Good evening, everybody, and thank you for joining Solutions 30 Q1 2024 Revenue Conference Call. We will hold the conference call in English, and the transcript will be available on our website in both English and French. Amaury, our Group General Secretary, and Jonathan, our CFO, are by my side to comment on the Q1 2024 revenue. We will then answer your questions from the chat at the end of this presentation. In the first quarter, 2024, our group revenues were up, were at EUR 265 million, up 3.8% compared to Q1 last year. We continued to benefit from a strong momentum in Benelux, with a growth over 21% against a very high comparison basis. Q1 was another confirmation that energy activities are a powerful growth driver for the group.
They grew by 36% in Q1 and by close to 48% in France, where the rebalancing of our business mix is progressing in favor of these activities. As you already know, in the second half of last year, we voluntarily slowed down our telecom activity in Italy due to a difficult situation with our main client. This has created a temporary decrease in our Italian revenue. Excluding Italy, our growth in Q1 was 6.7%. Concerning Italy, we have made good progress in the last month, and we anticipate to resume a normal activity in Italy with a better economic model in the second half of the year. We'll come back to this later in the presentation. Lastly, we confirm our outlook for the full year. As said, visibility has significantly improved in Italy. Also, in Belgium, the situation concerning the coming elections is getting better.
Recent planning sessions that we have conducted with our clients give us confidence that we can minimize the impact of the upcoming elections by anticipating work in the city centers now. In Germany, growth will accelerate significantly through the year with the ramp-up of fiber deployment. As a result, our revenue should grow over the full year at a higher pace than in Q1. Our adjusted EBITDA margin, as previously announced, is expected to make further progress towards its double-digit normative level. I will now pass to Amaury.
Thank you, Gianbeppi, and good evening to everyone. Let's now take a look at how the growth was generated during Q1. With an organic growth of 21.6%, Benelux remains the driving force. This growth was achieved on a very high comparison basis, since we grew by 77% in Benelux in Q1 last year. The fiber activities are still going strong, and energy is growing double digits. In France, we are progressively rebalancing our activity mix towards energy, which is a buoyant market at the moment, while managing our decrease in connectivity with stringent contract selectivity and a strong focus on margins. Energy was strongly up in Q1 by 38% organic, while connectivity was down 10%. Given the relative size of these businesses, the net was an organic decline of 4.9%.
In Italy, revenue was EUR 6 million lower than in Q1 last year. As you already know, we have voluntarily slowed down our fiber activities there since H2 last year due to a difficult situation with our main clients. As said by Gianbeppi in the introduction, negotiations with these clients have moved in the right direction, and we now anticipate a positive outcome for the situation with back to normal, but with better conditions, at some point in H2. Excluding Italy, other countries were up 3.1% organically, with solid growth in Germany, where fiber activities will start ramping up in H2. We do expect Germany to become our third pillar alongside France and Benelux, and to drive a continued high level of organic growth for the group.
At group level, organic growth was +6.2%, excluding Italy, and +3.4% in total. On top of that, we have a EUR 1.2 million positive impact from the consolidation of ELEC ENR, a French specialist in photovoltaics, which we acquired in July last year, and which is being successfully integrated in the group. I will share with you the details of another acquisition we just made in France, also in the solar sector, and we are actively building up capabilities in this promising market. Going forward, we intend to continue seeking targeted acquisitions in an opportunistic way and play an active role in the sector's consolidation in Europe. Looking now at our Q1 revenue by activities. Energy activities revenue grew by 35.9% to EUR 36.9 million in Q1.
Quarter after quarter, the energy transition is proving to be a powerful growth driver for Solutions30, as we are successfully deploying our business model in activities directly related to renewable energies. The solar market, in particular, is buoyant, and especially in France, where revenue doubled in Q1 and where the commercial activity is very dynamic. In Belgium, we have recently won a contract with Fluvius for low voltage grid modernization, in order to adapt its new electricity needs commanded by the energy transition. This paves the way to a new diversification in a dynamic market, where our business model, combining versatile technical skills and the ability to manage a large number of interventions on a large territory in a short period of time, is extremely relevant. Connectivity revenue was up 1.4%.
This moderate growth reflects the different stages of fiber deployment and connection in the various countries where we operate. France and Spain are major markets where we are managing a revenue decrease by being selective and focusing on profitability over volumes. On the other hand, the same activities are generating significant growth in less mature countries like Poland and the U.K., and will generate even more significant growth in Germany, starting in the second half of this year. Technology posted revenue of EUR 25.7 million revenue in Q1, down by 9.5%. Lastly, in terms of geographies, as you can see on the right, Benelux is confirming its position as the number one geography in the group in terms of revenue, as it just passed the EUR 100 million mark for a quarter, following a strong growth of 21.6%.
