Good morning to you all. Welcome for the third consecutive years to the House of Denmark to share with you the publication in three days' time of our annual results. You'll have seen our press release after the Board that approved the financials. We have more detail to share with you today. I'll move straight to the summary. To summarize the year for us, it was a very symbolic year for Robertet. We celebrated the 175th anniversary of the company. It's always important to recall that it's a long-term company, a long-term vision with a strong, rich history giving it the assets on which it builds today. More prosaically, what occurred in 2025 is solid performance in organic growth, 7.6% growth.
More about that in a moment, but you'll have seen since February that we have two particularly dynamic divisions that are raw materials and aromas that are both leveraging our position on natural products. We've also improved the EBITDA margin up 120 basis points over last year at over 20% of revenue. There again, we'll return with some more details, but this margin benefited from great many positive effects. Some are one-off and at Robertet we always look at the long-term trajectory of the margin of revenue, of course, and clearly the 2025 margin benefited from long-term effects but also short-term effects that are difficult to replicate. We continued to invest. We're in investment to develop our global footprint.
We're investing massively in our industrial capability to serve our clients in our creative centers that are there to win new briefs and to co-create with our clients new products and IT, information technology, that are in a catch-up phase for some systems and a protection phase. We're investing as many other companies do in IT security and in harmonizing group data so that we can be ever agile and swifter than we are today, particularly when certain clients extend their international footprint. Subject to the approval of the AGM next June, we'll propose a 20% increase of the dividend at EUR 12 per share.
Lastly, that amongst the strategic pillars of Robertet, there's innovation and natural and then globalization, as well as the CSR trajectories that strengthened in 2025 with the adoption of a pathway validated by SBTi with costed 2023 figures, and we continue to make progress on that front. The revenue, to remind you that we have an increase of EUR 801-EUR 824 in 2025. That's reported growth of 4.5%. Three major elements, organic growth of 7.6%, growth of the scope very limited, a 0.4% primarily with the acquisition of Phasex at the end of 2024 in the U.S. and Forex effects that were particularly strong, 3.5% in 2025. That's EUR 20 million that were unfortunately lost, owing to negative Forex, particularly in Q2, and that's continuing into the start of the year.
By division, we have four divisions. All divisions were up in organic terms. As I said, credit where credit is due. The finest growth, which is that the longest standing division of Robertet, that of natural raw materials, and there again, credit where credit is due. It's the last division last year that Julien Maubert will be heading up that division and has passed on the division in great shape, which is particularly dynamic with its natural ingredients and experienced a very dynamic in all products linked to fine fragrance. Second division growing strongly is that of Flavors, 10% organic growth driven by many investment from Robertet. We improved our organization, strengthened our teams, and conquered new clients, new briefs that ensured our growth.
Fragrances were slightly down, 2.2% in organic growth, particularly dynamic in Europe and Asia. We were impacted in North America by inventory drawdowns, but no cause for concern because growth, save a couple of clients that reduced their inventory, remains robust, and we're preparing a good rebound 2026. Health & Beauty, only 3% of revenue continues to be a growth driver, growing strongly. Of course, we have a long-term ambition for this division that markets active ingredients with clinical efficiency briefs, but from 100% natural products. We also wanted to share with you this geographical mix of our regions. Just to recall, we have two dominant regions we've measured and shipped to, because we did a release B. From terms of IT, we have systems that don't allow us real-time to report everything.
It took a few weeks to screen the billings where the goods were being shipped to. That's done. You have this mix. These are not from, but where the goods are shipped to. Europe strengthened in 2025, accounts for 38% of our revenue. North America, weakened slightly in terms of weight in 2025, comes in at 32%. Very dynamic Latin America, +31%, almost 10% of revenue. Asia continues to grow strongly, 16%. We know where the effort of the out years will be focused. Lastly, we have Middle East and Africa that is still quite limited, but nevertheless continues to offer a great many opportunities. We conducted a second analysis, that takes a bit of time for the same reasons, of our client portfolio that is showing some resilience and a broad balance. The DNA of Robertet is to attract new nuggets, new brands of the future.
The rising stars who start from zero with Robertet to become five brands that account for 16% of our revenue, contributing strong. We have the local champions. These are purely local players in a country or in a region, and also growing well with family companies seeking to strengthen their creative potential, turning increasingly to Robertet. We have the international groups. Well, international groups, we define those groups with a strong international footprint, but very localized, very regionalized decision center, very often centralized in Europe or the U.S., but from these decision centers spread across the world. That's 26%. The global CPGs, these are companies with a very strong, powerful footprint to harmonize products throughout the world, and they account for 18% of our revenue.
