Welcome to Bureau Veritas' third quarter 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. Thank you for joining us for Bureau Veritas' third quarter 2026 revenue update. I am joined today by François Chabas, our CFO. This was a busy quarter for us, with a major update to our investors during the Capital Markets Day, late September. I will come back on that later on in this presentation. Let me now begin with an update on the quarter. Organic growth improved sequentially in the third quarter. We have seen a continued momentum throughout the year. This growth is broad-based across all divisions and geographies, demonstrating the resilience of our business model and the robust mix of product lines growth in our portfolio. Based on our solid year-to-date delivery and growing pipeline, we confirm our 2026 outlook. Our LEAP | 2028 disciplined execution continues.
In almost three years, we delivered on our commitments of organic growth and portfolio rotation, delivering mid to high single-digit organic growth, and rotating 21% of our portfolio. We have now put in place a simpler product line-centric operating model, evolving Bureau Veritas into a focused multi-specialist company, asserting leadership in served markets. At our Capital Markets Day in September, we explained how we will amplify execution in 2027 and 2028. We will accelerate acquisitions and will continue to scale our performance and people programs. AI is both a growth catalyst and a transformation lever for Bureau Veritas. Our ambition is to generate EUR 1 billion in revenue from AI-driven markets and services by 2030. Starting with the revenue performance for the quarter. Revenue reached EUR 1.57 billion, representing total growth of 10.1%. At constant currency, total growth was 8%.
Organic growth reached 6.2%, continuing the sequential quarterly acceleration of this year from 4.8% in Q1 to 5.9% in quarter two. This performance reflects our market-favorable secular trends and the disciplined business delivery across our 10 product lines. The scope effect was positive at 1.8%. Acquisitions contributed 2.7%, reflecting the bolt-on transactions completed over recent quarters that were partly offset by 0.9% impact from disposals. Currency contributed 2.1%, mainly due to the strengthening of the dollar against the euro. This follows two quarters of negative year-to-date currency impacts this year. Overall, the quarter demonstrates a progressing growth equation, robust organic delivery, an increasing contribution from acquisitions, and a more favorable currency environment. François will come back to the bridge in detail later on. Before that, I will update you on the growth by division and geography. This quarter, all four divisions contributed to organic growth.
We operate today with a portfolio of product lines exposed to growing end markets, robust investment cycles, and broad geographies. This creates a more resilient and de-cyclicalized growth profile. Buildings & Infrastructure is the strongest contributor, with 7.9% organic growth in Q3. Mission Critical assets remained one of the main growth engines, with growth above 40%, supported by data center investments primarily in North America and in other countries in the rest of the world. Product Testing & Services delivered 7% organic growth. Technology grew double digits, benefiting from AI-enabled device renewals, increasing connectivity, and increasing technology product regulations around the world. Industrials & Commodities grew 5.1%. The main drivers are oil and gas CapEx, Metals & Minerals, and marine new construction. Metals & Minerals grew 14% organically in the quarter as investment into precious and green metals continue, as we expand capabilities and reach.
Business Assurance accelerated organic growth sequentially to 3.2%. Sustainability services remain in high demand, with carbon and environmental services delivering particularly strong growth. Growth was also resilient and broadly distributed across our geographies. The Americas delivered 8.7% organic growth, supported by strong momentum in North America, particularly for Mission Critical assets and Energy & Industrial Assets. Asia Pacific grew 8.6%, driven by strong activity in China and South Asia and solid demand for technology testing services, Marine & Offshore, and specifically infrastructure services in Australia. Europe delivered 2.6% organic growth. The U.K., Italy, and France performed well, supported by regulatory inspections and building safety, demonstrating the resilience of these mature markets. Africa and the Middle East grew 5.6%. The region remains resilient in a fast-changing geopolitical environment that is impacting projects planning and inducing delays, like more recently in Saudi Arabia.
It is important to mention that our reshaped portfolio and geographical footprint position us well to capture the ongoing investments in the markets we serve. It also gives us a natural hedge against different geopolitical disruptions. I will now hand over to François for the financial review.
Thanks, Hinda. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me take you through the revenue bridge and the financial dynamics for this quarter, Q3, and the first nine months of the year 2026. Starting with the Q3 revenue bridge. Revenue increased from EUR 1.42 billion in the third quarter of 2025 to EUR 1.57 billion in the current quarter, representing the reported growth of more than 10%. The main contributor was organic growth at 6.2%. As a reminder, it is an acceleration. Q1 was at 4.8%, Q2, 5.9%. This is, as a consequence, the third consecutive quarter of growth acceleration and confirms the stronger momentum across the company. Scope, 1.8%, acquisition added 2.7%. It reflects many of the transactions completed over the recent quarter, while the disposal from our B&I activity in China reduced growth by roughly 0.9%.