This shows that we have successfully deployed our model in this region, where we have built a leadership position and captured strong market growth. I will now hand over to Jonathan for further details on Benelux.
Thank you, Amaury, and good evening to all. I will start with Benelux, which is now the largest contributor to group revenue. Revenue grew significantly by 21.6% compared to the first quarter of 2023. Energy was up 14.6% at EUR 16.7 million, driven by the continued rollout of digital meters in Flanders. With the grid modernization contract we just won, that Amaury mentioned, we will be in charge of upgrading more than 1,000 km of low voltage network to adapt to new electricity usage. This is opening the path to a new diversification in energy and further growth opportunities. Connectivity revenue was EUR 78.7 million, growing 24% year-on-year, despite a very high comparison basis, as growth in Q1 2023 was +92%.
The ramp-up of fiber activities continued at a rapid pace, despite very harsh weather conditions in the winter months, which impacted the outdoor deployment activities. Regarding the upcoming elections in Belgium, our local teams are working closely with their clients in order to adapt and optimize planning and organization through the election period. As a result, we now believe that the impact of the election on the pace of the fiber deployment should be minimized. Technology revenue was EUR 5.3 million, up 11.6%, driven by the good trends in IT support services. I will now pass it back to Amaury for an update on France.
Thank you, Jonathan. Revenue in France was EUR 97.9 million in Q1, down 3.7%, year-on-year. We are currently moving ahead with rebalancing of our business mix in France towards a higher share of energy activities. Energy delivered remarkable growth of +47.2% to EUR 17.5 million revenue in Q1. These activities are benefiting from strong tailwinds, fueled by the energy transition and the ever-increasing importance of renewables in the country's energy mix. Revenue from renewable energies activities doubled in Q1 and grew by 84% organically, driven by the ramp-up of large photovoltaic infrastructure projects, like the construction of the largest floating solar farm in Europe, in which we are involved alongside Q ENERGY.
In addition, the recent ENR law, mandating the installation of photovoltaic panels on outdoor car parks exceeding 1,500 sq m, is triggering a dynamic commercial activity in the renewable energy sector. Our strategic expansion in the energy sector is also bolstered by M&A. After the acquisition of ELEC ENR last year, we finalized in Q1 the acquisition of a minority stake in SO-TEC. SO-TEC is an installer of photovoltaic structures based in the South of France. We plan to progressively increase our stake and anticipate consolidating approximately EUR 20 million of revenue from this entity in 2025. Connectivity passed revenue of EUR 64.7 million, down by 10.3%. The fiber connection market slowed down in Q1, while the maintenance market was broadly stable.
In this context, we are managing our revenue decrease by maintaining stringent contract selectivity, always prioritizing margins over volumes. As maintenance constitutes an increasingly significant portion of the connectivity market, we are gaining competitive edge as a leading player in such activities, which demands the capability to ensure swift interventions at the user's residence, wherever it is located. Revenue in technology was EUR 15.6 million, down 11.5%. This slight decline was attributed to lower volumes in IT support services. However, we anticipate better trends for the rest of the year, and especially with the forthcoming Paris Olympics, which are expected to generate opportunities in the payment and IT support activities. Back to you, Jonathan.
Thank you. Looking to the other countries, revenue was EUR 66.5 million in Q1, down 6.2%, but up 3.1% excluding Italy. As mentioned before by Amaury, we have voluntarily reduced our fiber activity in Italy since Q3 last year due to poor organization and planning from our main clients. We are currently negotiating with them in the framework of legal protection, and these negotiations have clearly moved in the right direction, so that we expect the situation to be resolved and to be able to resume normal operations at better conditions at some point in H2. So this is definitely good news. Germany, which is now the biggest country revenue contributor of the geography, with EUR 18.2 million in Q1, delivered solid growth of 12%. This was driven by a high maintenance activity on coax networks.
Regarding fiber, you remember that we were awarded major contracts last year. Based on plans that we have, that have been established with our clients, deployment will start ramping up in the second half of this year and fueling the growth of the whole geography. The German fiber market has a huge potential and will allow the group, in the medium term, to benefit, to benefit from a third pillar alongside Benelux and France, and to sustain high level of organic growth. In Poland, we continue to roll out our fiber business successfully, and revenue in the country was up 25% in Q1 at EUR 14.6 million. In Spain, where the fiber market is more mature, we are applying the same management principles as in France.
