Good morning. Let's get started, Thomas [audio distortion].
Yes, good morning. Good morning, everyone. A warm welcome from Olivier and myself to our Annual Press Conference for the year 2024. In usual manner, we will talk about the key highlights. We will deep dive into the financial results of last year in Q4. We will provide an outlook for 2025. We will also provide you some updates, and first glimpses in our new strategy with regard to AI, because that has been a constant topic of questions from our investors. O f course, we are open to Q&A from your side, s o what are the highlights? As you have seen, 2024 was a year for us where we have achieved all our financial results. TP has for the first time delivered more than EUR 10 billion revenue, which means a statutory increase of 23%, on a like-for-like basis, 2.6%.
With these over EUR 10 billion revenue, we generated more than EUR 1 billion i n free cash flow, actually more than EUR 1.08 billion free cash flow. Y ou will see later the source of that, s o a very highly resilient and strong business model. W hat's also nice to see is that we have accelerated the growth momentum last year quarter- over- quarter, which I think shows the dynamic and the resiliency of the business. We have also increased the margin a bit, and I think there has been some question around what is up and what is supplying us? T here is a margin expansion last year. W hat is very good to us to see, obviously the core business, our BPO business, which is around 85%-86% of the business, saw a very strong second half of last year.
We have delivered [like-for-like] in Q4 almost 4% in that area. O ne big part of that business, the EMEA region and the APAC region, have delivered more than 7% in Q4 last year, so very healthy growth and the teams did a great job. Specialized services also proved to be a strong and resilient business with double-digit growth last year. We had a special effect as one of our visa services business, a long-standing visa service business was not renewed unfortunately. F rom that perspective, there was a little bit dip in Q4, and you will see later the detailed numbers . T he third big element for last year is that the integration with Majorel is really well on plan. We are right on track to deliver the EUR 150 million as indicated from the beginning.
Last year, we recorded over EUR 90 million in synergies generated out of that plan, s o that's 2024. You also have seen, obviously we are a company that tried to drive shareholder value. F rom that perspective, we drive a capital allocation that tried to enhance it. We have executed a share buyback program of EUR 500 million as you know, of which EUR 184 million were delivered last year. We did announce in November last year, and we just got the regulatory approvals at the beginning of February for ZP. This was a $490 million acquisition to further strengthen specialized services. S tarting February 1st, we are consolidating this business. We are also proposing to the AGM that will be held at the end of May, an increase in the dividend to EUR 4.20 per share, which is a relevant increase and the payout ratio will go up to 48%.
We continue to be that, with our strong market positioning. Having also a strong balance sheet is critical, and we are reducing our debt exposure. At the end of last year, we were at 1.9 debt-to-EBITDA ratio. As you also know, that's why the two of us are sitting here, w e also made some advancements in the governance. Moulay Hafid took over as Chairman of the Board of Directors, separating the role with Daniel. I must say, the last five months working with Olivier, Moulay Hafid , Daniel has been really tremendously productive, I would say. It's been a lot of pleasure, a lot of not just pleasure, but also hard work. It really works quite harmoniously from that perspective.
What is also interesting to note, the board meeting yesterday nominated two new board members to the Board of Teleperformance, Mehdi and Vera, who will be I think great assets from an AI perspective and from an international finance in Africa perspective to the board. Mehdi is the Chief Product Officer of AI71. This is one of the prominent AI companies in Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi has very ambitious plans when it comes to AI. W e're very lucky to win him to this role, obviously subject to the AGM approval. Vera has been a very prominent director of the World Bank and IFC, and it's also great if she can strengthen our exposure there, s o, that's in a snapshot. M aybe a few words why we believe that these current times of change are good times for TP.
O bviously, in these times of change, we have to grip at these opportunities, and we believe we can do this from a position of strength. TP today is present in the digital business services market, and you see many new developments when it comes to data annotation, data labeling, AI consulting, back office processes, F&A. We do believe this allows us to tap into these markets, and to drive mid-single-digit medium-term growth for the company as a whole. We also see pockets of growth, and I will talk about this later, where we see that this new disruption, this integration of human intelligence and AI offers us new opportunities. Second comment, it's interesting to see after two years of generative AI, and we're now entering almost the phase of agentic AI, that the notion that the world becomes AI or ubiquitous AI, I think is well understood.
The value of the human connection, I think is seen and seen more in this conversation. We believe TP, with almost 500,000 people is well positioned to drive this integration of AI and EI, because it's not a contrary relationship, but a complementary relationship. We also see these days a lot of opportunities of driving the business beyond the classical front office business. When you look at our numbers, we've seen double-digit growth in our back office services. We believe the opportunity to become more verticalized, to move front- end and back- end, will be one of the key strategic imperatives for us going forward. We will continue to invest, and we have done investments last year in that respect. The trend of bestshoring is not a new trend. Many of you have seen it. We believe it will continue despite these technological changes.
For us, last year's India was a big driver of growth. We have now there 90,000 people. W e believe having India, the Philippines, Latin America, but also Africa will be a key component and a relevant component for us going forward. To give you an idea, we have now 50,000 people in Africa in 11 countries, which puts us really in a very prominent position. W e will spend some time also later this year to strengthen Africa further. O bviously, in a year or in an era of uncertainty and change, being the market leader allows us to operate from a position of strength. We believe that quality, the ability to invest in innovation, and the financial strength of the group gives us a good value proposition, not just for us, but in particular for our clients and employees.
Obviously, we are a company that combines four critical dimensions, people, process, technology, and expertise. W e have done and will do so in the future, continuing to invest in these areas. We have launched last year, a company-wide AI and EI upskilling program. We have now trained more than 60,000 people, supervisors and above. W e have rolled out for more than 100,000 people, EI, so emotional intelligence training. We also have done significant investment to strengthen our business development and sales teams, in particular in the US, but also EMEA and APAC, as we see this as an investment in future growth for the company. Processes, TP has been for decades one of the leaders when it comes to process excellence.
We have updated, as I indicated in our Q3 numbers, our TOPS and BEST [audio distortion] program], so it's called internally, including AI and EI elements. The teams are on full charge rolling this out, and we will be expecting by the end of March to have 20% of our operations onboarded on these new TOPS and BEST programs. We continue to launch AI projects, so that's something that hasn't stopped. We have implemented more than 200 new AI projects for our teams. You'll see later also the statistics that are around or more than 700 clients have now implemented AI applications inside their operations. We will continue to do this. Most of our AI applications and solutions are based on TP's microservices platforms, which simply means that it's like a cloud-based solution that can seamlessly be integrated into workflows.
