Good morning. Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Pluxee first half fiscal 2026 results presentation. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions by pressing star and one at any time. I advise you that this conference is being recorded today on Thursday, April 16th, 2026. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Ms. Pauline Bireaud, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, madam.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our fiscal 2026 H1 results. I'm Pauline Bireaud, Head of Investor Relations for Pluxee, and I'm joined by Aurélien Sonet, our CEO, and Stéphane Lhopiteau, our CFO. Let me guide you through today's presentation agenda in the next slide. Aurélien will start with the key highlights and figures for H1, followed by a focus on our commercial performance, and then Stéphane will take you through our financial results. Finally, Aurélien will then conclude with our outlook, including an update on the regulatory situation in Brazil before we open the floor for the Q&A. With that, I will hand over to Aurélien.
Thank you, Pauline, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to be back with you today to present our first half fiscal 2026 results, starting with our key highlights. We are pleased to share that we delivered overall solid H1, which puts us well on track to meet our full-year objectives. First, commercial momentum remains strong and resulted in sustained revenue growth driven by our core employee benefits activity. Second, profitability delivered ahead of plan. Recurring EBITDA margin expanded strongly, supported by the operating leverage embedded in our business model and the strong execution of our efficiency initiatives. Lastly, it translated into strong earnings growth and cash generation, reinforcing further our net financial cash position. Overall, H1 performance strengthened our confidence for the full year and allows us to enter H2 from a position of strength amid a more uncertain macro and geopolitical environment.
Let's now focus on the key figures for the semester on slide five. Despite the increasingly challenging environment, we continue to deliver sustained top-line growth, with total revenues reaching EUR 655 million, up +5.6% organically. This was supported by the continued strength of our core business, with employee benefits operating revenue reaching EUR 500 million, up +9.4% organically. I'll come back on this in the coming slides. At the same time, profitability delivered strongly. Recurring EBITDA reached EUR 242 million, up +12.9% organically, and recurring EBITDA margin expanded to 37%, up +229 basis points organically. Finally, recurring free cash flow reached EUR 210 million, corresponding to 86% cash conversion rate. In a word, we delivered a strong and well-balanced performance across growth, profitability, and cash generation. This is exactly what the next slide highlights over time.
Beyond quality of execution, the performance delivered in H1 also reflects how our business model structurally converts top-line growth into margin expansion and cash generation. At its core, Pluxee benefits from a resilient growth engine anchored in employee benefits. Combined with the operating leverage embedded in our platform and the continued efficiency gains, this translates into higher profitability, with EBITDA growing at twice the pace of top-line growth. In turn, this profitability translates into strong cash generation, confirming the robust cash conversion capacity of our model. Let me now focus on our core growth engine, employee benefits, in the next slide. At the heart of our growth engine is employee benefits. This core business represents the vast majority of our revenues and continued to deliver high single-digit organic growth across regions in H1.
In Latin America, employee benefits grew by +11.5% organically, driven by particularly strong commercial dynamics across products and further supported by favorable pay value trends underpinned by local inflation trends. In Continental Europe, growth reached +5.1% organically. In the current geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, this represents a solid performance and illustrates the resilience of our core offering across European markets. Finally, in rest of the world, growth was particularly strong at +16.8% organically, illustrating the favorable dynamic that we observe in terms of market penetration in those countries. Overall, employee benefits once again demonstrated this semester the relevance of our pure-play positioning. I will now turn to other products and services in the next slide. Even if other products and services is facing temporary pressure in two specific activities, the long-term value creation story remains unchanged. Looking first at public benefits in Continental Europe.
Current performance mainly reflects the effects related to the contract cycle and order fading, which are inherent to this business. At the same time, by leveraging our merchant network and payment capabilities, these large-scale programs structurally enhance group scalability. On top of that, a highly selective approach and close monitoring of contract performance ensures that public benefits remains sustainably accretive to growth and profitability overall, beyond short-term fading impact. As base effects unwind, performance is expected to progressively regain momentum from H2. Switching to the U.K. and the U.S., where we are strategically refocusing our activity toward employee engagement, a structurally growing segment in both countries. We now operate fully digital scalable platforms and are progressively exiting non-core, lower return activities. Together, these countries account for less than 5% of group revenues.