The positive contribution is particularly visible in Buildings & Infrastructure following the integration of Lotusworks from August onwards in our numbers. Currency adding 2.1%, mainly due to the strengthening of the dollar and peg currencies against the EUR. As a result, total growth at constant currency over the quarter reached 8%. On a nine-month basis, next page, group revenue reached EUR 4.5 billion at 4.9% on a reported basis and 6.1% at constant currency. Organic growth is at 5.7%, reflecting the continued strength of our three largest divisions, together with improving performance for Business Assurance. Overall, scope contributed 0.9% over the first nine months, including increasing contribution, as mentioned, from acquisition, offsetting the impact of activities divested over the last 12 months. On a nine-month basis, currency remains slightly negative at -1.2%.
However, you may remember that the currency impact in Q1 and Q2 were rather different, -5.3% in Q1, close to zero or neutral in Q2, now moving to positive in Q3 at 2.1%. I think I mentioned it in July, we started to have positive FX impact from June onwards. It does continue, as we've just explained, driven mainly by strengthening of various currencies against the EUR. If you now divide on the main divisions we have, I would like to highlight a few elements on that page as far as Q3 is concerned, which is on the left-hand side. First, a strong acceleration on B&I. As you see, combination of organic growth 7.9% and scope at 4.2%.
Here again, we have the impact of Lotusworks starting to kick in the numbers, which means after nine months, on the right, you're going to see that this division is the first one to deliver double-digit growth at constant currency. It's an echo of what Hinda mentioned in the Capital Markets Day at the beginning of September. Second element of highlights, the three other divisions are accelerating their organic growth sequentially. It's not only at group level. It's as well at division level. As a reminder, Industrials & Commodities grew 3.3% in H1. It's now 5% in Q3. Business Assurance grew 2% in H1. It's now slightly above three. And Product Testing & Services grew 5.6% in H1. It's now 7%. So overall, the organic growth is accelerating in a relatively spread manner across the division. A quick summary or focus on the scope point of view.
Since the start of the plan, Bureau Veritas has rotated approximately 21% of its portfolio. 24 acquisitions representing more than EUR 400 million of annual revenue, and four divestment and exits around EUR 800 million. So it's active portfolio management in motion. Capital is being redeployed towards higher growth and more scalable activities. And moving forward, as mentioned, we expect the net M&A contribution, being M&A net of divestments, to increase as the bulk of our divestment program is behind us. I close this financial review with a quick snapshot on the balance sheet item. Bureau Veritas is in a very strong financial position, as you know, and we have acted proactively to refinance our debts ahead of the recent increase in interest rate volatility. It's been timely, as you may consider.
In early days of September, we had a placement of 700 million A3 rated bond, which is due in 2034 with a 4.1% coupon. Transaction has been covered twice and attracted, obviously, strong investor demand. Perhaps to keep in mind, and that is what is depicted on the right, it refinanced the September 2026 and January 2027 maturities. As a consequence, we do not have any maturity until 2031. Point two, all of our debt is at fixed rates. So no risk on that front. To close on this, the net financial debt of the company at the end of September was pretty unchanged compared to where it was at the end of June. I now hand back to Hinda for the portfolio business highlights.
Thank you, François. I will be looking now at the performance of our four divisions, starting with Industrials & Commodities, our largest division. It delivered 5.1% organic growth in Q3. Energy & Industrial Assets product line recorded low single-digit organic growth. This performance is a mix of a strong double-digit growth in oil and gas CapEx that was partly offset by softer OpEx activities. We talked about this recently, oil and gas operators are deferring some inspections to maintain production, while of course, they are always managing risks as they do that. So we have seen some of these deferrals, in fact, since the start of the year. The Commodities product line delivered high single-digit growth, driven by the continued strength of upstream Metals & Minerals activities.
Lastly, in this division, the Marine & Offshore product line also grew at high single digits, supported by double-digit CapEx growth from backlog conversion.
This is for new ships. The order backlog actually continued to grow and reached a record of 36.3 million gross tons, giving us very strong visibility as we consider our future growth for this product line. Buildings & Infrastructure, our second-largest division, continues to deliver the highest organic growth performance, delivering 7.9% in Q3. Looking at the two product lines within this division, the Buildings product line delivered high single-digit growth, mainly fueled by CapEx activities. Mission Critical assets continued to grow, delivering, as I mentioned earlier, over 40% on an organic basis. The business also secured a backlog of commissioning services, a strong backlog of commissioning services for the next two to three years. We are expanding our capabilities in the mission-critical space with new access to, with now our new access to the semiconductor market.
