Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I'm very happy to welcome you to the combined General Meeting that I am going to chair as chairperson of the Board of Directors , and thank you for being with us in such large numbers. I should point out that our, our General Meeting is also being broadcast live from our website, and I would like to welcome, the shareholders who are, are following us, live. I'm happy to greet the members of the board who are with us today, in particular, Mr. Kevin Nazemi and Madame Brigitte Daubry, whose ratifications and renewal of term as members of the board are going to be, proposed today. Mr. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, unfortunately, was unable to be with us today due to prior commitments outside of Paris. I'm happy also to introduce, for those of you who don't know them, Mr.
Bhupinder Singh, the Deputy CEO, and we run the group as co-CEOs in a transition phase. Our statutory auditors, Deloitte & Associés and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have also been invited to attend. They're with us. Mr. Raphaël Perrot, bailiff, is in the room, and he has checked the attendance sheet and will check the proper running of our meeting and of the voting. I will start off our General Meeting with the usual formalities prior to opening the meeting in order to establish the bureau and go through the legal formalities. You will hear several speakers during our meeting, with Mr. Olivier Rigaudy, Deputy CEO and also CFO.
We will commence the presentations with the key figures and highlights for 2023, Teleperformance in 2024, financial results for 2023, and first quarter revenues for 2024, and news regarding the share price and share ownership. Then Clémentine Gauthier and Evangelos Papadopoulos will present the group's approach regarding ESG, with the main developments in 2023 and the group's initiatives in this field. Mr. Patrick Thomas, who is our lead director, will then present a summary of the governance and remuneration policies. Your statutory auditors will present a summary of their reports, and then we will give you the floor in order to answer any questions that you may have. Finally, we will conclude with the vote on resolutions that have been submitted for your approval.
I should point out that from the page on which our shareholders' General Meeting is being broadcast, shareholders will be able to ask questions via the internet. So I now propose that we open the meeting and establish the bureau of the General Meeting. The provisional quorum, as of a few minutes ago, is 74.56%. Some shareholders are still coming into the room, so we will give you the final quorum before we have the vote on the resolutions. In order to establish the bureau, I would like to call on as scrutineers the two shareholders who have the largest number of shares and who have agreed to be scrutineers. It's Madame Christine Arnoult and Mr. Thierry Revah.
I propose that Madame Sonia Schaeffer be appointed secretary of the General Meeting. The combined General Meeting is therefore legally established and can therefore hold the meeting. I declare the meeting open, and I would now like to give the floor to Sonia Schaefer to make the legal announcements. Your General Meeting is meeting on in the first convening. It was convened through announcements in the BALO of the eighteenth of March and seventeenth of April, consistent with legal and regulatory requirements. The documents discussed during this General Meeting have been made available to the shareholders at the company head office and on the website of Teleperformance.
The documents are as follows: the presentation, the text of resolutions, announcements published in the BALO, convening letters sent to the statutory auditors, the Universal Registration Document for 2023, the report of the statutory auditors on financial statements, and the resolutions on the agenda, the number of postal votes, internet votes, proxies, and the number of proxies that the company has received. I should point out that the shareholders who have made, who've requested this, requested documents and information, were able to do so at head office. This General Meeting will be asked to vote on 29 resolutions, 21 ordinary resolutions, 8 extraordinary resolutions. The wording of the resolutions is on pages 49 and subsequent pages of the convening brochure.
The resolutions concern approval of corporate and consolidated statements for the 2023 breakdown of allocation of results, and setting up the dividend, lack of any new related party agreements, the approval of remuneration policies for 2023 for the board members and the corporate officers, the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the statutory auditors in charge of the certification of information regarding sustainable development. Approval to be given to the Board of Directors with regarding the share buyback of the company of its own shares. As for the extraordinary aspect, the delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the company's capital, with or without pre-emptive subscription rights .
Authorization given to the Board of Directors to increase the amount of issues pursuant to resolutions 22, 23, and 24. And finally, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to allocate free existing shares and/or shares to be issued, to employees and/or certain corporate officers or. And finally, the customary resolution regarding powers for formalities pursuant to the General Meeting. Yeah. Very good. Now, we'll talk about the business, and we'll present the key figures and the highlights for 2024. 2023 was a turbulent year, where we went from a very promising environment in 2021 and 2022, we moved to a far more challenging environment.
First of all, it was the end of lockdown, and during the pandemic, many people were in lockdown, and this led to a high increase in the interaction with the customer service. Beginning of 2023 is the beginning of the end of lockdown. People went back to outdoor activities, and very clearly, there was less interaction with customer services, and we are back to a rather more natural dynamic. It was also a very surprising year. It would have been very difficult to predict everything that happened, insofar as we saw a significant reduction in the number of unicorns. These are young companies whose valuation is in excess of $1 billion in 2022 in technology, e-commerce, and transport.
Funding was more expensive, less readily available for investment, for companies seeking to expand, and for the purpose of cash burning. This led to cutbacks in budgets in Silicon Valley. It was the... To quote Mark Zuckerberg, "It was the year of efficiency." And between the second half of 2022 and 2023, 290,000 redundancies were recorded in this particular sector. In March, April of 2023, we had the widely published side news announcement of LLM, Large Language Models, on which rather extreme positions were set out between, on the one hand, the winners of artificial intelligence, and on the other hand, the losers.
Teleperformance has many, many people, many employees, even though we're very active in new technologies, and we fell into the latter category, for a period that I hope will not run for too long. Now, clearly, we've seen the potential of large language models. The potential is very significant. In 2023, most of our customers engaged in proof of concept. In other words, you test and try out models. And the question that, in a rather simplistic way, arose was as follows: Is it going to increase thoughts on that? The companies will have to make their own strategic decisions, but when you realize that the differentiation is done through service quality, I'm not overly conservative. AI will provide the capacity to improve the service to consumers, and we'll see this over time.
The growth has slowed down very significantly in many sectors of outsourcing and including consulting, management, because we saw results that ran from 0 to +5% in most cases. So this is understandable, given that GDP, both in the USA and in Europe, it was 2.5% in America, and very low GDP in Europe. In 2024, the macroeconomic situation is not going to improve significantly. Let's be clear on that. So what did your company do in 2023?
Well, when you look at the figures, you might think that the business model is resilient, in a turbulent environment, because we delivered revenues, the highest revenues in our history, yet again, with organic growth, unchanged scope and constant exchange rates, excluding hyperinflation of +5.1%. We posted EBITDA margin of +40 basis points, at +15.9%. So that's for Teleperformance, excluding Majorel. And we posted net free cash flow of +15.5%, standing at EUR 812 million, meaning a conversion rate of free cash flow of 46% versus 40% in 2022. We acquired Majorel, and we agreed with the sellers in April 2023.
That's when the acquisition was announced, and the acquisition, despite the complexity of the transaction, was completed extremely efficiently by our legal and financial teams in November 2023. The first thing here is that it lends a new dimension to the group by strengthening our position in key markets where we was rather weak, and by providing an additional know-how. The new pro forma Teleperformance, it represents just over EUR 10 billion, with EBITDA of just over EUR 2 billion and an EBITDA of EUR 1.5 billion. I have to say that in addition to that, over a two-year integration period spanning 2024 and 2025, we have valued the synergies arising from the merger of the two companies at EUR 150 million. We are confirming today that the integration plan is going ahead smoothly.
