Good morning, and welcome to the emeis Q1 2026 revenue conference call hosted by Jean-Marc Boursier, Deputy CEO, and Samuel Henry Diesbach, Head of Investor Relations and Capital Markets. The call will be structured in two parts. First, a presentation by the emeis Group management team, and afterwards, there will be a Q&A session. During this session, you may ask a question only by telephone by dialing hash key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. I will now hand over to the management team. Gentlemen, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are very pleased, Samuel and I, to welcome you for this quarterly presentation regarding emeis Q1 sales performance review. During Q1, the upward trend in occupancy rates continued, with the average occupancy rate rising by 2.1 points. The very favorable momentum observed since early 2023 shows no sign of slowing down and, on the contrary, is keeping a strong pace.
The average occupancy rate now stands at 89.1%, an increase of more than two points year-on-year and more than four points over the past two years. This trend is particularly favorable, as you will see in nursing homes, and more specifically in Germany, in Southern Europe, in Central Europe, but good news also in France. As a matter of fact, occupancy rates are improving across all regions where the group operates.
If you are following this presentation on our website, I am on page three now. It should be noted that we have adjusted the way we break down our revenue by region in our financial communication. Since we have begun the process of divesting our operation in Latin America, and we have already significantly reduced our exposure to non-European regions, we deemed it appropriate to revise our geographic breakdown.
The other country category will now only include operation in China and South America. This category is expected to be phased out gradually. The Northern European region now include United Kingdom and Ireland, in addition to Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The Central European region will now include Poland in addition to Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, and Slovenia. The Southern European region will no longer include LATAM and will therefore only comprise Italy, Portugal, and Spain.
The increase in occupancy rate, as you can see on this slide, is true everywhere, but more particularly pronounced in Central and Southern Europe, where we are now back to pre-COVID levels, I mean greater than 90%. In Northern Europe, the trend is also very pronounced despite the temporary difficulties encountered in Ireland. Let us now focus on slide four on our two markets, France nursing homes and Germany.
In both of these markets, the momentum is very strong and show no sign of slowing down, as you can see on the left-hand side of this slide. In France, the occupancy rate has risen by 3.6 points. While this increase is particularly strong, it should be noted that nearly one-third of it comes from a change in definition, the removal from the total number of bed of those that are not marketable.
On a constant bed count basis, the occupancy rate would have still show a strong increase of 2.4 points, an evidence of the continued very favorable momentum in France. In Germany, our performance is still not fading out. The occupancy rate is up by 3.4 points year-on-year, and that is more than six points over two years and nine points over three years. Despite the strong performance already recorded in both countries, we are very confident that this growth will continue in the next quarters.
Slide five. At EUR 1,509,000,000, our revenue showed a significant increase in Q1, up 6.3% on an organic basis, a rate comparable and even slightly ahead of the growth recorded in 2025. Here, too, the momentum showed no sign of fading out, and the factors that drove our strong growth in 2025 continue to support our performance in 2026. This increase indeed reflects a combination of three factors which are all trending positively. First, a positive price effect supporting organic growth in the first quarter by 3.9%.
This contribution even exceeds the impact recorded at the end of 2025. If you remember, the price effect in 2025 was +3.3%. Second, an increase in the average occupancy rate at the end of March, contributing to +1.6% to organic growth. Third, the impact of recently opened properties, those opened in 2024 and 2025, whose ramp-up contributes 0.7% to organic growth, primarily in the Netherlands and Spain. Please note also that the negative perimeter effect relates mainly to the disposal of our Czech activity in March 2025 and to the disposal of our French senior housing activities in November 2025. On slide six, the analysis by business segment.
Retirement homes performed the best, with organic revenue growth of 7%, reflecting improved occupancy rate across all regions and the capture of significant price increases in many markets. This strong performance was further accentuated in certain markets by ramp-up of new facilities, notably, as I said, in Spain, Portugal, and in the Netherlands. Note that this also reflects the benefit of enhanced health protocols, which helped contain a particularly virulent flu season, and thus contributed to the solid performance posted in Q1.
We are also very pleased by the performance of the clinic activity, which growth rate is +4.9% organically. This growth reflects, first, the hard work of our team and the corrective measures taken by the group to get us back on track after a rather disappointing Q1 in 2025. We are pleased to see that the effect of those measures have improved the performance.
This also reflects a base effect and the impact of one non-recurring one-off item in France, a positive one-off item, which are improving this growth. This is fair to say that the pace of organic growth should naturally slow down a bit going forward in 2026, even if our operational performance should continue to meet our encouraging expectations. On slide seven, you have the growth revenue by regions.
Organic growth reached significant levels across all geographic region. In France, organic growth is 4.8% and even 7.1% for clinics. In clinics, this growth is particularly driven by favorable base effect and the non-recurring item I was mentioning. It also reflects the sequential improvement in our performance quarter after quarter, thanks to the measures taken in 2025, following a first quarter in last year that fell short of expectation, particularly regarding private rooms.