While they are expected to continue weighing on the group's revenue growth in H2 2026, they should return to a positive contribution from fiscal 2027. More broadly, we continue to actively manage a portfolio and allocate capital and resources selectively toward activities and markets offering the most attractive long-term returns. Let's now look at the key drivers of the group's substantial margin expansion in the next slide. H1 marked another strong EBITDA margin increase, with operating EBITDA margin expansion accelerating at plus 268 basis points compared to plus 235 basis points last year. It comes first from the operating leverage embedded in our model. Our one platform architecture allows us to absorb incremental volumes with limited additional costs, generating structural scale effects and synergies across the group. This sharp expansion also reflects the structural cost efficiency that we've been progressively delivering since the spin-off.
It mainly comes from the streamlining of our product range and processes across countries, the accelerated automation, notably through the increasing use of AI as a key optimization enabler alongside technology and data, and a clear prioritization of projects and initiatives based on rigorous value creation monitoring. This discipline has become an increasingly important margin driver for Pluxee, complementing volume growth and reinforcing our ability to sustainably improve profitability. Let's switch now to the commercial traction delivered in H1 on slide 11. Our commercial trajectory remains solid in H1 and positions us well on track to deliver on our full-year business targets. First, we achieved a record level of new client wins, generating EUR 0.9 billion of new annualized BVI across all client sizes and geographies. Second, net retention proved resilient despite a more challenging macro environment impacting end user portfolios in some markets.
Lastly, face value remained a structural growth driver of business volumes. In fiscal 2024, we have generated EUR 2.9 billion of cumulative incremental BVI from increases in face value, bringing us very close to our three-year target of more than EUR 3 billion. Let me now detail each of these levels, starting with new client development. New client development was particularly strong in H1. We generated a record EUR 0.9 billion of annualized BVI from new client acquisition, with positive momentum across all three regions, which reflects our strong commercial execution tailored to the specific dynamics of each local market. Just as importantly, performance remained well-balanced across client sizes, with SMEs making a substantial contribution and accounting for more than 30% of new development over the semester. In addition, recent M&A contributed significantly, notably in Latin America, where the Santander partnership continued to perform at full speed.
The acquisition of Benefício Fácil has also been a step change for our employee mobility business in Brazil, driving more than 50% volume growth year-on-year. This momentum is to be reinforced by the ongoing integration of Skipr in Belgium and in France. With a strong, diversified, and actionable pipeline, we are confident in our ability to deliver ahead of our full-year development target, supported by disciplined execution in the second half. Now, beyond new client acquisition, let's now look at net retention, another key driver of our commercial performance. Over the semester, client loyalty remained consistently at high level, underlining the strength of our value proposition to our clients. This provides a solid foundation to actively manage our revenue per client through two key levers.
First, the increase in sales values, which remain a key contributor driven by inflation trends in Latin America and rest of the world, as well as the progressive implementation of recent legal cap increases across Europe. This dynamic is expected to accelerate and continue to support BVI growth in H2 and beyond. Second, the cross-selling, which gain momentum, reflecting our strategy to stand out as a multi-benefit partner for our clients, illustrated as an example by the accelerated deployment of our employee mobility solutions, as highlighted on the previous slide. At the same time, end user portfolio remained under pressure in some markets. A more challenging macroeconomic environment continued to weigh on labor market dynamics in some countries, leading to a temporary contraction in the covered employee base. As a result, net retention stood at 99% in H1, excluding the temporarily delayed large employee benefit program in Romania.
It demonstrated solid resilience in the current environment, confirming the stickiness of our solutions and the effectiveness of our commercial and portfolio management strategy. With that, I will now hand over to Stéphane to take you through our financial performance in more detail.
Thank you, Aurélien. Good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be with you today to present our financial performance for the first half of our fiscal year 2026. Let's start this financial review with the business volumes issued on page 15. Total business volumes issued, or BVI, reached EUR 12.9 billion in H1 2026. Employee benefits remained the growth engine, reaching EUR 10.1 billion of BVI in H1, representing a +5.9% organic increase over the semester. It is worth noting that these figures include the deferred rollout to H2 of a large employee benefit program in Romania. Excluding this temporary phasing effect, employee benefit BVI grew +6.8% organically in H1. This performance reflects robust commercial execution driven by Latin America and the rest of the world as anticipated, which both delivered double-digit organic growth in employee benefit BVI over the first semester.
