Welcome to TP2025 First Half Results Conference Call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers Thomas Mackenbrock, Deputy CEO, and Olivier Rigaudy, Deputy CEO and Group CFO. Please go ahead.
Good evening everybody. Olivier and myself are very happy to be with you this evening and share with you our H1 2025 results and of course answer all your questions after the short presentation. Let's deep dive into the presentation and let's have a look at key highlights of our business in the first half of 2025. Olivier will then give a deep dive on our financials for the year. We provide the outlook for 2025 as always and of course answer all open questions. How did the first six months of 2025 look like? It was a good half year for us. Of course, there were the challenges on the FX side, but overall we are very pleased with the development, in particular in our core services. If you look at the numbers, we really have a story of two tails.
On the one hand, as you can see, our core services demonstrated strong growth of almost 3% like-for-like and in particular in our important EMEA and APAC region we have seen revenue like-for-like growth of almost 5%. In particular, interesting. We see an acceleration, as you remember in our Q1 presentation, we were already pleased with the development in our core businesses and we have demonstrated further growth momentum in Q2. We're working hard on all the AI implementation and we really see the resiliency of our core business process services. As you can see, 3.5% growth in Q2 versus 2.3% growth in Q1. We have ramped up new businesses around the world, in particular EMEA and APAC, and we have improved also our client retention in our existing business with our clients. This is really a strong asset for our business in the last six months.
On the other hand, as also indicated in our Q1 results, we faced headwinds for our specialized services. As you can see, we have grown in specialized services on a like-for-like basis if we exclude this famous non-renewal of a significant visa application, but by 3% if you exclude that. Unfortunately, the business has contracted by -7% on a like-for-like basis and as we acquired ZP, 4.2% as reported. This is in particular driven by the environment in the U.S. that has lessened to soften volumes for LanguageLine Solutions. This of course impacted our overall numbers. Despite the headwinds in specialized services, we have grown on a like-for-like basis as a group by 1.5% which leads to a revenue of more than EUR 5.1 billion for the year. On the EBITDA, we see also good development if you exclude the FX effects.
On a constant FX basis, we are exactly at the same EBITDA margin as in the first half 2024 of 13.9%. Of course, on a reported basis, as the Euro strengthened against all major currencies, we see a decline by 30 basis points. Olivier will guide you through the different drivers of these businesses. We have further implemented efficiency measures throughout the group. We'll give you a little bit more details for specialized services to maintain and improve our profitability in our core businesses. Given FX effects that we've seen, we are also updating our objectives for 2025. As you see at the bottom, we do now expect, given the headwinds in specialized services, a like-for-like revenue growth at the lower end of the guidance.
The EBITDA margin remains at 15% and 15.1% objective, but at constant fixed currencies, and we are seeing a sustainable net free cash flow before non-recurring items of around EUR 1 billion. Let's dive deeper on the different elements. As I said, we are particularly pleased with the development of our important core services. You see here the quarter-over-quarter development of core services with a very nice momentum over the last three quarters: 3.8%, 2.3%, and 3.5%. If you deep dive now and say where does this come from, we see in particular the strong momentum, as I said, in Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, where we've seen growth on a like-for-like basis of close to 6%, 5.7% in Q2. This is a super momentum driven by the strong performance in the UK, the Middle East, APAC, and Egypt.
I can go on across different industries, really ramping up of new businesses, having strong momentum with existing client relationships, and gives a good prospect for the future. Also, our EBITDA margin for core services has improved by 10 basis points despite the FX headwinds that I described earlier. On the other hand, unfortunately, and we mentioned this at our capital markets date in Q1, we're extremely cautious about the development of our specialized services business. Unfortunately, we have seen a further acceleration of shrinkage of the growth to almost minus 12% in Q2, which is of course impacted by the visa management contract and the volatile business environment for operations in the U.S. If you adjust for that, we're still growing at a low single digit, and we have a set of efficiency measures in place to preserve the margins.
As you can see, we have continuously improved the margin after the dip in Q1 and are now at the adjusted level of 28% almost for the first half year. To give you one example on this one for LanguageLine Solutions, as we anticipated a normal growth momentum for the business at the end of 2024, we have organized and prepared the resources accordingly. Unfortunately, as we said earlier, there was a softening of volume given the special situation in the U.S., and we had to adjust correspondingly our cost base, which of course takes some time. You can see that after this quarter, where the costs were sort of not appropriate to the demands that we've seen, we were able to adjust the cost per minute now to even a lower level compared to 2024 and thereby restored the margin for LanguageLine Solutions in the second quarter.
