Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this Casino de Paris. We know that this is somewhere that is actually part of our portfolio with [Mr. Jean Rendreg], who is somewhere here as well. We have 3 areas. You would actually be able to see that this is such a beautiful place, the Folies Bergère, Casino de Paris. We also have an event space in Bordeaux as well. I'm going to be giving the floor to Pauline straight away, who will be opening up the SMB, and then I will be speaking to you afterwards, so we can talk about how 2025 will look into the rearview mirror. We will also have a surprise in the middle. Pauline, over to you.
Thank you very much, Arnaud. Ladies and gentlemen, we are here at the Casino de Paris for the meeting.
This is here with Mr. Arnaud Lagardère, the interpreter. In this, we have got the different scrutineers in accordance with the law, the scrutineers are the two shareholders present holding the highest number of votes. These are Louis Hachette Group, which is represented by Mr. Jean-Christophe Thiery, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Vivendi S.A., represented by [Mr. François Canavaggio], who is the Director of Securities and Corporate Law. I will, in accordance with the appointment of the chairman and the scrutineers, I select a secretary to this meeting. The provisional attendance figures were finalized a few minutes ago, and I will share them with you before we go to voting, and these are going to be definitive.
Here for, We've got 1,700 shareholders, and we're looking at 132,367, which means that we've got 92.7%. You can see that quorum is exceeded because we need to have at least 20%, so we've got 1,782 here. All of the documents that will be sent to you, have been done so within the statutory time limit. Some of these documents are being tabled today at the meeting. I will just quickly go through them. We're looking at the articles of association of the company, the notice of meeting published on the 25th of February, 2026, the notice of meeting published on the 17th of April, 2026.
In the same bulletin, we've got the letter of invitation that was sent to the statutory auditors and the auditors responsible for certifying information. The report prepared, as well as the information required under articles of the commercial code. We've also got the information relating to Grant Thornton, the firm appointed for appointment as statutory auditors. Notice of meeting and the 2025 universal registration document. The meeting is divided to deliberate on the agenda set out on which will be, there we go, on page 26 of the notice of meeting, which you may view on your voting tablet. We'll be looking at 11 points, resolutions 1 and 2, which are the approval of the 2025 annual and consolidated financial statements. Resolution 3, the appropriation of the company's profits and the payment of a dividend.
Resolution 4, the appointment of Grant Thornton as statutory auditor for a term of 6 financial years. Resolution 5, the non-renewal and non-replacement of Forvis Mazars as statutory auditor responsible for certifying sustainability information. Resolution 6 to 9, the approval of remuneration packages awarded to corporate officers for the 2025 financial year and the remuneration policies for 2026. We've also got Resolution 10, the renewal of the share buyback program for 18 months, and Resolution 11, the powers required for formalities. Following these opening formalities, Arnaud Lagardère will outline the group situation, performance, and strategy. We've also got the financial statements for the 2025 financial year, which were presented by Mr. Grégoire Castaing. You will then hear a presentation on the group's commitments to sustainable development by Ms. Céline Soubranne, the group's CSR Director.
Then there will be a presentation on governance and the activities of the board of directors and its committees, which will be given by Ms. Valérie Hortefeux and Ms. Véronique Morali, who are chairwomen of the two committees that I mentioned, so CSR and audit. Finally, you will hear a summary of the various reports issued by the statutory auditors responsible for certifying the financial statements and sustainable information. We will then move on to the question and answer session, for which we have allocated approximately 30 minutes before concluding with the votes of the 11 resolutions submitted for your approval. Thank you for your thing, and I would like to give the floor back to Arnaud. The interpreter apologizes she cannot hear the speaker.
Here we go. I'm here with two new faces.
I'll start with the first one, Valérie Hortefeux, who was appointed last year by you during the board meeting. She is part of the board as the president of the chair rather, of the CSR Committee. We've also got Véronique Morali who is a loyal amongst loyals. He we've got going on this side, who is our CFO, and he is in charge of everything, really. He is someone who is wonderful, I imagine that you think about the great Philippes and Dominiques of our past, and we have got the crème de la crème, best of the best here with us. Thank you very much. We've got Pauline Hauwel, who doesn't need to be introduced now.
We then have Maxime Saada, who you know as he's the Vice-President of the Lagardère group, and he's come with the Canal+ team. That's about three-quarters of the room. We've got Anna Marsh, who is in charge of StudioCanal. You will actually have a presentation given later on, which will be very interesting and also very important for us, yes. We've got Jean-Christophe Thiery, who has an impressive CV. He's president of everyone, chair of everyone, and also chair himself. Thank you very much, [Pierre Zétié]. We've also those of you who are shareholders of Louis Hachette Group, you'll see him this afternoon for example. 25 years of us together. We've got a new face as well. It's Frédéric Chevalier, who has taken over from Dag.
We actually have a leaving do because Dag is leaving us, we would like to thank him for everything that he's brought to I'll actually touch on this later. Before talking about the presentation, I also want to just talk about a lot of members of the board. Most of them are here in front of me. From representatives of the Bolloré is, unfortunately, not He is not here. He apologizes for this. I would like to thank him for all of the support that he gives us on a daily basis, also the synergies that allow us to to With us, we've also got our shareholder and our reference shareholder, as we say, we should say. It's very advantageous, we've got Cyril Bolloré. Cyril is with us.
He's just 40 years old, which is wonderful. This is also wonderful for the group in the long run. We know that Cyril has worked a lot with the This is an activity that wasn't very well with Vivendi. This was not the case. You should be very happy with this. They're completely absorbed and completely concentrated 100% on performance and financial. Why? Because our main raw material are the 34,000 people. We are working on performance. We look at the different cash that we have. We also have wonderful people working with us to boost the performance. I want this to be as clear as possible. I also want to ensure that it hasn't been that I have regretted this marriage with Vincent Bolloré.
I want this to be very clear. We're completely in line with the Bolloré family. We are doing wonderfully well. You will see this. We see this year in, year out records, I think that it is actually the solidarity that we have with the Lagardère, with the Bolloré family that is important. Obviously, they're going to have to learn to live with it. Pauline, I think that you have a film that you wanted to show us. I think it's about 6 or 7 minutes max, this is going to be looking at the different events that have happened recently over the past few months, taken into consideration by Jean-Christophe Thiery. We are looking at the Hachette, Well, we're celebrating the 200 years of Louis Hachette.
Let's have a look at the film, and then we'll be back.
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I will just quickly I actually forgot 2 people, my dear Arnaud. I'm so sorry, Arnaud de Puyfontaine. Who is next to you, we've got Fatima Fikree as well, who is representing Qatar Holding. Qatar Holding, who actually is going to be celebrating its 20th year within the group. 20 years of loyalty, 20 years of support with us. I would like to thank Fatima as well as Qatar Holding. Thank you, Fatima. You have been essential to our board since then. I think that the presentation is probably going to be behind us. Let's start with the key figures. Notably, what I was saying before is our real key factor here, our success factor. It is the people who are working with us and the people who make us day in, day out, the group that we are.
You can see the splits on the screen. The essential is within travel retail. We have 67% in Lagardère Travel Retail, and then we have 21% in Lagardère Publishing. We also have a very women-heavy population with a slightly different split if you look at the different groups, because obviously we have, and this is very positive, but we have roles that are a little bit more feminine than others, especially publishing. You can see here that we have a huge majority, 64% or 74%, which means that we actually have more women than men. If we look at the geographical split here, you can see how this is working across. We've got the 33,000 people working across the globe. We're there in Europe and then in the Americas. We've got France as well.
We've only got 17% of our workers in France. That's about 17,000, 6,000. Then we've got a couple of them in Asia, in Oceania and in Africa as well. That just gives you an idea of the split of where all of our employees are. Obviously, we are a French group and we enjoy the fact that we're a French group, but you can see their activities and our employees are actually split across the globe and most of them are abroad. If I continue now just for the turnover, we've got most of it coming in from Travel Retail. You can see that we don't have huge margins and this is why recurring EBIT is relatively similar, even though this is changing. The rest is on Publishing.
We've got a little bit here where it's not actually that little, it's Lagardère Live, but I will be going into details with later. We look at the split, once again, the geographical splits for the revenue, you can see it in reality. The biggest country is probably France with the U.S. and now it's the U.S. that's above France. We also have Europe, 43%, and this is Europe not including France. We have a small part in Asia as well, 5%, and Latin America, which means that we can say that there is opportunity for growth in these regions. We're also very cautious as well. We know that these countries aren't that easy to manage from France, which means that we're very cautious for these different geographical zones, especially in the morning.
