Welcome to the Edenred Q3 2025 revenue conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions-and-answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speaker, Virginie Duperat-Vergne, CFO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for being with us for the Q3 2025 revenue conference call of Edenred. I'm Virginie Duperat-Vergne, Edenred CFO, and I'm today with Cédric Appert, Investor Relations Director. We're here for the next 60 minutes with a presentation of around 15 minutes, followed by a Q&A session. I suggest we start with page two of the presentation. We do have four key messages we want to convey to you today. Firstly, we achieved a stronger top-line growth in Q3 2025 versus H1 2025. As for business lines, we delivered a sequential acceleration in all of them in Q3 compared to H1. Looking to it by geography, we see an acceleration in Europe and a sustained double-digit growth, both in Latin America and in the rest of the world.
Secondly, we have delivered EUR 59 million of other revenue this quarter, which means we are on track to deliver around EUR 220 million of other revenue in full year 2025 versus an initial clause of EUR 210 million. Thirdly, Edenred continues to seize growth opportunities in all its business lines. Face value increases will notably help to fuel future Benefits & Engagement growth, and we continue to strengthen both our businesses and our global platform, notably, thanks to key partnerships. Last key message, thanks to the elements I just mentioned, we confirm all our targets for full year 2025. First, a minimum of 10% like-for-like EBITDA growth for 2025. This 10% like-for-like EBITDA growth is equivalent to approximately 15% like-for-like EBITDA growth, excluding the impact of the new situation on merchant fees in Italy. A growth of 70% free cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate.
Starting now, page four, with Benefits & Engagement, one of our growth drivers on top of further penetration, upselling and cross-selling is face value increases. Since the beginning of 2025, eight countries where we operate already increased their maximum face value, and we continue to see momentum on it as more countries are looking at it, notably as part of state budget discussions. Indeed, in Belgium, a +25% face value increase has already been voted and will be implemented as of January 1, 2026, combined with the doubling of the corporate tax exempt amount and a faster and easier possibility to further increase this maximum face value for another EUR 2 in the future through a simplified process that will not require any additional vote. We also see active discussions in countries such as Italy, Romania, Japan, and others. What does it mean to Edenred?
An additional tailwind to further grow our revenues in those countries. Based on our historical observation, notably thanks to our commercial efforts, it takes up to two years for our clients to gradually reach the 85% average usage of the new maximum face value. All those countries are set to fuel the growth for 2026 and 2027. Moving now to Mobility on page five, we signed in Q3 in Italy a partnership with Esso, allowing Edenred to issue and manage the Esso fuel card from 2026 onwards. Coming after the acquisition of IP Energycard's portfolio in 2024, which moved us from player number six to player number two in Italy, this partnership confirms Edenred's willingness to invest in the Italian Mobility market and play at scale. We expect our market share in Italy to further progress and reach 25% with the addition of the Esso card.
As for our Beyond Fuel portfolio of solutions, we are pleased to announce we have signed an instrumental partnership with another best-in-class oil and gas major. Edenred Finance will serve as their main partner, opening opportunities for their CRT clients to access Edenred Finance VAT and excise duty refund solutions across close to 30 European countries. This partnership represents an important growth lever for Edenred Finance and highlights the relevance of our solutions and our capacity to partner with best-in-class players. Let's focus now on page six on our global specific purpose payment platform, namely Edenred Pay Tech. This unique asset processes a volume around EUR 100 billion per year and settles more than 1.6 billion transactions every year. As you may have seen, we are announcing today a strategic partnership with Visa, a worldwide leader in digital payments.
Under this partnership, we will leverage Edenred's platform through the certification of our in-house issuing and processing infrastructure with Visa Europe, issuing Visa cards across our three business lines. The certification allows Edenred to further increase its versatility and ability to work with all the key networks, reinforcing Edenred's technology leadership. Moving to page eight and to the quarterly performance, we delivered EUR 667 million of operating revenue, a stronger performance in Q3 than in Q1 and Q2, with an 8.2% like-for-like operating revenue growth. Over the first nine months of 2025, this brings us to a + 7.5% like-for-like growth, just over EUR 2 billion of operating revenue. On page nine, you can look at the breakdown of the growth per business line.