Recognizing the difficulties that these groups sometimes have, our exposure to them is quite limited. I'm going to hand over to Isabelle Pardies, our CFO, for the finance section.
Good morning, everybody. I'd like to give you two slides concerning our financial information. The first one, as you can see, is our profitability. You can see there's been a good improvement. The EBITDA is 20.6%, and that is 120 basis points increase. This represents structural levers, but also occasional, regular decisions that were taken to improve these costs. There's an improvement of 2.9% in gross margin, and this is due to a reduction in our production costs. This is because we optimized raw material purchase costs and also a more favorable product mix. This is in keeping with our position on certain slots in the market which have higher value added, and also we caught up on different margins. On this slide, you can also see that we have continued to invest in a very targeted way so that we could have medium-term growth.
Personnel costs went up by 9.2%. This is salary catch-up and also strategic hiring. External costs or charges have gone up by 10.6%. This is mainly due to inflation in transport costs and also because we have invested more in IT. Despite these investments, our net income has increased greatly, and our net income is in keeping with the EBITDA and is up by 14.8%. That's the group share of net income. This therefore confirms our capacity to invest wisely and without in any way jeopardizing our profitability. On the next slide, you can see the cash that was generated, and particularly the solid cash generation during a year, which was actually quite demanding. As you see, our EBITDA was EUR 174, which really indicates excellent results of EUR 174 million. This year, cash outflow has been impacted by two factors.
First of all, EUR 44 million was paid out in taxes, this is slightly higher than in the past, and also increased industrial and financial investments. These investments cover a period of more than one year. The CapEx was EUR 40 million this year, and this is in keeping with our annual target of having an investment between EUR 40 million and EUR 45 million. This was presented to you in our strategic roadmap going up to 2030. Despite all of this, our cash flow is very strong. It's +EUR 111 million. Our free cash flow is EUR 47 million before acquisition, and EUR 45 million after acquisition. Here, once again, you can see that our economic model is strong and resilient..
If I could sum up, we could say that in 2025, Robertet has shown that it can generate high cash flow, and at the same time, has been able to buffer the higher taxes and higher investments in CapEx and in industrial investments, and in having a solid base, which has allowed us to have good margins for future acquisitions. Thank you very much, and I would now give the floor back to Jérôme.
Thank you, Isabelle. I'll now come back on our long-term strategy, Seed to Success 2030, presented at the CMD last May, and to give you some color on what's changing in the company. Firstly, and those of you who were here in this very room a year ago, some changes have occurred on the governance front with a Board that has been enriched and renewed. Four new Board members you see top right, with the arrival of two family Board members, Victoire le Tourneur d'Ison, Georges Maubert, and two shareholders representing our new shareholders, Marion for Peugeot and [Aubrée] for FSP. On the Executive Team front, two major changes.
First change, Julien Maubert, who was previously in charge of the Raw Materials Division, is now heading up the Fragrance Division since the 1st of January. He was replaced at the head of the Raw Materials Division by Patrick Rogier, who you see fourth from the left, who knows this division very well and has been with Robertet for a great many years, and recently in charge of our Southeast Asia region. Finally, major change, the arrival of a Group Human Resources Head. Knowing the considerable importance for Human Resources and skills building at Robertet, Grasse has always been the case. Increasingly, we're becoming an international group. It's important to coordinate HR policy and the promotion of international talent within the company, and that's the roadmap entrusted to our new Head of HR.
Hello. Good morning. We also would like to become the world leader in different sustainable ingredients. In 2025, we had a new record broken for certified supply chains, 67 supply chains. This represents more than 80% that are covered with a certification such as Fair for Life or UEBT. These supply chains represent more than 320 products and an increase of 30% of requests coming from our major clients for certified products. There's also been an increase in sales of 45%. Concerning our leadership and sustainability, there are two external certification bodies. The first one is EcoVadis, which is used in our industry. Here, once again, we have a Platinum EcoVadis status, 88 out of 100. That's up by five points. We are amongst the top 1% of companies that are considered to be the most sustainable.
We have extremely ambitious goals for 2030 and 2033. If we look at our carbon emissions and water consumption. In carbon, we've brought down the emissions by 6%, and in water, it's down by 14%. This concerns per ton sold, it's -35%, and for water, this is down by 41% per ton sold. Let me say a few words about innovation. 2025 was a very important year, and this is because we structured our governance with greater innovation. We have new heads. We have obviously had internal growth, partnership, and also our startup accelerator for tomorrow's brands and technologies. The second area where we have invested is in agronomy with Farm Tree and Interstellar. This allows us to work on the botany side of things, biomass, et cetera.