Good progress there, but we remain extremely vigilant for the development, and we remain cautious on the recovery of this business in this year across the board. It's also good to see we see that the growth in our core services is supported across different verticals, whether this is government solutions, fast-moving consumer goods, media, entertainment, gaming, retail companies. You see a bit of a shift. Last year, we saw strong development for our BFSI and automotive clients. In the last six months, we see particular strong momentum across the above-mentioned verticals, which again is an indicator of the resiliency of the business. The same is true for the areas where we are growing. This is unchanged. We see, despite all the AI fears, good momentum in our core voice and non-voice, and we see particular strong growth in our strategic focus areas.
On the one hand, back-office BPO growing very nicely and strongly, as well as our other targeted services, which are unfortunately here subsumed into other, whether this is data services, technology, consulting, analytics, at a strong growth momentum. Let's look now, after we had a quick overview on the financials, on the strategic highlight that the last six months presented. On the one hand, our strategy. We live in times of change, and we need to be an active driver of this transformation.
For that purpose, we have outlined our future forward strategy, our capital market strategy in June with our TP FAB platform orchestrating AI and human at scale, our expansion of TP AI data services, notably with the acquisition of Agents Only, which is a crowdsourcing platform to have access to this talent for data annotation and AI training work, with our new AI partnerships, Ema Parloa and Sanas AI, our new AI officer that you got to know at our Capital Markets Day, Anish Mukker , and the strengthening of our capabilities, whether it's IT services and F&A and B2B sales. We believe we need to be agile and focused on the strategy and to execute on the growth momentum we see in these areas.
Secondly, yes, we talked about and we saw the headwinds of specialized services, but we strengthened this important pillar of TP also in the last six months. On the one hand, with the successful completion of the acquisition of ZP that performs very nice and in line with the initial plans, the integration program is well on track, and we have with Juan Carlos Hincapie a new CEO for specialized services, driving a lot of closer cooperation between specialized services and the core business. We are also continuing to advance and we're well ahead in progress with the integration of Majorel, obviously with P.
We are also, with the above-mentioned approval of the reorganization in France, we got the approval from the French authorities, and we continue to focus on efficiency because we need, on the one hand, to drive the transformation, invest in the business, but on the other hand, ensure efficient delivery and driving efficiency operations to maintain our margin. Lastly, as you know, as a B2B digital service company, it's about people, process, technology, and domain expertise. We continue to invest in all four areas over the last six months, and we will do so in the next six months to strengthen the business. To give you maybe a bit of a flavor, because some of you asked to give a little bit context, I brought this time along our three strategic verticals that you might remember from our future forward strategy.
Recent wins, so in all three dimensions, growing the core with AI, extending our vertical place by extending the value chain for our clients, offering back-office solutions and new service lines, and capturing new opportunities in AI, we saw notable wins over the last six months. Here's just a selection where we continue to drive the transformation of Teleperformance and being the transformation partner for our clients. Maybe to pick just a few examples, what is quite exciting if you look on Grow the core with AI, we won a very large deal with a global logistics player to deploy not just one AI solution, but a set of AI solutions for scheduling, invoicing, back-office support where we use translation tools, interaction tools, analytic tools that drive efficiency, but also improved customer satisfaction for the client. It's really this hybrid approach that made us win that deal.
On the extended vertical plays, I'm particularly proud we recently met the clients, a very large U.S. financial service provider, that we are selected to support them on their risk management for the mid-market, which is not a core CX operation but really an extension of our value chain for this long-standing client, and we're very excited about the future opportunities with them. Another one is on the healthcare segment in the U.S., which is an important market where we do back-office support for broker enrollments, again an expansion of our value chain. Or thirdly, new opportunities AI.
As you might remember from our presentation with Akash Pugalia, we're very excited about our capabilities when it comes to AI data training, and we have secured two important wins for some of our global tech clients on training and supporting foundation model and linguistic labeling work for the AI tools, which are important wins, and we will further invest in that area. Last but not least, for a mid-sized tech company, we won also some IT services deals. You see the type of services Teleperformance provides, the type of extension of our capability is in place and is being executed, and we follow the strategic script along these three dimensions.
Before we.
Go to the financials. An update as usual on our four capability set. People is and remains a core component of our value proposition. We continue to train them, we continue to provide a good working environment for them, and we continue to expand our offering not just for our normal employees but also offering on demand workforce via Agents Only. We also continue to invest in AI deployment in our core capabilities, not just offering AI solutions for our clients but also deploying more and more AI solutions in our own operations, whether this is recruitment or quality management. We also, as a highlight, completed more than 250 AI projects in H1.
