Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. Welcome to Pavillon Gabriel. I hope you like the venue for the annual general meeting. This meeting will be videotaped, is being broadcasted and will be available on the group's website. I will be chairing the meeting with Stanislas de Gramont, general manager; Olivier Casanova, in charge of finance; Philippe Sumeire, general secretary and Secretary of the Board of Directors; Cathy Pianon, who is the Vice General Manager in charge of Public Affairs and Communication. You can recognize them. We would like to say hello to the directors who are here, the members of the Board of Directors and executive committee, and all the company's employees. I would like to thank our statutory auditors for being here.
The meeting statement was published in the Bulletin des Annonces Légales as per law on 11th of March 2026, and it was also published in the Legal Announcement Gazette. The shareholders and the statutory auditors have been invited to attend the meeting. I will be the chair of the Bureau of the Board of Directors, and I would like to call the two members representing the largest number of votes. Please be the scrutineers, Mrs. Damaris Oudard and Mrs. Caroline Chauvet, representing Generaction, and the other lady represents the shareholders. Ladies, would you like to do this? Thank you very much. Philippe Sumeire will be the general assembly secretary for this meeting.
It is an important moment for Philippe because Philippe will be the secretary for the last time. He's officially retiring at the end of this year. He joined the group in 2022. He was the legal director of Moulinex when we acquired Moulinex in 2001, and he became secretary of the board in 2011. I think I can speak on behalf of the board and all of the people working for the company, we all very much enjoyed his career. He's definitely a legal specialist of high quality, and he has beautiful vision on our activities and our work and our products in all the countries. I'm very happy that I had the opportunity to work with him for 25 years, and I would like to thank him for this collaboration.
He will be attending the general meeting next year, but as a shareholder. As usual, I have all of the documents required by the regulations. All the documents were made available to the shareholders by the shareholders' department on and on the website, according to the rules and regulations. Written questions from the shareholders were received before the meeting, as we are authorized by law. These, we answered the questions, and the answers and the questions are available on the website. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, this is your general assembly. It's a time to provide information and for the exchange with the managers of this group.
We will start with a short introduction, which will be followed by the presentation of the 2025 results and first quarter of 2026, which will be delivered by Stanislas and Olivier. We will continue with a presentation on the Rebound plan, a project which should help us restore the profitable growth trajectory. We will then take stock of the situation regarding our RSE 2030 ambition, whereby we would like to anchor the environmental challenges within the heart of our strategy. We will come back to the highlights of the 2025 governance, as well as the members of the board and the various committees. We will then provide information on the resolutions on which you will need to vote.
I will then give the floor to our statutory auditors, and they will summarize their report. The presentation will be delivered by Nicolas Bruneteau, if I'm not mistaken, who is a partner in the Deloitte company. We will then have a question and answer session, and we will close with the votes on the resolutions. You have the resolutions in the documents you were given. The meeting's opinion and the documents for 2025. What did I do? It is officially 2:37. I declare the General Assembly open, and I would like to ask Philippe Sumeire to share with us the provisional quorum figures. With regard to the ordinary part of the General Assembly, we have 1,430 shareholders who voted online.
1,944 gave to the president, 379 to the shareholders, and 231 shareholders are present. We have 71.7% of the capital present for the AGO and the ordinary general assembly and slightly less, 70.90%, for the extraordinary general assembly. In order to be able to vote, the assembly should have at least 20% and 25% for both the general ordinary and exceptional assembly. We have the necessary quorum, and we will have the final quorum before we vote for the resolutions. Thank you very much. A short introduction. I would like to say that this year was unfortunately not up to our expectations. The revenue was stable, but the offer was down 25%.
We had to reseal perspectives twice, revise our perspectives, and decrease them by 40%. As the chairman of the board, I would like to tell you that we are very much disappointed by what happened this year, and we are absolutely determined to restore the previous situation as quickly as possible. Before I give the floor to Stanislas, I would like to place SEB in our group, in the longer perspective, and I would like to share with you a few things that we should keep in mind. SEB is the world leader of small domestic appliances. For more than 20 years, our growth has been above 7% per year on the long run.
This business was carried out for 70% with our products or in geographical areas where SEB is the leader with 10-20%, 10-15% market share. We are highly profitable on a large part of our portfolio, and the result on invested capital is higher than 15%. Therefore, there is a good balance between mature markets and emerging markets. Mature markets are more than 50, and the emerging markets are where we are growing and will be growing tomorrow at slightly less than 50%. We have an industrial presence of 70%, 75% in low-factor areas so that we can perform local activity for local markets and emerging markets, but also to produce simple products for our European sites in France, Germany.
France and Germany are mainly focused on high added -value products. SEB has the capacity to develop further. We have 1.5 billion of commercial resources and motor resources. Very few players have these resources available. We have a yearly cash flow of EUR 400 million, which means that we have the necessary capacity for industrial investments, 2%-3% of our turnover, every year. We are an industrial company. We have 48 industrial sites across the world, more than 15 of which are located in France. We also have the capacity to perform acquisitions in order to enlarge our playing field for product categories and geographical areas so that we can strengthen our historical leadership. External growth has always been a part of our traditional strategy.
Some companies we acquired when they were small, like Supor, less than EUR 130 million turnover in China when we started negotiating. Now they have reached a mark of EUR 2 billion. All-Clad is more than EUR 200 million in turnover. Colombia and Samurai, also small companies, EUR 60 million, now are reaching the EUR 200 million mark or nearly. Acquisitions have always been a part of our growth strategy, so we have the necessary resources, and very few players have such a sound basis. Third thing I'd like to say, I've made an observation. Our environment has changed deeply. Geopolitical issues and our core business. Geopolitical issues, obviously, there's nothing new. As early as 1998, we had been challenged by geopolitical issues.
15th of August, 1998, the Russian banking system collapsed, and the euro, which was 9 ruble for USD, went to 33. Cyrille Buxtorf, who landed in Moscow at that time to manage the company, remembers it. The whole Russian economy collapsed, and I had never witnessed this before. For several months, we had a negative turnover, which rarely happens to a company such as ours because we were actually buying back goods, we had taken back the goods we had sold to our customers because they couldn't pay for them. That was the first serious crisis. There were also other crisis in Latin America and Southeast Asia. The Gulf War, the war in Ukraine that started in 2022, which obviously had a negative impact on us.
There was a world order which was still under the American hegemony, and China was mostly at the time looking after its own economy, and Europe was still being led by the French-German pair, which we really wonder where they've gone. There was some stability up to a certain extent. We are now witnessing, and all the companies will be witness of this, we are witnessing the emergence of a world turmoil. We don't know what will happen. The war between Russia and Ukraine is coming into its fifth year. There is now the Middle East war. Iran, Israel, Lebanon, the Gulf countries, with military but also economical consequences.
Two economic wars, the tariff wars in the United States which caused us issues in 2025, but we were not the only ones facing those challenges, which led to also some uncertainties with all economic players. There were the tariffs, but also nobody knew what was going to happen and how they would evolve. There is also the hidden conflict between America and China with lots of products landing from China to Europe. There is also the economic situation with some currencies collapsing in emerging countries, and it's difficult to operate in such areas, in areas such as Russia, because we know that European Union has imposed sanctions. It's also a major element in the interpretation of the 2025 situation, which Stanislas is going and Olivier are going to cover later.
According to what the Americans like to say, the world has become uncertain. You know the expression, VUCA, volatile, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. Welcome to today's world. It is a reality that we are facing, and all we can do is try and understand how we can face the situation. Now, the second thing I would like to dwell on is how our business is going to evolve. We hear that nothing happened for many years, and it's happening now. It isn't true. It isn't true. Our industry has been through some turmoil. A few years ago, modern distribution appeared, which replayed all the wholesalers with direct retail and direct trade and distribution, but also textile and toys and our industry have become delocalized.
It started in the 70s and 80s in the U.S., then it landed in Europe, all our competitors transferred their production to cheap labor countries, including China. For those of you following us for many years, in 2015, we saw the new brand distributor brands appearing with products that went from EUR 20 to EUR 5 almost overnight. At the time, the production cost for all the coffee makers and toasters were EUR 19. Can you imagine what it meant for us? It was a shock. For those of you who were shareholders at the time, and some of you may have been shareholders at the time, we had to close down some of our factories to adjust to the situation. After the last few years, we have also witnessed a new evolution.
Distribution has now become digital. We will see the figures later. More than 50% of retail trade is digital, 80% in some places. It depends on the countries, obviously. The movement has been picking up speed since the COVID, but it questions all the consumption rules and codes. All these evolutions have hit our industry very hard. Some of us resisted, SEB remained world leader in spite of the turmoil, but some of the other players actually disappeared or went through a very difficult time. We are facing a new evolution in our industry. It's recent,but it is going to impact all our industry in Europe, regardless of what we manufacture. There will be new players with new characteristics, new features.
Players who, forgive me if I say this in English, but they are digital natives. They were born in the digital world. They think digital. Artificial intelligence obviously is involved. Two, innovation is almost exclusively coming from China, very often subcontracted. Many people no longer have any innovation activities. They rely on a local network of suppliers. Some companies are fabless. They have no factories or very low-cost factories. They sell through platforms, no structures, no trade structures or very limited trade structures or sales structures, and they invest mostly in marketing activities. This is what we went through in 2025, like many of our competitors, the major competitors. What conclusions can we draw? What lessons can we learn? Is our industry in danger? No, it isn't. Because people will always want to live a better life.
People are prepared to spend money, a lot of money, to celebrate, to have fun, to enjoy their family, to be in good health, to live a comfortable life, and to simplify everyday chores. We still have a beautiful future and in mature countries with innovating products being developed and in emerging countries with the middle class going up. It's a generalized movement. There is a good correlation between the household equipment rate and the GDP per habitant, per inhabitant. Now in our world, we adapt to the strategy, and there is the incentive here of innovation more than the quality of execution all through the value chain. This is going to be a turning point. We have an advantage versus many of our competitors. We know the whole world.
I mean, we have the biggest network. We have marketing resources available, research and development resources, production resources across all the continents, especially in China, which is the heart, the beating heart of the innovation ecosystem , production, and online trade, more than 80% of the world online trade, and new methods and new ways that Stanislas de Gramont will describe under the half-hour delivery times, and this is still changing. What we observe is that the model is inherited from the past is too complex. Our product diversity, our world presence is a major trump cards. It is very demanding because it needs to be controlled in a very accurate way. We need to be quick, we need to be disciplined, and this is absolutely vital.
This leads us to the Rebound plan that Stanislas de Gramont is going to explain: simplification, optimization, acceleration, reallocation of resources to go further and faster. Our growth engines are there: innovation, geographical expansion, new consumer needs, a development of professional areas which we are the world leaders for, and a quicker, more selective, and more efficient implementation. Our priority for 2026, 2027 will be to restore profitability quickly so that we can restore our operational standards with an operational margin in excess of 10%. Which doesn't mean that we are giving up on the historic turnover growth standard, which we will need to restore once we have restored the profitability target so that we can go back to a 5% per year organic growth as we traditionally have had for many, many years.
