Bonjour à tous. Good morning to you all. Thanks for joining us for the presentation of our first half results. A few pictures to start with. On the cover of the booklet, you no doubt have before you, there's an artist's view of the future Saint-Cloud station of the mega contract of Line 15 West that we won recently. This is a first with the Grand Paris Company Design-Build. 5 stations, 14 kilometers of tunnels, EUR 2.71 billion of revenue to be delivered in 2030, 2031. The Grand Paris Express is truly becoming a reality, and it's, without doubt, going to boost the economic activity of the Paris region. Next, we often talk to you about decarbonizing the road, and in particular, the autoroute that's imperative and urgent.
We're gonna be testing 2 technologies, allowing all e-vehicles, in particular, trucks, to charge as they roll. It's a big advantage because you can reduce the power and weight of onboard batteries. Tests will take place over 2 years, 2023-2026, on 2, 2 kilometer stretches near Saint-Arnoult. The aim being to certify the technologies that could then be deployed on very busy autoroute stretches. Next, a photograph here that shows one of the platforms of the Cape Verde Islands. We completed and closed the financing of this 40-year concession, whose aim is to support, stimulate economic growth through the development of tourist potential of these islands. Of course, in our program, we've planned to make major initiatives for the environment and the production of renewable energy.
It symbolizes the fact that we continue to grow in the airports sector. We're consolidating through these Cape Verde airports, our leadership as the leading global private operator, operating 17 airports across 13 countries. We've also strengthened our stake in Vía 40 in Colombia. Work is progressing at pace. Next slide is the image of a project won by VINCI Energies and VINCI Construction of what? About EUR 300 million for the two conversion AC/DC stations, as part as the power interconnection between France and Spain in the Bay of Biscay. A shot of the PV farm connected to the Brazilian grid, the Belmonte farm, 570 megawatts peak power.
The shot of a construction project achieved by VINCI Construction and Consortium, the Sydney Gateway in Australia, EUR 900 million to build, refurbish, 5 kilometers of road, 19 bridges and cycle lanes, to illustrate the fine breakthrough by VINCI Construction over the past 10 years in Australia, in New Zealand. Lastly, the signing off plan of the first co-living project developed by VINCI Real Estate in the Paris region. This is part of a broader operation of urban regeneration on a former wasteland, where we're developing the co-living, many homes, a nursery, with a rewilding project.
Just to show you that, as on previous occasions, we're seeing that the world is brimming with projects, and this allows us to be extremely selective as we move forward. Next, to say that H1 performance at VINCI was very solid. VINCI Airports, a spectacular turnaround, a traffic that has returned to its pre-COVID levels, if we don't take into apart the part of the world that's lagging slightly behind Asia. VINCI Autoroutes , traffic is trending well, strong growth of activity and operating margins at VINCI Energies and Cobra. Good selectivity of VINCI Construction, also improving its operating margin. All this, on slide 12, sees H1 revenue to grow by 13% versus last year, whereas, as you can see, EBIT grows from EUR 724 million over a year.
You'll have noted the free cash . Free cash flow of the H1, that doesn't, of course, represent annual free cash flow. As you know, great deal of seasonality in our business. This SCF, what's interesting is that it's positive, up EUR 542 million as compared to where it stood last year. Lastly, order intake being renewed very satisfactorily, both in volume and quality. That's important. We can remain confident, which is the best way of winning attractive projects with a good level of margin. If we now turn to the geographical split, you see that all our major areas are up, often very significantly, as the case in Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, excluding France. France is up 7%, also the case in the Americas, broadly, and in Asia, Oceania.
It's worth noting that international business now represents 56% of our total activity. Diving deeper into the various businesses, VINCI Autoroutes, light vehicle traffic is up, benefiting of a number of effects. A base effect, first of all, due to the fact that last year in January 2022, there was still a residual COVID effect, so we're benefiting from that this year in terms of the base effect, number of calendar effects. Also, there were more business open travel days for cars, visiting friends and relatives, FVR over last year. The numbers growth of light vehicles is very useful, 2.8%, even if it's somewhat boosted by the effect that I mentioned. Truck traffic is down slightly 1.2% for calendar effects.
That is the number of opening days during which trucks can travel, but it's quite likely that this slight dip also reflects economic growth, which, as we all know, is not particularly buoyant at the present time. I won't deliver the usual speech about the autoroute decarbonization. You've heard it a number of times. We're going to trial the two engineering operations of dynamic recharging that I mentioned at the outset, and to say that all our service areas, our 180 service areas, are now equipped with charging points, with 1,326 as we speak, 1,500 by the end of the year, and it's important on the autoroute. 70 ultra-fast charging points of at least 150 kilowatts.
Important to add that we're gearing up to equip not just our service areas, but our rest areas with a program to equip some 50. On the airports, as I said, traffic is recovering. June traffic levels was only down 6% versus the pre-COVID situation, excluding Asia, as I said, we're at the pre-COVID traffic levels with very solid performance levels in Portugal, Serbia, Dominican Republic, or more recently in Mexico. We acquired the cluster of airports around Monterrey at the right time, because since the acquisition, traffic's holding up very well. Traffic continued to grow in the UK, driven, encouraged by a strong increase in flights.
In Japan, an interesting point, international, regional traffic, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, is strongly accelerated of late, whereas traffic with China is being reestablished gradually. VINCI Airports, very good containment of operating costs in spite of cost inflation, not just energy and all this leads to the performance shown here, and in particular, a fine increase in the operating margin. Of course, we continued to roll out our environmental policy across our 72 assets. Other concessions, slide 16, as I said, we've strengthened our stake in the Via 40 in Colombia, that we now fully consolidate. We included Entrevias in Brazil, a concession of 570 kilometers in the state of São Paulo.
Just, after the 2 slides I've shown you, I'd like to indicate that the strategy, incepted in 2006, aimed at diversifying our infrastructure concessions projects, by growing VINCI Airports, allow us to post these significant figures. You can see that excluding French Autoroutes today in concession, we're achieving EUR 2 billion in business and EUR 1.2 billion in EBITDA on the half, as against, as you saw previously, EUR 3 billion in business, EUR 2.3 billion EBITDA for VINCI Autoroutes. It's progressing. We're beginning to reap the benefits of the strategy that was initiated, back in 2006. works, look at the order intake. Excellent level, as you can see on slide 17, both at VINCI Energies, Cobra, as well as VINCI Construction. The three segments, geography, France, ...
