Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to see you. It's almost 8:00 A.M. Unfortunately, we have a pretty dense agenda today, Olivier and I. What we are going to do is we are not going to bother you too much with the long story that you have here. We are going to pass very quickly to the presentation to leave time to questions as I will have to leave a few minutes after 9:00 A.M. to catch a train. Olivier will stay with you as long as you want. Until the last question. Come on. Thank you. It's a disclaimer, p erfect. Okay, this, you know it, t here is nothing very new except it's a little bit larger and bigger than every single year. The results of 2019 were, of course, a record. We had a double-digit organic growth, EUR 5.355 billion, which is $6 billion.
What is important is we increased the margin, and that the net profit share of the group is at EUR 400 million, which means +28% versus last year. We are going to propose to the general assembly of shareholders to increase the dividend per share to EUR 2.40, which will mean an increase of the dividend by +26% versus last year. What is the story behind the numbers? The story behind the numbers, if I'm at the right page. Yes. The very first thing is that after the acquisition of Intelenet in India, we rolled out all the expertise in knowledge services and in integrating artificial intelligence and robotic process automation in all our region. From our center of excellence in Mumbai and Delhi, we created a center of excellence in digital integration in Colombia for the LatAm, in the U.S., of course, for the English market.
We are in process of doing the same thing in Europe with a little bit delay. There is a full dissemination of the digital integrated with our human solutions, which has helped us to strengthen our offer. Last year was a super good year for the employment within this group because we created net 25,000 jobs in one year, i n different countries, but it's still very significant. We launched a major cybersecurity program to make sure that the group would be best in class in terms of data security, anti-bad actors. To do that, we benchmarked with the most advanced cybersecurity companies. This launch of the Eagle Project, it's going to be in two years, but if I remember well, it's EUR 70 million, more or less.
50, probably to 50/ 60.
50/ 60, o kay. I'm sure that at the end it will be 70. You know, t hey always tell you something, and then it's always more. We strengthened our top management organization, and you are going to see that later. We centralized and reinforced the reporting of our group corporate social responsibility, because in fact, this group has been very much involved in corporate social responsibility way before it was in the fashion. Maybe we did not communicate it enough, n ow we are going to communicate much more on that. What happened? As usual, we got a lot of awards and recognition, so I'm going to pass on that. These are the business recognition.
These are the corporate social responsibility recognition, on which I'm going to stay for one second, which is the fact that today, around the world, 70% of the group employees work in one of our company, in one of our subsidiaries, that has received a best employer award, whether a Great Place to Work, a best employer program, depending on where it exists. Of course, we are going to continue to develop that to reach the 80% and 90% and so on. Second, we received for the sixth time in a row, the Verego certification in the five area of social responsibility standards. Finally, we got the Morgan Stanley Capital Index in social governance, with a AAA. Let's see how we did that, which is the strategy.
First, we are gradually moving from being a front office customer experience manager to becoming a leading group in Digital Integrated Business Services. Our unique selling proposition to our clients is to make things simpler, faster, safer, better, more cost-effective. How we do that, thanks to our footprint, our army of service, our knowledge services, which are the analytics, the process engineers, and all the business-oriented IT solutions. Of course, with the robotic process automation. You are going to see in a future presentation, in a future slide, our strategy, high-tech, high-touch. Of course, somebody made me the observation that it was our 31st quarter growing above 7% organic. Our aim is never to chase the maximum growth or whatever.
Our aim is to, and which has been in the past and what is going to be in the future, is to build a sustainable business model, in terms of creation of value for all stakeholders. We developed a harmonious activity within our world. What are the challenges and opportunities? You know that we are in the world of the digital transformation that impacts absolutely every activity sector. We decided to embrace this digital transformation, and this is the purpose of our 600 TAP consultants, T for technology, A for analytics, and P for process. In fact, as we face an end-to-end more complex demand from our clients, we pass from being just a capacity provider to becoming solution designers, and these solutions are hybrid solutions that integrate the human and the technology. This enlarges our market.