One last word for the board of directors and the shareholders. I would like to say that in this situation, the board of directors is extremely active. Obviously, we are there to make sure that the execution level is on the same level as the strategic ambition. Myself and all the directors are committed to reaching this target, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the shareholders, the family shareholders, the employee shareholders, our directors, independent directors for their commitment, the commitment they have shown throughout all of the meetings we have held since the beginning of the year and which we will continue holding until the end of the year. I will close my introduction by saying, Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, we will be able to rely on your longstanding loyalty and your legitimate demands.
We are honored, but we also know that we have a responsibility. We have to provide you with the financial results. I would like to thank you for being here, and I will give the floor to Stanislas.
Thank you, Thierry. With Olivier Casanova, we're going to review the results for 2025, the first quarter, and we'll be sharing with you some important information about the pickup in activity. Let me immediately start with a very short summary of 2025. We published our results on the 24th of February. I shall not repeat what Thierry said for 2025, slight organic sales growth. This conceals some mixed results across a number of categories. Our sales have been up. E-commerce and online DTC across our own sites are very vibrant with two-digit growth rates, let's start with the two.
We have been facing cyclical headwinds due to currency effects and to what happened in Americas, the tariffs in North America, the climate in the South America, and also base effects on professionals, which have led to 60% decrease across the year. Besides these cyclical headwinds, we identified some structural elements that have been addressed by the chair, which has prompted us to quickly launch the Rebound plan to structurally revive our activity. I'll come back to this later. Now, let's look at 2025. Let's quickly review the figures. Sales at EUR 8.169 billion, up 0.3% on a like-for-like basis.
North at EUR 601 million, it is disappointing, down by EUR 201 million against 2024, which leads to an operating margin of 7.4% against 9.7% in 2024, so -2.3%, which has led to a net profit group share of EUR 245 million against EUR 232 million in 2024. In 2024, we had the fine payable to the French Competition Authority, the real comparison base was EUR 222 million. Net financial debt of EUR 2.342 billion, up by EUR 226 billion against the end of 2024. Last, a proposed dividend that will be put to the vote of this general meeting at EU R 2.8 per share.
It is stable relative to 2024. Now, over to Olivier, who's going to explain this performance in detail and address the first quarter.
Thank you, Stanislas. Greetings, let's start with professional. As you can see, a drop in sales of 5.9% on a like-for-like and constant currency basis. Two different quarters. The first half was strongly down. The comparison basis for the first half of 2024 was very high, with very high sales with our main Chinese key accounts. In the second half, a stabilization of organic growth, which was marked by a good performance in machine deliveries in Germany and China.
We can also report a good performance in services in Germany, a double-digit growth in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. Despite that, customers are still in a wait-and-see attitude, professional customers in the U.S., mainly due to tariffs. As a reminder, there were 39% tariffs on the imports of our machines from Switzerland. Progress, however, strategically speaking, in 2025, with the strengthening of professional culinary with the acquisition of La Brigade de Buyer that occurred in the first quarter of 2025. As you know, it's a brand of premium culinary cookware for professionals and so for demanding enthusiasts. Let's look at consumer. Mixed performance here, where let's start with EMEA. Europe, Middle East, Africa, up 2%. Actually, if you exclude the loyalty program, it's actually up 2.8%.
Now we can see the total markets are growing. 11 markets with growth above 5%, which is mainly driven by the success of our innovations. Some markets, specifically Germany, under-delivered. Eastern Europe, again, a very, very high growth, above 10%. Much for EMEA. Asia now. We're back to growth over the year, plus 2.7%. Of course, it's thanks to our performance in China with organic growth of 2.7%. A market that's not very buoyant, but the activity is driven by our ability to innovate and the success of online sales. Outside China, return to growth in Japan and activity which is still looking good in the whole of Southeast Asia, which is mainly driven by online sales. Let's finish with Americas.
As you can see, negative growth, -4.9%, in sales. Two different realities here. In North America, specifically in the U.S., the market, of course, was affected by the introduction of tariffs in early April by President Trump, which led our customers to engage into wait-and-see attitude. Sales were down in Q2 and Q3. The situation has started to normalize again in the fourth quarter, up by 4.7%. In Latin America, mainly the weather effect with the La Niña climate phenomenon, which is very adverse for the sales of fans. As regards our product lines, we can see a good momentum in cookware, in floor care with the very strong success of washers and also in linen care with the success of garment steamers.
One last thing, slight decrease in kitchen, in cookware, especially the slowdown in air fryers. Last point, online sales remained vibrant with growth of close to 10%, especially direct sales, DTC, across our sites. Let's look at profitability now. The operating result from activity is at EUR 601 million, down 25%. Of course, this is disappointing. It is under our expectations. The operating margin is at 7.4%, as you can see, minus 2.3% against the previous year. We can see here that the performance was better in Q4, EUR 334 million in operating profit from activity offer only, quote-unquote, down by 6.7%, and a margin at 13.3%, which was slightly lower than the previous year.
I think that the Q4 2024 was an all-time high for the group. It was a comparison with a sterling performance in 2024. If you look at what has led to this result in 2025, you can see that here we're trying to break down the result. We're looking at the 2 different effects, cyclical headwinds, and then what we call "other effects, " which, of course, have led to the launch of the Rebound effect. First, let's look at the cyclical headwinds. 3 different aspects that every time account for EUR 40 million. First, the impact of tariffs, as I've said, with a very strong drop in Q2 and Q3 in North America. Also, we raised prices to offset tariffs.
Of course, there was a lag between the introduction of tariffs in early April and the pass-through of price increases. Now, currency, strong volatility in emerging currencies. We were also affected by the strength of USD and of the yuan at the start of the year. You will see that it took some time for us to benefit from the depreciation that occurred, which was obvious as from the second quarter. Last cyclical aspect, professional. We had a very high comparison base, as we said in 2024. This activity has an accretive margin for the group's margin. Of course, its decline has affected our results. it's not the only element.
As you can see, there's a fourth block, minus EUR 80 million. The growth in volumes and the decrease in production costs unfortunately were not enough to offset price pressures and the rise in overheads and communication costs. As we've said, of course, this prompted us to launch the Rebound Plan. Last thing, as you can see, performance increased in the Q4. You can see that the cyclical effects overall faded in Q4. In North America, we returned to growth plus 4.7%. The market started to normalize again in Q4. The currency effect also became positive. We started to benefit from the drop in USD and the yen and the yuan that are two short currencies, and a return to moderate growth in the second half in professional.
We can see that the effect on the rest of activity was more limited in Q4. Let's wrap up with the financial structure and our debt. As you can see, our net financial debt stands at EUR 2.342 billion. Of course, it's been strongly affected by the payment in May 2025 of the EUR 180 million for the fine that we had to pay to the French Competition Authority. As you know, we disagree with this decision. We have decided to take steps to apply for refund of that fine. Excluding this, our debt is up EUR 226 million. It reflects two things. Free cash flow generation, of course, which is under expectations.
104, EUR 124 million for the year only. Of course, it is due to the results, the drop in the offer and the WCR that remains high. Due to the fact that our investments, our capital expenses were higher than the trend of the last years, especially with the famous Shaoxing hub for professional. Second, of course, it reflects that the dividends are EUR 207 million, including EUR 50 million for SEB and a fairly limited amount in acquisitions, especially with La Brigade de Buyer. The financial leverage ratio stands at 2.7 above our objective, which is to be around 2.5.
As you know, in 2026, we committed to decreasing this and to returning to approximately two, which is our objective, 2.5, which is our objective. That being said, the group's financial structure remains very robust. We have financial security, a very high financial security, with more than EUR 2.5 billion in available liquidity. We can relate to great refinancing with a great bond issue in 2025 with very good rates under very competitive terms and a large subscription, which demonstrates that financial markets continue to trust us. As you know, we have no covenant for our debt, so very strong financial robustness. Let's move on now to the results of Q1.
Sales stand at EUR 1.885 billion. As you can see, growth is up 2.7% on a like-for-like and constant currency basis. The offer, EUR 72 million up at 42%, and the operating margin is itself slightly up. Now, if we look at the highlights of this performance in Q1, well, I shall not discuss again organic growth. Of course, as the Chair said, we are still in a geopolitical and macroeconomic environment which is highly complex and uncertain, which actually has deteriorated since early 2025, specifically since the outbreak of the war in the Middle East. Despite this, we have growth across all activities and regions. I will go back to this in the next slide.
The offer is up 42%, as I've said. Of course, relative to the comparison base of Q1 last year, which was low. There's a positive effect from the growth in sales. As I've said, the positive effect from currencies, especially short currencies, USD and yuan, and the drop in operating costs. We've been extremely selective in our resources, but also we've reduced our overheads. All this lead to an improvement of the offer. We've turned it around. Since the announcement in early 2025, we've launched the delivery of the Rebound plan. Stanislas will go back to this later on. On the next slide, you can see a return to growth across four activities.
Professional on the one hand and the three main regions on the other hand for consumers, especially 6.7% in Americas. Now let's look at this in greater detail. In professional, 1.1% in growth. It is lower than our ambition in terms of medium-term growth. This is mainly due to the wait-and-see attitude of clients and customers in America, but also now in the Middle East, of course, because of the geopolitical context. That being said, our sales momentum is quite good. In China, we can see large volumes with Luckin Coffee. Also, we are still acquiring new customers with ChaPanda, a new tea chain and other tea chains. In North America, also new clients with Scooter's Coffee, a chain with more than 1,000 sales outlets in America.
In Europe, good performance in our operations, mainly driven by services. Also, another highlight of Q1, the start of production in our new hub in Shaoxing. This will allow us to penetrate in a much more competitive way the office and small retail segment with the Peak and Elevation models that you may have seen on your way in this building. Consumer, as you can see, 2.5% in growth in the EMEA region. This is mainly driven by good performance in France, +21%. Of course, we do benefit here from major loyalty programs on Q1, but excluding loyalty programs, growth in France is 5%, which is noteworthy. Loyalty points are parts of our traditional business model.
We do mention this because they do not step in at the same time every year, which may slightly change results for professional. It may change the reading of figures. Germany. Germany, our performance is down in line with the performance in 2025. Other EMEA countries slightly down, the comparison base in, especially in Eastern base was very high. The area is affected by the region in the Middle East. For the group as a whole, it only accounts for 2% of our sales. It's an area that is fairly moderate compared with the rest of the group. For the rest of the EMEA, it accounts for 10% of that zone. Asia at 2.2% in growth.
We maintain our growth rate in China, plus 2.3%. Other performance in other Asian countries is still characterized by good momentum in Japan and also good growth in Southeast Asia. Let's wrap up with Americas, plus 6.7%, in line with Q4. Again, good performance in North America, plus 4.7%. The market itself is not very promising or not very buoyant, but SEB has acquired quite commendable market shares. In South America, we have a more favorable comparison base due to the El Niño phenomenon.