Europe, excluding France and international, are all up with particularly strong growth as regards international. Diving deeper, VINCI Energies in great shape, well established across the four major dynamic trends: energy efficiency, the energy transition, and its adjunct, the electricity development that is growing in the energy mix, and also the digital revolution with its huge need for data capture, retrieval, data storage, data operations and management. That accounts for the sharp increase in the business, 18% on the half versus last year, 13% in France, and 21% outside France and international, where we've now gone flat out for a while, represents 56% of the total.
VINCI Energies, what's more, is improving its EBIT margin 6.8% on the half, as against 5%, 65% in 2022, and in accordance with their corporate culture, a continuous flow of small to medium deals, 14 since the end of beginning of the year, to complete our geographical coverage and expertise. VINCI Energies is proving to be an extraordinary machine that has a key role to play in the energy and digital transitions underway. Cobra, hosting the same momentum, both in terms of flow business and the major ramp up in ESPC projects linked to the energy transitions, with new AC/DC conversion stations for offshore wind farms in the North Sea, with of course, high power transmission projects of high voltage in Brazil or Australia.
Also, a good crop of PV farms, be it in the Iberian Peninsula or Brazil. The Belmonte power plant in Brazil was, as planned, connected to the Brazilian grid and put into production the day before yesterday. It's a major milestone for us because it's the first renewables project fully developed by Cobra, and that we're going to keep in our portfolio. Since yesterday, we can consider that we're producing green power big time. Others in Brazil, Portugal, Spain, total power of 1.4 gigawatts to be constructed before the end of the year. The performance shown here are being delivered both in terms of energy, development, order, intake, and EBIT margin. VINCI Construction, we're also seeing a very good half. Revenue up 11%, 7% in France, 15% internationally.
The activity is comprised of many local projects, buildings, civil engineering projects, the flow business, as we call it, but activities particularly buoyant in major mobility infrastructure. In France, the Grand Paris Express, line HS2 in the U.K., several autoroutes, rail links in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the fixed link, the undersea fixed link, pretty extraordinary between Germany and Denmark. Let's dive deeper on the order intake. Very good progress of small projects, below EUR 5 million, represent just over 60% of the order intake. It's important for us because it generates a great deal of resilience, and that's not always how we're perceived, because we communicate a lot on the major projects that allow us to show you some fine pictures.
You need to know that 60% of the business logged over half projects lower than EUR 5 million. It's very important to track that, because that's what allows us to maintain the resilience of VINCI Construction. At the same time, we're seeing an increase in projects between EUR 5 million and EUR 50 million, and this is something we've seen for a while now, an increase in the elementary size of projects. Which is pretty much a good news, cause very often, these are more technical projects in which we can better showcase our ability to deliver value added. You're seeing that VINCI Construction is now achieving 55% of its business internationally, in accordance with our strategy, and the EBIT margin continues to grow.
Of course, as you know, that this margin is in no way a reflection of the full year because of the high seasonality of a number of sectors, notably, road construction. Lastly, VINCI Immobilier , that doesn't escape the deep crisis. Reservations are down 36%, revenue down 23%. It's obviously not very good news, but for us, as you know, it's a very modest activity. We can also note that two segments are performing better: that of hotels and what we call managed residences, either for seniors or students. This is a sector that is still faring quite well. We have 38 residences in service, and 9 new managed residents to be commissioned by the end of the year. That's what we can say. Over to Christiane Labeyrie, who will reflect that in the figures.
Thank you, Xavier. Slide 24. Slide 24 compares changes in revenue for H1 2023 relative to H1 2022. We're seeing a 13% increase in revenue, including 12% organic growth, and this reflects the good momentum in our businesses. In line with the previous fiscal years, the change is homogeneous between the three main branches, between 12% and 13% organic growth, plus 13% in concessions. The rebound in air traffic continues, good traffic on highways, 13% for VINCI Energies, 14% for Cobra, 12% for Vinci Construction. The only caveat, as we said, is real estate. There's a drop, a 23% drop in revenue. Scope effects are relatively limited this year.
To date, a growth contribution of 2.6% additional growth, which comes in addition to organic growth with the consolidation of Oma, which accounts for about EUR 300 million revenue over the half year. 40 acquisitions between last year and this year, which provides additional revenue of about EUR 380 million. The main two segments are ICT by Kontron in Europe and Otera in Norway. We're talking electricity infrastructure. So far, slightly negative, -0.6%. That is the impact of the euro rising against sterling. Next slide, France versus international. Strong booming business in international operations, up 20%. This gives us organic growth of 16%.
France has nothing to be ashamed of, with strong growth of about 7%, which is a slightly higher, more much higher than inflation. We're talking 56% of the total increasing year-on-year. This is one of the main thrust of our strategy, has been for years. We want to increase the share of international operations in our revenue and profit. Now, operating income EUR 3.5 billion, i.e, 11% of revenue, an increase of EUR 724 million. A strong increase in Vinci Airports. EBIT reached EUR 780 million, and half of that is due to the consolidation of OMA. EBIT for Vinci Autoroutes exceeds EUR 1.6 billion. It's an improvement of over EUR 150 million.
We're also seeing improvements in Vinci Energies, uncertain, and Vinci Construction, both, in quantum terms and in terms of the margin rate. As we said before, the only caveat, as I said before, is real estate. We're seeing a slight loss of EUR 16 million in the first half versus a profit of EUR 28 million last year. Now, our operating income, slide 27. We are seeing a strong increase of the IFRS 2 expense, which is mostly explained by the increase in the expense related to the group savings plan due to strong subscription. Initially, we have created EUR 5.9 million new shares in the first four-month period of the year.