Finally, for the M&A, 2019 was a year of consolidation and integration after the acquisition of Intelenet in India. That went better than we could have expected, even. 2020, 2021, the hunting season is open again. We are going to look much more for, of course, specialized services, higher margin, the large U.S. market. We still have a love for the U.S. market. It's going to happen likely in the next 24 months. Oh, yeah. Basically, this slide explain you that from the front office customer service, we pass to front office, middle office, and back office. There is something beautiful to explain that. Recently, I was in Dubai.
The team there took me to Abu Dhabi and told me, "Daniel, come to see our center in Abu Dhabi." I discovered that for Abu Dhabi, we were the unique number for the citizen of Abu Dhabi, for the government. The government pays, anybody who lives in Abu Dhabi, whether you have a problem with the police or whether you need the police, you don't always have a problem with the police, it depends. Whether you need the police, whether you need a doctor, whether you have an administrative purpose and so on, you call this center. We reroute to the appropriate service and person, much more, we make the case management. We make sure that your demand has been treated, we close the loop to make sure that you are satisfied with the solution that has been brought.
To me, it's a little bit the vision of what could be the future, the day we are going to embrace our future world. A world of service, and we are here at your service. Something important in the next slide is maybe the fact that in 2013, we used to make 5% of our revenue with clients coming from the e-economy. In 2019, we make more than 20% of our revenue. You see the switch. What is amazing to understand is that a lot of these companies that seems to be magic companies because they are app companies. You think, "Oh, my God, with a click, I get the solution to my demand." In fact, there is still the real world, and these companies do not have the infrastructure to manage all the frictions of the real world.
We are the solutions to help them to manage what goes beyond the click. We serve, in fact, the disruptors. Typically, we help them to grow and to address the friction of the day-to-day business, and we serve the disrupted by helping them to streamline their process. We do that with a team of, again, 600 top solution architect. We try to be an easy to work with partner because we are in 80 countries, we are the natural partner for the global companies. By the way, from a few years ago, today, 50% of our revenue come from global account. Few years ago, it was 30%, t oday is 50%, and it's continuing. We set up the situation faster because we start from green. It means we start all our implementation matching very quickly the Key Performance Indicators, thanks to the Lean Six Sigma discipline.
Safer, t his is our focus on cybersecurity. Thanks to the hybrid mix and our ability to geo-localize the operation, we are typically most cost-effective. The model is very simple. There is the high-tech, which is to have a robust and reliable architecture, IT, so no downtime. Omnichannel, which means seamless relationship for the customer, whatever the media he choose to contact us. Integrating robotic process automation and AI to speed up the process and to reduce the risk of error. Data security and our solution architects. High touch is our army. In our army of service, we want to make sure that we have the best elements. To hire the right people, we use predictive models. To train our people instead of using the boring support of the 20th century, we develop more and more gamification, interactive gamification training, coaching labs.
We could explain later on what it is. We try to manage our people with a purpose, which is instead of managing them on boring KPIs, we manage them so as they can reach their maximum bonus. It's a way that is much more committing for the individuals. We also want our employees to work in super good conditions. T hat's the TP Global ecosystem. Our campus are most of the time absolutely beautiful, t hey are cathedral of the 21st century. Beautiful architecture, color, space, great place to work, w e create a kind of multicultural, cool environment. All that you have to manage it with passion for people, which is to have a management that is very close to the people who do the service and do the very difficult job to address the irritation of the customers very often.
You need to bring a lot of support, but at the same time, a lot of discipline, as a discipline is the statistical discipline of the Six Sigma. What is the distribution of the curve of answer? What is the standard deviation? How do we reduce it? Three. Oh, excuse me. The expertise at Teleperformance is tri-dimensional. Of course, by line of business, i s it sales? Is it customer service? Is it tech support and so on? By activity sector, i f we serve a bank, we have bankers serving a bank. If we serve the travel industry, we have people who are specialized in the travel industry and so on. Professionals speak to professional, and by integrating the digital platform as much as we can. That's the cybersecurity, so I already told you about. This is more important.
