Good morning, thank you for attending this presentation of the half-year results. We'll tell you about our main figures and achievements for the half-year, as well as the ramp-up of some of the initiatives taken as part of the Horizons program. Then the outlook for the rest of the year. We will take a look at some of the key figures. Olivier Champourlier, our CFO, will give you more details about that. We'll move on to recent developments with the Horizons program. Then the outlook for 2026. Let's start with the main lessons learned from this half-year. Revenue for Q2 stands at EUR 615 million. That's a total growth of 4.9% compared with -2.4% in Q1 of last year.
If we look at organic growth, I don't know if you attended previous sessions, but that is indeed the main criterion that makes all the difference. The differentiating factors our service compared to others is organic growth in 3% to be compared with -1.4% in Q1. We are returning to growth, which is noteworthy. Olivier will tell you more about that. If you look at all three geographical areas, the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific, indeed in the four main audiences, we are growing on all four fronts. That's the first time ever since I've been here, at least since 2023. Anyway, if you look at the numbers, though, revenue stands at EUR 1.170 billion. That's 1.3% up, including 0.8% of organic growth. This means throughout the first half year, we've been growing organically.
If you look at sales, new orders, most of which will be performed this year, they were up 1.6% compared to Q2 of last year. If you combine that with Q1, which was up 1% compared to 2025, we're looking at a growth in our order book for 2026. Our order book is up 1.2% compared to the same period last year. The main growth drivers for H2 come to increase that trend. In public affairs, we're having a rising demand in our orders, which shows the countercyclical aspect of public affairs. There's significant traction with the CPG clients. We've seen it in Q1, and this is confirmed in Q2. Then a rebound in China as well in terms of orders. There are two boosters which were not as clearly seen in Q1.
Acceleration of business in pharmaceutical companies, that applies both to syndicated surveys indeed ad hoc surveys and market surveys for anything to do with oncology and we'd call GLP-1. Finally, in the U.K., sustained growth in Q2. This is all the more remarkable because our public affairs business in the U.K. is significant. Knowing the political instability in the U.K., including a change of prime ministers this year, goes to show we have very resilient business in the U.K. I'll give the floor now to Olivier Champourlier, who will give you more color on these figures by market, by territory indeed the various items of our figures.
Thank you, Jean-Laurent. Good morning to all. Thanks for joining us. Let's start with the breakdown of revenue by region. As Jean-Laurent presented, organic growth revenue came in at +3% in Q2, a net rebound versus the Q1 negative at 1.3%. We're ending the first half with organic growth of 0.8%. It's notable to see that all regions in Q2 returned to positive organic growth. That's a significant improvement over the situation at the beginning of the year. EMEA is posting revenue growth of 5.6%, of which organic growth of 0.5%. That's accelerated because we're at 0.1% in Q1 and 0.9% in Q2. Total growth of EMEA was positively impacted during the half by the consolidation of The BVA Family.
You'll recall that this is a group that we acquired last year and that was consolidated a few days at the end of June in H1 2025 and fully so in the first half of 2026. Positive scope effect of the integration of The BVA Family offset by the exit of Russia, representing 4% of the region in the first half of 2025. Unfavorable Forex, notably linked to pound sterling. Organic growth on the EMEA region is penalized by slowdown in the Middle East, but a limited impact of several million EUR at the end of June. The Americas posting organic growth of 0.7% in H1. LATAM is solid, 6.3%. North America organic growth is stable at the end of the half. In the U.S., we note several contract wins in public affairs, driving recovery in the second half.
Asia Pacific, this region is posting 2% organic growth on first six months of the year, benefiting from a sustained recovery of activity in China. This uptick is driven by the spend of local clients in the tech and automotive sectors, as well as major international clients for consumer goods. This geography's benefited from innovative offers developed in China, notably those that incorporate AI. Like the regions, we see the same momentum when we look at growth across audiences in second half. We see that all audiences delivered positive growth in Q2. All in all, we have growth during the half of 0.8%. Diving deeper, consumers, clients, and employees, total growth of 0.6% in the Q1 and close 2% in Q2.