Looking now at other products and services, business volume issued declined by -20.9% organically in H1. As already mentioned by Aurélien, this performance reflected temporary headwinds in public benefits, due mostly to anticipated contract cycle and phasing effects of certain large public benefit programs across continental Europe. Let's now see how such business volume issued translated into total revenues on slide 16. Total revenues reached EUR 655 million in H1 2026, up +5.6% organically or +3% on a reported basis, including a -3.6% currency impact, mainly due to activities in Turkey, partly offset by a +1% scope effect. In Q2, total revenues increased by +2.8% organically. Operating revenue reached EUR 573 million in H1, up +5.7% organically and +3.9% on a reported basis, driven by employee benefits, which continued to deliver high single-digit organic growth, as introduced by Aurélien earlier.
Focusing on Q2 2026, operating revenue reached EUR 306 million, delivering +2.8% organic growth. As expected, growth moderated, mainly reflecting non-recurring effects in other products and services, which I will detail on the next slide. When stripping out these one-offs, we continue to see a strong and sustained momentum with operating revenue organic growth running at +6.1% in Q2 and +8.8% in H1, confirming the quality and the resilience of our core business. Lastly, float revenue increased by +5.3% organically, reaching EUR 81 million in H1 2026. On a reported basis, it was slightly down by -2.5%, including a -7.9% currency impact. I will come back to the float revenue growth drivers in more detail later in the presentation. Before that, let's focus on the key drivers behind operating revenue performance over the semester, as shown on page 17.
Employee benefits operating revenue reached EUR 500 million in H1 2026, delivering a solid +9.4% organic growth, or +7.8% on a reported basis. This high single-digit organic performance was fueled by strong commercial momentum, especially across Latin America and rest of the world, and it was supported by a solid 5% take-up rate. Focusing on Q2 2026, employee benefits generated operating revenue of EUR 266 million, up +7.5% organically. Turning to other products and services, operating revenue reached EUR 73 million in H1, down -14.3% organically, of which -20.6% in Q2. As Aurélien explained it earlier, this decline mainly reflects first temporary public benefit impact in Continental Europe, combined with the ongoing strategic repositioning of our activities in the U.K. and the U.S., including the exit from selected non-core and lower profitability contracts, temporarily weighing on both countries' performance.
Let's give a look at the geographical breakdown to see how these operating revenue trends were reflected across regions over the semester on slide 18. Starting with Continental Europe, operating revenue reached EUR 250 million in H1 2026, corresponding to a -0.7% organic contraction and a +0.8% reported growth. The trend, excluding one-off effect in public benefit, remained solid, delivering +3.4% organic growth in H1. Growth continued to be driven by Southern Europe, especially Spain, which was up double-digit organically, while France and Eastern Europe were more affected by the macroeconomic environment, notably with regards to end user portfolio trend. With the public benefit impact progressively fading, growth trend in Continental Europe should improve in Q3 versus Q2 in a still challenging macro context. Turning to Latin America, operating revenue amounted to EUR 229 million in H1 2026, delivering a strong +12.1% organic growth.
The region continued to benefit from strong commercial momentum, particularly in Brazil. Growth was driven by increasing penetrations of Flexis solution across both corporate and SME clients, combined with a continued increase in face values supported by local inflation dynamics. In addition, public benefit activity in Chile remains strong, further contributing to the region's strong performance. As the initial regulatory evolution in Brazil has been affecting the group since the beginning of March, operating revenue growth will turn negative in Q3 in the region as expected. Lastly, in rest of the world, operating revenue reached EUR 94 million in H1, growing +8.4% organically or -5.3% on a reported basis, including a -13.9% currency impact, mainly related to the depreciation of the Turkish lira.
Turkey remained a key growth driver for the group, supported by local hyperinflation environment, driving higher face values across the client portfolio, as well as by continued penetration through new contract wins. As already indicated, performance in the region also reflected the ongoing transformation of our activities in the U.K. and the U.S. Excluding this impact, operating revenue grew +16.9% organically, highlighting the strength of the momentum. Before contributing back to growth from fiscal 2027, this in-depth transformation is expected to weigh more heavily on Q3 than on Q2 as the cleanup of legacy activities continues. I will now come back to the contribution of float revenue to the top-line growth in H1 on page 19. Float revenue reached EUR 81 million in H1 2026, still delivering a +5.3% organic growth, including +2.2% in Q2.