First of all, Benefits & Engagement, which represent 64% of our operating revenue this quarter, grew by 8.7% in Q3 2025 on the back of an acceleration in various geographies, notably in Europe. I'll come back on this later in this presentation. Mobility, which represents 27% of our operating revenue in Q3 2025, grew by 13.5% like-for-like versus Q3 2024 and continues to deliver sustained growth. Finally, Complementary Solutions operating revenue, which represents 9% of our operating revenue in Q3 2025, decreased - 6.6% compared to Q3 last year. This decrease was less pronounced compared to the first half of 2025. This is on the back of the ongoing B2C banking-as-a-service exit that we already flagged and will continue to weigh in Q4 2025. Turning now to page 10, where we can see the breakdown of the growth of our operating revenue per geography.
In Latin America first, which represents 31% of our operating revenue, we go on delivering solid double-digit growth with + 12.1% like-for-like growth in Q3 2025. In Europe, which represents 59% of our business, we saw an acceleration of growth at + 4.7% this quarter. Finally, the rest of the world, with 10% of our operating revenue, grew strong double-digit again with + 16.3% like-for-like versus Q3 2024. Digging into European performance on page 11, we delivered EUR 392 million of operating revenue in the third quarter of 2025. This is 59% of total operating revenue. It represents a growth of + 4.7% like-for-like this quarter versus 1.7% like-for-like in H1 2025. These additional three points reflect an improved performance that is visible both in France and the rest of Europe. In Europe, outside of France, Germany delivered a solid performance in Benefits & Engagement.
Italy also delivered a good performance despite the implementation of the new regulation that waits only for one month through Q3 2025 and was largely re-offset by strong business volume in the quarter. Mobility grew double-digit in the rest of Europe on the back of Edenred UTA in Germany, our fuel card business in Italy, and the much-improved performance of Edenred Finance as expected. As for Complementary Solutions, performance is impacted by the wind-down of the B2C banking-as-a-service solutions that remains included in our like-for-like computation. In France, we saw good commercial developments on our Mill & Cook solutions despite the economic environment that remains challenging, with some specific sectors reducing headcount. The intrinsic cyclicality of the WorkCouncil platform licensing activity keeps impacting performance negatively as WorkCouncil measures three-year renewals occurred in 2023 and 2024.
Finally, Mobility delivered strong double-digit like-for-like growth in the quarter with higher demand for EV solutions. Turning around the globe to Latin America on page 12, which represents 31% of our operating revenue in Q3 2025, we delivered EUR 208 million of operating revenue in the quarter. This represents an operating revenue growth of 12.1% like-for-like this quarter, reflecting the strong dynamism of the geography. This organic growth was offset by a slightly lower negative translation effect than in the previous quarter, mostly on the back of a slight appreciation of BRL versus Europe in the last three months. In Brazil, operating revenue grew 15.2% like-for-like this quarter. We continue to see strong momentum in Benefits & Engagement, both in Mill & Cook and in our Beyond Food solutions.
In parallel, Mobility also grew double-digit in the quarter thanks to the strong activity of our fuel card solutions, boosted by our fast-growing Beyond Fuel solutions in maintenance, toll, and freight payment. In Hispanic Latin America, operating revenue grew 10.5% like-for-like in nine months 2025, reflecting sustained performance both in Benefits & Engagement and in Mobility. However, as per a strong Q1, the like-for-like performance in Q2 and in Q3 was negatively impacted by the reduction of our share in the public social program in Chile. Moving to page 13, we delivered EUR 59 million of other revenue in the quarter, bringing it to EUR 171 million for the first nine months of the year. This leads us to increase our EUR 210 million floor for the full year 2025 to a new estimate of around EUR 220 million, in line with current consensus estimate.
Wrapping up on that part of the presentation, let's review total revenue growth patterns. We delivered a Q3 2025 operating revenue of EUR 667 million, growing 8.2% like-for-like compared to Q3 2024. The foreign exchange impact on our 3Q operating revenue was a - 3%, offsetting a positive scope effect of 2.6%, reflecting the contributions of the recently acquired activities, mainly the commuting employee benefit in Brazil and the IP Energycard fuel card activity in Italy. All in all, this resulted in an as-published growth of 7.8% for our operating revenue in the quarter. Other revenues were EUR 59 million for this quarter, declining slightly, - 1.7% like-for-like year on year. The foreign exchange effect was a - 4.8%, reflecting mainly the evolution of the Latin America currencies, impacting us less than in the previous quarter.