You can see most of our group is actually in the U.S. or in Europe, generally speaking here. I spoke earlier about the record results that we have. We can see them on this side. We've got COVID here, which is the dip. You can see that we're now historically, we're doing better in terms of the results for the group when we can. This is a factor that is wonderful. This is the, for the 32,000 who work for us. If we look branch by branch, here this information is available on the websites as well. You can have a look at this. I'm not going to comment on it in details. I just want to show you here we're actually above EUR 3 billion for publishing, and then after this, we had an exceptional year for COVID.
Or for after COVID, rather. We saw a wonderful bounce back. We were able to cover good ground. Now therefore we have got a recurring EBIT that is above EUR 300,000, and we hope that we'll be able to increase this year and year out. If we look at travel retail as well, once again, we've come above another bar with EUR 6 billion. Look at this bounce back. This is incredible. It's unfortunate that Dag is not here. I know that Dag likes these figures and will like these figures from where he is. We were very complicated for us in 2020, and five years ago or even 10 years ago, we could see that travel retail, hopefully, will get to the same levels soon.
You can see, this is what I'm going to show you now, we've got publishing that is on the slide. We had publishing that was flat, even though each year, as we mentioned, it's something that's not easy to do. We also have travel retail. Travel retail that started here from the COVID year, which was very low. Historically, this is for the first time, this is, for no hate, this is the case. We have a travel retail that is better than publishing. For a shareholder, the shareholder that you are, we do have a split that is very different from one to the other. You have a very resilient business line, a very stable business line, a very sustainable business line, and you have another one that is also growing as we speak.
This is more a motor of growth than resilience, so maybe this could change slightly, and the two combine very well. This is the strategy that we've had over the course of 10s of years, saying that if we want activities that can compensate, which will offset one another, it's the case here. We want everything together to work well and this serenely and also stably. Our third, we've got here the media that have come together that, as you know. We've got the air licenses. We've got theater and talents, as you can see, that you know of as well. I can see that Benjamin Boulanger, we've also got the Barrière de Saint-Cloud, which is wonderful. It's a wonderful event space in the Bois de Boulogne, which is highly profitable for us and also for the Mairie de Paris.
We've got different concessions as well that will come in 2028 with a pool tender that was launched. All of this together is a little bit complicated, but you've known this for the longest time. It's the issue with the deficit that we had. This is no longer the case. Robin is still losing money, but it's not hemorrhaging money, thanks to the audiences that we have. You can also see that little by little, we are going to hit the 0, that flat point, and I hope that in 2026, we're going to hopefully hit that plateau. It is not a contributor, negative contributor significantly as it had been in the past for all of the group. If I continue now looking at the positioning and the strategy just very briefly.
For each business review, we'll go through them one after the other. You can see that for publishing here, we are the third, in third spot, on the global footing, which is actually quite exceptional for a group that was meant to be a French group. I mentioned this at the beginning. We were just a French group, about 10 years or so. We were a little bit crazy when nobody believed in us last in publishing. Just like nobody believed in Musings, saying actually maybe it's the moment to invest, and we can invest in other countries. For example, the United Kingdom and the United States. We took that wager. We won the wager.
It was a little bit lucky, but we also received a lot of talent with exceptional teams, not only in France, but also in the U.S. and in the U.K. This is what allowed us to move from being the top French group, which obviously put it very flattering, to the third global player. As you can see here, We're the third in the U.K. and the third in Spain. We are mostly general literature. We will describe this to you later. For example, we're looking at board games. We have the audiobooks. We're dabbling in lots of different things. We've got really our raw material here.
Our raw material is the book, and we're looking at using that as a starting point to then do lots of different other things for our authors. For our revenue, this is mostly coming from France, but you can see the U.S. and Canada, especially the U.S., are increasing slightly. Well done to the American teams who are If we continue, I'm not going to cite everything, but we have 15 new, which means 15,000 rather new titles coming out every year. We want to be able to create new authors, new publishers, new ideas, new collections. For example, why not coloring books? That, but that's just one idea amongst others. The idea is to really think about what is new for us, what can go on for us. This obviously for 2025, it's every two years.
This was the Asterix year, which was a high success. We've got about EUR 2 million in France, about EUR 5 million across the globe for Asterix. It's not nothing. This is a wonderful machine that Isabelle Magnac has been able to implement. We've got 81 different literature prizes, and we've also got leaflets, we've got booklets, we've got board games, and thanks to Isabelle's team, we were lucky to have exceptional success as Flip 7, which is something that I would actually recommend to you, which is very, very fun. We have acquisitions as well. We have 999 Games as well. That was, we're looking at board games, and they were acquired, and we're going to continue with our endeavor.
Now we've got these strategic axes, which, you know, we want to obviously look after our authors, our publishing houses, creativity, different types, be we talking about coloring books, board games, whatever they may be. We're looking at synergies and so on and so forth. We also have wonderful, we've got artificial intelligence. I'm not going to talk about this too much because that'd be too much for me. I just want to tell you that artificial intelligence is something that we do use a lot, but in domains that are not linked to creativity. We don't want to kill off our authors. We want to protect them. We want to continue to work with them. We're going to continue with this strategy. We're also looking at different other drivers of growth, which are important.
You saw that books are resilient, but we are missing a little bit of growth, even though we have a couple of percentage points here. We would like to make the most of this and have more growth. We also have Well, it's actually Maxime who did this. Maxime has found a lot of different elements that I would like him to describe to you now to show you that we do have a huge challenge in front of us and a huge opportunity for us to use all of this raw material that I mentioned that is in front of us and use them in a different domain, which is the one that Maxime is going to talk us through. You have the floor.
Good morning, everyone. My dear shareholders, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to take the floor. I just wanted to share something that is very important. This is the potential that is underexploited, this is how we adapt different literary works for the screen, I want to talk about this now. This is what we'll do this morning with the figures. The media market, Grégoire Castaing will talk about it later on, but it weighs for EUR 150 million in 2026. It's 3x the weight of book publishing. Up quite a significant percentage , mainly thanks to investors from stakeholders such as Canal+, bigger stakeholders. Disney invest EUR 20 billion on a yearly basis in content. Netflix, that was just for 2025, but EUR 15 billion invested by Netflix.
They actually said that in 2026, they would invest EUR 2 billion more. That means EUR 17 billion. All these stakeholders that are growing, such as Canal+, are investing more and more in media content, allowing for this growth on the market that I said. This is what I said. At the beginning, we have a very big media content market. Secondly, like I said, this is a growing market, but films that are adapted from books account for less than 10% of produced films and between 30%-40%, depending on the year, of the global box office. This is in the top 100 of the main films that do best in the world.
That for 2025, 40% of these movies account are based off novels when they only account for 10% of global films produced. We can clearly tell that movies that are from books are a lot more popular than the ones that are not. From a critical standpoint, beyond the critically acclaimed movies, I can also say that films adapted from movies are doing better than others. If you look at the 98th ceremonies, the of the Oscars, out of 10 movies nominated, 5 were from adapted from films, from books rather, including the winner, One Battle After Another. The César ceremony, same thing in France. 40% of the nominated movies came from books, including the winner, [L'Attachement].
I took only examples from Netflix. I could have taken other examples, but if you look at the history of Netflix and the seasons that are the most watched, 6 out of 10 come from literary works. These are some of the examples. We can clearly see that this is a major market, and clearly this is a growing market. On top of that, it also shows that films from books do better than others. For Hachette, we have a EUR 3 billion publishing market in France. What are the revenues coming from adaptations? They're really low, minor, less than EUR 10 million these first few years. This is a random year. This is a traditional year, but this is quite common.
We can clearly see that the publishing sector is not tapping into this potential. Like I said, Hachette, I told you about this last year. We're not worse than others. We're not doing better than others, than the other competitors. Around 1% coming, our revenue comes from the media content. Except for Asterix, because it's a different phenomenon. It's a different kind of piece, including in the global market. Beyond Asterix, really, Hachette has not really made the most of its potential in this, which is why we need to continue to work on this. Why do the publishing world and publishing players, including Hachette, did not tap into this potential? Why are we not making the most of it? There are different reasons.
Some of the reasons, we'll look at some of the reasons why the publishing world has not really tapped into its potential. Because you have the negotiations for the adaptation, that looks like options basically that you acquire. Players, stakeholders such as Canal+ or the different studios that I've mentioned earlier, they acquire options on a book for a few thousands, if not dozens of thousands of EUR, so it's quite minor. They block the rights for the 18 to 36 months. The question is, how many of these options convert into shows or films? The rate is really low, between 1% and 2%. That means that options are taken for a low amount of money for a long period of time, but the conversion rate is very low.
