Earnings Call: Q3 2020

Nov 19, 2020

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Nine Months twenty twenty Results Conference Call. I'll now hand you over to Karine Adore, Head of Bouygues Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to remind everyone that you can find on the company website at wwwbig.com the earnings press release, the presentation we will be commenting on during this conference call, an Excel file with historical key figures for the group and its business and the company's financial statements. Statements made on this call are forward looking statements. Such statements reflect objectives that are based on management's current expectations or estimates and are subject to a number of factors and uncertainties that could cause actual figures to differ materially from those described in the forward looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Pascal Granger, Chief Financial Officer of Thank you, Karine. I would like to welcome everyone to our conference call to discuss Bouygues' nine months 2020 results. With me in the room are Richard Vielle, CEO of Bouygues Telecom and Christian LeCogue, CFO of Bouygues Telecom. Following our comments, we will be answering your questions. Let's Let's begin with Slide four. The most striking point about the nine months 2020 results is the group's excellent performance in the third quarter compared to last year's third quarter, which was already at a high level of activity and profitability. Q3 twenty twenty results marked a major improvement compared to the first half of the year, which was strongly impacted by the health crisis. Current operating profit reached €813,000,000 in Q3 twenty twenty, up 22% year on year, while current operating margin increased to percent, up 1.5 points. Furthermore, the group financial structure remained robust with a high level of liquidity. Available cash at end September twenty twenty was €10,100,000,000 Given the strong performance in Q3, we have revised our H2 twenty twenty outlook upwards. Looking at the Construction businesses on Slide five. The backlog remained at a high level of €33,500,000,000 at end September twenty twenty, offering good visibility. Activity returned to a normal level in most countries. Thanks to the strong performance of the three business segments in current operating profit returned to positive level for the nine months. At TF1, performance of the Broadcasting segment was very good in Q3 twenty twenty. And finally, commercial momentum at Bouygues Telecom was good in both mobile and fixed and top line growth was solid in the first nine months of twenty twenty. Sales from services were up 7%, better than expected, and the EBITDA after lease margin remained stable despite the drop in roaming due to the health crisis. Bouygues Telecom therefore confirms it will generate around €250,000,000 in free cash flow for 2020. Let us now turn to group key figures on Slide six. Let me start by saying that given the resumption of activity, it is no longer possible to isolate the change in performance that would be attributable to COVID -nineteen. As such, we will no longer quantify that impact. Nine months 2020 results reflected a major improvement in earnings in the third quarter following the significant impact of the COVID-nineteen crisis in the first half. Like for like and at constant exchange rates, sales improved strongly in the third quarter, growing by 1% year on year after declining 8% in the first quarter and 21% in the second quarter. Sales benefited from catch up of activity in the construction business as well as advertiser spending at TF1 and from steady growth in sales from services at Bouygues Telecom. Profitability improved significantly compared to the first half of the year with current operating profit reaching €681,000,000 in the nine months compared to a loss of €132,000,000 in the 2020. Current operating margin rose to 2.7% in the nine months versus minus 0.9% in the first half. Net attributable to the group also returned to a positive level. It included a contribution from Alstom of €51,000,000 in the nine months twenty twenty versus €238,000,000 in the same period last year. As a reminder, the nine months twenty eighteen contribution included a net capital gain of €172,000,000 of the sale of 13% of the share capital of Alstom. Please note that the nine months twenty twenty contribution did not include two elements that will be accounted for in the four quarters. The €87,000,000 capital gain linked to the disposal of €11,000,000 of Alstom's share and the €30,000,000 gain associated with Alstom's capital increase as announced two days ago. We will now move to slide seven to focus on the strong Q3 performance. You can see that all business segments contributed to the sharp rise in current operating profit and margin compared to the third quarter of last year. This significant improvement was better than expected. First, Q3 twenty twenty sales were stable year on year after a fall in Q1 and Q2 and were driven by strong activity in all businesses as discussed previously. The performance is particularly remarkable in France as sales were up 5% compared to the substantial level of Q3 twenty nineteen. Second, all business segments implemented cost saving measures. Moreover, the construction activities also benefited from compensations linked to worksite shutdown in Q2. Those factors contributed to a major improvement in current operating profit in all business segments and current operating margin reached a very significant level of 8%. Percent. Let us now turn to Slide eight that shows the group's strong financial position. The chart highlights available cash at the high level of €10,100,000,000 at end September twenty twenty with €2,400,000,000 in cash and €7,700,000,000 of undrawn medium and long term maturities of which €7,100,000,000 were without covenants. Please note that in July 2020, the group reimbursed a €1,000,000,000 bond at its maturity. As you can see, the debt maturity schedule is well balanced with no debt war. Moving to Slide nine, you can see that net debt was nearly €3,700,000,000 at the September 2020, a decrease of €982,000,000 compared to last year end September. Net gearing improved by nine points over the same period. This robust financial position remains key, especially during the crisis. Please note that the net debt at September does not include €450,000,000 in proceeds from the sale of €11,000,000 of Alstom shares, the acquisition of EIT by Bouygues Telecom expected by early twenty twenty one, and the first installment of the five gs frequencies for €90,000,000 Let's now turn to Slide 10 to see the net debt evolution between end September twenty nineteen and end September twenty twenty. On Slide 10, you can observe that the increase in net debt since the end of last year is mostly explained by the following four items. First, an outflow of €55,000,000 in acquisitions and disposals, resulting mainly from the acquisition of Granite contracting by Colas in The U. S. Second, an inflow of €30,000,000 mainly linked to the exercise of stock options and the remainder of the Bouygues Construction's capital increase reserved for employees. Third, the outflow related to the payment of dividend in September 2020 for €687,000,000 And finally, an outflow of €727,000,000 from operation decreasing sharply year on year that I will explain in the next slide. Turning to the breakdown of operations for the nine months 2020 on slide 11, you can observe that. First, net cash flow including lease expenses was down €248,000,000 year on year, reflecting the impact of the health crisis on the group's first half results. Second, net CapEx was down €142,000,000 year on year due to early adjustments in investments in the construction activities due to the COVID-nineteen crisis and then higher disposals in the first nine months of the year at Bouygues Telecom related to the sale of FTTH premises to SDIES, the Asterix project. And third, you can notice on the chart that working capital requirements improved strongly compared to the same period of last year. Most specifically, the change in working capital requirements linked to the activity was lower by almost €1,000,000,000 from the first nine months of twenty nineteen, much better than what we were expecting in this environment. This performance was driven by the efforts made by all business segments and most notably Bouygues Construction and Colas. In addition, the change in working capital requirements related to fixed assets was affected, as we already mentioned in the first half, by the sale by in June by Bouygues Telecom of FTTH premises to SDIF