We're working on the basis of four-month periods. There's also been a change in method, which has currently been implemented in France, following recommendations from accounting authorities. This means a lower discount linked to the mobilization of shares. Other aspects, we're seeing an improvement in equity accounted associates. This can be explained by the better performance of airports in Japan, which have now broken even, even though traffic has not returned to its 2019 level. Very few non-recurring items as you can see. We're seeing an increase in cost of debt and financial interest.
It should have been higher than what we're seeing on the screen, because out of the EUR 340 million in net financial expenses, we're taking into account a one-off impact of EUR 170 million linked to the restructuring of the debt incurred to acquire London Gatwick. This, this impact, unfortunately, will not repeat itself every single half year, but we managed to cut our losses caused by the impact of interest rate hikes. We're seeing an increase in the tax liability and a stronger negative contribution of non-controlling interests, which represent the share of our partners in Gatwick Airport. They own less than 50%, and the share of Oma shareholders, which exceeds 70% of the share capital.
In a net profit of about EUR 2.1 billion, sharply increasing over last year, and this is reflected in the EPS of 3.65 euros per share. Next slide, please. Number 28, we're seeing changes in debt over the half year. Next year, we can do a comparison over a 12-month trailing basis, which is probably more relevant considering the seasonal variations in our businesses. However, we are seeing an increase, which makes sense this half year, despite a strong increase in EBITDA, EUR 5.3 billion versus EUR 4.5 billion in the first half of last year. VINCI Autoroutes accounts for over 40% of EBITDA, and energy, in the broad sense of the word, plus VINCI Airports account for about 20% of EBITDA for the half year, respectively. WCR is shifting negatively.
It has increased over the first half of the year, but to a lesser extent than last year, thanks to uncertain and VINCI Construction. Financial interest is up, taxes are up. That makes sense. We've already analyzed that. CapEx is also strongly up, about EUR 500 million, and this mostly relates to VINCI Airports. You probably remember that it strongly reduces investments during COVID, particularly with regard to Gatwick, and uncertain is investing into its public and private partnership or projects, electricity infrastructure projects in Brazil and renewable energy projects, particularly Belmonte. We're seeing a number of disposals and an impact of dividends and share buybacks, which is slightly higher than what it was last year.
By and large, debt is less than EUR 21 million, and it breaks down between gross debt, about EUR 28 billion, and cash to the extent of EUR 800 million. Next slide, please. This reminds us that, yes, we are happy that we are in positive cash flow generation territory. It hasn't happened very often, only four times. Let's stay humble because the bulk of that cash flow is generated in the second half of the year. We could even say in very last months or even weeks of the year, due to significant inflows in the fall. This is still a source of satisfaction. The free cash flow in H1 is improving relative to H1 last year. We are in positive territory. Next slide, please. The consolidated balance sheet. Our capital employed accounts for over EUR 56 billion.
Out of the EUR 56 billion, we have a EUR 44 billion in concessions, broken down as follows: EUR 20 billion for VINCI Autoroutes, EUR 20 billion for VINCI Airports, and about EUR 3 billion for the other concessions, mostly VINCI Highways. The rest of the EUR 23 billion in the, we have about EUR 10 billion, EUR 13 billion WCR. VINCI Energies, Cobra, so the energy branch accounts for a little over EUR 10 billion. Much for our balance sheet. Now, our financial policy. I keep saying the same thing, but it makes sense, so I don't see why I should change my tune. Liquidity is high. It's important to us.
It's important to have liquidity, to have cash when you have gross debt that you need to manage, and at the same time, you need to grow in order to maintain our elbow room, so we can make the right investment choices when we need to make them, as opposed to based on financial constraints that come from markets. At the end of June, we have EUR 18.5 million in liquidity, including EUR 1 billion in cash. The EUR 10.5 billion in credit lines will be brought down to EUR 8 billion. We decided not to renew the EUR 2.5 billion credit line set up in July last year for one year, but that could have been extendable. What's the point of continue to pay fees when we don't absolutely need to?
Eight billion in cash, broken down as follows between the holding company and our subsidiaries. In total, EUR 8 billion, which is, which is still a pretty good level of cash. Our rating, both for S&P and Moody's, has been confirmed. The level is good, A minus, A3, depending on S&P or Moody's, with outlook stable in both cases. This means we will continue to issue bonds. You can see in the lower right-hand corner, we have issued a bond, bonds for EUR 1.3 billion between ASF and VINCI SA. In over a 12-month trailing basis, we're doing pretty well. Credit terms are more expensive than in previous years, we're still doing pretty well, over 3% for the annual coupons. Last slide, the change in gross cost of debt.
It's relatively limited, 3% of the average cost over the first half, compared with 2.5% in H1 2022. In actual fact, the 3% takes into account the one-off item that I talked about before, with regard to the debt incurred to finance the acquisition of London Gatwick. Otherwise, we have about 4%, a little over 4%, in cost of debt, which is more than previous years. On the right-hand side, you see the explanations. Shifts in the different currencies were about 4%, slightly under 4%, but, considering yesterday's ECB announcement, it could be higher in the next few months. We're hoping this will stabilize, and we expect the trend will go down. Sterling, close to 5%, dollars, higher than 5%.
On the left-hand side, the pie chart shows that a significant share of our debt is no longer euro-denominated, and this shows our growth. Over for a number of years now, we've grown our business in the U.K., but also in the dollar zone in Latin America, and these currencies are costing us more than the euro, obviously. Thank you very much, Christian. I'll go quickly before Q&A. This is our outlook for 2023. For the most part, we are reiterating our guidance. I will point out the slight changes. When it comes to French Autoroutes, as usual, much will be decided this summer, and it is premature to revise our guidance of stable traffic mix for the year as a whole.
With regard to VINCI Airports, clearly, we are on the right track, we're not expected yet to fully return to 2019 levels due to the delay in Asia, including Japan and Cambodia. Regarding our construction businesses, we need to look at our order book. On slide 36, we can see that our order book is both at an all-time high and of excellent quality. VINCI Energies, well, what's the outcome? 2023 will see growth. VINCI Energies is expected to maintain, at the very least, a high level of operating margin recorded in 2022. Cobra has a record order book and is expected to record sales growth of at least 10% while remaining among the best in the industry in terms of operating margin.