When these books are finally adapted into shows or into movies, we've gone through all these steps, and then comes the time for distribution. We need to look at the rate, the ratio of the revenue that is captured by the publisher, and this is also very low. We understand why, and this is not only Hachette. Like I said, all the different players on the market are struggling to capture their potential. The only clear example, and Hachette is doing better in that category, is the increase in sales, in book sales. This is why it's so regrettable that we have so little conversion, such a low conversion rate, because as soon as we have an adaptation, then the book sales also rise. Let me give you the example of The Housemaid.
It was already a best-seller before it was adapted into a movie. We see that in the three months that followed the release of the movie, it went up 50%. Bridgerton is a series of books published by Hachette, and The Queen's Gambit as well. It's on Netflix. It's among the top 6. You see the figures, the multiplication, the multiplier is huge. This is Hachette, and this is really good, but we need to have more of these examples, more of these successful adaptations. How can we work on this? Well, it's gonna be very easy. We want Hachette and StudioCanal to work hand in hand with a joint venture. Of course, the potential for both of these entities is huge, as Arnaud said.
The 15,000 books that will be adapted, that will be included to the Hachette catalog and 100,000 books that may be adapted by Canal+. We know the example of Asterix. About EUR 500 million in revenue over the past 15 years. I told you about The Housemaid earlier by Hachette. It made more than EUR 400 million in theaters at global scale. The Magic Faraway Tree was released one month ago. It's an Enid Blyton book. More than $25 million generated in theaters in the U.K. It's a huge success. It was not released in the U.S. yet. It hasn't been released in the U.S. yet. It will be released in the summer. We can clearly see that Hachette, this is an Hachette book.
Hachette is able to demonstrate its capacity to have major successes in theaters. Canal+, I'm not going to spend too much time on this. We have great assets. Over 42 million subscribers in more than 70 countries. What we have, and what is going to be very useful to Hachette, is StudioCanal. StudioCanal is one of the main players in Europe and in Africa for production and distribution of shows and films with 23 production companies across the world. These companies can help Hachette turn these books into successful movies and successful shows. There's Anna Marsh and her team has a lot of knowledge and know-how. They're able to develop franchises. We were talking about Asterix, the best example of Canal is Paddington. Paddington is now owned by Canal+.
StudioCanal has developed three movies, one in 2014, the other one in 2017, and the last one is Paddington in Peru in 2024. Over $700 million globally in theaters. Beyond that, it's shows, and then there's gonna be a musical soon and a merchandising. If you, if you're able to go to London, and if you're able to buy tickets, because it's completely sold out, for the next 12 months, the musical's gonna be amazing. Arnaud de Puyfontaine has made a very good decision when he decided to acquire the rights to Paddington. Over EUR 1.5 billion, thanks to the different products related to Paddington. Well done. That was a great decision.
We have a lot of knowledge, a lot of know-how when it comes to developing franchises, when it comes to merchandising films, shows, et cetera. That's why we need to join forces, and we want to create a dedicated team, a standalone company. A team that will be completely dedicated to the development of books and film. They need to first identify the high potential books. They'll be working hand in hand with Hachette's teams, and they will then develop scripts for films and shows in order to accelerate and remove the roadblocks that I've mentioned earlier with a much more favorable contractual framework so that Hachette can capture this. We are at the General Assembly of Hachette, and I won't talk about it at Canal+ because this is really for you. This is for the Lagardère Group. This is for Hachette.
The ambition is really to give the Lagardère Group and Hachette the capacity to capture a lot more value on this really big market. It will be called OnScreen. That is the name of the company. You have the logo. This is the first time we're actually showing this logo. Like I said, the goal is to remove the roadblocks with a more favorable contractual framework when it comes to acquiring options, better conversion rates of books into shows and TV shows and films. Again, we'll have a team dedicated to that. When it comes to production, we have this long-term vision. Arnaud has said it. We want to progressively grow Hachette's expertise to look at audiovisual production.
Finally, we wanna share the revenues better so that Hachette that will be associated to the development of these audiovisual contents, they need to be able to capture more of the revenue. Potential outcome will be a better capture of value coming from these adaptations. Second acceleration of sales of books and merchandising and derived products. Our authors will attract more publishers and we will also be able to attract more authors because they will know that when they publish with us, they'll have more chances of having their work adapted. In the nuggets of Hachette, Anna and the studio team believe that there's a lot of potential with this book.
It's a book entitled The Search, and it was a number one sales in, at Amazon Kindle across many countries when it was released, and we will adapt it very soon. We're going to start developing the script with the joint venture team. Thank you. Thank you, Arnaud.
You can be reassured with Maxime and Anna. You can be guaranteed that it will be done very seriously by one of the best and the most incredible studios in the world. As you know, Maxime always says, "Always faster, always stronger, always further." It's not easy to follow, but that's what we want to do. That is the entry point into a different universe protected by Maxime's team, obviously.
When I go, I look back in the rear-view mirror 10 to 15 years ago, do you remember the Twilight series, that the movies were a major hit? When Stephenie Meyer presented to us the first script that had been refused by four or five American publishers, they said it was a bit weird, a bit complicated. We had a publisher, it was a female publisher, who accepted it because she saw the potential in it. It sometimes happens. We've missed opportunities in the past as well. Had we been able to present such a project, maybe Twilight would have been produced by StudioCanal and with Hachette. With this OnScreen company, we could say the same thing of The Housemaid. McFadden initially was not a huge author. She became one. She became a best-selling author.
Had we been able to present this at the beginning, maybe we could have been not only the publisher of the book, but at the same time, make the most of it with OnScreen and also capture the revenues coming from streaming and theater revenues. We've learned the lesson. Thanks to Maxime and his team, we will be well-equipped. We'll be able to offer great opportunities to well-known authors and not so well-known authors, this kind of experiences. This will be a win-win for everyone. This was great. We looked at this. This was fun. Let's take a look at Travel Retail. Travel Retail is something that we didn't have at Travel Retail for some time.
Remember last year, I told you that the teams of Travel Retail had an idea, and sometimes there are synergies that are quite odd. I serve on the board of ADS and Airbus, of course, I see a lot of airline companies and airport owners, the only thing that they were talking about was transform the airports into malls. It was 10 to 15 years ago. No one was talking about it at the time, now it's the case. There are malls. We benefit from it. We're not the only ones, you can see that we're the number one operator in the world. I'd like to mention that Gregg Paradies is with us today. He is our partner in the U.S., partner and shareholder in the U.S. We got married, if you will, in 2015.
This has allowed us to really skyrocket. The U.S. are extremely beneficial to us right now, especially in a world that is somewhat complicated. The U.S. always helps when things are troubled, that they travel a lot, including domestically, nationally speaking. If we need to acquire, if we need to make investments and develop an area, I think that it should be done in the U.S. Of course, we will continue to invest elsewhere wherever we see opportunities. Now, let's take a look at the three businesses you see here. Duty free was one of our first businesses, and we were the first company to diversify across these three businesses. We're not the only ones anymore because our competitors have followed suit with Travel essentials and restaurants.
This gives us a balance and global power, allowing us to reach the figures that you've seen earlier. You can clearly see that it's pretty much the same breakdown. It's interesting to see that. Almost like publishing. We're very strong in Europe, outside of France, and we're really strong in the U.S., and we continue to develop it in these two areas and in these two geographies. This is the right choice when we see the results. We've continued to invest a lot. As you know, Grégoire has in mind an obsession, which I share with him. It's in this obsession that comes from the Bolloré Group more than the Lagardère Group.
This is good news, which was that we focus on cash, especially in troubled times such as this one, as the one that we're experiencing. We've had a year where we were really vigilant. We worked on de-leveraging. We will continue to do that. We'll continue to be really vigilant. However, we continue to invest. Right, Frédéric? We have a lot of CapEx in Travel Retail. We acquire companies, we bid in during call to tenders, so well, of course, we're looking at cash, but we wanna find the right balance, and that's exactly what you can see for Travel Retail. We've done quite a lot. There are investments that are quick wins and others that are more sluggish, but in the long run it works well. Here are some examples of major developments.
I'm not going to detail all of them because you have them. What I want you to keep in mind is the record res up level. I want to thank and congratulate Dag, Craig, Frédéric, and the whole team. It's outstanding. We'll continue this development strategy. We'll remain cautious as to what's happening in the Middle East. Of course, there's an impact there. It's not significant. We remain vigilant because we know that this crisis could go beyond what we see. You realize that kerosene price might go up, therefore less tourism, therefore less traffic in airports, et cetera. That's why we're vigilant. It's also during times like this that we can make a difference. We can develop, invest when others might not be as bold as we are.
