Hello, and welcome to the Teleperformance 2021 Annual Results all. My name is Courtney, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note that this call is being recorded, and for the duration, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your question. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Daniel Julien, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
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For your patience, I will now hand you over to your host, Daniel Julien, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, to begin. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. If you may put the slides on the screen, this would be helpful. Okay, I cannot see the slide on the screen.
It's okay.
I'm going to tell you that I'm very happy to have the opportunity to present you Teleperformance 2021 Results and our vision for the next four years. Having said that, as I cannot see the slide on the screen, I'm going to let Olivier Rigaudy, who is present in the center in Paris, to make the whole presentation. Thank you very much.
Good morning and good afternoon to all. I'm going to present you the result of the 2021 result of the group. We are going to cover first the key figures and highlights of FY 2021, give you some information about the objective and strategy from 2022- 2025. After, I will deep dive in the 2021 result before looking to give you much more detail on 2022 outlook. Let's start with the figures and highlights first. I don't know if you, Daniel, can see them.
It's not working.
First off is just to see where we are. Teleperformance in 2021 is at this level. We are close to 420,000 people across the world, with 70% of the people working from home. We are working in 88 countries in 265 languages, serving only for the call service, roughly 1,000 clients in 170 markets.
As you can see on this map, we are showing where we are and highlighting the country where we are very, I would say important, meaning Philippines, India, of course some, Colombia, and also some domestic country, like Brazil, U.S., and in Europe, with two multilingual hub, Greece, Portugal, and specifically also Netherlands this year, given the COVID lines that I will come back later on. What are the main stuff to keep in mind about 2021? First of all, we have achieved a record growth in 2021. We are ahead of our 2017-2022 plan, with revenue above EUR 7 billion.
Like-for-like growth, which is 25.7%, which is significantly ahead of people expectation, mainly driven by an acceleration in market digitalization and revenue generating digital client up to nearly 50% in 2021. As you might remember, we have also been able to make two external growth last year, with the acquisition of Health Advocate that has been completed in last July, and Senture, which was completed in December. Not only we grew, but we have been able also to have a sharp increase in profitability. The EBITDA figure is now, without non-recurring item, close to EUR 1.5 billion, up 30%, more than 30% in 2021, which is a margin of 20.7%, 100 basis points versus 2020.
The increase in EBIT before non-recurring item is 45%, close to 46%, and exceeds EUR 1,071 million for a margin which is 15.1%, up 200 basis points versus 2020, and far ahead of pre-COVID level of 2019, which was 14.3%. Just to mention that all margins are up by activity and region. Not only we grew, not only we increase our profitability, but we have been able to deliver a very good cash flow, EUR 661 million, up 36% versus 2020. That has been recognized by Standard & Poor's, that move upgrade us from BBB- to BBB in the fourth quarter.
As a key figure, I just wanted to remind you two things, the two acquisitions that we made in U.S. Health Advocate, which is a company that helps American citizens to navigate through the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system and delivers to 12,000 clients, which are mainly companies, of which 20% are part of the Fortune 500, and the revenue is $140 million. Senture, which is a business process outsourcing operator for public services in U.S., with revenue of a little less than $200 million. These two acquisitions are boosting the group's positioning in high-value-added businesses and enhancing the group's profitability profile, sorry. Not only we made acquisitions, but also this, in 2021, we have been able...
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Only the slide came on my screen.
Oh, finally. I give you the stuff.
Great.
Sorry.
That was my part of the presentation.
Of course.
I'm going to be happy to say, yes, you saw the results of 2021. They were beyond our own expectations, whether in organic growth, but also our ability to make targeted acquisitions. Also, there are a few pieces of information that are critical. Please don't change the slide before I ask. We generated net 30,000 jobs, and we have been recognized by Great Place to Work for more than 98% of our operations covering our employee base. We reduced our carbon footprint by 15% per employee, and very important at the COVID time, we have been able to deliver a good quality of service with 70% of our employees working from home. Next, please. Among the awards, I'm not going to bother you with multiple awards.