We are still at an intermediate stage with a decline in the sales of fans. We still have good commercial successes, especially with the expansion of our ranges in some specific categories. That's so much for the details.
Thank you, Olivier. This has prompted us to reassert our prospects, as we said in February for 2026. We do indeed live currently in a macroeconomic and geopolitical environment that is uncertain and deteriorated. I think we can all see the news every day. However, we can confirm our ambition for the offer for 2026 on the one hand and, on the other hand, a free cash flow generation that would be more in line with the average performance of the last years.
Which means that, as early as 2026, it should help us reduce our leverage ratio. Our objective is to bring it down to the group's standards. That is a ratio of two, excluding acquisitions, by 2027. We have talked about the Rebound plan several times since October and in some of our statements. I think it's important to discuss with you, ladies and gentlemen, our dear shareholders, what that means, what the content of this plan is, and what its ambition is. Let's discuss it now.
What is the medium-term ambition to serve the group? The group's mission for the last 25 years has been to improve daily life of consumers and improve their lives across the world. It means a consumer ambition that consists in reinforcing our leadership position. For professional customers, the initiative started about 10 years ago with the WMF Schaerer acquisition. We want to become the reference player across the world. Now, if we look at the assumptions or the working hypothesis that structure our strategy as a group, we feel that we have success key factors, significant success key factors. Thierry said 75% of our turnover is acquired in markets where we are the leaders. Number one for coffee makers, automatic professional coffee makers. Number one for cooking, utensils, linen care, electric cooking.
Number one, two for electric blenders. Strong positions, relying on the position of some countries. We also have a strong brand portfolio. 80% of our consumer sales, DTCs, consumer sales are carried out with five major brands, Tefal, Supor, Rowenta, and WMF. If we add Krups, it means we reach 85%. If we add a few more brands with a different name, but actually belonging to the same group of brands, Calor, Tefal, for ironing, for instance, it's 90% of our turnover focused on the brands or brand systems that are very compact. These brands are often iconic brands. Very often, they are deeply rooted in our consumers' daily life, and it's essential in a world where communication is increasingly focused on brands. Thierry said this in his introduction.
We see the evolution of our environment picking up speed. The speed at which launches are carried out, the fact that products become viral. Innovation is no longer communicated on TV, innovation is communicated on social media. Innovation goes from product to customer experience. Increasingly, influencers will describe the product and the innovation, not describing the sum of functions and features, but rather the experience lived by the consumers, the interaction with the products, or the fact that the products makes some factors in their life easier. The priority is given to social media. A lot starts and happens and becomes amplified by social media, this is something we need to take into consideration. Which brings me to the transition for the next item, the way the relationship between brands and consumers is changing.
Increasingly, the consumers recognize themselves in communities, in social media communities. Influencers become the content creators. The people who produce the contents and the messages talk about the qualities of a brand. The ratings and reviews that Amazon describes very often are becoming vital factors in the choices made by consumers. 90% of consumers have a look at the reviews before they choose a product. Finally, real-time data. The world is changing at a fast pace, and promotions, encouragement for the consumers are changing very fast. Mutations are also mutations in the access to market are happening at a faster speed. Online e-commerce has developed recently. DTC sales, direct-to-consumer sales, are increasing. We see also social commerce appearing.
TikTok is developing its own boutiques, its own shops. TikTok shops in 25 countries over the last 10 years. TikTok Shop is now the third e-commerce network in China. Finally, omni-channel systems players like Zhang Yibai, who's number two in online platforms with the Jingdong brand, they recently acquired Ceconomy, which owns MediaMarkt in Europe, the first channel in e-commerce specialist. Omni-channel trade is developing. Finally, rising importance of sustainability is something we have observed. Consumers are increasingly aware of repairability, product lifespan, energy efficiency, refurbishment, second life for product, recycling. The world is moving faster. Speaking at speed and is increasingly led by social media. On the other hand, we also have consumers—it's not necessarily contradictory—consumers who are looking for sustainable products.
The Rebound Plan means that we want to restore a profitable trajectory, and we are observing how vital it is to restore our growth model. We want to act as leaders on innovation by developing new product segments, and we have initiatives such as Coffee Crush. It's an initiative to reinvent the automatic coffee maker. We want our new marketing practices to become systematized. This applies also to e-commerce practices, and we're going to use this modus operandi for dozens of products across the world. We want to accelerate with the more buy and products. We want to restore our profitability by simplifying the organization and simplifying our operating methods and simplifying our product ranges.
We want to decrease by 20%, 30% our product ranges depending on the family. We also want to improve our industrial efficacy and our purchasing efficacy. We still have room for improvement. We can improve our productivity, we are using those opportunities. We want to reduce our overheads by simplifying the way we work and also by using the contribution of AI to its full potential. Finally, we want to reinforce the connection and the stakeholder engagement. We want to nourish the connection and the involvement of our consumers. We want to develop the way our consumers are involved with our brands. We want to develop meaningful innovations, and we want this to be carried by inspiring brands.
We're lucky that we have more than 70% of our turnover coming from cooking, cuisine, where we know there is culture, intimacy, and we go inside the households with our cooking utensils, and our brands are a symbol, and we believe this is a trump card. In such a transformation era, we want our employees to be at the center of the transformation process. You understand by now that many of the initiatives are across -the-board levers, based on artificial intelligence and the increasing role it is going to play in the way we carry out business. We will have a greater role played by data and simplification. Simplification will become our motto. It will become our raison d'être in many things we do for this plan.
The Rebound Plan means a number of initiatives currently being discussed and shaped, developed by all our teams. There are more than 300 people involved in developing the Rebound Plan. It's only the first stage really. The plan will last for many years, and the whole group will go on board. This will also structure our roadmap around artificial intelligence. What do I mean by that? I mean that we are facing some challenges and addressing those challenges. We're fully aware that our world is changing. AI will change the way we do business, will change our companies. A few months ago, we did a 360-degree scan of all the functions, pro and consumer business units, consumer markets.
We carried out 140 workshops in Q1 with more than 500 employees. We identified more than 800 use cases where we could generate value. We are already working on a very ambitious program. Beyond the Rebound, the Rebound Plan, there will also be a roadmap given to the group in order to support growth, to improve operational excellence, and to rely on a robust technology basis for our employees' sake. We are fully committed, and we will see the first results as early as 2026, and the plan will continue beyond 2026. It will create value for all of our business units, all our functions from turnover generation to margin improvement, and also operational efficacy improvement. On the short term, the Rebound Plan will have quantitative targets.
The target, the ambition is to generate as early as 2027 EUR 200 million recurrent annual savings, partly by changing our organizations, partly also by changing the way we perform indirect purchases. It will have an impact on our structures, on our industrial efficacy, and it will also have an impact on our indirect purchasing basis. This plan will involve up to 2,100 positions worldwide, of which 1,400 allocated in Europe, potentially 500 in France, but all on a voluntary basis. The plan, the P&L provisions will mainly be in 2026, with disbursements mostly in 2027, and we believe that the one-time plan cost will be in the range of 1 to 1.25 times the recurrent annual savings that we have forecast.
This will bring us back or should bring us back to what has been our roadmap since 2023. Our 2023 ambition to place the group back on its midterm trajectory for a turnover organic growth of 5% annual growth and an operating margin of 10% progressing towards 11%. The Rebound Plan is aiming at placing us back on this trajectory, on this route for 2026, 2027, and then we will continue adjusting and improving the group and adapting it to today and tomorrow's environment and after the day after tomorrow's environment. This is it for the Rebound Plan. I will move on and talk about innovation and activation. As you may have surmised, in the Rebound Plan, we talk about innovation, acceleration, activation, transformation.
I would like to share with you what we mean exactly by that, and what we have already started doing, and what we want to continue doing and insist on. The innovation pipeline first. Rather than giving you a list of products, I would like to show you a video, a quick reminder of the innovations last year and the coming years. These innovations show material results. The washing vacuum cleaners started in 2024. For the first full year in this category, more than EUR 100 million sales in turnover. I mean, this is a historical high. This brings us to 2nd position in Europe. Textile stain removers were launched at the same time in Europe. Wrinkle removers, this was an innovation.
The first one reached 90 million sales at 2 double-digit growth for garment steamers. Innovation is new product, new categories, but also the renovation of existing categories. You may have followed over the last 10, 12 years the success of the Cookeo story. Between 2012 and 2024, more than 5 million products being sold. We have relaunched Cookeo fourth quarter of 2025 with a new product, a new brand. A brand that was losing steam and was suffering from the consumers looking away.
The fact that we relaunched in 2025, Q4 of 2025, the new Cookeo version with a new Cookeo Infinity offer has allowed us to move the whole Cookeo brand in France from -20 sales in 2025 to a 10% growth in 2026. We are working on innovation. We're working on renovations of existing materials and products. We're working on new segments, and we're working on core business segments, cooking utensils, such as pans, 35% of the group's turnover.
We have launched with the material success new initiatives in 2025 in wider Europe but also elsewhere, new offers for stainless steel cooking utensils, ceramic coating, and also coated aluminum in Europe, which are all contributing to making this so-called stabilized activity a growing activity, 10% organic growth in 2025. Which comes back to what Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise was saying earlier. Our products, our categories are magic, yeah. Even on businesses which we thought were mature or reaching maturity, with innovation, we can find a second stamina and a new growth area. Now, if we look at the portfolio, it's quite promising. The X-Clean range, development of washers. X-CLEAN 10 is the evolution of the X-Clean you find here in the hall.
Aerosteam is a lighter version but a better -performance version. With Supor, we are launching wok ranges. Wok in China is the cooking skillet. It's more than 50% of cookware in China. With the new titanium coating, which seems to have a lot of success, we've sold more than 1 million pieces. Cookeo Infinity I've already described. In the hall here, you can see the Pizza Pronto oven, which we will see on TV very soon. There will be advertisements on TV. I will allow Cathy Pianon to talk about that later. Finally, Coffee Crush, a new kind of automatic coffee machine, much compact, efficient, launched in France a few weeks ago and already very successful. Absolutely remarkable. We will discuss it late July when we look at the second quarter results.
Innovation in the consumer business but also professional business. We have recently opened the Shaoxing hub. It's both an R&D center, a purchasing, and a production facility. Thanks to this new hub, we are now launching two new machines, models that have been designed for small companies or office blocks. Machines that can make between 50 and 100 coffee cups every day and which are serving a very interesting market. We have inaugurated the Shaoxing in March, and I would like you to have a look at a video to introduce this new hub.