for €222,000,000 which was monetized into cash in July. I will now turn to the review of operations starting with the Construction businesses. Let's begin with the backlog on slide 14. At €33,500,000,000 the backlog in the Construction businesses remained at a very high level at September 2020. As you can see on the chart, it is very close from the record level reached in September 2018. Commercial momentum at Bouygues Construction and to a lesser extent at Colas continued to be good. The overall backlog at end September was up 3% compared to the same period of last year. Let us now turn at the backlog on slide 15. The French backlog in the Construction businesses was down slightly at September 2020 year on year due to the health crisis and the impact of the municipal elections. Overall, Bouygues Construction's backlog was stable. It was down 1% at Colas with Rail experiencing a 15% growth while roads in Mainland France was down 8%. Indeed, the environment to roll out bids and contracts remained difficult with local authorities even though the French government implemented supporting measures. This situation can be expected to continue in Q4 and maybe into the 2021. At Bouygues Immobilier, the backlog was down 3%. Residential reservations decreased by 16% year on year as delays in obtaining building permits linked to the municipal elections resulted in a lower supply. This impact was mitigated by some block sales to CSSA EBITDA. To date, the resumption of the issuance of building permits in the residential property market is very slow, while housing demand remains solid. As you can see on slide 16, international markets remain dynamic and the good international backlog was up 6% year on year at end September. This good commercial performance was driven by civil works, Energy and Services and Rail. Thanks to this performance, 62% of the backlog at Bouygues Construction and Colas was related to international markets compared to 61 at end September twenty nineteen. Let us now look at the Construction activities key figures on slide 17. As I already mentioned, the Construction businesses returned to a positive current operating profit in the nine months after the strong negative impact of the COVID-nineteen pandemic on first half results. Activity solidly rebounded in the third quarter compared to H1 twenty twenty, thanks to a catch up of activity in France during the summer and a return to normal business levels in most countries. This achievement was made possible thanks to the strong commitment of our employees. In France, a group wide collective agreement was concluded allowing employees to take a portion of their paid leave during the first lockdown. We also adapted our working hours and working days to facilitate catching up our activity levels during the summer months. As you can see, profitability resumed thanks to the strength of our three business segments. Current operating profit was €133,000,000 in the first nine months versus a loss of €437,000,000 in H1 twenty twenty and current operating margin was 0.7% versus negative 4% in H1 twenty twenty. This improvement was led by stronger activity, which allowed a better dilution of our fixed costs and benefited from cost saving measures as well as compensations linked to work site shutdown in Q2. Now let's talk briefly about TF1 as its results were released at the October. First, I would like to highlight on Slide 19 that TF1's audience share among key target was maintained at a high level during the first nine months. As the lockdown ended, TFTV usage in the 2020 was up sixteen minutes year on year. Moreover, after being severely hit by the COVID-nineteen crisis in first half twenty twenty, TF1's performance in the third quarter was very good in the Broadcasting segment. Third quarter advertising revenues were up 7.5% year on year, thanks to both longer viewing time and a return of advertising spending in several sectors such as food, retail, personal care, e commerce and automotive. Current operating profit showed significant improvement reaching EUR58 million in Q3 compared to EUR21 million in Q3 last year. This improvement was linked to the adjustment of programming schedules and the optimization of programming costs, which were €138,000,000 in nine months 2020, including €31,000,000 in the third quarter. Given the low visibility and uncertainty of the COVID-nineteen pandemic evolution in France, TF1 did not set new objectives for 2020 or 2021. Now let me turn the call over to Christian LeCote and Richard Lieber. Thank you, Pascal. Starting with Slide 21, you can see that we benefited from a good commercial performance during the third quarter twenty twenty. In mobile, excluding M2M, we won 181,000 new plan customers in the third quarter, totaling 455,000 since the beginning of the year. In FTTH, net adds continued to grow with 169,000 new customers joining us during the third quarter. With a total of 1,400,000 subscribers, FTTH customers represented 34% of the fixed customer base at end September twenty twenty compared to twenty two percent one year ago. Overall, and excluding M2M, at end September twenty twenty, Bouygues Telecom serviced 12,000,000 mobile plan customers and 4,100,000 fixed customers. Let's have a brief look at our FTTH rollout on Slide twenty two. As you can see, Bouygues Telecom has been accelerating its FTTH rollout since the 2019, going from €11,800,000 marked at premises to €15,800,000 at the September 2020. The acceleration is particularly noticeable in Vireadant and Medium Data Area, thanks to our partnership with CTFAT and SDIES partners. We have also we also have decided to accelerate in the public initiative network area, and we are now in a position to revise upward our objective of market premises from €22,000,000 to €27,000,000 by the 2022. As you can see on Slide 23, mobile ABPU and fixed ABPU were up year on year in the 2020. Mobile ABPU increased by 0.4 to €20.3 restated for roaming impact and fixed ABPU increased by €1.5 to €28.1 reflecting both the success of our pricing strategy and our competitive intensity. As a result, sales from services were up 5% year on year in the third quarter twenty twenty. This performance was better than expected. Mobile revenue was up 3% year on year, driven by growth in the customer base and ABPU and despite a loss of €33,000,000 of roaming revenue linked to the drop in intercontinental travel. Fixed sales from services were up 10%. As shown on Slide '24, Bouygues Telecom delivered solid top line growth in the first nine months 2020. Sales were up 6% year on year with a 7% increase in sales from services services despite a 63,000,000 decline in roaming revenues over the period. EBITDA after leases for the first nine months was up 7% year on year at $1,123,000,000 euros Let me remind you that this figure includes one off brand and advertising expenses of €20,000,000 regarding in the first quarter and a COVID-nineteen impact estimated at €20,000,000 for the first half of the year. The EBITDA after leases margin was stable at 30.9% despite the negative roaming impact, which is a very good performance. We stated for this roaming impact, this margin reached 31.9%. As shown on the chart, over the last five years, the margin has increased by 11 points, a truly remarkable achievement. Operating profit of €460,000,000 was slightly down compared to the same period last year due to a lower volume of site disposals versus last year. CapEx was EUR837 million in the first nine months of twenty twenty, an increase of EUR103 million year on year, in line with our strategy to strengthen the quality of our networks. Over the same period, disposals amounted to €222,000,000 with a very large part related to the sale of FTTH premises to FTAES FTAES in the 2020. As you may have noticed, 3.5 gigahertz frequency are available since yesterday. I will now turn the call to Richard Rielle, who is going to explain you our strategy starting with Slide '26. Thank you, Christian. Since its inception, Bouygues Telecom has always been pragmatic regarding the implementation of new technologies and the rollout of its networks. In keeping with this approach, Bouygues Telecom will deploy its five gs network progressively. In line with customer benefits that will arrive in two stages. As you know, the quality of our mobile network is a core pillar of our growth strategy and a major component of our success. Our goal is to maintain this high quality to remain one of the best mobile network in France. Therefore, our priority is to deploy a reliable five g network while maintaining the quality of our four g network. First, four g will remain the main technology