We are pleased to report that we have now closed, as we have closed the Lotusworks acquisition on July 31st. It is progressing well in its first two months. I take this opportunity to welcome all our new colleagues from Lotusworks to Bureau Veritas. OpEx buildings delivered low single-digit organic growth owing to project timeline shifts. If we exclude this, we will see that the activity is actually quite robust in most of Europe, where we have our mature OpEx activities. The Infrastructure product line delivered mid-single-digit organic revenue, organic growth, supported by a broader, more diversified portfolio, considering the multiple acquisitions we have completed in the last two and a half years. OpEx activities maintained strong momentum for infrastructure, supported by recurring asset integrity and specific monitoring programs in Italy and Asia Pacific. Moving now to Business Assurance.
The division delivered 3.2% organic growth in the third quarter, an improvement from previous quarters following the implementation of a number of operational remedial actions. Certification solutions recorded mid-single-digit growth with a resilient demand for customized assurance solutions and transition-related programs such as carbon and environmental services. Digital Assurance recorded a low single-digit contraction due to a contract termination late last year. The service offering continues to be shaped, particularly in cyber, with strong growth in certification services that are offsetting lower offensive security testing activity. We expect this product line to grow from Q1 2027 onwards. Lastly, Product Testing & Services, a newly assembled division that includes consumer products, technology products, and industrial products, delivered 7.0% organic growth, with these three product lines growing at least at mid-single-digit organic growth. The consumer product line delivered mid-single-digit growth.
Testing activities were accretive to organic growth, carried by higher volumes in South Asia and a sourcing shift back to China. Supply chain and sustainability services improved, supported by demand for supply chain resilience and responsible sourcing solutions. The technology product line delivered a very strong double digit, or a double digit, sorry, organic revenue growth. The diversification strategy and the acquisition completed in the last two and a half years contributed to this strong organic performance. Growth acceleration in electronics was supported by the renewal of AI-enabled laptops, desktops, and connected devices, as well as increasing local testing requirements for market access purposes. Industrial product certification delivered high single-digit growth. The base business of this product line is pressure vessels and welding services that continue to grow on par with the product line, while rail and mobility growth in Europe is growing faster and is accretive to this growth.
Let me now turn to our outlook and the next phase of LEAP | 2028. On the outlook, our year-to-date delivery is solid. Our pipeline continues to grow, and the portfolio post-reshaping is well positioned for growth. We therefore confirm our 2026 outlook. Mid-to high single-digit organic revenue growth, adjusted operating margin improvement at constant exchange rate, and strong cash flow generation. Let me now move to talk about our LEAP | 2028 ambition. At our Capital Markets Day in September, we confirmed the strategic pillars of LEAP | 2028 and explained how we will amplify execution in 2027 and 2028. The first phase from 2024 to 2026 has been about execution, refocusing the portfolio, building a product line centric and multi-specialist operating model, and deploying performance programs.
The next phase is about scale. The three pillars remain: portfolio, performance, and people. What changes is the pace and level of ambition.
On portfolio, we will accelerate acquisitions and scale organic growth within our product lines. On performance, we will complete the rollout of proven operating systems, and we will use technology to improve productivity, service quality, and margins. On people, we will make expertise more visible and more mobile. This is how we are transforming Bureau Veritas into a more focused, faster-growing, and a higher-performing multi-specialist company. Our new operating model is central to achieving these ambitions. The purpose of our operating model is simple: make growth more focused, more repeatable, and more accretive. We have moved from six reporting lines and 21 sub-segments to 10 product lines. This aligns the external reporting with the way the company is now managed. Each product line is a growth platform. It has clear accountability to scale services, deploy expertise across geographies, strengthen client interactions, and identify capability gaps.
At the same time, the four-division structure allows us to leverage our global scale and bring more of Bureau Veritas to each client in a more systematic way. This operating model enables a self-sustaining dynamic of organic growth and M&A. The first engine is organic execution. We scale new services, expand proven capabilities into new geographies, increase cross-selling, and use our product lines to deploy expertise more effectively. The second engine is disciplined M&A. Targeted bolt-ons strengthen leadership positions, add specific capabilities, and increase density in attractive markets. Selected mid-size transactions can accelerate our entry into strategic high-growth areas. Selected disposals are also an integral part of the model. They release capital and management attention from activities with lower growth, lower margin, or limited strategic relevance.
Together, organic growth and M&A create a compounding effect, a higher quality portfolio, stronger execution, and greater financial capacity to invest in the next wave of growth. In terms of ambition for the coming two years, for organic growth, it is mid to high single digits. Our M&A plans will support our upgraded ambition of double-digit total revenue growth at constant currency. The second phase of LEAP | 2028 will also amplify our performance and people programs. On performance, we are creating operational leverage and functional scalability through standard processes, digital operating systems, shared services, and disciplined overhead management. The impact is already visible. We have achieved 110 basis points of margin improvement towards our 180 basis point ambition. The next step is to move from discrete programs to broader deployment across the company. We will also evolve our digital process modernization towards AI-enabled operating systems.