For synergies, and I'll say something even more important for me, we have an excellent integration of the Majorel teams. We have not lost any clients as a result of the transaction. So that's. There you have the new Teleperformance, just over 100, almost 100 countries, 170+ markets, over around 300 languages and dialects. I didn't know there were so many. In core services, we have a portfolio of 1,400 clients. In specialized services, clearly, we have far more clients because a company like LanguageLine Solutions itself has, in its own right, approximately 20,000 clients. The new Teleperformance in 2023, well, has strengthened its leadership through the acquisition of Majorel.
First of all, in the regions, we strengthened our position in markets where we were weak, in France, where we've been losing money for the last 10 years, and Germany, which is the country of origin of Majorel. And Majorel with organization structure, which is different from Teleperformance's, managed to remain healthy and profitable in France. We strengthened our presence in the Asia-Pacific markets by doubling our size, meaning that we have become a significant non-Asian player in the Asia-Pacific region. And this is important, not over merely, not only to deliver now, but for the future, we are the number one player in Africa, be it in French-speaking Africa or in English-speaking Africa, which is bigger still. Looking at our client sector, this enabled us to improve our penetration in financial services in Europe.
We had a strong presence in financial services in North America and Latin America, but very little penetration in Europe, continental Europe, and in the UK. Majorel had a presence in financial services in Germany and France. This enabled us to step up our presence in the insurance business in Europe, where we had no presence at all. It enabled us to enter the luxury, the high-end market in China with a digital and human, an integrated digital human solution. And I think we are providing for the biggest luxury companies in China, and this enabled to step up our presence in the automobile sector, either by strengthening our activity with existing customers groups in Europe or by welcoming new groups.
The third contribution from Majorel, and this is a reflection of their history as a captive structure of Bertelsmann. It's a company that has developed a know-how in the back-office segment. So we have included additional experience. We manage claims for home and auto insurance. We run the complex processing of orders, middle- and back-office. We provide a digital marketing platform in Latin America for broadening the diversity of our services, and a management platform of social media and an omni-channel platform for the luxury goods industry in China, which I was referring to just intelligence. And between both entities, we have just over 250 projects for the inclusion of artificial intelligence in the programs that we're operating. So...
Teleperformance in 2024. Today is the twenty-third of May, so one-third of the year is behind us. We have a client base of 1,400 clients with a long-lasting relationship, on average 14 years. We bring in new customers every year, so we clearly have some clients for whom we've been working for the past 30 or 40 years, maybe more. Another important point, the managerial base of Teleperformance, in other words, those who are directors, presidents, vice presidents, senior vice presidents, executive vice presidents, et cetera, account for 2,000 people with average length of service of seven point almost 8 years in the company. This is important because sometimes, very often, in fact, people say that we're just there to pick up the phone.
So, we're very omni-channel, which means that we're on all possible channels of communication. And when we talk about omni-channel, that means that we have integration, in other words, moving from one channel to another. But above all, the portfolio of applications on which we work is the portfolio for this sector, and our portfolio of activities, especially, is very broad indeed. Customer service, sales and business, B2B sales, including advertising sales for digital platforms, technical support, help desk, intercompany help desk, content manager and management for social media.
interpretation, translation, localization, healthcare support management, middle and back office management, full management of claims, fraud prevention, anti-money laundering, outsource central services, for example, finance, HR, IT, privatization of public services, management of citizens, dossiers. I have to say, one of the services I cherish now for some years, we manage citizen cases, in other words, case management. So we're the entry point and the validation point, which proves that the service is being rendered in a timely manner for the United Arab Emirates, for the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. And this is perhaps the most developed citizen service I've ever seen. Of course, we provide cloud solutions.
In other words, our know-how, which are marketed as a service, be it for workforce management, for quality, service quality management, recruitment, and of course, we provide operational, consultancy services. Now, it's worth noting here that in this presentation, which is far from exhaustive, we have a highly diversified and niche offering in our specialized services, which continues to grow very strongly, and both in 2023, and this will continue in 2024. So what if an advertising slogan? So let me explain. Our promise to our, our clients is to improve the, client experience and management process by combining the human aspect, emotional intelligence, and advanced technologies. And this is reflected in the loyalty of our clients, that we, we provide a customized, high-quality service at a fair price for the, the customers.
Our goal, ultimately, is to strengthen the loyalty to our brand. Now, forgive me for the use of acronyms, but High Tech, High Touch of Teleperformance is AI at TP and EI at TP. And this is a combination that fosters a much improved customer experience in the year ahead. As you know, everybody is complaining that the customer experience is no longer what it was when there was a close relationship with the shop, the salesperson, the people you knew, everything has become standardized, et cetera. But I think that Gen AI will enable us to go back to a much improved quality of relationship. So for some years now, well before we started talking about ChatGPT, GPT, our developers had developed applications based on ChatGPT 3.5, before 4.
Each time we had individual solutions, and for each individual solution, there is a difficulty in implementation because you have to obtain the approval of the technology departments in companies which don't... or the IT departments of companies who don't particularly want their architecture to be meddled in. So with João Cardoso is our Chief Digital Officer at TP. He's a computer scientist, and he's a specialist in artificial intelligence. And what we've been doing, and we're in the process of building this, we've been providing all our solutions as part of a microservice architecture. What does microservice architecture mean? It's an architecture that enables easy connection to the client's technological architecture through APIs.
In that respect, the main services that are already up and running at TP, and we have knowledge bases. Of course, immediate summaries, predictive models online, e-channel histories, to be able to move from one channel to another, while preserving the customer history. Speech-to-text-to-speech, which is from speech-to-text-to-speech with instant translation. For those of you who read the press, it's what Klarna has described as an extraordinary leap ahead, and it boosted the share price. But it's an application that's been in existence for a long time at TP, well before Klarna ever mentioned this in the press. The alert algorithms regarding data security, which is very important because outsourcing will continue to exist on the basis of that particular criteria.
In other words, can we ensure data security that will be at least equivalent to that of the most sophisticated clients? And in this respect, I should say that the data security at TP, in which we've spent tens of millions of EUR, is one of the BEST in the world. Coaching with emulation of the customer systems and role-playing, automated role-playing generation, means that we no longer are in a classroom like the schoolmasters of the Third Republic, but so we engage in role-play. The fact that we're moving towards quality control, that we'll be covering 100% of interactions through the online analysis of the voice, and many other things, such as the intelligent processing of documents, which is called optical character recognition.
Which converts continuous information into discrete information, which means that you save a huge amount of time. Of course, artificial intelligence is a positive factor for TP. It improves the precision and speed of access to information. And more importantly, it will enable us to reduce the stress factor for our employees, and this stress is present, in particular, in tasks, for example, in four or five different sources, with a customer on the line waiting impatiently for information to be provided. So this stress reduction by providing information immediately online will release the employee in order for him or her to play his or her fundamental role, which is to be an active listener, to produce customized solutions, and to rebuild the pact, the trust pact. So there you have it. I've said what was...