We can say that in these areas, there's not that much research, and soya, wheat, and corn has many investments and R&D, whereas in botanics, there seems to be less. Neurosciences is another area, which is an area in which we are concentrating so that our fragrances and our perfumes actually give more than just a scent. Finally, we've also got a minority investment in Aethera, which has plant-based biotechnologies. We've been working on this particular area for aromatics. By investing in Aethera, we've taken a new step, a new area, because we're going to be working in more innovative technologies, which will bear fruit in the medium future.
Thank you, Julien. Just to complete the picture, I wish to share with you our roadmap in terms of international expansion. We strengthen our footprint across countries. Why we're doing this, as I said, in our client portfolio, we have a great many local and regional clients who are asking strong creative presence at their side and, if possible, industrial. We have international clients who seek our supports in expanding areas for them. Robertet is showing them that it supports them in their international expansion, gives us agility. What happens in one region doesn't necessarily replicate what's happening next door. With the strong team presence, we can respond faster to market shifts, and for certain investments, we can produce closer to the biomass with industrial investments close to the field. Well, throughout the years, you can see on this chart, new creative centers were opened, one in Shanghai.
We opened a creative center in Mexico City, in Singapore, Dubai. We have also invested in our industrial capability, the increased automation of facilities in Grasse and in the United States, and strengthened our industrial footprint in Asia with a new atomizer in India on the Sonarome site we acquired two years ago to serve the whole region, a new plant in Indonesia. We have a strong industrial presence in China and Singapore, but no presence in Indonesia, which is a growth country going forward. We've invested in order to serve our Indonesian clients in close proximity, and this region will continue to benefit from industrial investment to produce and mix the formula close to our clients.
The perspectives, the outlook, short, medium, and long term, well, first of all, is to continue to grow the top line and to demonstrate our resilience in an environment that is extremely uncertain, very difficult, if not impossible to plan. In terms of opportunity, we're convinced that our expertise in natural products will allow us to capture growing demand for natural ingredients. We see the good health in 2025, our divisions that cover those most extensively. We have a client portfolio that varies greatly in size, also very different geographies, allowing us to spread our risks. Let me remind you, and it hasn't changed very much, Robertet, with its five top clients, generates 15% of its revenue, and Robertet with its top 50 generates 50% of its revenue. We have a well-balanced portfolio. Historically, we've conquered fine positions in Europe and in Asia.
Asia, in contrast, remains a land of conquest for us, and historically, the interest of natural ingredients was low, but it's strengthening year after year, justifying increased investment in the region. Nevertheless, we're facing many challenges going forward, an extremely uncertain geopolitical context, and we depend a number of raw materials that we don't produce ourselves, the synthetic products for fragrances, which are produced, notably commodities, China, India, and other countries that, of course, make us somewhat dependent on those prices. There'll be some headwinds and continuing FX volatility in 2025, a major variance versus 2024 in our budget that posed a few issues. We expect that impact to remain strong, in particular in H1. Lastly, you'll have noticed that heightened competition is rising, particularly in naturals and local and regional clients. We don't report the figures quarter by quarter.
It doesn't make much sense in a long-term company such as ours. But we did report the revenue of 4.9% on like-for-like, and down 0.7% on a reported basis. And you see, at a glance, the importance of the Forex headwinds materialized in Q1. That's set to attenuate during the next half, but remains a major headwind. So our FY targets, it's a very perilous exercise given the current conditions, but we did nevertheless wish to share our ambition, our roadmap, which is to continue to grow in a range of 5%- 7% by 2020-2030, probably at the low end of the range, around 5% 2026, assuming no persistent deterioration in the economic climate. For our purchasing procurement costs, we're facing many headwinds that are on the rise on synthetic products, plastics, headwinds on shipping costs, logistic costs on the duration of those shipping costs.
Our take is that it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to replicate the 2025 EBITDA performance. We are nevertheless a long-term company. Our ambition, as I often say, is to have a mid-term vision on EBITDA and the margin in general, so as to improve it gradually over the long term. We've gone from five-year periods during which we constantly improved our profitability with scale effects and investment discipline. We expect that improvement is fully achievable over the next five years, as we indicated at the CMD in May. That is to be sustainably and lastingly above 20% by 2030. In our 2026, the historical average of the last three-four years would be quite a performance. Our ambition for 2030 remains broadly unchanged.