This will help us automate routine work, improve planning, accelerate reporting, and deliver a more consistent customer experience. On people, our multi-specialist model makes expertise more scalable. We are developing specialist skills, strengthening internal mobility, and giving our experts clearer pathways across product lines and geographies. The objective is straightforward: higher productivity, better service quality, stronger customer experience, and a more scalable platform for margin expansion. In this amplify phase, AI will play a larger role. AI is an accelerator of the execution of the portfolio, performance, and people strategic pillars. It creates opportunities for Bureau Veritas in three areas. First, new markets. AI is driving investments in data centers, semiconductors, power infrastructure, and other Mission Critical assets. These are complex, high-performance, and assurance-intensive systems that require testing, inspection, certification, and assurance at scale. Second, new services.
As AI adoption accelerates, clients face new needs around model reliability, data quality and privacy, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and responsible deployment. These needs are aligned with our capabilities and track record as an independent, trusted third party. Third, new ways of working. AI can automate repetitive tasks, support technical decisions, improve consistency, and service quality. Bureau Veritas' differentiation is built on its independence, broad technical expertise, the body of accreditation and licenses to operate that we have, footprint and reach, and brand and accountability. AI, we believe, will amplify these foundations and increase our company relevance. Now in term of future ambitions, we aim to generate EUR 1 billion of revenue from AI-driven markets and services by 2030.
Approximately EUR 800 million would be coming from AI-driven markets, including data centers, semiconductor fabs, new power systems, and other Mission Critical assets where Bureau Veritas has existing client relationships and proven technical capabilities.
We target an additional EUR 200 million from new AI-related services. These include AI assurance, cybersecurity, and data integrity services, to list a few. Finally, AI will transform our delivery model. We aim to fully integrate the technology into activities representing 30% of our revenue by 2028 and 60% by 2030. At our Capital Markets Day, we confirmed our LEAP | 2028 total plan ambition. We also updated our growth guidance for the next two years. For the full plan, we continue to target mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth and consistent margin improvement at constant currency. Our cash conversion ambitions remain above 90%, and we confirm our double-digit total shareholder return ambition. Our CapEx and dividend policies remain unchanged. For 2027 and 2028, accelerated acquisitions through a combination of bolt-ons and selected mid-sized strategic deals support an upgraded ambition of double-digit total revenue growth at constant currency.
Our cash conversion will be strong, and we will narrow our leverage range to 1.5x-2x net debt to EBITDA. To close, we have delivered sequential organic growth acceleration in Q3, consistent with our expectation for the quarter. This growth is broad-based across geographies and product lines. This performance, coupled with a robust pipeline of opportunities and a track record of reliable execution, supports our 2026 confirmed outlook. Our new multi-specialist operating model provides a stronger platform to accelerate growth, scale our expertise across markets and geographies, and create greater value. We enter the next phase of LEAP | 2028 with confidence and momentum. We are fully committed to delivering our 2028 ambitions through disciplined execution, accelerated portfolio development, and the continued deployment of our performance and people programs. AI is a key element of our future development.
On the growth front, we will capture in the coming two years the opportunities associated with the AI build-out and the new risks created by wide AI adoption. AI is also a lever of performance, and its integration into our workflows will drive the next step of performance beyond 2028. Bureau Veritas is well-positioned for the future, and we remain focused on creating sustainable long-term value for all our stakeholders. 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 Victoria Chang from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Hinda, François. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two. My first one is on the delays in OpEx inspections, particularly within the Energy & Industrial Assets that you've seen through this year. To what extent do you think these delays can continue? Is there a window of time that inspections must happen for regulatory or contractual reasons, for example? What do you anticipate the impact of to your margins for this year? My second question is on your activities planned for exit. Are you able to disclose what the revenues from those activities were in 3Q and what the growth was for those, please? Thank you.
All right. Hi, Victoria, thanks for the questions. I am going to answer the question on the OpEx and then François will answer the question on the business for exit or what we can answer there. On the OpEx, we have explained since the start of the year impact, we did specifically mention that the OpEx delays, we have seen them. We had some delays late last year, late Q4. These sometimes happen. They might move a little bit. Some of the shutdowns we see for refineries could move. I think this year is a little bit more complex.
First, owing to, we had some of these traditional delays, but we also seen some delays that were induced by the conflict, particularly in the Middle East & Africa, where operators, either they had damage to some of their facilities, so they really were not going to continue with the schedule they initially had anyway, or they had facilities that are operating and at some point they made a decision. Of course, always with the risk in mind. These are important decisions when people delay some of these scheduled inspections. Some of them are regulatory, and some of them are rather based on risk assessment. That is really what we have seen. So there is a dynamic of you do get delays.
We just seen many of them, of course, compounded with the fact that you have the conflict decision-making on when to schedule these is what created even more delay.