used by customers for many years to come. This means that we will continue to strengthen the coverage of the capacity of our four gs network. And second, the quality of the five gs network will rely upon the quality of the four gs network. I will explain why in the following slide 27. The first reason is technical. Until 02/2023, the five g will use a four g core network and will require the four g encore frequency band to operate. The second reason is commercial. The rollout of five g compatible terminals will take time. As you miracle, it took a while for the four g technology to be adopted by customer even though it was offering a new experience and immediate benefits. It is likely that the acceptance of our new technology could also take time. Our willingness is to route five g under the best condition, maintaining constructive dialogue with stakeholders. Third, network densification is necessary in five gs and in four gs, both in capacity and coverage, particularly in very dense area. This network densification is even more important for high frequency bands. Therefore, five g on the 3.5 gigahertz frequency will require more radio side to ensure deeper indoor coverage. Consequently, our target is to have more than 28,000 sites by 2023. To conclude, the quality of our five gs network will rely upon the quality of the four gs network at least for the next three years. Let's now see on slide 28 how we will roll out the five gs network. To roll out, we will have two things in parallel. First, we will use 3.5 gigahertz band to improve capacity. And second, we will gradually migrate existing frequency band using in four g to provide five gs coverage. As we recently announced, we acquired a 70 megahertz block of 3.5 gigahertz spectrum at a reasonable price, allowing us to double our existing available range. Therefore, we will now benefit from about one quarter of about the French spectrum. We will use a 3.5 gigahertz band to improve capacity, notably in the very dense urban area, which will require in standing new antennas dedicated to five gs. At the same time, as shown on slide 29, we will migrate our existing four g frequency band to five g to provide five g coverage. The high frequency band ranging from one eighteen hundred and two thousand six hundred, we will gradually transfer to five g, will be gradually transferred to five g starting with 2,100 band. We consider that the 2,100 band is the best combination between performance and coverage to rapidly reach 15 megahertz. In five g without deteriorating the four g network quality. Moreover, the 2,100 is a frequency band most referenced in the five g handsets. Our seven hundred and eight hundred bands will remain to four g for several years to maintain a solid four g quality. As mentioned previously, five g benefits for customer will arrive in two stages. Stages. Let me explain that on slide 30. The first stage, through 2023, five gs will help maintain good quality service in very dense area. As wise as a rise in data consumption will require increased network capacity. This is what is called the non standalone five g, where five g use a four g core network to operate. A second stage, which we call standalone five g, we don't know starting in 02/2023. New services for individuals and especially for companies thanks to its new features such as low latency, higher speed, and ability to connect many objects. This five g will be used to call five g network. Of course, we do not yet know all the new usage and opportunities that will be provided by the five gs technology. Turn to slide 31. I am pleased to announce that the four zero gs commercial launch will be at the September December. Okay? And on that day, we will introduce a dedicated portfolio of offers with a wide range of five g handsets and enhance content based on our strong partnerships. Our objective is to reach national coverage within wire. Thank you. And Pascal, I will now return the call to you. Thank you, Christian and Richard. Now I would like to briefly comment on the financial statements on Slide 13. We have already discussed nine months twenty twenty revenues and current operating profit at the beginning of this call. Other operating income and expenses were negative €45,000,000 in the first nine months. It notably included non current charges of €61,000,000 at Colas due to the reorganization of the road activities in France and the ongoing dismantling of the Dunkirk site. The decrease of €95,000,000 compared to the first nine months of twenty nineteen is explained by the lower volume of site disposals You can also note that cost of net debt decreased by €30,000,000 year on year due to lower interest expense on our bonds as we reimbursed two bonds in October 2019 and July 2020 and issued a new one at a lower rate in April 2020. Regarding the income tax line, the effective tax rate was 46% in nine months 2020 compared to 33% last year. As we already explained in H1, the difference in the tax rate is related to some losses abroad that did not result in the accounting of active deferred taxes and some losses in France recognized at the tax rate lower than the current one. The share of net profit of joint ventures and associates was €109,000,000 in nine months 2020. It included a contribution from Alstom of €51,000,000 which was much lower than the previous year when we sold 13% of our Alstom stake and recorded a net capital gain of €172,000,000 in September 2019. We will now turn our attention to the group outlook on Slide 35. First, strong Q3 results confirm the group's expected return to significant profitability in H2. Given that performance, we upgrade our outlook for H2 twenty twenty and now expect the group current operating margin to be slightly higher than that of H2 twenty nineteen. Bouygues Telecom raises its sales from services guidance and confirms its free cash flow objective for 2020, while maintaining a high level of investments to strengthen its network. First, growth in sales from services is now estimated between 56% versus around 4% previously, despite the sharp decline in roaming sales due to COVID-nineteen. Second, we forecast growth CapEx of €1,250,000,000 which will include expenditures necessary for the integration of EIT, but will include the acquisition of five gs frequencies. And last, we confirm the free cash flow objective of around €250,000,000 Please note that this outlook is based on information noted to date and excludes any new unfavorable change due to COVID-nineteen. In this unprecedented context, Bouygues remains convinced that the need to implement strategy, as mentioned on Slide 36, the group confirms its 2020 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 02/1930, compatible with the Paris Agreement establishment in 2020 of actions plans for its five business segments. I am pleased to announce that we will hold our first Climate Markets Day on December 16 to discuss with you our goals. You will very soon receive an invitation for this event. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your attention. Operator, please open the floor for The first question comes from the line of Nicolas Cotcullisson from HSBC. First question is on telecoms. Yesterday, the asset asked SFR to cancel some of its wholesale tariff increases after you've complained. Can you tell us a bit more about this? And how the new tariffs compare now with Orange as the line rental seems to be cheaper at SFR now? And also if you have any precisions regarding the way you or actually Asterix arbitrate between co investment and rental would be great to have too. And my second question would be around construction. What's the trend around energy and services in the context of lockdown and whether the margin is or can be in the recovery phase? I also wonder if you see inorganic growth as a necessary step to establish long term profitability as some assets could be up for sales. I'm just thinking about ENGIE in particular. Thank you. Hi, Nicolas. This is Christian. I will answer to your question about telecom. So SFR tariffs in the medium dense area were very high at, I think, more than EUR 16 per subscribers for winter. Arcep asked SFR to be at the same level or at a lower level than Orange. And the level of Orange is, I think, 13.2 per subscriber per month. So we will see now what SFR will do in terms of tariff, if it will be 13.2% or less than that. About Asterix, you know Asterix is a scheme we put in place with robot infrastructures has been concerned only the orange area in the medium dense area. And so SFR is not concerned by the Astelles program. So no change I think. As Energy and Services are concerned, yes, we confirm that we are the trend is the improvement of margins in this Energies and Services segment. Obviously, the first half of the year has been affected by the crisis and the lockdown. But during the third quarter, we are online with were what expecting previously. So yes, we are in a trend of improving our margins in terms of Energy and Services. And secondly, obviously, we will consider any opportunity to grow in that segment. We told you that in terms of an organic growth, Energy and Services was one of the sector for which we are considering such an organic growth. You know that some assets are for sale at the moment, so we consider that situation. But please note that when Mr. Clement, you speak about the subject, he is considering more probably a private equity way or spin off way. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning, everyone. So two questions from my side. The first one is on your outlook. I'm trying to understand a bit what's going on. So for instance, in Telco, as you dropped from 5 percent to 4% and then back 5% to 6%. So what's going on there? And then secondly, at the group level, your outlook for the year seems at least for Q4 seems fairly prudent considered what we've seen in Q3. So again, any special factors we should have in mind? And if you could give us an update on the commentary you provided with Q2 results around the shape of recovery of margins in the three construction divisions that would be very helpful? And then maybe a second question on the border activity prospect in construction. If you could give us an update perspective, especially your ability to benefit from some of the border stimulus plans, which have been announced? Thank you. So about Telecom service revenue, we met the forecast we gave you at the August at the beginning of summer. At this time, it was very difficult to know what will be the impact of the COVID-nineteen on the roaming, of course. But also, we do not know if we would be able to continue to apply our more for more strategy and to increase the tariffs for new clients and also for our existing clients. And so that's why we were very cautious. The situation is now much better than expected, and that's why we decided to revise the guidance. As far as the question you raised concerning the group, first of all, our overall guidance for Q4, you have to consider that during we part of the activity is a result of catch up of activity we have done during the summer for the construction activities. Obviously, we want to have this catch up again on Q4. This is we are in a situation in which we are working in all our divisions, but the current sanitary situation is not so obvious to manage. And thirdly, at construction level, we consider that probably we will have some decrease in activity at the Colas level due to the fact that the municipalities in France faces face some difficulties to implement the bids and so on. So globally, effectively, we will consider that we will we have a fairly good fourth quarter, but at a lower level than what we had as a result. Concerning margins and the evolution of margins of our construction activities, let's say, I just spoke about Energy and Services. Now considering Bouygues Construction, we consider that we will come back to a normal level of activity in the next period. So no doubt about that. Concerning Colas, you know that we have a form of decrease of activity during Q3 and probably beginning next year. So probably, the profitability will be affected by that factor. But on the other side, you know that we are developing some strategies in order to be more industrialized in two aspects. First, the quarries and secondly, the bitumen activities. And another point is the fact which will enhance the profitability is the impact of the reorganization we are implementing in France. So we consider that probably in the first half of the year, COLAS margin will be under pressure. And concerning Bouygues Immobilier, the situation is the following. You know that before the crisis, we had a very quite low level of units to sell. And we are currently facing some difficulties to obtain building permits. So probably the activity will remain quite low and the profitability quite low during the whole period end of 2020 and 2021. And we are developing new projects and we expect to see the situation being better and better during next year. The third question was related to the stimulus plans. We are quite optimistic of what we can obtain from this stimulus plan, especially at the level. But we think it will take some time to implement it, probably from the political decision, which is already done to the first call for tenders, it will last, let's say, six months or so. So we'll see that in the activity second half of next year. Thank you very much. May I be precise that you know that in all these stimulus plans, the part which is related to green solutions is very important. And this is the reason why we will be very happy to present to you what is our policy in terms of Green Solutions, but also what we do at our level for developing our own activity during the Climate Market Day on the December 16. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. I had a question on the telco business and then a question on construction. So on telcos, you have clearly guided for better revenue trends following a strong Q3. Just wondered why that's not translating into better free cash flow for the full year given the CapEx element. So what exactly are these greater investments in CapEx given a lot of your infrastructure is off balance sheet? I'm presuming that a lot of it is related to five gs, but it would be good to get some color on that. And then just on constructions, you've clearly pointed to Colas and the public tender slowdown and Immobilier's weak permitting. Just wonder if you could just give a bit more color on your outlook for construction over the next few quarters. Is there anything that stands in the way of continued strong improvement there? I heard you say back to normal activity to the previous question. I think you said in the next period, but I wasn't sure what that really means in terms of timing and whether it's just a margin comment. Thank you. So about Bouygues Telecom cash flow, yes, that's right. We decided to maintain the level of free cash flow level at €250,000,000 I remind you that it includes €20,000,000 of CapEx related to the integration of the IT. Why we decided to do that? Just because we now expect growth CapEx to be at a level of $1,250,000,000 euros So it's a bit higher than expected before due to two points. First, more CapEx in five gs and second point, more CapEx also in FTTH due to the better growth we have now in FTTH. And so we need to increase the level of CapEx to cope with that. As far as the construction activities are concerned, on the level of profitability, can expect, let's say, at Bouygues Construction level, we consider that probably we will be not far from the 2019 level in 2021 globally. But you will see during the second half of the year 2020 year that profitability is already very good, fairly good and improving. And for Colas, as I mentioned previously, we will have a form of lack of activity during the first months of 2021. So probably, we will stay at a lower level than in 2019 during 2021, coming to a fairly good level in 2022. And for Bouygues Immobilier, as I already mentioned, we will see an improvement in margin during in 2021 compared to 2020, but probably at a very low level. And in 2020 but we expect to recover in 2022. Yes. Very helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Josep Pujal from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello, everybody. Two questions on my side, please. The first one is on these compensations for unemployment that you got in Q3 that you booked in Q3. Could you tell us the total amount, how this compares to the €148,000,000 of EBIT improvement in this period? And if you can split by division or by activity, it would be great. And my second question is on FTTH, I would say, competition. You had mentioned early that it was becoming a more competitive market with some players offering doing lower offers. How this compares the current situation here today in November compared to what you saw in August, September? Has it changed? Has it improved a little bit? Or is it still as competitive? Thank you. Okay. I'll start with the telecommunication. It's Richard. Well, more than competitive situation, what we've seen after the second lockdown is of the demand. So the acceleration of the demand is we see that now in October, November as we see on q three, and you've seen the number of everyone in q three. So what does it mean? Does it mean that in fact the demand when you are in lockdown on adding more fiber, more capacity at home to support, I would say, telework and all those kind of things for sure. It's it's not accelerating the demand at FTTH. Secondly, about pricing position, I would say that in general, what we see is two things. We see fiber revenue potential which has to be bigger because in fact the pricing of the fiber is higher than the pricing of the DSL. But you see in parallel some promotion activity arriving which should contribute to accelerate this level of growth in FTTH. Is it clear? I don't hear you very well. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. Sorry. What I if I rephrase in my words, yeah, and then we can say if I understood it or not, is that the promotional activity remains the same as after the lockdown. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yes. As far as compensations are concerned, due to the shutdown of some sites, let's say that the situation is quite difficult to analyze for different reasons. If you consider in France, public clients, you know that we had some recommendation from the government to have the contractors compensated for these events. At that date, amount which has been recovered are quite non significant. Are not convinced that we will have very material amounts during the next few months. So nothing material in our accounts. Concerning private clients, are negotiating globally generally with these clients. So it's very difficult to isolate such compensation. But there is no in that part, we don't have any anything very material in that respect. Concerning the compensation for workers, which were locked down during the period. We had different situation in France and abroad. Let's say that in France, the compensation has been directly paid during the Q2. And during the for other countries, we had some compensation during the third quarter, but this is not at all in the range of the improvement of the margin during that period. It's small part of it. The part of the improvement of the margin is related to catch up of activities. Understood. But can you be more precise? Are we talking about 20,000,030 million maybe in this Q3? That's the range. That's the range. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jacob Bluestone from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I've got two questions as well. Firstly, can you maybe just comment a little bit around the net working capital? It's improved by about €1,000,000,000 year to date. Could you maybe sort of I realize it's something you've been working hard to improve. Is that sort of sustainable, or is there something funny COVID related within that? So maybe if you could share with us what should we expect for the full year. And then secondly, thank you for the presentation on on five g, which was very interesting. I had a question on the 28,000 sites you mentioned by 2023. Can you maybe expand a little bit or give a little bit more detail on those 28,000 sites? First of all, how do you intend to get there? Is that gonna be through build to suit? Because I think that's above what you've already announced. Or should we be expecting higher CapEx? And then also, is that for four gs and five gs sites combined? Or was it just for five gs stand alone? When we start considering your first question, when we started 2020, we had a very important action plan in order to improve our working capital, especially in the construction activities because we consider that there is always room for improvement in that respect, having people being invoiced very rapidly and then when invoiced being paid in due time. It's a fairly important work to do. When we worked March and when we talked about the impact of the current regulatory crisis, we feel a quite complicated situation in that respect. And this is the reason why we mentioned at that time that we were fearing a deterioration of that working capital during the 2020 period and probably having a recovery during 2021. The very good news of what we see what we have seen June and now September is the fact that the mobilization of overall teams have been very efficient in order to maintain our working capital and the impact being very limited. We have even an improvement in that working capital evolution during the period. The factors obviously, there is an impact of the COVID crisis, but this is not major, I think so. But the factor which is major is the action plan done by Bouygues Construction and Colas in particular to have their invoices paid. What we can say for the future, the I have to mention that the working capital is it is really, really due to invoice paid by our clients and not by we have to be to pay to our suppliers and subcontractors. This is very important. And what we can expect Unfortunately, we don't see that it will be possible to maintain that €1,000,000,000 difference at the end of the year. But of course, the mobilization is 100% on this subject and all our teams are focused in that respect. And we expect to keep, let's say, a part of it. I have no figure to mention, but it would be in a range of, I would say, some hundreds of million euros. Okay. Thank you. On your question concerning the coverage and the number of sites, you need to integrate the fact that probably in the next five years, the traffic will be tripled. And for all those reasons, we need to integrate that. Good news. As we expressed to you in the five g, we doubled our capacity with frequencies. So we have this capacity to to to support the double of the traffic. So that's easy. But it's not enough to make triple, you know. So you need to increase your your your number of your number of antennas. So we will have a concentration on the sites where we need more capacity. Capacity. So in very dense area, it will be around 2,000. Today, are 21,000. So there is 7,000 new sites to be built. So 2,000 in very dense area and the others will be in an undone area. So for those reasons, it's a split of what we have to do in the two areas. First, strategically, it's very important on the very dense area because it's where we have the major risk of saturation. And then you add the coverage in the non dense area, which is planned with some of politics engagements that we have had in the past on the fact that we need to cover a small city's roads and all those kind of stuff. Now about how we will do that, well, we will be very pragmatic pragmatic as we deal all the time. To do that on the loan approach or to do that on the building CapEx approach, we are thinking of it case by case as we did in the past on a regular basis. Okay? Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Thomas Couprie from Bryan Garnier. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two on network concerns. First, thanks again indeed for the presentation on your five gs rollout plan. I have a question on the frequencies here. Does what you explain mean that you will use the dynamic spectrum sharing technologies? Because these technologies put forward by Ericsson, in particular, or Nokia are supposed to be rather disappointing in terms of quality. So is this what you intend to do? And more specifically, you said that you would reuse the 2,100 band for five gs. Why not using 700 or 800 megahertz band since they are better for coverage indoor? Is this because you don't have enough 700 megahertz? Is it because 800 megahertz will not be available enough on the five gs smartphones? That would be interested to have your view on that. And the other question I have still on networks is regarding network sharing. It's becoming, let's say, more and more obvious that we could expect something between Iliad and Orange in the same way that what you did in the range sharing with SFR. This type of agreement enables to accelerate and improve coverage in the less dense areas as you did again yourself with SFR. Do you fear that such an agreement between Iliad and Orange could, let's say, help Iliad reduce the gap in terms of coverage and network quality in this area? And would you have any specific, let's say, regulatory type of concern versus such an agreement? Thank you very much. Okay. I think inside your question, you have three questions. So I will try to answer to all of them. First about the DSS. DSS is a technology normally to optimize, in fact, the sharing of differences between four g and five g. So the DSS on the principle is an interesting approach. There is no reason why Telecom is not looking at it. What we've seen at the beginning is depending on the suppliers, the