Everything that was written, so we can move on to the next one.
So as I was saying, AI is fantastic because it lets us get back to emotional intelligence. That's a kind of poetic way of saying it, I suppose. Now, I don't know how much of a poet I am myself, but, but according to the Harvard Business School, 95% of purchase decisions are made based on emotions. Now, it might be nearer to 90, it might be nearer to 80, it might be nearer to 75, but it's a lot. Valuable, that's valuable for a company. Now, I don't know how important it is to pull away from emotions, given that context. Deloitte, do we have any people from Deloitte in the room? I'm sure we do. Deloitte in 2023 said that, before... Now, next time, we'll take some examples from PwC just to balance the, the presentation a bit.
So according to Deloitte in 2024, 53 rules in AI. But I certainly can't foresee people disappearing in the relationship that leads to extra brand loyalty in customers. And Deloitte, again, in 2024, tells us that 40% of consumers who switch brands do so because of poor customer service. And this isn't me saying it, this is Deloitte, and I promise you, I didn't pay them, at least not to say that.... I'd just like to mention 2 articles that came out. They were extremely topical. One of them came out yesterday in the Financial Times. Yann LeCun is the guru of AI and Gen AI, working at Meta. And he explained that LLMs are all good and well, but they're not all they're cracked up to be. And to have true artificial intelligence is gonna take us another decade of development.
We'll have to see how that pans out. There was another article that was very similar to that, that was published in The Wall Street Journal. Now, maybe this type of information is going to get people's ideas of progress back onto the Gartner curve. Gartner is the business analyst firm that monitors successive technological waves, and they tell us that every time there's a wave, there's a hype, there's a crest, there's a hype crest, where people think that this new technology is going to do everything, and it's going to change the world and do absolutely everything we could ever ask it to do. That honeymoon period lasts for maybe a year and a half or two years. Then you have the valley of despair.
Now, it's a bit of a strong term, but this is the period during which people realize that, yes, this is useful, it's a great new technology, but it's not quite what people might have thought it was during the hype phase. People start to realize that things aren't shifting to quite the same degree as they expected, and then you have a more gradual rise, with more apps coming out, leveraging that technology. AI isn't something that's stable and fixed in time. It's gonna continue to get better. It's gonna continue to get fantastically better, in fact, because we're in a world that is progressing at an exponential rate. And it's up to us, Teleperformance, and any service company around the world, and it doesn't matter whether you're a consultant, an auditor, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what kind of field you work in, healthcare or anything else, everyone needs to continue to evolve and change. There is one thing that's extremely important that was underlined, probably 25 years ago now by Daniel Goleman. He was the guru of emotional intelligence in companies, and he explains to us that emotional intelligence is like a muscle. You can train it, you can strengthen it. Teleperformance is developing its emotional intelligence muscles. We're working to get stronger in that field. So maybe I need to bring in a bodybuilder next time to illustrate this. We work on emotional intelligence throughout the experience that employees have with us. So from hiring, psychological profiling, and making sure that it matches the type of job that they're gonna have to do. We also work on emotional intelligence in training.
There are positive attitudes and there are negative attitudes. We work on this through training, coaching. And there are all sorts of things that we can do using AI to strengthen our emotional intelligence, our EI, management as well, of course, and work environment. I remember that it was a little bit more than two years ago now. All right, let's say maybe a year and a half ago. There was a lot going on in the press about the... Sorry, yes, I need to stand behind the microphone so everyone can hear me. Yes, so working conditions in Colombia were in the press. The arena for digital and online games for our employees is fantastic over there.
I believe that in Colombia, when they organize their national digital games, And by the way, Brigitte Daubry, if her term on the Board of Directors is renewed, is the person who, fifteen years or so ago, actually developed TOPS worldwide. Well, TOPS is a unique operational model that guarantees consistency of service across the board. This is how performance is operated, of deviations and remedies, and this can be applied for individuals or processes. And finally, in management processes, we have TP Loves Ideas. Now, all of this was written in English in the original, simply because 60% of our business is in the English language. Because innovation always comes from the operational front lines.
Of course, artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence, and this is exactly why we have all different versions of TOPS and best, but they're always integrated into our processes. Finally, or at least we're coming to the end of my part of the presentation. This year, we... Well, last year, we were kind of punished. We were surprised, we were caught off guard. So this year, we are taking into account the entire business environment with pro forma sales growth guidance at between +2% and +4%. The major markets that we work in are Europe, which is likely to have GDP growth of less than 1%. I think forecasters are at 0.8% GDP growth in Europe, and, the U.S., which is expecting 2.5% GDP growth.
The momentum is going to be much more favorable to us in the second half. The first quarter of last year, the first, financial quarter of last year, had organic, growth, which was higher than-- which was more than 11%, if you look at Teleperformance plus Majorel, and that's a lot. So the basis for comparison was very high for the first quarter, but we were still able to increase it even further. On the second half of the year, the comparison base for the year, is, of course, much, more favorable to us in the following year. And if you look at our outlook, we are pretty confident, very confident, in our ability to deliver this growth.
I would even think that we're going to be in the higher end of the range rather than the lower end of the range. We are hoping to see an increase in EBITDA of more than 10 or plus 20 basis points on a pro forma base. Free cash flow is set to be significantly higher, and we are going to continue to pay back to shareholders. 2023, we had about a two-thirds payout ratio. I think that we are going to be considering that possibility also for this year, maintaining dividend, of course, and also by undertaking, when it is justified, share buyback programs or acquisitions of companies that could further help Teleperformance, and we could also pay back part of our debt.
Because we exist in quite an unstable universe, and one of our fundamental goals throughout all of this is. To conclude, I would like to say that we are a high-performance global organization that is constantly changing. We are riding and integrating waves of technology, just as we have for 40 years, and our aim is to consistently deliver a wide range of services to our clients. Thank you for listening, and I'd like to give the floor to Olivier Rigaudy. Merci. Merci, Daniel. Bonjour, mesdames. Bonjour, messieurs. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to quickly run down the financial results for 2023, as they were published a couple of weeks ago already. And we'll also be looking at the figures for the first quarter of 2024, which was published at the end of April. So what about 2023?
Well, quite paradoxically, the environment is changing extremely quickly, as, Mr. Julien just explained as part of his speech, and let me explain what we've been doing to continue to grow and continue to create value. There are three fundamental things. First of all, we continue to innovate and to integrate new products, including using, artificial intelligence and LLMs. Secondly, continuing to be flexible in our execution and also knowing how to adapt our solutions and our markets to guarantee further growth.
Thirdly, and this is my area of expertise, keeping costs down, and that's something that we've been able to do, particularly last year, by streamlining sites, streamlining usages, so that our operating margin rate can reach record highs, and keeping a good, tight control over our cash spending, our investment, WCR , and taxes, so that free cash flow can be as high as possible. That frees up money to pay back debt, to give it back to the investors, or to follow through on acquisitions. So here we have the 2023 financials as they were published. If you look at the comparison, it's with 2022. The numbers are a little bit special this year, because 2023, as published, includes the Majorel acquisition and also include a full two months following that acquisition.