In fact, we have strengthened our corporate management by creating a pack, a very first line pack of people that you see here. Olivier, you know him. We asked Bhupender Singh to become the President of Transformation of the group, which is the knowledge services, the R&D, the marketing, the Lean Six Sigma, the IT, and the IT security. All the central support function of the group are managed by our friend Bhupender. For the business development, we asked Eric Dupuy, who moved from France to the U.S., to be the Global President for the development. He has, of course, his teams by regions. The operations for the core business are split because it is very wide, split between two Co-Chief Operating Officers, Jeff Balagna and Agustin Grisanti. Agustin leads everything from LatAm and Europe, and Jeff, everything which is English and Asia Pac.
They are supported by three Chief Client Officer, Miranda, who is with Teleperformance for 20 something year, who is based in the U.S., Stephanie, who is based in the U.K. for Europe, and Gustavo, who is based in Buenos Aires, excuse me, for LatAm. Bhupender is still, for few months, the Head of Teleperformance in India, but he's going to be replaced by his number two, as he is going to have his two full hands, more than full, with taking the responsibility of the drive of everything that makes Teleperformance smart and dynamic. Scott Klein, that many of you know, who is our outstanding President of our Specialized Services based in Monterey, California. Corporate social responsibility. I know that there are a lot of debate and discussion in the press about that. It is something that has always been part of our DNA.
We turn in our industry to become the preferred employer on the group market, because if we are the preferred employer, we can get the best people, the best resources, and at the end of the day, it's a competitive advantage. Second, we want to be a force of good, which mean that in every community where we operate, we systematically have a positive impact versus this community through Citizen of the World and Citizen of the Planet. Typically helping the young kids that have difficulties to go to school or something like that, to go through a scholarization system. I think that we support something like 30 school?
39.
39, okay. All over the world. Citizen of the Planet is the mobilization of our people to help to fight against the plastic. Finally, again, we always have in mind that our role is to optimize the return of every single stakeholder, which is not always simple, because sometimes you play a little bit like the Chinese plates. It means, of course, our shareholder need to be satisfied by our dynamic and our results. Our employees need to be satisfied so as to deliver a very good service to the customer, we need to be satisfied so our clients are satisfied and pay us. To our partners, they need to trust us to continue to be part of our dynamic. I'm done.
You know that we upgraded our 2020 objectives in October or November last year. We stay on that, and we are very comfortable with that. We think that we are going to have an organic growth of at least 7% per year until 2022. We plan to make acquisitions between EUR 250 million-EUR 500 million in revenue, t hat should take us around EUR 7 billion, and w e are going to continue to increase our margin. Having said that's all for my part of the presentation. I just would like to add that, yes, we have operation in China. Yes, this operation has seriously impacted. Yes, it's going to have an impact on 2020, w e measured this impact. At this time, we think that the impact is going to be less than 1%, at this time, except if something new arrive with the coronavirus.
As this impact is going to be less than 1%, it's absolutely within our security line, and so it doesn't change at all our 2020 guidance. When we give a guidance, we always say, we give a guidance, but something unknown and that can be negative happen every year. Okay, n ow we know. I hope there will not be a second thing, but right now there is zero reason to change the guidance. Thank you very much. Olivier.
Thank you, Daniel. I'm going to be as quick as possible. First of all, you know that we had the privilege, like most of you, to disclose IFRS 16 impact this year. That changed dramatically our figure in 2019 versus 2018. To make it simple, I believe there are four things to keep in mind about the 2019 figure. First of all, the growth. It's the first time that the group has achieved such a growth. We are following the path that we had over the last two years, but now we are above the double-digit figure, close to 11% growth, like for like. Secondly, not only we are growing, but we are improving our operational result margin. If you strip out the IFRS 16 impact, you will see that we have an improve of the operational margin close to 30 basis points.
Third point, we have also not only an increase in operational result, but also an operational net result. For the first time, we achieved EUR 400 million result. I just want you to remember, for those who are following us for some years, we were achieving EUR 200 million net result in 2015. In four years, we have been able to double the net result. Lastly, the last point, which seems to be a little surprising, or that seems to increase since we took all the impact of the IFRS 16 rule, but in fact, if you strip that out, the debt has decreased by EUR 186 million this year. As a whole, as you can see, a very good year. Coming back much more in detail about the sales, you see that here are the sales of the group.