For keen observers, you will have noticed the 2 changes compared with our previous guidance. First of all, with regard to VINCI Construction. VINCI Construction is expected to post slight sales growth and improve its operating margin. Free cashflow, as we said 6 months ago, free cashflow should range between 4 and EUR 4.5 billion throughout the year. Now, we'd like to add that we should be closer to the top end of that guidance range. For VINCI as a whole, we expect further growth in sales and operating income, but to a lesser extent than in 2022. Our net income should be slightly higher than 2022, despite the increase in borrowing costs. That's all we can say. We would like to reiterate that VINCI is a solid company.
We're extremely diversified in terms of business lines and increasingly so in terms of geographies. Our group is well positioned on the underlying trends of the environmental transition and the energy transition. We are highly agile organizationally. We are poised to weather crises. We've shown that throughout the COVID pandemic. We're also feisty when it comes to securing contracts where we can fully show value added. This means we are well equipped, and we're particularly confident in our ability to pursue a virtuous and sustainable growth trajectory over the years to come. I'd like to wrap up by saying that, in view of all these factors, the board of directors, which met yesterday, has decided to pay an interim dividend of 1.05 EUR per share. Of course, this does not prejudge the outcome for the full year.
Page 38 shows the sequence of dividend payouts over the past 10 years. Our Ex Comm members are also here or have logged in remotely, and we're standing by to answer any questions you may have.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your keyboard. We will let you know when to ask your question. Question 1, Jean-Christophe Lefebvre-Moulin, CIC. You have the floor.
Hello. Hello to the entire team. Can you hear me? We can hear you, Jean-Christophe. Wonderful! I have a couple of questions on my end. I have a general question regarding the risk equation for projects, particularly uncertain projects in renewables. There are a number of important contracts for third parties. Could we have more color regarding the breakdown of risks?
Are you bearing all of the risk, particularly when it comes to commodity supplies? Are you sharing risk with the customer? Same thing for the Grand Paris, the Greater Paris contract. Design-Build contracts are riskier. Could we have additional explanations on that? In addition, and I'm happy about that, VINCI Autoroutes is improving its EBITDA by over EUR 160 million. What is the highest contributor to that growth in EBITDA? Thank you very much.
I don't know how you do it. Whether in person or virtually, it's always Jean-Christophe who gets to ask the first question. I don't know how he does it. Congratulations. Regarding Cobra, more specifically, but of course, this applies to all of our VINCI Energies and VINCI Construction businesses. Obviously...
Don't take this verbatim, but, we are moving into a phase where the ability to do things ourselves is absolutely key, and this gives us good pricing power relative to our customers. Because there's a growing number of geographic areas where our customers have a lot of projects, but they don't necessarily know how to go about it, and they don't have a lot of providers that can help them. This means we are well poised to maintain our selective policy. We only take an interest in projects where we can truly provide value added, but also we get to be a little more ambitious when it comes to profit margin. That's an underlying trend. Of course, needless to say, Cobra, this applies to Cobra as well.
When it comes to the breakdown of risks, how we wish to break down risks between us and our customers, Pierre Anjolras can answer that question. You can take the question regarding inflation and how we pass on our higher cost onto customers, and also with regard to DB contracts and the Grand Paris project. As I've rightly said, the ability to do things and get things done is more and more a prerequisite, and that's what our customers care about. When it comes to DB contracts, there's a long, months-long, sometimes years-long phase marked by workshops, and through those workshops, with the customers and other candidates, you get to fine-tune the project, the shape of it, and the contract terms and conditions. More specifically, you get to fine-tune a transparent allocation of risks between the customers and the consortium of contractors.
The customer should bear the risk that he knows how to manage. That way, they understand that it's better for them to bear those costs themselves rather than to assign them to the contractors. Joint preparation for the contract is absolutely key. It's a long process, but this is how you ensure proper risk breakdown. It's important, particularly when it comes to inflation. A growing number of customers prefer to bear that risk, particularly including in sectors where they were not used to doing that, the construction sector in particular. Those risks have been successfully transferred to the customer.
What I'd also add is the diversity of skills in VINCI Group, in each of the divisions, whilst coming together with varying sets of expertise, on the multi-business contracts. It's the case for the Grand Paris project, where we have underground work experience on the conventional contracts, rail experience, experience from the energy world, and this ability we have to work together across the various groups, skill sets is a real value. Each can manage these technical and organizational risks, plus the ability with our grand project entities, we have to federate all that and provide project governance and leadership. We're fully confident in our ability to have correctly read the risks on these big projects.
Well, I didn't quite understand the last question on the EBITDA VINCI Autoroutes, but maybe Pierre Coppey can provide you an answer with that. On the EBITDA, VINCI Autoroutes, it's up significantly. There are three impacts: productivity, volume, and a base effect of the TP09 index on calculate the provision for major repairs last year, and that's accounts for the spectacular leap this year.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question during today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Next, question comes from Elodie Rall, J.P. Morgan. You have the floor.
Yes. Hi, everyone. My first question concerns the hot topic regarding the autoroutes and the government's proposal to tax all the French concessions, or autoroutes would be the major contribution to that. Could you perhaps give us an update on where we're at, current state of play on your view? Do you think that this project is likely to pass? What extent are the motorway operators mobilizing? If it goes through, could it herald further changes in contracts going forward? That's my first question. Second question on airports, we saw that traffic has returned to 2019 levels, as of now, aren't you fearing that we've kind of reached a peak on growth where we see a lot of fair amount of disruption this summer?
June traffic levels were already slightly impacted by Many strikes in airlines that are reducing capacities and being highly focused on yield. I'd like to have your view on that. Thirdly, minor, more technical question on Lisbon, in particular, Lisbon Airport, Montijo. Have discussions progressed on the expansion, when do you think we can start the works, and what about the CapEx?
Thank you. Thanks, Elodie, for that. I'm gonna hand over to Pierre Coppey to talk about the autoroutes, Nicolas Notebaert on the next two. On the taxation or the plan to tax the autoroutes, you need to recall here that this idea stemmed from the erroneous idea that there's overprofitability of the autoroute concessions.