Finally, our total revenue for the third quarter of 2025 was EUR 726 million, growing 7.3% like-for-like compared to 3Q last year, which was at EUR 682 million. This includes a positive scope effect of 2.3%, which was more than offset by a negative foreign exchange impact of 3.2%. Let's end this presentation with page 16, reaffirming our guidance for full year 2025. We are pleased to confirm our full year financial objectives for 2025, which are as follows: EBITDA growth of minimum 10% like-for-like, which is equivalent to a minimum of EUR 1,340 million based on foreign exchange rates as of June 30th, and a free cash flow to EBITDA conversion rate of at least 70%.
Finally, before opening for Q&A, I would like to remind you that Edenred will unveil its new strategic plan during a Capital Markets Day event on November 4th, 2025, that will be hosted both physically in Paris and virtually. I thank you for your attention, and I will hand you back to the operator for the opening of the Q&A session. Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. Please limit yourself to two questions. The next question comes from Andre Juillard from Deutsche Bank Equity Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question and congratulations for this strong quarter. First question is about the discussion in France about the budget. Could you give us more color about what is going on and what we could expect from the potential reform that have been talked about? Second question about the first trend you are seeing for the Q4 and the end of the year. We appreciate it to have some more color about what you are seeing and if you have already received the first request for the end of the year. Thank you.
Thanks a lot and good morning, Andre. For France first, we hear like you do all the discussions that are happening around. Maybe worth to note that in the budget discussions that are currently happening, there is a proposal of adding a new additional element, which is a tax of probably around 8% that would weigh on advantages like the French Ticket Restaurant. What we now know since yesterday is that all the parliamentary groups, so all of them, not the vast majority, all of them have all posted an amendment against this article in the budget that will obviously be going to be discussed in the next coming days and weeks, and we won't know the final budget before the end of the year. A total number of groups posting an amendment is probably a big sign on what the French population and political framework think about this proposal.
On our side, we wait like everyone what's going to be said on it. What we can say is that the impact remains an important impact on the budget of French people, obviously. Ticket Restaurant and the advantages would remain something attractive. We know that we've seen some elements like this happening in other countries where we've seen a penetration still progressing quite strongly, even when there are tax weighings on advantages to employees. That's maybe the way we can comment on that element. In terms of Q4, as you know, Q4 will see the first strong big impact of the change on the regulation in Italy, as we said. For the rest, we expect the current traction on the business to go on occurring as it has been occurring in Q3.
Business tailwinds are relatively positive for us for the end of the year and a negative impact coming from the change in regulation that will obviously reduce the volume of revenue coming from Italy.
The next question comes from Edward Young from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. First question, you posted acceleration in Europe despite the one-month impact of regulation in Italy. Can you help give us a bit more color on what's driven that better performance, or have you also seen better than expected mitigation against that regulatory impact versus your prior expectation? The second question is on other income. You've raised the guidance to EUR 220 million from a minimum floor of EUR 210 million. Can we just clarify if that's a new minimum floor or that's new point guidance? It implies quite a decent sequential drop in Q4 compared to the growth you saw sequentially in Q3. I just wanted to understand the drivers into Q4 and is that a floor or is that around EUR 220 million expectation? Thank you.
Sorry, I think that you've been breaking up during the first part of the question. I understand it's about Europe acceleration versus the Italian impact in Q3, but I'm not sure there was not something else into it.
It's really.
Could you elaborate on that?
It's what's driven the acceleration, and/or have you had better than expected mitigation against the regulatory impact?
Okay. Thank you. Definitely, maybe one or two elements to highlight on that. Number one, as you may remember, what we said on that part is that we see an impact being quite well balanced between the two years, 2025 and 2026, with the EUR 60 million for the H2 2025 as a EUR 60 million equivalent for the first quarter of the year. When we dig into it a bit more precisely and we look quarter by quarter, it's not something that you can take, you know, and EUR 60 million and divide by four quite mechanically. The reason for that is that this is not really a mechanical impact month by month. Number one, question of negotiation, as we flagged earlier. The way we've been renegotiating with our clients makes the fact that some increase in or reduction in discount from our clients will impact more in 2026 than in 2025.
