Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining Rexel first quarter 2026 sales conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guillaume Texier, Group CEO of Rexel. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2026 sales presentation. I appreciate you making the time to be with us this morning. As always, I'm joined by Laurent Delabarre, our Group CFO, who will walk you through the detailed sales figures in just a few minutes. First, I'd like to take a look at the key highlights of the quarter, and then I will conclude this presentation by sharing how our strategy and ongoing transformation continues to support our performance while navigating an uncertain macro environment. With that, let's get started. I'm on slide three, and I could summarize the first quarter as follows. A solid start to the year with all three geographies in clear positive territory for the first time in the last 11 quarters.
As you know, the quarter was also marked by the Middle East crisis, with some impacts, albeit still limited. I will return in my concluding remarks to the potential risks and opportunities that could emerge if the conflict were to last. Overall, compared to our initial expectations, we benefited in the quarter from a better pricing contribution, offsetting temporary volume softness, mainly due to weather effects, project timing, and business selectivity in some countries. The better selling prices reflected our capacity to pass through price increases in the context of higher raw materials prices, including the recent rise in energy prices. The sales progression was driven by high- growth segments in North America, such as data centers and booming solar activity in Australia, while Europe moved to positive territory. In Europe, the electrification rebound is a potential additional tailwind against the backdrop of the Middle East crisis.
With that, let me now hand over to Laurent, who will take you through the details of our first quarter numbers. Laurent.
Thank you, Guillaume, and good morning to all of you. Let's start on slide five. The different building blocks of our Q1 2026 revenue performance. Our sales totaled EUR 4.7 billion, up 3.4% on a same-day basis. This growth was mainly driven by a sequential improvement in selling prices, both cable and non-cable, contributing to 280 basis points, while volumes grew at a more moderate pace, contributing 60 basis points. More specifically, on the selling price increase, cable prices benefited from a good pass-through of higher copper price above $12,500 per ton in Q1 2026, and non-cable products benefited from higher commodity price, with U.S. piping now back to positive territory. A few additional considerations. First, the scope effect was stable as the impact of the 2025 acquisitions of Warshauer, Schwing, Jacmar, and Tecno Bi was offset by the disposal of our business in Finland.
Second, our calendar effects stood at -0.9% and will reverse in Q3 and Q4 this year. Third, the currency effect was a - 4.3% in the first quarter, mainly from the U.S. dollar's significant depreciation. We expect this effect to ease in the remainder of the year, assuming unchanged spot rates, and we anticipate a circa -1.5% impact for the full year of 2026. On slide six, you see the breakdown of our sales evolution by geography. As mentioned by Guillaume, Q1 2026 growth was driven by North America and Asia-Pacific, with Europe now in positive territory. Let me add that adjusted for solar, same-day sales in Europe would have been up 1.2%. More specifically, APAC posted very strong growth, +11.4%, mainly driven by Australia and Asia, to a lesser extent.
In Australia, sales were up +16.7%, boosted by our capacity to better capture trends in solar activity, supported by battery subsidies. In Asia, sales in China increased by 4.4%, and sales in India grew by 14.7%, with both countries supported by industrial automation activity. I will detail Europe and North America in the next two slides. Moving now to slide seven on Europe. Same-day sales were up +0.6% in the quarter, improving sequentially from broadly stable sales in Q4 2025. Volumes remained negative in a market that was still soft and was also impacted by some temporary effects, including weather impact on business selectivity, while pricing continued to improve sequentially. It was also interesting to see growing demand in energy efficiency solutions at the end of the quarter, as illustrated by Wasco in the Netherlands.
Detailed information by countries provided on this slide, but let me highlight the main country dynamics. France benefited from strong demand in HVAC and solar activity, mainly from small commercial projects. The DACH region remained impacted by trends in solar, but improved sequentially, mainly thanks to Germany and Switzerland. Let me add that industry in Germany remained positive in Q1. Benelux was up + 3.9%, driven by both Netherlands and Belgium. The U.K. was still impacted by a difficult macro environment and continued business selectivity. Finally, Sweden was broadly stable. Also, momentum improved month after month. On slide eight, we move to North America, which remained the Group's main growth engine in the quarter. All three markets were positively oriented in the quarter, with non-residential remaining the main contributor.
