline, and toys. It's just very flexible.
It's available, it's extremely deep, expertise exists, we've seen that happen. Would that stay? I think from what we observe, you will always have companies trying to de-risk China. They won't pull out completely. It doesn't make sense because they're unmatched in term of breadth and depth of what they do. You will always have a mix. You're right, the tariff story is that compelling reason why they will always de-risk. I expect to see this movement, and I expect to see a mix between China and non-China. On the technology side, look, we haven't seen the chips prices impacting the product innovation yet. A lot of what we do, a significant part of what you do is actually during the product innovation cycle, and these projects are still ongoing.
In fact, we consider today that the integration of AI capabilities, the concern around cyber are making the products a lot more sophisticated. There is a lot of innovation in everything from ICT products to other electronics to industrial products. We haven't seen the impact of that on these projects. You have seen we have a high single-digit growth in technology today, which is very reassuring. Of course, it's a direct result of our diversification of our technology business as the consumer division today.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Neil Tyler from Rothschild & Co. Redburn. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions-
Hi.
-please. Firstly, back to the certification and the operations review. I just wanted to perhaps clarify your earlier comments or maybe ask a similar question from a different perspective. Am I right in framing the slowdown that you've witnessed as reflecting, I suppose, internal issues and a divergence in your own offering from the market growth? It's not a slowdown in the end market opportunity, and therefore, if that is the case, it's sort of relatively, I don't want to use the word easily, but it's within your own hands, fixable. That's the first question. Just if you can sort of help me understand the organic growth dynamics and the differentiation between what's happening in your end markets as you see it and what's happening in your business as you see it.
Look, on certification, I don't think it's a market slowdown. That's not at all what we're talking about here. You made a comment there, Neil, on diversion of our own offering from the market. I think we have the offerings. We have been developing what we consider high-growth sub-segments or strategic priorities for us in the market. We have an execution challenge, and we are pushing the businesses where we have seen that execution challenge on the sales front, on the execution front, to recover and to make sure that they were well prepared for the pickup. In fact, if you look at our sustainability and digital business, digital assurance, they're growing high single digits, and we're doing well on that front, and we see that across most markets.
It's really very specific to our mature markets, meaning mature geographies and mature offering, where we have seen a bit of a below-expectation performance that we quickly converged on and put plans in place to make sure the pickup does occur in the second quarter. The comparables weren't exactly easy in half one for certification. If you look at last year, I think in quarter one, we grew 10.9%, and we grew less than that, around mid-single, at 6.5% in the second quarter. There's a bit of that, but I don't want to fully justify by that, and that's why, to me, it's an operation review that zeroed in on where we see that slowdown. We have very clear plans on how to recover.
Understood. Thank you. That's very clear. Then the second question, just coming back to the provision you've taken with respect to the issues mentioned at Q1. Can you clarify a little bit what that covers? Is that just your best estimate of financial penalties? Is it exit costs, lost profit from exiting the contracts, and what you've provided for in that number? Thank you.
Look, thank you for the question. On this whole matter, I think what's important to keep in mind is that we acted very quickly, transparently, and decisively. The review is complete. The provision is recorded. I'll pass to François to talk a bit more about that. The exit is underway, and we're strengthening our compliance framework. This is a legacy activity, and we're addressing it with a discipline that you would expect from a company like Bureau Veritas. That provision reflects our best estimate to date of the full financial impact in my insight. I don't know if François wants to add anything to that.
Yeah, I think I can't add much more, that's really the full financial impact of the whole story.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Allen Wells from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just two very quick clarification questions from me, please. Firstly, just on the 22 basis points of margin improvement from scope in the first half. On the known knowns, disposals, contract activity, et cetera, how should we think about that number for the full year? Would be my first question. Secondly, just on the growth guidance upgrade, can I just check? My understanding was that that's now obviously on a group excluding the activities exited and being sold. From memory, I think that part of the downgrade in guidance back at Q1 was the impact of those government services exits. I'm just trying to understand how much of the guidance upgrade is the accounting reporting and how much is an actually underlying upgrade more broadly. Any clarification there would be great. Thank you.
Let me start with the guidance upgrade. Look, the guidance upgrade is based on performance, what we believe the business can do. You're right, you have to remove out the oil and petrochemical and coal and Government services. You take those businesses out, the remaining scope will perform mid to high single digits. That's the guidance. Why do we think that? We think that based on the performance. You have seen the pickup in quarter two. We will watch very closely our pipeline and our backlog, and we have very clear visibility on our execution capacity. That's how we were able to make that guidance. The guidance is not based on some major rebound from the Middle East, for example.
It's a really well-balanced guidance that shows that our businesses that we have been working to shape for the last two, three years are prepared or are being prepared to deliver the mid to high single digits. I think I gave a few explanations in prior questions on a number of these businesses. On the scope, you want to take that, François?
Yes, Allen. On the scope, there is a simple way to answer, which is the 22 basis point of positive scope effects are not at all being driven by anything related to offshore business or oil and petroleum business, neither our GSIT, Government services business. They are here to stay regardless of the formats, old reporting, new reporting, they stay. That's element number one. Element number two. Obviously, this is a current scope. I mean, the scope at the end of June. Whatever could come, acquisition, et cetera, will alter the number up or down. But if we were in a world that this scope at the end of June would not change, that this 20 ex basis point of improvements is here to stay through the year. It's something to replicate-
Okay, great. Thank you.
-based on the current scope.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Rory McKenzie from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Well, Rory here. Last one from me, just to clarify, following up from Allen's question. Slide 29 makes it look like the exited activities will be classified as held for sale, and so excluded from the group organic growth and margin calculations, even if those disposals aren't complete until the start of next year. Is that correct? I can follow up with Laurent, but are we going to get any restated numbers for these new divisions for the past years as well, please?
Just to make it very simple, IFRS, like those two activities, would be treated as a discontinued activity. You will see it from reporting Q3 as of 1st of January backward. You would have the full Q3 and usually Q3 based on this new whole division and treating the two activities I've mentioned under a discontinuation mode. That's point one. Your second half of question was, probably did I miss this one.
Just about the area--
We actually bring comparables. Rory, you already have a nice illustrative H1 picture, and the comparison will come together with the actual numbers.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
All right. Thank you everyone for attending the call, and I'm looking forward to meeting most of you in the Capital Markets Day on September 22nd in Paris. Thank you very much, and have a safe and restful summer.