So at the right of the presentation, we have the TP figures, so excluding two months of Majorel, so that you can have a more like for like understanding of profitability of the company, excluding acquisitions that came in at the end of last year. There, there are a number of things that we need to say about this. First of all, the like-for-like growth, 5.1%. Some people thought that was low, but I'll be coming back to the explanation of that. This is probably the highest growth across the entire sector. In fact, probably, in fact, very likely the highest growth of any business process outsourcing companies. Many others did a lot less well than we did last year, and it was a special year, as you would have gathered. Secondly, and this is important, we've been able to increase our margin rate.
The published margin rate 15.5% with the two months of Majorel, as you can see on the left part of the slide. But on the right-hand part of the slide, excluding Majorel, because Majorel, we haven't had that long to work with them, only two months, we were still able to deliver 15.9% margin rate, which is a record for Teleperformance. This is important to remember because this was a year with its ups and downs, with its challenges, but it is still the year we've been able to put in the best growth in the sector and the year in which we've been able to have the highest operating ratio as well. It's worth noting, and I'll be coming back to some other things in a minute, such as cash flow elements, which were particularly high this year as well.
To better understand changes in revenue, we need to explain a few things here. Here, we're comparing the published revenue from last year, EUR 8.154 billion-EUR 8.345 billion. What happened in between? There were EUR 600 million worth of external effects, non-recurring external effects. That's significant. Forex accounts for EUR 350 million from various currency changes that were bad for us last year. And very specifically, we also had hyperinflation, which came and weighed down our revenue in two countries, especially Turkey and Argentina, which are experiencing very high inflation rates, and that pushed down our revenue by EUR 32 million.
On top of all of this, remember that last year I explained that we were able to sign some exceptional COVID contracts, such as with European governments to help keep people informed about COVID. Of course, these contracts ended, and it's a good thing, but they do play into our comparison between 2022 and 2023. So overall, EUR 600 million, basically, we started the year down EUR 600 million in revenue versus the previous year. So we started the year off at EUR 7.5 billion, and then on top of that, you have about EUR 400 million in organic growth and EUR 400 million further, which is the growth that we were able to get from the acquisition of Majorel over the 2 months at the end of last year. Now, that's an overview of revenue changes over the year.
So EUR 600 million negative effects, EUR 400 million in scope with the acquisition of Majorel, and just under EUR 400 million in organic growth. That's the 5.1% growth that I explained earlier, which is the best in sector. Now, the sources of this growth are important to note as well. The spread is... How can I put this? It's pretty even across our two main business lines. We've got the core services, and we've got the specialized services. The core services account for EUR 207 million in growth. A little bit down in Asia-Pacific and North America, a little bit up in the Latin and Spanish-speaking world, Latin America, Spain. Negative growth in the American world is noteworthy, and the large offshoring effect was also felt this year.
Shifting revenue from higher-priced countries such as the U.S. towards countries that have lower operating costs and therefore lower revenue, such as India or the Philippines. These are two different things that affect revenue and margin differently. EUR 200 million from our core services, EUR 180 million from specialized services, with a very good growth, 16.1% organic growth, which is highly satisfactory for us, and that is continuing into 2024. The reason for this is that Teleperformance is probably the company in the sector that has the best balance in terms of customers and geographical presence. As you can see, we are pretty evenly spread across all types of businesses all around the world and across countries as well.
America, Europe, South America, and all businesses such as administrations, automotive industry, healthcare, hotels, et cetera, et cetera. So the advantage that we have at Teleperformance is that if a company or a country or a business is down, we can offset that with other parts of our portfolio, and that makes us much more stable than some of our competitors that are far more focused on particular sectors or particular countries. Operating profit here, operating profit, this is including the 2 months of Majorel. There's not much that is particularly noteworthy other than the current EBIT. A lot of the other figures have already been mentioned. There are 2 numbers that are important on this slide, however. This is some accounting effects, so no impact on our cash position.
Amortization due to acquisitions, and some other accounting effects that won't have any real impact on our balance sheet. The other effects are the important ones. They are largely stable, except for the Majorel transaction costs, which are also booked this year. For net profit, there are two important things. There's no surprises on the financial profit, and rates have been going up throughout the year. No surprises there. We've been doing our best with our treasury and financial teams to do what we can, but we have experienced negative impact on the variable part of our debt, and also our debt base has increased, given that we put out EUR 2 billion to buy Majorel at the end of the year.
So there's a volume effect and a rate effect that come together to explain the financial profit, although we've still got margin rates that are acceptable, given the circumstances. We're going to continue to work in the line of cost reduction, although it can sometimes be difficult. Our profit is slightly down. That is in large part due to the accounting effects that I mentioned on the previous slide. But even that drop is relatively small. Let's talk about our cash position, and this is something that I would like to underline. It's very important. Free Cash Flow, as Mr. Julien said just a few minutes ago, is up by more than EUR 100 million this year. That's a record for Teleperformance.
We hope that we're going to be able to continue in that same line in 2024 with EUR 800 million in free cash flow generated this year. That is, of course, keeping costs low, keeping supplier costs low, and by keeping our investments at 2.5% of revenue. We're able to better control our spending, our investment across all countries around the world, and we're able to continue to maintain a remote working ratio, which is relatively high, around 40%, which has helped us avoid investing in new offices. Now, very quickly, this slide, I think, is the one that speaks the most to Teleperformance's performance. We've gone from 95 million to more than EUR 800 million. We're hoping for more than EUR 900 million in free cash flow next year.
This goes to show how solid the company is and how good we are at generating free, free cash flow and how we can continue to develop. This is probably the most striking indicator of the performance of the company. Our financial structure, we touched on this a little bit earlier. We are continuing to be very cautious about our financial structure. Of course, we started off the year with EUR 2.6 billion in debt. We've been able to reduce that debt using those EUR 812 million in cash flow, but we did buy Majorel.
That was in part in shares and in part through debt, adding a further EUR 2 billion in debt, and the dividend that we paid out, and, the share buyback programs, contributed to bring us to EUR 4.5 billion in debt, with, EUR 800 million, which is actually nearer, EUR 3.7 billion, if you include all of the effects that I just mentioned. The share buyback program that I mentioned, is part of this because of low share prices last year, and that is perfectly legitimate to do. Pro forma, however, we are still at a 2.18 times gearing ratio, with our, BBB rating with stable outlook, which is maintained, which is very important to us and sets us apart from our competitors.
Just to wrap up on our financing, our net debt is EUR 3.7 billion. Average cost of debt, 3.27%, which is acceptable. Our maturities, our average maturities are quite far out, and our teams have been preferring fixed rates, thinking that rates are likely to continue to increase. So we're pretty well hedged. We were pretty well hedged against increasing rates, with one third of our debt exposed to variable rates. We have been able to maintain our good access to liquidity through bonds, banking loans, and bond issuers. I'd like to remind you that we issued EUR 1.5 billion in bonds last year to fund the Majorel acquisition, and that was done in perfectly acceptable financial conditions.