That is, managing the revenue decrease, -26% in Q1, by focusing on margins rather than volumes and developing the the more promising energy activities. Lastly, in the U.K., revenue was up 10%, thanks to a good momentum in connectivity. With that, I will hand over to Gianbeppi for the outlook.
Thank you, Jonathan and Amaury. Based on this Q1, we are confirming today our outlook for the full year. As you see from this presentation, visibility has significantly improved in different areas. In Italy, where the most favorable scenario is now very likely, meaning that we should be able to resume working fiber at much better conditions at some point in H2. In Belgium, where we should be able to minimize the impact of upcoming elections on fiber activities based on optimizing, the planning, work with our clients. And lastly, in Germany, where the fiber deployment will start ramping up and boosting our growth in that geography in H2. Therefore, we expect group revenue to grow over the full year at a higher rate than in Q1. Regarding margins, we expect our adjusted EBITDA to further improve in 2024, as previously announced.
In the midterm, we target EUR 2.5 billion revenues and the normative adjusted EBITDA margin between 10% and 15%. This is actually a good transition with the next topic, which is our Capital Market Day. We warmly invite investors and analysts to our next Capital Market Day, which will take place in Paris on September 26th. This event will be an opportunity for the whole Solutions30 management team to present the group market on our numerous business opportunities, our initiatives in terms of technological innovation and ESG, and we will also detail our roadmap and our midterm financial guidelines. Venue and the detailed agenda will be communicated later on, but we look forward to seeing you and discussing with you during this insightful event. This concludes our presentation.
Thank you for your attention, and we can now take your questions. Okay, so first question, I read it in French. [Foreign language] Pourquoi les élections en Belgique n'auraient pas, au contraire, un impact positif en accélérant la signature de nouveaux contrats, aussi bien avant les élections, pour des raisons électoralistes, qu'après les élections, avec de nouveaux élus voulant plaire aux électeurs? Okay, so the question is, why elections in Belgium don't have a positive impact on our activity? And the question is geared towards commercial elements, you know, so cities willing to be more modern and therefore willing to deploy fiber.
It's probably going to be the case, but there is always a delay between the moment you have a commercial discussion with a client and the moment the work begins and our revenues growth. So when certain cities will decide this year to be more modern, you know, to be more better perceived from the citizens, the impact of this decision is going to be seen in the coming months and possibly next year. Here we are talking about contracts that have already been signed, and the issue of elections is that during elections, a city doesn't want to see the city center blocked. It's as simple as that.
So we basically have managed with the cities to do the center now, and then during the election time, work on the suburbs. So basically, we managed to agree on how to optimize the planning to continue work during the election time. Yeah, and which is actually the second part of the question, because second question is the impact of elections on the contracts that have already been signed, is indeed what I've just explained. So basically, during elections, no work in the city center. We managed to move around the planning and anticipate work in the city center now. Okay, other question. It has been many years that activity is suffering in telecom in France. Are you managing to reduce significantly enough your head count, therefore, your charges in order to adapt to lower demand? Amaury, I suggest you take this one.
Yes. I confirm that this slowdown in the deployment and connection market was anticipated. And so, you know, we are definitely protecting our margins. But as I said during the presentation, the good news is that the energy market is booming at the same moment. So, it's a good way also to reallocate our resources to these activities, which are growing significantly. And, you know, what we are doing actually is we are demonstrating that our model can be replicated from one industry to another. And by doing that, you know, we just adapt our workforce. We train our workforce to this new market, especially in the energy in France.
Thank you, Amaury. Other question, margins continued to improve in 2024? And the answer is yes. Yes, indeed, because our small countries are growing, and therefore margins are improving. We said we are going to see Germany growing in the second half, and prices in Germany are pretty good, so that will be margin contributor. Problems in Italy are going away, and therefore we should have a much better S2, H2 than what we had in H1, and so in the first quarter and also in 2023. So many things are going better in 2024 than in 2023. Other question: Can we think of revenue levels greater than EUR 1,140 million in 2024?
That's a very, very precise question. It's end of first quarter. I think we cannot be as specific. We have not given a guidance for 2024 in revenues, but I can answer in a different way. As you have seen in the first quarter, without Italy, we grew by 6.7%. Now, problem in Italy is going away, so we expect Italy to be again growing in the second half. Germany will grow significantly in second half, and in Belgium, the main problem related to elections will be out of the way. So we remain quite positive with the second part of the year, certainly much better than the first part. I'm not seeing other questions.