Digital sales continued to accelerate, up more than 500 basis points, reaching 28% of sales, thanks to the adoption of digital tools. Concerning the United States specifically, first, growth continued to be driven by data centers, with a material contribution in the quarter. The non-residential segment also grew in such segments as hospital, mining, or water wastewater. Second, industrial automation was up +3%, confirming the positive trend that we have started to see in recent quarters. Third, backlog was strong, up in double digits compared to the end of December 2025. Turning to Canada, sales grew 9.1%, supported by data center projects and industrial automation. With this, let me now hand back to Guillaume for some concluding remarks on our outlook.
Thank you, Laurent. I am now on slide 10. As said in my introduction, the conflict in the Middle East started at the end of February and had a limited impact in the first quarter. Even though we have low visibility on the evolution of the conflict, let's assess what could be the consequences and how we could turn risks into opportunities. First, while higher energy prices could impact the overall macroeconomic outlook, it could also bring business opportunities, potentially spurring renewed interest in energy efficiency and electrification solutions. I will share more details in the next slide. At the same time, we are increasingly leveraging AI tools to optimize our sales efficiency, and that should support further market share gain. Second, we are navigating in a higher energy price environment, combined with already high prices for copper, silver, and other commodities.
This could raise potential additional price increases by our suppliers, and we have demonstrated our capacity to pass them through to customers. Finally, we are taking actions to offset the impact of higher energy prices, which account for circa 1% of our sales, mainly in our transportation and building costs. These actions include adding fuel surcharges when possible, increasing the use of green energy across our operations, and maintaining strong discipline on gross margin and SG&A. Let me provide a few illustrations on slide 11 of some encouraging signs we are seeing in electrification across some of our markets. First, in France, the government recently announced a new plan aiming at accelerating electrification and reducing the country's dependency on Oil & Gas. The program plans to double support to around EUR 10 billion per year, with investments notably focused on heat pumps and electric vehicles. Obviously, it's a positive.
Second, in Belgium, we are seeing a strong rebound in solar demand. Belgium is a country where energy price fluctuations have an immediate impact on the energy bill of households and businesses, and this is driving immediate reaction and rapid investment in more efficient solutions. As a result, for example, solar was up around 50% in the first quarter, with a strong acceleration in March. Finally, in Australia, the focus on energy independence continues to support a strong momentum in solar and batteries. Thanks to subsidies supporting batteries investments, solar now represents around 50% of our sales and is expecting to grow by more than 50% in full year 2026. Those are just three examples showing how our positioning on different adjacent activities reinforces our resilience to economic cycles. Turning now to slide 12, which illustrates the strong momentum in data centers across North America.
Let me start with the U.S. Data centers now represent around 7% of our sales in the country, and they continue to benefit from strong investment activity. This reflects both the strength of underlying demand, obviously, and also the capability that we have built over the last few years. In particular, we are leveraging the additional storage capacity we recently added to ensure product availability in what remains a very constrained environment. We have also implemented a new organization to offer a unique value proposition to our customers. We support at every stage of their project, from the initial purchase phase through to MRO parts and services. As a result, we confirm our growth ambition for data centers of above 20% in 2026, with Q1 actually showing even stronger momentum. Turning to Canada, trends are also very positive.
Data center activity now represents around 10% of sales and grew rapidly in the first quarter. The business benefits from a well-balanced mix between domestic colocation contracts and also export activities from OEMs to U.S. hyperscalers. We also built a solid backlog and will benefit from additional expertise brought by the recent Techno-Contact 360 acquisition announced today that I will present on the next slide. Overall, data centers continue to be a strong growth driver for Rexel in North America. Let me now turn to slide 13 on our very recent acquisition of Techno-Contact 360 in Canada, which we closed on Monday. This acquisition strengthens our presence in Quebec while expanding our capabilities in electrical distribution, industrial automation, and services. The company also brings strong end-to-end project management capabilities from the design phase all the way to long-term service, which complements nicely our existing offer.