Activity is driven particularly by our service lines linked to innovation as well, optimizing marketing spend, reflecting corporate resolve to accelerate their launches and maximize the success of their investment. Our activities focused on citizens is posting strong organic growth close to 8% in Q2, driven by contract wins over several years. This performance confirms the countercyclical nature of the business and the renewed interest of public and private decision-makers for a better understanding of citizens. Also, Ipsos' ability to conduct large-scale complex surveys with robust face-to-face collection, also through telephone interviews. Lastly, doctors, patients audience sharply up too, with organic growth close to 3% in Q2, reflecting the good commercial momentum of that service line. The pharma sector is driven by oncology innovation, also in rare diseases and GLP-1 obesity treatment too.
I'd like to recall that our Ipsos.Digital Platform continues to record double digit growth over the Q2 level, similar to that of Q1. Initiatives are underway to continue to grow the number of surveys conducted on this platform. We're going to enrich the platform with further functionalities in H2. Let's now move to the income statement. Having discussed revenue, I'd like to tell you about the gross margin. Gross margin coming in at 67.7% on the half against 68.4% in H1 2025, and a level almost equivalent to that achieved during full year 2025. The drop in our gross margin of 70 basis points in Q1 is due to two things. Dilutive effect of the integration of The BVA Family, leading to an impact of 30 basis points, but also effects linked to our business mix for 40 basis points.
Growth was more sustained this year over last year through public affairs projects, whose method collection face-to-face, by phone, has a lower gross margin. Turning to operating costs. Personnel costs up 1.2% in the half due to acquisition. This increase remains slightly lower than that of revenue growth, is continuing to adapt its cost structure with effects that were down 1% since the start of the year. General expenses down 2.2% on the half. This reflects savings achieved as part of continued cost optimization efforts. Lastly, you have other expenses in the income statement, a balance of EUR 10.9 million. That's essentially severance costs. For H1, the operating margin comes in at 7.9%, down 40 basis points over H1 last year. As with every year, it's important to note the seasonality of this activity will lead to a markedly higher profitability in H2.
Lastly, the operating margin below you have other non-recurring costs, a negative balance of EUR 19 million, EUR 11 million of which are depreciations linked to IT development projects that we've halted. That's part of the reorganization of group CapEx focused on more tech initiatives as part of our Horizons strategic plan. It also includes EUR 6 million in reorganization costs following acquisitions and managerial change. In conclusion, adjusted net profit attributable to the group, EUR 1.66, pretty much stable versus that of H1 2025. Turning now to free cash flow. EUR 145 million gross operating cash flow in H1 2026, up EUR 6.8 million. Change in working cap is negative to the tune of EUR 6 million, in line with the seasonality of our activity. PPE, intangible and financial assets, EUR 33.5 million. That's essentially IT infrastructure as well as tech infrastructure.
Just to focus on net interest paid up by just over EUR 13 million, reflects the payment of the first coupon of the bond issue that we raised last year. The first interest payment was disbursed in January this year for EUR 14 million. We generated a free cash flow, FCF, of EUR 44.4 million, up EUR 4.6 million versus the same period last year. Under free cash flow, you have key financial items such as share buybacks for a total of EUR 54 million of it, EUR 11.2 million share buybacks for employee free shares, and also EUR 43 million of share buybacks for cancellations. The group financial position. Ipsos has a particularly strong balance sheet. Our net debt versus June 30, 2025, is reduced down to EUR 225 million. Our leverage remains very low at 0.5 x EBITDA.