One recognition that was important was by Fortune Magazine, who after reviewing 10,000 other companies with the help of Great Place to Work included Teleperformance as one of the world's best workplaces, one of the top 25 companies among 10,000. Next, please. Other awards and recognitions. As usual, it's Everest Group that gives its leadership grade. As you can see, Teleperformance is up to the top. Thank you very much. Next. Next. Our four-year objectives are extraordinarily simple. We recognize that we are in an exponentially transformative environment. Everything moves super fast. In this environment, we are going to maintain and to expand our global number one leadership worldwide in our business scope, which are the outsourced customer and citizen experience management and their related business services.
We are going to do that, thanks to our unique global range of services, from customer experience service to the back office and very specific back office by vertical activity vertical. Thanks to very aggressive investment in digital transformation, analytics, and process. Already, by the end of 2022, we are going to have more than 2000 engineers and consultants in our transformative division, TAP, technology, analytics, and process. We are going to develop, and we are developing specific expertise by vertical, which mean that we have people coming from the specific industry, knowing very well the pain point of this specific industry, and helping to build solutions that improve the workflow. Our objectives for 2025 are very simple.
Like-for-like EUR 10 billion, plus targeted specific acquisitions that make the group stronger for EUR 1 billion-EUR 2 billion, and improving our EBITA margin up to 16%, from the 15% to 16%. Next, please. The strategy, again, nothing new, we are consistent. First, the high touch. We are the largest army of service in the world. Enthusiastic people helping people. Of course, thanks to selection of the people, training of the people, coaching of the people, and a way to manage, and as it is laid out on this slide. Next, please.
This unique army of service is enhanced by high-tech investment, hardware, software, knowledge from the cloud-based solution with TP Cloud Campus, the omni-channel solution, the artificial intelligence, the robotic process automation, the analytics, the Lean Six Sigma discipline, and extraordinarily important, a best-in-class information security that we want on par with our clients or even above. This means a Global Security operation running 24/7, security operations center 24/7, multi-factor authentication, network segregation, and so on. Next, please. This high touch, high tech will help Teleperformance to deliver an outstanding quality of service. This outstanding quality of service that ensure our leadership is measured by objective key performance indicators. Our client seniority, which define the loyalty. Our stack ranking when we are several of us to serve a client needs. How well do we do?
Our Net Promoter Score, which is the client satisfaction, and of course, our share of wallet evolution client per client. We are an agile, responsive, consistent and scalable solution, and this is maybe the most important. Teleperformance is the most scalable solution in the industry. Next, please. Strategy. Very simple. The verticalization by client sector. There is a Teleperformance bank finance, bank finance and insurance. There is a Teleperformance for digital platform. There is a Teleperformance for healthcare and so on. Second, adding new line of services with the digital transformation, like for the social media, the content moderation, like for the development of the AI, the labeling. Like for the development of the blockchain, the solutions for cryptocurrency. Also offering one-stop shopping. Front office, middle office, back office for our clients when they want just one integrated solution. Also offering our own expertise as a service.
As I said, we are going to continue to make targeted acquisitions who are going to enrich Teleperformance portfolio of offering. Next, please. This activity is going to be developed with a sense of responsibility and with a purpose. Corporate social responsibility is specifically quantified at Teleperformance. First, we want to be a preferred employer in the market, and these are the Great Place to Work certification. Second, we are going to continue to promote diversity, gender equality and inclusion. We follow the ratio, and we have specific proactive initiatives that everybody can see, for example, on LinkedIn, to promote diversity and inclusion. Our commitment on the SBTi targets for global warming to reach the net zero by 2040. Finally, we want to be a force of good in the communities where Teleperformance operates, and give back to the community.
These are our different initiatives like Citizen of the World and many others that are going to be announced during the year 2022. Please keep in mind that Teleperformance has been a signatory of the UN Global Compact for already 11 years. Thank you very much.
I'm going to present you the figure quickly before we answer the question you are going to raise after. Coming to the figure precisely, as I told you, we have achieved EUR 7.1 billion this year, which is a 24% reported growth, but 25.7% like-for-like growth for the full year. If you exclude the impact from COVID support contracts, this growth is now at 16.5%. This is absolutely amazing. This is the figures that we never achieved. I'll come back later on that to give you much more detail on that. Two points I wanted to make.