It's always about the balance, about making the right choices. We remain, however, a group that is obsessed with growing with development. AI, obviously it's the buzzword. We hear about it a lot. It's going to become important for Travel Retail amongst others, and Frédéric will be more than happy to answer your questions if you have any. We've been doing a lot in AI. We don't talk about it. We just act. We experiment and, of course, we're monitoring this rigorously. Live. We have four groups, so news, entertainment such as this venue, and radios. As you know, this is a separate module. It's a limited partnership, so it's aside. Paris Racing.
All of these groups, radio and newspapers and magazines, just so it's really clear, the first year we wanted to work with a audiovisual group was in 2011. It did not come from our reference shareholder, whom we're really happy to be with, by the way. It was at the time, it was [Jean-Pierre Gabillage] who gave us the idea. He knew that this was going to become an ecosystem and that radios in a world that is declining could not survive if they were a standalone entity. We created an ecosystem between JDD, Europe 1, Europe 2, RMC. You're friends with CNews, Maxime. You see in the audience it's worked really well. It saved our lives.
Everyone, with the JDD, the Journal du Dimanche, everyone thought that it was going to disappear, it's actually doing better than ever and better than its competitors, by the way. The ecosystem is working really, really well. We will continue to work on this. Live entertainment, same. Of course, it was a complicated period over COVID. We honestly, we did not know where this was going to lead us, it's always the same. Everyone was saying, "The world's not gonna be the same ever again." It's actually better than it was. For Travel Retail, we've caught up even more than that. For venues, concerts, artist management, Jérôme would probably detail this much better than I would, it's a major success. It's doing really well. High growth live entertainment is more live than ever.
It's just very vivid and this is incredible. We're really happy. We're ready to make acquisitions. We'll stay in France. We'll see in the future, but there may be other venues that we would be interested in, and add more theaters to the one that we have. Well done, Jérôme. I know that COVID was not an easy time. After COVID was not easy either, so well done. The radio channels, like I said, were doing well. The audience, the latest audience release was not as good as the ones released at the end of the year last year, but we're not concerned. Things are going well, especially for advertisement. Constance will probably say a little bit about it later on if you have a question on this. Lagardère Paris Racing, there will be a call for tender soon.
We're considering exporting the model abroad under the format of a license. We're not going to buy land and buildings, but Benjamin has an idea of maybe having a turnkey format offering the experience that we have with the men and women of the Lagardère Paris Racing, that would help. We have a few projects in Europe, but we will say a little bit more about it later on. Investments in sports as well. Cedric, I know you're one of them. Padel is a very popular sport these days, and Benjamin is considering offering more space to padel in the club because from an economic standpoint, it's very profitable. Well done to Benjamin and well done to your teams. This is what it looks like in terms of the strategy.
We are extremely optimistic for the coming years because it's a very French ecosystem that is not as hit by the crisis in the Middle East, also because we have incredible teams. The experience that we've been able to develop across these media and media outlets is incredible. Yes, of course, we're cautious. This is the conclusion. We remain rigorous. We need to remain robust. We need to keep the result that we have because we need to get more cash, to generate more cash. Of course, we're looking at this with a lot of caution. However, this leads me to the most positive side of things, we remain extremely cautious when it comes to cash, that means that we have more financial means, we have more investment capacity.
We're ready to take opportunities. The crisis that we're currently experiencing could also lead to opportunities, and we'll need to seize them across our different businesses. I don't want to rest on our laurels. I don't want us to rest on our laurels, but it looks as if our strategy is the right one. It was good. It was the right one during times of growth, but also during troubled times and times of crisis, the Middle East crisis and also COVID. What we want is to continue to deliver for you, for our shareholders, with the dividends that come with it.
I know I want to thank the 33,000 people working for the group, the men and women that make up the results. We want to thank them, and I just want to congratulate everyone, and thank you.
Thank you, Arnaud. Dear shareholders, dear board members, I am delighted to be with you today and to add to the financial elements that Arnaud has presented to you. Let's first take a look at the 2025 consolidated results of the group. We will then talk about the dividend proposal that was submitted to you today, and then we will end up with the revenue that was shared with you. After an outstanding year, 2024, as you know, 2025 was also a very good year.
Once again, the revenues reached EUR 9.4 billion, up 5%, and 4% on a like-for-like basis. Operating results is up 8% and reaches EUR 641 million. Net consolidated results is at EUR 256 million, up 27%. Net share group result is up 35%. Net debt is improving. This is, like I said, EUR 1.6 billion net debt, down EUR 255 million, and this allows the group to have a 1.96x debt ratio. It's been improving in the past two years. As mentioned by Arnaud a second ago, if we look at the revenue, you can see that the breakdown You have the breakdown here. We have a robust model because these activities are very complementary. EUR 6 billion for Travel Retail.
EUR 200 million for Lagardère Live. Every entity is contributing to the growth, allowing again to show the robustness of our businesses and activity portfolio. If we look at the operating result and the breakdown, the operating margin, EUR 641 million, up EUR 50 million compared to last year. Across all our activities, we see an improvement. You see that they all contributed. Lagardère Live has been able to continue to reduce its losses and is back to a balanced situation. Now Lagardère Publishing has generated a EUR 312 million rise up and Lagardère Travel Retail EUR 334 million in 2025. These performances show us that our operating results are very robust and very complementary. If we look at the P&L, the net financial expenses have gone
Down from EUR 138 million- EUR 124 million. That is also due to the reduced interest rates on the rental debt. They've gone up. That is due to the development dynamic of Lagardère Travel Retail, the renewal of existing contracts, leases, and increase in number of term point of source, and this is why we have more expenditures here. Taxes are down from EUR 127- EUR 111. That's also due to the disposal of Paris Match in 2024. Minority interests are going up from 34% to 53%. That is thanks to the Lagardère Travel Retail activity, because the share allocated to the minority shareholders therefore increases as well, thanks to our great result. Net result group share is also up, as you can see. Now operating CFFO.
Operating cash flow generation is up as well, EUR 573 million, when it was EUR 504 million in 2024. For the group, as you can see, as you can see on the left-hand side. On the right-hand side, you see that our two branches have EUR 291 million before taxes and EUR 172 million for Lagardère Travel Retail. These good performances have helped lowering the debt. You see here the debt level. It's gone significantly down. This is probably the most outstanding result. You know that this was our biggest objective for 2025, we're really happy that we've been able to reach this level.
This drop in our debt shows the strict financial discipline and the fact that we've been extremely, really rigorous in our debt structure and in deleveraging. This improves our financial flexibility and helps us support the development of our activities and guarantee that we will be able to seize the opportunities that we'll that we'll be presented with. That means that the net debt ratio on EBITDA has been declining over the past two years. As you can see, we've gone from a 3x to a 1.96x ratio. This is a major progress, and this demonstrates the robustness of our model and of our financial management. Now let's have a look at our consolidated statement. You can see that things are very robust, they're very well structured.
You can see that everything is about EUR 6.3 billion, it's very stable. We've also got the editorial catalog as well, which is the base of our future performance, and we've got great diversified assets. This shows us the stability. We can see that it's EUR 2.6 for our current assets, we've also got progression of the cash flow that's moved up to EUR 6.32 million in 2025, this is directly linked to the high generation of cash that you can see. For equity and liabilities, you can see the figures on the screen, this is what was sent in 2025. There is a slight variation that has been seen, this is moderated reflecting the level of risk that has got. We have got a handover.
We've also got financial debt. This is also because we have developed the travel retail activity. In total, you can see that we are above EUR 9.7 billion. Let's now move on to the distribution of dividends that have been put forward for this year. The board says that we should have an ordinary dividend of EUR 67, which is, if this will be approved, from the 6th of May, and we're also looking at the 8th of May. We've also got 4%, this is based on the end of the stock market and prior to concluding for the activities of the first part of 2026 and the revenue for the first quarter. I will quickly go on to this now. For the first quarter revenue for 2026.
In the first quarter 2026, we posted solid growth with revenue of over EUR 2 billion, which is up 4%. This is from all of our business segments and the group's international diversification. The publishing business remains robust with growth of 1.4%, and this is supported by the success of recent publications in France and the United States and strong performances of magazines and board games. Lagardère Travel Retail continues on a path of sustained growth at nearly 5%.
This is better than last year. Europe and the Americas confirmed their strong performance whilst Asia Pacific grew thanks to recovery of the Auckland concession. Lagardère Live continued its positive momentum with revenue that despite the fact that it's a very complicated market, with revenue up by nearly 6%, driven in particular by the strong performance of Lagardère Productions and the growth in audiences for radio stations Europe 1 and Europe 2. This growth once again was principally organic, thanks to our activities, this is a high satisfaction. As you can see, this organic growth represents EUR 74 million in revenue. Additional, compared to last year, our most frequent acquisitions generated EUR 47 million over the period.