We had a change in scope that you remember, that we consolidated Intelenet starting October last year. The nine first months of the year, we had this impact of Intelenet. Of course, you have the like-for-like growth that is EUR 480 million. I just wanted to stop a minute on this figure. I just wanted to tell this is a net figure, t hat means that not only we grew, we grew net of that, but the growth of the group is higher than that because during the course of the year, some client has decreased their amounts. There are some change that has been happening all along the year, t hat means that the growth activity of the group is higher than that. That's a net figure that is shown on this figure.
I'm just saying that because sometimes people believe that our objectives are not challenging enough. I just wanted to show that EUR 480 million, it's a significant figure to be pointed out. It has been said by Daniel. We continue to diversify our base, n ow the pay TV and telecommunication is less than 20% of our sales. The tenure is increasing each year. The ePlayer, the 21% ePlayer client has been precised by Daniel a minute ago. Of course, now 50% of our clients are global accounts. That means that we are working with them at least in two countries. That changes the pattern of the group, and we are more and more global.
Excuse me, I see here that there is a mistake. Sorry. 2019, first client is not 6% of our business, a little bit over 4%.
I agree, i f you exclude LanguageLine.
Yeah, t he group. Excuse me.
Just a quick word about the revenue for the Q4 and the full year. Two things to be noted. First of all, the full year figure of 10.6% like-for-like growth, as mentioned earlier on, is probably one of the best figures that has been achieved over the last 12 years of the group, and it has to be noted clearly. More interestingly, is to see that the increase in the Specialized Services, that was a question that you had, most of you, in the beginning of the year. Now we see that the Specialized Services is growing, especially in the second half and in Q3 and Q4, again at a high level. If we move to Q4, you have a 8.4% like-for-like growth made of different stuff. Mainly a fantastic growth in IberoLatAm that continue to be sustainable for the last year.
There are different evolution on the EWAP, EMEA, India, and Middle East that I'm going to comment a minute ago. Each of them have a specific issue to be mentioned. Keep in mind that we made a fantastic Q4 last year. Keep in mind that we grew last year in EMEA about 18% in Q4, t hat explain partially the performance of 2019. As a whole, we made a very good quarter, the 31st in a row of a growth which is above 7% or 8% like-for-like growth. If we move to the margin, of course, 70 basis point, of which, to make it simple, 40 basis points are coming from the IFRS 16 change. You see that everywhere we are achieving good margin and growing specifically all along the year.
We'll come back in a minute to that. As a whole, we are just confirming the growth that we are experiencing of margin in each division. Let's move quickly by division. North America, 6% like-for-like growth with very high comp in Q4. We are making 6% growth in U.S. in Q4. Of course, the global environment in U.K. is not helping this zone, but f inally, we have been able to achieve a very good figure. In terms of margin, we are stable despite the fact that we have this issue in U.K. globally, and we decided to open Japan and get out of Australia. It's a very good performance for the English world that is picking up again. If we move to IberoLatAm, I would say, little to say, 18.5% like-for-like growth on a full year basis, close to 23% in Q4.
I'm not going to comment in detail, but every country in this zone has delivered very good results, whether it's Central America, South America, or even Spain or Portugal. All of them are doing great. The margin, if you take out the impact of IFRS 16, is just very good. It's just, of course, taking account the ramp-up that was happening in this country. I just want you to remind that we made close to EUR 100 million CapEx in this zone with new facilities that have been grown everywhere in the region. If we move to Europe, 10.2% like-for-like growth. Again, good momentum with clients in different country. Of course, Greece and Eastern Europe are helping us to grow, of course. High comp in Q4, I mentioned it was 18% growth last year, of course it doesn't help for 2019.
As a whole, the growth is fantastic, more than double-digit. In terms of margin, we are progressively continuing the path that was engaged over the last two years to narrow the gap versus the other division, and we are now at 8.3%. I just want you to remember that four years ago, we were 1% in this zone. D.I.B.S., D.I.B.S., is difficult to read because you have here 12 months of TP India, that was a former business of Teleperformance, plus nine months of the ex Intelenet business. We have a 13% like-for-like growth, which gathers the two approaches, and t he margin, as you can see, is outstanding. Just a point that is, to be clear, we decided with the full management of India, it's a decision to reduce the domestic part of some businesses that were not delivering good margins.