We're talking about innovation. In the last weeks, we've also talked a lot about activation. We have carried out an in-depth review of our activation policies for our new products. Instead of telling you about our marketing strategies, I wanted to share with you the example of the launch of Coffee Crush. How did it work? We did a pre-launch with several dozens of influencers two months before the official launch to create content to make sure that they would fully understand the machine and to work with them on the content that they're working to launch. We organized an event in March 2026 in France with 75 influencers, with a potential coverage of more than 20 million consumers. Since the launch, we've had more than 5 million views on the generated content.
The product is being rolled out extremely fast. It will be available in more than 50 markets in 2026. Our market share in the first six weeks in France has more than tripled. If you compare with De'Longhi or other competitors. Very promising start. Very promising launch. Actually, let's watch a short video. One thing I had not expected coming to this Groupe SEB event was to run into a guy who could sit at the Coffee Crush table. "Hey, someone's has thought of me at last. Well, I'll be sitting here all night. I'll stay put. " Well, that's a good thing, Vincent, because tonight Krups is revealing its latest gem, the Coffee Crush, and clearly they went big. Well, not for the machine, of course. The size is really impressive.
I did not expect it to be so versatile. It is touchscreen, it's sleek, it's really handy. You come up, you walk up, you press a button, you get a coffee. It's small, it's discreet. It blends seamlessly into a kitchen, even in a lounge. There were also acrobatic bartenders that were mixing cocktails with coffee, of course, a Coffee Crush camera booth with original questions, coffee, and live demonstrations of the machine. We had everything to spend a great evening. I think that the main takeaway is now that Coffee Crush is available everywhere for you. Good afternoon, everybody. Let's carry on with activations. As you have seen, we will continue to organize a number of events like this. We already had another event in early April with 60 influencers and journalists to present all our products, all our innovations.
The objective was to stage this like the fashion show and to have the SEB Fashion Domestic Show. I suggest we now watch a quick video. It's an immersion into our different brands and our different universes. The concept of the event was to have a full day dedicated to our products, have people discover them. We wanted to convene influencers who attended the event at night. Since Saint Paul, we've had journalists who also attended the event, who have been writing about our products. We have also signed a partnership with the French Institute of Fashion, Institut Français de la Mode, in Paris. There are 45 luxury companies that are members, and SEB will become a member for a chair on culinary cookware.
It will also be part of some work on objects of desire that are part of our everyday lives. Here's a video of our show. Visitors could have fun and play with the different articles. Thank you. Thank you, Cathy. You can see the evolution of activation in Europe, in the U.S., and in the rest of the world. There's another country where some of these trends are also shaping up, and China is clearly one of the countries that is at the forefront of this, which is one of the most advanced countries. We know that merchant social media developed in China. 20% of support sales online are on these merchant sites. Douyin, for example, which is known outside China as TikTok. That's where live streaming was born.
That's a number of activation techniques were born. They are now broadcast across the world or livestreamed across the world. Now we have instant sales. That is one order delivered to your doorstep in less than 30 minutes with warehouses that are fully automated. Delivery riders or delivery staff that enter the warehouse do the picking themselves. Everything is AI-driven and automated. The same for replenishment of inventories. We can see that in China, part of the development of merchant social media or of new distribution methods and marketing methods and patterns are developing. They are developing and expanding beyond the borders of China. In 2025, only, we opened close to 13 TikTok shops across 13 different countries. First, activity is quite intense. Transformation is underway.
The point here is to tell you that our innovation is rich. Second, our activation is transforming, it's amplifying, and it's developing fast across all the countries where we have operations. Of course, we are mindful. We don't forget our ESG ambitions. It's a very strong aspect of the group strategy. It's been a very important aspect for the last 30 years. Let's watch a first video about the different aspects of our ESG policy. [Presentation] Acting for the environment, reducing our carbon footprint. We work to decarbonize the activities of our factories and our logistics hubs through energy efficiency and conservation.
I have talked about the deployment of a tool over the last two years, which has helped us to reduce overall 20% of energy use across all sites that were equipped with this in 2021. The modernization of our hardware. Lots of plastic injection machines have gone electric. They are much more energy efficient. Also, the development of renewables, the acceleration of installation of renewables. Two very practical cases in Shaoxing, in China, where we have moved from gas to power, thereby reducing fossil fuel use with therefore, a strong reduction in the carbon footprint. Or the Til-Châtel warehouse in Burgundy, in France, which is our new European warehouse for cookware, which is equipped with PV panels.
This shows that we can meet our own demands, our own requirements but also redistribute power to surrounding sites. The reduction in the footprint of our products. I will come back to this in the next slides. We also work on the use of our products and the CO2 emissions. Sorry. Let me be more specific. CO2 emissions in the use and the lifespan of our products. Subito, the toaster, for example, on the right-hand side, the acceleration of the rise in temperature reduces by 20% of the energy required to toast your bread. This is quite energy guzzling, so to speak. We've managed to cut energy use by 20%.
The same for rice cookers by Supor, where all the work on conservation or we've managed to reduce the energy use in this device. Now, as regards the circular economy, as I've said, we work a lot on the development of recycled materials and the integration of recycled materials in our machines. With three key materials, stainless steel, aluminum, and plastics. We have some very specific examples. The WMF 1500 S+ coffee machine, as you can see on the slide, contains up to 39% of recycled steel, which means a reduction of up to 80% of CO2 emissions. The Renew range, frying pan range, where we've managed to reduce GHG emissions by almost 90%, thanks to the integration of recycled materials.
In the last years, we have developed pioneering circular economy initiatives with two examples which I think are highly inspiring and, how shall I put it? Are extremely promising for the future. First, the aluminum closed buckle. It's a collection circuit to recover aluminum parts, recycle them. It's the first closed aluminum circuit, recycling circuit. It's a global first. It has been expanded to Belgium. We now have plans to develop this in America, in the U.S. Another project which has been extremely popular with consumers and investors, La Poste has opened to more than 1,500 post offices to collect pots and pans from consumers.
The other project that we've mentioned already is the transformation of the of our factory in Burgundy to turn it into a European refurbishment center. We started this last year. Now, this plant recovers, refurbishes, and resells the products of several European subsidiaries. Today, we have 65 SKUs that are available for sale with reselling prices that are 20%-30% lower than new products. The ambition is to process hundreds of thousands of products per annum in the medium term. Third aspect regarding the RSE, the ESG policy, we want to act for the community. We work a lot on our suppliers' portfolio strategically, or rather on strategic suppliers. We want to focus on 500 strategic suppliers that account for 80% of the group's carbon footprint.
We try to work with them. We took some steps in 2025, for example. We've organized seminars at the group level in English and Chinese for these strategic suppliers to really onboard them in our carbon reduction push. This is quite an important objective, as this accounts for less than 1/3 of our carbon footprint. Less than 1/3 of our carbon footprint is related to these suppliers. All these efforts have been recognized by institutes and firms that audit and certify or assess environmental performance, extra financial performance of the group. You can see here a number of institutes. I shall not comment this slide any further. We are constantly going up.
It's quite outstanding because the criteria used by these institutions or these extra financial rating agencies become more and more demanding and more and more difficult to achieve. There you go, Thierry.
Thank you very much, Stanislas. We're done with the first part, which was about informing you on our activity. We are now going to move on to the more legal and governance-related part of this meeting. We shall start with the share capital. You can see on this slide the breakdown of the share capital, shares and votes. More than 3 million. It's 55.3 million shares and voting rights. Almost 80 million votes. Two things we could say about 2025. First, a great stability in our shareholding structure within the family shareholding, especially the voting bloc.
I think that the creation of HRC a few years back that buys back shares from our shareholders has been quite successful, as there has been no diluting effect for a number of years, which is a very good thing for the future. This will ensure the sustainability of the family control in the voting bloc. Second point, you may or actually you may not see it, a very strong rise in the number or in the percentage held by individual shareholders. For many years, we used to say that individual shareholders, this part of our shareholding structure tended to crumble. Here in 2025, we've moved from a 6.4% to 9.1% owned by individual shareholders. We are thrilled at this.
Many of you are here attending this event today. We'd like to thank you. We've moved from 39,000 to 48,000 individual shareholders over one year, a growth of 10%. That's a great success. I am absolutely thrilled, and I would like to thank you for this. Second aspect, well, it's not as fun. Our share price since January 2025, as I said in my opening remarks, it went down by 43%. It is slightly up now by 9%. It's been up 9% since the start of the year. It is at an all-time low or historical low.
The only thing I can say here is that we have the same development in our share price as other players on the market with American or European players who've been through the same ups and downs on financial markets. Of course, we will do our best to improve our results, and we do hope that this will have a bearing on our share price. The following aspect is our dividends. I think that this chart speaks volumes. You can see that since IPO, well, we did not go back to as far as 1975, but since IPO, the dividend has always followed the payout policy decided by our predecessors. That is an annual regular improvement in the dividend.
No, no payout ratio, but a regular steady improvement, as you can see here. We took a 20-year period here. An annual average growth of 7%. Sometimes, when events justify it, a drop in this figure, sometimes the dividend is put on hold. The only time we reduced the dividend, you probably remember it was during COVID. The President of the Republic and the AFEP, the French Association of Private Enterprises, recommended that companies reduce their dividends by 30% to be able to deal with short-time work. We did it at the time, but we did believe that this year, despite the fact that our results were low, we would maintain our dividend.
Well, there was no reason to go against this dividend stability policy. Now, just a quick word on your board, the board of directors. Maybe two or three things I could point out here. First, of course, in 2025, we've had Eric Rondolat who joined us. He was already with us last year. He replaced Yseulys Costes who had finished his term. Also, the replacement of Laurent Henry who was representative of employee, who's been replaced by Jean-Laurent Lacas who's here, who works in Écully, and he's been sitting on this board with us and has taken part in several meetings. We're delighted to have him. We still have 14 members. Independent directors account for 1/3 of the entire membership.
As you know that, you know that this is a statutory requirement by the AFEP-MEDEF code. We only take into account directors, excluding employee directors and employee directors who are shareholders. That's four out of 11. That's 36%. That's above 33%, as required by the AFEP-MEDEF code.
Regarding gender parity, we have 50% of women, and if we apply the calculation method, we exclude the directors representing employee shareholders from this calculation. 5 on 10, that's 50%. Still, we are on target with the rule. The minimum is 40%. We're even doing better than that. One word on the committee composition, no major changes. Thank you for showing the slide. Three committees. Audit and compliance committee chaired by Catherine Pourre, governance and remuneration committee chaired by Jean-Pierre Duprieu, two independent directors sit on that committee, and the strategic and CSR committee chaired by myself. I would simply like to remind you, if we look at every committee, the governance and remuneration committee plays three roles.
Governance of the Board of Directors, it is in charge of the operation assessment procedure. We assess the committee, the board operation. We validate the applications for the directors' positions. This year, we also defined a table of skills and competencies which we wanted our directors to have so that we had all the different skills and experience represented within the board to be efficient. We also have to be in charge of corporate officers and follow them, so we want to look at the remuneration policy for corporate officers, and their performance is also assessed. Finally, well, that's it. The third role is regards to human resources, the free action, free shares plan and the human resources, the challenge review.