We were unfortunately penalized by lots of groups, by EUR 62 million due to exchange rate effects with the USD, the GBP, the United Arab Emirates dirham, all moved unfavorably against the EUR this year. Finally, I will conclude this presentation with a global breakdown of our revenue at the end of March. This is a slide that Arnaud showed you earlier for the data. As you know, your group has a balanced portfolio of activities and a diversified geographical presence. These two factors in during this period, and in addition to the strong performance described earlier, are significant assets for the future. It is important to note the Middle East accounts for less than 3% of our revenue, the group's direct exposure to current events in the region therefore remains limited.
Nevertheless, we remain very attentive to any potential indirect repercussions, whether these be possible disruptions to air traffic, rising energy costs, or more general inflationary pressures. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, thank you very much for listening to me.
Thank you very much, Grégoire. I would now like to invite our next speaker up to the screen so that we can look at the different CSR strategies that have been put into place for 2025.
Good morning, everyone. Yes, 2025, we continued with our strategies of as a responsible entity. I will be talking through this with you. To begin with, I just wanted to say, to underline that the finality of our business strategy has led to huge creation of societal values.
This doesn't mean that we have stopped developing the best practices in the way that we speak and the way that we operate, all of this because we're really concerned about our performance and sustainable development. Our first engagement is that links to fostering a culture of talent. We want to ensure that we're fostering this culture of talent, and it's something that is important for us across the board. We want to ensure that there is gender equality in the workplace at all levels, particularly with the top executive team. We are delighted to announce that for the top executive team, we have 47% of which that are female, and this is a figure that is very high. We also want to ensure that we are nurturing a new generation of managers through our international mentoring program.
This, internal rather, mentoring program since 2018 when this program was launched, we've had 130 future leaders in the early stages of their careers who've been supported in this way. Obviously, we want to foster a culture of talent, this also means paying close attention to the fulfillment or, and wellbeing of every individual through regular engagement surveys. At the moment, we're looking at more than 3/4 of our workforce, this will allow them to voice their views and take action to improve their working conditions within their teams. Finally, because we're talking about human capital, regarding this crucial aspect, we are looking at continuing investment in skills and innovation, which is essential in context of changing competition across our business sides.
By 2025, our co-workers will have received an average of nearly 12 hours of training per FTE worldwide. That's our first commitment. Our second commitment is more societal. We want to look at fostering a culture of openness. How do we do this? By facilitating access to education and culture for as many people as possible, especially those who are far from this. In 2025, we're looking at 100% of the catalog, the publishing titles that are available in accessible digital formats. Our publishing division, once again, has been a pioneer because we are anticipating the European Union requirement coming into force in 2026. The audiobook is also expanding. We have 29,000 titles available by 2025, an increase of over 3,000 titles in a single year. Also, we are here at the Casino de Paris.
I would like to highlight the pioneering role of Lagardère Live Entertainment in matters of accessibility, having been a trailblazer in making live performances accessible to people with autism spectrum disorders. If we still talk about opening and our openness, we want to diversify our formats. In 2025, Lagardère Publishing had a huge campaign in the U.K. and the U.S., which was called Raising Readers, which was championed by influential figures such as hugely popular actress and producer Reese Witherspoon, whom you can see in this photo. All of our different medias outlets wanted to look at literature, reading. We were looking at different columns, daily columns on literature, with [Nicolas Carreau ], for example. We had different authors as well, novel authors that came in, and that they were invited in on a regular basis to do so.
We have Lagardère Travel Retail as well, who are not sitting on their laurels. We have the Relay brand, which is organizing a growing number of events, centers on books, comics, and magazines from all walks of life. We also have a third commitment now. This is to decarbonize our, so to reduce our CO2 emissions. We know that this is important for all of our activities across the value chain. Lagardère has set a target that to reduce its CO2 emissions by 30% by 2030, and we are on the right track. In 2025, we had the transition to alternative energy sources that was accelerated. As you can see on the photo here, these are solar panels for a publishing site in Spain. It's the Anaya publishing site.
In addition to energy and carbon, I think that this is linked to the good management of environment and financial assets. We want to best use our resources that are required for activities. This is the case of paper, which is the main material that we use. We want to ensure that 99% of our paper that is sourced from recertified or recycled sources. In addition to this, we've got all of our products that are unsold that are reinjected in the circular economy. We've got Lagardère Publishing that works a lot on conception and design, especially when it comes to reducing plastic, whether in relation to its products or within its supply chain. Lagardère Travel Retail is continuing its waste reduction program, with a particular focus on food waste.
We had 125,000 meals that were saved thanks to a partnership with Too Good To Go, which enables the redistribution of unsold foods. There we have it for our commitment, and we've got all of our different partners, our commercial partners. I already spoke last year about training. We want to look at anti-corruption training that was with all of our different employees. We're looking at 91% here of people who have been working over two years. We're obviously very attentive. We're trying to have a hand over our risks, especially when we look at subcontractors, and these are done with different organizations. Just to conclude, I would like to talk about local procurement. We know that local procurement is very important for Lagardère Travel Retail.
We're trying to ensure that we are relevant, and we want to be very authentic and genuine when it comes to working with our customers in the different points of sales. We're looking at 25% of our products that are local, and depending on the areas, for example, in the U.K. or even in Italy, we have nearly 70%, 75% rather, of our products that are locally sourced. To conclude, I would like to pay tribute to the teams for their for having fostered this culture of commitment day in, day out. We're talking about CSR, operations, finance, the sales force as well. Thank you for everything that you do, bringing to life the culture of commitment to serving our customers, our clients, and all of our stakeholders. Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you very much, Céline.
Now let's move on to Ms. Valérie Hortefeux.
Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be here for my first general meeting, and I want to talk about the makeup of my board, and I also want to talk about the different works that we have undergone with regards to the financial year 2025. Let's start off with the makeup of the board. During the last general meeting on the 29th of April, 2025, 2 decisions were taken. The first was to appoint for a term of four years two new independent directors, so Michèle Reiser and myself, and to replace Ms. Laura Carrere and Ms. Virginie Banet. The second was to renew the terms of the 6 directors whose mandates were due to expire.
This was Ms. Valérie Bernis, Ms. Fatima Fikree, and Ms. Véronique Morali, as well as Mr. Yannick Bolloré, Mr. Arnaud de Puyfontaine, and Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, for terms ranging from two to four years as appropriate. Following the general meeting, the group committee, which met in June, renewed the terms of office for four years of the two executive directors, so Ms. Marie Flavion and Mr. Pascal Jouen. The board that you can see displayed behind me and whose members are present today, be they in person or remotely, thus remains composed of 11 members, 2 of whom are employee directors. Their terms of office will now expire on a staggered basis, some in 2027, others in 2028, and others finally in 2029.
This structure ensures the board's continuity over time, in line with best governance practices and avoids large waves of simultaneous renewal. One figure is worth highlighting, and that is 55.5%, whether in terms of the proportion of women or the level of independence. This is well above the legal requirements and the recommendations of the AFEP-MEDEF code. Finally, our board has diverse profiles and a high degree of complementarity expertise in management, finance, communication, CSR, which makes it a board that is structured to cover all the strategic and operational challenges of your group. I will now move on to the composition of the board to the two committees. Your group's board is supported by two standing committees. We have the audit committee, which is chaired by Véronique Morali, who will present its work to you shortly.
We also have the nomination, remuneration, and CSR committee, which I chair. Over 2025, the 2025 financial year, in accordance with the changes approved at the previous annual general meeting, the composition of these two committees were reviewed. First, Valérie Bernis, Michèle Reiser, and I have joined the nomination, remuneration, and CSR committee, which now has 7 members with an independence rate of 83.3% and a female representation rate of 66.6%. Similarly, Michèle Reiser, Arnaud de Puyfontaine, and I have joined the audit committee, which now comprises 6 members with an independence rate of 66.6% and a female representation rate of 83.3%. Once again, both our committees each have female representation independence rates significantly higher than the legal requirements and the recommendations of the AFEP-MEDEF code.
Now let's move on to the main work of the board of directors of your company during the 2025 financial year. During the 2025 year, the board met on 6 occasions with attendance rate of 98.7%. 98.7% recent beats the speaker. In addition to the so-called recurring tasks such as reviewing the annual and half-yearly accounts, approving the budget, setting the remuneration packages for executive directors, and monitoring the CSR strategy, the board also worked on other strategic matters as follows. To begin with, we have 2 financing operations totaling EUR 800 million, namely a 500 million bond issue and a 300 million short-term loan, both of which have been heavily oversubscribed.