That explain partially the level of the growth that we achieve in Q4. It's done for the sake of the business and to improve the margin and to concentrate our results either in 2019 but also starting 2020. Specialized Services. I know it was a concern of all of you whether we will be able to deliver good growth. We are back on track, 7.6% like-for-like growth for the full year and 9.5% in Q4. Everything is good there, either for our LanguageLine Solutions and also for our TLScontact that has been able to develop the added value service to the U.K. applicant. Of course, there is a sharp increase in margin.
Here, I just wanted to stay a minute there, and I'm sure you have noticed that for those who are looking to us for a long time, the two better margin division, meaning IberoLatAm and Specialized Services, are delivering fantastic figure in term of growth in Q4. Let's move to the other point, operating profitability. Little to say that you have not seen already. Here you have the performance share plan impact and some other non-recurring item. We were EUR 5 million at the end of June, so we are now EUR 9 million. There are two or three minor stuff that are happening there. Little to say compared to last year, w e delivered an operating profit EBIT of EUR 621 million, growing by 28.2% versus last year. Moving to the earning performance, financial results.
Of course, here you have the impact of IFRS 16, and if you strip that out, you will see that we have been able to reduce our financial charge while in the meantime, on an average base, the debt has increased. It's because we have been able to take advantage of the level of the rate, especially in euro, and we have been able to decrease the debt, especially as I mentioned earlier on, at the end of the year. Second point, which is interest probably for you is the tax rate that moved from 28%- 24.7% this year. This is due, of course, to two things. One is India, the other is mainly India, and the other in Greece.
We have a reduction in the corporate tax income in India that has a one-off effect that is taken here, and it will be a recurring effect in the future. We believe that the tax rate for 2020 will be much more in the range of 27%-28% as again. Finally, net profit of EUR 400 million, as mentioned a minute ago. I'm going to give you a word about cash flow, because I know all of you are very interested in that and say, okay, Teleperformance should have delivered a better cash flow. We are at EUR 321 million, and why? It's because of the working capital. It's difficult to grow so quickly and not to have money kept in your balance sheet. Just to give you an example, we have grown EUR 141 million in the Q4 versus last year.
A significant part of it has been done in December, much more than last year, and especially in LatAm, w here the DSO is longer than elsewhere in the group. That is the reason of this surge in working capital, which is for me, a good news somewhere. Just for you to know, and I'm speaking out of the control of the financial team that is here, we have collected close to EUR 50 million in working cap. We have positive inflow of working cap of EUR 50 million in January. The money is back, d on't be afraid by that. Finally, as you see, the net capital expenditure is under control, 4.7%, while we have significantly more workstations than we had last year. We had 23,000 versus 12,000 last year. We have been able to control, to monitor our capital expenditure cost.
Balance sheet, I'm not going to spend some time. Just a word about the net debt. As I told you, we have been able to reduce our debt, if you take out the IFRS 16 impact, from EUR 2.1 billion- EUR 1.9 billion. Of course, there is a net free cash flow of EUR 321 million. Financial investment is mainly some buyback of minority shareholder. We pay the dividend, hopefully. On top of that, you have the IFRS impact of EUR 730 million that inflate artificially the net debt to EUR 2.6 billion. If you take that out, the pro forma debt to EBITDA ratio has moved from 2.6x last year to 2.06x by the end of 2019. Finally, I'm not going to be long on debt, but I hope we will be able to reduce again this level of cost of debt to below 1.5% this year.
We propose a stable payout ratio of 35%, meaning a dividend per share of EUR 2.4 as mentioned by Daniel. Finally, confirmation of the 2020 outlook, at least like-for-like growth of 7% and + 10 basis points in the margin. That's what I can tell today, t hank you very much. Give the floor to Q&A.
We are open to your question. Mr. Jousseaume.
Good morning, Patrick Jousseaume, Société Générale . I have two questions, please. First question on coronavirus. C ould you give us more, let's say, more details, maybe number of people in China, revenue in China, and things like that? My second question is about M&A. You say M&A probably in 2020, 2021. A few months ago, it seems to me that it was more 2020, w hat does it mean? Does it mean that you have missed some deals recently, or can you explain? Third, could you give us examples of how you leverage Intelenet high-end BPO solutions to your base of clients, please?