The strategic committee is in charge of strategic orientation, three-year priorities, which are revised and updated every year and are being introduced to the strategic committee. The CSR policy follow-up and the M&A follow-up, we follow the acquisitions performed. We look at possible acquisitions. We review these possibilities. We introduce them to the board of directors. Finally, the audit and compliance committee looks at internal assessment, risk mapping, statutory auditor's appointment as well as the sustainability report, which is acquiring greater importance every year. Independence rate of our committees, the audit and compliance committee is 75% independent.
The Governance and Remuneration Committee is 60% independent, with Adeline Lemaire, who's a permanent representative at the Committee has increased the independence rate, so we have a greater percentage of independence. Finally, Strategic and CSR Committee, 50% of independent members. Attendance rate is 100%, 100%, and 94%. Five meetings for the Audit Committee and three meetings for the other two committees, Governance and Remuneration and Strategic and CSR. I'm getting ahead of myself. Finally, last year, we showed a slide regarding the trip that the board of directors took in China in 2024. We think that the Board should travel to see what is happening on -site, across the world, so we travel off-site.
This year, we took all of the board members to an event taking place in Lyon. It's in English word, IPC, International Product Conference. It's a meeting lasting 1 week, bringing together 800 people representing all business units creating products. You have seen many of them earlier. We had all the people representing marketing departments and the general management of our markets selling products. They meet once a year to discover new products to define new strategies and priorities. It's a very interesting meeting because, you know, innovation is the heart of our business. It's a very important event that we wanted our directors to be able to witness it for themselves. They spent half a day there, and they really liked it. I think they've found it very interesting. That's it.
I will give the floor now to Philippe. We're almost on time. We're only a few minutes late. I'll try to catch up.
Like every year, we're going to have a look at the agenda and the main resolution projects. No surprises, almost always the same. There is nothing really new. Obviously, the ordinary resolutions on the approval of the financial statements and, for instance, the setting of dividends. We wanted to remind you of one thing with regard to this particular item. A resolution project was submitted, called the Resolution A, in order to set the dividend in a different way from what the board of directors is suggesting.
We want to keep the dividend at EUR 2.80, which is in compliance with the policy we have been following for the last few years. Shareholders, they want to decrease the dividend by 40% and bring it down to EUR 1.68. We're going to vote on the resolutions. When we reach resolution number three on dividends, should the resolution be voted, we would not submit the alternative resolution to the vote, which was submitted because it's the contrary. It's either/or. It cannot be both of the resolutions being voted. That's it for this particular item. If we move to the next slide, we see that some administrators are being reappointed. Bpifrance Investissement, represented by Adeline Lemaire. BPI became a shareholder in 2022.
She became a director at that time. She needs to be reappointed, and we suggest she is re-reappointed. Your Board of Directors has observed that we were facing a situation where in 2027, we might end up with six directors that needed to be renewed out of a total of 12 being chosen by the assembly because two are chosen by the employee representative, so that's half of the directors needing to be renewed. For good governance reason, we want to avoid this situation. We want to spread out in time reappointments or new appointments. Therefore, we submitted this to the family board, the possibility to postpone two reappointments. Two people submitted their resignation for this AG.
Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise for three years and William Gairard for four years should be reappointed so that we can restore some flexibility in the way we renew the reappointments of the directors. We have the remuneration. Obviously, every year, the resolutions are the same. There aren't many changes. There are no changes, really. We apply the same rules to set the remuneration of our corporate officers and managers. Regarding the ex-post remuneration of the chairman, the one paid in 2025, it is compliant with what you voted in 2025, fixed remuneration and variable remuneration, and fixed remuneration as the chairman.
For the general manager, as you can see here and as you probably saw in the document, universal registration document, and also in the invitation to the meeting, the fixed part, fixed portion has not changed between 2024 and 2025. However, the variable part has decreased for the reasons we have explained, because we didn't reach our targets. There was a profit warning in 2025, as you're probably aware of, which means that the variable retribution decreased. A part of it is connected, conditioned to quantitative targets and the results which were not reached, and also individual targets and a collective operating target for the executive committee, which were both considered to be worthy of some remuneration, although they were not extraordinarily high.
If I move on to the remuneration, there is the detail. I suggest we move to the 2026 remuneration policy. For the Chairman of the Board of Directors, no change. We can move on. Regarding the chief executive officer, we would like to apply the same structures that you're already familiar with because we have described them, and I have been seeing them for, like, 24, 25 years. Obviously, this is a proven system, stable in time, based both on quantitative criteria, i.e., turnover and financial results, set by the Board of Directors every year, and very demanding. You have seen this in 2027. Also qualitative criteria. The quantitative criteria with ESG, which are new. We started them in 2018.
They are directly connected to the ESG Group policy, but they can be quantified. They are based on the rate of accidents in the workplace, including the temp workers, and based on two other pillars. Compliance with the minimum social basis in those countries where we have factories. Checks are being conducted in four or five sites every year by an independent company called Intertek, and they are very famous and experienced for doing this kind of work. With regard to CO2 emissions reductions, as Stanislas has already mentioned this earlier, we have targets and we have reached our results, and those are the quantitative ESG criteria, 15%. Again, quantitative ESG performance. Finally, we have individual performance criteria. For this year, essentially, it's about implementing the Rebound plan. Next, we move on.
The other remuneration items. Here we have anything regarding the ordinary general assembly. Sorry, can you go back? Yes, this is the slide. Free share plan. You know the system. The shares are given annually for the managers who can benefit from it, 600, 700 managers, including the Chief Executive Officer, and the number of shares is capped. It's really equivalent to what was done last year, and it's also based on financial criteria for the three years corresponding to the vesting time for share acquisition and 20% for ESG criteria, which is slightly different from the ones being applied for the annual variable retribution. This is detailed in all the documents you have received. We can move on. We will discuss remuneration policy. Oh, sorry.
Of course, to close with the chief executive officer remuneration policy, we have the fixed remuneration variable, the ESG performance, and also the remuneration in kind, such as the vehicle, the death insurance, and the unemployment insurance. We have retirement commitment, personal protection, health insurance plan, individual life insurance, non-compete indemnity, and severance pay. I would like to remind you that this is in compliance with the Medef code. Now, we move on to the director's remuneration policy. Constant, if we compare with 2025. The total amount was revised in 2025 simply because we performed a benchmark over several years, and we found that there was a one-third difference between the market average and a number of companies that are similar to ours.
This is the reason why in 2025, the remuneration level of the directors was revised to be aligned on the market average. The structure is compliant with the governance prescriptions. There is the fixed parts portion and the variable portion in this remuneration. There is the director, the member of the committee, and the Chairman of the committee who works more, and I can testify to this as a member of the board. Our committees are working very hard and the workload has increased. The Audit Committee, for instance, needs to revise a greater number of risks and different types of risks. Also the ESG Committee has to work on the succession plans of the managers. Finally, financial delegations and authorizations. Very quickly because it is always the same every two years.
They're back every two years. Cancellation by the company of its own shares. Issue securities within the limit of 10%. Issue securities with preemptive subscription rights, so directly on the market and capped at 10% of share capital. Finally, we also have an overall limitation of authorizations on two levels in such a way that we cannot multiply the authorizations in order to exceed 11 million shares, which would be a maximum of 20% of share capital. Finally, there is a resolution that allows to incorporate reserves and bonuses in the capital. We also have the resolution on the year program.
We also have a program to comply with the Women on Board directive, according to which, in the calculation of gender parity, we can take in consideration the lady who represents employee shareholders. That's it. I'm done with the main presentation on resolutions. Thank you, Philippe. I will now ask Nicolas Bruneteau from the Deloitte company to introduce the statutory auditor's report.
Chairman, dear shareholders, on behalf of the statutory auditors, representing KPMG and Deloitte, I am honored to introduce the report regarding the annual financial statements. A consolidated accounts and information regarding sustainability. I'd like to tell you about the essential points on annually consolidated financial statement. Our work is based on professional standards in order to obtain a reasonable assurance that there are no material abnormalities.
Regarding annual accounts, we certify that the SEB SA accounts give a true and fair view in accordance with French accounting rules and principles on the results of the operations for the year then ended, and of the financial position and assets of the company as at the end of the year. We have integrated an observation on the change of accounting method regarding the first application of the new accounting rules regarding modernization of statements. We have included a key point of the audit regarding the assessment of the participation shares. We have no observations on the report and the information with regard to company governance.
With regard to consolidated accounts, we certified that the consolidated accounts, based on the IFRS standards adopted by the European Union are true and fair in accordance and when result of the operation for the year then ended and of the financial position and assets as at the end of that year on the persons and entities included in the consolidation. We have included the key audit matters regarding assessment of the recoverable value of goodwill and trademarks with indefinite useful life, assessment and recognition of provisions for deferred rebates. We would also like to tell you that we have no observations on the group's management report as shown in the report. I would like to move to the special report. It will be very simple.
We have been informed of no agreements submitted to the annual general meeting for approval and no agreements already approved by the annual general meeting that would be continued during the financial year. Which brings me to the report on capital transactions. We have four reports. One report with the 15th to 17th resolutions, delegation of authority for a period of 26 months and within a ceiling defined in resolution 19 to issue shares and various share equivalents.
In this report, we have no observations to make. As regards the issuance of share capital, share or marketable securities granted access, we do not have any opinion as regards the terms to determine the issuance terms of the securities, nor anything related to the preemptive subscription rights. When appropriate, we will provide additional information. We also draft three further reports as regards the 14th resolution regarding the delegation of authority for a period of 26 months to council within the limit of 20% of share capital is but 24 months. The shares were acquired under an authorization to buy back the company's own shares. Also report on the 21st resolution, authorization for a period of 14 months to grant existing bonus shares to employees and/or executive officers.
A report on the 22nd resolution on the delegation authority granted to your board for a period of 26 months to decide on the issuance of ordinary shares and/or various share equivalents reserved for members of company savings plan. We do not have any comments to make as regards to these three reports. As regards the last one, where appropriate, we will issue an additional report when this delegation authority is used. Now on to our last report on the certification of information in terms of sustainability. For the first time last year, this report was presented to you. It includes three distinct parts. Each of them corresponds to every strand of our action as provided for by the commercial code and the guidelines of the French audit institution.
The first strand relates to the compliance with ESRS of the process implemented by the group to determine the information to be published. Based on the verifications we have performed, we have not notified any omissions, inconsistencies, or misstatements as regards the conformity of the processes carried out by the group for with the ESRSs. We mainly focused on how the group updates its analysis of double materiality. The second strand relates to compliance of information in terms of sustainability with the standards of the French Commercial Code and the ESRS. On the basis of our verifications, we haven't identified any material errors, omissions, or inconsistencies regarding the compliance of the sustainability information, including the sustainability statement. However, we'd like to draw your attention to two points.
