Welcome to Pluxee's annual general meeting of shareholders. I am Didier Michaud-Daniel, Executive Chair of the Board of Pluxee, and I'm happy to officially open today's session as its chairman. While a general meeting is a standard part of business for listed companies, this event is anything but ordinary for us. It caps off an extraordinary year for Pluxee and offers an opportunity to come together for the first time since the company was listed on February 1st. I want to thank everyone joining us, whether in person or by proxy, as well as those who are watching the webcast online. I would like to welcome our major shareholder, Bellon SA, represented by Monsieur François-Xavier Bellon, member of Pluxee's board and chairman of the management board of Bellon SA, who is with us today. Thank you for being here. I would also like to acknowledge Mr.
Feiko van der Ploeg, who is representing PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants, the external auditor of Pluxee. He will comment on the audit opinion provided on the financial statements. Before I give the floor to Béatrice Bire, Chief Legal Officer and Group General Counsel of Pluxee, who will be the secretary for this general meeting, I would like to share a few takeaways from Pluxee's first year as a standalone unlisted company. Fiscal 2024 has been a time of exceptional transformation for Pluxee, made possible by its more than 5,000 employees around the world. Under the leadership of Chief Executive Officer Aurélien Sonet , each one of them contributed to delivering on our strategic roadmap, working towards a common goal: strengthening Pluxee's global leadership in the employee benefit and engagement sector.
Looking back, Fiscal 2024 has included a series of milestones, starting with a spin-off and listing on Euronext Paris on February 1st, and finishing with our truly remarkable results. Pluxee exceeded all its business and financial objectives, proving that we are well positioned as a pure player and leader in the employee engagement and benefits market. In just a few minutes, Aurélien Sonet will share more about these achievements. I want to take a moment to recognize his many contributions to rolling out our strategy and driving such outstanding performance. This performance not only builds on the accomplishments of this past year, but also reflects our more than 40 years of experience at the forefront of the world of employment. The past years attracting, retaining, and engaging employees have been an enormous challenge for companies of all sizes, regardless of their industry or location.
Looking ahead, we will continue to be the go-to HR partner for our clients on employee engagement and benefits. Our aim is to help them meet the evolving expectations of their employees so they can enhance their well-being both at work and beyond. To accompany Pluxee on this journey, we have established a board of directors. Pluxee's board includes four members of the Bellon family and five independent directors, bringing together a diverse range of perspectives. Today, 50% of our board members are independent and 40% are women. The board has adopted a diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and is committed to improving gender diversity throughout the company. As of Fiscal 2024, 43% of Pluxee's management positions are held by women. It is an honor to serve as the Executive Chair of Pluxee's board of directors with such seasoned global leaders.
Our priority has always been to establish a balanced board with highly relevant experience in both large publicly traded companies and startups. The current members offer a rich array of expertise across critical fields such as digital technology, data management, cybersecurity, payments, and human resources, ensuring they are well equipped to guide Pluxee in executing its strategy. The board and its two committees, the audit committees and the nomination and remuneration committee, had an impressive attendance rate of nearly 100%. This shows the commitment of each and every board member. From the start, Pluxee's board has ensured that Pluxee has the necessary checks and balances to comply with corporate governance standards. We have incorporated best practice provisions from the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, showing our commitment to sound governance as outlined in the annual report.
All the directors are guided by the company's corporate interests, which include the interests of all the group's stakeholders, comprising shareholders, clients, consumers, and partners. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to all our board members. Their enthusiasm shows their confidence in Pluxee's potential. A special thank you as well to Bellon SA. Their support is a strong vote of confidence and provides a solid foundation for Pluxee to pursue its long-term vision and strategy aimed at delivering sustainable and profitable growth. Thank you again for your presence today, and I will now give the floor to Béatrice Bire, Secretary of the General Meeting. Beatrice.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to act today as Secretary of this General Meeting. To start, I can confirm that the quorum of one-third of the issued and outstanding share capital has been duly met. Therefore, the General Meeting can validly deliberate on the resolutions on today's agenda. I will now take a few minutes to explain how the General Meeting will be conducted. The General Meeting is held in person and is conducted in English. It is being recorded, and a replay of today's webcast will be available on our website. Now, moving on to the topics and speakers for today's meeting on the next slide. In his opening remarks, our Chairman shared a few words on Pluxee's vision and corporate governance. Aurélien Sonet will, in a moment, present our Fiscal 2024 highlights and outlook.