During the CMD, we set out our ambition, reviewed upward to reach between EUR 1.1 billion and EUR 1.2 billion in revenue in euros, that is, by 2030. That's an annual revenue growth of between 5% and 7%, depending at the lower end or upper end of the range. Within that growth, we expect to have acquisitions contributing between about EUR 50 million-EUR 80 million. That's historical continuity. That's about a quarter of our growth. That's our historical average of contribution from M&A. We remain very disciplined on that front because we're seeing multiples. We've looked at many briefs in 2025, seeing multiples that are quite abnormal, and we don't want to up the ante on those. Lastly, EBITDA margin exceeding 20%, but sustainably with ups and downs year after year, strongly dependent on the outlook, but we're gradually and surely improving year by year.
The growth accelerators will, of course, to remain on strong and sound organic growth, enriched with a few M&A deals, as I mentioned. Our four divisions all have a major growth plan for the next five years and will contribute to this momentum. All four, we have significant growth potential in Asia that we will nurture through investments locally. Lastly, even if it's only 3% of our revenue, Health & Beauty is a major opportunity for us. It's a true diversification versus our three historical divisions to seize all market opportunities linked to Health & Beauty around natural ingredients. That concludes this presentation. Let me once again emphasize the solidity, the strength of the model, the originality of our model, and our competence around natural ingredients. In its complexity, depth, traceability, remains a somewhat unique model. Once again, to convey a message of prudence on 2026.
If the metrics were very positive in 2024 and in 2025, we're firmly focused on top-line growth, on serving our clients. We can't ignore headwinds in 2026 that are on the rise and tailwinds that were pretty one-off and unique in 2025, an exceptional product mix and exceptional outstanding purchasing costs. Thank you.
Just to talk about the improvement in profitability, you talked about exceptional events that would be difficult to reproduce. Could you perhaps explain that to us? What would these events be and could you quantify them? Secondly, could you also give us some information on Forex, on exchange rate fluctuation and its impact on your budget? My final question for Julien is, we've seen that selective perfumery is finding it more difficult to actually exist because people are either looking for niche perfumes or higher range perfumes. In 2026, what will the drivers be for you in this particular area?
Thank you, Sarah. On your first question, there are obviously very good results that we had in 2025 because of our product mix. Our two divisions have got two major skills. If we're talking about Flavors, it's mainly in the area of drinks. If I'm talking about perfumes, I'm talking about fragrances. I mean aromas has mainly had the drinks sector, and fragrances is for fine perfumes. In the medium term, we want to also work on other categories, but we were extremely good and had good results here in 2025. This was obviously excellent for our profitability. We have a good result. Obviously, we want to diversify in the midterm, but again, we have concentrated on our two-star divisions.
Secondly, I don't think we can really quantify as things stand today, but it's quite clear that all our purchases for raw materials, and I'm not talking about external costs, and there have been external effects that Isabelle talked about that a great deal, transport costs, maintenance, subcontracting, interim, so on and so forth. All of this was high, but we can also say that the purchase cost for our synthetic products and the commodities, which are more elements that support our formula, were bought at very low levels in 2025 in India and China, which were really sending these and selling these products and promoting these markets. I think it would be impossible to have the same cost this year because of oil prices and what's happening right now in the Middle East.
Your second question, I've forgotten what that was. Yeah, the foreign exchange fluctuations. Yeah, Forex. We had very negative effects from that in 2025. We had planned to have 1.0, but in fact, the euro was stronger than all the other currencies. Obviously, we're following the dollar, but also i f you look at the peso, the yen, the RMB, in fact, all of them were weakened compared to the Euro. This was really not good for us. In our budget, we had planned for 0.3, which is what the banks suggested, or 1.3, and in fact, we ended at 1.14. Now, obviously, it's impossible to make forecasts. We have this gap of approximately 10%, which we found surprising between what had been budgeted for and what we actually had to pay out.
One bit of positive news is that for 2026, we're ahead because we have a budget rate of 16. This means that in the first quarter anyway, we are in control of these things. We hope that we shouldn't have too many bad surprises. That is because we are capable of planning our budget. 1.16 is, again, not as good as 2024, but less bad than it had been. Now, concerning Fine Fragrances, what we have seen is that we can say that in Brazil, China, in the Middle East, the markets are still very good and growth bearing. One market, such as Brazil or North America, was an excellent market locally, but now it's becoming an excellent market internationally as well.
There are new categories where we are present, Beauty Care, Personal Care, and also in some products that are Home Care oriented, which are a little more functional. In the emerging markets, we have these products which have a premium status, but at lower costs. I think Robertet has a good position in those market slots, which means that we can continue to be fairly confident for 2026.
Eric Blain, Finance Connect. Just another question. Finance Connect. We've come back to the 2024 base margin, the gross margin. Will we come back to that?