On a reported basis, float revenue decreased slightly by -2.5% year-on-year, impacted by a -7.9% currency impact, mainly driven by the Turkish lira depreciation. Float revenue organic growth was mainly driven by higher business volumes issued, notably in countries where interest rates remained elevated, such as Turkey or Brazil. This was partly offset by lower interest rates across most geographies, particularly in Europe, following successive interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank. To mitigate interest rate volatility and secure float revenue over time, the group continued to actively deploy a flexible investment strategy, increasing exposure to longer tenure and fixed rate instruments tailored to local financial market conditions. As a result, the average investment yield reached 6.1% in H1 2026, up +10 basis points year-on-year.
Looking ahead for the full year, given one, the current geopolitical environment and the implied volatility on interest rates, and two, the still uncertain impact from regulatory evolution on float balance sheet position in Brazil, visibility remains limited. As a consequence, our growth expectation for fiscal year 2026 float revenue are now fluctuating from slight decrease to slight increase organically. After reviewing the top-line performance, let me walk you through the significant profitability improvement delivered over the semester, starting with slide number 20. Once again, this semester's profitability performance clearly highlighted the strong value creation embedded in our business model and supported by our continued cost discipline. Recurring EBITDA reached EUR 242 million in H1 2026, up +12.9% organically and +7.7% on a reported basis. Recurring EBITDA margins stood at 37%, increasing by +229 basis points organically and +159 basis points on a reported basis.
This strong margin expansion, well spread across regions, was largely driven by operating performance. Indeed, recurring operating EBITDA, I mean here, excluding float revenue contribution, grew by +17.3% organically, translating into a +268 basis points organic uplift in the recurring operating EBITDA margin, up to 28.1%. This performance reflects, as already explained, strong operating leverage as well as strict cost monitoring discipline and continuous operational improvement implemented both locally and at group level, combined with top-line and cost synergies from acquired businesses. This strong growth in recurring EBITDA contributed positively to the full income statement, all the way down to net profit, as disclosed on page 21. Below EBITDA, first, depreciation and amortizations stood at -EUR 62 million in H1 2026, showing a slight increase year-on-year, consistent with the specific phasing of our CapEx in fiscal year 2025 and the additional contribution from newly acquired companies.
Second, other operating income and expenses decreased from minus EUR 13 million to minus EUR 8 million, reflecting limited one-off rationalization cost in H1 2026 compared with residual carve-out cost in H1 2025. For the full year, including Brazil restructuring, OIE are expected to remain broadly stable year-on-year at minus EUR 25 million. Operating profit or EBIT reached EUR 172 million, up +9% in H1 2026. Financial income and expenses came in at minus EUR 3 million, broadly stable versus H1 of last year. Borrowing costs remained unchanged and were largely offset by interest income generated from non-float-related cash. For the full year, we expect financial income and expenses to land between minus EUR 15 million and minus EUR 10 million. Finally, income tax expense reached minus EUR 53 million with an effective tax rate broadly stable year-on-year at 31.4%.
As a consequence, net profit reached EUR 116 million in 2026, up +9.3% year-on-year, reflecting the strong expansion in recurring EBITDA, lower other operating items, and disciplined financial expense management. Excluding OI, adjusted EPS group shares reached EUR 0.78, representing an increase of +6.8%, including the initial accretion from the execution of the share buyback program. Let's now take a look at how our solid operational and financial performance translated into a strong cash flow generation over H1 on slide 20. Recurring free cash flow reached more than EUR 10 million in 2026, driven by the combination of a significant increase in recurring EBITDA, a disciplined monitoring of CapEx, and a favorable evolution in working capital excluding restricted cash.
CapEx reached EUR 44 million in 2026 or 6.8% of total revenues, stable year-over-year, reflecting our disciplined capital allocation and the continued shift toward a more OpEx-driven model supported by cloud migration and IT service management. Change in working capital, excluding restricted cash, improved to EUR 85 million compared to EUR 43 million last year, driven by effective focus on cash collection and management. As a result, recurring cash conversion rates reached 86% in 2026, reflecting the quality of our recurring earnings. This performance keeps us well on track to meet our three-year average objective of around 80% cash conversion, despite expected regulatory headwinds in Brazil in the second half. This strong cash generation has also been a key driver supporting the further increase in the group net financial cash position, as we'll see on page 23.