What is the return for shareholders? The dividend has remained stable at 3.85 EUR, which is a 30% payout range, so 48% of the revenue is paid back to the shareholders, to which you should add share buybacks, at the time, EUR 366 million. So we've paid back almost EUR 600 million to shareholders out of a cash flow of EUR 800 million, which shows how well treated the shareholders have been this year. Just a few words on revenues for the first quarter 2024. The first quarter revenues were published last month. We are on a new dimension here because we have a growth of 27% with a strong addition from Majorel. Pro forma growth include coming as Mr.
Julien said, from a very high base of 11% in the first quarter last year. We continue to roll out AI and generative AI solutions in order to remain a step ahead for our clients. The integration plan with Majorel is going well and should step up in the weeks and months ahead. We expect free cash flow to increase and to continue the payback to shareholders. We have a strong balance sheet. The revenues are EUR 2.5 billion per quarter, meaning approximately EUR 10 billion in revenues per annum. We emphasize, we confirm our financial targets as announced to the financial community in March. I'll wind up saying a few words about the share price and share ownership.
You see a chart here of the share price over the past 10 years. It fell sharply in 2023. It still outperformed the CAC Index, but it fell sharply due to the perception of the perceived disruption of the sector because of AI, and we think that this perception will be adjusted in the weeks and months ahead. A few points on the share ownership of your company. We are beginning to have a core shareholding further to the purchase of Majorel. The two main shareholders of Majorel have come into the capital of Teleperformance. Bertelsmann, 3.6%, and Saham, 3.6%, together with Daniel Julien and our treasury stock and individual shareholders.
We see individual shareholders accounting for 10% of the capital, which is far more than before. Geographically, North America is almost 40% of our shareholders. UK is 17%. France only accounts for 14% of our shareholders. So that's what I wanted to say of about the financial statements for 2023 and early 2024. I'll hand over to Madame Gauthier, who will now be talking to you about the corporate and social and environmental responsibility, CSR. Hello, everybody. So I'll introduce and present the CSR approach of the group. I recall that our approach is based on four key commitments. Number one, to be the market's preferred employer.
This is reflected in the obtaining of Best Employer certificate from the Great Place to Work Institute and reflects many programs, initiatives and investments in HR commitment of our employees on working conditions. This commitment is linked to the next one, which is promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion in every possible manner. We have a key asset here, which is rolled out in many countries in order to ensure that this approach is appropriate in each country culture. I'll go back on gender parity in a moment. Regarding the environment, since 2021, we have decarbonization objectives that have been validated by SBTi, which means that our goals are sufficiently ambitious to be consistent with the Paris Agreement.
We're ahead of our trajectory, and to go further, we've submitted new goals to SBTi, which are in the process of being approved, aligned on an even more ambitious trajectory and will include the acquisition of Majorel. And finally, the group commits to be a force of good, a citizen player in two ways. First of all, by developing the local economy. Teleperformance provides many, many job opportunities, even for people who may be far removed from the job market, and secondly, through our Citizen of the World program. All this is underpinned by our support to the United Nations Global Compact that we signed up to in 2011, and in this respect, we commit to promote the 10 principles of the Pact and to comply with the Sustainable Development Goals.
You may have heard of the CSRD, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive from the EU It comes into effect next year. We have updated our dual materiality analysis in order to, on all durability issues, to be able to measure the material reality of impact and financial measure. You can see this on the matrix. This matrix can change. It will be updated on the basis of the most recent publications and also market trends, sector benchmarks, and changes in the organizational structure of the group. I would also like to talk about some key results. It's very important to have some figures in terms of CSR. It's not an abstract concept. There are important significant KPIs here. In 2023, 99% of our employees were working in an environment certified as Great Place to Work.
So that means 72 of our countries, where we have a presence, are certified. Over 220,000 employees gave us a mark of 79% in the Trust Index. We provided over 56 million hours of training in 2023, with a lot of internal promotion, promoting internal mobility, career development. Over 60% of our managers account for these positions in-house. On gender parity, we're improving in the presence, in the representation of women at senior level. We have hired over almost 100,000 people for a first work experience in terms of security in our sector. This is very important in our sector, as Mr. Julien pointed out. We renewed the global certification, ISO 27701, for all of our operations.
In the environment, we were able to reduce our carbon emissions by half since 2019, emergency aid. So that's just so that you have some figures, a few figures that illustrate our progress in our CSR. Going back to the 600 key executives in the group, we emphasize the consumption of energy with two main areas here. Number one, increased adoption of renewable energy in our sites, and renewed energy efficiency. This deployment, this climate strategy, led to our getting a very good score in this regard from CDP. Looking at gender parity, all this is improving. We have a balanced headcount, 50% women, globally.
Women in senior positions has gone up to, with 38% in the senior management committee, which is ahead of the group's objectives, and 30% of women in the executive committee. All the initiatives regarding gender parity are underpinned by the group, TP Women, which is a recruitment and promotion process. You will recall that a year and a half ago, we signed up to UNI, the trade unions federation. Local agreements have been signed in several—5 countries: Colombia, Poland, Romania, Jamaica, and El Salvador. This concludes the first wave, and on the first anniversary of the agreement, UNI published a press release that you can see on your right, which commends the improvements that have been made, showing that the group has remained loyal to its commitments.
If I remain on the social aspect, we remain vigilant on human rights. In 2023, we updated the group's human rights policy, we updated the detailed map of risks and impacts in human rights across the whole of the value chain, and we also rolled out many training programs in this respect, be it at group level, by following the accelerator for business and human rights under the UN pact. Providing training for all managers and training a network of specialists in human rights in the group's main subsidiaries. We. And finally, and we're very attached to this, our program, Citizens of the World, enabled us to generate EUR 7.6 billion in donations.
Employees generously contributed 42,000 hours of work time to the charities, and our program was able to help over 220,000 persons in partnership with UNICEF. I will now hand over to Evangelos Papadopoulos, who is the social auditor and the board member representing employees, who will explain his key role within the organization. Thank you all very much.
The following presentation will be given in English. We do have simultaneous interpreting that's being made available to you.
Hello, everyone. My name is Evangelos Papadopoulos. As already mentioned, I'm the company's director representing the employees, and I'm here to present you, first of all, my resume, my experience on this company. Started back in 2004 as an agent, moved over to another position as a supervisor. In 2014, it was my first, let's say, experience in the social dialogue, where I was elected as an employee representative to the company's European Works Council. In 2018, I took another role, another challenge in operations on the field as an operations manager for a trust and safety account, what we call outside in the world, content moderation. In 2020, the European Works Council voted me in, elected me as one of the directors representing the employees in the company's Board of Directors .
On 2022, another change followed, where I became an account manager for a specific, trust and safety client. Last year, my mandate was continued. I was re-elected as a director representing the employees by the EWC again, but I also transitioned from a local role to a global role, as a global social auditor. And here, I'm going to tell you a little bit about this new role, a new, unique role, I would say. I don't know if it's only in this industry or globally. But first of all, what is the mission of this role? It is to elevate the employee voice... Ensure ethical practices are upheld and identify and mitigate risks that could harm the employees. How it's done?