We believe being more open to AI partnerships is something that is valuable not just for us and the AI companies, but also for our clients. You saw the announcement that we have done last week with Sanas AI, and there's more in the pipeline. We will open up a partnership ecosystem when it comes to technology . E xpertise, a s I said, I really do believe in this extension of the value chain. We saw really healthy growth and continue to see healthy growth on the back office side. We saw new wins on data labeling, and we believe this is an area we will focus on in the future. We have done further investments, hiring new teams when it comes to BFSI, healthcare, IT as a service, as well as F&A. Here you have the statistics.
I think you will see later more details from Olivier. What's important to note, I think is really this acceleration in the second half of the last year, and really the very strong performance of the business when it comes to EMEA and APAC. 7.3% of the teams have done a fantastic job. Specialized services sustained their growth with 10%. Obviously, we had this special effect that had led to some reduction of the growth momentum in Q4, and you might have seen it has obviously also an impact for our guidance for this year. We believe that this is a non-recurring event, as all the other contracts of TLScontact are not up for renewal until 2028. Shoring, I think the statistics critically is pretty much the trend what we have seen the last years.
The verticals, I think many of you, when I entered, talked about that TP strength, that's its resiliency and I think this is part of it being broadly diversified across many verticals. We continue to see very good momentum when it comes to, as I said, the banking space, travel, hospitality, tech, and healthcare. When I say very good momentum, in particular when I think about healthcare, yes, it's growing, but we can grow much more. It's an interesting opportunity for us, so we will continue to invest in this area. On the other hand, even so, I still believe there are many opportunities. We saw some reduction, for instance, in the telecom vertical. What also stands out is our strength in government services. This is particularly true for EMEA and the U.K., so we ha,ve won there some relevant contracts.
We believe having this broad diversified portfolio, but with a clear focus on how to integrate and expand the value chains, as I said, on the back office side, when it comes to tech, healthcare, and banking will be a crucial focus for the future. Talking about this, you know this chart by business line, roughly half of the business is customer experience, customer care 4%, but still over EUR 400 million is back office growing double-digit. Also, B2B sales, Trust & Safety , which includes the data annotation business is something that we want to grow further. ZP, I said it before, we're happy to have received the regulatory approval from the relevant bodies in the U.S. We are now consolidating the business, and already the first integration teams are underway. It will be part of our LanguageLine business in the U.S.
ZP is headquartered in Austin, and the teams are now working together not just to deliver the synergy program, but also to have a more forceful go-to-market on that space. I do really believe having with LanguageLine and our ZP together, one of the prominent players in language solutions and interpreting services is a key asset for us. I think there, we really have a jewel that we want to expand in the future. The other one that might be interesting for you, as we talked about, expanding our AI partnerships with a EUR 100 million program this year is Sanas, which is a first example of that approach. Sanas is a company based out of Palo Alto, that has provided fantastic solutions. We have been working with them for quite some time with some client implementations. That is a non-latency real-time accent translation. What does it mean?
It's a technology that allows to neutralize accents in real time, without any data storage. You have obviously the issue we talked about, human connection and human empathy. We have first implemented Sanas with clients in India, and sometimes there's a difficulty for people in India talking and vice versa with clients from the U.S. What Sanas allows is to neutralize typically all background noise, but also allows an accent translation that enriches understandability between both parties, which leads obviously to lower average handling time, higher customer satisfaction. An example with you now. They have now expanded to the Philippines, and the idea is that we do three things. First, roll this out to other territories. W e will jointly train the model. Obviously, you have Latin American dialects, dialects not just in English, but in Spanish, in French, in all kinds of languages. T his is one growth area.
The second thing is that we will become, or we became the exclusive reseller for the Sanas technology for many of the world's leading brands. T hat's another revenue stream for us. T hirdly, we are continuing to expand and roll Sanas out in our own operations with many of our clients. To give you a sense that you have an idea on Sanas, so we brought you two examples . A t least because sometimes, what does accent translation actually mean? I t is a great example how AI, coupled with our human empathy drives better outcomes. T his technology is essentially a way to create more closer and intimate relationships. F irst, an example without Sanas. I hope it works.
I'm [audio distortion ]. I started my job here, joined with 2023 on the month of February. Since then I'm working here, and it's been almost two years, I guess. Y eah, everything is going good. Talking about my hobbies [audio distortion].
My name is [Freedom Shanker]. I [audio distortion], I started my job here, joined with 2023 on the month of February. Since then I'm working here, and it's been almost two years, I guess. Ye ah, everything is going good. Talking about my hobbies, I listen to music, I play guitar sometimes, and I do sing.
[audio distortion]
I'm Miguel. I'm from the Philippines. I live here in Parañaque City.
T his is without Sanas.
It's a 30-minute drive to our Makati Central Business District. I'm into sports. I play tennis, basketball. I play the occasional golf game. I try to do these things with friends and family as often as I can.
[audio distortion] sports. I play tennis, basketball, play the occasional golf game. I try to do these things with family and friends as often as I can.
I hope this gives you a sen se. There's of course more to look on Sanas AI to have an example, but that's a way for us to enrich this human side because we believe it's really the combination of both that drives better outcomes, and the results are promising. W e have implemented it now in 15 client situations, with great results on customer satisfaction, as I said, high efficiency and also more confidence now obviously on the TP expert side. Let's move on. Let's see if it works. Meeting Vera, I talked about it before. Again, it will be up to the annual meeting in May to get it approved, but we really believe in strengthening our board, the board composition with people who have expertise on the AI side.
Mehdi is an excellent person. I think he really worked before at Google DeepMind. R eally understands deeply not just the foundational models, but also the application and now works very closely obviously with the Abu Dhabi to enhance their very ambitious AI strategy going forward. W e are very lucky to have him on board. Vera is, as I said, a senior expert working in IFC, World Bank, on Africa, but also on broader international finance topics to strengthen the governance and the board composition. Last but not least, you might have noticed for those of you who have been here not just the first time, that we have a little update on our logo because obviously, as we enter this chapter, not just being Teleperformance about customer care, and we are more a digital business service company, we are moving our brand from Teleperformance to TP.
This is already the name that many of our clients used to call us, in particular in the U.S. TP, s imple, it's a shorter website, so tp.com, not longer teleperformance.com. I t's also a way to symbolize the brand, that we are focusing on more end-to-end verticalized digital business services. We keep the legal name, so no worries from that perspective, but at least our branding, website, etc., will be focusing on TP essentially, as that's what we are standing for and will stand for in the future. We have prepared a little video, I think 30 seconds before we go into the dry matter of all the financial numbers, and then let's start it now.