It's difficult to say. We're negotiating with our suppliers for our raw material costs and purchasing costs. I can't commit right now. We've had good prices for the first two months of the year, but everybody has said that as of April, there will be an increase. I think this is the case for the second trimester quarter. Everyone's trying to protect their margins, including the suppliers.
Do you think it's reasonable to say that we'd come back to the 2024 figures, or is that too optimistic?
I really cannot say for the time being. I think if anybody can actually understand what's going to happen or foresee what's going to happen, well, I hope so, but we didn't have the same sort of oil crisis in 2024 and 2025. On Forex again, yes, there is obviously a currency effect.
What is the net effect on the EBITDA from Forex fluctuations?
It's approximately EUR 12 million. That is the negative impact.
This is because of the dollar or other currencies?
It's all the different currencies.
You also purchase in dollars.
Yes, we do. There is a negative effect on the sales that had been estimated for +EUR 25 million, and in net, we came to EUR 12 million in the EBITDA. This is essentially because of the dollar fluctuations. This year, all the other currencies also had a lower rate compared to the euro.
One last point on your capitalist structure. Can you tell us where you stand? Have you created a holding company? What percentage does that represent? If you had a slide on that, it would be very useful.
Well, I suggest you look at what was presented last year. There hasn't been any major changes since then. One of the major competitors of Robertet has sold its share in three sections, one into Peugeot, one in FSP, and one was sold as an ABB to many different investors. This obviously did have an effect. This has not changed since then, and every year, we make a list and inventory of our investors, and for the time being, we don't think there's been any change or movement. Our main competitors had sold their shares in recent terms, and since then, there's been no change in the family holding company either. They continue to have the majority voting rights and a share in the capital, which hasn't changed.
Hello. [Christophe Lagneno]. I have several questions. First of all, on the increase in suppliers' costs, can you quantify that? Can you say whether that is just going to be doubled on a small scale or on a very large scale, and over what range of time would that take place? Mainly for, obviously, the synthetic components. Secondly, concerning the new capacities that have been used, can you give us information about industrial return base costs or the sort of returns that you expect so that you can explain the reasoning behind your investments? M y third question concerns the activities in the first quarter. I was wondering if you had any ideas, division by division, geographic area-wise, or by anything else. One last question on M&As. Can you give us any information on deal flows without going into any details, obviously? Thank you.
I'll try to remember your four questions and try to answer them. The first question concerned the increase in supplier costs. This is high double digits. It's not 11%, but it's between 20% and 40%. These are big increases. Here, once again, I'm talking about the requests or the costs that are requested or demanded. This does not mean that that is what we're actually going to get in the end, and that's not exactly what's going to have an impact on our results. Robertet has concentrated on the natural ingredients as well, and therefore there are several raw materials that will not be affected by that. There are many other sectors that obviously will be affected by oil prices in the second quarter.
Second question, I can't remember what it was about. Yeah. Our new capacities. I can't actually answer that, especially from a productivity point of view. All I can say is that the main advantage from this approach is to open up some of our capacities in Grasse. Grasse continues to be our main industrial hub. You can see if you look at the ship to, as opposed to the actual home hub production, you can see that Grasse continues to actually manufacture a lot. We have to adjust, adapt these plants in Grasse so that they can receive the products that will be coming in there. Many of our products used to come from different parts of the world. They were probably sourced more locally or close by.
To be able to actually generate growth in Grasse, we have to actually move some of our productions, which actually in the past, were always based in Grasse. That is one of our big advantages. We will be saving on transport costs by shifting this production to other parts of the world. Also we will save because of productivity gains in sourcing locally and manufacturing locally. As you know that in our base costs, 80% comes from the actual natural products, that is the raw materials. That is not really going to change that much. The gain of productivity will come maybe from personnel costs or other, but that's not really going to have a huge impact on us. The way in which we have to be a little more efficient is to have factories or plants that are running at full speed.
Occasionally, we might have to subcontract if we have reached our maximum capacity or we are local and we are waiting for certain products in Jakarta, whereas if we invest locally, that will change as well. M&A deal flow. Well, the deal flow, we remain very cautious. We looked at varied deals in 2025. As you've seen, we've activated nothing significant. Why? Simply because the multiples are out of reach and outside our discipline. We looked at very in-depth briefs in several deals in China, several in the United States. The multiples presented to us in the U.S. above 17x EBITDA were totally unreasonable, so we won't go there. The fine deals that we studied in China failed. Unfortunately for industrial security, Chinese legislation is changing in order to limit the production of chemicals in certain areas.