Techno-Contact 360 generates sales of around CAD 85 million and has significant exposure to data centers, which are expected to represent more than half of its sales over the next couple of years. From a strategic perspective, this transaction is fully aligned with our M&A approach. We continue to execute targeted bolt-on acquisitions while expanding into adjacencies and higher value-added service business. Finally, it also contributes to building an industrial services platform in Canada alongside the companies that we have recently integrated, including Jacmar from two years ago and Apex. With that, let me turn to our slide 14 to confirm our full year 2026 guidance. The first quarter showed positive momentum with solid growth across all regions and continued pricing discipline.
In the context that remains uncertain, marked by geopolitical tensions and continued volatility in energy and raw material prices, we are confirming our full year 2026 guidance, namely same-day sales growth between 3% and 5%, current adjusted EBITDA margin of around 6.2%, and free cash flow conversion above 65%. Thank you for your attention. Laurent and I are now, like always, happy to take your questions.
Thank you, sir. This is the conference operator, and we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove your question, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. The first question comes from Akash Gupta of JP Morgan.
Yeah. Hi, good morning, Guillaume and Laurent. Thanks for your time. I got a couple. The first one is on the weather impact that you had in Q1. Is there any way to quantify how big headwind it was to volumes? Maybe a follow-up to that then, can you also comment the exit rate in month of March, given some of the growth in electrification seems to have accelerated after the war. Maybe any comment on exit rate in March. Second question I have is on U.S., where you had strong double-digit increase in your backlog versus end of year last year. How much of this is seasonal and how much of this is showing acceleration in demand? Can you also comment on margin quality of this backlog? Thank you.
Okay. Many questions, Akash. I will try to take them all without forgetting any. Weather impact in Q1, it's always difficult to quantify exactly the weather impact, but it's true that we lost a few days in North America and also to some extent in Europe. The best estimate that I would have, and once again, very difficult to quantify, would be 0.5% approximately. A little bit more than that in North America, because North America was quite impacted, a little bit less than that in Europe. But that's the best estimate that we have at this stage. That's one thing. Exit rate in March. You're right, in the second part of March, we saw an acceleration in electrification trends in some countries. Not in all countries, but in some countries like, as we mentioned, Australia, Belgium, for example.
On the other hand, there was a little bit compensating that. There was a little bit of a wait-and-see situation because of the conflict in some markets. At the end of the day, I would say the exit rate in March was very consistent with the quarter. No particular either acceleration or slowdown at the end of March. The double-digit increase in backlog. That's a little bit unusual. It's not seasonal. There is a little bit of seasonality in the backlog, but not to that extent. It's mostly about the fact that, as you know, we have an increasing proportion of our business, especially in North America, which is dedicated to data centers. That has a tendency to enter a little bit more in the backlog.
Today we have in the U.S. approximately 2.5 m onths of backlog at the end of March, which is an increase compared to the end of December. In Canada, we are up to a little bit more than four months of backlog. Now, what is the quality of this backlog in terms of margin? I think it's relatively homogeneous to what we have in North America. There is no particular thing to say in terms of being relative or dilutive, and it's going to execute mostly in the rest of the year. Some of it may be pushed to next year, but I think it's a minority of the backlog. Most of it is going to be delivered in the second part of the year.
We are very happy with the increase of backlog, which is showing that our penetration in those important segments is progressing.
Thank you. If I may ask a follow-up on the supply chain in the U.S. related to your data center business. I think a few weeks back, we had some headlines saying that there is some supply chain issues with some other components going in data centers. Have you seen anything in your scope when it comes to your data center offering? Thank you.
Look, there are lead times which are starting to lengthen a little bit, but I think most of the issues that you're talking about are specific products or objects which have a tendency to go direct from suppliers to data centers. It's not affecting that much the distributed part of the business, or at least not to my knowledge.
Thank you, Guillaume.
Next question is from Daniela Costa of Goldman Sachs.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just wanted to ask one question actually, but just you had a higher price than you had expected. You're still talking about suppliers putting price further. Actually, I wonder how much do you think they will put price further, if you can comment on that. Why didn't you change your margin guidance? I guess, does that reflect a fundamentally weaker volume picture going forward? Or, because it sounds like some of the weaker volume was exceptional factors, I guess like weather. Can you kind of explain those ups and downs on the bridge and how it changes versus where we were three months ago?