Net financial cash position, excluding restricted cash, reached EUR 1,270,000 as of end of February 2026, representing an increase of plus EUR 107 million over the semester. This evolution reflected the strong recurring free cash flow, which more than covered the cash outflows for first, the deployment of our M&A strategy, second, the dividend payment, and third, the ongoing execution of the EUR 100 million share buyback program, of which around 64% had been completed by the end of H1. Gross financial debt remained quasi unchanged over the semester at a bit less than EUR 1.3 billion, mainly composed of the two long-term bond tranches. During H1, we also entered into fixed floating interest rate swaps on part of this bond fixed rate debt, further optimizing the financial structure as part of our asset-liability management strategy in connection with float revenue.
This Pluxee's strong financial cash position and cash generation is also reflected in our unchanged triple B plus rating and stable outlook from Standard & Poor's. With that, I will now hand it over back to Aurélien for the outlook.
Thank you, Stéphane. Let me now wrap up this presentation with our outlook, but starting with an update on recent developments in Brazil and the group's related action plan. Since the revised framework was announced, we have consistently executed our action plan in Brazil, making tangible progress across our three work streams in line with regulatory milestones. Starting with operations. From early March, we have implemented the first measures set out in the decree, and in parallel, we've been preparing the rollout of our best-in-class open loop solution, leveraging our existing Pluxee capabilities with the deployment starting in May. In addition, we've been deploying a multilevel efficiency plan to adapt our cost base and protect profitability, adjusted over time to reflect the different stages of the reform and our business needs.
In parallel, we continue to maintain proactive and constructive discussion with Brazilian public authorities, focusing on feasibility, scope, and implementation timelines to ensure a pragmatic and orderly transition. Finally, we continue to pursue our longer term legal actions, keeping all options open to support the sustainable development and proper functioning of the PAT framework in Brazil. Overall, we are executing our roadmap in line with the plan, and teams both in Brazil and at group level remain fully mobilized. Combined with our strong H1 performance, this supports our confidence in confirming all our financial objectives for fiscal 2026. As a reminder, our fiscal 2026 objectives assume the full implementation of the Workers' Food Program reform for the PAT from H2. It also incorporates the positive impact of our mitigating actions and the progressive adaptation of our operating model in Brazil.
Within that framework, we continue to expect stable total revenues on an organic basis for the full year. Light organic expansion in recurring EBITDA margin. This is underpinned by the resilience of our model and by the actions we are taking across the group to protect profitability in a more challenging environment. Finally, recurring cash conversion of around 80% on average over fiscal 2024 to 2026.
Overall, our strong H1 delivery, combined with our disciplined execution, reinforce our confidence on full-year objectives, while continuing to manage proactively in this complex geopolitical and macroeconomic context. To conclude, I would say that Pluxee once again delivered a strong H1 performance with solid revenue growth, margin expansion, and robust cash generation. While we are facing a contained regulatory evolution in Brazil, it does not change the fundamentals of our business model, the strength of our commercial momentum, nor our discipline on execution.
This is why we remain fully confident in meeting all our full-year objectives and focused on long-term value creation for the group. Thank you for your attention. Now with Stéphane, we will be happy to take your questions.
Thank you, sir. This is the conference operator. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. The first question comes from Pravin Gondhale of Barclays.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, on retention, it's at sort of 99%, excluding Romania. Could you please give us a sense when do you expect it to sort of return to positive territory? Secondly, on CapEx levels, H1 CapEx were broadly flat year-on-year, but I remember you talking about FY 2025 CapEx being lower on temporary sort of delay in IT and tech CapEx. Given your shift to OpEx-driven model now, what's the right level of CapEx we should be thinking in medium term? Finally on Brazil. It's been sort of a few months since the announcement of decree. Since then, have you announced any incremental cost mitigation or pre-negotiation actions which will help you to reduce the impact from the regulations? Thanks.
Thank you, Pravin. I will start with your last question regarding Brazil. Indeed, as we said during our presentation, we started the implementation of our mitigation plan. I'd like to highlight the strong commitment from our teams locally. They've been working on two sets of measures. On one hand, the client renegotiation for all our clients who've been using the Workers' Food Program solution. It has been a very deep work, and it's a hard conversation that we've been having with clients, but positive overall. The second set of measure is much more related to the first. As we said, we've been running ongoing cost reduction and optimization actions, and we are doing it in accordance with both our business needs and the evolution of our operating model.