I think in general, OpEx spend, I would not say it is completely discretionary, but there is some flexibility when you schedule it, again, provided you are managing the risk. That is really what we have seen. Now, do I think it will resume at some point? Absolutely. I think we will see some facilities. We will see first some damage assessment as well added to that, plus other inspections that need to be done. So it is a matter of time. It will have to be done. We have seen that in different parts of the world. But of course, the Middle East & Africa has been the most impacted. The second question was on the exited businesses. I will let François comment on this.
Yeah. Good afternoon, Victoria. As you know, as per IFRS 5, we now publish numbers excluding activities for exit, at least from the revenue down to the adjusted operating profit. Not to let you without an answer totally, I think we've communicated during the Capital Markets Day that the two activities which are under exit being namely the fuel testing business and the Government Services business has been historically growing less than the average of the group by 30 basis points in terms of organic growth. You could easily think that this has not dramatically changed over Q3, and considering we are actively pursuing a strategy of exiting Government Services, most probably the gap is even a bit wider in Q3 because we are closing contracts and as a consequence, reducing the level of activity.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, Hinda. Good afternoon, François. Two questions, please.
Hey, Annelies.
Hi. Firstly, on the operations review in certification that you announced at the H1, could you comment on any progress you've made or findings? As part of that, for Business Assurance, do you still expect a material improvement in growth in that division into 2027, as we've seen some improvement now in Q3? Secondly, I just wanted to ask on the Middle East & Africa, the growth here in Q3 looks better than in H1, but you've mentioned some ongoing and broadening project delays. I think you mentioned Saudi Arabia, for example. So I'd be keen to understand what the situation is like on the ground in the Middle East, and what are you hearing from your customers in terms of when some of that might more formally recover going into next year? Thank you.
Thanks, Annelies. It's four questions or three, four questions. You tell me if I addressed all of them. Look, on the operation review, yes, indeed, we did say that. On that business, we had some issues in the certification solution. We had some geographies that struggled a little bit commercially. There were some operational management concerns in terms of how they were managing their opportunities. We have reviewed those. We have put plans in place. We are building the pipeline. It's starting to recover. Of course, it takes time. That's why we can confidently say that. We said it, in fact, in half one, we said the performance will improve gradually. You've seen it in Q3. We believe you will see something similar, slight improvements as well in Q4. The question for 2027, yes, absolutely. I expect that Business Assurance will improve.
Overall, that includes Certification solutions product line, and also the Digital Assurance. I expect it to improve as well, because we have a difficult comparable this year that will be off by the end of this year. Therefore, I expect Business Assurance to resume growing in 2027. In Middle East & Africa, I think what is important to keep in mind for this region, we have had a number of years where we have worked on diversifying our growth from being really mostly around Energy & Industrial Assets into more Buildings & Infrastructure and Metals & Minerals. Of course, we always have had certification there. I think that resilient performance you see is the result of that very resilient portfolio we have in place.
While Energy & Industrial Assets have struggled, to your point, and I just explained to Victoria the OpEx delays, we continue to have very strong, it's very important, very strong CapEx performance in Energy & Industrial Assets, particularly in oil and gas. We haven't seen impact there. Those are long-term projects. But the OpEx indeed did suffer. But what was interesting is the growth and the other activities, and particularly Metals & Minerals certification, and to some extent, B&I have been actually quite healthy, and that's why you have that resilient aggregate organic growth performance. I think these are the three questions there, Annelies. Did I miss anything?
No, that was clear. Thank you. Yeah, sorry, maybe more like two and a half. Thanks, guys.
Perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two small ones from me, please. Just wanted to clarify your organic growth expectations for the next quarter. I know at the beginning of the year, you had talked about sequential improvement in organic growth from the first quarter, which you have delivered on. Therefore, can we extrapolate that for Q4 as well? That's my first question. My second one is on B&I, mission-critical assets doing really well on growth driven by data centers. Can we expect further acceleration in B&I in the coming quarters as the backlog converts to sales? Thank you.
Yes. Hi, Suhasini. Thanks for the questions. On Q4, I think we believe we'll have a slight organic growth improvement in Q4 versus what you have seen in Q3, and we have reiterated our guidance. So that gives you an idea on where we think we will land. So that's really our plan. In term of how we see that performance, I think previous questions were on Business Assurance. We expect that to continue to improve. I expect that B&I in Q4 continue to deliver a very robust performance. Then I would say in general, probably the best way to think about it is out of the four divisions, B&I would do a stronger performance than what we have seen, and the others would be mid-single digits, roughly around that.
Thank you.
Now, on this. Yeah, I think we covered most of it.
The next question comes from Neil Tyler from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please go ahead.