By regular on-site visits to our global locations, by holding confidential roundtables with the employees, and by analyzing data and trends to identify areas for improvement. What data? All of the employee channels available. Why it matters? It matters because happy employees equals happy customers, happy customers equals happy clients, and this means a very strong company. Also, ethical practices are super essential for long-term sustainability and stakeholder trust, and last but not least, to prevent any kind of future crisis. The framework is quite simple. On a high level, three steps: listen to the employees, analyze the different data, and act upon. In my capacity, I'm able to conduct 300 roundtables annually, visit 60 different locations, and personally connect with over 2,000 employees.
The last slide, which is what I would call, "So what?" It's the impact and value of this position. By empowering the employees, by giving them a direct line to the senior leadership, I report to the Board of Directors , which is sitting here, and also to the three people sitting on this table to the right. So all of those employees that I have, direct communication with, it's like they're speaking directly to Bhupinder, directly to Daniel. So we're creating, we're fostering the culture of open communication and trust, where the employees feel heard and valued. Another very, very good thing that we will, this role is helping with is proactive risk mitigation. With the regular on-site visits and the in-depth conversations, I'm helping identifying potential problems before they become major issues, thus safeguarding our reputation and ensuring ethical practices. Third item, driving performance.
We all understand that if we address the employee concerns, we're going to create a more engaged workforce, and this means that is crucial for long-term productivity and innovation. I think you've heard that already. And last but not least, shareholder value. By prioritizing the employee well-being and the responsible business practices, we're building a sustainable company that can weather all the incoming challenges and deliver consistent value to the shareholders. That's it on my end. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here to talk about two things that I'm sure you find extremely exciting, governance and compensation and benefits, benefits. Now, The lead director is on the screen, but it's not me in the photo, as I'm sure you might have noticed. All of this can be found on the Universal Registration Document on page 191, and further, which explains a governance and a compensation for corporate officers. I'm going to be running down some of the highlights as quickly as possible. The Board of Directors is currently made up of 16 members, two of which represent employees, Evangelos being one of them. Nine different nationalities on the Board of Directors , 43% of them are women, and 57 are men.
The Board of Directors is still mainly independent, 71% made up of professionals who are recognized and experienced in fields that are diverse and international. In 2023, the Board of Directors met 11 times, including a 5-day seminar, which was about strategy, and there was also a meeting of independent directors with a 97% attendance rate for 2023. We have three subcommittees made up mainly of independent board members and presided, chaired by an independent board member, 97% attendance rate, and you have the description of everything that they've been doing throughout the year in the Universal Registration Document as well. On the screen, we have the members of the board. We will be asking you for the renewal of the term of three of them: Mr. Thomas Weisel, Kevin Nazemi , Mr. Elalamy, and Mrs.
Daubry, and the renewal of four, Mr. Thomas Weisel, Mr. Elalamy, Mrs. Cantaloube, and Mr. Bery. This means that we will be able to maintain a highly experienced international Board of Directors . If you vote for resolutions 14 to 20, we would have 7 women and 9 men on the board, and a high level of independence of the board members. The makeup of the committees on the 15th of February 2024, the board decided to set up a new governance structure for the period from the 31st of December this year onwards, with Mr. Daniel Julien, the founder and CEO, and Mr. Bhupinder Singh, who is sitting to his left, so to the right for you.
As the deputy who would both be acting as Co-Director General s, they will be taking strategic decisions and sharing operational responsibilities and strategic decisions. This new structure will facilitate management for development of the group, will facilitate the integration of Majorel, and will also help optimize opportunities arising from AI, as Daniel Julien just explained. This is also a step towards the separation on the first of January 2026, between the Chairman of the board and the CEO, Mr. Bhupinder Singh, who will become Director General from that date onwards. Your Co-Director General s are assisted by the members of ExCom and 45 key managers across the group, together, the General Direction Committee. They are mainly tasked with implementing the goals set by the Board of Directors . Now let's talk about compensation and benefits for corporate officers.
Now I'm going to summarize the main ins and outs of the compensation policy as voted by this AGM. For the implementation of the 2023 policy in the ex post, we have the performance criteria that are again in the URD. The compensation policies voted by the AGM in April 2023 were applied with no modification, and that led to the Board of Directors to observe that the conditions as set for variable compensation for corporate officers in 2023, and for the executive corporate officers, were only achieved at 60%. That means that their annual bonuses will only be paid out at a 60% rate for the short-term targets, and for the long-term targets, so the performance shares, 66.67%.
The fifth resolution will aim to approve all of the information relative to the compensation policy for 2023 for all corporate officers. Regarding the vote on compensation for 2023 for our Chairman and CEO, the benefits and bonuses paid are in line with the criteria set out by the AGM. There is a fixed component, there's an annual variable component based on targets, a long-term variable component as well in performance shares and benefits in kind and a non-competition clause. The variable annual component for 2023 is 60% of the target. This is due to the partial achievement of the performance criteria set by the Board of Directors for 2023.
The number of performance shares to be paid out in 2023 are 66.67% due to the partial achievement of the targets, so 22,000 performance shares. However, no shares will be delivered to Mr. Julien, as he personally decided in last March, given the drop in share price to not request those 33,000 and some shares, and the board thanks him for that. The seventh resolution will seek your approval for this. Regarding the compensation for Mr. Olivier Rigaudy, this is seven- the seventh resolution, the previous one was the sixth resolution. This is set out in line with the policy, including a fixed annual and a variable annual component based on the performance and a long-term variable with performance shares and benefits in kind.
I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that the annual variable component as part of this term for 2023, also are 60% of the target amount due to the partial achievement of the performance goals. Regarding resolution number 8, this is a vote on the approval ex post of the absence of any compensation and any in-kind benefits paid out for 2023, or attributed to Mr. Bhupinder Singh, the Deputy Director General for 2023. As a reminder, Mr. Bhupinder Singh received no compensation or advantages or benefits due to his position as Director General for the last six months of last year. On slide 24, sorry, you can see resolution 9, which is the ex ante vote on the compensation policy for 2024, applicable to members of the Board of Directors.
The policy is unchanged since the previous year, so no further comment required. With a fixed component, extra compensation for the lead director, there are also compensation elements based on how far they have to travel, attendance rate,... and also compensation for any working contracts, if they were previously employees. You can see all the references on the slide. Tenth resolution is the ex ante vote on the compensation policy for 2024 for the Chairman and CEO. Unchanged versus the previous year, with fixed annual, variable annual, and long-term variable components and in-kind benefits. The variable annual component is expressed as a maximum in this case, not a target, and no additional compensation will be paid out if there is overperformance.
The variable component is based on financial criteria and targets, and non-financial criteria based on priorities that are identified by the Board of Directors . These performance criteria and the achievement level of that will be set out in the corporate governance report. Resolution 11 is on the ex ante approval of the compensation for Mr. Bhupinder Singh, Deputy Director General . As part of this, the Compensation and Benefits Committee has taken into account the period during which Mr. Julien and Mr. Singh will be working as co-Director General . Therefore, the structure of compensation for Mr. Singh is set out as such, maintaining the work contract as chairman in charge of transformation, and providing further compensation as a corporate officer, with some adjustments and tweaks to align the compensation structure with the group policy.