The group continues to post excellent liquidity, with over EUR 450 million of undrawn credit lines with maturities over one year and no major maturity for Ipsos before 2030. This financial structure is a key asset to drive the execution of our strategic plan Horizons. Lastly, I would like to conclude this financial presentation to remind you that our good financial performance goes to a record return to shareholders. We distributed a dividend of EUR 2 per share, up 8% over last year. In parallel, we continued to execute our share buyback program for cancellation. As at July 22nd, we have achieved half this plan for EUR 50 million. We are going to continue to execute this plan to reach EUR 100 million for FY 2026.
This shareholder return policy is made possible through the strength of our cash generation, the quality of our balance sheet, and our low level of debt. Thank you for your attention. Back to Jean-Laurent.
Well, thank you, Olivier. Let us look at the latest developments in the Horizons program. Horizons is the name we give to our strategy that we announced back in January. It has been fully designed now, and it has been implemented for the past two quarters. Looking at the past half year, we are already seeing some of the results, and we are now looking forward to H2. We are implementing a strategy. This business is all about collecting, processing, analyzing data, and that very much involves artificial intelligence, which goes to show we are going to invest in analytical tools, either on behalf of our customers or our own production teams, whose work is augmented by AI, combined, of course, with the expertise of our own people.
This is also due to our need to be fast and to complete most of our surveys in under 48 hours. This strategic plan is also based on Ipsos' global footprint and in view of all the capital expenditure we have engaged in, but indeed all the work on surveys involving artificial intelligence. We were able to capitalize on such investment in all territories. I will give you an illustration of this, and this is an area very much in demand on the part of our customers, and that is understanding, especially for CPG clients, but there are other areas as well. Large language models such as GPT, Claude, or Mistral, what these LLMs tell about their products or their brands. There is a company called Synthesio, which we acquired. It works on social media, and it is known for its ability to process data.
We have one area in particular for CPG clients. Through these surveys, we read the languages, but we see what questions are asked by customers of this CPG company. Finally, the answers that are produced by the LLM model. Based on that, we can see on what source these answers are provided. We keep updating this for the customer so that at the end of the day, we can bear some influence to bear on the image of these customers. What's being said about the companies on social media and LLMs is also being used in the public sphere. This is not just for the private sector. A case in point is the European Commission. We've been working with them. We've been supporting it in its ability to monitor in real time what's being said about it in social media worldwide.
We use AI aid to listen, analyze, and learn lessons, as well as emerging risks related to this or that publication or the implementation of this or that regulation, or indeed, any other events related to European policies. We combine this with the expertise of our people who are very much specialized in European policies, with a view to providing a summary which is then produced to the European Commissioners so that they can see the results of the day's developments on the image of the Commission and of European institutions. We can produce results that are produced in real time. Every single morning, we provide that report to European Commissioners, and Ipsos is the platform that makes it possible to meet these speed requirements, but also which meets the differentiation requirements.
Now we are coming up with a new function, which is moderation with artificial intelligence, meaning when you run a discussion group on this or that product or this or that societal issues with human moderators or when we conduct interviews, not just asking questions and checking boxes or quantitative answers, but an actual verbal exchange. Well, that which is now being done by human operators, we are also now using agentic AI to do the same. We provided new functions in the assessment of commercials, of advertising. These functions make it possible to design faster, new advertising concepts prior to their launching. There's yet another development.
We try and run communities of respondents that have a shared interest, indeed to enhance our ability to conduct surveys with our own customers, not just the Ipsos panels, which are automatically activated when we launch a survey through the Ipsos.Digital Platform. In other words, we improve the offer of globally managed services. These services are indeed rolled out globally. To a large extent, these services are supported by the Ipsos.Digital Platform. Now, on product innovation, that's the processes whereby new concepts or new products are created by customers, but they want to test them out, the new products or prototypes, before they start mass marketing them. What we've done is, in Q2, we launched what is known as Product Studio. This is a platform that speeds up the match between new products and customers' desires.