We are evolving because standing still is never an option. Evolution isn't just about change, it's about purpose. A new era demands a new identity, simpler, sharper, more connected. Teleperformance becomes TP, an evolution that began in 2018, a name that reflects who we've always been, where tech can touch power partnerships, where transformation drives performance, where thought fuels passion. With each innovation, we help our clients build personalized systems to harness all intelligence, temper it, perfect it, so you can adapt, advance, and stay ahead. That's evolving with tenacity and purpose. That's TP. Never underestimate the value of being there.
It's also a different color, and the website should be live today. Olivier, over to you on the financial numbers.
Thank you, Thomas. Good morning to all. I'm here to try to explain to you the figures for 2024 and the guidance for 2025. F irst of all, just wanted to show the global P&L. We are here looking to 2024 versus the figure reported last year, and the pro forma figures that I remind you that as reported, are only with two months of Majorel, while the pro forma is of course with 12 months of Majorel. What I can say is the main takeaway for me is the following.
The first one is that full- year revenue and recurring EBITDA margin are in line with objective. Second thing, there are significant impacts of non-recurring item and accounting tax charge on net result, which have no impact on the cash. I'll come back in a minute to that, but this is something that I just wanted to highlight. W e have an adjusted net result, which is up by 10.2% versus last year, which is something which is key to notice.
Let's move to the figures themselves,, of the results of the sales. As you can see, we had 10 months of Majorel because remember that we consolidated Majorel first of November last year. W e have 10 months to add in 2024. W e had currency effect, which is EUR 110 million, roughly the same that we had at the end of September, which is made of four major currency changes because we had a complex year this year with currencies. As an example, Egyptian Lira account for EGP 67 million here out of the €110 million, Turkish Lira TRY 21 million, and Brazilian Real BRL 18 million, while you have exactly the opposite positive impact of the Colombian Pesos and of course the British Pound. All of that is a mixed evolution of the currencies that didn't help all the group all along the year.
A fter you have the real growth, which is EUR 257 million that we have been able to deliver in 2024, knowing that if you look at the figure at the end of September, we were at EUR 155. That means that we have been able to deliver EUR 100 million sales above in Q4 versus EUR 157 over the first nine months. This is something I just wanted to highlight, and shows the acceleration that has been explained by Thomas a minute ago. What happened? In fact, I think that it's interesting to see what happened in 2024 versus 2023. We have been hit, you remember, by the reduction of the growth all along 2023, still being positive, but still growing, but at a lower pace. N ow, gradually in 2024, we came back to the growth path, accelerating all along the year.
I remember that when we issued a figure at the end of Q3, people were questioning whether we would be able to deliver a higher growth in Q4 than Q3. Yes, we did. I just wanted to show it again because this is a question that was raised at that time, and we have been able to do it. Clearly, we know that this acceleration of growth will continue in 2025, even knowing that Q1 will be in 2025, eaten by the fact that 2024 was a leap year. You have a calendar effect specifically in Q1 that has an impact, that will have an impact on the growth in Q1 2025. Again, acceleration of growth, and we delivered what people were adopting that we were able to deliver in Q4.
If you look at the figure, again I'm not going to be long on that. It has been mentioned by Thomas. If you start by the Q4, of course you see that the core service is growing on the quarter by close to 4%, 3.8%, mostly led by Europe and Asia Pacific. W e are able to deliver for specialized service at 5.2%. If we would have had this problem in TLS, the known renewal of the contract in TLS, we would have achieved 5%, 10% in specialized service and 5% for the quarter. G rowth is back, and of course has an impact on the full year. We are at 2.6% for the full year in the guidance that we have set up at the beginning of the year. Let's move to the margin, because this is something that probably interests you much more from what I understood.
What I can say is that we have achieved a guidance related to the progression of the EBITDA margin in 2024 versus 2023 pro forma margin, thanks to two things. The combination of a mix effect, as you see the growth of specialized service with higher margin has an impact, and also the ramp-up of the Majorel synergies that amount to EUR 94 million in 2024, which have been partially reduced by investment in our business and business development function. We decided to put some money to nurture the growth in 2025 and beyond. There is another impact which has been clearly significant, and I mentioned earlier on the FX impact that hits us in 2024, which is a fix , which there are two effects. One is the translation effect, the other one being the transaction effect. Translation effect is basic.
If you take the figure of 2023 and you put them at the 2024 rate, FX rate, you have a decrease of 30 basis points linked to that. W e have also roughly a transaction effect in the same size, mostly coming from the LATAM region, coming from the Colombian Pesos and the Mexican Pesos. Clearly, this adverse FX represents roughly 60 basis points, split equally between translation and transaction, and this is what I just mentioned a minute ago. W ithout this effect, in fact, we are delivering 10 basis points more, able to swallow the FX effect and the investment in business development team. What happened on the Majorel integration? I remember we have defined an initial run rate target of EUR 150 million. As far as today, in the P&L in 2024, we have been able to book EUR 94 million of cost synergy.
The implementation costs are EUR 58 million, recorded in 2024, and we expect to make again EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million more of cost in 2025. You have on the right side, the main issue of the target, the main place where we have made the target. To make it simple, it's labor and operation. That's where we have been able. There is still work to be done, mostly on IT, mostly on some certain sites. Most of them will be done in the second part of the year, notably on IT , most of the contracts that we have decided to change are elapsing at the end of June . W e will have the impact in the second part of the year. Lastly, and I just put that here, even if it's not directly linked to Majorel, we have launched a plan in France.
I'm sure you have seen that. We announced it in November. We decided to make a voluntary departure plan of 600 people in France. We provided, again this year, EUR 54 million for this plan. To make it simple, we have achieved and we will achieve EUR 150 million synergy cost, as mentioned earlier on. Let's go now to the operating profitability. Two things to tell here. Of course, the amortization of the intangible asset is growing since we have now 12 months of Majorel versus last year. We had two months. You have the performance share plan that is still at EUR 91 million that will probably decline dramatically next year, given the fact that the stock price has declined. W e will be probably significantly lower next year.
W e have the other, which are made of the EUR 58 million that I just mentioned for Majorel synergy, and EUR 54 million for the French plan that I just mentioned also a minute ago. Beyond that, you have EUR 28 million of impairment of goodwill on two topics. One is of course Eastern Europe, as you can imagine, and one is on PSG for EUR 15 million. I t leads us to an operating profit of EUR 1 billion and EUR 82 million. A fter, I'm going to explain to you what's happening below. Financial charges, I would say contrary to what I've read, financial [audio distortio] is of course increasing. Not a surprise. We have put EUR 2 billion more for 10 months, s o it's not a surprise that it's increasing. I would say, contrary, I do believe that these financial charges have been very well under control.