What I would mention among other items is that we already conducted a first restructuring initiative in February to start streamlining the organization. Regarding the CapEx, maybe, Stéphane, you want to take this?
Good morning, Pravin. As you rightly noticed, this semester, we were consistently with last year for the first semester, a little bit lower compared to the 9% average of CapEx versus revenue that we expect and still expect for this full year. We are right now a bit lower compared to what we used to be two years ago with, as you said, this switch to a more OpEx-driven model. However, what happened this semester, there is nothing related to some specific event like what we faced last year with the carve-out. This is more just the pace of our internal project, where the pace of activation of the project when they are fully completed, was a bit behind. Overall, in the full year, we are fully on track with more standard 9% over.
In the medium term, it's likely that this percentage will be reduced by still switching to this OpEx-driven model and also with the higher scale of the group as a group will deliver more growth in the coming years.
Thank you, Stéphane. Regarding the net retention, look, we maintain our 100% of the T for the full year. We really aim at reaching at least 100%. We will be helped on that front by the face value increase. We mention it. We still anticipate stronger contribution from the face value increase on H2 and on the end user portfolio growth. For the moment, for some specific country, we expect a positive inflection, but we also have to remain a bit cautious within this challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical environment.
The next questions are from Hannes Leitner of Jefferies.
Yes, thanks for letting me on. Couple of questions from my side. Maybe you can comment on your reference to end user portfolio decline. Can you maybe double-click on that, talking also a little bit in terms of geographic dynamic, especially, I would be interested to understand the European dynamic. Thanks for talking about Turkey. Maybe you can also give us a little bit more detail on your current size of the business, operating revenue contribution, and how there is the dynamic in terms of market share, et cetera. Just lastly on Brazil. It sounds like the incumbent players are looking for kind of adopting the open loop, but also maintaining the closed loop. Can you just talk a little bit about that, where in which case the closed loop just makes sense to maintain, and what's led to that decision? Thank you.
Thanks a lot. I will start with your question regarding Brazil. In Brazil, as we are sharing with you, we are still having constructive discussion with the Brazilian government, clarifying whether there is an obligation, and even for the Workers' Food Program, is it a definitive decision to move only an open loop system. We are currently having those, again, constructive discussion. It's fair to say that if this obligation is confirmed, we still have other product in Brazil that will still take advantage of our closed loop network, meaning our strong relationship with merchants. On this topic, just to share with you, we still see some very good traction. I mean many, and when I say many, it's thousands of merchants contacting us every month, close to 10,000 merchants, who still on board into the acceptance network of Pluxee.
That's regarding Brazil and the open loop and closed loop, Stéphane, and maybe for Turkey.
Turkey, good morning, Hannes, first. Turkey is, as I think we already said, one of our key countries. It's among our top six, something like top six countries. It's a dynamic country for us, and this country contributes well to the organic growth of the group, with strong double-digit organic growth from this country. We don't share precise numbers by country, so I'm not going to tell you. You ask what is the level of operating revenue. We disclose it for France and Brazil as required by the accounting standard, because this country represents more than 10% of group revenue. You can conclude that Turkey is a big one among the top six, but lower than 10% of the group revenue.
Regarding the end user portfolio decline. Indeed overall, at group levels, we disclosed quite a negative impact.
It's fair to say that it's pretty different from one country to another, from sector, from industries to others as well. We are still penalized in Europe, and many countries such as France, Romania, and Austria. For example, in France, we see companies that are really cautious. Some are clearly putting critical projects and investments on hold, and they remain quite conservative in their approach to investment. This impact is even more visible in the SME segment. We saw it even during the Christmas campaign. Yes, previously we are mentioning Mexico. The situation is getting better, but it's not back to positive yet. We have other countries where still the SME segment can show some weak signal, I would say. That's why, again, we remain very cautious for the H2 on this specific indicator.