We have statistical inferences. In other words, we increase the number of responses from human responses, then AI can generate summaries of what these tests arrived at. Also, we can have more sophisticated cross-analysis, and we make it possible for customers to discuss in natural languages the data that we provide. All this is done in much faster time, and to a much more detailed level. This is an indicator of our transformation. Indeed, we've appointed one of our most experienced leaders. He was the CEO of Ipsos France, but he was one of our leaders in the U.S., and he had operating responsibilities there.
His name is Alexandre Guérin , and he is in charge of this acceleration program, which is basically transforming the tools we provide to our people and which we use for our service to reduce the lead time to less than 48 hours, to complete surveys in under 48 hours. This is being launched. We finalized the charter. We have a roadmap, and we know exactly how we will in H2 2026 and indeed in 2027, how we will meet our objectives under Alexandre's stewardship. The outlook for 2026 then clearly, the first achievements of H1, resumption of growth, we now expect a stronger business in H2 than in H1. Well, first, because the initiatives I've just illustrated with a few examples from the Horizons program, these will be scaled up.
We will be rolling out globally managed services worldwide because we have all our teams and all our territories working on that. We've also enriched the functions of the digital services, we also significantly promoting this commercially so as to support and speed up this double digit growth. Solutions provided by AI, give you a few examples there, but there are new initiatives making it possible for all our staff to have tools that using AI can improve productivity. There are specific initiatives for China. In particular, we're using AI there, but we're also using it in the U.S. where we capitalize on the way that business model is being technologicalized. This will result in terms of improved order book for H2. We also expect that we will be spending more time with our large accounts.
All of this means that we expect our business to step up in H2 in a market environment which has been hampered by the protracted conflict in the Middle East and the uncertainty as to its outcome. We have seen here and there a wait and see attitude on the part of our customers. That was not the case at the beginning of the conflict. Now we have seen some programs being postponed. It's not very significant as yet, but there has been a downwards revision of growth outlook by the IMF from 3.3%- 3%, so 30 basis points right there, with a significant increase, 1.1% in H2. This means that for the whole year, we're looking at organic growth about 2%.
We may remember that initially we were looking at between 2% and 3%, with keeping costs under control, our operating margin should be similar to what it was in 2025. That's what I had to say about the outlook for H2 2026. On 23 October, we will present the numbers for Q3. Now if you have any questions at all, this is your chance to ask them.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to ask a question, please press star eight on your keyboard. Question number one comes from Marie-Line Fort from Bernstein . Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I hope you can hear me loud and clear. Right there. Regarding your order book, it has been growing at end of June. How does that translate in terms of revenue expected for the full year? Question number two is about the development of ancillary activities. You mentioned that during Capital Markets Day. Where do you stand now? Where are things going? Are we looking also at possible acquisitions in 2026? Question number three regarding the share buyback program. Part of that will be for the benefit of employees and others will be canceled. When do you propose to cancel the shares that you propose to buy back?
Well, thank you, Marie-Line, for these three questions. I'll answer question number one and number three. Regarding the order book, we did point out that the increase stood at 1.2% at end of June, and that accounts for 75% of our annual revenue. You can do the math. That answers question number one. Regarding the share buyback program, as of 22 July, we're halfway through. We've purchased EUR 50 million worth of shares, by the end of the year, we propose to buy back the rest, the balance. We propose to cancel all these shares by year's end. As to the question regarding external growth and acquisitions that might enable us to strengthen our ancillary activities. Well, we started an acquisition strategy. This was a message heard by a number of companies that might be targeted.
We've been talking with intermediaries and bankers. We have a deal flow. Talks are underway, but of course before anything happens, I cannot divulge much, but the main categories of acquisitions are technological bricks that will enable us to buy what we will not be able to build by ourselves, to implement our strategy using artificial intelligence and other technological tools. There are other acquisitions that enable us to go to neighboring markets, and particularly anything relating to data analysis and the integration of multiple sources for our customers. Sources not just provided by Ipsos itself, but our customers' first-party data and indeed external sources from other origins. The third type of acquisitions are those that look like Ipsos, but in markets where we propose to broaden our footprint by acquiring companies that are engaged in the same business.