We have been able to book a lot of FX gain and rate gain, that help us to reduce the financial result. If not, we would have been at a higher level, probably close to EUR 260 million. Income tax, h ere, you have two issues to be understood. You have the effective tax rate and the cash tax. The effective tax rate is climbing, but there is a reduction in the cash tax. What happened? We decided to not recognize any asset of tax linked to the cost of the French plan, on other, I would say, points. That means that finally, what happened in reality with the group, we have been able to reduce the cash that we spend in terms of tax, being careful in terms of accounting for the future.
If you look at the cash out of 2023, adding Majorel and TP, it would have been EUR 402 million. Here, we have been able to spend only EUR 366 million. T his is absolutely an accounting approach, and we are absolutely convinced that it's the right way to do so. Of course, these effective tax rates will dramatically reduce over the next two years to approximately 35% in 2025, and below 30% in 2026. We do believe in the meantime, we are going to continue to reduce our cash tax. That explains why we have been able to post such a good result in free cash flow. Cash flow, of course people who are waiting less than EUR 1 billion, we are above EUR 1 billion, close to EUR 1.1 billion. What happened? We took control of the Majorel DSO, and we have been able to get money from it.
We continue to control our CapEx that is at 2.1% this year. I do believe that next year we'll be probably closer to 2.5%, between 2.3%-2.5%, as we are putting much more emphasis on some specific geography. I'm thinking to India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa, where we are investing as we speak. Here, there is no investment, where I'm not absolutely speaking of any investment in, I would say, equity in some startups that we might look for, for the future. The cash conversion rate is 52%. What happened with the debt as a consequence? Of course, we have been able to reduce the debt, not a surprise. The level of the debt is really under control. We gave back to the market EUR 415 million, made of EUR 180 million of share buyback and the rest by dividend.
Finally, we have a net debt to recurring EBITDA ratio, which is 1.9, clearly in a way where people are absolutely comfortable with that. I'm going to skip the balance sheet, but if you look now at the debt, I just wanted to reassure you, TP has a large unsecured asset to liquidity. There is absolutely no problem with this debt. We are the only company which has a BB B rating across the board, across the competition and we are absolutely safe on that. As you remember, we have successfully issued early January, EUR 500 million five-year bonds, which have been oversubscribed 6x , s o we have no liquidity issue. We are absolutely covered for the next years. The net debt exclusively is roughly EUR 3.1 billion, with a cost of less than 4% and with a maturity which is above three years. We have no issues there at all, whatever people were missing. What has been decided, given this good cash flow, good adjusted result, is to increase the payout to 4.8 and to a dividend of EUR 4.2 per share. This is what I can tell you, and maybe we can move now to the outlook.
Yes. As you just heard, that we are satisfied with the results of 2024. G iven the current economic situation, we also have a positive outlook for 2025. We see, or we provide guidance when it comes to revenue of 3%-5%. This excludes the special effect of the non-renewal of the TLS contract, as we believe that this is a special effect. We see, in particular, in our Core Services, due to our investments in the business development activities, an acceleration in the second half of the year, as we have just closed some relevant new contract wins in that area. W e also see specialized services continuing to grow single high digit, excluding the special effect. On the EBITDA margin side, Olivier?
Yeah. In 2025, the drivers that support the 2024 EBITDA margin increase will continue to apply, meaning mix effect and ramp-up of the Majorel synergies that will be close to the run rate. In 2025, further accelerated by the consolidation of ZP, with benefit from a profitability to our specialized services segment. 2025 margin gains, however reflect the reduced scope of TLScontact, [audio distortion], roughly equaling ZP roughly, that will cause a 60 basis point negative impact on margin.
We are still hopeful to somewhat improve our margin relative to 2024, in the level of 15% to the tune of 10 basis points, maybe more, but we are cautious here. Note that the reduction in workforce that we have announced in France, that we have provisioned for in 2024, will lead to a positive effect mostly at the back end of the year. We do believe that the people will start to leave the company somewhere between September and October, and we have little impact on 2025 guidance. We continue to believe that we are going to deliver a strong cash flow generation of net free cash flow of EUR 1 billion before non-recurring item. T his company is generating a regular, solid, and durable cash flow. We will continue to deleverage.
We will continue to grow the dividend per share, and we might of course, and I will leave the floor to Thomas in a minute, target specific investment in value-enhancing partnership in AI up to EUR 100 million as equity investment.
Super. Let's move into the strategy update, because this reflects a little bit at a, I would say, 10,000 ft level, some of the discussion and questions we have received over the last month. What is the future outlook for TP? How do you see the positioning in the age of AI, and what is the value proposition for TP as a company? Just to look back, and I think it's not just to praise the last 10 years, I think you all know the numbers, it's just maybe to give one important thought. The business is not static.
The TP of today is not comparable with the business that TP had 10 years ago. Over the years, new lines of businesses were added, like specialized services, like digital operations with the Intelenet acquisition, like Trust & Safety business that didn't exist 10 years ago. I f we look in the future, TP in five to 10 years will also have a different business composition. It will rely on the same fundamentals of driving outcomes for clients using people, process, technology, and domain expertise. I n the future, this domain expertise, this know-how on certain verticals will become more important. Why is that? As we continue to move up the value chain and focus on more complex tasks, having specific know-how on claims processing, KYC, back office process for banks, healthcare insurance companies will be more critically important.
Lastly, the aspect is that TP is today one of the few truly global companies that has a global distribution network. A ll the trends you see, all the new AI technology companies, when we talk to them, they look for distribution. They want to scale. W e see that this know-how and network that we have built, working for thousands of clients around the world, driving their outcomes, is a huge value plus because we are able, based on these relationships, to scale these technologies and to implement them and customize them because very rarely something that you have in a demo, is something that is applicable in an enterprise situation. How do we see the world? I think this is important to know, that there's been so much frenzy about the new developments of AI. Y es, AI will become ubiquitous in tomorrow's world.
What we believe, that in a world that is ubiquitous with AI, the element of the human, at least in this room, we are still having humans sitting here, not AI analysts or AI partners, will be also equally important because it's about building human connection and having this element of human empathy, connectivity will be something that will be equally valuable in the future. It's not a contrast. It's not either/or. Our deep conviction is, it's about building connections with humans, humans supported by AI. That's what it says here. Copilot, so every one of you uses already AI today, that assists and augments your human labor, that maybe rewrites some of your text, that checks maybe some of your reports that you write, that we use today on onboarding and coaching new employees, that we do for quality assurance, that we do maybe writing, for email summarization.