We have a higher impact in 2025. When you look into what's happening into redemption of the volumes being issued, in September, the vast majority of the volumes that are being redeemed come from volumes that have been issued before the change of regulation. As a consequence, they will come into our P&L with the former rates. Progressively, month after month in Q4, you will see a greater impact of the new regulation with redeemed volume progressively getting into the new regulation. That's number one effect. It also happens in parallel, and that's what I signaled earlier in my script, that we had quite strong volumes in Q3 in Italy this quarter, and that offset a little bit the first negative impact that we have seen coming from the change in regulation. That's maybe what we can say from that part.
In terms of other income, yes, we have delivered EUR 59 million. If you sum up in the first nine months, you are up to EUR 171 million. What we see for the rest of the year is that, assuming, you know, that the stabilization we see in foreign exchange rate and the stabilization also of the decrease of interest rate, then we foresee we should be around EUR 220 million for the full year, which is right in line with the consensus estimate.
The next question comes from Josh Levin from Autonomous. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. You talked about eight countries which have already raised face value ceilings and a few that are in advanced discussions. Could you roughly quantify the total addressable revenue uplift if all those changes are adopted? I guess how much of that lands in 2026 versus 2027? The second question, what are your latest thoughts or what are you hearing about potential reform in Brazil? Thank you.
Thank you, Josh. Taking your first question, we have seen a face value increase in 2025 in eight countries. Part of it is already fueling a little bit our organic growth. Belgium will start fueling only in 2026, as we said. Some others might come as there are current ongoing budget discussions in the States, and that could be voted to fuel 2026 and 2027. Generally, what we see is that it takes 18 - 24 months to progressively take the impact of or grab the impact of the potential additional opportunity that represents a face value increase. That comes with client renegotiations that we will have to do on the existing portfolio. Generally, when it is about new sales, you have an opportunity to try to get immediately to a higher amount in terms of face value, and that helps also fueling the portfolio.
I'm not going to quantify precisely, but you could really get a kind of progressive increase of all that. In terms of total impact on that part, I think Belgium is quite a sizable country in our portfolio. We also mentioned Italy and Romania in the countries to come that are also large countries. You can extrapolate a little bit on the volume of revenue we are doing in this voucher to see that it's increasing the addressable market force.
The next question comes from Julien Richer from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Two questions for me, please. The first one, you mentioned some new partnerships. Could you please quantify the potential impact to operating revenue like-for-like growth in 2026 from those partnerships and also the impact at cruising speed? The second question, you also mentioned some other countries where a tax on employee benefits exists or has been added in the past. Could you please give us examples of those countries? Thank you.
Julien. In terms of new partnerships, as you can imagine, I'm not going to disclose the revenue per client. That would be an issue for us. In Italy, obviously, getting the capability of issuing the Essocard with us is an opportunity to increase significantly our market share and progress for, let's say, a nice handful of points in terms of market share in that country. The Visa partnership is very interesting in terms of agility that it gives to us and versatility. We are already having a long-lasting partnership with Mastercard, but with also quite a number of payment interfaces everywhere in the world. Having this additional capability and this strong partnership with Visa is really putting us in a position to be almost qualified as agnostic in terms of the types of systems that we can monitor and interfaces that we can monitor.
In that respect, that's very, very strong in order of allowing us to have the development that we want to be having, notwithstanding the usage or the habits of any country where we develop ourselves. In terms of tax on employee schemes, yes, I was referring to Mexico, for example. A few years ago, in Mexico, they moved in terms of meal voucher from nothing to quite a size volume of tax on meal voucher. If we look back now, since it happened, the penetration in the market has progressed by more than 11%. This thing happened, but it doesn't change the success of the product and of the solutions in the countries where it is being developed. You have also, in Belgium, for example, some of the consumption vouchers are already having tax natively since they've been issued.
Despite that, it's quite a successful product that has been developing quite strongly over the past year. That's maybe two examples. That's what it was.
Thank you.
Maybe before we switch questions.
[crosstalk].
Comes from Hannes Leitner from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
We don't have any questions. Maybe that was for me the opportunity to come back on Josh's earlier question on Belgium.
Oh, thank you.
Okay, yeah. Go ahead.
I got two questions as well. The first one is on the beyond. Can you give us there the metrics on the performance as a whole and then by the two segments? The second one is more in regards to your CFO role. Can you talk us a little bit about your views on the current state of the debt? Debt has been increasing over the last couple of years due to M&A and also due to higher refinancing. Maybe you can give their comment around your personal strategy, how that should be going forward, and what is the total debt capacity you feel comfortable with? Thank you.