Yeah, I have a question on an update on Germany. How much potential from the fiber market, short term and medium term? Yeah, the market potential in Germany is really huge. Many of you have seen the fiber plan in France that was worth EUR 20 billion - EUR 30 billion, so a very significant market. In Germany, it would be greater than 40 billion. And since the German country is much more distributed than France, the whole plan is going to last much longer than in France. So we are going to see strong growth beginning this year and lasting for many years. Other question: What is the potential of energy activities in Benelux, notably in light of this new contract in grid modernization? The potential is big.
The potential is big, not only in Benelux, but all across Europe, because today all of the European utilities have planned an increasing amount of investments to increase the capacity of the grid, of the last meters of the grid. And this is because solar panels are being deployed, charging stations for electrical cars are being deployed, windmills are being deployed, and the distribution network is not strong enough to support them. So the investment in the grid by the different utilities in Europe is extremely important. With this contract that we have won in Belgium, we have shown that we are capable to be an important actor in this segment of the market.
We will continue pushing in this direction, and this will contribute to increase the share of our energy activity in the total revenue mix of the company. Another question, are you going to continue to do external growth? The answer is yes. As Amaury said, we have recently invested in a French company that is a specialist in photovoltaic, and we have similar targets in other countries in Europe. Energy is clearly a focus for us, for both renewable energy activities, so solar panels, charging stations, but also the grid itself. So we will definitely continue to analyze opportunities of external growth in different countries. What is the expected EBITDA in 2024? It's a little bit too early to tell.
Now, we are just at the end of the first quarter. This call is about revenues. We can say that margins are going to improve during 2024, but we are not in a position to give a guidance for the full year. I do not see other questions. Yeah, another question is: Are you already under negotiation for new contracts in Germany? And the answer is yes. We are actually doing already some pilots with some new clients, so indeed, there will be new contracts and new clients coming up in Germany. Most likely around the end of this year or latest, beginning of next year. But definitely, Germany will give us many more opportunities and more clients, of course.
Another question: Is the improvement in Italy linked to the takeover by KKR? No, no, it's independent. The improvement in Italy is that we have taken this strong stance in the negotiation, where basically we said, "No, at these conditions we will stop," and we stopped. We indeed stopped. The fiber plan for the country has a political importance, and Italy has been a big beneficiary of European subsidies, but the counterpart is that Italy has to spend them at a certain pace. So if the situation was stuck for too long, the risk for the operator is to lose the subsidies. So this is why, you know, both parties, you know, our client team and us, in the end, we managed to converge to a s...
You know, to a solution that was beneficial for both parties. Other question, yeah, we said in the past that we want to address the market of elevators. Where are you in this respect? And the answer is yes, indeed, we are analyzing this market, and we are doing some pilots with the major manufacturers, KONE and Otis and Schindler. So we are doing pilots. We are in a pilot phase in analyzing this market. We need to understand it a little bit better before we can really take a strong stance and announce something in this respect. Currently, the focus for us is really energy, because as you have seen, we see clearly that it's going to be a big source of growth and opportunities.
Prices are pretty good in this sector, better than in telecom. Question: Why have you postponed your CMD at the end of September? Well, we wanted to do it now before the summer, but we have investors meeting now in May. There is some forums that we are participating to. Then we have the shareholders meeting mid-June, and we were a little bit short to do properly the Capital Market Day before the summer. Since we want to be more exhaustive and give you more information, especially for what is related to the midterm, we thought it was better to take a little bit more time and then do it after the summer. In September, we also had the press release related to the first half results.
That is going to be published, I think, around the 20th. So 26th was first date available, just after our release of September. So that's the reason. Another question: How should we think about France stabilizing? Will energy become as big a business as telecom? And the answer is yes, indeed. So as you have seen, the telecom activity are slowing down, are mature, but at the same time, you are seeing that this energy part is growing extremely fast. So there is going to be a rebalancing, with one activity, energy, becoming, you know, progressively as important and then more important than telecom. Yes, we should think about a rebalancing of the two activities, indeed. Okay, so I do not see other questions. Let me thank you, everybody, for your participation.
Let me just remind the good news of this first quarter with Italy. That was a sensitive situation when we spoke last time in January, that now seems well underway and allows us to be more positive on the second part of the year in Italy. And also Belgium, with elections being a factor risk, a risk factor in the middle of this year and just after the summer, that is now again resolved. And third point, Germany picking up with a good growth that is forecasted for second part of the year. Thank you very much. Have a good evening.