Yeah, no, absolutely, Daniela. First of all, we have a tendency not to change our guidance in Q1, except when we have very strong impressions about what the rest of the year is going to be like. You can understand that in the current context with the uncertainties which are linked to the Middle East conflict, including uncertainties on the macroeconomy, we prefer not to do that at this stage. It's really not particularly an indication of anything but the fact that we are still cautious. I mean, for us, to get further visibility into what the year is going to be like, we usually wait until H1 to be able to do that.
When it comes to price increases, yes, it's true that we have seen second round of price increases, with indications being around 3% or 3%-5% additional round of price increases for many suppliers, for example, in North America. Now, we are at the beginning of that. We are at the beginning of the implementation of that. There is still a level of uncertainty linked to what's going to happen in the Middle East. I think that some of it is going to go through to the market for sure. Now, what is the proportion exactly which is going to stick? That's something which is a little bit difficult to say at this stage. That's a little bit what I would say. In positive, you're right. When you think about the margin, the positive is the price increases.
The negative could be the volume slowdown if the conflict has an impact on macroeconomy and on investment decisions. As I was mentioning to Akash, we have seen during March, a certain level of wait and see attitude from some customers. Hopefully, we see an end to the conflict and that disappears, but we prefer to be cautious at this stage.
Clear. Thank you.
Next question is from Aaron Ceccarelli of BAML.
Oh, hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. My question, sorry. I have one on the backlogs. You've mentioned 2.8 months at the end of March in North America. Would you be able to quantify what this number is in Europe, please? When it comes to pricing as well, can you help us understand how do you think about pricing going to offset potential volume losses in Europe, especially in the second half? Thank you.
I'm not sure I understand your second question, Aaron.
Yes, I'm wondering if you think that additional price increase could potentially put more pressure on volumes in the second half.
Oh, yeah. I think, first of all, backlog in Europe, in our business, we tend to be much more exposed to large projects in North America than in Europe, which means that the backlog in Europe, it's usually minimal. We don't even count it. We have a very low visibility, and that's due to the structure of our business between North America and Europe. You can say basically that the backlog in Europe is nonexistent. When it comes to pricing and the impact of pricing and volume, what we usually say is that price of electrical materials in the balance, in the economics of a larger construction project, for example, has a minimal effect on the decision, on the go, no-go decision, because it's small compared to other materials and compared to labor.
It tends to have, especially in times of energy price, it tends to have a payback. Each time you invest in electrical materials, you tend to save energy. So at the end of the day, we have never witnessed, even in times of super inflation after COVID, we have not seen evidence of the price of electrical materials being a hurdle to the decision-making in terms of projects. So no, I don't think it's going to have an impact. Now, could there be here and there construction projects, not because of the price of electrical materials, but because of the price of materials and the cost of completion of the projects being delayed? That's possible, but that's really not the generality that we are seeing.
Just a follow-up on that, I saw that on your press release, you mentioned residential turning positive in Europe. Can you provide more color, please?
Laurent, do you want to give a little bit more color?
Yeah, there are a couple of countries where people invest more with variable mortgage rates, and we start to see some light at the end of the tunnel also boosted by some solar investment, like in Belgium. We start to see a small pickup in resi. For example, I would say Belgium, Netherlands, and Sweden.
Yeah, to be precise, I think first of all, the statement is impacted also by the electrification categories, you're right, by solar and by the pickup of solar and by other categories like heat pumps and EV charging. The second thing is, what the positive trends that we are seeing are more on the renovation side rather than on the new construction side. I think the new construction is going to take time to pick up, because renovation tends to be more impacted and quicker by interest rates evolution. That's the color that we can give.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your touch-tone telephone. Next question comes from Eric Lemarié of CIC Market Solutions.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've got a question on market share. Do you see any change in Europe or in North America, and in particular, notably in North America for the data centers market? Do you see any new competitors wanting to grab a share of this very dynamic market?