Thank you, Hannes. Just to be clear, I'll take your question, but I'll also come back on Josh's question on Brazil because I was probably sketched to the next question before I had time to answer Josh. Maybe starting first with Josh's question on Brazil regulation. On Brazil regulation, discussions are still ongoing as we speak. What we have told you in July remains valid. Maybe discussions can be seen as being long, but it's important to remember that in Brazil, you have more than 110 different issuers. That's also one element that needs to be taken into account because as discussion progresses, the government also sees different situations between different types of issuers and then discovers around how it works. That's a lengthy process that we are still in. No real news to add to what we said. On your question, Hannes, coming back to you.
On the beyond performance, nothing specific. I'll come back to what we said in H1 because we don't disclose a P&L in Q3, as you know. It's only a revenue release. In H1, as we said, you know beyond performance has been growing faster than our core performance. That's still valid for Q3 in terms of revenue. In terms of margin, you know of our beyond activities, it's not significantly different when you look at H1 performance to what it is in the core businesses. As far as the debt is concerned, yes, we have a gross debt of around EUR 4 billion on the face of the balance sheet. As you may have seen, we have also quite a strong volume of cash in the face of our balance sheet. At the end of the day, when we look to our debt profile, we have a strong, fast deleveraging profile.
That's maybe what, as a CFO, I would want to note and to highlight. The way this business is being built is that you have the ability to deleverage quite fast. If you look back in the past, you will see that just after COVID, when we did not do a lot of acquisitions, the ability to deleverage has been quite fast. We have a strong cash generation, a strong level of EBITDA margin, obviously, and then a cash conversion, which is quite high also in terms of percentage. That helps this deleveraging profile. We'll probably be around 1.2, something like this, in terms of net debt and leverage at the end of the year. To be transparent to you, I also have some investors a little bit worried that I'm not keeping a lazy balance sheet at some point.
That is also an element that I need to take into account as a CFO to have a productive balance sheet, which is not also sufficiently levered. Remember also that Standard & Poor's is rating us A minus since several years. This credit rating has been reiterated earlier in April 2024. That is a part, I would say, of the sound balance sheet that we are having. As a CFO, you know I will take great care of the strong financial discipline that has been created by my predecessor. I will make sure that we don't have a lazy balance sheet and we invest. We will talk more about that during the Capital Markets Day.
The next question comes from Justin Thomas Forsythe from UBS Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Morning, Virginie and Cédric. Thank you so much for having me here. Just a couple of questions, if I might. I want to go back to that Italy point. There was a prior question, and I think you clarified that the month-on-month impact of Italy is going to be increasing as you issue more vouchers under the new regulation. Could you just clarify what the impact was in 3Q? It seems like it might have put your employee benefits growth on a like-for-like basis ex-Italy up into low double digits. Just wondering if you could confirm that. I wanted to go back a little bit to the growth algo for my second question. There are probably, it seemed like, three components that you might call out. You have your maybe more organic same-store sales development, which encapsulates the employment levels, say, in France, as you called out before.
You have face value increases and then the further penetration of small businesses. Could you weight those underlying impacts, meaning was face value the biggest driver of that acceleration on an ex-Italy basis, or should we weight SME ahead, or just walk through the relative weighting of all those three impacts? Thank you very much.
Thanks, Justin. Coming back to Italy first, as I said earlier, if you take EUR 60 million and you totally divide it by four, you'll get EUR 15 million, obviously. You have to assume that this is really lower than the EUR 15 million as a direct impact in Q3. There has been quite a strong Q3 in terms of business volume this quarter. That compensates strongly, I would say, the impact that we've seen. Italy is part of the rest of Europe growth that we have seen sequentially based on that. On the second element, which is about trying to get a little bit more in the various drivers of how we see the various elements of growth, obviously, that is a little bit different on a country by country or region by region element.
Let's say that one strong element maybe that is important is that we have, and that's nothing different from the past, but that's really helping us. We have a low level of churn. Because we have a low level of churn of our existing portfolio, obviously new sales are really helping the growth quite mechanically. In France, yes, and it's not only in France, but in some other countries, we have some portfolio client by client volume that we are issuing that is reducing because headcount is reducing a bit, and that has an impact. That's what we see. The additional solution, for example, transport voucher in Brazil, let's not call that small business line. At the end of the day, it's quite nice Complementary Solutions that are bringing a decent volume of revenue. In particular, this activity is quite synergistic to the meal voucher in Brazil.