I would like to take this opportunity to commend the work of and the mobilization of Grégoire Castaing and his teams in the success of these two transactions. A success which clearly illustrates the market's confidence in the strategy of your group. I will not come back on the different challenges that we're facing within [NCC] distribution division, which were outlined to you by Arnaud Lagardère, and therefore, we will not revisit this. We also reviewed the audits as they're selecting the new statutory auditor, which is a subject of resolution submitted for your approval today and which Véronique Morali will discuss with you. Finally, we have the external evaluation of the functioning of the Board of Directors and its committees.
We have an independent Committee now in place, but I'll come back to this afterwards when we talk about the works. Let's now move on to the works of the Appointments, Remunerations and CSR Committee. The Committee met on five occasions with an exemplary attendance rate of 100%. It continued its so-called recurring work across three key areas, CSR, remuneration, and governance. Regarding CSR, throughout the financial year, the Committee reviewed the Group's strategic decisions, action plans, as well as the results by business division, and approved in a joint session with the Audit Committee, the Company's first sustainability report for the 2024 financial year. For remuneration now, the Committee monitored the proper implementation of the policies approved by the last General Meeting and recommended adjustments to the Board in line with best government practices.
The committee also monitored the delivery of the action plans. Regarding governance, the committee reviewed the composition of the board and the committees, in particular, the independence of its members. We have finally the so-called specific tasks. We have the supervision of the process for the annual assessment of the functioning of the board and its committees. This is something that we worked on during the financial year 2025. The evaluation process was presented to the directors. They highlighted several very positive observations, which I would like to share with you. The evaluation is based on 3 areas. We've got the composition of the board, the functioning of the board, and the chairman of the board as well.
For the composition of the board, it appears that the board is of a high overall standard, highly experienced, and possesses a rare combination of expertise. These are financial, managerial, sector-specific, and CSR. This is a renewed yet cohesive board. On the functioning of the board now, it appears that the mode of operation has evolved significantly since the external evaluation of 2022, and that it works effectively with a high level of energy and commitment in a climate of mutual respect, trust, and freedom of speech. On the chairman of the board, this is the best or last now. We talk about the chair once again. Arnaud Lagardère is described as a leader whose leadership is unanimously recognized by all directors. Unanimously, which is actually very rare and significant.
Everyone praises his strategic vision, his unfaltering commitment to the group, and his perfect command of the matters he brings before the board. The board is therefore aligned with its role, namely to support the performance of your group and the creation of long-term value while maintaining a constructive challenge to senior management. ladies and gentlemen, now I would like to add that it is also not rare for certain leaders to refuse to be evaluated, which was not the case of Arnaud Lagardère. He accepted, and he opened his doors to the different evaluators. I would like to commend that as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude now, it is on these positive observations that I will hand the floor over to Véronique Morali, who reports on the work of the audit committee. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone.
Our audit committee came together 6x with an attendance rate of 100%, which we're very happy about. I would like to thank the financial teams as well, which we work with. We talk about all of the recurring subjects within the audit committee, so the production of accounts, the closings, the mapping of different risks, different audit issues as well. I would also like to just very quickly underline the 3 points that are important to me. I imagine that 2 will be recurring for upcoming years, and that will be part of the audit committee and its work more so. The first is the following, as was mentioned by Arnaud Lagardère. We will be looking at everything linked to IT. For IT, this is something that is important, especially for a multi-geographical group.
We are looking at lots of different aspects. We've got cost aspects as well. Why? Because each entity wants to have different systems in place, and this will be the case for everyone. We also want to look at protection, data protection and the different reporting systems. Therefore, even if a lot of these subjects have been dealt with and we are covering good ground on, as Grégoire mentioned earlier, we need to be cross-cutting. I want to ensure that we are centralizing our approach and centralizing all of our subjects, which will allow us to understand what's happening in the different geographies for management of stock and so forth. We also want to implement a harmonization of all of our systems. I would like to underline this. We are going to continue with this in a permanent fashion.
This is also we want to identify the different threats, cyber threats that will come to us, and we want to ensure that we are on the ball with this. We also have other subjects linked to vulnerability. We have data protection for personal data. That is important as well. All of this will form the foundation of our IT system. We have a second subject that is going to be recurring. This will be looking at collecting, production and follow-up data that is linked to sustainability and this in the CSRD. We know that this is something that is part of our KPIs. There are lots of different aspects within the group which are followed rather than monitored, with a lot of enthusiasm and constraints. This is not the case of the group.
As I mentioned, there are lots of geographical entities or sectoral entities that should be implemented as well. Why? Because this is important for sustainability, it's when we talk about sustainability is the trajectory. We can look at this in a very positive fashion with the different auditing teams, with the CSR and remuneration team as well, we have been able to We also put together the sustainability report in March, this is a subject that we are going to be continuing working on. Why? Because there are KPIs that are important and will have an impact in the future. The third subject, this is more occasional, this is looking at resolutions 4 and 5 that were mentioned earlier. This is the renewal of our statutory auditors, we have been working with Forvis Mazars.
We have lots of very formal and informal exchanges as well with the group. I would like to thank the Forvis Mazars for everything that they have done over the course of the past few years. They have really respected all of our different deadlines. They have ticked all of the boxes, all of the T's have been crossed, and all of the I's dotted. Therefore, we would like to thank them for all of their work that they have done. We've also appointed Grant Thornton. Grant Thornton will now be replacing Forvis Mazars, and they will become the other statutory auditor as well with Deloitte & Associés for a financial term of six years. This for the whole group, because they've been working with us since 2024.
They have actually been the co-statutory auditor for Louis Hachette Group with Resolution.
5. This is the non-replacement of Forvis Mazars as its role as statutory auditors for solidifying sustainability information, the Audit Committee. I hope that this is something that you'll be able to follow. The simplification of governance and cost of sustainable auditors. We're only going to be returning to a single auditor for Deloitte, and this is something that was deemed appropriate for sustainability. Thank you very much for listening.
Now I'd like to give the floor to Ariane Bucaille from Deloitte, and she will be presenting the different reports that have been put forward by our statutory auditors and the information linked to sustainability. You'll be able to find this information in the universal document. Deloitte, over to you.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, the auditors.
I'm delighted to be able to speak on behalf of the statutory auditors, Deloitte & Associés and Forvis Mazars. This is a report that we have written for the last financial. There are four, and they were made available to you both for today's event, and I will summarize them for you today. Let us start with the report on our annual accounts. This is the first resolution. They were prepared as per the French accounting standard, and we would like to highlight the fact that this is the first application of the number 2022-06 new regulation. And we considered that the participation shares were key to the audit and therefore, at the end of our audit, we have no reserves for the group's accounts.
That was for the non-consolidated accounts, and the consolidated accounts were prepared according to the IFRS standard. There are two key elements to the audit. First is the assessment of acquisition gaps, given the significance of this expenditure, and key calculation scenarios. The second one is the estimates of returns taken into account into the Lagardère Publishing revenue, given how significant the amount is for the returns in the balance sheet and the estimates in that are taken into account for the different scenarios for calculation. The conclusion is that we don't have any findings or reserves. As for the fourth resolution of this general assembly, we have made a report on regulated conventions. There were no convention, no regulated convention authorized or agreed upon during the previous year. There was only one that had been approved previously.
The one, which is an assistance convention between Lagardère Management and Lagardère Resources and amendments and the memoranda of understanding. There's also the report on certification for information related to sustainability. All of this is aligned with the requirements. The report is split into three parts. The first one is compliance to ESRS standards, which are the new standards for sustainability. The second one is compliance with regards to sustainability information based on the L 233 code. Finally, the disclosure requirements regarding taxonomy. In our report, we highlight the fact that there's one specific element regarding estimation of greenhouse gases for Scope three, especially for Lagardère Travel Retail.
This is the only conclusion and finding that we have. Thank you very much, dear shareholders. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Ariane. Let's move to the Q&A session. We have about 20 minutes. We have a roving mic. Thank you.
I have two questions. My name is Claude Arose. The first one is about the troubles coming up in the Hormuz Strait. The second one is about the 200th anniversary of Hachette Publishing. Airlines are struggling with rising kerosene prices and supply issues. To maintain their profitability, they have to increase the price of plane tickets or to even cancel some flights. This situation is not very buoyant for Lagardère Travel Retail, given the fact that we are present in over 200 airports.
Even if the crisis in the Middle East was to end, air traffic would probably still be disrupted for many months to come. My question, while waiting for this conflict to be solved, have you considered measures where you would backtrack or even transfer airport stores towards the 700 network, 700 stores in train stations, metro stations?