As you might remember, we were at around 80 in the first quarter, and we are bringing them to life because we are now really in the deployment and in the operational use of AI at scale on our own tools and in our open ecosystem with our partners. One great example on that front is Anna AI. As you can see here on the chart, I have a little deep dive. As you know, we have a specialist company PSG focusing on recruitment services, and recruitment is also a perfect example where it's the blend of human and AI driving better outcome. Anna AI is in recruiting AI enabled recruiting assist that allows an individual human recruiter to be four times more productive when it comes to hires. That increases the leads through better lead management and screening of CVs and applications and also reduces the wait time for applicants.
A great example of a solution that we offer for clients through PSG but that we also use internally to improve the efficiency of our own processes. With this quick snatch up overview, I will hand over to my dear colleague Olivier who will guide you through the financial numbers.
Thank you, Thomas, and good evening to all. I'm going to give you a much more deep dive information about the first half. It's not the first half easy to read, but I strongly believe it's a solid operational first half and we are going to see that in detail. If you look to the figures, there are two major points that I just wanted to highlight. To start with, there is a solid like-for-like growth in each one with positive momentum in core service as mentioned by Thomas a minute ago. We of course had an impact, a FX impact in this first half and also volatile macroeconomic environment weighing on mainly on LanguageLine Solutions. This is a two major topic we have to keep in mind. Let's move to much more in detail to have a look to the sales.
If you look the first half, what is interesting is that we have an encouraging commercial moment up and which is coming from of course new AI solution. What is interesting is to see that we have first a big currency effect, EUR 121 million of which EUR 114 million came in Q2. Everything changed in Q2. The euro climbed up versus all the currency. We'll see that in a minute. That has an effect on our company. You remember that we bought ZP better together early this year. You have the change in scope of consolidation of EUR 89 million. They enter the scope beginning of the year. The like-for-like growth is EUR 72 million which is 1.5%. Like-for-like this 1.4 like-for-like is EUR 72 million are split differently.
As mentioned, there was an increase in core which is significantly higher than the EUR 72 million because we are here in a position to deliver EUR 121 million while we were down by EUR 51 million in specialized service, mostly coming from these famous new contracts that has disappeared in H1. To make it simple, negative effect, hyperinflation impact of 0.3% in Q2 which was I would say coming at the very end of the quarter in Argentina and Turkey. I can come back on it later on. It's mostly the fact that the devaluation was higher than the index of price and of course acceleration in core service consolidation of the P impact of TLS and an environment in LanguageLine Solutions which is not so easy to predict.
I just wanted to give you this slide just to show that even all of the currency in which we are running and it's a part of them because we are active in more than 80 or 85 countries. All of them are depreciation versus euro. This is the first time in my life in TP that I'm seeing that everywhere we have negative impact from the currency, which has impact on the group. If we look much more in detail in the growth momentum that we were leaving in this quarter, as Thomas was mentioning, the core service moved to 3.5% in Q2, while the specialized moved from minus 2.4% to minus 11.6%. If you correct from this famous contract, we are at 3.8% in Q1 and 2.2% in Q2. There are two main takeaways to have here.
Core service is accelerating, and this is a key question given the field that AI was generating. Specialized service, of course, is slower than it was, but still growing. I'm going to give you much more detail by region and by region, by quarter. You have the detail here. There is a growth which is noticeable of close to 6% in Europe in this quarter, while America is back on track, 1.1% again in growth. At the end of the day, as I told you, core and EMEA are back to growth, significant growth, and specialized service specifically, if you take out this UKVI contract that is specific, is still growing. I know it was a fear for most of you. Let's move now to the margin. The margin has changed, as you can see.
The core service margin has grown up by 10 basis points, mostly driven by the growth that we experienced in Europe and in EMEA and Asia Pacific. The specialized service was down by three points, specifically linked to this TLS impact. That's where we move from 13.9% to 13.6%. What is interesting is to have a much more precise view on this margin. What happened in fact in this quarter, in this first half, if you look precisely, you have two major impacts which are clear. You have the impact that Thomas explained for the Q1 in LanguageLine Solutions, where we were facing less demand versus what was scheduled, and it was correctly scheduled. It cost us 15 basis points in Q1. Knowing that starting Q2, we have been able to correct it. TLS and ZP is a wash, if I may say. They are roughly the same amount.
You have a mix effect on the fact that the specialized service, which is a higher margin, is lower than previous year. These 40 basis points have been covered by operational improvement and operational performance across the board. All in all, we have been able to cover these topics that were not totally scheduled, notably LanguageLine Solutions and the mix effect, by a better delivery either in the core service and mostly in core service. What happened is that finally when you take into account the FX effect on the translation effect. I'm not speaking of the transaction effect. I can come back if you are interested later on the translation effect. Just moving, translating the result in Euro drives a decrease of 30 basis points that hit us in this first half. I would say after, there are few things to say.