This idea was counted by a number of arguments, but I would note how it went unnoticed that, following the statements made by the government, the Finance Committee on the 22nd of March, the ART, the transport regulator, redid a focus on the profitability of concessions that came after its report back in January this year. Its report in January 2021 there confirms that there's no significant gap between the project IRR, rate of return of concessions as planned and as noted in the calculation to date done by the regulator, the ART.
The government had pledged through Minister Bonn to give the view of the Council of State on the two questions put to it, to whether is it possible to change the duration of concessions, and is it possible to tax autoroute concessions? To date, we have not obtained the publication of this opinion. I think it would be good for the contractual stability and, of course, the contractual loyalty, this opinion be published. We continue to ask for the publication of that opinion, would allow us to know in what legal framework we are, because we now know what economic framework we are, now that the ART has published its focus. Nicolas?
Yes. Hello.
In terms of, growth recovery, you'll have noted that a few years back, it was, envisaged that, return to previous growth levels would be later, 2024, 2025, excluding Asia. We're now back to pre-2019 levels. As we, put in the document, we're seeing major, variances. We see that our geographic mix is ensuring growth drivers that are set to continue, while Asia, Japan, Cambodia were, well below 2019 traffic levels. This recovery of Chinese traffic, that hasn't really taken place, guarantees steady progress, in H2 and going forward, probably through to a return to normal. That's what's, missing. Chinese traffic, Japanese outbound, Japanese travelers, that's still lacking in our mix. About your question on Europe, well, Europe today, currently, we're, pretty much on a 2019, 2019 level.
There are the difficulties of European air traffic control, both social and technical difficulties and problems that you flag. To date, they're not leading to a reduction in travel demand. We're seeing that bookings, reservations this summer is very buoyant, notably intra-European traffic and tourism and VFR have recovered very well, way above 2019 levels, not the case for business travel. Our geographic mix and diversity is such that growth drivers that haven't yet recovered will guarantee an uptick. That's why we're pretty confident for the coming months. Turning to Lisbon now, we're resuming CapEx. We did some qualitative investments on the current site. We have regular extension plans, and we're seeing that Lisbon traffic, you've seen our figures at the end of June, is very good.
Portugal, generally, is one of the three European countries with the strongest growth in the first half, growing strongly versus 2019. There's a national public debate, and that due date has been postponed till the end of the year, early next year. On the next steps, is to the countries, the grantors to decide on their choice. We're confidently awaiting on the decision for the future capabilities of Lisbon. They'll be decided, but we're investing in Lisbon airports out of Porto and ensuring strong traffic goes in Portugal.
Thank you. Our final question on the French call comes from Nicholas Mora, Morgan Stanley. Over to you. Nicolas?
Nicolas? Yes. Did you say something? You spoke, but we did not hear you.
I think that Elodie wanted to go back to the issue of autoroutes. I understand Mr. Coppé's point of view, but I think that the question has more to do with your discussions with the government. Is there a dialogue going on? Is there the possibility of dialogue on taxes, but also in the broader sense, on contracts? That's my first question. One thing is sure, when it comes to Vinci Energies and Cobra, we're seeing a slight slowdown in Q2. What kind of expectations are you seeing in the field from industry players? Are they looking for dreamy projects such as data centers, or are you seeing a lack of steam there?
When it comes to airports, Gatwick in particular, maybe we're biased because we're based out of London, but Gatwick doesn't have a good reputation. Quality of service is still bad. What are your intentions? Are you going to invest more, invest more OpEx into Gatwick to secure medium-term growth, improve quality of service at Gatwick? One last question, if I may. Regarding the CapEx level, could you give us more color on Cobra's CapEx? What's breakdown between renewable energies, PPPs, the non-concession CapEx profile for the first part of the year, which is significant?
Obviously, there's a lot of questions coming in, both from Nicolas and Elodie. Pierre, did you have an opportunity to talk to the government about all of that? We talk to the government on a regular basis whenever they ask us to help improve purchasing power of French residents.
We believe that it is not legitimate to levy additional taxes on highway concession companies. We challenge those plans, and we request transparency when it comes to the Conseil d'État opinion. In addition, based on the work that we've been doing, both at a local level with local authorities and also the work we're doing on decarbonization, investment needs are huge, and it is urgent that we address them. This is more urgent than levying a tax which is not legally sound. Okay, to spice things up. Hello. Now, in the field, we're not seeing any kind of slowdown. Well, yes, growth is showing a slowdown, but we're still double-digit growth, so it's still handsome growth. The month of May had a lot of bank holidays, and that slowed down production. Generally speaking, as Pierre Anjolras was saying, our customers have a lot of projects.
Some of those projects are big. The main problem is having the capacities to roll out those projects over the long term in satisfactory fashion. We don't have any concerns at this point when it comes to our ability to grow our business. On the contrary, that slowdown to reasonable levels is a good thing. We're still very much focused on controlling our profit margins, managing our risks well. As Pierre was saying, it is important to negotiate and to make sure the negotiations cover our contractual breakdown of risk between us and our, our customers, so that we can complete the projects over the long term. We're not seeing any kind of slowdown in the field. On the contrary, there's a whole raft of projects coming our way and a lot of contracts that will soon expire.
Now, the problem is not finding contracts and signing the contracts. It is finding teams that will develop the passion that we want to implement those projects. Hello, Nicolas. Now, perception of Gatwick has nothing to do with Gatwick's operating costs. The teams there, particularly when it comes to the safety controls and security controls, those are responsible for less than 5% of the delays. We restaffed that airport in time. There are no headcount problems there. There are multiple factors involved. As I said before, air control at the EU level, both technically and workforce-wise, things are not up to scratch yet. So when you are unable to travel to Spain or Portugal, or you're unable to transit through France because of workforce or strike action, obviously, flights are delayed.
There's a lot of joint activity at the airport level that is not being handled well. Ground handling, for example, is not outsourced to the airport. It's done by airline company contractors, and the airline companies themselves don't necessarily have the spare capabilities or headcount to address those operational difficulties. Like I said, this airport comes under constraints, but as far as we're concerned, there are absolutely no operating savings that are designed to limit the freedom of travel by our passengers. That's the reason why, when it comes to Gatwick, we filed a DCO. We're expecting this to come through in January 2025, and this will help us improve resilience at Gatwick.