Regarding the ancillary activities, and indeed that's what refers to data integration and analysis. We don't even have to have acquisitions because we've already strengthened that business using data labs with data scientists and AI experts who work on behalf of our customers, and this has improved our ability to provide predictive services based on analytics in a number of areas. Regarding prices, rates, do you find that rates are going up? Is that an impediment, or in fact, do you believe that this is a chance for you to seize pricing opportunities? Well, this varies from case to case. You have to remember that Ipsos is an extremely broad company in terms of services. There are 16 business lines.
Indeed, 70 separate types of offers, but on highly competitive markets, there is pressure on prices. Where we have engaged in significant capital expenditure and when that investment has been scaled up, we have found that our ability to provide services faster and cheaper in terms of unit prices, this usually is, of course, compensated by higher volumes. Of course, if customers may have views on more markets, more detail on brand perception, well, then they turn to us if they want higher volumes. A case in point with the Ipsos.Digital, when we find that Ipsos.Digital makes it possible to have a lower unit price in terms of per question asked say, the increased volumes more than makes up for these lower prices.
Next question, Emmanuel Chevalier from CIC CIB.
Yeah. Hi, Jean-Laurent. Hi, Olivier. I hope you can hear me.
Yeah, we hear you.
Very good. Thanks for the presentation. A few follow-up questions. Just return to the order book, you said that it's accelerating in March. When we look at the order book, we have the impression that we remained on the March level. When I read the release, it seems to be accelerating further. Can you give us color on the trend, April, May, June? Second question would be to return. Could you explain what the EUR 11.6 million of depreciation linked to IT projects? Just to kind of illustrate and give us some illustration type of project, because the amounts are quite sizable on the projects that were halted?
The final more on the use of cash on this half. We see a decrease in CapEx. Seems to me that in your plan between acquisition of CapEx, we're looking at stability of CapEx versus the previous pace. Does that mean that your AI CapEx is more in OpEx at CapEx? If we could have some color on that. Thanks.
Fine. We give information on the order book in the Q1. We gave some in Q2. The commercial dynamic is good across the quarter. We're not going to give monthly numbers, otherwise it becomes too specific, and it's not very relevant because our business is a degree of volatility. The only thing I would repeat is perhaps more over the past six weeks, we're seeing markets in which clients are beginning to say, "Shouldn't we wait a bit?" It doesn't mean that all in all, purchasing decisions are canceled, there's a form of wait and see. We consider that full year will be seeing an H2 that will fare better than H1, so it's a positive dynamic.
Secondly, regarding depreciations, of course, without going into the detail, essentially it's one project that we n oted would not be delivering expected results and two tech assets of a smaller size that ceased to be utilized at scale, we considered it would more reasonable to hold them, that was the technical side, and therefore to depreciate a s to CapEx, OpEx of investment in AI, Olivier, I'll discuss this section. Indeed, the CapEx level in H1 is lower than last year. There were two factors to be borne in line. Last year in H1, there was a kind of one-off effect. We acquired a platform, for this year, half of the drop is a one-off effect of a purchase.
The rest is also linked to our redeployment of our tech strategy. We paused a number of programs that are currently being redeployed, this CapEx drop H1 doesn't reflect what will happen over the coming quarters. In H2, we'll return to a CapEx level in line with last year's. Concerning AI investment, indeed, there are a number of costs, such the token costs that shift to OpEx and that are not capitalized. Perhaps a word more generally on the work undertaken as part of Horizons focused on AI solutions and tech platforms. We've done a substantial path of work with the advent of Nathan Brumby as Chief Technology Officer to revisit everything. We've worked with the board. These are substantial investments and now have a strategic framework to know exactly where we're going to be redeploying to and what is of lower priority.