An AI supporting the human. In the future, you will have agentic AI. I think that's what you see about, that AI will autonomously do certain tasks. T he AI becomes a coworker to human, not an augmentation, but a de facto coworker. Yes, this will happen over the next years, but it will create an even more complex ecosystem because now you have humans, augmentation for humans, agentic AI as AI coworkers. O rchestrating these three dimensions seamlessly for somebody who wants to reach out to a company, maybe wants to talk to a human, maybe wants to talk to a voice bot, t his seamless orchestration on an enterprise level is incredibly important and incredibly difficult. There we see TP on the Nexus. Know how many billions of interactions we support already today? V ery well positioned.
At the same time, it opens up new opportunities about integrating, implementing this different ecosystem. For that, we need to change and we will change, but it acquires and leverages the capabilities that we already have today. I just put this here, and I think it's just as a reminder because everybody has the news about AI every moment. I f you see even some of our, I would say, partners in the past who propagated that AI will take over everything, it's just now speaking about two weeks ago that he had an epiphany that in a world of AI, nothing will be as valuable as humans. I do believe it's important to know, we have now two years, two and a half years in the age of generative AI. Yes, there are many applications.
There are tremendous developments, but we shouldn't forget, as long as we exist and interact with each other, not just mimicking human empathy, but being able to transport human empathy, will be important. We will see, at least in our conviction, an explosion of interactions and an explosion of conversations, because AI is more conversational than even reading a text. Now you talk to ChatGPT as a conversation. Y es, many, many conversations will be done by agentic AI or by other tools that are automated. S till, you are looking for a conversation with the human that is critically important also to building this intimacy and building trust, because TP is a end-to-end experience company and able to orchestrate something where we believe is a differentiator. W e got also this feedback from our clients more and more.
T hat's why if you think at our business, I think now we call it sometimes Core Services, which I think is a bit misleading. At the end, we have three pillars. One, we have the BPS, the Business Process Services, that is the essence of TP today, managing people, process, and technology at scale, where we need to move into more vertical and horizontal specialization. Second, we have the pillar of specialized services, targeting specific target needs with integrated solutions. W e will reinforce, strengthen our TPA offering, a nd that has two dimensions. One is orchestrating and being the catalyst for internal transformation. This is what we're doing today. We have around 3,000 people doing solutioning work, IT consulting work, integration work, but we will harness that capability and provide this also externally for new services.
I won't go into details here, but you have an idea on the direction. O ur BPS services will become more verticalized. We believe in particular on banking, insurance, healthcare tech are really growth verticals for us and that's what we see also in the numbers, and we will be more horizontal specialized. We believe there's a big opportunity on F&A.
We believe there's a big opportunity on B2B sales, collection, tech support, so we will drive a more integrated end-to-end business and drive specific targeted solution for these product lines, if you will or services lines. If you think about it, then putting these capabilities together, there are four ways to grow our core business. One, we really see growing existing client relationships either through consolidation or expanding the value chain as an area with us, so we are growing more and more with our large embedded client base.
Secondly, we believe having more technology and digital operation allows us to tap into the mid-market. So far, we have focused more on larger clients, but we believe there's an opportunity also going down to the mid-market. Thirdly, we are convinced we are now present in nearly 100 countries, that expanding this footprint you see here, Africa for the world and scaling up some other location is an opportunity for us. W e see that there are many, many years analysts have talked about differentiated outcome-based business models. We see that today the willingness and the capability to do so will be more prominent than ever before. Specialized services, I think you know the business. It's a portfolio of highly specialized business opportunities with different value propositions, most of it centered around North America.
In particular, LanguageLine, where we do have to focus on this year about a successful integration with ZP, will be critical going forward. Also here, it's about the integration, about a human-led process, but also embedding AI insight. AI, as I said, we are today already a company that has very much focused on transforming existing business. We have deployed our solution suite more than 1,500 x in more than 700 clients. W e have the capability to drive this internal augmentation, how we drive and assist and improve the processes. What we want to do going forward is three things, very simple. Number one, and you've seen this, there is a new market. It's a multi-billion-dollar market, growing double-digit, about humans training AI. Data annotation, data labeling, collection, curation is something that didn't exist.
It's a little bit like content moderation, like 10 years ago where you saw the increase of content moderation. What you're seeing now is that an immense demand for human, sometimes specialized know-how, augmenting AI, and this is something we believe is a capability. It really goes across the different boards, where we also have not just the big hyperscalers, but more verticalized, industrialized solution to move into that field. We have a dedicated team now. We will continue to invest in that space, and this is something where it's also about specialization and different profiles that we need to onboard to the TP platform to provide this kind of solution, so that's a business we're doing it today. It's a relevant business, but we see a lot of more potential in that field. Second, if I can go back, let me see, it works, is TP Infinity.
You've seen this before. We have a small, but relevant platform of 700 people that provide essentially consulting-led services, technology-led services of implementing technology and AI solutions for the client. It's small, so you can do the math. It's like a percent of TP's revenue, but this is something we want to accelerate further. This is also an area where we believe we can accelerate the development, because we see a need from the clients for a partner like us helping them to navigate. A s we do come from the operations, we do believe we have the credibility on the floor to make this happen. T he third element is TP AI solution. T his is something some of you have probably read about. It's not just software as a service, it's service as a software.
Obviously, having the capability of our decade-long experience in running processes and having this global client network, having the tools that we developed internally or using the tools of partners, we believe there's really a chance of building an ecosystem, we're agnostic to the solutions, but building more strategic ties with selected partners of creating unique value solution either by vertical or for horizontal expertise in that space. We have announced one now with Sanas, that you gave the example that focused more on the human side, but there are many more opportunities. T hey have to stay tuned of driving AI-led solutions by vertical or horizontal application in that field. T hat's something that allows a differentiated approach, drives a win-win solution, not just for the AI company and us by scaling them up, but also providing unique access for our clients in that field.
T hat's essentially it. I know we're a little bit running out of time. A gain, 10,000 ft, we believe having a more verticalized BPO solution approach for our core business, continue to invest on our specialized services, drive internal adoption and external adoption for TP AI, positions TP well to take advantages of this changing landscape and to drive the business in the right direction. To give you more insight, so this is a little bit the outlook. We're also decided to have a new Capital Markets Day in three months from now, four months from now, June 18th, where we will give then more deeper insight and deep dive on the solutions, also some updates on the strategy in that regard. We are now open for questions. We'll start with the people here.