Particularly the northern runway in Gatwick, we wanna be able to use that runway by January 2025, and for that, this means more CapEx, so we can increase the capabilities of the London airports. There's a lot of uncertainty when it comes to Heathrow as well. As a concession company, we're doing our part to prepare, to gear up to developing advanced solutions to ensure the future of those airports. This has been broadly investigated. When it comes to Cobra IS CapEx. Microphone, please. There are about EUR 200 million in CapEx, in operating CapEx. The distinction between operating and concession-related CapEx is sometimes artificial. We have EUR 200 for operations and EUR 75 for concessions and PPPs. In total, EUR 275 million. The other way around is true as well.
In net terms, slightly under EUR 200 million, so we have EUR 125 million in net investments, net investments into renewables, including EUR 100 million for Belmonte. Then we have investments into Brazilian PPPs for power, transport. Cobra does not carry the projects beyond the design phase. I hope you understand. I may have misexpressed myself, but I hope you understand. Thank you. Next question.
Please star, and then the 1 on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Mr. Luis Prieto from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Luis Prieto here. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. I, I have 3, if, if possible. The first one is regarding the U.S. concession market, the I-10 finally went to the uncertain on a plenary consortium. Where does this leave you in terms of future positioning in the country? Are you looking at other potential projects now that the uncertain seems to be springing back to life? The second question is, for a good while, you've been talking about a selective approach to order intake on the construction front, on how the focus should always be on profitability, but you continue to organically grow the division's top line handsomely and margin does not suffer.
Is this because most of that top-line growth is being driven by inflation, or is it because the underlying demand environment makes top-line and margin expansion compatible in construction? The third and final question is regarding potential M&A in the energy space. What should we expect? Are there any particular areas or regions you would like to strengthen? Thank you.
I'll answer in French. In a minute, I will hand over to Nicolas Notebaert with regard to our growth in concession contracts in the U.S., particularly the I-10 project. I'll take the next two questions.
Well, what you need to realize is the following: it may seem strange, but in fact, it's the reality of our business, both in construction as well as electrical engineering and communication. You got 2 major metrics, volume and margin. If you decide to focus on volume, you can get there. It's not very difficult, but you can be pretty much certain that you're gonna deteriorate your margins. If you decide on the focus on the margin by being ready to absorb a loss in market share on the volumes, at that point, what happens is generally speaking, you can indeed boost your margin, which was the case of our 3 major activities. Cherry on the cake is very often in doing so, you have, as a bonus, volume.
It's not that you've sought volume, it's been, the upshot of your very rigorous discipline policy and picking jobs, for the, the margin. That's precisely what's happened at Vinci Construction. That's why at the start of the year, having decided to focus on the margin of Vinci Construction, we had a guidance, a guidance which was volume stability. We implemented that strategy as we did in previous years. We're seeing a margin improvement. As a bonus, cherry on the cake, we have, volume growth that's above inflation. Once again, growth is coming, but as the by-product of a product seeking to improve margin. I'm sorry, it's a little complicated. It may seem magical, but that's precisely how it works in our businesses. On M&A in the energy world, I'll let Arnaud Grison answer that while saying that regarding Cobra.
Cobra, does practically no M&A. Historically, culturally, Cobra is focused on organic growth and not external growth. M&A happens essentially at VINCI Energies. Arnaud?
Yeah. So, growth at VINCI Energies rests on two legs, organic growth, but also external growth. We do.
do that regularly, we'll continue to do so. We don't seek to expand into new geographies. We're present in 57 countries. We're really set to consolidate our geographies and grow in our four business lines. What we see today is we're looking for small-sized deals to integrate them in our network, transmit our values and the complement. We're very vigilant and watchful on the valuations. We try and answer issues of, of succession, of people who want to have a, a long-term perspective and join our model. Each and every year, we do a number of deals.
There, there are a number that have taken place so far, and will continue in H2 across our business lines, as Xavier said earlier, be it geographic strengthening or some strengthening on skills, business niches, industry, information technology, or in building. It's a highly fragmented market. We can still do loads of deals, as always, the limiting factor is HR, because for us to recruit, we have to acquire the talent. It takes time and co- onboard the people so that we can successfully roll out our model. I'd add a point before handing over to Nicolas regarding our ambitions.
What we're doing in the US on the concessions front is on the segment of renewables, our model is first and foremost to develop ourselves, renewables, farms similar to Belmonte, that we do not exclude rollout if it's a useful price to buy projects that are already producing renewable power. When it will allow us to enter a new geography, we can accelerate our penetration. We do the effort. We buy an existing asset as well as developing from scratch. The key of our strategy in renewables, not to buy existing capacities, but rather to develop them ourselves, like Belmonte. Nicolas?
For the U.S., it's a country where there are fewer concessions as compared to Europe or Latin America, we have some positions in airport, the Orlando Sanford Airport, and some management contracts such as Hollywood Burbank, or a few terminals of Atlanta Airport in Georgia. On the highways, we acquired a company. We now have a position called ViaPlus, allows us to do tolling in Texas and California. That's a tech dimension that's quite attractive. We're, of course, seeking to pitch in calls for tenders. A collective, I've heard Xavier, we analyze a construction offer at the right price, taking into account inflation and traffic and financing outlook, as that we won't win every time, but we'll continue to participate, to pitch, searching for construction and joint concessions, greenfield projects.
We could-- We're not ruling out brownfield. There needs to be some market depth and the size of construction projects that fits our competitiveness and our interest. There are a few projects in the US, but we'll look each geography, each project site that may meet that ambition, but possibly also there'll be some brownfield possibilities. We look at those systematically, but they're too few as compared to the size of the country today, so we look at them with certainty and on strategy. We're looking throughout the world, and we difficult to talk beforehand, save that when it's made public, was made public, we. An offer on the Athens ring road as motorway concession. Merci.
Thank you. Next question?