First, we are close to EUR 1.5 billion EBITDA by 2021, achieving 20.7% versus sales, which is a significant improvement over last year, of course, but over 2019 in the meantime. EBITDA figure or main figure crossed EUR 1 billion to attain EUR 1.071 billion, 15.1%, up 46% versus last year. Net profit, EUR 557 million, close to 72% growth versus last year. If we now enter much more in detail on the sales, I know you are interested to understand what's happening on the sales.
Here you have the breakdown of the sales versus 2020, including, of course, the currency effect, which was negative this year, mainly due to the euro, mainly in H1, and mainly coming from the dollar and main American currencies. After that, this 25%, 25.7% like-for-like is breakdown between COVID support contract impact on like-for-like and like-for-like growth excluding COVID contract. As you see, we increased our sales by EUR 927 million this year from, I would say, between brackets, recurring business and 515 from COVID line. Finally, we had EUR 64 million of change in scope linked to Health Advocate that has been consolidated in July 1, 2021.
We try to explain to you much more in detail over two years the revenue growth analysis. Of course, this year is complex because you have two issues. One is the COVID line that we mentioned that are following a path that is not steady from a quarter to another, plus the base effect of the year of 2020, which was depressed and now better in 2021. As a whole, if we neutralize these two effects and trying to define a growth path for 2020 and 2021 as an average, we see that the growth is 12% over the two years.
Not only we saw that, but also we see that the figure of 20% for Q4 is significantly ahead of people who are waiting and delivering a good figure for 2020 for the last quarter that is promising for 2022, as you can imagine. Let's move now to the detailed growth for the year and for the quarter. What is amazing here is just to see you have the breakdown of the 25% across the different division and across the different, I would say, geography. Interestingly, in Q4, we grew by 13.3%.
In fact, if you take out COVID, it's a little less, but 11%, while we were facing a very hard comp to beat versus last year, which was tough to beat, notably in Europe, but not only in Europe, also in LLS. Here you see that all the company, all the regions are growing very fast. Even in U.S., we are back on track and we deliver a very good acceleration of market in Q4. This is, as I told you, very interesting for the start of 2022.
Of course, on specialized service, not only we continue to grow on LanguageLine Solutions, but we are also enjoying a gradual recovery in the TLScontact business, not at the level we had before, but starting to come back to a better pace. If we move now to the results by activity, I would say few things to tell, except that all figures, all geographies, all regions are progressing and improving versus last year, achieving record figures, notably in India, that you can see we are achieving 18.2%.
This is a result of our management picking the right contract to deliver the improved figure, but also a very big growth in EMEA, and nobody really thought it could be possible to achieve close to 14% margin in 2020 in EMEA. While Ibero-LATAM is continuing to deliver very good figure. EWAP is improving again, and Specialized Services came back to the level that we were knowing in 2019, notably with LanguageLine Solutions, but also the improvement of TLS back to normal. Not exactly back to normal, but on a pace to be back to normal.
If we move now to the region, I would say, notably in English world, of course, you see the figure of 12.5% growth in Q4 while facing tough comp, notably in U.K. Now we have a gradual acceleration all along the year in North American market, which is satisfactory. Asia Pacific, very good activity in Southeast Asia. The margin is improving, as you can see, by 90 basis points, sorry. Moving now to, sorry, I skip IberoLATAM, which was a mistake. Very good expansion in IberoLATAM, 18.3% in Q4, versus 26% for the full year. Of course, comps were tough to beat also in Q4.
Very good, very good growth, I would say, everywhere, Colombia, Peru, Nearshore, Argentina, and even Portugal, and even Brazil, which is not there, but everywhere we are enjoying good growth. The margin are growing very fast by 160 basis points in 2021. If we move now to Europe, 41% growth, like-for-like growth, of course, this is important link, this is linked partially, significantly. Sorry, for the COVID support contracts that are going to dry up. That was supposed to dry up, but I'm not sure they are going to dry up so much in Q1 2022.
We have, of course, here comps to beat that were difficult in Q4, but we have still a 10.7% growth in Q4, and a significant improvement in margin, as you can see, for more than 400 basis points. Let's finish core service by India, growing at a lower pace, but it was maintained, it was under control, this is managed, and achieving the best core service figure margin across the groups to 18.2%, at a very good level. To end the presentation on that specialized service, back on track, 14.5% growth in Q4, close to 20 for the full year. Again, growth in the margin to 30.2%. You have, of course, language lines that continue to deliver good margin.