Okay. Very quickly, coronavirus is, you know what the Chinese government said, "Stay at home. If you went outside of your city for the Chinese New Year, don't come back. If you were away from Beijing, stay in quarantine for 14 days." The operation to operate right now in China, we need to get the approval of the city authorities, city by cities. Like everything in the kingdom of the Mandarins, it's never just straight and simple. At the same time, the Chinese government, making these smart decisions, said, "You don't come to home, but the companies are going to pay you your salary." We pay the salary, but the people are not working. That's the reason why it's going to impact.
We measure this impact. If the situation stabilizes and decreases like it seems it is happening, the negative impact that we would have had end of January, all February, beginning of March, will absolutely not change our guidance. If we discover that after China, it is India and Egypt that is impacted the same way, we will come back and tell you another story. I think nobody can say more about the coronavirus. The M&A, you are an expert in reading in between the lines. You know, n o, nothing changed. We are at work as usual, you know when you are at work, you don't decide all the time when the work is going to be finished. It depends also of the sun and of the rain.
Example of clients with the acquisition of Eli Lilly, it's all over the place. It's a transformation, i t's all over the place. There are dozens and dozens of projects that are transforming into hybrid solutions that help us to really address the concern of all our big clients, which is how I can do faster, simpler, better, and more cost-effective. Really, if one acquisition that we did in the past that was fantastic for the group, was of course LanguageLine Solutions. If one acquisition has been a transforming factor for the group, it has been the acquisition of LLS. You see also an element of that in the new positioning of Bhupender Singh, who comes as Global President for the world for anything that is business transformation, including knowledge services, IT, AI, and so on. Okay? Thank you very much.
Thanks.
How many workstation do you plan to put in during 2020, and will it be similar in geographic distribution? I'm not going to give you the exact numbers because that would put us too much within a frame, within a box. Typically, yes, we had a momentum in LatAm in 2019, and this momentum is continuing strong. There will be probably more CapEx, and it's more refreshing and renewing of CapEx in the U.S. because we are transforming also our, I would say, traditional setting of the U.S. to give it a better 21st century fresh look and feel.
Yeah. We are going to effectively invest on top of Iberio LatAm, also in U.S., in Philippines, in South Africa.
Can you talk a bit more about t he big pipeline Specialized Services. Can you kindly break out the growth between LLS and TLScontact? First, t he Specialized Services are really two different things because LanguageLine Services have 30,000 clients. It lives on a kind of leading dynamic because we are number one on the U.S. market for online interpretation over the phone or via video. There is a strong dynamic that has no reason to be impacted. The second thing, I would say in LLS, video is growing very, very fast.
We call that our interpreter on wheels because we come with the wheels next to the patient at the hospital and with our iPad, you have this very futuristic situation in which you have the doctor, the guy, the person who is in the bed, and the interpreter, the three have a nice chat to make sure that the doctor is going to operate the right side of the body. Hopefully. Regarding TLScontact, our contracts are comforted and do not see any specific risk in 2020 except that TLScontact is also, as you can imagine, impacted by the coronavirus because we process the visa for the French government from China right now. Typically, the good thing is February due to the Chinese New Year and January, February, March are not high volume months.
Of course, I hope that the great president of the great America is right, that the coronavirus is going to die with the sun and the warm. If the coronavirus was still a super big concern and would impact the travels all over the world during the summer season of the northern hemisphere, of course, it would have an impact. Okay?
Hello. I think you have mentioned a 1% impact on the coronavirus during the earlier part of the presentation. What is that, the revenue or EBITDA line?
In that case, it's at the EBITDA line, yeah.
It's okay.
It's okay, I mean, it was part of the natural.
Maybe we take some question.
Yeah.
Good morning. Christophe Chaput from Oddo. Three questions for me, please. I'd just like to come back on India, the termination of some contracts. Could you tell us what is the sales on an annual basis that you want to terminate?
They are terminated. I don't remember. Non-significant. A couple of dozens of million.
On domestic part, just to be clear on Christophe-
With low margin.
With very low margin.
It's just low margin. It's just a free-up of capacity to get business at better margin on this capacity. It's just a natural cleaning, like you clean your cupboards from time to time.