Compensation policy for 2024 is therefore based on a compensation as an employee of an entity within Teleperformance, also as a corporate officer, and then we have a variable component, benefits in kind, and a non-competition clause. Periods have been brought down to 12 months, so that the compensation paid out is no more than 24 months if the contract is discontinued. Components are based on financial and non-financial criteria, which is the same between the Director General and the Deputy Director General . You can also find this in the URD. Finally, on my final slide, we have compensation for our Deputy Director General in charge of finance. We're asking you to approve the compensation package in a way that takes into account the new complexity and changes within the group.
The compensation policy for that position has not changed since 2018. The work contract as Financial Director for the group is maintained, and the amounts payable are unchanged for that task. The function is about 10%, of the overall compensation for the fixed plus variable components, and this is only compensation for their mandate as a corporate officer. The variable and, long-term variable, components are, subject to the same financial and non-financial criteria as, previously mentioned. You can find all of this in the corporate governance report. That's what I wanted to share, and I would like to thank you for your attention.
Merci. Merci. Thank you, Mr. Thomas, for your very efficient presentation. I'll hand over to Mr. Patrick Suissa, representing Deloitte, the statutory auditor of the company.
Good afternoon, shareholders. As you will have seen, Deloitte will continue in the same vein, and on behalf of the statutory auditors, on behalf of PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte, the result of our work on the corporate financial statements in 2023. So consistent with professional standards, our work sought to ensure reasonable assurance that the group's consolidated financial standards, based on IFRS standards and the financial statements of Teleperformance, drawn up in accordance with French accounting standards, did not display any significant anomalies. 2023 was marked by a challenging geopolitical and macroeconomic climate, with the significant acquisition of that of Majorel, under which Teleperformance led to a capital increase. Against this exceptional volatile backdrop, we adjusted our due diligence in order to obtain all the required assurances.
Our audit approach took into account the specific features of the group in terms of its businesses, regulatory requirements, organizational risks, and internal control in an international context. Further to the initial consolidation of Majorel, the financial statements of 2023 are impacted by non-recurring items due to FX impact, negative factors, as well as COVID-related factors. The audit led us to form an opinion that was set out in our results. With the agreement of your chairperson, I will not read out the full report, but I will sum up the key points as follows, with three main points here. Number one: our report on consolidated financial statements, pages 344-348
Of the Universal Registration Document highlights two key points of our audit work regarding significant items in the financial statements, or the sensitivity to different assumptions, or requiring the judgment of the management committee. We have the accounting handling of the acquisition of Majorel, and the second point concerns depreciation tests on goodwill on the consolidated balance sheet in the amount of EUR 5.1 billion before the finalization of the acquisition price of Majorel. Secondly, our report on the pages 384-388 of the Universal Registration Document , and are covered by the first resolution. This includes two key points. One of them is shared with the acquisition of Majorel, handled on a French accounting principles.
And number two, the evaluation of participation securities for a net value of EUR 6 billion, with a major impact for the group. For each of these key points, we examined and considered management's views, we reviewed the main assumptions, including the financial models for the applied evaluation of assets, and we looked more closely at the debt load of the group, the increase of which reflects the funding for over EUR 2 billion for the acquisition of Majorel. And we agree with the amounts that have been booked with the correct information appearing in the annexes.
Our work required specific due diligence on the publication of the financial reports in digital format, and our evaluation is part of the audit approach, and supports our professional judgment, and enables us to state, without reservation, and to certify Teleperformance's consolidated financial statements for 2023. We produced various reports, some of which concern resolutions that will be put to the vote. This concerns our report on related party agreements, page 285 of the Universal Registration Document . This is for resolution number 4, that you will be called to vote on, and also concerns the various reports in page 24, 20- of the convening brochure regarding operations on the capital of your companies. These are presented in resolution 22 and 26, and we do not have any particular comments on these resolutions.
The other reports do not have any associated resolutions and are shown in this slide, concerning mainly the pro forma accounts, simulating the integration of Majorel on a full year basis, and the consolidated declaration of extra financial performance on with social-environmental information, which is part of a dynamic including more financial and extra financial information with respect to the CSRD. And there's no particular comment on our part. Thank you very much. We will now move to the question and answer session. So perhaps we can. So your company received 16 written questions from 2 shareholders of the company. The answers that have been sent by the company are on the website, under the General Meeting section. If there are any further questions, so, so we'll start off with taking questions in the room.
Everybody's in the room, so we'll give priority to those who are attending in person. Done. So we're ready to take your questions. Yeah. And a microphone is on its way. Good afternoon. I'd like to know whether in, given the forthcoming presidential election in the United States, in November, you have already planned a specific strategy depending on who will be elected. What is your strategy? Well, if I did have a strategy, perhaps I wouldn't actually be telling- Good afternoon. I have four questions. I'm an individual shareholder. Number one, the share buyback. Last year, you implemented a major share buyback program. I'd like to know where you stand, how many shares you bought back, how many you've canceled, and do you intend to go ahead with a new share buyback program further to the acquisition of Majorel?
I have a question on Majorel, which is a global leader in its sector. Have you identified growth areas in geographical terms and also in sector terms? And a question on investments for start-ups. Do you intend to invest in venture capital project? And what is your view regarding the potential listing of the company? And a question for Mr. Singh: You're the future CEO, have you identified any specific areas for transformation in the group? Well, that's quite a lot. Regarding share buybacks, Olivier will talk about that. Well, we announced a share buyback program of EUR 500 million last August. As we speak, EUR 420 million have been bought back. We'll have a board meeting that will be probably canceling a large amount of shares further to the General Meeting.
The program is not over yet, and as you know, this is governed by strict rules, which do not enable us to go much faster. We're going to try to complete the EUR 500 million program in the weeks and months ahead, before the board comes to a decision regarding a possible new program. As Mr. Julien has pointed out, and I've pointed out, we place a lot of importance on having a debt load that's under control, even if we expect interest rates to decline, and we want our. We're very prudent, we want our debt ratio to be less than twice, two times EBITDA, so we'll be making the decision on that in the months ahead.
As a global leader, and regarding opportunities, of course, there's one geographical area which still represents a major opportunity because it's continuing to grow very rapidly, and that is the Southeast Asia region. It's still a marginal part of our business, but it's the economic area that's the most buoyant in today's world. And there's a second point in geographical terms, namely, that Africa, and in particular, English-speaking Africa, is drawing increasing interest from American companies. As we have a presence in a number of English-speaking African countries, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, we think that we will have growth, in particular for offshore services in this region.
In Africa, at present, we have a dominant multilingual company, which is based in Egypt, where we employ almost 20,000 people, and they are an excellent workforce, and this should continue to develop strongly. Now, we have the service business services. With Majorel , we have been able to establish areas of know-how by centralizing a lot of our in-house services. We've developed a back office know-how in India, and we intend to develop the back office business line, be it for help desks or for finance or for human resources in India. And I would add, the most important point in the short term is that we review the engine, as it were, of the economies, which are the key drivers for us, which is the United States and Europe.