Yes. Suhasini, [no]?
Yes.
I know. You have the micro. I think he's just getting it. Suhasini, I think was the first, ladies first.
Thank you. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Suhasini from Goldman Sachs. I have three, please. The first is on your medium-term strategy, where you talk about mid-single-digit medium-term growth on top line. Is that fully on an organic basis or is it organic plus M&A? I see that you haven't discussed capital allocation per se at this point. A ny color on that would be appreciated. Thank you. The second question is on the contract lost in Q4. When did the contract end? Did you have any impact on growth and margins in the quarter in Q4 already? T he third one is on free cash flow, please. For 2025, you're targeting EUR 1 billion of free cash flow, but that's before the non-recurring items. W hat is the cash cost of the non-recurring items in 2025? Thank you.
Do you want to go first with cash flow?
Yeah, cash flow. D ifficult to tell, but I believe that we will have the French plan, EUR 54 million, and maybe something between EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million additional coming from the last cost linked to the synergy of Majorel. It's a rough figure, but let's put that. W e should be on this amount. On the question of TLS, the impact in Q4 is mostly on sales. Of course, there is an impact in margin, but the impact on sales is roughly EUR 20 million in Q4, notably mid-November to end of December.
On the mid-term outlook, yes, that's organic. Obviously, we are working now on a more detailed breakdown of our M&A strategy, where we provide an update and then we have to see how much we can add depending where we will invest.
Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Thomas. Good morning, Olivier. This is Antonin Baudry from HSBC. Three questions. The first one is, would it be possible to give us more color on the visibility you have today on your revenue growth compared to last year? Would you say that you embed the same kind of cautiousness as last year in the growth guidance, and would it be possible to have more granularity between the performance you expect in Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 2025?
I would want in the second question to come back on the contract loss on TLS. What explained this loss? Is there other big contracts that you could lose like that on this business or another? On my third question is about margins, so 60 basis points negative impact from FX in 2024, 60 basis points from this contract loss in 2025. A t the end, what is for you the long-term margin that you could reach for the group Teleperformance in, let's say, mid-term? Thank you.
Let me start, and then yes, I hand over. R egarding guidance, as I said, we have a special effect which has an impact on our business as we had last year, one day more essentially in Q1. W e do see from the dynamic, a stronger growth dynamic in the second half of the year. W e try to be of course always prudent, but we do expect that the second half of the year will be stronger than the first half of the year. The second question was on the dynamic for TLS. A s I said before, we don't have any contracts up for renewal till 2028. T hat's why we don't expect any negative surprises on that front. I t was a contract that we had for a very, very long time.
Start 2013.
Yes, s o it's a very long contract, very long relationship. We still work for that customer. I t's not that we lost the customer, it's simply that after this long time, we lost this contract.
Third question was on margin. I'm not going to speak before the Capital Markets Day, because it's the question that you want to have, but there is no reason by which we should not continue to increase our margin. Just to be clear, 2024, of course you had the FX impact, which is significant. I'm not too sure we will have this impact in 2025, but we have been careful on it. Of course, dollar should help in 2025. I'm not sure people have understood that, but it's too early to tell and we are only at end of February. There are still 10 months to go, s o it's hard to tell. T hat should be positive, either in translation, but also in transaction. A gain, it's too early.
The second part is of course the TLS impact is a one-shot, and is not going to happen on a regular basis. It has been a long discussion with the client. Thomas was mentioning, we are working with these people for the last 12 years in a row. There have been ups and downs. We have grown very, very much with these people. We have been very, I would say, disciplined on price. Let's put it this way.
Thank you. S hould we expect mid-term guidance at Capital Market Day in June?
[audio distortion]
Yes, of course. I f I may, if you look what Thomas was just presenting in the previous slide, if I am able to do that, he was speaking in terms of growth, mid-single-digit, medium-term growth. That's what I just wanted to highlight.
Yes, you just have to look at, there are many analyst reports on market dynamics. Obviously, in times of change, there are many disruptions. We really do believe that TP is well- positioned for taking these new opportunities. As I said, AI operations, data operations is a growing market, double-digit, where we see potential. The whole advisory service for AI digital CX is a growing market where we see potential. If we move to back office areas, F&A, B2B sales is a growing market where we see potential. It's about leveraging the capabilities that we have in the right direction, to leverage our opportunities in that space. We have businesses, we work with the clients. It's about investing in the right skills and scaling them up.
I think that was my comment before. TP has been in the past, maybe not always the first to enter into a new trend. Think about content moderation, but once they enter and put the full force behind it, I mean, Trust & Safety is now a EUR 1 billion business for us, t hey have been very successful at doing so. I think that's where I see now, after two years of AI and a little bit reorientation after the COVID years, leveraged the power of TP as a global excellence platform, I would call it and focus on these growth areas where we see opportunities. T hat's essentially then scaling them up. I would say, it's not rocket science. It's about execution, a nd that's 90% of the focus here.
I f I may, if we look at the guidance of the global sector, first of all, we have not missed it in 2024 versus others. W e are, I believe, at the high range of all the profession in 2025. I just wanted to make it clear.
Good morning. Remi Grenu from Morgan Stanley. Three questions on my side. The first one is on the TLS contract. Just as a follow-up, you flagged price discipline. I s there any kind of pricing pressure in that specific activity? A re you seeing any opportunities to offset that revenue loss by additional outsourcing contract, or other opportunities within TLS specifically? The second question is on Core Services or business process services growth in Q4, which has seen an acceleration.
I'd like to understand what you're thinking about the breakdown, between what is your end market improving and what is market share gain? I t seems that you've invested quite a lot in Salesforce over the last few months. W hat's been the contribution of that investment you've made? The third one is on working capital, a bit of an inflow this year, which I think you mentioned was partly driven by Majorel. Can you elaborate a little bit on the assumption you've made for 2025 within that EUR1 billion free cash flow guidance, and whether that improvement is something you think is sustainable?
L et me start maybe with the first, and then over to Olivier. If you see, I'm just going to that page, our performance by region, as I said, we have grown 4% in Core Services in Q4. We definitely outperformed the market on that regard. I f you look at listed players, if you look at industry analyst report, so from a percent perspective, yes, we have performed better than the market, b ut the question is how you also define the market. As I told you on this chart here, we've seen quite significant growth. Here it is. Quite significant growth, in particular in back office services. We also have grown in our care services, s o there you have the benchmark to CX BPO.