TLS that is back on track, even if it's not at the level that it was in 2019. Of course, six months of Health Advocate that is delivering very good figure as planned. Quick word about the rest of the P&L. Very few things to tell about figure below EBITDA. Mainly the increase of the cost of share plan, which is linked to the fact that the stock price is increasing, while we have no this year, any goodwill impairment in 2021. To finalize the analysis, financial results that are showing a degradation this year, but in fact, we decided to repay in advance some US private placements.
If you exclude that, the financial charge would have been lower, and it is absolutely promising for 2022, because this cost will be done also in 2022. Income tax back on track to the 28% that we were knowing in the past, given the fact that we have no impairment of loss on goodwill this year. A net profit that is EUR 557 million, which is 9.36 euros per share. Quick word on cash flow, because this is probably the most interesting stuff. The cash flow not only increased because of the EBITDA you understood, but the change in working capital has been limited to EUR 75 million, while the group was growing by EUR 1.4 billion in sales. I just wanted to highlight that point.
This is really an achievement. In the meantime, we have been able to control the CapEx, not only in percentage, given the increase in sales, but also in value, given the fact that our CapEx were mainly used on IT and not really on new workstation in 2021. I'm not going to spend much more time on balance sheet. I just wanted to stay a minute there to see that finally, to show the evolution of the group today in the net debt to EBITDA that move from 2.2x- 2.6x. In fact, in 2021, we have been able to finance Health Advocate and Senture acquisition for close to EUR 1 billion with only an increase in debt of EUR 382 million versus last year.
This is remarkable while we continue to pay a good dividend. Finally, we land a net debt to EBITDA below 2%, with a ratio that is a published ratio, which is 1.8%, but if you exclude Senture, is 1.75%. I'm sure you understood that the fact that our rating was improved by Standard & Poor's in such a troubled market, notably in debt market, is absolutely an asset as we speak. Just a word about our debt. I'm not going to spend much more time on that, but clearly our gross debt was EUR 1.3, and I do believe it's going to be down again in 2022.
Lastly, if I may, we are going to propose to the general meeting a dividend of EUR 3.3 per share, which is an increase of 37% versus last year, with a stable payout ratio of 35%. I'm going to finish with the outlook for 2022, and after open the floor for question. Or we discussed we have a. We guide the market. We decided to guide the market to have a double digit like-for-like revenue growth above 10%. We do believe that if you exclude the COVID lines that we have hard time to predict for 2022, we are going to grow above 10%. Of course, there will be a decrease in contribution from COVID support contract, no doubt on that.
Probably much more starting in the Q2, Q3, Q4 than Q1. The like-for-like revenue, if you take into account this decrease in contribution from COVID support, we believe we will be above 5%. On top of that, we think that we announced that we are going to be 30 basis point increase in EBITDA margin by the end of this year of 2022. As mentioned by Daniel, we are looking for further targeted acquisition. That's the end of what I wanted to say. Of course, we are ready to take your Q&A, your question much more than that.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally and you will be advised when to ask your question. Our first question comes in from the line of Oscar Rao calling from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone, and congratulations on the result. I had two questions. The first one, if you could touch upon wage inflation and where are you seeing that in your markets and how you can pass that through. That's the first question. Then the second question is on the underlying growth. Could you explain if this is taking market share from competitors? Is it new outsourcing? Yes, so those are the two questions. Thank you.
Dr. De Paepe.
Wage inflation is a characteristic that is developing more or less all over the world. Of course, it started more significantly in the USA. We are integrating this element in our 2022 forecast, and we have been mostly able to pass it through. That's the first one. The second point, the underlying growth, I think it's an underlying growth of the volume of interaction between the customers and the companies they buy product and service from. That come from the fact that there is more and more subscription model. There are more and more technology, more and more e-commerce, more and more digital platform, and this fuels more interaction.