Cost-selling is bringing quite a nice complement to our portfolio.
Thank you. Real quick, I might get cut off by the end of that.
You did.
On the Italy thing, just to be super clear, I didn't get cut off, which is great. On the Italy thing, just to be super clear, understood that it's not an equal 60 divided by 4, but should we be putting, say, a EUR 2 million, a EUR 3 million, a EUR 4 million impact into our models for 3Q to think about how to model that going onward into 4Q as an Italy impact? Thank you.
Justin, I'm not going to play on that game because obviously you have the impact, but you have commercial impact. You know, and even for us at some moments to be absolutely able to go on the comma after the million to see what the impact is can be debatable. There is volume traction. There is momentum with clients. You know, and get something which is progressive but not completely stupid from one month to the other, with the biggest impact, obviously, which is in December. With that, you should have something quite accurate.
The next question comes from Kate Xiao from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my questions. First question on France, I think you highlighted improved growth in meal and food. Just wondering what's driving that because compared to especially a quarter ago when you highlighted some weakness in headcount and macroeconomy, kind of weaker macroeconomic growth. Just wondering if what's improving, is it the general macroeconomic environment? Just on that Italy point, because you mentioned in September, the majority of the volume came from previous issuers. Can we assume the majority of the impact was not basically there for September? Appreciate you can't go into the details, but just confirm that understanding that most of the hit will be kind of skewed towards later months and that September was relatively more muted. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks a lot. In terms of meal and food growth this quarter, as we said, we had several drivers. We see quite a strong traction in Europe compared to what we've seen in the past. The macroeconomic environment is definitely probably a little bit better than it has been before the summer. In addition to that, we have some pockets that are quite strong. Thanks to allow me to come back on that, especially Germany. In Germany, where we have what we call the city card, it's not really a meal voucher activity. It's more beyond meal and food activity. We have seen a strong growth on that one and strong traction over the quarter. That's definitely fueling the benefits revenue. That's one element. Brazil has been also quite strong over the quarter. It's the winter over there, so the season everyone is working.
You have a full issuance of volume. As I signaled earlier, the strong combination of the acquisition of RB last year with the transporter voucher definitely is bringing fruits in terms of cross-sell and synergies between our respective portfolio of clients, which is also pushing the growth. In coming back to the impact, as we said earlier, yes, I confirm the vast majority of the impact in 2025 will be on Q4 and in the last part of Q4. That's natively about coming from the way the redemption of issued meal vouchers is coming. It's more or less a 14th percentile. As expected, by September, you won't be having the redemption of things that have been issued before August 31. As remembering, legislation is put in place as of September 1. You have the four months of the year that are being confirmed.
In Q3, the vast majority of what we see coming in terms of volume of redemption obviously do come from the past, and an immediate consumption of the voucher is relatively limited. On average, we estimate that there are seven weeks where we keep the money, meaning that the redemption doesn't come immediately after a ticket has been issued.
The next question comes from Pravin Gondhale from Barclays Bank PLC. Please go ahead.
Hello, morning. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, on Italy, we had written guidance of EUR 420 million on an annualized basis. Last year, you had suggested that this includes the phase one actions, which is contract renegotiations. You are pretty much done with that, I believe. Now we are in phase.
Sorry, Pravin. Sorry.
Yeah.
Hello.
Pravin, sorry. Can you speak a bit louder because we cannot hear you well?
Sorry about that. I hope it is clearer now. My first question is on the Italy regulatory EBITDA headwind guidance of EUR 120 million on an annualized basis. Last year, at this point, you had suggested that EUR 120 million assumes phase one actions, which is mainly contract renegotiations. Now you are pretty much done with that, and we are potentially into phase two where you might be looking at cost mitigation actions there. Do you see any potential to bring down this EUR 120 million EBITDA headwind by additional, say, phase two mitigation actions? Secondly, on Mobility, you are targeting 25% share in Italy. What is the incremental market share opportunity the Esso partnership offers, and what are the drivers of you getting to that 25% target from the 5% market share last year? Thanks.