And we are happy to see that the performance has largely recovered and is now back in line with our ambition. In all other three regions, organic growth is around 8%. In Northern Europe, beyond the German performance that I have described, please note that we were also very pleased with the growth in the Netherlands, notably driven by new facilities that we have recently opened in the country. In Central Europe, we notably enjoyed strong occupancy growth in Austria and Poland. And in Southern Europe, we are back on track with two pre-COVID levels in Italy and Spain.
One word on slide eight on our divestment plan. As you know, we have achieved our divestment plan at the end of last year, but the first quarter of 2026 remains significant in this regard. We received EUR 815 million, largely from the Isemia transaction that we have finalized mid of January for EUR 761 million, and that you know about. On the top of Isemia, please note that we have cashed in also EUR 54 million from real estate disposals during the quarter, 62% of which came from sell and lease back transaction with an average yield of 4.9%.
This divestment primarily involved real estate assets located in Switzerland and in France, and those divestment have enabled the group to generate EUR 12 million of profit on disposal in Q1. I will conclude this brief presentation by confirming our guidance for 2026, as well as our medium-term outlook. The strength of our business since the start of the year reinforces our ambition to achieve an EBITDA growth of at least 10% in 2026 on a like-for-like basis.
And you remember that this guidance equates to an average growth since 2024 of at least 15%, which is close to the upper end of our medium-term guidance, which anticipates an organic growth in EBITDAR between 12% and 16% between 2024 and 2028, again, on the like-for-like basis. Thank you very much for your attention. And now with Samuel, we are totally available to answer all questions you may have.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial hash key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial hash key six on your telephone keypad. We have a question from Aleksander Peterc from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I just have two quite simple ones. The first one is on your strong revenue growth in Germany. Nursing homes is close to +10%. Could you explain or get into more detail on what was behind this acceleration and how sustainable you think this is? Will we get to pre-COVID occupancy in Germany faster than previously thought, despite what I think are still unfavorable demographics at present? My second question on the French clinics. You had a very strong growth there at just over 7% with some contribution from one-off items. Should we think about the underlying growth of being 5% and that will fade in the remainder of the year as comps get more demanding? Is that the right way of looking at it? Thank you.
Thank you for your two questions, Aleksander. The performance in Germany is the double impact of an occupancy rate and price increases. Occupancy +3.4%, and the vast majority of the rest to 8% is related to price increases. Do we believe that the demography will play an unfavorable role in the years to come? Not at all. We are totally convinced that after what I would consider as a superb quarter in Germany, we shall be able to continue on the same pace. On the French clinics, yes, I will dig into a little bit more detail regarding this one-off that you will easily understand. The public information regarding tariff increase for a set year is given to us very late, and the last tariff increase in France related to 2025 was given to us in April.
At that point in time, the 2025 year-end books were closed, so we booked this tariff increase in 2026. This tariff increase, the last tariff increase, amounted to EUR 9 million that, as I said, we book in Q1. That represent 1.8% contribution to the growth of the whole clinic activity worldwide. The 4.9% organic growth in the clinic activity would have been 3.1% without this last increase. That again, was given to us by the French state so late that we decided to book it the year after.
Can I have just one quick follow-up? When you say 1.8 contribution was the one-off for all clinics, was that only in France? Therefore, what would the French clinics look like if you strip out this 1.8 for the group overall?
Yeah, this is a pure French impact. The French activity for clinics is around EUR 300 million, so this 9 million means an increase of 3% for the growth in the French clinic. The 7.1 that we have disclosed would have been 4.1, roughly, without this one-off.
Okay. Thank you.
Still very healthy.
Great. Thank you.
Now we have a question from Constantin Gumenita from Caius Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Jean-Marc, Samuel. Can you please just follow up on the last question? Maybe if you can provide a little bit more color when you look at France in particular, both nursing homes and clinics. What sort of price increases did you see organically during the quarter?
Well, it is difficult to give you a generic answer. What is most important is the nursing home activity. Within the nursing homes last year, we had also the French senior activity, senior housing activity, that has impacted a little bit the comparison. To give you a straight answer, Constantin, the average increase in tariff on the French nursing home market in Q1 was around 1%.
So slightly above the 0.89, if I am precise, indexation that we have received from the state. So slightly above that amount. If inflation were to continue in Europe, it could well be that we would increase the price again for new residents throughout the year. To answer your question, the tariff increase on average on the French nursing homes market was around 1% in Q1.
Thank you. And within clinics, is it comparable, what you observed?
It's a little bit more.
Okay, got it. Generally, a separate question. Generally, when I look at the numbers, 6.3% organic growth, it seems to be quite well ahead of the midterm guidance of 4%-5% you've given, which is very encouraging. At the same time, the EBITDAR guidance of at least 10%, you've sort of retained, but should we read this as that you will likely well exceed that target, or is there anything that would stop you from getting there?
It's too early to come back to the guidance. We gave it to you only a few weeks ago. To answer your question in a different manner, have we been pleased with the performance in Q1? The answer is yes. It is a significant and good quarter for us, so it reinforces our confidence in our capacity to reach the 2026 guidance.
Got it. Very helpful. Congrats again.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial hash key five on your telephone keypad.
If there are no further question, thank you very much for your attendance this morning, and obviously, in the next few days and weeks, Samuel and I will remain at your disposal. Have a very pleasant day. Bye-bye.