I also think that Teleperformance grows faster than the market due to the fact that the leaders, and specifically in times that are a little bit disturbed, the leaders have an advantage. We have the credibility, we have the security and basically I would say that last year we generated 50% of our volume with digital helping digital services, whether digital companies or traditional companies in their digital activity. This is the main fuel of the growth.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Anvesh Agrawal, calling from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Just, like, three questions, actually. First, just the technical one. You're saying that digital customers are about 50% of volume. I believe this number was more like mid-thirties when last reported. Just wanna check if there is a change in definition or you have seen sort of a pickup in Q4.
It's a definition. We define the stuff differently, and I'm going to send you the definition precisely. There is also an increase, a significant increase of our digital business all along this year.
The second question is, I mean, so you partially answered in the previous one, but we have had some sort of digital companies having some softer results. I mean, look at Facebook, Netflix, Roblox yesterday, and you seem to be growing much faster than sort of what's happening in the entire U.S. digital space. Can you just tell us, like, bit more how you're able to grow faster than the entire sort of marketplace that seems to be slowing down? The third question is, your guidance of around EUR 10 billion of revenue. Am I right in thinking you're sort of roughly baking in around 8% like-for-like growth over 2022- 2025? Is that guidance?
First, Teleperformance is a customer and citizen service company, which mean that we are extraordinarily useful to help to reduce frictions. There could be a decorrelation between how well one of our clients can perform and the development of the volume of Teleperformance. It's not necessarily related. Very specifically, to give an example, if an airline companies has trouble, they are not going to grow their top line, but Teleperformance is going to do much more activity. That was just an example, well, to understand. Second, when Teleperformance grew very much, the service around the digital platform, it's not just the social media platform, but it's also the whole economy that is in transformation. The bank finance, for example, you have the neobank, and you have an incredible growth of the neobanks. You have the fintech.
You have the Buy Now, Pay Later, and you have an incredible growth of that. Same for the e-commerce activities. You can see in the big brick-and-mortar retailers their progression in digital, and we are here to accompany them. I think that whatever is the specific of one company or another, there is more and more digital transformation, more and more direct relationship between the customers and the companies. This fuels the growth of Teleperformance.
Okay. Just sort of what you're baking in within your 2025 guidance for like-for-like?
It's a computation that it's a CAGR that is around 9%, 8.8%, if I'm not mistaken exactly. This is the EUR 10 billion figure for 2025 is some threshold to get. Maybe we can get more, maybe I don't know. Today this makes a growth of roughly 9% CAGR from 2022- 2025.
It's a good 9% CAGR, but without neutralizing the impact of COVID, when we think that probably the largest part of business that was related to COVID was more behind us than in front of us.
Yeah, that's clear. Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Simona Sarli, calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good evening, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of them. First of all, going back to your medium-term guidance of an organic revenue CAGR close to 9%. You mentioned also in one of your slides that you have achieved a like-for-like organic revenue CAGR close to 12%. Just to try to better understand, what are the underlying assumptions for your medium-term growth, and what are the moving parts that might be brings you to deliver a double-digit organic growth in the medium term? That's the first one.
Okay. On this first question, I'm going to answer. It's always easier to look at the number of the past than to define the number of the future. If Teleperformance has a characteristic, it's systematically to deliver what we have projected for the future. Honestly, people can be more optimistic, more pessimistic. I'm reasonably conservative. By the way, right now, I hope that the situation in Europe is still peaceful so we can develop our business properly.
Thank you. During one of your previous presentations, you also mentioned new vertical outsourcing opportunities with the government agency. Is there an update that you can provide on that front, if you have seen any new contracts coming in?
We have seen a lot of new contract coming in within 2021, and we think we are going to see also a lot coming in within 2022. At the same time, the reality of the economy is you have part that goes up and part that goes down. You have less dynamic businesses also. If the question is Teleperformance successful in business development and hunting and specifically in the dynamic segment of the economy? The answer is yes.
Thank you. One last one. At the beginning of the presentation, you mentioned that you have now roughly 65% of your workforce working from home. Is that sustainable in the medium term? What would you say is the cost optimization opportunity? Also considering that in 2022 you're guiding for a margin improvement of 30 basis points year-over-year, how much of this margin improvement is coming from the cost optimization opportunity? Thank you.