Okay. Thank you, Pravin, and sorry for that. We heard you far better on the second time. In terms of Italy EBITDA, I reconfirm the impact of EUR 120 million on an annual basis. What we've seen is that the contract renegotiation exercise has been well managed. The EUR 120 million assumed we would be quite successful in doing that, and we have been successful. That's why this impact is confirmed. Sequentially, we've explained how it comes into play and that a large part of it will enter into effect more in 2026. That's why we have this unbalanced effect more or less between 2025 and 2026. We have already put additional elements in terms of working again, you know, in terms of negotiating new clients, putting sales back on track, and so on.
Obviously, this renegotiation has been occupying quite a lot of our sales force all over the year, but they are now back on track to develop on additional elements. Maybe one element to signal is that we've been very successful in terms of welfare. This year, we have some welfare solutions in Benefits & Engagement in Italy that we are selling. That's also part of the traction and the good growth that Italy has been posting, especially this quarter. That's helping compensating. We go on focusing a lot on all these elements. We'll go on working, obviously, in terms of, yes, developing more SMEs, but also cross-sell and upsell of all our solutions to further work on the Italian market, which is a good market.
As I signaled earlier, in the current budget discussions in Italy, there is a potential for the increase in face value of around 25% if it goes from EUR 8 to EUR 10. If that happens, obviously, that increases the addressable market. That is something. Yes. Sorry.
[crosstalk]. The next question comes from Mourad Lahmidi from Edenred. Please go ahead.
Okay. Maybe I'll come back to the Mobility Esso card, and our friend from Artificial Intelligence will come back later with the next comment. The Esso Mobility card is obviously quite a strong opportunity. It's worth to mention that it is a progressive win. The acquisition of the card has been putting us in a position to move from player number six to player number two. With that, we had the opportunity to secure this new additional partnership with Esso card. Our market share will have the opportunity to further increase by progressively taking into account all the clients that we can and further issuing this new Esso plus Edenred card. I'm not saying that we'll overcome the player number one in Italy, as you can imagine. That puts us in a very strong position of a strong number two in Italy.
There is a lot of possibility, and we'll go on in investing in this market.
The next question comes from Estelle Weingrod from J.P. Morgan . Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Two questions from me as well. Coming back to France specifically, Q3 was, I think, a nice surprise despite headcounts reducing and so on. Can you provide more color on the drivers on this pickup in France? Is it right to model a further sequential pickup in Q4 given relatively easier comps? The second question on Edenred Payment North America, formerly CSI, you mentioned in the release initial positive results, which is encouraging. I guess Q3 sequentially improving versus Q1 and Q2. How should we look at it looking forward? Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Estelle. In France, definitely, we had a good Q3. Maybe starting with a very, very strong quarter in Mobility with high, strong double-digit growth on that quarter. It's a small part of the activity, but yes, it's progressing, and it's pushing France. On the rest, on the meal and food activity, we've seen a positive growth quarter on quarter in terms of the core meal and food activity. We have still a detrimental impact, as we signaled, coming from our work console software platform, but it's probably a little bit lower than it's been in the previous quarter. You know we are now in October. For us, at the moment, we enter into the gift season, and we'll see what the gift season will bring to us.
Hopefully, that will be an instrumental element of our Q4 with the new offer that we are pushing on the market that our teams are presenting at the moment. On CSI, so CSI that Bertrand explained earlier in the year, we have changed the management and we have put a team on track. Definitely, this is a turnaround process, quite long. What we've seen in Q3 is that we hope we are starting to flow in terms of, let's say, a negative impact. The team has also undertaken a very strong restructuring over the year, and then it's much more fit for purpose with a cleaner and leaner cost structure with the right element in the right place. That should help us and help them turn around and progressively recover and go faster.
That may be what we can say with CSI that we'll call Edenred Payment North America as part of the group, and we'll see in the next quarter how they progress.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you, operator. Thank you all for your nice questions and for being with us today. At the conclusion, I would like to remind that Edenred delivered a stronger top line growth in Q3 2025 thanks to an operating revenue like-for-like growth of 8.2%. Seizing new growth opportunities in all business lines, we saw really an acceleration in all business lines versus H1, an acceleration of the growth in Europe, and a sustained double-digit growth both in Latin America and in the rest of the world. That allows us to confirm our full year 2025 objectives of a like-for-like EBITDA growth of at least 10% and a free cash flow to EBITDA cash conversion rate above 70%. I wish you all a very great day, and I really hope I see you all on November 4th in person for our Capital Markets Day. Thank you.
The host has ended this call. Goodbye.