Stéphane Lhopiteau, Pluxee's Chief Financial Officer, will next offer more insight into our financial performance. Pluxee's external auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, represented by Feiko van der Ploeg, will present the audit report. I will then go through the presentation of the various resolutions. You can already see on the next slide the list of those resolutions. Let me specify that as part of their presentations, Aurélien and Stéphane will address Item 2A, Report of the Board for Fiscal Year 2024, and Item 2C, Annual Accounts, as well as Items 3A and 3B, Presentation of our Dividend Policy and Adoption of the Dividend Proposal. Please note that Items 2A and 3A are not subject to vote.
I will cover the remaining items, 2B, Remuneration Report, 4A and 4B, Discharge of Liability for Pluxee's Executive and Non-Executive Directors, Item 5, Authorizing the Board as a competent body to repurchase shares, and Item 6, Renewing the Term of Office of our Statutory Auditor. Once all resolutions have been presented, we will take time to answer questions, if any. Then, the resolution will be put to a vote. I remind you that only shareholders attending in person or by proxy can vote during the general meeting. Now, it's my pleasure to give the floor to Aurélien Sonet , the CEO of Pluxee, who will take you through Pluxee's performance and our ambition for the coming year.
Thank you, Béatrice. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm happy to be here today, standing before all of you for the first annual general meeting of Pluxee. I will begin by walking you through the highlights and the key figures for Fiscal Year 2024, which has been an exceptional year for Pluxee in every respect, and before giving the floor to Stéphane to comment in detail on the group's financial performance in Fiscal 2024, I will present our ambition and our financial objectives for the years to come. Let's start with the main milestones that we have reached through the year in the next slide. Over the last year, we pulled off an ambitious transformation of Pluxee, transitioning from a business unit of Sodexo to a fully independent company.
Following the spin-off, Pluxee is now a unique employee benefits and engagement pure player at the forefront of tech and product innovation, well positioned across all our geographies, and this is reflected by our new brand, which embodies this strong positioning. The ability to operate as a standalone company has been a major shift for us and has led to a significant reinforcement of our teams. All these evolutions have been underpinned by a strong and experienced board and leadership team. Besides the spin-off process, Fiscal 2024 has seen a strong acceleration in the execution and the delivery of our strategic roadmap. The group has successfully gone through outstanding operational delivery and strong development momentum, which has translated into two consecutive guidance upgrades, and the group eventually exceeding all its business and financial objectives over the fiscal year.
And last but not least, we have started executing on our M&A roadmap with two significant developments: the completion and active deployment of our strategic partnership with Santander in Brazil, and the acquisition of Cobee, a Spanish digital native employee multi-benefit player. Before jumping to our strategy and our performance, I would like first to come back to our cash-generative and scalable model, which is at the foundation of our business. Our highly interconnected ecosystem is composed of three main stakeholders: our clients, their employees that we qualify as our consumers, and our large network of affiliated merchants. One of the key strengths of our business model lies in its prepaid structure. Pluxee collects cash from corporate clients at the time they book their order. Cards and digital wallets of employee users are then preloaded. This loaded amount corresponds to what we call our business volume issued.
Once these consumers have spent their benefits within our merchant network, Pluxee reimburses the merchants. This model generates three main sources of revenue: commissions paid by clients, commissions paid by merchants, and the interest generated on the float, which is made of the business volumes issued but not yet spent by the consumers or reimbursed to the merchants. To give you a broad idea of the scale, our float stood at EUR 2.8 billion as of end of August 2024. This is a highly scalable model, as more clients and consumers bring additional value to merchants and, I mean, more business volume generates at Pluxee level and increasing revenue while positively impacting our margin. I will now remind you of the main pillars of our strategic roadmap on the coming slide.
You may be familiar with this slide, which is a recap of our strategic framework that we presented at our Capital Markets Day last January. As a pure player, the group's strategy is twofold: reinforce our leadership in meal and food benefits and augment our wider employee benefits and engagement offer. This strategy is enabled by our digitally skilled, diverse, and highly engaged talent, our best-in-class scalable tech and data platform, and a targeted and disciplined M&A strategy. All this is underpinned by our strong sustainability commitment and our overall goal to have a positive impact on our ecosystem. And I'd like to take the opportunity to take you through our ESG roadmap targets and Fiscal 2024 achievements in the next slides. Fiscal 2024 has been a year of ongoing progress in terms of sustainability across our four main ESG pillars, covering business conduct, DE&I, local community, and environment.