Thanks for that. I'd just like to explain that because they have been impacted by public social programs. When you reference that kind of end user portfolio dynamic, is that also because of the expiry of those contracts? If you now exclude those public contracts, just focusing on the core meal voucher, would you say that—
No, I was not referring to those public benefits contracts. I was really referring to the employee benefits business. Yeah. There are some industries, such as the IT, automotive industry, that in Eastern Europe are under pressure at the moment.
Thank you.
The next question is from Justin Forsythe of UBS.
Hey, good morning, Aurélien, Stéphane. Thank you so much for having me here. Just a couple questions, if I might. I wanted to come back on Brazil. I think we talked last quarter about some of the puts and takes between the revenue impact that you expect alongside the cost reductions. Just wondered if we could revisit that and confirm the progress there, and maybe talk about the different buckets of cost. I think there's a good portion of cost which comes out relating to processing. Meaning when you remove some of the back-end processing as you move to open loop, there is a big reduction in cost as a result of that. I wanted to focus on that other portion of cost, which is the OpEx side. Is there maybe more detail you can give on the specific actions you've taken?
Okay. Thank you, Justin. Stéphane, do you want to start.
You might complement.
Yeah.
Justin, as Aurélien explained during the presentation and answering some of the previous question, in Brazil, I think we need to make a distinction between the potential end game and the transition period. The end game, and when I say end game, there is a lot of uncertainty about this end game, and we explained that right now, we took an assumption of a worst case scenario with a full implementation of the reform as currently drafted in the decree. This is his end game, and based on this end game, we said that our business in Brazil might be reduced by something like twice. Then in this case, we will target to adapt significantly our business model in the country by reducing our cost base.
We started to look at it because we are preparing for this situation, and it's almost all lines in the cost base that will be concerned, both processing costs as part of cost of sale or SG&A as well. We said that again, with this end game, we would target to keep our EBITDA margin in the country unchanged. Meaning that if the top line was to be reduced in the end by twice, we will have to organize to restructure things so as to be able to reduce our cost base by twice as well in order to keep this EBITDA margin unchanged. Now, this is not where we are today. As Aurélien explained, we are in a transition phase.
There are still a lot of uncertainties regarding the scope, the timeline, the technical feasibility of this reform with some ongoing discussion with the government as well. The industry has engaged with the government, and we'll see what will happen. Meaning for this fiscal year 2026 and for the second half, we have started to reduce a little bit of cost base as we are going to face some preliminary headwinds. We also need to protect the top line of the country in case in the end, the reform was to be implemented only partially or in a different way compared to what is currently contemplated.
Therefore, there will be an impact in the second half of the year. The potential 50% decrease in revenue under the code base, this is for a much later period in case, again, the full reform was to be implemented as per when it started.
Maybe just to complement on the revenue side, because remember that the growth engine lies in the business volume. The performance of Brazil remains very strong in terms of the business volume growth. Our new sales in H1 were very high. We still benefited from the full impact of our partnership with Santander. We also enjoyed a strong performance in cross-selling, thanks to our new employee mobility benefit pro product. Talking about H2, we still anticipate similar dynamics in terms of business volume growth, than in H1, i.e., double digits. For us this is extremely important and positive.
The next question is from André Juillard of Deutsche Bank.
Good morning. Two questions, if I may. First one about the amortization. Could you give us some more color about the evolution of the amortization during H2 and the year after? Because you have, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have two components. First one about the general evolution of the amortization regarding the CapEx and the OpEx. Secondly, the plan on M&A. This is my second question. Your net cash position is even stronger than what it was at the end of last year. Do you have any new plan about the use of this cash or still not clear? Thank you.
Good morning, André. This is Stéphane speaking, but I guess you recognize my voice. Regarding your question about depreciation and amortization. No surprise for us. No, this is fully consistent with the pace of our CapEx in the last two years. If you look at it, over the last two years, we capitalized those, in average, there are some differences year on year, but close to EUR 110 million per year. It was a little bit more than this in fiscal year 2024. It was a little bit less in fiscal year 2025. It will be a little bit more in this year of fiscal year 2026. This is the pace. After a while, we are likely to reach the same level of depreciation year on year. This is what we are seeing today with a little bit of contribution from the newly acquired company.
If you think about companies like Cobee or Skipr, which have some tech assets, of course, we are now consolidating the depreciation of the tech platform of these companies. At the same time, in terms of amortization of intangible assets identified as part of the business combination, no surprise. No, this is fully in line, again, with what we were expecting. Regarding your question on the net cash position, I think it's worth differentiating two cash positions. You have the overall net cash position, and we also disclose clearly in our activity report what we call the net excess cash position, making a clear distinction between the contribution of flow-related cash-to-cash and this excess cash.