Yeah, thank you for the question, Eric. In Europe, no, I don't think that there is anything specific to mention. I think market share, to the best of my knowledge, are relatively stable. I don't identify a country where we would gain a lot of market share or lose a lot of market share. Laurent mentioned several times during his comments what we call business selectivity, which means that especially in times of price increases, we tend to be very focused on pass-through, which means that even in the countries where we gain market share over the last few quarters, we have stabilized, I think, because of our attention to margin. That's one thing. To come to your question about North America, North America, those are countries where we don't have any official measurement of market share, so it's difficult to answer.
What I can say is that when it comes to new entrants wanting to penetrate the data center space in terms of distribution, I think for the kind of services that we provide to electrical contractors operating in data centers, they really want to be aligned with well-established and nationwide distributors, which means that there are four or five players in this game. What is very important is to have a proven track record of delivering those services. Because, as you can understand, what is really the name of the game is to be able to save time, to give assurance that things are going to be there and things are going to be done in time. Time is of essence in the construction of the data centers.
For those kind of services, being a new entrant and trying to shave a few dollars from the total bill is. I shouldn't say that, but it's probably going to be difficult because what really counts is a track record of services and of delivering. That's my answer. To answer more precisely, no, we have not seen new entrants.
Thank you very much.
The final question, sir, is from George Featherstone of Barclays. George Featherstone, maybe you have your line on mute.
Oh, hello. Morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to come back to the margin guide. You were talking about an inflation gap before, but clearly the message is a little bit better on price. I just wondered if you could give us an update on what you're thinking there and whether or not you were run rating with an inflation gap in the first quarter. Thank you.
Look, because it's not a margin call, I'm not going to answer precisely on that. What we have seen is both, obviously, a higher than what we had budgeted price increase on the product side. We have seen a little bit more inflation on the other side, which is the cost side. I mentioned in my comments that we have seen an increase in the cost of transportation. We have seen an increase in the cost of heating our buildings. Even though those two costs represent, what, 10% of our [audio distortion], something like that, so it's not major. We have seen, in proportion, important increases there. I will update you a little bit. We will wait for the dust to settle on all of that, and I will update you a little bit more on all of that at H1. You have two moving parts.
The price of the product is not the only moving part from this perspective. That's all the details I'm ready to give you at this point, and you will have to wait for H1 to get a little bit more balance on that.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, George.
Sir, I apologize. There's another question registered from Martin Wilkie of Citi.
I will take the additional question from Martin.
Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah, good morning. It's Martin at Citi. The question I just had was coming back to electrification, and you've given some details already. One thing we saw last time back in 2022 was quite a big pricing effect from solar as well. I know that the pricing that you see is not necessarily what we track with polysilicon and all the rest of it. Are there signs that this can be both a sort of volume and a pricing element inside solar? Perhaps it's just too early to tell, given that a lot of this hasn't quite come through yet.
That's a great question, Martin. What we had seen, even before the conflict in the Middle East, was the price of solar turning positive. I think it's turning positive since one or two quarters. Laurent?
Yeah, on panels.
On panels.
Still a bit of deflation on batteries.
Yeah. We have started to see that on panels, especially because of raw materials and the situation in China. Yes, we may see that also in batteries if the volumes start to be high enough so that there are supply shortages. We are not there yet. We are seeing a level of interest in some countries, but we are not seeing the equivalent of what we had seen in 2022 at the start of the Ukraine war. That being said, we know how it works, which is that people are now thinking, it's the second time in five years that people are facing big increases in their energy bills. At the end of the day, it becomes a risk management topic rather than anything else.
That's interesting because those categories, electrification categories in Europe, which were very much pushed by sustainability topics, sustainability concerns in the past, are now very much reviving because of energy independence concerns, and that's exactly the case in France, for example. The government in France, as a priority during a few days after the Middle East crisis, decided to get out a plan about electrification specifically. The angle was a little bit sustainability, but very much also protection of the businesses and of the end users against the future variations of the price of energy. We think that's going to be a wake-up call from this perspective. We'll see what it translates into in terms of business. For example, once again, only green shoots, but interested by this evolution.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Martin.
Sir, there are no further questions registered at this time. Back to you for any closing remarks.
No, no particular closing remarks. We're going to talk again in H1 for the full P&L this time, including margin. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over and you may disconnect your telephone.