I'm proud to say that we are on track on all the targets that we set. First, we remained committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity and transparency. By the end of the fiscal year, 99.6% of our employees had completed training on our Responsible Business Code of Conduct. Second, in terms of diversity goals, we are well on track to reach our objective of 42% of women in leadership positions in Fiscal 2026, with 39.9% already reached in Fiscal 2024. Further, we are constantly looking for new innovative ways to support our local communities, notably by enhancing the visibility of our small and medium-sized merchants. We aim to reach EUR 8 billion in business volume for our SME merchants by Fiscal 2026, with EUR 6.2 billion achieved in Fiscal 2024. And finally, in terms of environment, we are on a solid track towards our net-zero trajectory by 2035.
In Fiscal 2024, we have successfully reduced our Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions by 11% compared to the previous year and by an impressive 50% compared to our Fiscal 2017 baseline. Coming back to our global roadmap after this focus on sustainability, I will now present how we have successfully delivered on our strategic initiative, exceeding all our main business targets in Fiscal 2024. Pluxee has seen a continuous strong momentum in business volumes over Fiscal Year 2024. We recorded new clients' wins of more than EUR 1.6 billion in annualized business volumes, tracking well above our target of over EUR 1.3 billion volumes annually at constant rate. Our net retention rate stands above 103%, so slightly ahead of our midterm objective, as we work with our clients in renewing existing contracts and growing our current client portfolio, especially through further increase in average face value and cross-selling.
In this respect, the further increase in average face value of EUR 1.3 billion over Fiscal 2024 was a key contributor to net retention. This was done by advising our clients to increase face value towards legal cap in all our markets. This outstanding performance relies on the strong value propositions that we have built over the long run for all our stakeholders, as we will see in the next slide. As mentioned previously, Pluxee operates a highly interconnected and tech-enabled ecosystem of clients, consumers, and merchants that handles 4.8 million transactions every day. Our constant focus on delivering value to each of these stakeholders allows us to sustain profitable growth over the long run. Starting with our more than 500,000 clients, our support lies in our ability to build innovative solutions that they can rely on to attract and retain talent while optimizing their costs.
As an example, in France, we have recently provided the Pluxee Restaurant Card to more than 90,000 members of the security forces deployed for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Our B2B2C model also creates further value for our 36 million consumers through an enhanced employee experience and flexibility of choice. As such, we continue to roll out our multi-benefit approach, and a total of 16 countries are now on board. In Brazil, for example, more than 330,000 employees are now enrolled with our comprehensive multi-benefit offer. Lastly, we are also boosting our value proposition to our 1.7 million affiliated merchant network. On top of driving more traffic and increasing engagement with our massive consumer base, we provide them with an enhanced range of complementary services, such as a one-stop payment solution suitable to all types of transactions that we made available to all our merchants in India.
Let's now have a glance at our fiscal 2024 financial performance. This year marked an outstanding performance of our business and an excellent illustration of our virtuous business model, combining strong organic growth, margin improvement, and significant cash conversion. We overdelivered across our three key financial objectives. Total revenue reached EUR 1.210 billion, representing a plus 18.6% organic revenue growth, with strong business performance across all regions and significantly exceeding our initial target of low double-digit growth in total revenues. It was mainly driven by a very solid plus 22.5% organic revenue growth in employee benefits. Recurring EBITDA stood at EUR 430 million, up plus 24.8% organically, corresponding to a recurring EBITDA margin of 35.6%. This represents 36.4% on an organic basis, implying a plus 183 basis points increase compared to an initial objective of at least stable margin.
This margin expansion, while absorbing new standalone costs, demonstrates a strong operating leverage embedded in our business model. Recurring free cash flow amounted to EUR 379 million, corresponding to a cash conversion rate of 88%, so significantly above the 70% three-year target. Looking at all these aggregates, we are clearly well ahead of our initial plan, allowing us to enhance our shareholder distribution framework, which is covered in the next slide. During our Capital Markets Day, we committed to an at least 25% dividend payout from Fiscal Year 2024 onwards, with a regular revisit of shareholder returns depending on the unfolding of our M&A pipeline.
During our Fiscal 2024 release, we have announced a substantial positive evolution to our shareholder return policy, as we have decided, with the support of the board and subject to the adoption of the proposal by today's general meeting, to base our payout on our adjusted net profit of EUR 203 million, excluding other operating income and expenses. This is meant to align more closely our dividend policy with the operational performance of the business and drive a more attractive remuneration policy corresponding to a significant increase in dividend per share compared to the initial calculation basis. This will translate to a proposed dividend per ordinary share of EUR 0.35, as proposed to the shareholders during the meeting. Stéphane will have an opportunity later to talk about our broader capital allocation policy.