First, in relation to the data collection limitations that the group has continued to face and the expected progress prospects regarding the remuneration indicators specified in the following section, ratio between the total annual remuneration of the highest paid person and the median annual remuneration of all employees. The second point relates to the operational limitations of the group that has continued to face for the reliability and consolidation at group level of the information relating to repairability, product recycling, and eco-packaging as specified in the following section, indicators relating to resource use and the circular economy.
The matters that receive particular attention relate to the information provided in accordance with the environmental standards ESRS E1 to E5. Last, the third strand relates to compliance with the disclosure requirements provided for in Article 8 of the European regulation. On the basis of our verifications, we haven't identified any material errors, omissions, or inconsistencies regarding compliance with the requirements of the said article. We have specifically focused on the eligibility of activities. Ladies and gentlemen, this was a summary of our various reports for 2025. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much. Thank you for the clarity of your presentation. It's not always easy. On to questions and answers, the Q&A session. Let's listen to Philippe's instructions.
We have six hosts or attendants who will be making available microphones to make sure that the Q&A runs smoothly. If you agree to it, to make sure the Q&A session runs smoothly, please wave at our hosts to get the microphone so that they can then go on to other participants. Sir. Good afternoon, Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I have three questions. The first one for the statutory auditor. This gentleman has told us that there was no significant error, but what does he mean by error? Or what is material? EUR 1 million, EUR 10 million, EUR 100 million? Another question regarding competitors. Who is the fiercest competitor for SEB in terms of products, marketing, and distribution? Last, you haven't mentioned Africa. Africa is developing much more than Europe, especially its middle class. Why is SEB not present in Africa? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Could we give the microphone to one of our statutory auditors, Nicolas, maybe, so they can explain what they mean by material error? Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Because of the regulation, we cannot give you an answer. I'm afraid that's dissatisfactory, but we have to comply with the regulation. The Chair. Well, if it's what the regulation says, he cannot give you an answer. I'm absolutely unable to give you an answer on this, I'm afraid. The fiercest competitor. That's a tough one. First of all, the group operates across several regions, across several product families, so to speak. I think the first thing we need to say is that our competitors are very diverse, depending on countries and product families.
For example, if we look at cookware in France, our competitors are private labels. If we look at ironing across the world, our competitor is Philips. If we to look at electrical cooking, it could be Ninja in one geographical area, Philips in another area. Therefore, I don't think there's one single answer. We are not in a linear world as in the businesses where I used to work, Suntory, for example, where there were three or four global players that had very standardized product portfolios. I think that as regards the distribution landscape and the competition, there are several things to say here. First, we are very well-balanced with lots of product families in many countries. This is really a factor that allows us to be very well-balanced.
We can see that many of our competitors that are very much oriented on one product, for example, or one family of products, like British competitors, that are going through successes but also suffering some severe setbacks because they only focus on one type of product or one type of product family. Second, competition is evolving very fast indeed, and often unpredictably. As Thierry said in his opening remarks, you mentioned 2024, right? 2004. We had this kettle crisis with the price going down from EUR 22.5. Today, we are witnessing Chinese competition that works in the lower range products, but also premium, more sophisticated products with a higher value added. Maybe five or 10 years, I could have told you about Japanese or Korean products.
I think that this competition issue is a recurring one. This is a very attractive industry. To us, it's more a stimulation. It encourages us to match our competitors in every single area, marketing, distribution. We're not the best everywhere, but we do have this ambition. I mean, when we're not the best, we try to call ourselves into question to redo the hard work and become the best. As regards your question on Africa, you're quite right. We don't talk a lot about it. I was just doing the maths. We generate some slightly more than EUR 100 million in Africa already. We have very important, fundamental or foundational initiatives. We launched a joint venture with Zahran, a company in Egypt. It's very successful.
Three or four years ago, we entered into another JV in Morocco. It is also thriving. We are the leader in small electrical appliance, small domestic appliances in Cameroon, Kenya. It's fair to say that middle class is developing, but these markets remain small. For example, in Kenya, I think that in modern mass retail, we have 35% of in market share. That's EUR 6 million in sales. What we do in Africa is creating the conditions for the success of tomorrow, making sure that in major urban areas, in large metropolitan areas, we have a presence. Of course, it has to be cost-effective. We don't want to overdo it. We don't want to force through this development by working on prices and affordability only.
I suppose we can discuss this during one of our next general meetings. We are interested in this continent. In a more personal note, I started to work in Africa with Danone in 1998. In my previous career at Suntory, 15% of my business was in Africa. What my experience has shown me is that we have to be patient. We need to be strategic. We need to do things in the right order. We need to do things right. We need to properly build our brands. We don't want to jump the gun. We don't want to go too fast. I can, I can also say for fun, if I may say so, is that Africa is a continent where there's a lot of counterfeiting from China or elsewhere.
For example, there are lots of countries where you have Calor branded products like Calor, Moulinex, that sounds like Moulinex. A lot of quixotic brands like this, but of course the price is as quixotic. Outlandish, rather. The gentleman there. Yes.
Hello. My name, I'm an individual shareholder. I'm very disappointed at the performance of the share price for this beautiful brand. Minus 40% over 10 years. I can't possibly fathom this. You have a beautiful brand. You are a leader. You are a leader, you organize great events. I need to understand. I have three questions. First, as regards the timing of the Rebound plan, why did you wait? Why did you wait that long?
Why did you wait for the share price to be that low to propose this very strong plan? To me, it's almost like a restructuring scheme. Why this belated awakening? Second, about the track record of your launches. There are, I suppose, a lot of successes. Well done. Maybe all sorts of flops. Maybe this could shed light on your operating methods. Could you give us some examples, and could you maybe explain why they didn't work? Third question about your great stake in Supor, 83%. Could you tell us more about its market cap today, its market valuation? Is it possible to raise your stake? One last bonus question. I'm quite curious, how do Supor general meetings go in China?
What about the Q&A sessions in at Supor general meetings in China? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your question. First of all, we do understand your frustration and your anger. No one can be satisfied at these results. The first thing we need to say here, that we need to say loud and clear, we have members of the executive committee here. This is a concern that we share with you. As regards to the timing of the Rebound plan, it was announced in September, at the end of September 2025. We started to work on it with the executive committee in July. I think it's important to remember that in 2024, the group's performance was, in terms of sales, I mean, was satisfactory. It was not at five.
I think it was in the region of four. There was a significant improvement in the reported operating profit. The Rebound Plan is not a response to the share price. It's a response to what we think we are seeing. The structural need to transform the company to become profitable again. Also the management team does believe that there are cyclical explanations of our performance in 2025, but let us not be fooled. There are more structural issues that we need to address and tackle. The Rebound Plan is not a response to the evolution of the share price. It's an initiative of the management team. We have looked at the more structural dimensions of what has to be done if we want to return to this profitable growth path.
As regards the results of our launches, you're quite right. Some of them are successful. Now, you're asking us about the flops. Well, it doesn't work like this exactly. I mean, we don't have launches that are unsuccessful. The thing is that we have a core business where things might deteriorate. Let me give you a very simple example. OptiGrill, one of our products, which I suppose account for about 10% of our sales in Germany. This product has been down by 15%-20% in the last 15 months. The problem is not that innovation didn't work. The problem is that we have countries that are really mainstays, pillars, where activity is crumbling, is eroding. That's the problem when you have a large product portfolio, large coverage in terms of family product families and geographical areas.
I said earlier on that it is an advantage. It can act as a shock absorber, but there's a problem. If we want our innovations to be successful, to be tangible successes, we need to Well, we need to take steps. If you look at this Rebound plan in greater detail, all we say is that we need to be faster in our innovation. We need to be stronger and more relevant in how we activate this innovation. What do we mean by that? More relevant in the activation. That means it's all about our ability to turn a good or great idea into a good success and possibly a great success. We did some launches in the past that were, for example, superior to the washer.
The innovation, the great thing with the washer in its launch in 2025 is that it's been a success, and we've generated EUR 100 million, but it's not enough. We need to have five launches like this and more and faster. Why? That's the very purpose of the Rebound plan. We do this because our competitors respond to the market much faster than before. 10 years ago, when you launched an innovation, you would see the first Chinese copies or counterfeits or copy products get on the market five, 10 years later. Now it's after three or six months. In China, we visited Supor with Thierry a few weeks back. Copies hit the market maybe eight weeks afterward. We do some monitoring of the competition, especially in China.
It gives us the objective in terms of pace, the standards we need to meet in order for us to generate innovation that is successful. Not only that, innovation that can offset what is not as successful and that can generate this additional growth that we wish for. Also, we have to be the first on the market segments that we're interested in. We want to be able to derive some profits for this and faster than our competitors. Thank you very much for what you said about Supor. Now, about Supor, you're absolutely right. At this point, Supor is worth EUR 4.8 billion, CNY 9 billion, whereas SEB is worth EUR 2.9 billion.
Even if we have 83% of our share capital, that means that actually Supor is worth much more than SEB as a whole. If we want to buy the remaining EUR 2 billion, that means that we go in the red and that we're negative. That doesn't make sense. Let me give you some information, some of the few points. Supor is EUR 3 billion for China. For lots of people who look at Supor through SEB, it's EUR 2 billion. For our 15,000 Chinese shareholders, they can see a company that generates EUR 3 billion in sales, which first, is very big. It's the largest one. Second, which is clearly the undisputed Chinese leader today. We have already overtaken Joyoung and Midea, which they are very dynamic.
Second, as you know, clearly, the market cap on Asian stock exchanges, especially on Shenzhen, have multiples that are much higher than the European stock markets and the French stock markets. It all comes into play. The third reason, I think, is that the share price is particularly low. Supor's share price is not very much different or is not lagging behind that of its Chinese competitors. It's fair to say that SEB's share price is way under what we would like it to be. It should reflect the company's value. I think, however, that China, that has been driving us, well, that really drove us a few years back when we had this development from 130 million to 2 billion on the Chinese market.
Two things have changed since then. First, China scares a number of people since Xi Jinping became president and since the COVID policy that has cast some doubts as to the strength and reliability of China. We believe it's overstated. Some still believe that China can have a 10% annual growth rate. If you have an opportunity to go to China, go to large Chinese cities. Even in small 10 million cities like Hangzhou, where we are based, there are many more Lamborghini and Porsche car dealerships than in Paris. Today, China is a mature market with an equipment rate amongst households for our products, which is very high.
Actually, the products we sell are very expensive on the Supor market. There's been an evolution. The development of China means that today China's growth rate will not be the same. However, the most fundamental explanation is that SEB's share price, we believe, of course, we cannot judge our own share price. All we can say is that we are fully determined to ensure that results pick up fast to make sure that investors can trust the plan that we want to deliver. That they will trust in our recovery. I do hope that the share price will move fast as it already has. As it already did. Our share prices dropped until October 2022.