Lot of questions in one. The very first one is that there is a big question mark about the organization of the work is going to be in six months or one year from now. There are contradictory forces. Some forces that push towards going back to brick and mortar, specifically for data security concern, for loyalty concern, for even mental health of the employees concern and so on. You have exactly the antagonistic forces, people who prefer to stay and work from home. There will be, of course, a balance. Where is going to be the balance? I just don't know. We are ready for all cases or figures, understanding that this is going to be any kind of adjustment is not going to be welcome because it's going to be more work, more cost, but there will be adjustments.
If in one year from now we are at 50/50, I will not be surprised. If we are at 60% brick-and-mortar and 40% work from home, I will not be surprised. You know, I don't know who can say what it will be. I'm going to give you an example. Over the last six months, regularly, publicly, the largest companies of the world have said that they are going to bring their employees back to their office at the end of a specific quarter or at the end of the next quarter and so on. Right now, none of the predictions that were given has been effective. We know we are going to have to deal with some changes. What is going to be the magnitude of the changes is pretty uncertain.
Are we solid and are we confident that we are going to be able to deliver and keep our margin? Yes, because we have different levers that we can use to adjust to the situation.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Christophe Chaput calling from Oddo. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good evening, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my question. I've got three, if I may. The first one is coming back to your margin, in your EBITDA margin for 2022. Obviously the +30 bps will benefit from TLS, but could you give us as well granularity on geographies and domain that are going to benefit from a leverage? The second question is sure, regarding 2025, you mentioned 16% for the EBIT margin. Is it like for like or with acquisition, or it doesn't really make any difference?
Yeah. It's like-for-like. In any case, in like-for-like it would be 16%, and with acquisition it can be. There can be an upside or it can be no difference. I still don't know because the acquisition are still not here.
Okay. The last one is, you say that the digital clients represent 50% of the sales. Can we have a rough idea of the average of the market share on these clients? How does it compare versus, let's say, traditional clients?
I think that the wisdom of the economic leaders all around the world is widely shared, which means that it's very rare when a large client who has a large business wants to put all its eggs in the same basket. Having said that, a number of the new economy clients tend to be smaller than some of our blue chip companies. In that case, the share of wallets that one player can enjoy with these clients tend to be larger. Doesn't mean that you are going to have 100% and be the only one partner, and I would not even recommend that to our clients.
Just to understand, let's imagine that with traditional client you've got, I don't know, 30% market share, and in digital client, let's say 10% market share or below. Is there a reason why the market share in digital client should be below the traditional one?
No, I said exactly the opposite.
Yeah. The question is, how fast you can improve, let's say the.
No. I mean, if you want, we can have a outside of this discussion, a specific discussion to try to approach a different answer to your question. Frankly speaking, I'm unable to answer.
Regarding the +30 bps in 2022 by geographies, if you get some granularity, it would be great.
We are not here to give you a stick to beat us. There are so many multiple factors that can change the situation from a geography to another. That to start to give to the market a level of granularity for objectives that are objectives in the future would be extraordinarily inappropriate, because we do not master everything. Of course, there are going to be pieces of our business that are going to be better than what we are expecting, and pieces of our business that are going to be worse than we are expecting. That's the reason why, for each category of information, we define different level of granularity. You can have the granularity on the past. We are unable to give the specific granularity on the future.
I'm not the master of the market shares and of the battles of the different clients on one specific vertical.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Patrick Jousseaume, calling from Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Hey, good evening, Daniel, and good evening, Olivier. My first question, speaking about granularity is the margin on COVID contracts. You've got basically EUR 550 million additional revenue on these contracts. I know that these contracts are all in Europe. In Europe, you have improved your EBITDA by something around EUR 130 million. When I do the math, I acknowledge that it is very simplistic, but it should lead us to a 25% margin on the COVID contracts. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
No, I cannot elaborate too much. What's for sure is that, on some COVID contracts, you tend to have a positive effect because we have been running above our traditional SG&A ratios for some period of peaks. It's always the same case when you are at peaks.
Okay. Can I ask the second question?
Please go ahead.
What is the question?
Assuming that the margin of COVID contracts is higher than the margin for the whole group, I guess that your +30 basis points margin improvement that you expect for this year is probably bigger if you would exclude the COVID contracts. Could you also elaborate on that?