As far as I know, the business in India, the domestic is, let's say EUR 150 million.
Yeah.
You cut, let's say 10% of that or?
A little bit more.
Okay, good. The number two is on Eagle Project. You give us the number EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million. Just to be sure, is it CapEx or OpEx? It's mainly CapEx, I assume. A very basic question for me, please. It's made for improving the security in-house at Teleperformance, but could it be as well a kind of leverage on the offer?
Absolutely. Oh, thank you for the question. I love this question. I'm going to tell you something. When we decided to do Eagle, we wanted really to benchmark with the cybersecurity team of the best-in-class in the world. Who are the best-in-class in the world in terms of data security? Typically, the very large banks, because they know that they are the natural target of fraud. I went to see some of our friends. I remember specifically a nice meeting with the CEO at JPMorgan Chase in New York City. Some of our clients have been super nice saying, "You know what, w e are into this boat all together." Because the bad actors, they are the bad actors. The fight that exists between the good and the bad in the real world is also existing in the virtual world.
They help us to benchmark with their data security team what could be the best practice. We took a lot of advice from the most advanced consultant in the world, specifically EY. We worked with super company for the end-to-end detection point with companies like CrowdStrike that you probably have heard about. We put together a comprehensive package of solution that have four result. First, to segment our network. If one part of the network is unfortunately infected, we can immediately close all the doors that go to the other part of the network, and so the whole network is not affected because we have some clients with more or less critical data and security. Beside that, there are the constant surveillance at all the data on three points of anything that is happening.
There is the creation of a 24/7 SOC that monitors everything at all time. Plus OpEx, plus training. We are an army of 330,000 people. I'm going to start by something stupid. Your fiscal authority that says, "Hey, we have a problem with your number, and we need to reimburse you EUR 100. Please, can you confirm your number?" Okay. Here, we are never going to do that because we immediately understand that it's phishing. There are so many people who do not understand that. This is the first source of data security breach that can cause disaster. Every single company is facing that today. The commitment of Teleperformance is to be, by the end of 2020, mid-2021, among the very best in terms of security.
It becomes, de facto, a competitive advantage because, if you go with us, you know that you are not going to catch any bad sickness.
You referred to some softness. There are some questions there?
No.
I'm sorry for that.
[audio distortion] . Thank you for taking my questions. First, on LatAm, I wanted to know, could you give us some idea of the impacts of the development of D.I.B.S. there and the new greenfield projects you have started there compared to the nearshore on impact on the organic growth? Secondly, do you have any impacts from the political tensions that may have arisen in LatAm?
Yeah.
How do you address that risk, as it's your now fastest-growing region? Maybe could you give us already an idea of the level of CapEx to sales for next year, as you're still investing?
There are a lot of questions about LatAm. First, the political risk in LatAm, no, we have not been impacted. Second, as usual, the media gives you an image of the reality that is not exactly what's happening in the streets, because I can tell you, living in Miami, when I see Paris burning, I don't think that we are in 1944. No, we do not have any impact in LatAm and in Colombia specifically. Yes, it was a little bit more cost because we had to bus our people, which we already do and so on, but it was okay. Second, Colombia is the place that we choose to develop our LatAm center of expertise in terms of D.I.B.S.
We have an extraordinarily strong team there, and developing smart solutions for our clients, including financial institution, or travel or e-commerce, that help us to dramatically develop our business. The main driver has probably been the transformation of our offering of solutions in LatAm, either with company from LatAm or with U.S. companies coming nearshore, but being very seduced by the added value provided by what we propose. I would say the outstanding growth of LatAm doesn't come from a super new attractiveness for the nearshore, but comes directly from the transformation of the offer.
You have understood that D.I.B.S. and now core services are more and more mixing, and the way to follow that will probably change in the coming months for us.
In fact, Teleperformance is going to become D.I.B.S. anyway.
Yeah. That's what happening in fact. It's difficult to isolate what could be understood as D.I.B.S. only. CapEx, we are going to be at least in the range of 4.5% this year, except if there are fantastic development that may occur tomorrow, but probably in this range of 4.5%, as we are since the last four or five years now in a row.