But before leaving him the floor, I would like now to focus on our ambitions and financial objectives for Fiscal 2025 and 2026. We were pleased to announce, end of October, an upgrade of our financial objectives for the next two years. This is first because we are confident about our structural growth drivers. As such, we reconfirm our low double-digit organic revenue growth objectives for both Fiscal 2025 and 2026. And this is built on a higher Fiscal 2024 basis and is predicated on a slight organic growth in float revenue year after year. Secondly, we now expect our recurring EBITDA margin to continue to expand by plus 75 incremental basis points in each of Fiscal 2025 and 2026. This improvement will allow us to reach our initial three-year target of plus 250 basis points organic increase one year ahead of our plan.
And last but not least, we upgraded our three-year average recurring cash conversion objective from 70% to 75%, which reflects our continued focus on operational efficiency and cash management across the group. And with that, I will now hand over to Stéphane to deep dive on our Fiscal 2024 financial performance in more details.
Thank you, Aurélien. Good afternoon, everyone. It is my pleasure to be with you today to present our financial performance for Fiscal Year 2024. Aurélien recalled earlier what our business volume issued consists of, and this is what I would like to start with on the next slide. Over Fiscal 2024, our business volume issued, as a reminder, we call it BVI, reached €24 billion, with employee benefits BVI up plus 11.5%, increasing to €18.1 billion compared to €16.6 billion in Fiscal 2023.
As described earlier by Aurélien, growth in employee benefits BVI has been fueled by strong commercial dynamics across all regions in both new client acquisition and additional volume generated on our current client portfolio. BVI from other products and services stands at €5.8 billion in Fiscal 2024, reflecting mostly the discontinuation of a public benefit contract in Chile, as well as a high comparison base in continental Europe due to large public benefit contracts issued in Fiscal 2023. Such growth in employee benefits BVI translated into strong revenue growth in all regions, as shown in the next page. Total revenues reached €1.210 million in Fiscal 2024, which represents plus 18.6% organic growth, well above both the low double-digit objective announced at the Capital Markets Day and the latest revised guidance released in July.
All regions delivered above low double-digit growth over the year, reflecting the positive business dynamics across countries all through Fiscal 2024. The strong underlying business trends continued in Q4, even if it was partly offset by the well-flagged base effects experienced by the group in Latin America. The strong momentum on total revenue was spread over both operating and float revenues, as seen in the next slide. The plus 18.6% organic growth outperformance has been driven by a strong trend in operating revenue growing at plus 13.3% over 2024, of which plus 8.1% in Q4, reflecting fully the non-recurring impacts mentioned in Latin America. The increase in operating revenue was mainly driven by the employee benefit segment, which showed an organic growth of plus 16.7% for the full year.
Growth in total revenue in Fiscal 24 also resulted from the strong increase in float revenue, growing up plus 69% organically and reaching EUR 155 million reported in Q4. Float revenue increased by 30.3%, up to EUR 40 million. The remarkable growth in float revenue was powered by its two drivers, namely the float baseline in the balance sheet, which grew at a CAGR of plus 9% over the past two years, and the increase in average investment yield boosted by interest rates maintained at a high level overall and by efficient cash management policy. The strong revenue growth on both operating and float revenue has translated into profitability improvement, as shown in the next page. Recurring EBITDA reached EUR 430 million in Fiscal 24, representing a plus 24.8% organic growth and a plus EUR 67 million upside versus Fiscal 23. On a reported basis, recurring EBITDA margin stood at 35.6%.
This corresponds to 36.4% on an organic basis, meaning at constant foreign exchange rates and excluding the scope effect related to the acquisition in Brazil of the Santander employee benefit activity. It represents a plus 183 basis point increase, significantly above our initial, at least stable at 34.5% objective, and achieving in only one year more than 70% of our three-year objective of plus 250 basis point improvement. The strong performance was partly driven by the strong growth in float revenue, as well as by the operating leverage embedded in our business model and our drive for efficiency gains. Conversely, due to the carve-out, the group has supported new standalone costs of circa EUR 20 million. We managed to offset a significant portion of this additional cost during the year with our recurring operating EBITDA margin, I mean here excluding float revenue, increasing in H2.