There is less synergy costs that have been incurred in the first half. It's not really a surprise because we are close to the end of this story and we have been able to improve operating profit versus last year. What is different is probably the second part of the P&L where we have a decrease of the financial result, which is mainly also due to unfavorable exchange gain and loss that was coming from mainly the Egyptian pounds that was very, very favorable last year that is no more existing today. This is mostly non-cash. You have also an income tax that is a little higher than last year that will be an improvement versus last year.
What is interesting is that if you take out this gain and loss unfavorable, you have a stable net financing cost despite the fact that we increased our debt by EUR 500 million with the bond issue that we did early January. The average cost of the debt has been decreased by 30 basis points in the first half versus last year. Lastly, to finish, to explain also the difficulty, I would say, to understand what is economically beyond the story, which is a front-loaded outflow we had in 2025 on the cash flow. The cash flow has been hit in 2025 temporarily by different topics. Lower reimbursement of VAT credit that we had in 2024. Not only did we get money in 2024, but some money that we are supposed to get in first half will be paid in second half, notably from Greece and India.
We are speaking of a wash of EUR 30 million to EUR 20 million. We have a full year increase in tax, which is mainly borne in H1. There will be an additional cash tax, but most of the cost has been borne in H1. You have, of course, expense related to the cost synergy plans at EUR 20 million and increased cloud subscription and rollout of AI partnership. On top of that, in terms of CapEx, you remember that the CapEx was planned to be at 2.3%, which is already where we are going to be, which is a EUR 40 million increase versus last year, of which EUR 30 million has been expensed in the first half. The net free cash flow generation is expected to be significantly improved in H2. This is a specific situation.
If we move now to the debt, just to show what happened, we have the net free cash flow, we have dividend and share buyback that has been done in the first half. I'll come back in a minute to that. You have the investment, which is ZP better together, and the investments that we did in AI, I would say partnership notably, and some non-cash issues that push the debt to EUR 4.482 billion. With no surprise, the share buyback program of EUR 100 million that has been announced in June is mostly completed as we speak, and we continue to have our BBB rating with Standard & Poor’s. That's what I wanted to tell, and I'll give back the floor to Thomas to give you a final remark before the question and answer.
Thanks Olivier. Let's have a look at the outlook. As you can imagine, based on the performance we updated the outlook to reflect the latest development. We do not expect a full recovery of specialized services in the second half of the year, remain extremely close to the business, watch its performance, but we don't expect that we will rebound different in the development eight years ago. From that perspective, we see the revenue growth at the lower end of our initial guidance. Secondly, as Olivier explained in detail, we have these massive FX movements, in particular in Q2 of this year, and we want to specify that the EBITDA margin of 15% to 15.1% assumes constant exchange rates.
We were not so explicit the last time and we want to be explicit about it because it's hard to estimate how the Euro, dollar, and all the other currency movements will be in the next years. We do expect there are some headwinds for us. Lastly, there's no change. We have this front loading and some of the cash outflows in this year, but we continue to see a sustainable net cash flow of around EUR 1 billion before the non-recurring items that Olivier laid out. Also, no change in our ambitions for 2028. As you've seen at our Capital Markets Day, we see the traction in these new business lines and do expect an acceleration of the growth momentum.
We continue to see for new, more complex services a possibility to expand our margin and that we see after this transformation period over the next three years to be at 15.5% EBITDA margin. We continue to see in our resilient business model accumulated cash flow generation over the three years of around EUR 3 billion. That having been said, we are looking forward to your questions and want to announce one change because for many of you, you have been in contact with our Head of Investor Relations, Quinn Yegin, who will leave the company. We are very pleased to welcome Simon Sachs as our new Head of Investor Relations Communications to the team. In the future, Simon will be your direct contact person for all the kinds of questions you have and of course the rest of the management team as well.
With that, back to you and to your questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Remi Grenu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Thomas. Good evening, Olivier. A few questions on my side, if I may. The first one is on LLs. I think you said earlier this year that it was kind of growing, had deteriorated, but was growing mid single digit. It seems from the numbers that you're giving today that this might have deteriorated a little bit more in Q2. If you can make an update on that current trading in LLs and how you're thinking about the second half of the year, you're not guiding for recovery, but equally could there be a deterioration there? That would be the first topic. The second one is on the acceleration in core services in Europe. Can you maybe provide a bit more detail there on what has driven that and the level, and especially the level of margin that these additional volumes are coming at?