We have increased clarity to redeploy our investment than to leverage or to move to OpEx, depending on the nature of the expenditure.
Next question comes from Davide Amorim from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for this presentation. I had three questions, and I hope you can hear me loud and clear. All right then. Question number one, you said that acceleration in H2 will be basically driven by such new initiatives as AI solution, GMS solutions. What other developments are you expecting for your legacy portfolio? Can you tell us how much of your revenue is covered by such core business? Another question, Q2 showed a significant performance in the Americas, and that was driven by the business public. Sorry, public affairs. Can you give us color about the rest of the business without including public affairs? Then regarding China, you give us some idea about Q2 and H2, what sort of acceleration are you looking there? Geopolitical developments are hardly encouraging there.
Do you think you will gain market share vis-a-vis the competition? Can you give us color on that? Thank you.
Regarding growth and the share of growth related to global managed services, digital services, indeed, enhanced businesses with our large accounts, that is commercial efficiency both in the Americas and in China. That is indeed where we expect the largest growth. I gave you other examples. The pharmaceutical industry was a case in point. This is another growth driver, although this is not strictly speaking related to Horizons. There is more business, as I said by way of introduction, that is fairly evenly distributed in terms of geographies, in terms of audiences. Of course, that is being, as it were, enhanced by Horizons. GMS is worth several hundred million EUR. Ipsos.Digital is worth just under EUR 200 million. The commercial business with large accounts. If you look at our main, most of the key account managers are working with say about 25 large accounts.
Regarding business in the U.S., outside public affairs. Well, public affairs indeed is, of course, a significant portion of our business in the U.S. Of course, we look at the business as a whole, and we don't want to leave out public affairs. Of course, there are a number of developments in other contracts, but it doesn't make much sense to leave out one contract and look at the rest of the business. We look at the business as a whole, and that business as a whole picked up in Q2 and remained stable at the end of H1. Regarding China, to answer that last question, we have been seeing stepped-up business in China, and that was quite significant in Q2. In terms of revenue recognition, this trend has been confirmed.
Last year, actually, we started a number of initiatives, new platforms involving artificial intelligence, meeting new market needs, enabling us to grow faster than the market. We're in a position to confirm that indeed we were able to secure gains in market shares in China. Indeed, in the advertising portion, we have seen stepped-up business in China. Macro-economic developments have not affected our business in China. Regarding China, I was not long ago in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. We had to give a presentation to about 400 clients. Technological innovation, artificial intelligence, not only enable us to support strong growth in China, where we are, in fact, the leading player in this industry. But also this has enabled us to understand what is going on at, as it were, one of the edges of technology with artificial intelligence, which enables us to measure what we can do worldwide.
Next question. Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Yes, sir. Hi. Three questions from my side, if I may. First question, just to reconcile expectations in terms of organic growth during H2 globally in line with Q2 of the order of 3% with the order book growth, which is half less during Q2, and just your comments about clients being a bit more wait and see. For six weeks just to kind of reconcile the expected consensus there, the expected growth for H2. Second question, could we have more granularity on growth, notably in China during quarters one and two, U.K. for Q2, and North America for Q2? Third question, more for Olivier, if we could. The non-recurring costs, restructuring costs that weren't expected in H1 versus EUR 19 million in H1? Thanks.
On H2 growth, Olivier said we have about three quarters of the order book to be executed in the year that was booked during H1, so there's one quarter remaining. I repeat the fact that our revenue produced on the one hand, about 75% of our activity already booked with total growth of H1 at 1.2%, and what will be booked as new orders and executed in H2 will amount to about 2% growth. As to what will drive this growth, you asked about China, U.K., North America. I'd say that we're expecting to see growth across the three regions, but we're giving our numbers on broader areas that are America, Europe, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Olivier, do you want to just give more detailed geographic growth and non-recurring costs?