W e see that we are with our portfolio and our strength very well positioned to outperform the market, but also have the ability to enter into new growing fields. For TLS, you've seen the math and the guidance. If we adjust our guidance for the group by 1%, you have an idea it's quite relevant. U nfortunately, as TLS is not such a large business, it's not growing without the loss of the contract.
F rankly, when it comes to this type of business, it's a very long contract between four, five, six, seven years. T here is always discussion with the different government, to define a path for the five or six or seven coming years. O f course, there are discussions, but there is not a specific price pressure on that, s o there are discussions as always. I t's different from the core service, where you have contracts which are much more shortened, which are shorter than in case of TLS. I t's a specific topic, a specific case. When it comes to working capital, we have been, I would say, careful in our assumption. Of course, this is something which is difficult to predict, as you can imagine, depending when your growth is happening.
If your growth is happening at the end of the year, you are much more into working capital than your cash. We do believe that working capital should be between - 50 plus 50, let's say zero, in this bracket, which is very, very difficult to predict on a basis of EUR 2.2 billion of clients on the balance sheet.
Thank you. Good morning, Laurent Gélébart, BNP Paribas Exane. I have three questions. The first one relates to your cost-cutting plan of EUR 150 million, regarding Majorel. Y ou have been adding France on top of this. W hat will be the end number regarding the cost synergies you are expecting? G oing in terms of margin bridge in 2026 compared to 2025, what will be the impact ?
2026?
2025, sorry, versus 2024, what will be the impact of synergies in your margin bridge? T he third question refers to your [audio distortion OpEx investments in 2024? Y ou have been reinvesting in Salesforce and other stuff. Is it done, achieved, or do you expect to invest further going forward?
L et me start with the rest. We have really strengthened the team quite significantly. Typically, you have an onboarding period. If you hire a new sales or business development person, it takes some time to onboard it. W e are quite happy with the strength of the team, even though there might be changes. W e don't see that we need to invest net on top of that team, b ut the real power and the effect of the new strengthened team will come into play more in the second half of this year.
As far as synergies is concerned, you have two issues. One is a carryover of the synergies that have been recorded in 2024, plus the new synergies that are going to be implemented in 2025 of course, because the synergy of 24 has not started from day one. T he idea was again, to be careful. We expect to have something between EUR 30 million. W e will achieve the figure of EUR 150 million by 2026, but most of it will be done in 2025, let's say roughly EUR 30 million more, EUR 35 million more. On the cost of the plan, it's clear that the plan of France will have very few impacts. French plan has nothing to do with Majorel, first point. I just wanted to be clear. This plan, we don't know exactly when this plan will be happening.
You know there is a process that has to be followed. You need to negotiate to get the agreement from the authority. I t's difficult to tell, but probably part of the plan will start to be executed end of June, but most of it , starting September and October. T he impact of this plan in 2025, it will be very limited. We expect to have a return of EUR 20 million in 2026.
That's one person.
Hi, [Raphaël Moreau, Amiral Gestion]. Just a question on Core Services and sequencing of your growth for 2025, quarter by quarter. 2024 , you saw this acceleration of growth, s o the base effects should become tougher and tougher over time. I t seems you are talking about better growth at the back end of the year. I wanted to understand the reasons for that.
As we said before, so obviously for the business process services in Q1, there's the effect of having a day less. We also see that some new businesses are kicking in more in the second half of the year, so that's why I have to provide you more updates once we publish our Q1 numbers, how the first quarter went.
The classical new contracts are sold at the end of the year, put in place in Q1, Q2, and start to deliver in Q3, Q4. That's classical, I would say pattern.
W e are not unhappy how the year started.
Yeah. Is there a question? I'm sorry? Okay, i s there a question online, please?
If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line Sylvia Barker from JP M. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi. Morning, everyone. First, three questions, please. Number one, could we just go back on the 2024 margins, please? Y ou had synergies of 90 basis points. You had some mixed benefits, and yet the margin is up 10. Can you just quantify the impact of FX and any other impacts within that bridge, just to understand all of the negative impacts?
Okay.
Thank you. Yeah, should we do them one by one, t hat's easier?
Yeah, o kay.
That's easier. When you look at 2024, you have roughly a 90 basis points of synergy positive impact, plus a 30 basis points from the mixed impact, to make it simple, linked to the growth of the specialized services, coming from the growth of specialized services with a better margin. Beyond these 120, you have -110 , 60 coming from FX, split roughly equally between transaction and translation, and 40-45 linked to what we have invested in business development force all along the year.
Okay, thank you. V ery clear. O n the restructuring in France, so could you maybe just give us a little bit of background on that? A lso, as you have seen this big accelerated move away from onshore into more offshore and then shifts within offshore within the regions, do you now see other regions, let's say U.S. onshore or I don't know, Colombia, where you have to scale down as well because you have facilities which maybe you're underutilizing because the business has transitioned elsewhere?
I didn't get the last comment, obviously.
Me too. What did you say?
I didn't know.
I'll give you the answer, Thomas.
I think France is a particular case.
I might [audio distortion] offensive.
Yeah, it's a voluntary plan for, as Olivier said it, for 600 people. In the other markets, of course, we see movements up and down. That's the normal part of the business. Y es, as I said, I think in our Q3 numbers, we've seen a growth in our offshore locations. W e see in particular in the U.S., in India, but we saw some pressure in the U.S. onshore. T his is a normal, it's the day-to-day of the operation. I think i t's not giving the size of the organization with almost 500,000 people. There are always ups and downs.
France is a specific situation, linked to the fact that we need to adjust the tool, if I may say, to the new approach. We are too scattered , so we need to approach that. We need to rationalize that. We are on the run. This is done, I would say with responsibility. Everything is done properly. There is a voluntary plan. People are not forced to leave, and we are going to make it as smooth as possible, but to make sure that the French business will come back to a better situation starting 2025, and your third question?
Okay, thank you. The third question, just on Trust & Safety . Can I ask one more?
[audio distortion]
No, you had a third question. I missed it.
Yeah, sorry. Just on Trust & Safety . Given all the news flow we've had from the social media platforms, is that business going backwards now? I t seems like there's less requirement for it, o r how is that developing? It's quite a big chunk of the problem.
To be honest, I think we talked about it briefly in our Q3 numbers. There was some developments, and as I said, a reduction in our Trust & Safety business, but it has recovered quite nicely in Q4. In particular, as I said, our data labeling and annotation business, we saw some recent wins in that area, and that's reported also in that Trust & Safety b ucket. There are some movements. To your question, the pure content moderation, we saw some slowdown, but it was nicely compensated in Q4 by our data annotation and data labeling wins.