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Grégoire Doudron from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I hope you can hear me. A few questions, maybe firstly on contracting margins. In the three different contracting segments, margins stepped up at varying degrees in the first half. I want to understand if you think that is kind of the trend that we should be expecting. Maybe related to that, now that you've owned Cobra for, for, you know, I think 18 months, can you give us sort of an updated view, what you think the margin potential in this business is, considering especially the large EPC contracts, I don't think you've ever really quantified? The second question is on airport OpEx. I want to understand to what extent you think OpEx, sort of on the whole, will step up, perhaps in the second half.
I guess it will do compared to the first half, but if you can give, give us a little bit of a sense how we should be thinking about OpEx? Then maybe a brief update on the oil and gas assets in Brazil that you kind of inherited, if you've made a strategic decision on those, please. Thank you.
Sure. Contracting margins. Well, let's not dream. Trees don't reach the sky. Vinci and Cobra, VINCI Energies, they're at margin levels that make them European champions, without a doubt. Global probability, you'll have seen that for a few years now, this margin has improved... Slowly but gradually, our intention is to, of course, continue that. Let's not dream here. At one point, it's going to stabilize. We can't be out, out in front and lead the pack of competitors. The contracting margin is not yet at the level where we'd like it to be, and in fact, for that matter, it was a level that we reached a few years back. The strategy entails what I said earlier.
That's to say, to work on selectivity and, seeking to improve margins, even if it's or at the detriment of volume. In fact, we're seeing that it's not detrimental to volume, so there's still some scope to improve EBIT margin and Vinci Construction going forward, all this very gradually. Airport OpEx, Nicolas, anything to say? No worries of, on, OpEx for H2. Most of the contracts are annual contracts, be it in terms of employees, for our headcount, energy, so there's no kind of unpredictability or concern in H2 on airport OpEx. I don't think I recall... I think you had a third question. I seem to have, it seems to, I've forgotten it.
The oil and gas assets in Brazil and, sorry, and to push back on the margin, sort of to come back on the margins. Do, do you have any comment where you think Cobra could go, or is that something for the CMD in December?
Well, yeah, well, thank you for giving me that opportunity. Yeah, we'll do a fuller update on Cobra, and in particular, on renewable energy, during the CMD, set to be held at the end of the year, December this year. I would refer you to what we might be able to say and discuss on that occasion in far greater detail than today. For Cobra, regarding its overall margin, I'll give the same answer that was already given, that covered both VINCI Energies and Cobra. Cobra is henceforth above 7% margin, and like VINCI Energies, indeed, is the best in the European, indeed, possibly global industry. It'd be very good if Cobra could generate organic growth for us while maintaining this very good margin level.
Thank you.
Question suivante?
Next question.
Your next question comes from the line of José Arroyas from Santander. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Just a couple. On the Belmonte solar PV plan, what revenues do you expect this plan to generate on a full year basis? Secondly, on interest expenses, excluding the Gatwick debt refinancing, interest expenses rose by about 90% year-over-year. We can all see that, about 60% of Vinci's gross debt is floating. Is Vinci considering adding more fixed debt at some point? Thank you.
Okay, regarding Belmonte, my answer is simple: We will give you more detailed information on CMD in December. With regard to the structure of our debt, I understand the question has to do with financial interest. Financial interest was higher because there was an one-off, there was a one-off profit of EUR 170 million, and that's not gonna happen again. Twice as much over the full year, except for maybe that one-off profit, which is what we factored into our initial budget for 2023, but we were maybe a little too circumspect. We don't rule out doing better. With regard to the EUR 400 million increase in H1, half of that is financial interest for debt that we are consolidating for the first time with regard to Oma and Via 40.
When it comes to variable rate versus fixed rate debt, our strategy has not changed. The impact of our strategy has been very positive for a long time. It does sound counterintuitive. We find ourselves in unusual circumstances when it comes to fixed rate and variable rate levels, we're not gonna change our strategy because the variable rate debt should match our surplus cash. For about a year, we have seen an improvement. It makes sense. An improvement in our cash yield and part of our variable rate debt matches our EBITDA for airports in particular, which is thought. Which is broadly inflation indexed. We're basing ourselves on the improvement on our, in our EBITDA. Fixed rates, that would happen. Fixed rate, fixed rate debt, that would have to be long term, we are seeking to deleverage. We would find ourselves over-hedged.
This does not mean we can't have one-off hedges, punctual hedges over the first, over the next 1 or 2 years. If in 2024 we are seeing a drop in short-term rates, we may plan to fix our 3 or 6-month Euribor rates, but now is not the time.
Your next from the line of Ashish Gidwani with the Citigroup . Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Ashish from Citigroup. I just wanted to check on airport segment. You recently acquired seven new airports. When do these start contributing to the revenues? That is my first question. Second is with regards to the margin. We saw good improvement in margin from airport segment. Do we expect that to continue, or what would be the normal, you know, range of margin for the airport segment? Thank you.
Nicolas
Okay, I'm gonna let Nicolas collect his thoughts. In the meantime, by definition, an airport is usually brownfield . It's an already existing asset, throughout the concession contract, we will do work to improve the airport's environment, but also we will improve airport capacity. Assuming we consolidate that asset, as soon as we buy it, it will start generating revenue and EBITDA. There's no ramp up. The kind of ramp up we see for pure greenfield projects, which sometimes happens for highways, but rarely for airports. The second you buy the asset, it starts to contribute to both EBITDA and revenue. When it comes to profit margin, I'm going to let Nicolas explain to you that all airports look alike, or rather, no, no two airports are the same. Okay.
One present example would be consolidation of our, our 29.99% stake in OMA. That is a company that started performing immediately, and its performance level actually exceeded our hopes. That portfolio of airports in Northern Mexico benefits from different things, strong domestic growth in Mexico, but also what we call nearshoring. In other words, the U.S. is transferring a lot of its contracting work from Asia to Mexico. There's gonna be a Tesla Gigafactory in Mexico. Pro rata, this has an impact on EBIT and EBITDA. We invest in 2 companies which do not have a normative EBITDA or EBIT, of course, there are differences in price. Gradually, we acquire levels of margin and concession contract lengths that are very different, and of course, this has an impact on price.