All in all, I am proud to say that we are ahead of our plan in terms of profitability improvement, which will drive up our financial objectives for the years to come. This strong EBITDA generation has been a key contributor to the net profit and free cash flow, as disclosed on the next slide. In Fiscal 24, we delivered a significant increase both in net profit and cash generation. Net profit amounted to EUR 133 million, up plus 64% compared to Fiscal 23 that was impacted by the competition proceedings in France. As already mentioned by Aurélien, we have also introduced an adjusted net profit that reached EUR 203 million in 24, slightly below 23 as a result of the new capital structure of the group.
This metric consists of net profit attributable to equity holders of the parents restated for the impact of other operating income and expenses net of the related income tax and non-controlling interest. It will serve as the basis for our distribution policy going forward. From a cash perspective, we delivered a recurring free cash flow of EUR 379 million over Fiscal 24, a significant upside compared to EUR 289 million generated in Fiscal 23, excluding the favorable impact of the evolution to prepaid model in Brazil. All this has translated into a strong cash conversion rate of 88%, largely above the three-year average target of 70% and plus 8 points of percentage above Fiscal Year 23 levels when adjusted for the change in regulation in Brazil. As a result, our capital structure and financial profile are even stronger as of end of Fiscal 24, as depicted on the next page.
The group's net financial cash positions stood at €1.054 million as of the end of Fiscal 2024, representing an improvement of €195 million, mostly as a result of the strong free cash flow, largely mitigating foreign exchange headwinds on cash balances. As of end of August 2024, the group continues to rely on a strong balance sheet position illustrated by our current triple B plus investment grade rating and stable outlook from S&P. The net cash position of €1.054 million was composed of more than €2.2 billion of cash after excluding €973 million of float-related restricted cash, net of circa €1.2 billion of gross debt made mainly of the two bond tranches issued in early March 2024 for €550 million each and €62 million of lease liabilities. Ultimately, the improvement in our net cash position and the success of our bond issuance make the group's financial profile even stronger.
Before handing over to Aurélien, I would like to conclude with a focus on our capital allocation policy on the next slide. As disclosed during the Capital Markets Day in January, we have a clear framework for capital allocation based on three priorities. First, we are on track with our objective of investing around 10% of our total revenue per year, supporting organic growth and development by further enhancing our tech platform and digital capacities. Second, we are focused on delivering targeted and well-executed M&A. Aurélien commented earlier on the deployment of our partnership with Santander and the acquisition of Cobee. M&A will continue to be a core growth engine. Last but not the least, on shareholder returns, we are proposing EUR 0.35 dividend per ordinary share calculated on a 25% payout ratio based on the adjusted net profit.
This shift in our shareholder remuneration policy drives a significant increase in the total amount of dividend to be distributed to our shareholders. It is fully consistent with our Capital Markets Day commitment of continuously adapting our shareholder return framework. It also allows us to align our dividend policy more closely with the operational performance of the business. And going forward, we will, of course, continue to look at the available range of options to enhance our framework for shareholder returns subject to the unfolding of our M&A strategy. And with this in mind, I will now leave the floor to Aurélien for the conclusion of this presentation.
Thank you, Stéphane. Obviously, this was a pivotal year for Pluxee, marked by significant achievements, and I first want to thank our 5,415 employees and all our stakeholders for taking part in this success.
I also want to thank all of you, our shareholders, for your interest and your support in this journey as a public company, as we are building step by step our track record on the market. The Pluxee story is a profitable growth story sustained by the values that we create for our clients, our consumers, and our merchants. We continue to be strong believers in the structural growth trends driving our sector, in the strengths of our highly scalable business model, and in Pluxee's potential as a standalone company, both in terms of organic growth, operational efficiency, and cash flow generation. Following the spin-off and the outstanding performance delivered in Fiscal 2024, we are stronger than ever to successfully execute our clear strategic roadmap and continue to deliver a robust performance.
All this makes us confident in delivering on our ambitious financial objective for both Fiscal Year 2025 and 2026. And we are looking forward to keeping you updated on our progress in the quarters ahead. And with that, I will now give the floor back to Béatrice.
Thank you, Aurélien. I'm now turning to Feiko van der Ploeg, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Feiko, I invite you to share more insight into Pluxee's audit report for Fiscal Year 2024.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Feiko van der Ploeg. I'm an audit partner at PwC here in the Netherlands, and I'm responsible for the audit of Pluxee NV.
As you can see in the annual report, we've provided a long-form audit opinion, which you can find in section 4.3 of the annual report, Fiscal 2024, and that audit opinion is unqualified as to the nature of the opinion. Included in the opinion are materiality, scope, and key audit matters, the most important aspects, and I would like to run down these points. Maybe first a word on the setup of the Pluxee audit. Being a Dutch legal entity headquartered in France, that means that for us, we have a combined group audit team, combined meaning PwC, the Netherlands, together with PwC France. We have a very good cooperation and good communication, with the ultimate responsibility lying at PwC in the Netherlands with myself. It is the first year of audit for us for Pluxee NV, and that means that we did not audit the corresponding figures.