A lot of the M&A targets were in those areas. It wouldn't have been reasonable to take that position when those zones will probably be off-limits to chemical production. That limited us in our ability to deploy, but we remain keenly interested in M&A. As we mentioned, we have three types of acquisitions. We have three to strengthen our natural ingredients leadership, acquisitions to grow our industrial and technical capability on new extractions, as we saw with Phasex. We plan also to invest going forward. That's something we did with our stake at Aethera, as Julien reminded us, allows us to take a long-term foot on biotech that we're not too familiar with today. That's the third question.
The final question was the Q1. Q1, as you've seen, is off negative in reported, positive organic, lower end of the range. This 5% low end of the range is particularly dynamic in new regions, LatAm and Asia, in particular South Asia, but Asia broadly are in a strong expansion phase. We've seen a slowdown in Europe and an okay start in the U.S. and in terms of divisions, no major difference. The beginning of the year make us quite confident for fragrances.
Yes. Hi, I'm from [Mahex]. Two quick ones from my side. On the 2026 outline, your 5% guidance, there are raw material price hikes in that 5%. Have you anticipate number of price hikes that you'll have to pass on, and that will have to pass on a number of price rises given rising raw material costs? How do you determine the 5%? A technical question, just on the amortization and provision expense down slightly in 2025. Is there a write-back, a reversal, a normal level? What can we expect in 2026?
Let you answer on the provision.
So it's true that versus the level of investment we had in 2025, CapEx was strong in H2, so there's no additional amortization expense in 2025. It will come into its own fully in 2026. There's some write-backs, reversals of provisions for risks and expenses that were positive in 2025, so that's a reduction versus 2024. But in 2026, it will be more consistent with the CapEx growth. On the price front, today, of course, it's our intention to pass on the raw materials costs on our prices. We're in the midst of negotiations today. Nothing's clear. Last year we had the U.S. tariffs. It changed every other day, so we preferred for things to be settled before negotiating price hikes with our clients that we began to do in August, September. It's the same here.
We're faced with a new situation that we had H1 contracts that were relatively in continuity. They're all called into question. Of all countries, one after, we're in total uncertainty. It will all pan out. We're in discussions with our suppliers, and then we'll do what we always do, targeted price hikes, country by country, client by country. We're not a company that does massive across-the-board price hikes. With all these uncertainties, we're used to having a policy for price rises. We present it to clients. We can only do it when we're on a stable basis. Phase one, let's stabilize the base we have ahead of us, about a month of negotiation to know where we're headed. Once we know where we're going, we'll go and see our clients, how to rebuild our margins.
As you saw in the past, we always rebuild our margins within 12-18 months, the time it takes to pass through these price rises, negotiate with each. There'll probably be a dip in Q2.
5% is on the basis of your previous contract?
Absolutely. For your guidance, yes.
[Foreign language]. Thomas Renaud, Kepler Cheuvreux. I'd just like to react on the tariffs. In September, for example, you spoke of an increase of 9%-10%. I think it was EUR 15 million. I was just wondering where we were at. There was a period which was set for implementing it, and that was over a six-month period.
Yes, absolutely right. We said that we had to increase by 9%-10% to offset the margin, and we didn't think that we would be able to cover 100%. We have a very practical approach and very flexible, and we deal with this on an individual basis, almost tailor-made for each client. We thought that approximately 2/3 of this increase could be offset. That is between 60% and 70% of success rate in our margin. That's exactly where we are. For the United States, for example, we've offset approximately 70% of what we had hoped for. That is actually being absorbed by the prices in the United States.
Obviously, when you are dealing with clients who need a little more time, either we come up with and need a different sort of an agreement, then we're pretty flexible. If a client says, "I don't think I can accept this increase in the prices, but I commit that we will develop our business relationship in a different way," we are always ready to listen. That is really also the approach we have so that this leads to better relations, better partnership.
What about the tariff effects? You talked about the United States?
Yes.
Do you think this will continue in Q2, or is it going to be different?
No, nothing new will be expected in Q2. Of course, there are other clients as well. There are half of our clients who accepted the increases at the end of last year. There's another group of clients who are a little more difficult about that. They say, "Okay, fine, but not right away." Others who say, "This is just not acceptable. Let's talk about something else and find another way of working together." Right now, obviously, the new input in all of this is the increase because of oil prices. This is not only limited to the United States, but it's going to affect everybody.
I have two questions. First of all, freight costs. What part of that represents your revenue? Also whether there are going to be blockages in supplies to your clients. Secondly, concerning Health & Beauty, that is a slightly different result. I want to know why it's taking so long to actually pick up in that division. Is it because you don't have the same customers or it's difficult getting those shares of the market?