No, I am not sure. Honestly, it's something that we can take also offline, and Olivier will be able to answer you. When we take all our COVID business, EBITDA versus top line, I'm not sure of what you said. Honestly, I did not check it specifically. We are going to make the calculation. When you take all the COVID business we made around the world and in the different geographies, I'm not sure of your calculation.
You're right, Daniel. We are not.
Olivier is going to follow up with that.
We are not so different from the total. There are some in some places, yes, but in some places, not. As a whole, it's not changing totally the game.
As a whole, I'm pretty sure that we are not, that is not so different. Again, it's a question we need to check the specifics and answer you. It's not that suddenly the COVID has been the Holy Grail for the group.
Thank you.
The next question comes in from the line of Antonin Baudry, calling from HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen, and congratulations on my side for these results and the visibility for 2025. I have two questions, please. The first one is on the CapEx.
The next plan, 2022-2025 period. Should we expect to know now that the 3.5% of revenues in the coming years? This is my first question.
From your microphone, we are probably around 3.5% for the next year in terms of intensity of CapEx. We have a hard time listening to you because the-
3.5% sustainable in 2023- 2025.
To be honest, the forecast for 2022 is quite solid, but for 2024, 2025, I don't have a precise plan of the CapEx. It makes sense to be in this range of 3.5%. Because of course, you have much more. You might have less CapEx from brick and mortar, but also much more from IT and from laptop and from stuff like that. Three point five seems to me correct today.
Thank you. My second question, would it be possible to split your growth between existing clients and new clients in 2021, and the trend that you expect in 2022?
We are going to stay roughly in the same approach, meaning in the range of, I would say more than new clients are probably in the range of 60%-40%.
New clients, huh?
I don't know if there are other questions, maybe we have to take last two questions.
The next question comes in from the line of Nicolas Tabor calling from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Good evening, gentlemen. Thank you very much for taking my question. The first one quickly would be if you have an indicative trend of what you are seeing right now with the COVID contracts in Q1 and how we should think about them. I mean, you said it should still be there in Q1. What do you expect for Q2? I understand it's low visibility, but just to have an idea. The second question, looking forward, your 16% margin target for 2022 at constant scope, I was trying to understand how much was coming from potential evolution from working from home with the lower leasing and depreciation expenses and so on. How much would come from just operating leverage. Finally, just specialized services being a higher share of the mix.
I mean, how do you model that? Because I guess you've done the math in detail just to see how we should think about it as well. Thank you very much.
On margin, of course, I'm not going to answer the question differently that was not answered by Daniel about how we are going to split different stuff. It's clear that the fact that in specialized services, the increase of TLS that we expected plus the Health Advocate impact should have an impact on the margin. That's clear. I do expect no bigger change elsewhere. The only question and clearly the visibility on COVID line are absolutely nil. We have 15 days, maybe sometime less in advance. What we do expect that there will be still COVID line at least until March, April. After, they are going to dry up.
Probably it's starting already to dry up, but not at the same, they are still testing and vaccine line. It's difficult to tell. That's the reason why we are careful about that. What is sure is that there will be probably much more COVID line in Q1 than people expected, I would say, last year.
Great. Thank you very much. Finally, just the last one. Can you say that your guidance for the 5%+ organic growth is as conservative as it usually is at the beginning of the year?
What I'm just telling is that, of course, and Daniel mentioned it, we are committed to deliver. If we are able to do better, we'll do better. This is difficult to be much more precise today, mid-February.
Great. Thank you very much, and congratulations again.
Questions.
The final question comes in from the line of Laurent Gélébart, calling from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Daniel. Good evening, Olivier. Laurent speaking from BNP Exane. Just one question for you, Daniel. You are sticking to the mid-term plan to 2025. I would like to know if you are going to run the business up to the end of this plan.
You know, typically, the human being purpose and God decide. Right now, I'm here to present you 2021, to present you 2022. You are going to see me in 2023 to present you the result of 2022. Then, we all will decide, the board, the shareholder, and myself.
Okay. Thank you, Daniel.
I just want to thank you, everybody who were here on this call. I deeply apologize for the very bad quality of the connections that we had today. Usually, it's clearly smoother than it has been. In any case, what is important is the message, and the message is Teleperformance did well in 2021 and is going to do well in 2022. Thank you very much.
Thank you to all.