They have been audited, but in the context of the combined financial statements included in the listing prospectus. However, we did perform procedures which are sufficient and appropriate to gain audit evidence over the opening balances, so we did not qualify our opinion for that, and that includes reviewing the audit files of the predecessor auditor. Starting off with materiality. Materiality that we use determines the depth and the scope of our work. It is based on what we consider relevant for you as users of the financial statements. Based on our professional judgment, we've determined the materiality to be 14 million, and that is based on recurring operating profit before tax, so that means that we would qualify the financial statements if an error over 14 million would occur.
We have reported all unadjusted differences over EUR 1.4 million to the board and to the audit committee, and we use a lower materiality on certain specific items. For instance, on the board remuneration, we use a lower materiality. If I move on to the scope of the audit, we've performed the audit in 11 locations, covering 75% of the revenues, 74% of the assets, and 79% of profit before tax. For the remaining countries and the remaining companies, we've performed alternative procedures reaching the 100%. We are also, as a group auditor, involved in the local audits. We do that via instructing our colleagues abroad. We have regular meetings, and this year, Fiscal Year 2024, we visited the Brazilian company due to its significance, but also the acquisition that was already mentioned before.
All audits are performed by PwC except for the one in Turkey that is a non-PwC auditor, and there we performed working paper reviews to make sure we can take the full responsibility as group auditor. If I move on to the key audit matters, we have three in our opinion, as you can see. The first one is the measurement of the recoverable amount of goodwill. It is disclosed in note 7.1, goodwill, and note 7.3, impairment of non-current assets, and that key audit matter is driven by the amount. It's a big amount. It's about EUR 670 million euros, and it's inherent uncertainty of certain inputs used, likelihood of achieving forecasted results, and the long-term growth rate used. If we look at the audit procedures that we perform, we obtain an understanding and critical review of the method applied.
We review the methodology used and assets, assess the compliance with IAS 36 or with IFRS. We verify the mathematical accuracy of the model used. We reconcile the net carrying amount of assets used for impairment testing with the financial statements, and we assess the assumption on the line to projected cash flow through inquiry of management, assessing the budget process, but also the reasonableness of discount rates applied. And there we use our own specialists to form an opinion on that and to help us form an opinion on that. We assess the sensitivity analysis of the values in use to changes in main assumptions, and we verify whether the disclosures are accurate. And with respect to this key audit matter, we have no material findings. The second key audit matter relates to revenue recognition. We refer to note 5.1, segment information and revenue information.
Pluxee operates in different countries with different regulations regarding employee benefits. This, together with the risk of overstating revenues in the first year as a standalone listed company, resulted in our focus on existence and occurrence of revenue recognized as a key audit matter. Also here, the audit procedures performed cover, for instance, evaluation of the design and implementation of internal controls regarding the appropriate timing of revenue recognition, assessing through sample testing whether revenue was adequately recognized in line with IFRS 15 for consumer and merchant commissions, and based on underlying documentation such as contracts, transaction data, payments. We obtained confirmation of a sample of clients and merchants as well, and we assessed the adequacy of the cutoff of revenue, whether it is recognized in the right period.
For the flow of revenue, we tested on a sample basis whether revenue has been recognized in line with IFRS 15, based on underlying documentation as well. We also assessed here the appropriateness of the disclosure. Based on the procedures performed, we found the revenue recognition to be supported by sufficient audit evidence and the disclosure to be adequate. Then the last key audit matter that we've included, and that is the presentation of recurring operating profit in the consolidated income statement. Pluxee makes a distinction between recurring operating profit and operating profit in the consolidated income statement. That is further disclosed in note 5, segment information, revenues, and other operating items.
This key audit matter is given that an intermediate aggregate is included additional to the provisions of IAS 1, which is not common in the Dutch financial reporting environment and requires some judgment to be applied in the elements presented as non-recurring other income and expenses. Here, the procedures included relate to the evaluation of the design and implementation of controls on classification of income and expenses of non-recurring other income and expenses. We tested on a sample basis the adequacy of the recognition of cost and income as other income and expenses. We assessed the consistency of the presentation and classification compared to the audited combined financial statements for Fiscal 2023, as included also in the listing prospectus, and we assessed the consistency of the presentation with the presentation of the former parent company, but also with main competitors.