First point, quarterly growth, if you do the math, we have revenue growth 0.8% at the end of the half. To land at around 2%, need to continue to grow by about 3% over the next two quarters. At a level equivalent to what we saw in Q2. That's the math to land around 2%, continue to grow the revenue at 3% equivalent level in Q3. As to the growth of Q2. In the U.K., we have broadly similar growth to Q2 versus Q1, the Americas acceleration, as we showed America + 5.5%, and inside there's the U.S. On China, we have growth that's broadly similar. It was already very quite high in Q1 for revenue, and it continued on the same trend. On the restructuring costs, there were restructuring costs, EUR 19 million in H1.
Included in that, we have EUR 11.6 million that concern the depreciation of IT projects. We're not expecting to continue to book a similar level in H2. We've performed a full review of our IT projects. We're not expecting an equivalent level of depreciation in terms of amounts in H2. Just to specify on the wait and see, I spoke about a kind of one-off wait and see. It wasn't as material up until about six weeks ago, but it remains one-off.
The final question from Emmanuel Matot from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Jean-Laurent and Olivier. Sorry, I came in a bit late this morning. Did you say why public affairs seem to be declining? You said you had more contracts, you have budget restrictions in those geographies where you offer the services. About the digital platform, would it make sense for Ipsos to join forces with AI models now being developed in companies? Finally, the question about The BVA Family. Did you achieve the synergies, do you find there's still dilutions on the profitability of that business?
Regarding public affairs, that business line, we find that we have a unique ability to win and indeed, execute contracts with high operating efficiency, not just online, but also on the phone and indeed in actual presence in a number of countries, including Britain, France, and many other countries. That unique feature means that this particular business is not as fragmented as is, well, at the other end of the spectrum when we do product tests or advertising tests where you have almost individual tickets. Here, we're looking at large size contracts. I've mentioned the work we do on the daily basis for the European Commission. One reason why public affairs, that business is so buoyant is that we can not only just win, but actually execute contracts which gain significant increments of our revenue per contract.
Regarding our ability to process data using Ipsos.Digital, and more generally, our ability to work with AI players, there's one item, a point I need to remind you. I can't go through this point- by- point, but the main 10 technological players, they are, of course, very much involved in AI. There's complementarity in between what expertise we provide, especially through our panels and access to respondents, which, of course, these individual technological players do not have direct access to these respondents, and our rigorous process to select respondents and avoid issues, say, of frauds or that can affect the quality of responses means that we have a very good relationship with these people, good complementarity, which can open up new lines of business if and when the situation arises.
As to the last question about the integration of The BVA Family, the one thing we should remember is that The BVA Family was acquired at the end of June 2025. That was essentially being implemented in France, Italy, and the U.K. When we made that acquisition, our business plan, well, the business plan then has been basically fully implemented by end of June. There is some dilution. It makes sense on H1 because if you compare H1 2026 with BVA compared with H1 2025, where the business was only consolidated for six days, and so last year there was only EUR 6 million consolidated in H1, which is almost insignificant. Last year when we gave our numbers, there was a 50 basis dilution effect, a basis point dilution effect. We don't have the dilution effect this year because you only have BVA fully consolidated.
Of course, if you compare the situation where it was not there at all, of course, you will mathematically have some dilution, but that effect is slowly but surely vanishing, and it will be completely absorbed by year's end. This absorption is being done according to plan. The teams have been merged. The people work basically in the same premises in most of our countries. As I said, everything is going according to plan. That is the full implementation of our development plan. As to the integration of BVA, if I may add, we've worked on the similar cases before. Ipsos is in a position precisely because it was, to a large extent, built through the acquisition of as many as 150 companies in its existence. In Ipsos, there's a common technological backbone to integrate all companies.
Both at back office level and indeed in operating integration, we find that the integration of teams is working satisfactory and will deliver the objective of our business plan. I would like to thank you for your attention and for your questions, and we'll see you again on the 23rd of October. Thank you.