Now, transport. Yes, obviously we have logistic issues right now because the products are taking six to eight weeks longer to come from Asia to Grasse. This means that our logistic production lines are disrupted, and the time at which we deliver to our customers is also going to be disrupted. This has been the case since the beginning of the war. As far as contracts are concerned, we are on spot contracts, so obviously we have to incur the increases on a day-to-day basis. We are talking about massive increases in transport costs, sometimes 2x or 3x the initial cost. Obviously this has an effect on our company, but it's acceptable and tolerable. We are actually able to bear the brunt. This represents approximately EUR 15 million. It covers all sorts of transport. It's not only the supplies coming in, but also the products going out.
All of this is part of the uncertainties. Also, our packaging, our raw materials, our synthetics, all the synthetics frequently come from petrochemical production. All of this is going to have an increase of 20%-25%. Obviously we are calculating all of this and working on renegotiations. Once we've made our calculations, we can go and see our clients and tell them what it's likely to cost. Now on Health & Beauty, when you get EUR 20 million in revenues, obviously that shows that we are not yet at the level of a large division, but we're doing this step by step. It's part of our targets. Obviously, what we're doing right now is working on our sales team. Our sales teams in Europe were quite strong, but not elsewhere. We're working on them in the United States and also Asia.
We're setting up strong teams for these products in Asia and the United States. These products, unlike the others, need more time. The time between actually presenting it to our customers and putting it on the market, this could take almost two to three years for Health & Beauty. Whereas for a fragrance or aroma, this is much quicker. It could be just three to six months for Flavors and Fragrances. This is because you need to do many different tests, and this takes a lot of time. Anyway, we are working on our sales teams, and we are in the final part of developing these teams.
Following the acquisitions of Aethera, we also want to work on the beauty side of things. We used to work on Nutra mainly, that is food supplements, but now we're actually going to be working on topical products, and this obviously would need specific sales teams. It's not the same customers, obviously. There's the product side of things. We have three major lines for Health & Beauty and for the future of our company and the division. We also have to have other ingredients, maybe smaller doses, but we also have to work on that. We have to come up with new ideas.
We have an R&D program, which is very ambitious. We have a new person who's been recruited who will be dealing with developing a new pipeline of products. This means targeted acquisitions, and this will allow us to vary our portfolio. Finally, the industrial side of things, today, as things stand, these products are quite complicated to manufacture. They're mainly manufactured in Grasse. At one point, we had some difficulties, but that seems to have been overcome concerning deliveries. When you're dealing with new products, obviously you have new extraction techniques, and so this means there are some industrial challenges. Most of the products are being manufactured in a fairly smooth manner and delivered smoothly. All the problems that we had seem to have been overcome. I don't know how much time we have, just to check.
We still have questions in the room.
I have a question. You mentioned a heightened competition on natural ingredients, which is your strength. Who are your competitors? The usual players, can that exert pressure on the sourcing of your ingredients as a result of that? Lastly, on climate uncertainties on the rise, is that going to jeopardize this year? Did it have an impact on some of the raw materials that you're sourcing? Are you implementing plans to secure certain key materials for you and your clients?
Well, thanks for your question. The first part on keener competition. It's not that new, but the increased focus of all our competitors on natural ingredients is very visible, and that's quite normal. It's a very dynamic market segment. We see that many companies are returning to Grasse, are reinvesting the natural playing field. Fundamentally, it's a good thing. We're a strong believer in natural ingredients. Secondly, we remain in a comfortable position because we control over 1,600 products, hundreds of vertical product chains to have this traceability from beginning to end of the chain, which is the case for very few competitors. Some have the supply chains, but in one manufacturer benefit from 1,600 products, several dozen supply chains, of which 67 are certified on that scale, remains a strong competitive edge for Robertet once again.
There's no particular target. Everyone is seeking to move into the natural segment. We'll continue to do what we've done for 175 years, nurture our skills to have products that are as attractive and interesting as possible. Prevention, climate change, several answers to that. The first response is that of diversification. We're diversified on at least two supply chains on our strategic. We can't do it across 1,600. We diversified the supply sources so as to be not so weak. As Julien Maubert reminds us, there were a lot of inventory interrupts in synthetics. If there were to be stock bottlenecks, they'd be on petrochemicals than natural ingredients, even if natural ingredients experiences ups and downs, uncertainties, and it's part of some of the headwinds that we'll be seeing in cocoa, coffee, patchouli, that have increased substantially with poor harvest in 2025 that blocked volumes, boosted volume.