We assessed the consistency, as I said, between the presentation and disclosure of this topic compared to the listing prospectus, and based on these procedures, we found that the presentation of recurring operating profit to be supported by sufficient audit evidence and the disclosure as included in note 5 to be adequate in providing sufficient information to the users of the financial statements. I have three topics left. The first one is the audit approach to fraud risks. We refer to section 6, risks and risk management in the annual report of Pluxee. We evaluated the design of the related internal controls, including code of conduct, whistleblower procedures, and incident registration, and we tested the operating effectiveness where applicable. We identified two specific fraud risks in our audit, and they are both driven by the international auditing standards.
The first one is management override of control, where we focused on testing specific journal entries based on risk criteria. We focused on important estimates made by management, as well as significant transactions outside the ordinary course of business, like the acquisition in Brazil. And we also identified the risk of fraud with respect to revenue recognition, and I refer to the key audit matter just described. Our audit procedures did not lead to any indications or suspicions of fraud. I think that's positive. Audit independence. We actively monitor our independence as auditors. We do that in close cooperation with the group. We both need to approve any non-audit services, and we periodically report those to the audit committee, and the audit committee needs to approve them as well. And I can confirm our independence as external auditor of Pluxee. That closes the part of the audit opinion.
Maybe one comment on the ESG indicators. As you might have seen, we provided a limited assurance report on nine ESG indicators. I refer to section 5.6.2 for the indicators and 5.6.3 for a limited assurance report. For Fiscal 24, Pluxee is not yet in scope of the CSRD, which will be the case for Fiscal 25. I think that closes my...
Yes, thank you very much, Feiko. Our auditor will not be available to answer any question regarding the report. So are there any shareholders in the room who would like to ask a question to Feiko? Yes?
Excusez-moi, j'ai des questions, mais à propos des résultats. Ok. D'accord. Ouais. I think there are no questions.
There's no question for you, Feiko. Thank you very much. In such case, I will be moving on to the presentation of the agenda of the resolutions, starting with the remuneration report.
The remuneration report has been prepared in accordance with the Dutch law and can be found in section 2.5 of our annual report. In the remuneration report, the nomination and remuneration committee provided an overview of the remuneration of the members of Pluxee Board for fiscal year 2024. It outlines the main elements of Pluxee's remuneration policy adopted on January 31, 2024, and how it was implemented in the past year. It shows that the compensation of the non-executive director and of the executive chair complied with Pluxee's remuneration policy. No changes to the remuneration policy are being proposed for this general meeting. However, the company will continue to actively benchmark the evolution of compensation in its market and ensure its remuneration policy remains attractive. In accordance with the applicable law, the 2024 remuneration report will be submitted for an advisory vote in the general meeting.
Moving to the remaining resolution, I will not comment on items 3A and 3B of the dividend policy and dividend proposal, which were already presented by Aurélien and Stéphane. For more details, you can also refer to the explanatory notes to the agenda and the notice published on our website on November 6th. Our annual report is also available on our website together with a statement with two minor specifications. Item 4A of the agenda proposes that the general meeting discharge from liability the former managing director who was in office before the spinoff and the executive chair. This discharge concerns the performance of their duties during the fiscal year 2024. Under item 4B, a similar request for discharge from liability for the same period is submitted to the general meeting with respect to the non-executive directors.
Moving on to agenda item 5, which covers the proposal to authorize the board to acquire ordinary shares up to 10% of the company's share capital. Please here again refer to the explanatory notes for further details on this authorization request. Now on item 6, it is proposed to reappoint PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's external auditor for the next fiscal year. The company's audit committee recommended their reappointment, and the board concurred with this recommendation. Before we proceed to voting on this resolution, I will now give the floor back to our chairman for the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you, Béatrice. We have not received any written questions, so the floor now is open for shareholders in the room who would like to ask questions. Maybe we could start with you because you had a question on the results.
I prefer to ask in French, please.
No problem.
[Foreign Language].
[Foreign Language] , so I talk about the share price. I have no comment on the share price. I mean, the market is the market. I'm not in to say about it. We think, of course, that our results are quite good. So is it reflecting our results? Probably not. But investors are free to decide. L'investissement, la trésorerie, peut-être. Stéphane?
Yes, I'm going to answer the question in English, if you don't mind, and for the benefit of those who are listening to us.