Especially interested in the activity coming in back-office BPO and AI data services that you're referring to. The third one would be on the guidance, the margin guidance at current FX, constant FX or 15% to 15.1%. If we assume that the Forex remains stable compared to where it is today, what would that translate into in terms of reported margin? Just to understand the gap between that and what we should expect for the.
Second half,
let me answer the first two and Olivier can answer. The effect on the profitability on the business development in EMEA and APAC. As you remember, we have invested last year in our business development team and we have been very strong in our ability to win new contracts, rent new contracts, and grow with existing clients in EMEA and APAC, notably in the fast-moving consumer goods government sector. Some e-commerce clients that we ramped. It's a mix of, I would say, our operation to delivery like in Egypt or Turkey, strong local business wins in the Middle East. APAC has been for us a good market in terms of revenue contribution in the first half of this year and also the UK with their delivery locations in South Africa.
The team has really done there a fantastic job across the board of winning, growing new contracts, and growing with existing clients in these three sectors. We have seen also in EMEA, APAC the benefits of the synergies. If you remember the chart, let me maybe go into this on the detailed numbers. Here you can see really in EMEA, APAC, despite some of the FX headwinds, a growth of our EBITDA margin from 9.3% to 9.7%. Yes, there are some challenges in some domestic European markets as we talked about, but this region, and it's a significant part of our business, is resilient, growing, strong momentum. Africa and the other regions I mentioned for our operations. There it's really, it's quite exciting to see.
I said some of the challenges we save on the specialized services are compensated by our core business and the APAC there has a strong component. Americas is a bit mixed pictures. As you know, in our numbers here we have three big regions, part of it North America, Latin America, Philippines, and India. India continues to be a growth driver for the group. We're very pleased there for the development. North America remains challenging on certain fronts. In Latin America, we see an interesting picture. It was a little bit weaker development last year, but we see a strong development of our domestic businesses, notably Mexico, but also Brazil for instance. There we have the FX issue unfortunately, but it's really, you can see it, we win new clients, we extend the services line, it's really encouraging to see.
If you peel the onion, adjust for the FX effect, there are some challenges there in particular in the Americas. India is growing, LATAM is growing domestically as well as in our near and offshore operations there. It's quite encouraging to see. Unfortunately, we still have the headwinds in North America. There was the question on specialized services. We don't expect a recovery. LanguageLine Solutions in particular, we don't break out the growth rates, but it's growing, it's still growing, but low, low, low single digit. To your point, as you can see, obviously for H1 we see a reduction of our margin unfortunately by 30 basis points. The capability, how this year will end up, if we are very pleased or pleased or is just modest, will depend on our ability to continue the momentum in core services. That's really strong and positive to see.
We see the pickup in back-office BPO work and how much headwinds we have for specialized services in the second half of the year.
Thank you. Before I move to your question, just be clear that the margin in LanguageLine Solutions in Q2 is higher than last year in terms of %. We have been able to monitor that very closely. Of course, volume is difficult to predict as far as FX is concerned. This is, as you understood, it's a complex year. There are three topics that I just wanted to mention. First one, hyperinflation. Frankly, I have no idea where it's going to come. My guess is that probably will revert in the second part of the year as often it happens when the price will, I would say, adjustment with the devaluation or in the other way. That is probably what could happen, but I cannot guarantee it. On the transaction issue, the group has covered mostly all of them.
There is no marginal impact of the transaction because we are covering roughly EUR 3 billion a year and this was done sufficiently early in the year to cover it. On the translation issue, which is not covered, the impact was EUR 30. At this point, as we speak today, we believe, based on what I know, what I feel, because there is no certainty, we should be roughly in this range. There is no guarantee. It could be better, it could be worse, but it depends. A lot of the Euro versus all the currency, most of the time a lot of the currency, I mentioned it earlier on, are somewhere linked to dollar and when it translates to Euro it has an impact significantly for us.
Other questions.
Understood.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Karl Green from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much. Good evening to you. Just a couple of questions on specialized services and then a separate question if I can. Just in terms of that development between Q1 and Q2, excluding the TLScontact contract loss, so excluding that loss, like-for-like growth moved from 3.9% in Q1 to 2.2% in Q2. Given the very big swing in the overall like-for-like growth, can you be a bit more specific about the magnitude of the contract loss in Euros millions in the second quarter? How should we be thinking about that in the second half? That, I think, seems to be the big gap versus consensus expectations going into this print. The second question around this general specialized services topic is, given what's happening, are you more inclined to think more deeply about potential divestments?
The final question, completely unrelated, at the full year stage you did move towards giving the market an adjusted EPS metric. I just wondered if you could explain the logic for not providing that on this occasion. Given that there are lots of moving parts below the EBITDA line in terms of tax, which you talked about, FX gains, etc., what's the logic there? Thank you.