Okay, great. Thank you very much for the answers.
Other questions online?
Yes, we will take the next question from the line. Will Kirkness f rom Bernstein . The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. The bridge you did on the margin for FY 2024 was really helpful. Would you be able to do the same for 2025? I think you've obviously got some synergy flow through, and then you've also got a positive mixed impact from ZP. I t would be really helpful to understand what the gross uplift is and then the gross reduction [audio distortion].
For 25, I will try to explain to you how we see the margin as of today. You have a negative impact, you understood, from the TLS contract that is not going to be renewed, of roughly 60 basis points, which is I would say, neutralized by the ZP integration in the group of 60 basis points. I t's a wash, and after, there are of course the positive impact of the synergies that I just mentioned a minute ago, less some costs that have been incurred last year that will be the carryover of 2025, plus FX, plus the fact that the group is careful, to make it simple.
Understood.
Thank you.
There's more, I understand.
[audio distortion]
Please go ahead.
It was on the growth, just going back to what you've given previously on gross wins offset by churn as an automation and offshoring. I wondered if you could just perhaps talk about either the 4% or the midpoint of FY 2025's range of say 3%, how you see that in terms of growth wins and what's then falling out in terms of automation, or whether the offshoring theme is still quite potent? Thank you.
I would say we had the same discussion, I think when we were in Q3 and were guiding to the last year. There was the question, how will the last year end? It is a very dynamic market. I do believe that when it comes to some of the trends we have seen in the past, we are careful of adjusting for it or reflecting it. T hat's why we provided the guidance we are given. I cannot narrow down the guidance at this point in time. As we're entering a very dynamic situation, I do believe we are really well- positioned. We see a strong momentum and demand from the clients. As I said, in Q3, we have a strong pipeline, so we have more signed and verbal than last year.
A s you said, it depends also how our existing business, the churn develops. From that perspective, this was the basis for the guidance we have provided. I t really depends on the execution month after month where we end up with. The beginning of the year was positive, I would say, but we still have to work another 10 months before we can deliver the 2025 numbers.
Very clear. Thanks so much.
One more?
We will take the next question from the line Karl Green from RBC. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. Good morning. I've got three questions, perhaps take them one by one. The first question was just around the AI investments. You've talked about Sanas there, which looks really interesting. Can you indicate how much you're investing in Sanas specifically, i.e., how much extra you've got left to get to the 100 million of investment? A lso, just thinking about the P&L impact of that in terms of the equity contribution to the P&L, is it likely to be positive or negative or broadly neutral? That would be the first question, please.
Okay, so it's very simple. We have invested $13 million into the last series C round of Sanas, so we are now a minority investor in the company. We are working on more opportunities in the pipeline. I have to be cautious. I'm always trying to be cautious, and let's see, so the guidance of the 100 million, you can do the math, how many other partnerships come up in that range, but we will not feel pressured. I think we are trying to really create a situation that has a strategic benefit for our clients, for TP and for our AI partners, and we will do this in a very prudent manner. I really do believe that having these kinds of partnerships is an open approach because the world is very agile. I don't believe that we can build all these AI technologies within the company.
It's impossible, but being able to work with some of these interesting startups, not just in the U.S., but also in Europe, in Asia, creating this situation where we take maybe an equity position, find a strategic arrangement, allows us really to capture the opportunities in this evolving landscape. I will tell you, in June at the capital markets the progress.
I hope I can report by then more, and we're working on this in a manner and we'll really evaluate every month if it makes sense to continue to invest or not. It is as simple as that, but there's a lot of interest, I would say, from the ecosystem. We got a lot of inquiries, and I do believe if we are selective and prudent, we can really create some value-enhancing opportunities for us on the equity investment and potentially, but this will take some time. Obviously, these companies are also not that large, also on our P&L.
Understood, t hat's very helpful. The second question, just in terms of the finance charge, I think you've been very clear about what the expected tax rate is going to be, but just on the financial results, just looking at the variance between 2023 and 2024, there's been a nearly EUR 60 million swing on the other financial income and expenses. If I understand it correctly, your new adjusted net income definition will include those other financial income and expenses. That kind of is what it is. The question would be therefore, would you expect a similar level of net other financial income in 2025 as in 2024? I t would appear that the core financing cost, the net financing cost before those items, was a little bit higher than consensus was expecting. Just some clarity there would be helpful.
What I expect in 2025, of course, we will have the cash flows that will come on stream, but you will have of course, the debt that will have been raised to pay ZP from early February. T here is an impact here, increasing the cost of the debt mechanically. Of course, the cash flow will be reduced to a part of it. As far as income tax is concerned, I just wanted to be clear. What we have done is to follow a very, very, I would say, careful, prudent approach in recognizing tax assets. We are very, very, I would say spread across the world.
There are different situations on which I'm not going to answer, but where we are very, very careful. We do believe that we will be able to recover it, probably starting 2025, 2026, but we are careful in recognizing such assets in the balance sheet and in the P&L. While in the meantime, we are developing plenty of, I would say approach, tax planning to reduce the tax cash, which is really what matters for us.
Okay, thank you. M y last question is just around the contract wins, which I think you referenced in Core Services, which are likely to kick in in the second half of this year. Can you give a bit more color about the kind of verticals that they're exposed to? A re they the more verticalized type contracts, i.e., more BPO contents than the classic CX? Just a bit of color there would be helpful. Thank you.
We saw in Q4, that's why I said double-digit growth, and it doesn't start with a one, on our back office side, where they're quite happy, and we want to accelerate this further. On the verticals, it's quite broad. If I look about it, it's on the tech side as well as on back office. We have recent wins on the back office side, also on traveler, hospitality, logistics, banking side. It's really across the board.
I really do believe if you look how we strengthen the team, that we got more vertical expertise and functional expertise, and that's where we're focusing on. I think it will be a more differentiated offering, and I do believe if we leverage and have the right resources on board, we really can make a change happen, leveraging our global platform. It will be, as I said, not in Q2, and more in the second half of the year. This is based on our recent expectations.
Thank you.
Super.
I just wanted to tell a word before the end of this session. I just want you to consider that we are a company that is going to deliver a sustainable free cash flow of roughly EUR 1 billion a year. I'm sure that you have to understand that, all of us, whatever the AI discussion we might have, whatever the margin discussion that we can have, this company is safe, solid, and will continue to deliver a solid free cash flow. Thank you all.
Thanks, Olivier. Also, a big thank you from my side.