quality of the DSS is different between the suppliers. And the second point is, when you do that, you take a part of your bandwidth, which is which which is declining. Declining. I mean, if you have 100 megahertz frequencies, when you do the DSS, you lost 10 to 15%. It's depending of the supply cost. So that's the first reason why we are very careful about that. So second point is about why not to use a 700, 800 to 2,100 and the others. First, to have a good five g, you need to have an excellent four g. And if you try to substitute some frequencies which is dedicated to your four g now to to to replace that with five g, you create a disaster on your four g customer, and you're impacting strongly the quality of your network. That's the reason why we didn't decide to use the 700. Probably, the 700 can do a show off approach to say to the customer, blah blah, I have the five g here, but it will not be a good one. And you will destroy your four g and it's for from our experts is not a good pass. And as Bouygues Telecom has always perceived and good engineers able to have a good optimization of the network, we consider it was a wrong approach. And we decide to go to the 21 for sure as I expressed to you because that 21 is more on set. But it's a good I would say, it's a good medium between between small spectrum that anyone has on the low low band frequencies such as seven hundred and eight hundred. That's today we dedicate to the four g to have best quality of the four g. And the very high frequency is 3.5, which have some indoor issues. That's the reason why we decide to go just in the middle with with the two point 2,100. And we have a lot of experience of that. Don't forget that we did it with the four g, with the 1,800. So with this experience of the 1,800, we know that the 2,100 is a good frequencies to do it. That's the reason why we decide that. Is it clear? And about the sharing network. And about the sharing network, well, I don't know how to can make you can make a sharing networks. It depends of of your technology. You need to to move your antennas to the other ones. I don't know how they will do that. I don't know what kind of agreement they can have. To be honest with you, it takes three years to put telecom to make it happen with the with with with SFR. And I'm not so sure that it will be easier in the other case. So I have no idea. Will it be for four g, five g, three g, whatever? I don't know. So for me, I I'm waiting what could happen what could happen. You know, when we start to do some savings, you you you're impacting for sure cash because you need to do a work before. Thank you very much. Yeah. Very clear. Thanks a lot. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Mathieu Robillard from Barclays. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning and thank you. First, I had a question on the real estate. I think you mentioned in the presentation that you had some good contribution from B2B contracts. I don't know if you can quantify that. And more importantly, when we look ahead, are there big projects yes, big projects that could materialize in the coming quarters? I'm not sure if Albert Cranier has, in the end, finalized. So that was the first question. Second question on the telecom side. I was curious about the breakdown on the non service revenues, which recovered quite nicely in Q3. I think in Q2, there was a positive contribution from Asterix. My understanding is that that's not the case anymore in Q3. But maybe if you could give us a little bit of a breakdown, what is handsets, what is built to suit and if there's any material impact on margin, I mean, by material, I mean, out of the normal? And then thirdly, on the FTTH, so you upgraded the number of homes you want to cover. Can you remind us on the keen areas? Are you still planning to do it essentially through wholesaling? Or are you considering to be more engaged with co financing, for example, either through Asterix or another venture? Thank you very much. Well, I will answer to your questions about I think your first question was about what we call the other revenues, so the difference between the total revenues and the service revenues. You know we have three kind of items in the other revenues. First, this is the handset revenues. They have been impacted during the first lockdown in Q2. We will see what it will be now. Of course, shops are open now, but the traffic is at a lower level than last year. So we could have some little effect in Q4. The second thing is the construction volume. We had higher revenue in Q2, mainly due to Samarro because we closed Samarro in Q2. And at this time, we were able to sell to Samarro project what we have built during the last year in advance to the closing. And then you have some, I would say, a mix of other news, for example, shelf network sharing in white area with other operators, you have FTTH revenue due to customer link, so mainly with branch and so on. And what you have to know is that these revenues these other revenues have no impact or very little impact on EBITDA. So we have no margin on all this revenue except for the handset because we have some subsidy and the subsidy is accounted for service revenues. Okay. To to the little add ons on about fiber and all the aspects of the fiber that you expressed. As you know, with this, we said that the fiber will accelerate. As the fiber is accelerating, we said before, in 02/2022, we will have a 22,000,000 access plug. And you need to understand now that we're planning to have 27,000,000 access plug. So that means that in fact due to the acceleration of this market, we see a more more plugs and households available on the market, and we want to be everywhere. So we are accelerating these these connections to be in line with the market trends. So due to that, for sure, we will have a pragmatic approach between wholesale and buy or whatever. But you know that the pragmatic you need to have all the time, and I repeat that at each meeting, is it will depend of your market share you have locally. And in the rural area is not where Bouygues Telecom has the biggest market share. So we will probably use the wholesale. But outside of that, you need to know that for any customer connections, you have CapEx expenses concerning box, you have expenses concerning installation, all those kind of things. That will impact definitely outside of the wood sale some CapEx, whatever. Okay? Very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Consider that in terms of B2B business, we have signed three commercial projects during Q3 in Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, but these were not major contracts. We have signed, of October, the project we have in Cours Al Bertromnier, but we do not expect any other B2B project for this year. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Giovanni Montalti from UBS. Please go ahead. Hello, good morning. Thank you. Sorry, just a quick follow-up on the previous question about the fiber rollout. So when look at the September 2020 numbers, can you please confirm what's the mix there? So when I see this 4,800,000.0 for variance areas, I guess this is a mix of something that you have rolled out directly and CTFAST, but I don't know if there is any rent in the from from Orange so far. If you can if you can help us. And same rationale for the 9,200,000.0 and the 1,800,000.0 please. Thank you. So about the fiber rollout, just to remind you, you have 6,400,000 premises in the residential area. Half of them are made with Cityfast and the other half was made with SFR mainly in the past. Then you have the medium dense area, around 10,000,000 premises with orange. Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt, but just to understand. So you say 6.5 in very dense, but here you have indicated 4.8. So and you were saying the 6.5 half is done with SFR, half is done with CTFAS. So why we have SFR four has been done, I think, a few years ago. And now the difference between the four point eight and three point four is due to CityFast. And we are probably talking about Sorry. And the difference between the 6.5 over the total Veridex and the 4.8? That that will that will be made with CTFAST. Right. Also, the in the Medidant will be made in the future with with CTFAST. So everything that we mentioned will be made with CTFAST. And the existing the existing 4.8 is either with CTFAST or with SFR. Yeah. Oh oh oh, and a little bit orange. Right. But of this 4.8, how much is through CTFAST and how much is through basically granting with door and To to be if I'm taking the example of 6,500,000.0 you have €3,000,000 with SFR, but already 1,800,000.0 with Citi FACs, we go until 3,000,000 and then we go plus 500,000.0 with the range, and you have the 6,500,000.0 Is it clear? Yes. No. But I mean, my I guess, yeah, the the the question is, you know, just trying to understand what is your your business model moving into fiber and what is, you know, your value chain, what is what are the costs associated with with fiber connections? Because, I mean, you're you're you're you're taking a pretty, as you say, I mean, pragmatic approach, but you have a mix of different strategies. Right? I mean, I understand there is some very limited portion that has been done directly by yourself in the dense areas. There's lots of renting that you you plan to do also in the pin areas, and there's something that is off balance sheet. I would just like to understand what are the, let's say, costs you incur on average in the different areas. Is it sensible to assume that in any case, you're going to pay, in the vast majority of the areas, a wholesale fee comparable to the one asset is now indicated as in as, let's say, a cap to SFR. Is this a proxy we could take for you migrating customers to fiber on average in the entire country, or should we have, let's say, a more detailed approach? Thank you. Well, first of all, about the migration of the the market, you need to realize if you're looking at SFR, Orange no. We have we know the numbers of three Orange and Bouygues Telecom. As a trend today, SFR at 38 of their customer base which is already fiber. Orange is 35% and Bouygues Telecom is 34%. So we are in the same category. There is no one accelerating more than the other. It's a trend of the market. So that's first point. Second point now, the margins that you speak about. While the fiber is interesting, the revenue of the fiber will be higher than the revenue of the DSL. Does it cost money to migrate the DSL to fiber? Yes. It will depends of the areas. But if you're looking at, I would say, the London area, it's mainly loan approach to everyone because except Doron, which has a very big market share, all the other are small ones because we have capillarity and those kind of things. So the price is roughly the same as everyone. If you're looking at now the conditions that we have in the medium area, it's much more better due to SFR position now, which is back to orange level at quite good conditions. I mean, it's a little bit higher than the DSL, but not so far. And then you have a very dense area on which we have a direct integration with our partners, SFR its own. And if you're looking at with CTFAS, it's a very good pricing approach, so we have no problem there. Is it clear? And just one point, just I would like to remind you that for CTFAS, we don't pay a price per subscriber. This is a fixed price, and so it do not depend to our market share. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Jerry Dellis from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I had a question on telecom CapEx, please. I'd be interested in your guidance on the level of gross CapEx going forward and how that will vary based on your decision as to whether to build the new five g sites or to outsource that build. Following on from that, I'd be interested in the level of asset disposal proceeds that we might anticipate going forward as well. Second question has to do with the nonstandalone five g. Be interested in your thoughts on the performance of nonstandalone five g relative to your legacy four g network and whether you expect Orange in particular, which is not encumbered by legacy Huawei equipment, to also deploy five g in a nonstandalone form? And then finally, I'd be interested in the technical solution that you are applying in this nonstandalone rollout. Are you essentially putting non Huawei five gs RAN on top of a legacy Huawei four gs RAN? Thank you. So about I will answer to your question about CapEx and Usha will speak about your other points. So about CapEx, so today it's too early to give you any guidance to for 2021, but I will give you some more information. In 2021, we will have to take two decisions. The first one is the speed of rollout of our five gs network. And the second one is to FTTH acceleration either in the PIN area and also to, I will say, build the last major to link our customers to the FTTH network. These two things could impact our CapEx in 2021. It will depend on the speed of that. So it's very today too early to give you an indication for that. At the same time, I would like to remind you that we'll, of course, continue to roll out new sites to cover all our years. We'll continue to add four gs capacity. And we also add to Integra EIT, and we already said to you that it could cost us EUR 140,000,000 of capacity in our radio network to do that next year. We will also start the swap of our Huawei equipment. The government asked us to change to move Huawei out of 3,000 sites before 2028. So we'll begin to do that. And it cost us around €40,000,000 next year to do that. Well, so very difficult to answer to you, but I gave you, I think, the main point about that. Okay. So about disposals, I will just give you for this year, our main disposal was with the Astellix project. We sold one tranches of 5% to SDIS. We have we add also some disposals of sites telecommunication sites to Cellnex. Our levels of disposal is now EUR $222,000,000. It should be a bit higher than that at the end of the year, but no big difference. For 2021, we will sell our existing switch center to Cellnex according to the option agreement we have signed with them, I think it was two years ago. And this will lead to around €100,000,000 of disposal for 2021. Richard will answer to your other Okay. Concerning the good understanding about Bouygues Telecom architecture network, you need to realize that, in fact, today, Bouygues Telecom have a core network, which is mainly on different technology components, which are on Cisco, Ericsson, and Nokia. This is a core elements of the of the core network. And then you have the radio part on which Bouygues Telecom have historically a mix of Ericsson and Huawei. It's it's now a decision from from from the government about the fact that we have only a list of some cities in dense area on which we have to change the the Huawei, I would say, radio approach with with an Ericsson or a Nokia radio approach. So it's planning. It will take eight years, and it will it's only 3,000 sites on top of the 28,000 site we speak about. So it's a part of that. It's a work we already done in the past. We built that for Nortel. We did that for Crozon when we did it. So we know how to do it. It takes time and we need to do that carefully to have no impact on your customer. If you're looking at between standalone and non standalone. So it will be a standalone architecture based probably on Ericsson because it's where we have our core network, rather than to have a non standalone which is already in Ericsson. But I would say, the main difference of that is that if you have a standalone architecture, it takes time because you have to deploy data centers into your network to be able to speed up two things, the latency and then to have acceleration of capacity to support machine to machine technology. So it's a question of software release. It's only that. And the way you're managing you're managing the radio because you have some other features to speed up the capacity of the five g network using a features called beam forming or when you dedicate to somebody a part of your frequencies in a short time to accelerate the feeling to the customer to have higher speed. So all those things take time. That's the reason why you speak about 02/2023. So technology will be able probably at during 02/2021, but it will take between twelve to eighteen months to make it work. That's the reason why we speak about 02/2023. So don't forget, it's not an issue about Huawei. And I could tell you, stand alone or non stand alone, it will be a core network based on Ericsson and with some elements of Nokia. But it has nothing to see with Huawei. Huawei is on the radio on the antennas. Is it clear? Yes. That is clear. Thank you. Perhaps if I could just follow-up on one point, which is that currently consensus is modeling telecom CapEx, if we exclude the EIT, of about $1,000,000,000 net for 2021 and $1,100,000,000 in 2022 and 2023. Are those levels of net CapEx for Bouygues Telecom likely to be sufficient in your view? To be honest with you, it's it's a bit early now because we doesn't know exactly two elements. We doesn't know exactly about the speed up of the five g. We doesn't know exactly how the how the stakeholders would accept the fact that we deploy the five g. You know there is some bashing in France about the five g in the lot of cities. So we don't know how it will react. The perception of the customer, don't know today, who we're looking at. So to be honest with you, unfortunately, it's early. I think you need to wait a quarter to have better understanding about what will be our plans in the future. But for that, we never know. We speak to you about the acceleration of the of the FTTH. This is sure we know, and we know how it will work. And the fact we we don't know yet today, to be honest. Thank you very much. Too early. We haven't launched it. You know? It's not launched. Understood. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Eric Lumerie from Briongagnier. Please go ahead. Yes. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got four, but very small one, please. First one, relating to Colas. Should we expect for Colas further non current charges due to either reorganization or Dunkirk going forward and particularly in 2021? Still on Colas and this reorganization, what kind of impact should we expect from this reorganization on current operating margin next year, for instance? Third question on Bouygues Energy and Services. Could you be more specific regarding the level of current operating margin generated by Bouygues Energy and Services in Q3, please? The last question regarding this Dijon Smart City project you've been participating in. Could you give us any sense of the revenue generated so far by this Okay. Starting with your last question concerning Vision, the impact on revenue is very, very small. We are sharing that contract with several companies. So it's not significant at the Bouygues Energy level. So normally, what is the margin of Bouygues Energy and Services? In fact, we are during the third quarter, I think that the margin is in a range of 3.5%, which is material in terms of improvement considering the past level of profitability at the Energy and Services. And then the question was the non current charges as far as COLAs is concerned, no, we don't have any plan in order to increase the to have new noncurrent operating charges in 2021. But it's fairly normal because if should we have any project in that respect, we should have done that and put that in our account in our accounts already. But that doesn't mean we won't have some noncurrent charges next year. We will see. Although it will depend country by country, what is the level of activity and what we need to do in order to enhance the profitability. Yes. I understand that. But Dunkirk, for instance, will it be over next year? Or do you expect further charges from Dunkirk? Sorry, not yet in the line. It's a long term process. You know that we are developing how to revamp the site, to depollute the site. As we are discovering new things, are putting charge in that respect. But it will be in the we will see. We don't have any And regarding this reorganization on Colas, do you expect positive impact on margin due to that? The first thing, which it will mitigate part of the lack of revenue we will have during the first quarter in the first half of the year. Obviously, on the medium and long term basis, it's one of way we have identified in order to enhance the margins of Colas. And could you share with us the impact, I don't know, in terms of basis points we should expect from that? No. We are in the middle of the story. So it's also too early to know. All right. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you. The last question coming from the audio line comes from the line of Alexandre Rencier from Exane. Please go ahead. Hello and thank you for taking my question. I've got just two, if I may. First, just to come back on the Huawei switch. I saw I think it was last week or this week that you had some positive comments from the Europa Public to actually help you probably get compensation from the government. So I was just wondering if you had any news or any color on that. And then secondly, perhaps regarding Alstom and more broadly your dividend, given that the special was canceled earlier this year, is the recent capital and equity raise from Alstom now ended? Are you thinking differently about shareholder remuneration heading into next year? Thank you. Okay. About I would say the position of the the consolidated about our request concerning the non equity on this project, concerning five gs, Huawei so on. What I would say, we won a battle, but we don't want the war already. It will take two other stages. Normally, it will go to the Conseil Constitutionale. So it will take some weeks or months at least. Now that they recognize that there is a difference between two actors and the others. So we're expecting from some remedies and some compensations we will looking at. And if the con say of the con say constitutional is agree on that point, then the government will have to negotiate with us. So I would say it's good news. It has been a normal thing, I I believe. We we were thinking of it. And it would take some months, but we expect to to have some remedies. Yes. As far as our stock is concerned, our we won't tell you precisely what we'll do with the procedure in the future. But we have already repeated the same things. Our priorities are clear. Aim to develop our existing businesses. We want to maintain a strong financial structure. And then we will see what we could do in terms of return to shareholders. Intended earlier this year to have a specific return in that respect, but we will see when we have we will see in the next future what we do. Okay. That's very clear. Thank you very much. Not already decided. Perfect. Thanks. I'll now hand over for the webcast question. We have a webcast question coming from Akhil Zatani. What is the question? So what are the drivers behind the record Q3 Colas EBIT margin of 10%? Are there any one offs in there? There remains speculation around your potential M and A interest across the Construction and Energy segments. Can you update us how you think about your potential acquisition interest across these areas? And if you have any specific geographic focuses? And there is a third question always from Achilda Tani. Can you discuss the latest views on government infrastructure stimulus spend you anticipate in Europe and The U. S. As well as the extent to which you expect to be able to take advantage of this opportunity? Thank you. As far as M and A is concerned, you know that we have two priorities within our construction activities. The first one is to develop Energy and Services. I spoke earlier about this issue. We intend to enhance our activity in that respect. And we intend to develop our Colas activities, and we have some priorities in terms of geography. I would say that we would like to develop ourselves in Northern Europe, in Germany and in North America. That's the main priorities we have in that respect. I mentioned different time as far as the margin is concerned within Colas for the Q3, I mentioned that several times. We have very specific Q3 this year, which is linked to the resumption of activity at the beginning of summer and then a catch up of activity, which is quite important with Nicolas during the Q3. As you know, they have a lot of fixed costs. And so when you have extra activity, you enhance considerably the margin. And secondly, they had some compensation, mentioned that earlier. And then they have implemented some action plans in order to make savings in their organization. And the cumulative effect of these three type of facts induces the very high level of profitability during the third quarter. And your last question was related to stimulus plans in France and elsewhere. Let's say that we have some plans which are announced in Europe, France and the EU budget. And we have also important plans in The U. S. We don't know precisely how it will be implemented due to the election, but we are sure that something will be done in that respect. So we are confident that these similar plans will enhance the activity of Colas and Bouygues Construction in the future. As I told you, not during the 2021, probably during the second part of the year. Thank you. I'll hand now over to the speakers for any concluding remarks. Okay. Thank you for joining us today. We will be announcing our full year 2020 sales and earnings on 02/18/2021. Should you have any questions, please contact our Investor Relations team. Their contact information is on the press release on our website. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes week nine months twenty twenty results conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now