Livy, you want to start?
Yeah. Q1, Q2 specialized. The big impact, as you understood, was TLScontact, and the total impact in Q3 will be again something around EUR 50 million in terms of sales. It's a big impact. The bigger impacts are in Q2 and Q3. It will start to reduce in Q3. Investment, I'm not sure we are looking to that as we speak. We are always looking to a possibility of moving, of moving any solution for the shareholder. That's it. Today we are not, we are much more focused on the delivery than on potential move. As far as EPS metric, adjusted EPS metric are not done, it's mostly because it will be done at the year end, it's not done at the first half. We should have done it, we can make it. This was not something done on purpose specifically.
Maybe to add the point, I do believe yes we do see some weakness in our specialized services right now, but these are highly valuable businesses. If you look at reference cases, whether it's in the visa services segment, whether this is in the interpreting segment, in our specialized segment for recruiting solutions that are now AI enabled or Health Advocate that we presented at the Capital Markets Day, I strongly believe these are truly valuable company assets. Yes, there are some headwinds this year which we manage very closely, but these are valuable assets that if you look at relevant peers would maintain a high valuation.
Thank you.
You had another question, or that's it.
The next question comes from Carl Raynsford from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Thomas. Evening, Olivier. Yeah, good to see some solid momentum in the core services. My questions actually focus elsewhere I'm afraid. I've got three, but the first, just another follow up from LanguageLine Solutions. I'd have thought the LanguageLine Solutions trajectory should be sequentially improving even from Q1 to Q2. How can we gain comfort in specialized services returning to that high single digit or double digit growth rate over time? You explained these are valuable assets. To me, given your commentary, it does sound like there could be a structural growth issue there with LanguageLine Solutions and you've got no real visibility as to growth actually recovering. It'd be good to know your thoughts there. The second, you note front loaded outflows regarding free cash flow.
Could you please quantify how free cash flow in the second half should be so much stronger to get anywhere close to that EUR 1 billion level? When I look at your slides, on your notes, sorry, on slide 27, it's not so clear to me. I also note you've removed the guidance for deleveraging this year which was in place at Q1. I presume now that you're not even sure about that. It doesn't exactly give me a ton of confidence you're able to generate that EUR 1 billion free cash flow. It'd be good to quantify that, please. Lastly, could you again quantify the level of OpEx investment in the first half, please?
Of that 40 bps operational improvement gain you stated, is there extra cost investment that offsets the gain wrapped up in, i.e., is the underlying improvement higher than 40 bps and you've invested in the workforce, let's say, which sort of offsets that slightly? That'd be good to know. Thank you.
On LanguageLine Solutions. Let me start with this and hand over to Olivier. I think you have to distinguish between structural changes in the business and temporary changes in the business. If you are in the U.S. right now, you see that the environment in particular for people who are seeking the support of a language line, which are not non-English speakers, are today very difficult. This is part of the slow growth demand that we see in the business, that there is less demand from these more non-English speaking groups. We don't see a structural shift in LanguageLine on the interpreting solutions; the opposite is true. I think it's a very resilient business that, despite the situation in the U.S., is still able to grow. If this would normalize, I don't know when this would be.
We do expect this pent-up demand and this normalized demand to be significantly higher as it is today. It's a non-normal situation that we don't expect to be sustained for the next years. We do, as we want to be cautious, we don't expect a recovery in the next two quarters, but we don't expect that this would structurally shift over the next years.
On the free cash flow. Just to be clear, EUR 1 billion, around EUR 1 billion is excluding non-recurring items. You remember that there are EUR 20 million that has been spent in the first half and probably there will be another EUR 50 million that will be spent in the second part of the year linked to the French plans that has been mentioned. Why we are, I would say, so confident. We are, I would say between brackets, so confident if you look what happened last year. Last year we gained EUR 600 million of cash flow in the second part of the year. Here you have roughly between EUR 110 million and EUR 140 million that are, I would say, moving from H2 to H1 versus last year. When you put that together, I'm not saying it's granted and everything is okay.
Of course, you have these non-recurring items that will be impacting cash flows for this year. They might probably have some fixed issue if the dollar continues to slip. We know that there is, as always in this company, a lot of business happening in the second part of the year. A lot of revenue, a lot of cash, a lot of margin that is happening in the second part of the year. It's not improbable that we will achieve it. Of course, there are uncertainties but we are on it and we will be reasonably, I would say, we are reasonably, I would say, confident that we will achieve this figure. Again, I just mentioned there is a cost of the Synergy plan that will be deducted from this around EUR 1 billion figure.