In 1926, Louis Hachette created the publishing house, which still bears its name to this day. He was a marketing genius, and he was an extremely innovative, and this is why his publishing house is such a successful one. He was the first to think about having points of sales in railway stations in France. These points of sales then become the Relay stores that still exist to this day. Today, Lagardère Publishing, Hachette Publishing being the main brand of it, has become the third publishing group in the world with a revenue of over EUR 3 billion.
For its 200th anniversary, how come you haven't planned an incredible celebration with all your individual shareholders and institutional shareholders, but also your clients, your suppliers? At the end of the celebration, you would have a banquet that would look like an Asterix banquet. It's not every day that you turn 200 years old.
Your questions are incredible, thank you for your loyalty because I often bump into you. I think Frédéric could take the first few questions and then Grégoire Castaing and then Jean-Christophe Thiery for the festivities.
That's what he loves.
We can maybe kill a few wild boars, if you will. About the Strait of Hormuz, it's true that the current situation is putting pressure on air traffic. There are levels of uncertainties related to how long the conflict will last in the region, and therefore, the impact that it will have on local airlines. Locally, there's a huge impact, but in the rest of the world, it's hard to assess the impact. Yes, it's true that there are a few companies that are canceling some of their flights rather, but it's more because they're rationalizing some of their not so profitable lines. Right now, after two months into the conflict, we're still not really seeing a huge, significant impact on airline traffic.
As for your questions about transferring stores for logistics issues, it's a little bit difficult. As you know, we are in terminals and traffic via the strait is blocked, therefore, it would be difficult to do that. But if we had the opportunity to deploy more stores in stations, we would do it regardless of the conflict, as you know. Stations, train stations and metro stations are points of sales that we cherish, and we try to develop as much as possible our stores and our restaurants whenever we can make business in transportation infrastructures, then we do it regardless of the conflict.
About the festivities and the celebration, yes, 200 years, 200 anniversary, it's huge. I'd like to mention one thing.
Hachette Publishing was lucky to have over time, first, Louis Hachette, who was, you're right, a visionary. He was a publisher, but he also invented, you're right, points of sales in train stations. There was other benefactors, Jean-Luc Lagardère, who bought in December 1981 the company. He dusted it off a little bit because it was struggling and decided to develop the brand abroad. Now Vincent Bolloré and his family, including you, Cyril, which is why we now have a long-term vision with a French family. We're really keeping Hachette's DNA for the best of the company. As you said, to celebrate it, we either organize it or we ask Michel Sibony to organize it at his place. You know that I'm joking, of course.
I think Jean-Christophe, who was the one who initiated the celebration, he did an incredible job with his team, so I think he'd be in a better position to talk about it.
Thank you, Arnaud, and thank you, sir, for your comment. It's true that the Hachette Group has had an incredible journey. 200 years, it was a small bookstore in the Latin area of Paris. At the time, there were very few bookstores, not like today, but in 200 years, we've become the 3rd global publishing group. Lagardère was speaking about 3 benefactors. I'd like to add a 4th one himself, because 20 years ago, someone had to gamble. It was a bet. Betting on publishing was not easy.
A lot of people were saying that there was no future in this sector, and it was an incredible group already. It was bought out by Jean-Luc Lagardère at the time, but it was from a national group, he turned it into a global group because he's the one who helped the group made investments in Spain, in the U.K., in the U.S., and elsewhere. Everyone will agree with the fact that, of course, everyone thinks now that it's obvious, but at the time it was not obvious. It was a very bold decision that he made. He is part of the success. You're a bit unfair with us because I think we've already celebrated from the 12th to the 15th of March, we've brought together the employees, the readers.
Thousands of people came during four days at Palais Brongniart in Paris, where about 6 Hachette brands were there, our third-party publishers. It was an incredible celebration. There were a lot of intense moments. I have to admit that we did not have the banquet. We did not. We might have to think about something at the end of the year. We did not feast. We could have organized a feast. You're right.
Hello, congratulations for the incredible synergies between Canal+ and Hachette. Finally, a convergence that is going to be successful. I have three questions. First, about the balance sheet and more specifically the decline in equity. Why is everything up? Everything is great. The only line that is not looking good is equity, page 219.
Second question, the disappearance of school books in many high schools because of the new digital portal. What measures were taken by the group to defend your interests? If you're not in favor of this measure, what have you done? Because I know that it's a bit of a controversy. Third, on the share price. It's true that the figures are better, however, we're still down 6% in 5 years and down 18% in 10 years. What does that what do you have to say about this on equity?
You're right. As I said earlier, equities are down this year. That's mainly related to the distribution of dividends, which we did reduce, by the way, compared to what was distributed two years ago. As you may have seen, the net result has gone up this year.
Therefore, we have good hopes that for the future, the equities will go up in the coming years. Jean-Christophe for school books. As you probably will anticipate, we agree with you. Teenagers spend more than 5 hours a day on screens. They spend about 15 minutes reading books. Of course, thinking that we're going to replace school textbooks by digital screens to learn is not obvious. I'd also like to say that the countries that were pioneers in this movement, and I'm thinking of Scandinavian countries, are actually backtracking on this. Luckily, for the most part, in our countries, where students are still studying with books, textbooks.
You're right that there are very alarming initiatives, I'm thinking of the Île-de-France Regional Council that's decided to stop using school textbooks and to only ask teachers and students to use digital textbooks. What do we do against it? Well, first, there's a union called the National Publishing Union that is fully mobilized on all of this and is working with the Ministry of Education. We are working on this as well as first publishing group in France, number 1 publishing group. We want to convince regional entities, regional stakeholders to not make the same decision as the Île-de-France region. If the Île-de-France region could backtrack, that would be wonderful.
Thank you, Jean-Christophe. The share price. Of course, we all feel bad.
This remains an opportunity because I don't know exactly what the share price is right now. I have to admit that I made a very peculiar choice. I sold my Lagardère shares to buy shares closer to the Bolloré family. Probably also because there's a floating stock that is low. When you do your roadshows for LSE and Lagardère, I guess you get the same comment. What do you answer people? We agree with you. We spend a lot of time explaining the performance of the company and our strategy to convince investors. Just hold on tight, and I know it's not easy. Just hold on tight, it's worth it. Number 3.
Yes, are there questions? To the left. Number 6. Apologies. Monsieur, sir.
What is the, what are the What is the strategy against Trump and Putin when their actions are actually detrimental to us, as we can see where the publishing figures? Some are saying that there are Christian values, but they're not blaming the Russian government for killing many of its citizens. The Lagardère group is more and more towards a political party that I won't name. Should the Lagardère group not stop focusing on this and rather go back to its core business and not mingle with politics?
We've known each other for a long time, Christopher. The performance shows that we are aligned with our society, and that shows that we're on the right track.
Secondly, our goal, our strategy and management, the management team, and even, we're main shareholder is not planning on having ideological or political agendas. Even if I hear and see it and read it here and there, especially that's what our competitors are saying, that's their only response to us. Be assured that this is not our goal. We don't have a political or ideological agenda. I think that the performance that we'll have in the coming years are, our editorial strategy will show us that JDD, Europe 1 and CNews work hand in hand. If it wasn't for the changes that we made, we'd still be at very low levels. Constance would probably agree with me, and if you want to add something, go ahead.
The changes that we made really went in the right direction, because if we look at the results, they're very fruitful. You're probably not reading or listening to the news where you should. Go ahead and listen to Europe 1. Go ahead and listen to RMC. Go ahead and read JDD. To us, freedom of expression is essential, that's number 1, but also the performance of the company. Christopher, you can only agree with me that in terms of the performance of the company, the strategy was the right one. Constance, for the partnership that we have with CNews, of course, partnership with Canal+, with the César ceremony and other opportunities that the group has allowed us to get. As for Europe 1, as you said, the morning show is very robust.
We have this freedom of expression across all our shows, all our programs, this is a new breath, and Europe 1 is a free radio channel, that's what we want. Yes, you know it better than anyone else in terms of diversity. Honestly, Hachette is extremely diverse. We have every We have the whole spectrum of ideologies, I don't see why we should not do that. It's extremely profitable. It's been profitable for a long time. Fayard has done incredibly well in 2025. As for the proximity that you've implicitly mentioned with our main shareholder,
I could take oath. I could take an oath, Vincent Bolloré has never asked me to do anything, to take any action. At no point has he ever asked me that.
Other questions. Number 3.
Jeander, individual shareholder. I have a question. The net debt ratio went from 3 to 1.9, so below 2. What is your objective for the future? Are you planning on buying companies in the travel retail world?