I think we lost most of our value. We were at 58 and then we picked up at the general meeting in May 2023, up to 106. EUR 59 to EUR 106 in just a few months. I do hope and we'll do our level best to make sure that we can do the same.
Now, about how a general assembly is conducted in China, I'll allow Philippe to answer that question. Well, according to Chinese law with regard to the stock exchange, they're very close to ours. Our system, they've tapped into our system and the British system, they've mixed the two. It's very mature, legally speaking. However, in practice, there are some differences, especially one. There are no shareholders carrying the shares. Everybody's registered. If you have a share, you cannot just simply carry the share. You have to be registered by the administrative authorities. The visibility on the capital composition on this, the It's very detailed. We don't have that in Europe. Also regarding general assemblies, there are very many resolutions.
There are many more items being voted on during the general assembly, especially the related party agreements between the shareholders and SEB because there are EUR 1 billion worth of products being called "related party agreements" and being sold under the group's brands. This is voted in the assembly and scrutinized with attention. There are few questions. The general assembly is entirely remote. In the meeting in the board meeting room, there are only the managers present, a few directors, and all the shareholders are attending the general assembly online and voting online. There's another question I did not have time to answer. Sorry. You were asking if we had 83% and whether we can increase. Yes, we can. We can go up to 90%.
From 90% onwards, we would have to unlist the share, and we don't want to do that. We want to be listed in China. We're the only company across the world having been authorized by the Chinese authority to have the majority control of a listed company. That had never happened before 2007. It's never happened since 2007. We have a very special situation, but we like that. It's very good for us because we are de facto a Chinese company. Yes, we own 83% of the shares, but the other 17% are very small shareholders. No one has more than 1.5% of the shares, individual shareholders, financial shareholders, pension funds, but they have a very limited number of shares. We are in control. We are the captains.
It means a lot. On the one hand, it means that we need to have three independent directors. We have six directors. The rest are independent directors. We have one accounting professor, a Chinese professor teaching accounting in China. It's by law. We have to have that. We also have two ladies, independent directors. One is a French lady living in Shanghai, and the other one is Chinese lady who lives in Paris. She's a lawyer. The board meetings are held every quarter at least twice. We meet in person, and we perform a working session just like any other board meeting in France. It's very interesting. That's it.
Yes, according to the Chinese law that's recently changed, there used to be a group of shareholders who were sat on the board and did not vote. Now we have an employee director who votes. It's been the same one for, like, 20 years, the same person, but now he has a voting right. He's a company man. He's a factory manager. We have great stability with regard to management on all the levels. I think that last year we handed out 600 medals for people who had been in the company for more than 10 years and 60 medals to people who had been with the company for 30 years. They say that in China, there's a lot of turnover.
Well, go and have a look for yourselves. The gentleman there. Then, we know. We've seen you. Patrick Febvre, individual shareholders representing the National Association of French Shareholders. I would like to thank you and congratulate you on the increase of the number of individual shareholders. The first question. You explained that you moved from 6.4% of the capital held by individual shareholders to 9.1%, that family shareholders were stable. It's institutional shareholders that have lowered their share in the capital. Is it possible that the lower share value comes from the fact that institutional shareholders have left the company? The second question, if I may. Mr. de Gramont, could you please tell us more, could you elaborate on the TikTok shop? Where are they located? How does it work?
How do they work? I will answer the first question. Yes, of course, we cannot rule out that some financial investors who saw the share value dropping decided to pull out, and we cannot exclude that this might explain also the shareholders' value dropping. TikTok shops. Yes, I can explain where they're located. TikTok is a social media very powerful in China. The figures for September last year are staggering. 800 weekly visitors. 800 weekly visits in China. It's huge. It's staggering. TikTok started developing in Southeast Asia, so the more mature TikTok sites are in Southeast Asia, and it makes sense that social media sites becoming an e-commerce site happens where there is the greatest traffic.
The first places where we opened TikTok shops were Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and we opened them on the brand that we sell in those countries, Tefal. These are countries where only, almost only Tefal products are being sold. There's a second level, the countries where TikTok developed in priority outside of Asia, so it's the United States. I think that it was we opened a the Tefal TikTok shop in the U.S. The United Kingdom also we opened, fourth quarter we opened a shop, and then Germany is a country where TikTok is developing. This is for the Tefal brand. We also opened two sites with the Rowenta brand, one in the U.S., because in the U.S. we sell two brands, Rowenta and Tefal, and Rowenta.
In Spain we also have Rowenta, very strong on the floor management, maintenance and linen care. Spain is a pilot market, so we also have a Moulinex site, and one of the biggest brands in one of the biggest countries is WMF in Germany. WMF, we opened a shop, a site, a TikTok site in the fourth quarter of 2025. Next question. Just behind there and in front. Good afternoon. If we have a look in 15 years from now, we will have populations from Japan, India, and Europe aging. Many elderly people who will be over-equipped. The only country where the 30-year-olds will increase in numbers will be U.S., and then in India there will be a 500 million middle class.
Half of the population less than 30 years old will be in India. They will need to buy equipment, have access to our comfort level. Do you have a factory in India? Are you going to organize a hub with China? How do you see this market in the coming years? We should start thinking about the future now. I will allow Thierry to answer the question. It's his specialty, and I will add something if I need to. Well, we're agreeing according to the U.S. The U.S. is a very dynamic market. We're very, we have an average presence in the U.S., but we could reinforce it and if the conditions are met. Very few players have succeeded in the U.S., only two of them, and they cannot be bought, and the others are not doing well at all. India.
India, how can I phrase this? India is a bit of a mystery to me because India is a country where the population is growing. It's a country where they are developing not so more with industry, but rather with service. They are very well -educated and university -trained. They have all the conditions to become a big country, the biggest country in the world with regard to population, and they should be developing very fast. Trouble is, that's the theory, and until now, we haven't seen it happen in our business, in our industry, for two reasons, two main reasons. The first reason is that India is a country where there is no modern retail distribution network. It's coming, but it's very slow.
They prevented all international distributors from taking a foothold in the country. It was allowed on the federal level, but every state refused it. The trade system is still based on mom-and-pop stores, very small stores, local stores, 15 sq m, each selling their own product. Oftentimes the products are very basic products. It's not a structured market. There are no big players. The distribution network is fragmented. It is also an extremely complicated country. It's a federal state. They have excise duties between the states, the federal states. Logistics are scary because you drive on the motorway. All of a sudden there's a cow crossing the motorway. It's a country where contrary to China, I mean, China was a very quick development.
In India, we have never succeeded. I don't think that it is among our priorities. India is clearly not on our list of priorities. It will take so much time. There are other countries such as Southeast Asia countries, where the population is high, and they have a much higher purchasing power, and they will become an El Dorado, which we can conquer faster than India. Well, even mature countries, developed countries, so-called saturated markets, they continue to grow in an interesting way. Household equipment rates in Western Europe, according to our figures, reach 25–28 appliances per household. We see that the consumers tend to duplicate or even triplicate their equipment. In every French household, there is 1.8 vacuum cleaner.
15 years ago, there was less than one vacuum cleaner per household. Now there's more than 1 vacuum cleaner. What you're saying is quite relevant. Demography, growth will come from India or the U.S. However, we see growth pockets through innovation in mature countries, mature markets. Three more questions here. Yes, please. Can you raise your hand again? Thank you. And then the two people behind. Jean-Michel Chemillier. I'm an individual shareholder. I have three small questions, three things I'd like to discuss with you. Tefal, whose brand image is suffering from the anti-adhesive coating, and apparently one director. Well, there was one issue where the Tefal plant is located.
In order to make sure they don't lose too many jobs in that factory, do you have any substitution products, maybe frying pans with different coating or titanium coating, that could be manufactured there so they don't lose all their jobs? Supor, their e-commerce site, does it sell products that you want to push in those countries, or is the trade limited to Supor products? Finally, in the presentation, in Mr. Sumeire's presentation, I did not quite grasp the attribution of performance shares in 2025. I think it was 13,000, but we didn't see any variation versus the previous year. The variable share dropped. The variable portion dropped. Did the performance share number decrease as well? Thank you. We'll talk about PFAS at the end. Supor maybe first. Supor e-commerce site.
Yes, we choose. We decide together with Supor what we want to sell on the Chinese market. I'll give you an example. We are currently developing a range of coffee makers, coffee machines, with international brands sold and developed by Supor. The choice of what we sell on the Supor e-commerce site and the choice of brands we offer is definitely something that we control, the group. Supor is behaving like a market company. If we want to launch a new range of frying pans or mixers, blenders or cookers, it's, we decide what brand we want to sell that products under. Well, we have Aerosteam, a big success in Europe, and we have an Aerosteam with a Supor brand in China, and it's also very successful. Philippe Sumeire, two words.
On the performance shares. There is the annual attribution, but that can only be acquired over a 3-year period. The one you're talking about, 2025, 13,000 shares, can only be measured. The final performance and the real assignment of number of shares that could be lower or higher, it will be measured over the 2025, 2026, 2027 periods, and it will be measured in May 2028 based on the economic performance of years 2025, 2026, 2027. How is the economic performance target set? Every year, the board, following the disclosure of the accounts, will decide on the target set by the management. It will set targets for turnover and overall.
Just to give you a concrete example, on the 2023 plan, what was given, distributed in 2023, measured in 2023, 2024, 2025, the economic performance was quite okay, 120% in 2023. 2024 was even higher than that. The offer was EUR 200 million, and the next year was 0. In average, for 2023, again, measured in 2023, 2024, 2025, it was 74% of the shares that had been promised. The number was decreased. There was an impact on the number of shares given to the CEO or the other managers who can receive performance shares.
Does it answer your question? Let me answer your question. The group makes stainless steel pans, is also in Tournus.
For Renew, the pans are mainly made in ceramics and PTFE. We have both coatings on our site. Of course, we stand our ground. We have a very clear objective. We want to remain the number 1 in terms of all materials. I can see two hands raised there at the back. Hello, I'm an individual shareholder. Thank you very much for all these product presentations. There's something that we haven't discussed at all, which however I think is very important. The ergonomics and the user-friendliness of your products. Very often, use manuals or user's manuals are lacking, and sometimes users have to deal with extremely complicated tasks. Do you have an example, sir? Well, first I suggest we address this outside this general meeting.
If our products that leave our factories that cannot be used, that's a real problem. We try to make sure that users manuals are increasingly paperless, that we have videos on YouTube and pictures online. I would be tempted to say that actually we do a lot to make our products accessible to explain how they work. If you have a different take on our products, I would be very interested and a couple of people, a couple of my colleagues on the executive committee will listen to what you have to say. Right. The gentleman there. Give the gentleman a microphone, please. It's not a gentleman. Oh, apologies, madam.