Third question,
third question.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure to have understood it. Meaning that whether this EUR 40 billion, this point will continue in H2. That was your question, am I correct?
It was more just, you know, you've been pointing to OpEx investments into your people. That is, you know, I guess AI savvy people.
We had that last year, and we have a remaining impact in the first half, which is not dramatic but existing. We should have less issues than we had last year, notably in the second part of the year.
Okay, thank you. Just a quick follow-up on the second one on sort of free cash flow. Sorry, just with the fact you've removed deleveraging from your guidance, should I read into that in any way? Do you expect leverage to go up?
No, no, I'm not expecting leverage to go up. What I didn't have at that time is the EUR 100 million share buybacks that was planned. There will be a lower deleveraging. We are going to deliver. To what level exactly? I don't know precisely, but I have to add EUR 100 million debt following the share buybacks that we did in July.
If you have read our press release and we did actually have our board today, we have a very active discussion. What is the best capital allocation for the company in future value creation? We did announce the share buyback that is now completed, the EUR 100 million, and this needs to be taken into consideration as this was an ask that is being now deliberated on the board.
Thank you very much again. In case you will be afraid by debt, I can tell you that the group is totally in control of its debt, has access to liquidity whether it's short or medium or long term, and we have no issue of financing, clearly.
Understood. Thanks Olivier. Thanks so much.
Other questions.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Sorry to labor the point a little bit around LanguageLine Solutions, but if we can go back there just on that weakness that you've seen. First of all, is that something that was deteriorating through the quarter, sort of month on month, and then maybe in addition, how much of that is being driven by, I guess you'd call it the political backdrop in the U.S. and demand and willingness to engage in these services, and how much is related to other issues including kind of potential AI overhangs. I know you mentioned that the high value interpretation services were still growing, I think low single digit, which obviously implies that everything else is doing quite a bit worse. That was the first question.
Thanks.
Nicole, your question was on the cash flow or on the development on the revenue side?
On the revenue side from specialized, from what I understood. Am I correct?
I think really when you talk to the team, there's really a very special situation right now in the U.S. I cannot say differently and that has obviously an impact. It's still remarkable to see that they got their costs under control. There are hundreds of individual measures in place to ensure the efficiency of the business and to maintain the growth momentum that LanguageLine Solutions has today. I don't see significant AI impacts in the business today. It is not. That's why I said it's not a structural drive of the business, it's a demand drive on the business which puts the entire interpreting solution for this special demands in a particular case. That's why I'm not. That's why I don't see that in the numbers. Yes, you're right. There's some headwinds also on the other side, specialized services business.
The main impact is for specialized services really the loss of the TLScontact contract and the headwind versus the normal demand on LanguageLine Solutions. As we said earlier, the team has prepared for normal double-digit growth. That's why they put the resources in place and we had really a lot of measures to do to adjust for the resources accordingly to get the cost under control.
If I may add, Nicole, you have to understand that a lot of people who are using our service are afraid to use them, not because they don't need it, but because they are afraid to be, I would say, kept by ICE and sent back to Latin America or to Mexico, even if they are, I would say, regular U.S. citizens. The fear is clearly one of the major drivers of this evolution in us, in U.S. of course.
Yeah, that was my question, basically whether.
To what extent sort of demand weakness, to what extent. It's difficult to figure it but what we get as a message is people, and you know, we were looking to figure again with Thomas recently. You see the 20th of January, a drop which starting the 21st of January I.
Said it really, we spent a lot of management time and attention on the development. We see daily reports on the movements, on the volume. We really have all our eyes on the business. The team of LanguageLine Solutions does a fantastic job. I cannot say differently. It's a super company. They deploy AI in their internal offering, how they develop it. They have a super close and great sales organization. It's an absolute superstar in this segment. They face these unusual headwinds this year, and this we have to weather through. I was hoping. We were always expecting a recovery in the second half, which is not happening as you can see if you watch the news in the U.S. every day. We see the business is intact and healthy and ready to grow again when this situation has been normalized.
These volumes are particularly sensitive to what's happening, notably what happened in Los Angeles a month and a half ago or a story like that. We see a direct link between these two phenomena.
That is why I really have full trust in the team. Simon now with JC. They do a fantastic job, and it's a healthy business that has to weather this period through. We support them in any means, we monitor them in any means. This has unfortunately an impact on our business.
Unfortunately,
on sales, the margin has never been so good in LanguageLine Solutions in %.
Other questions.
Thank you. If I could just ask a quick question.
Yep.