So saying again, your second question was about our strategy on how we invest our cash over the world. And so the kind of product in which we invest this cash are mainly term deposits, so meaning that there is no capital at risk, but we, of course, support the risk of the counterparty. And this cash that we have in the balance sheet, so EUR 3.2 billion at the end of fiscal year 2024, is made of mainly float-related cash, but there is a portion of own cash, excess cash. And so this float-related cash remains in the country where this cash was collected from the client because it's going to be used to repay the merchant afterwards. So no way for us to take this cash out of the country where it is circulated.
Thank you, Stéphane.
So on the third issue regarding what you call the cartel, but it has not been... I mean, for the moment, we are still waiting for the decision of the court. So maybe the word is not the right one, but whatever. Béatrice, is there anything you're going to comment?
Yes, just to comment on your question, just that you know that we filed an appeal for cassation following the judgment of the Court of Appeal of Paris. So we need to see what will be their decisions. We haven't got their decision yet, so it's still ongoing. So of course, we are confident in the development of the case toward the cassation, and we hope that this decision for the Court of Appeal will be reversed. In such case, it will go back to the Court of Appeal, and it will be judged again. So no final decision yet.
Now, we are also aware that there will be some follow-on indemnity claim resulting from this decision of the French Competition Authority, and we will, of course, defend ourselves following what the Court of Cassation will decide.
So you're right regarding Madame Grégoire, but she's not in charge anymore, as you know. But I think Aurélien, you would like to say something about it.
Yeah, maybe just a few words. So indeed, I mean, when she was Secretary of State, Olivia Grégoire wanted to, and with the, through the concertation with all the stakeholders of the ecosystem, to define and to get adopted a law to modernize the meal benefit system. At the heart of this project was the digitization of the system, because in paper, we still have, in France, we still have paper and card.
And so this project, of course, I mean, was put on hold. It's still on hold as long as we don't have a new government formed in France. But I'm confident that once we do have a government, this plan to keep on modernizing the meal benefit system will be addressed. And this is for the good of all the stakeholders of our ecosystem. Thanks for your time.
Thank you, Aurélien. Any other questions from the floor? Okay. So if there are no more questions, we are going to move to the vote for the resolution set out in the agenda of this general meeting. I give the floor back to the Secretary of the General Meeting.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will now explain the voting process. I remind you that the record date for the general meeting was November 20, 2024.
As of that date, the total number of issued and outstanding ordinary and special voting shares, excluding treasury shares, was 208,895,645 voting shares. The definitive quorum of this general meeting is 89.69% of the issued and outstanding shares per the record date. More than one-third of the issued and outstanding share capital is represented. Therefore, all voting items on the agenda can be adopted by a simple majority of votes. Shareholders attending in person can vote using the voting device received at the reception desk. Resolutions will be submitted for vote one by one. Let's now look at the slide explaining the voting instruction to use the device. There's a slide on... So to start, make sure your smart card is correctly inserted to ensure your device is working. Then, once the vote is open, simply press the button of your choice. One, to vote in favor of the resolution.
Two, to vote against the resolution. And three, to abstain. When you see the received notification on your device, it means the vote has been cast. Should you wish to change your vote, you can simply press another button. The voting results will be shown on the following slide and will also be published as part of our voting results. Here you have the instruction on the slide. Now I will officially open the vote of the resolution, starting with Resolution 2B, Remuneration Report for the Fiscal 2024. The vote is now open. The advisory vote for the resolution is now closed. Resolution 2B is adopted. Now the vote on the annual accounts for the Fiscal 2024. The vote on Resolution 2C is now open. The vote is closed. Resolution 2C is adopted. Now the resolution of the adoption of the dividend proposal. The vote is open.
The vote is closed. Resolution 3B is adopted. Now on the resolution of the discharge of the executive director. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution 4A is adopted. Now on the resolution on the discharge of the non-executive director. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution 4B is adopted. Now the authorization to the board as the competent body to repurchase shares. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution 5 is adopted. Now the resolution on the renewal of the term of office of the statutory auditor for the Fiscal 2025. The vote is open. The vote is now closed. Resolution 6 is adopted. Thank you for your participation. We have now finished the vote on the resolutions, and I will give the floor back to Mr. Chairman for the closing of our meeting.
Thank you very much, Béatrice. Thank you.
So once again, I would like to thank all our shareholders for their attendance today and participation in our first general meeting. As we have seen, it has been a transformative and remarkable year for our company. And I am delighted to continue guiding Pluxee as it delivers on its ambitions in the coming year. We have now concluded the meeting. I wish you all a very happy holiday season, and I look forward to seeing you at our next annual general meeting next year. Thank you for your attention.