The next question comes from Geoffroy Michalet from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you. So two questions, I think you answered the first by anticipation, speaking on the normative growth profile for next year. I had in mind that B&I should lead, probably Business Assurance catch up, and at some point Product Testing & Services could be considered as having maybe a growth that is probably a nudge higher its long-term potential currently. The second question was on acquisition. I think it's the first quarter since a while that you haven't announced any acquisition this quarter, yet you were on the matter at Capital Markets Day. Can you update a bit on the pipeline and your ambitions? Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Geoffroy. Hello. Yes, I think you for. We're not, of course, guiding right now on next year, but obviously, we have worked on, with our new operating model, our different divisions. We have very clear plans of growth that we shared throughout the Capital Markets Day a few weeks ago. Yes, I think B&I is very well positioned to continue to perform nicely next year. And it's a combination of very strong, of course, expectations from our, or strong expectation from our Mission Critical assets, but also the rest of the portfolio that we continue to monitor very carefully, and we expect that it will continue to grow on par with the market.
And we are very vigilant to the B&I portfolio because we want to make sure that our acquisitions are really contributing to this high level of growth that we like to maintain and that we committed to in the Capital Markets Day. Business Assurance, absolutely, I think this was a year of reset for a number of reasons that explained earlier. And both on the Certification solutions from an operational perspective, but also commercially. And as we diversify our activities in the Digital Assurance, I expect that Business Assurance will have a stronger performance next year. And I would say overall again, we reiterated our guidance for 2028 to be mid to high single digits for 2027, 2028. I cannot say more than that on 2027 at this time, but I think that helps you triangulate how we think about the year. In acquisitions, you're absolutely right.
We did say that we will pursue more acquisitions going forward. And we upgraded to your point, 2027, 2028 total growth at constant currency guidance. Yes, in Q3, we didn't announce acquisitions, but we are very active on scouting for opportunities, sourcing opportunities, engaging with targets, defining, understanding these targets. And I think you will see by the end of this quarter and certainly early quarter one, we will be able to complete some of these acquisitions. Again, it's a disciplined approach. It's very focused. It's very clear. We know what we want to buy. We know where we want to buy them. It's a matter of executing all this, and we're trying to remain disciplined and not focus on the numbers. Yes, indeed, we did have a bit of a lull, but we were busy preparing for completing those in the coming quarters.
Geoffroy, perhaps adding one point what Hinda explained very clearly. M&A have very little regards to quarterly close. Unfortunately, we try and anticipate them, but it is a field that has less predictability, as Hinda mentioned. Just to keep everyone in mind that our ultimate focus is pretty much in Q2 and up until the end of July to close, to deal with Lotusworks, and to divest our large oil and petrochemicals and coal testing. So it is not totally a surprise to us that Q3 could not see big announcements, but we push hard and make you happy in the next quarter for sure.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Neil Tyler from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, Hinda, François. A couple from me, please. The comments you made in the release around the backlog in B&I. Specifically, does the visibility you talk about exist mainly around the Mission Critical assets, or can that comment expanded more broadly across the B&I portfolio in terms of the visibility, the two to three year visibility on order book? That is the first question. Then secondly, I wonder if you could expand on the comments you make in consumer Product Testing around the sourcing shift back to China. How that has impacted your business, and whether that is a sort of structural change that you see or something more temporary. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you, Neil. Look, the backlog, absolutely, I was referring to Mission Critical assets. We had, of course, a number of questions and inquiries and ourselves, we're watching very closely this market. And I wanted to share that the backlog is clear for us. We have very close relationship with our customers, hyperscalers, and others. And we monitor how the whole space of data center construction is going. And what is reassuring about that? First of all, our backlog is strong. And we have a good, I would say, a very good visibility for the next two to three years.
But also, and it's very important, is while there is a lot of noise around data centers, particularly in the U.S. and how there is opposition in some states, et cetera, what we understand from that, and really we have very good proximity and knowledge on the ground is, first of all, the need for construction of data centers is not going to go away. The compute needs are high. The compute cost is very high. They need more capacity. So that is basically the need front. We are very clear on that. Second, a lot of these projects that started initially, probably as a real estate project where you have technical assets inside, but it's just a real estate project, are moving into full-blown infrastructure projects. Which means what?
Which means that the expectations in term of permitting and regulatory compliance and environmental assessments and usage of water, noise, all these things that are actually strengths for Bureau Veritas are becoming real parameters that need assurance, that need for many of these stakeholders that in the past weren't involved during the CapEx phase of these data centers. So for us, we see actually resilience in this space, but we see movements. Movements for future projects. For now, we are comfortable with our backlog, but for the future, it actually gives us a very nice motivation to continue to develop our services around the object of data center that is becoming more complex and more, I would say, TIC intensive. So that's on your first question.