I just have a quick comment. You talked about 360 degrees for the scan. Well, that's you've come full circle if you do 360 degrees. Anyway, you referred a lot to AI. You haven't mentioned at all human intelligence. I would like to understand what AI will do for this company according to you. How will it develop within the group, especially in terms of jobs? Can you give us an overview? Thank you in advance for your answer. 360 degrees.
That's more comment than a question. Yes, a 360-degree scan. That means that you look at everything from all angles. You look at all scopes of the company. Now, as regards AI, maybe the two of us can answer this. Let's proceed this way.
Artificial intelligence offers a number of opportunities to optimize, to improve things. There are several ways you can harness AI. What we try to do is to find the right balance between AI and human intelligence or rather the human factor. I suppose, you can continue. Our work on AI rests on several pillars. First, people, as you said. The idea is that it should be a tool to augment the capabilities of our employees and not displace them. We said, for example, we've worked on 800 use cases. We don't want to use AI for the sake of it. We want to introduce it when it really helps us, also when we have the data for it. Of course, we are going to focus on AI.
Of course, we want our employees to be able to keep abreast of what's happening in AI. We don't want them to be to become obsolete. If they are not surrounded by AI and assisted by AI, it might become very difficult. Let's not forget that we have several pillars, three pillars. We have one pillar about responsibility because we do also take the accounts on the environmental footprint of AI, but also we have another pillar on human training on. We're trying to see how we can help our employees. AI is meant to augment our employees, if I can use that term. I'd like to pick up on this 'cause it's absolutely essential. We have always worked a lot on employability.
I think that the duties, amongst others, one of the duties of a company is to make sure that our employees remain employable, and that applies to the industry. We've, for example, worked with people to help them move from assembly jobs to robot or machine controlling work. We want to make sure they remain employable. Now, AI is a revolution that is going to hit all businesses with full force across the world. If we don't prepare our employees to use AI, they will not be employable anymore. We need to do this. It requires a lot of hard work, but I think that it's one of the duties of business. The member of the public. I understand your answer, but in your presentations and in your remarks, you haven't mentioned people at any time.
That's just my point. I do understand that AI cannot be ruled out. Maybe you could say that at some point that someone thinks, that a team thinks, that an R&D team thinks on this. Maybe it would be worthwhile saying this during a general meeting. Thank you.
Thank you. It gives me an opportunity to clarify this. On one of our slides, you had the number of people, employees, humans who took part in these workshops because we don't forget them. They are at the very heart of our work. We mentioned employees who were onboarded on this AI roadmap. We already have 500 people. It's a joint development. We don't impose this on our employees. It's teamwork. Thank you very much. We can take one last question, if you don't mind. The gentleman there. Hello, Mr. Jeand'heur.
A quick question about the Rebound program. Is it the program of last resort? Is it because there were delivery mistakes by the current management? How can we be sure that the Rebound program will be successful? I've gathered that when you buy out entities in the professional sector, it was to develop them. I can see that figures in the professional sector are very poor. How can you guarantee that this rebound will happen? I'm thinking here of the share price, which reflects this. We are at the very bottom. We've bottomed out. One last point about the eighth resolution. It's a question I wanted to ask last year. We have the remuneration of the chair, EUR 750,000, and corporate officers' fees as well.
I asked at the time about the pension of Mr. de La Tour d'Artaise. I was told that it was confidential information. Actually, I've double-checked. It's on the reference document on page 128 of 2022. The pension that was financed at the time by SEB was EUR 450,000 per annum. I'd like the company to include this information on the eighth resolution or the information that is in the reference document as it gives information about the chair's overall remuneration. As to your first question, the Rebound plan is not the plan of last resort. It's not a response to what's happening on the stock market. That's what I said in response to the first question that was asked.
The Rebound plan is meant to adapt the practices and policy and organization of the group to today's context and to the context of tomorrow. It's important to do it now because this context keeps changing ever faster. We need to do this swiftly, as we know that after the Rebound plan, there will be other evolutions. We know that the pace of innovation will accelerate. There will be an intensification of activation policies. Thus, the question is not whether Rebound is a last resort. We've generated EUR 600 million in operating profit last year. However, it's a required or necessary adaptation of the group, of its policies, of how it works, of its organization, so that it can deal with the competition and with consumers. Excellent. Right. Thank you very much.
We are behind schedule. Oh, you do have a question.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Just a quick question about AI. You mentioned AI in the Rebound plan and on repeated occasions. There are several types of AIs. For example, if you look at what NVIDIA says, they categorize the different types of AI. There's perception AI, agentic AI, generative AI, and robotic or physical AI. Well, that's mainly robotic. Could you give us specific examples of how you want to use AI in these different categories?
It can be, for example, to answer or to help some of our consumers, for example, chatbots to help consumers. Also, for prediction, AIs that can look at supply chains. You know that we have a lot of work in terms of deliveries.
Content automation to do things faster rather than using agencies. We've identified 800 potential use cases that are interesting. What about the agentic AI? We do have agentic AI, but not only that. I'm talking here about use cases to make sure it's clear to all our shareholders, yes. Excellent. Let us now move on to the vote, the final quorum. Over to you, Philippe.
The final quorum has slightly improved. 4,068 shareholders attending or represented at this general meeting who represent 71.32% and 71.19% for the extraordinary general meeting. That's 78% in terms of voting rights. You can see the figures here. The general meeting can validly deliberate on the ordinary and extraordinary issues. If you don't mind, we'll briefly describe each resolution before the vote.
The voting devices have been handed to you. Instructions will come on screen. It's the same as every year. Please make sure you remember that you have eight seconds to vote on each resolution. Can you play the video? It's the instructions on how to use the voting device. Dear shareholders, the voting device that has been handed to you after you sign the attendance sheet is strictly for personal use. The number of votes that you have or represent should be displayed on the voting device's screen. You only have to use the green, yellow, and red keys. Green is for in favor, yellow is for abstention, red is for opposed or against. After each resolution has been read out, the vote will immediately start.
Members of the board will say, "The vote is open." You will see a loading bar on screen which will show the countdown, the time you have left to vote. Once the countdown is over, the board will say, "Voting is over." You won't be able to vote anymore. Results will be displayed on the screen a few moments after the end of the vote. One last clarification, please make sure you turn off your mobile phones during the votes, and make sure you return the voting devices on your way out. Right. The first resolution, approval of the separate financial statements for the ended December 31st, 2025, showing a net profit of EUR 127,161,182. The vote is open.
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The vote is over. This resolution is approved at 99.96%. Second resolution, the consolidated financial statements, EUR 244 million. The vote is open.
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The result is on its way. The vote is closed. This resolution is approved with 99.99%. It is approved. The third resolution, allocation of the profit of the result. That is the setting of the ordinary dividend at EUR 2.8. Let remind you of what I said at the start of this meeting, it is an alternative resolution relative to the A resolution tabled by a shareholder. We have 1.68 in the alternative resolution. This is the third resolution, EUR 2.8. Let's start the vote. The vote is open.
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The vote is closed. 83.13%. This resolution is approved. We won't have to vote on resolution A, which is considered as rejected. Fourth resolution, reappointment of Bpifrance Investissement, represented by Ms. Adeline Lemaire for four years. The vote is open.
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The vote is closed. 98.4%. This resolution is also approved. The fifth resolution, appointment of Mr. William Gairard for four years as part of the staggering of directors' terms. The vote is open
The vote is closed. 88.47%. This resolution is approved. On to the sixth resolution, appointment of Mr. Thierry de La Tour d'Artaise as director for three years. Again, as part of the staggering of directors' terms. The vote is open.
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The vote is closed. 90.19%. The resolution is approved. On to the seventh resolution, approval of the remuneration of all executive officers. The vote is open.
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The vote is closed. 96.72%. This resolution is also approved. On to the eighth resolution, the ex post remuneration of the Chair for 2025. The vote is open.
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The voting is closed. The vote is closed. 76.41%. This resolution is approved. On to the next resolution, the ex post remuneration of the Chief Executive Officer for 2025. The vote is open.
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The vote is closed. 78.26%. This resolution is approved. On to the remuneration of the Chair of the Board for 2026 ex ante. The vote is open.
The vote is closed. This resolution is approved with the majority 82.41%. On to the next resolution, the ex-ante remuneration for 2026. It's the structure of the remuneration policy for the CEO. The vote is open. The vote is closed. 82.47%. This resolution is also approved. On to the twelfth resolution, which is the approval of the remuneration of policy for directors. The vote is open. The vote is closed.
Surprise, 85.12%. This resolution is also approved. On to resolution 13, authorization to be granted to the board of directors for the company to buy back its own shares. It's the vote is open. Vote is closed. This resolution is adopted, majority of 77.75% of the votes.
We move on to resolution A, which is not going to be voted on. Resolution B, which was not approved by the board of directors. Resolution B is about setting of the total amount of directors' remuneration at EUR 650,000 from EUR 1.1 million for the 2026 financial year. The vote is open. Vote is closed. This resolution is rejected 80.75%. Extraordinary resolutions, resolution 14, authorization to be granted to the board of directors enabling the company to cancel its own shares. The vote is open. The vote is closed. 99%, 99.24% for. It's approved. The next is resolution 15, to increase the share capital by issuing ordinary shares and all securities giving access to the share capital and all debt securities. The vote is open. The vote is closed.
86.58% in favor. The resolution is adopted. Resolution next resolution is 16, delegation of authority granted to Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and all securities by offering them on the market. The vote is open. The vote is closed. 83.57% adopted. Resolution 17 follows the number 16, delegation of authority granted to Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and all share equivalents using the offerings referred to in Article 411 2. The vote is open. Vote is closed. Resolution adopted, 83.3%. Resolution number 18, delegation of power to the Board of Directors to increase the company's share capital by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the company's share capital in consideration for contributions in kind made to the company. Vote is open.
85.18% approved. Extraordinary resolution number 19, blanket ceiling on financial authorizations. Vote is open. Vote is closed. 97.89% approved. We move on to extraordinary resolution number 20, delegation of authority to be granted to the board of directors to increase the share capital by capitalizing retained earnings profits premiums. Vote is open. The vote is closed. 99.88%. Extraordinary resolution number 21. Authorization to be granted to the board of directors to grant performance shares to the general management and the managers. The vote is open. The vote is closed. 96.66% of resolutions approved. We move to resolution number 22, delegation of authority granted to the board of directors to carry out share capital increases restricted to members of a company or group savings plan. The vote is open. The vote is closed.
Resolution adopted, 99.45%. 23, amendment of Article 16 of the bylaws. We already explained earlier. The vote is open. The vote is closed. 97.82%. Resolution adopted. The last one is resolution 24, powers to carry out formalities. The vote is open. The vote is closed, the resolution is adopted, 99.94%. All the resolutions have been approved, Chairman. Thank you, Philippe. Well, before we close, I'd like to thank you for attending the general meeting and for voting all the resolutions submitted by the board. Please do not forget to give back your voting device, you will be given a token of our appreciation. We would like to thank you, we will meet you again next year for the next general assembly.