There are as Olivia was saying, there are very few cases where, and I have no example in mind, except for maybe Belgrade or Santiago, where the work is underway, where traffic already exists. There are very few pure greenfield projects in our current airport portfolio. Thank you.
Your next comes from the line of Tobias Renner from Citi Europe. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. two questions, if I may, and one, one remark. Number one, just following up on, on, on Cobra. I mean, the, the order book looks amazing, the order intake even better, but your output growth is slowing, and I understand the issue here, labor. As we look forward into Q3, it seems to me that the growth will once again, like for like, fall below, 10%. Is, is your 10% growth target somewhat at risk as, as we look, look forward? That's the one angle to the question.
The other angle to the question is, given that significant shortage in labor to fill all these orders, could your margins come under pressure at some time, at 1 point? That's the 1 question. The second question relates to your cash flow and, you know, great job well done. But like, you know, children before Christmas, we, we, we have to wait until the end of the year as analysts to see what sort of cash you generate. I understand the nature of the business, and that's the way it's done, but are there no other ways to smoothen that cash flow to an extent, somehow? That's the second question. The third point is more of a remark following up on Nicolas. Like him, I travel through Gatwick. I've also traveled through Fiumicino and also Copenhagen.
I mean, I'm, I'm afraid I have to say, it's like day and night when you go to, to the other airports and you come, come back, come back to Gatwick or you leave from Gatwick. Point of making that remark is that it's amazing because it's a freehold asset, and, you know, in Copenhagen, you can't sit down yet. It's basically a shopping mall as an air-airport, and there you are in, in, in, in Gatwick, you know, missing a trick in a way. I just wanted to make that point and see whether that's gonna change. Thank you.
Well, I'm gonna let Nicolas answer the second question. I'm gonna begin by answering your first question. The very significant increase in Cobra's order book you'll have seen is in large part brought about by the securing of major projects as part of the energy transition, notably the AC/DC conversion stations in the North Sea for German utilities, Amprion and TenneT. These are issues that instantaneously flatter the order intake and order book, but whose rollout is over a very long period. Just to give you an order of magnitude, we got three yards where we're building these AC/DC conversion stations. One is in Spain, the two others in Mexico. These three yards currently are saturated in terms of output capacity through the years 2031, 2032.
The big order intake flatters the order book, but in terms of activity will be rolled out very gradually over the long term between now and 2030. There's no exact correlation between the order book at a given moment in time and the activities as it's rolled out subsequently. That's the first point. Second point, if we weren't reasonably certain that Cobra could boost its revenue by 10% in 2023, we would not have restated it in our guidance that I set out half an hour ago. Yes, Cobra is on a essentially growth trajectory at least equal to 10%. That doesn't pose a problem.
You had a somewhat additional question on talents, and if I heard you right, your question was the difficulty in having sufficient employees was likely to negatively impact margin. I'd say it's the, it's the reverse, it's the opposite. That's to say, we don't take a deal if we're not reasonably confident in our ability to deliver it for previously stated reasons. Increasingly, what makes a difference between the various competitors is their ability to deliver. In doing so, we can continue to be selective. We pick deals that we're interested on the basis of our ability to deliver them if we win them, but also in our ability to bring to these value added.
The consequence of all that is that, setting our order intake on our output level and taking advantage of the fact of being more exacting on our margin, the talent war that we're in globally, has as a consequence, that it allows us to rather improve our margins on Gatwick. Second, piece of flag, Nicolas.
Yeah, it's actually very different from earlier. Earlier, we're talking about ARPUs. I said, less than it's less than 1% in the recognized stats, linked to the actual own missions of the... We're doing our job on the ARPUs front. It's a highly constrained airport, so no one would understand, before the extension plan that I mentioned earlier, that we'd sacrifice operational surface area because the airport isn't just a shopping mall with a given surface to install even more stores.
As we saw, we need to leave space, so that the airport can operate for the airlines and the ground handlers. We've identified on the basis of our own experience, far greater in other parts of the network, in terms of retail, and the extension plans I mentioned earlier will incorporate more attractive commercial propositions. To date, there are two factors that are boosted, the proceeds from car parks and food and beverage. In terms of the past situation, what works well in airports is car parks and food and beverage. Duty free was already at a higher level, slightly less Gatwick, 'cause we've invested in a highly constrained airport. We knew it, it's going to improve, but when we have the ability to extend, that I referred to earlier.
Thank you.
On, on W- WCR?
All right. Yeah, cash flow. There's a question, why can't we smooth? Well, why can't we smooth? We can smooth a great many things, but cash flow, it's a bit difficult to smooth the cash flow. Maybe we can talk to our clients about that. We've got the seasonality of our businesses, including concessions that are kind of steadier than contracting, more regular evening concessions. The cash in depends on traffic, and traffic isn't smooth everywhere. We're gonna have significant cash in Vinci airports and autoroutes this summer and the beginning of it. It's less the case in the winter. Of course, there's room for improvement. If you've got advice, we're keen to hear that, to bring the clients' cash in throughout the year rather than to go flat out just before the financial close.
Probably what happens in a number of subsidiaries and constraints in terms of supplier terms. I mean, we are very prompt in paying our suppliers on time, sometimes more than on time, and which hurts the WCR. Then there's CapEx. CapEx, we tend to overestimate them in our budget, not because we don't want to do them, but materially for the same reason that you mentioned a second ago. To operationalize CapEx budgets in actual executed CapEx, we have to have calls, and it generally staggers in time. All these factors combined means that it's very difficult to have a reliable estimate right down to the final day, week of the year. Of course, I mean, we have progress to make, we realize that.
Thank you. Me? Maybe one last question in English or French.
Okay.
Yeah, we haven't heard much from the French. They're a bit limited in their questions.
Well, no last question. Thank you all very much for attending this call. For those of you off on holiday, have a great holiday, and we'll look forward to welcoming you for another meeting at the CMD, for Cobra, Capital Markets Day in December 2023, and in six months' time to look at what has happened to the free cash flow for the full year 2023. Thank you all. See you soon.