The share price, page 305, if we look at the capital in There's an asterisk or a footnote that says that you still own floating shares. It'd be good to tell us and to mention, Mr. Lagardère, that you still have or that you don't have any floating shares. Are you planning on buying companies? Qatar owns 11%. It hasn't moved in years. You still wanna have the opportunity to have cash for these shares.
Basically, there's a shareholder that is not moving, that is not doing much, and that is dormant, and you have a 6% floating share rate. It's difficult to make the price, the share price go up when you're not moving the situation.
Well, Qatar, 20 years being loyal to us, I don't know many shareholders that support companies in which they've invested as for as long as they have. This is their policy. They do what they want, what they can, and what they do is just fine by us no matter what they do. I won't say more about this. About the fact that I'm a shareholder myself, I am a shareholder, but personally, as you know, I had two packs, one that was owned by companies and another set of shares that was a personal one.
For tax reasons, to be perfectly honest, I kept How many do I have, Pauline? 0.4% of Lagardère shares that I own personally, and not through a company. The other question is for Grégoire.
Yes. There were two questions on the net debt ratio and the objectives regarding this and Lagardère Travel Retail strategies. For the net debt ratio, we went from 3 to under 2. We don't communicate on a target for this ratio, or not publicly, at least. For the coming years, what I could say is that we want to maintain our cash generation efforts. We're fully mobilized. The current context tells us that we need to be cautious. We've gone back to a debt level that gives us more leeway than what we had in the past.
This is a perfect segue into your second question with regards to acquisitions on travel retail. We keep our options open. As you may remember, we've made a few acquisitions over the past few years. We did not stop our M&A activities. We remain extremely pragmatic, very opportunistic, and we made the acquisition 70% of the Ad-Amsterdam joint venture, which was a form of call to tender, but it was treated as a scope variation because we bought out a company to be able to be in the bid, and that will make Amsterdam one of the biggest airports of the group in the coming years. We keep our options open, but we want to remain extremely strict with regards to our financial policy. As Grégoire was saying, you were talking about acquisitions.
Either we buy companies, which is what happened in Germany, like in Germany a few years ago, or we bid it for call to tenders, which we do very often, but that's not what we call an acquisition. It's still growth.
Other question? 6.
Yes. Individual shareholder, just like the previous speakers. I'd like to say a few things and then I have three questions. The last one should be a funny one. Grace, you're graciously promising the world, but given the exceptional context with straits, seas, the world is and conflicts, the world is changing with AI, with gas issues. The CEO's salary is going up when women don't get the opportunities that you get because there is very little representativeness in the managers and not at the board, by the way.
We should maintain our honor, and I'd like to mention one thing. Profits have gone up, and I know that also I say that we should limit dividends, but when profits are going up, you should at least increase the dividends by at least EUR 0.01. Second topic, what we have on the tabs to vote. You only have the English and French versions of the document, but I think that the universal registration document as well as the presentations that you are giving as well as answers to written questions would be a good idea to also have on the tabs. By the way, we are no longer receiving the brochure at home anymore. It's a shame.
Maybe you should simply reduce the number of pages, but it would be good to have this document in paper copy. Also, we've had a few written discussions, and I've asked AI among the documents that you see, what is the part that is generated by AI and the share that has been generated by human brain? What's funny is that when I tested several AIs, some said that part was AI-generated and another part that was human-generated and vice versa. It was actually quite contradictory.
Well, thank you very much. As for the dividend, we do as we can. We do our best. Everyone is helping de-leverage the group. Of course, we could distribute more dividends, but again, it's about striking a balance. You have to vote on this, by the way.
This is a proposal that was made to you, we believe it's balanced with regards to cash generation, acquisition policy. You can criticize it, I understand that. I take note of it. As for the brochures and the documents, well, brochures and documents, I can confirm that they're all made by human brains and hands, this is a lot of work. The European regulations make this work more complex every year. Our teams are working on these documents for a month, it was not AI-made at all. As for the fact that we no longer send these documents in written, in physical copy, it's true. There are some copies available in the room, it was a decree.
It was a decree that says that if the documents are available online and that they were sent to the shareholders, we no longer have to send them by the mail. This helps us also reduce costs as well as environmental resources.
We've talked about the cost of paper and of course, we'd rather use paper to publish books rather than these brochures. Of course, there are a few copies, paper copies in the room. If you wanna have a copy of the brochure and of the universal registration document, don't hesitate to fetch one. In your poem, at the beginning of what you said, I heard a reference to the fact that there are not many women, not enough women in management positions.
As you know, at the board, 45.5% are members are women, and also women account for 47% in executive positions. It's way beyond the average that we have in at RPOS. There's no glass window at Lagardère, as Lagardère said. We have 63% of women and still in executive positions, high level of women. As you may have seen, the average ratio of pay gap is only 14%. It's slightly below the average rate of CSRD reports because it's usually 15%. In most countries, it's actually more beneficial to women. If we look at the granular detail of the company, we have 75% of non-executive positions, and here the pay gap is only 5%.
Of course, we're targeting zero, and the HR department is working hard to reduce the gender pay gap, but 5% is still almost insignificant, or at least that's how the regulation deems it. As for management positions, there are fewer positions and not always unfavorable to women.
One last question we'll move to the vote. We'll proceed to a vote. The gentleman.
Boris Gateau, individual shareholder. Going back to this poem, I think I heard a reference to Nicolas Sarkozy, who's a board member. I had a question about this. When he was incarcerated, was he able to attend all of the meetings? If not, how can you justify the fact that you maintain him in his position?
As for the future, as you know, there will be, he has appealed, his judgment, and there will be a ruling made in October. What will you do? Do you commit to end his term in the board of directors? By the way, the Accor Group has made this decision a few months ago, and the AFEP-MEDEF code insists on the necessity to set an example with company shareholders. Are you planning on making a decision with this?
Thank you very much for your question. When we talk about being exemplary, obviously, we can talk about the fact that Nicolas Sarkozy continues to bring something very important to the group. I'm talking about the number of authors. I think it's about 270 thousand authors. I don't know what his schedule is. I don't know what he was doing when he was in prison. I don't think it was a very happy time for him. He was the one that wrote his book and no one else, contrary to what people were saying. It's actually the group that is making the most of this. The 300,000 copies of his book, I think that that is actually quite exceptional.
As we're talking about him, he's never at no moment was it forbidden for him to be a member of a board. This was important. I'm not just talking about, especially for travel retail, this is important. We can find other people to do this, absolutely. He is a friend of the group. He's someone who has always been on our side, and I don't know why he should be penalized a second time because there is no reason for us to do so. Therefore, we are not doing this against what people are saying. We're doing this for the group. I will continue to work like this. There are lots of us here, and we owe him a lot. When I say us as a group, well, it's us as well. I hope I've answered your question.
Yes, he didn't miss a single meeting. No, he didn't miss a single meeting. Nicolas, you're not here, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now let's move on to the votes. I don't think that there are any other questions. Sorry, just before the votes, I can say that there is one written question that was sent to the company, and the question and answer are available on the site, and they will stay here. Before the vote, I'm just going to give you the figures. The quorum has changed slightly with regards to what I said earlier. It's now 1,876 shareholders who are participating. This means that this is above the 20% that we need.
We have the different figures that you can see on the screen for the number of votes. Before going to the votes, we will have a short film just to explain how the voting system will work.
[Presentation]
Okay. The 1st resolution is the resolution, the approval of the 2025 annual unconsolidated financial statements. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.99%. 2nd resolution on the screen, approval of the consolidated financial statements. The voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.99%. 3rd resolution is the allocation of net income and distribution of a dividend. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.99%. 4th resolution is the appointment of Grant Thornton as statutory auditor for a term of 6 fiscal years. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.99%. 5th resolution is the non-renewal and non-replacement of Forvis Mazars as statutory auditor responsible for certifying sustainability information. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Adopted 99.99%.
Sixth resolution, approval of the compensation packages awarded to corporate officers for fiscal year 2025. The voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.98%. Seventh resolution is the approval of elements for remuneration for the exercise 2025 to Mr. Arnaud Lagardère. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved at 99.61%. Eighth resolution is the approval of the remuneration policy for the CEO for 2026. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved 99.62%. We've got the ninth resolution now, which is the approval of the remuneration policy for the members of the board. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Approved for 99.97%. Tenth resolution is the renewal of the share buyback program for 18 months. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Adopted at 99.99%.
Eleventh and the last resolution is the powers for the formalities. Voting is open. Voting is closed. Resolution adopted 99.99%.
This, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our resolutions. We'll see you guys next year, and good luck to all. Thank you very much.