We should see the opposite effect in 2026. We remain very cautious, but there again, the uncertainties are there and will persist. We have a model, at least as regards our pricing model, I would say, that's quite reliable. We have a markup on material, a market price. We have a markup, and if the product rises, the market markup remains the same, but that protects our margin. That's the short-term response. The mid-term, long-term response is that of new technologies, because we manage to seek to work on productivity, on the yield of the agronomic products with the agronomy efforts and botanical species where there's very little research, R&D on our side to understand how to get those botanical species to resist in a world of greater heat, more sun, perhaps less water.
Nature can adapt extraordinarily well. We can help it by trying to anticipate what will make the rose or jasmine more resistant to climate change, but we're looking 10, 15, 20 years out, hence our investment, our interest for biotech alternative technologies. If we had to supplement natural biotech with that from the field, that's a first. And then to have natural ingredients that are more resilient to climate change, and we'll have to focus on that with our agronomy department. To my knowledge, we're the only one with an agronomy department. We'll seek to demonstrate our leadership by better understanding ahead of time what's going to change, how to anticipate those changes.
Just to follow on from what you've been saying, you didn't actually talk about synthetic products, but what is the percentage between natural products and synthetic products in volume or value in your production?
Well, in value, they're always a little more expensive. As far as the balance is concerned, it really varies from one division to the other. We have two divisions for Raw Materials and Health & Beauty that only take natural ingredients. The Flavors use natural products as well, mainly. That is 70%-80% is natural. Fragrances uses quite a lot of synthetics. Apart from small niche brands, there are no 100% natural products in the Fragrances. You have to actually use a whole range of scents to be able to make your perfume. Some are natural, obviously, but a lot of them are synthetics, and therefore, these are bought and are affected.
There are all sorts of alcohols, glycols, et cetera, which are the base that are used for making the scents, and those are synthetic as well. Concerning the volume, I think that if you look at the group, I'd say it would be 50/50 for ingredients and synthetics. Natural ingredients and synthetic ingredients.
One last question. You also presented another target, and that was free cash flow. Do you have any comments to make about that, or was it just something that meant that you could optimize the stocks that you had? I don't see it in this presentation today.
Well, the free cash flow pathway remains absolutely on track. We've had many different sources of investments. We said that we are going to be investing 4%-5% of our revenue in the CapEx in the years ahead. This is to work on our industries and our production plants. That's not going to change. We're also going to keep a set part of that investment for acquisitions. Our acquisition policy or vision is that we should keep an indebtedness level which would be 2x below the EBITDA. Therefore, we hope that we would maintain that. We will continue to work extremely hard to reduce the working capital costs. In 2025, things were a little more complicated than expected, and this is because there were a lot of contingencies concerning stocks and raw materials. We're working on different tools. Generally speaking, things are fairly stable.
You can see that for the cash flow, there's been a really slight decrease, the BFR, and we are working on the supply chain to continue and on our stocks, which will also bear its fruit on the reduction in the working capital. Now, obviously, I continue to be fairly cautious because we want to keep our model, and our model obviously has to weather different contingencies, and this means that we've got to have more stock rather than synthetic products which can be delivered and manufactured on demand. We do have a margin leeway, and we want to keep this. The pathway hasn't changed, the plan hasn't changed, the ambitions that we had fixed have not changed. If there are no more questions, I'd like to take two from the Twitch.
The first one is you can see that. Acquisition targets are very high. Would you consider a share repurchase program?
Well, there's no plan to buy back. At the end of 2022, there was an OPAS which corresponded to the restructuring that we were carrying out in the shares amongst the family holding, and there was a loan, which was approximately below EUR 120, and this is still being paid back. I think it's going till 2027, this payback. That was a special moment where the company actually had bought back shares, but there's no other program of that sort that is planned.
One last question. Do you have any oversight on your customer stocks? Do you think there'll be an increase in volumes in 2026?
Well, they're two different questions, really. Concerning our customer stocks, we have very little visibility. We know that once there's been a slowdown in orders, we know that there may be an excess of stocks. On the opposite, we don't really have that much visibility. What we can say is that everyone's being very cautious, very careful. We're dealing with clients who have doubts concerning consumption. They have certain reservations concerning committing to certain products. All of this means that we have to be equally cautious.
Volumes now, yes, for 2026, we have certain figures that we have issued, and this is based on an increase in volumes and contracts. We haven't actually taken into consideration the increase in values. That is, if that were to come, that would be either from the mix or from the United States based on the investments we made in 2025 in the United States, but it would not be from an increase in prices.
Thank you. It's 11:45 A.M. We're going to bring this session to a close. Thank you for your kind attention and attendance.