If I just take one second question. Just moving to TLScontact. Sorry, this is quite a basic question in some ways, but could you just clarify a little bit about when the impacts started to come through here and maybe the annual sort of value of the contract you lost? Because you did call out an initial impact on growth from this contract loss or non-renewal rather in Q4 of last year, and now it seems to be quite choppy through the quarters of this year. Maybe that's some seasonality, and I'm not sure. Could you clarify why that is? Because it's quite confusing. I think from the outside that there was an impact in Q4 and then obviously an impact in Q1, and then that's actually become significantly more pronounced. I'm just trying to understand how we should think about that from here in our modeling. Thank you.
It's a complex situation when you stop such contracts. You remember that TLScontact was supporting delivery of visa for many, many, many countries for the United Kingdom. There are some parts of the business that have been closed or stopped earlier in Q4, and some of them have continued in Q1 because government asked us to continue until end mid-March for some places. This is exactly what happened. A significant part started to be reduced in Q4. There is still business, I would say, on a comparable basis in Q1 but significantly less, and it totally disappeared in Q2.
Great, thank you.
Other questions.
The next question comes from Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi everyone, thanks for taking my questions. Just a few questions for me. Firstly, away from LanguageLine Solutions and specialized services, in the core services business, there's quite a big divergence in growth between the Americas and the EMEA and APAC divisions. Can you just maybe explain the divergence that's happening there? The segments are obviously very geographically diversified in terms of the geographies that they end serving. Any color on what's happening geographically or whether it's a function of client mix that's resulting in such different growth trajectory for the different subcomponents of core services? A second question on specialized services please. Another question on disclosure. Thomas, you mentioned that some of the businesses within specialized services have very high valuation benchmarks in the private and public markets.
Are you considering giving more public disclosure on the constituent parts of the specialized services businesses to help us understand the moving parts within the businesses and maybe to help us value them independently? Thank you.
Yes, we have there a discussion but nothing has been decided and disclosed. I think if you look at the past as some of the assets within specialized services have been acquired, you can drive your conclusions of the businesses. These are really, and we gave some examples at our Capital Markets Day, specialized niche services businesses that target a specific client demand that have higher margins typically, and I do believe echo a higher valuation than we're currently seeing. That was just as a note on the business. On your different momentum question, I think it's reflected that the Americas, what I said earlier, a relevant portion of that segment is North America, notably Canada and the U.S., and we've seen a trend for many, many years, but also in this year of moving businesses onshore to offshore locations in the English-speaking world.
Of course, this is much easier whether this is India, Philippines, South Africa, and this affects obviously the growth rate. That's why when you dissect our Americas segment in India, Philippines, Latin America, North America, you see a very different growth momentum where India is growing high single digit and the other segments, in particular North America, see a decline in the top line, which is true not just for us but for the entire industry. There's the relative weight.
Maybe just as a quick follow-up.
Sure.
In terms of that English-speaking world and the offshoring dynamic, is there any differing face of AI disruption happening within the English-speaking part of business versus non-English-speaking? Is that something you're seeing, or is it purely an offshoring effect?
No, the beauty of AI. That's why I say it's of course multilingual. That's why the language barrier doesn't exist with AI. We have really positive discussions with many clients across the world, and whether you are a French client, German client, Spanish client, U.S. client, every agent speaks every language, so there's no language barrier as such. Also, the willingness to try out things. We have many European companies, many Asian companies who are in very active discussion with us. We're winning deals based on agentic AI solutions by combining a hybrid offering with AI and human-led BPO together across the board. In fact, we actually had today a very recent discussion with our Head of Business Development and Sales in Europe of all the ideas that he's seen. There's no difference in the dynamic for our U.S. clients versus our European clients. It's good.
We have to embrace AI, and I think it allows us an opportunity to transform this business if we do this very proactively.
Maybe a last question,
last question.
I don't know if there's something left in the queue.
There are no further questions at this time. I hand the conference back to Mr. Mackenbrock for any closing comments.
As we stick to this chart, maybe we'll look at it. We really are pleased with the development in our core business. The teams are a fantastic job, growing like for like. As you can see here, 3.5% in Q2 is encouraging momentum and we're really looking forward to continue this momentum in Q3 and Q4. We are closely monitoring the headwinds in specialized services also. There the teams really have our full trust in doing a fantastic job. These are headwinds that need to be managed. We see them as temporary, but we cannot give you a date for this year if this will end. We have, of course, on the group level, the FX headwinds that Olivier explained earlier that we continue to monitor closely.
We look with optimism and encouragement to the next five months and one day to then present to you in the meantime our Q3 numbers and then our full year numbers. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you to all and have a great summer.
Have a great summer. Take care. Bye-bye.