On the second question, on the Product Testing & Services, and namely for consumer product line, what we have seen at the early start of the conflict in the Persian Gulf, and when some parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia started struggling with access basically to oil and refined products, we have seen very quickly a realization by a lot of producers of goods, particularly soft line, hard line, that by not having some exposure to China, they're actually at the mercy of energy issues in some of these countries. So for me, it's a rebalancing. We've seen a bit of an exit out of China to de-risk China, but maybe too much. And now we've seen that rebalancing of that pendulum swinging back to say we need to have a mix of geographies in our production footprint for many of the producers and, of course, the buyers.
We have seen that movement back to China. That was a very nice increase in volume that helped us deliver a very nice performance in Q3. Now, is that structural? I believe so.
That's very helpful. Thank you. I wonder if I could just ask a quick follow-up, or third question, really. You mentioned in the release, both in Marine and in the Business Assurance, the effects of deliberate exits from activities or non-renewal of contracts, aside from obviously the Government Services exit. Can you just help me understand the sort of impact and when those annualize in each case, please?
I'm not sure I heard you very well. Sorry, Neil. If you could repeat again. Are you referring to exits? You said Marine & Offshore and Business Assurance. Is that what you said?
Yes. You talked about in Marine, I think it was non-renewal of contracts and in Business Assurance as well, some exits away from the Government Services, I thought I read. I wondered if you could just sort of clarify that and specify when those would annualize.
All right. Yeah. No, it's a good-
Okay. We got it now.
Small legacy topic.
Well, it's well spotted. Congrats. It's a really tiny business. We're talking about something that is less than EUR 10 million on the 12 months basis. A bit of cleaning. Nothing material, but well spotted.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Yeah. On the Business Assurance now, we referred in our Digital Assurance product line to a cyber contract that was terminated late last year that actually is providing a very unfavorable comparable for Digital Assurance. You have seen the contraction in Q3. We want to explain that. For me, what's important is if you exclude that particular contract, comparison to that particular contract, we are actually reshaping our services in cyber, and we are able now to increasingly grow our Certification solutions under cyber owing to needs in operation technology in IoT. That is actually growing double digits. So we just, it is really for full transparency, wanted to explain the Digital Assurance performance.
Thank you. That is really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Virginia Montorsi from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question. I just had a quick one on Digital Assurance. Considering what we've seen, particularly in the U.S., the CEOs of AI companies, the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, discussing a potential slowdown for the development of artificial intelligence, calling for more regulation and more safety in the space. I appreciate this is very quick, but have you already started having maybe different conversations in terms of your ability to certify for different ISO certifications, and how do you think this kind of turn opportunity for you? I know you've spoken a lot about this at the CMD, but just wanted to ask if you're already starting to have some more nuanced conversations about this, and obviously whether there's an expectation that this industry could become a bit more regulated.
Well, thank you. Hi, Virginia. Thanks for the question. I think you said it right. This is really fast evolving. There's a lot of thinking around how to regulate these technologies. I don't think anybody's used to regulate a technology that is so fast-moving and that develops so quickly and being so technical. The timeframe is just so compressed, right? If we look at many other industries where there is a very deep technical expertise needed, it takes years to develop regulations. I think what is the struggle today here is the technology is moving very fast. A lot of it is not very well understood, and the companies adopting it are very worried about risk. The way I look at it is, I think that conversation on regulation is going to continue. We're going to see different jurisdictions and different philosophies to that.
You will see, as we have seen so far, the European bloc will be considering regulations in a, I wouldn't call it traditional way, because there is a realization it's a very difficult technology to regulate, but definitely a framing of some regulations, from angles of data privacy, from cyber perspective, so quite well-defined on these two paths. You will see other jurisdictions, like the U.S., that are going to be probably fragmented. It's going to take a while. Now, what do we do with all that? I think for us, first of all, we're looking at this AI assurance in particular in two ways. One is any schemes that are out there, be it the EU AI Act or any other country-specific regulation, we will prepare ourselves and give ourselves the license to operate and the capabilities to support that, from an assurance perspective.
We just got our accreditation, for example, from a practice perspective, the ISO 42001. We just got an accreditation, and we are starting to scale it around the world. Then we will seek partnerships for very specific needs with tech players who understand deeply the technology, but that do not have, one, the third-party nature of who we are or the expertise to build a methodology around assurance. So those are the different paths we are looking at. Of course, we always have cyber, and we are looking at cyber with the AI risk of cyber versus what we have seen in the past. So I think it is all very much in moving as we go, and it is all about finding, on these paths, developing the capabilities as fast as we can. I hope it answers your question, Virginia.