The last question that I see here, you referred to some softness in consumer electronics in both EWAP and EMEA. It's very simple. You follow the economy. When we speak softness in consumer electronics, it's specifically in Asia-Pacific and specifically in China. You all are aware of a little rift regarding Huawei and the consequence it can have on U.S. companies. Consumer electronics has not been the most dynamic activity sector of the year 2019. The beauty is, as with all activity sectors, some grow less, but some grow more, and at the end of the day, you have a positive average.
It's exactly what I mentioned about the EUR 480 million a minute ago.
Good morning, Antonin Baudry, HSBC. 2019 has been a strong year of new contract win. Would it be possible to have a comment on hunting versus farming during the year 2020, and what it could imply in terms of granularity of top line growth quarter after quarter? You are usually cautious at the beginning of the year, so you target above 7% top line growth for the year. The economic environment, plus coronavirus seems to put a bit more pressure this year. How cautious are you this year versus last year?
We are the same, w e do not change promise. We are the same, s ame rule, same mindset. Let's say that we feel comfortable enough to present these numbers in front of you, except if suddenly something unexpected would happen. We take as hypothesis right now that the coronavirus is not something that is going to totally destroy the economy. If in two months from now it would be different, I cannot say anything.
Just a question about the path of the year. This 7% could be worked differently than this year. That means that there are some weight of quarters that may change, knowing that there are some contracts that could ramp up in the Q2 period. That's what I'm telling. I see that people asking whether we could divest in U.K. business, which have been causing trouble for some time. Clearly not. We are not growing dramatically in U.K., you have understood, but we are not losing money, and we do believe that we are going to come back to a good situation.
In fact, we have to say that in U.K. there is a Brexit, not only the Brexit. I don't like to blame everything on external factor. We also changed the management team of U.K. We have a new management team in U.K. for, now, something like nine months, that is at work. We are reasonably comfortable that we are going to see an improvement of U.K. in 2020, 2021, 2022. U.K. is one of these northern countries where it's more difficult to make money than in some other places, even though U.K. is a little bit more flexible than countries that I know in Northern Europe.
Just a question about the tax rate, 27%, i t could be between 27% and 28% as forecast for 2020. I have a question about, can you elaborate on the holding line and the right level of EBITDA generated there? You have to understand that the holding line concentrates on revenue from the different hub, but also some cost. We try to control the cost, especially in H2 this year. It might continue in 2020, and we hope to be able to continue to support the hub with the same level of cost in the holding, taking advantage of the growth of the group. It's difficult to predict today.
In any case, we hate bureaucracy. We hate all the expenses that are not justified directly by a positive outcome, we look at it extraordinarily closely. Our nature is not to expand the cost of supporting the operation, but to make sure that we support the operation remaining lean.
Are there other questions in the room? I have two questions there to answer. What was the organic growth of D.I.B.S. last year? We answered that somewhere, we are going to no more use this approach because the core service will be D.I.B.S. What is the content moderation growing at?
Oh, it's growing very fast...
Very fast.
...but it's still very small in our business. You see that it's a debate that you have everywhere, whether you are in the U.S. or whether you are in Europe. You see what the president of Facebook said about the fact that he had 35,000 people in content moderation, and that was the max number of people that he would have in Facebook. Content moderation is here to be maintained. We are a player into that, but along companies like Accenture, Wipro, and many others.
Mr. Stanley was raising a lot of questions. What is your DSO in LatAm versus EMEA and Europe on average? We are roughly 5-10 days more for two reasons. One is Brazil, where people are paying longer. Secondly, we have to get back the VAT credit from the Mexican state that is always longer to get and difficult to predict. Has all the cyber investment been expensed so far rather than capitalized, and how much will be spent in 2020 and in 2021? We don't capitalize any cost for IT. We are far from doing that since very long. We never did that. As far as 2020 cost for, and I'm speaking not of CapEx but on OpEx, I do believe that you have to take into account 10 basis points versus at the group level.
That give you a good idea of what kind of cost could be spent in 2020 for Teleperformance group. I think there is no more question.
If there is no more question, we wish you all the good, and we hope that we will not be so concerned by the coronavirus next time we are going to meet.