If you look at this excess cash, pure excess cash in the first half of the year, with no surprise, we don't benefit from an improvement, but we face a decrease of about EUR 140 million in the first half, which is fully related to the payment of dividend, the execution of the share buyback program, the cash out of our interest cost, which is happening at the beginning of the year, in the beginning of September every year, and all this kind of thing. Therefore, the first half of the year for us is always, and if you look at what happened in FY 2025 or FY 2024, it was the same. The first half of the year for us, in terms of excess cash, this is a period where we burn some cash.
A little bit more this year with the share buyback program, while in the second half of the year, we don't have these significant cash outflows and building again, a strong excess cash position, for the full year. Just wanted to make it clear, this EUR 107 million improvement in the overall net cash position, is the combination of EUR 140 million decrease in excess cash and a EUR 240 million improvement overall on the flow-related cash position.
Maybe even regarding the question, any new plan on the use of this cash, just to confirm that M&A remains a pillar of our growth strategy. We saw it as the acquisition that we completed last year had a material impact on our first half, delivering also some growth synergies and benefit in Brazil has been a very good example with this +50% BV growth in one year. We see the acceleration, and the integration of the more recent acquisition is progressing well. Now we have a good track record, and we believe that we are well positioned to continue executing on our M&A roadmap. We have a steady pipeline, but again, we execute this roadmap in a very rigorous and disciplined manner. We'll come back to you when it will be needed.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your touchtone telephone. The next question, gentlemen, is from Mahir Bidani of UBS.
Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on. Just wanted to kind of confirm around the EBITDA guide. You reiterated it, but that was reiteration despite a pretty strong beat in the first half. Is that just implying conservatism or do you expect perhaps the sort of downward trajectory in 2H in the EBITDA? In terms of the macro environment, is there a bifurcation between, I guess the sectors you're seeing, the end user portfolio reduction, is that more the automotive versus the tech? The conversations that you've had with some of your clients that are reducing the end user portfolio, is that because of AI fears and then stopping hiring for that reason? Or is it more because it's concentrated towards blue collar macro jobs? Can you just provide a little color there on that?
Yes. Regarding your second question, indeed we start having and we are engaging even proactively with our clients because most of them are wondering what would be the future of the organization. Not many of them have very clear answers. What makes Pluxee so resilient is the diversity of our clients' portfolio, because we are serving small but also very large clients in the private sector, in the public sector, and all of this in 28 countries. That does explain the resilience. Within this range of clients, we have also, let's say, the future giant, the one who will take advantage of AI, in order to grow with them. This is what I can tell you.
If we look at industry by industry, it's fair to say that at the moment, indeed, the automotive industry, the IT industry, and part of the interim industries are currently under pressure because their clients are reducing some of their budgets that are related to their own activities, confirming the EBITDA.
Regarding your question about our guidance on the EBITDA. This is not specifically conservative. There's a slight improvement in the EBITDA margin. Of course, all the teams are already focusing on doing their best in order to always do better. This is what we currently have in mind. If I have a bit more color, we expect all the regions to go on improving the EBITDA margin with a similar trend compared to what we delivered in H1, with one exception, one big exception, which is going to be Brazil. As I explained, in Brazil, we are not engaging right now in a pool of restructuring. We are making sure that we are able to benefit from all potential scenarios. There is a little bit of cost reduction.
The reform for the short term and for the second half of the year will weigh a lot on the EBITDA margin of the group. This is because of Brazil, that in the second half of the year, we will face a lower EBITDA margin compared to the previous year. Overall, but the improvement yearly we delivered in H1 is going to be offset by a deterioration of the EBITDA margin in the second half of the year, not as big as what we delivered in H1. There will be, in the end, a remaining small improvement in the EBITDA margin for the full year.
There are no more questions registered at this time. Back to you, Ms. Bireaud, for any closing remarks.
Thank you, and thank you for your attention this morning. In closing, I would like to reiterate our confidence in the future, supported by a strong first half, and reiterate as well our continued focus on disciplined execution and long-term value creation. With that, I wish you all a very good day. Goodbye.
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