Absolutely. Thank you very much. Very helpful.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Arthur Truslove from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everybody. Arthur from Citi. A couple of questions from me, please. The first one was on certification. I understand that next year is a major recertification year. Clearly, ones have been quite productive from an organic growth perspective. What sort of uptick are you expecting for organic growth as a result of that in that division next year? Second question, I understand you just consolidated Lotusworks. At the CMD, you talked to 15% or so invested capital on transactions. I just want to hear a little bit more about how that happens. Is it principally via growth in the underlying asset? Is it synergies with the mothership, and hence going up? How quickly does it normally happen that you get to that 15% return on capital? Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Thank you for the questions, Arthur. So I am going to answer the certification question. Then François is going to comment on the Lotusworks metric there. On certification, yes, of course, we expect that we will grow higher than this year. You have seen the growth so far this year for certification for nine months. It is 2.3% for Business Assurance. I think going from Q4 onwards, we will improve. We will see that continuous improvement, and I expect for next year, definitely to be beyond that growth we have seen this year. I am reluctant to give you a specific guidance and number, but definitely I would say we will connect with what I consider normative growth for certification, and it is definitely not low single digits. On Lotusworks, François?
Yeah. On Lotusworks, so basically the bulk of the, I would say, the investment thesis here is Lotusworks is made of a few hundreds of very strong professional, who are capable to deliver commissioning services on semiconductor assets primarily, plus a few others, including some data center activity. Their limitation initially is that they are active only in two countries, two jurisdictions, Ireland and the U.S. What Veritas brings to the equation is we are bringing to the equation the capacity to expand basically in any geography, on the back of contract being won by Lotusworks in Germany and Winterthur. They are not, for which for them would be extremely difficult to, should they win a contract with a client installing a semiconductor factory in Poland.
At the moment, and we had this discussion pre-deal, opening a legal entity, finding a finance person, getting the insurance and the permit together, et cetera, was such a burden that those contracts were not even looked after. They were not even signed. We are replicating, I would say, an approach that has been very successful in the data center commissioning business, where we have the same approach. We purchased a company that was, at the time, even smaller, active as well only in a very limited number of jurisdictions. We offered Veritas platform of all G&A services. Simply this is a very strong both growth accelerator and margin accelerator because we offer cost synergies knowing that we do not recruit an accountant every time we win a large data center for semiconductor commissioning services.
That is really the theme behind the investment, and that is why we can count on good organic growth and then straight and direct impact on the bottom line.
That is very helpful. Thank you, François. Thank you, Hinda.
Thank you.
The next question comes from James Rowland Clark from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Two questions, please. You are obviously partway through exiting Government Services contracts at the moment, and I understand you have done a bit already. I wonder if you could update us on how much of that business you have now exited at this point and, I guess, a targeted timeline on when you think you will complete that, maybe by the end of the year or by the end of Q1. Secondly, just on the Middle East & Africa and Europe, I just wanted to follow up on the earlier question. You have got an improved performance. That is a 5.5% growth in Q3, which I understand is on the continuings. As far as I can see, you were sort of 1%- 2% on the old business in the first half, including Government Services and oil and petrochemicals.
I just wondered what that actually looked like on the continuing perimeter, if that makes sense. Maybe you could give us the Q2 performance in Middle East & Africa now versus that Q3 0.6. Thank you.
All right. On the Government Services, we have said it in the past, and it is very important to reiterate. In this activity, we work with governments on very, very essential services for their goods that they import in the country. Therefore, we took some time to connect and engage with all our customers, all these governments, to ensure that there is very clear business continuity path and plans for them to take over these contracts. I am pleased to say that a lot of work has been done. A lot of contract terminations have been done so far. All customers we have engaged with, all these governments we engage with, and we have plans to close everything by. All contracts to be basically terminated by end of the year.
There will be some services that will be part of those contracts that were stopped that will probably pull into early next year, but no later than Q1, and we will be done. That is what we have been doing. Lots of work, of course. It impacts a number of countries, but we have progressed quite well on that. On the Middle East & Africa, I will let François on your question on the continuing scope performance prior to that.
Yeah. Thank you, Hinda. James, I think you are right. The 5.6% you see is on the, well, let us call it the new perimeter to make it simple. The 3.5% in H1 is on the previous one. It makes me just think we may, in the further publication, perhaps align as well, wanting to give you guys a bit of a historical data by division, by quarter. Actually, we missed perhaps the geographical part. If we want to read that properly, I would say the 3.5% in H1 is heavily impacted by the oil and petrochemicals testing, obviously, which was at a standstill. The 5.6% we have in Q3 looks better on the face of it. The reality is the business is not going better there.
I mean, we are still under pressure from the events over there in our activities in OpEx industry, as well as in our activities in B&I. I think to be fair with everyone, the reading of the numbers in Q3 for Middle East & Africa at 5.6% is not improving towards H1, to make it very simple. But I think you can reach out to Laurent Brunelle for perhaps further elements, if need be. By the end of the year, we will most probably, company say, disclose the numbers properly.
Sure will. Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks very much.
This concludes the question and answer session. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
All right. Thank you very much, everyone. I'm looking forward to talking to you early in the year. Thank you.