We need to see them recovering, moving ahead, and you can move ahead with innovation, with new products, new practices, because new products and new practices require a learning process, and that's always how the company has developed. 2023, apart from the GenAI bomb, as it were, 2023 was not a very strong year in terms of consumer behavior and consumer practices. Now, on venture capital, we are more in the process of... Well, it's work in progress. We're going to deliver, we're reducing the debt load, we're at a key moment here. This is a key moment, and everybody, once everybody agrees on the same and comes to the same conclusion, then we'll start taking an interest again in innovative companies.
So now I'll hand over to Bhupinder, deliver his vision of transformation for the future.
... We have been in transformation for the past few years, and transformation is a very commonly used word, so let me try to simplify what we are trying to do in our transformation. Essentially, we are trying to change two things. One, what we do, and two, how we do it. So what we do, as you know, we are a leader in customer experience. We have been leaders in customer experience for decades. Over the past few years, we have been trying to evolve ourselves beyond customer experience, so getting into adjacent lines of activities and businesses. And as you know, today, pure customer experience is about 55% or so of our business. So we're already underway in that, quite underway in that journey, and we'll continue to accelerate that. That's one element. Second element is how we do it.
Again, historically, it was more driven by labor cost arbitrage and process standardization. Obviously, that will continue, but bringing in what we have been saying for past few years, high tech and high touch. High tech, meaning leveraging the best available technologies. Earlier, it was conversational AI, now it's GenAI, tomorrow, it may be some other version of GenAI. So leveraging the best available technology to be able to deliver simpler, faster, better, and lower cost operations to our clients. At the same time, we are a people company. We employ 500,000 people across the world, so bringing in high touch. Daniel touched upon EI at TP, leveraging, so it's a blend of high tech and high touch to be able to deliver the right level of service to our clients. So it's continue to accelerate those areas is what we'll do.
Thank you, Bhupinder. Other question? Sir.
Denis Branche, Phitrust. I'd like to come back to your question on share buybacks. Now, you just said that your debt ratio, your gearing, is a little bit higher than you would like, that you're in a difficult situation, a tight spot. I'm not sure if that's what you would call it, or if you mean you're in a tight spot from from a financial or a strategic perspective. But I don't really understand why you're pitching a share buyback program with share cancellation, given these circumstances. Can you tell us the reasoning behind that? Because you might decide to keep things as they are. And also, what are you going to do with your self-controlled partner? I think that's 6%. What's the strategy with that? For the self-controlled shares, that's the situation we're at right now.
But, the controlled shares, the self-owned shares, might change as early as this evening with the cancellation of some of those. It's gonna be brought down significantly after this AGM. There's no delicate situation from a financial perspective. No, no, no, there's no tight spot. It's the macroeconomic situation as a whole that's a little bit complicated. You know, when you're sailing on rough seas, sometimes you need to make decisions quickly and then maybe adjust your strategy, but you need to make sure that you're making the right decisions quickly.
Last year, as we were seeing a clear expression of lack of trust in the company, despite the fact that we fully believed in the company, and we fully believe in the company right now, we felt that it was the right time to buy back shares. That's the decision that we made. Our strategy on that topic is changing right now, and that is because the macroeconomic environment in which we are operating means that I don't know if in 2025, things are all of a sudden going to improve, or maybe they're all of a sudden going to nosedive due to deglobalization and various geopolitical events that we're already seeing. All of this means that we're going to be prioritizing deleveraging for the time being.
Even at 2x debt to EBITDA, we are one of the best in the industry. If you look at other people in the industry, they are north of 3, 3-5x. Even with 2x, we are the best in the industry, but we would like to further deleverage.
Further to that, we're the only company that has an S&P triple B rating. It's important to underline that, and it's a differentiating factor from a financial perspective in the way we can raise funds, but it should also be seen as reassuring to all of our major clients. That being said, environments can vary. When people are feeling optimistic, I think that having a 2 or 2.5x leverage gearing ratio is seen as overly low. When things get tight, well, you know, I've got a kind of farmer background, so I prefer to have my gearing at under 2. Good morning. My name is Benoit Rieg . I'd like to thank you for all of your explanations. Two questions.
First of all, it does not appear to me that the Board of Directors or a majority of the Board of Directors were able to seize opportunities with a low share price recently to increase their own holdings, which are still relatively low, seeing as you gave us the breakdown in the annual report. Now, it's very clear. It doesn't seem that there are very many people out there who share your optimism about 2025 to increase their own holdings of company stock, or maybe there are divergent opinions within the Board of Directors itself. Secondly, and this is a more important question, you very clearly explained that you have 250 projects aiming to leverage all of the benefits provided by new technologies and AI to further improve your services.
And I imagine that that includes driving down cost, making them, better for the client, et cetera, et cetera. Are you not concerned that some of your major clients, such as, tech clients, social media, some of those major sectors, are you not concerned that some of them might not also see all of the benefits to this technology and decide to, take some of those services back in-house, the services that they've outsourced to you for the last 20 years? And a follow-up question to that, by the way, in 2024, are you seeing in any of your clients, any trends in that direction? Now, I, I much prefer your second question to your first. For the first question, you'll have to ask them personally.
I have a very good friend who was a member of the board, but stopped being on the board because of the independence ratios. I think that the independence and non-independent ratios are quite artificial, but I have a very good friend who has bought up a significant number of our shares, even if I haven't seen him for a while. He was a board member up until recently. Now, I see—I haven't bought any personally, necessarily, but putting 35,000 shares back into the community, I see as an expression of confidence. Now, to be perfectly honest with you, I wouldn't be surprised at the level of activity from my new Saham shareholders. Maybe, I don't know. They've just joined, so maybe they're waiting. Next, improving our services.
Now, we are human beings, and we make choices based on the ones that we have available to us. We're in an environment that is made up of people and is also made up of the exponential growth of new technologies. Taking a step back from the exponential growth of new technologies would be business suicide. And there's something extremely simple that's at play here. The end user is still a human being. The end user is still a human being, and a human being is made up of logic and emotions. And as we showed you earlier, maybe 90% of decision-making comes from emotions. That's where we feel that we can make a difference. That's where we are good. All of the bigwigs at, in the Silicon Valley are our clients. Any name that might come to mind, they're all clients of ours.
And of course, they're good at that technology. Of course, they're investing billions in these technologies. They might not use our technology. They'll tell us to use their technology, but they'll still have us do that work for them. Our micro service solutions are for people who don't already have something available to them. But it's a very dynamic relationship. We have a client, one of the big tech companies. They were major players in funding for large language models. Their teams are working with our teams to see how we could better use their technology and some of the applications that we provide to them. Basically, at the end of the day, you never really know who is the client and who is the supplier, because we're working hand in hand. Twenty-five years ago, Teleperformance was very different.
We had people who were our clients, giving us orders, and the client was always right. The customer is always right. Nowadays, we have technological innovation centers. Nowadays, we have digital teams, and a large part of change in services is the fruit of a partnership with our clients.
I think there were three parts to the question. One is just the development of AI and its usage in TP. We do use AI, we have been using it for many years, and we'll continue to use it even more, both for internal TP operations and external client-facing operations. That goes without saying. I think the second part you had was... Will it force or will it drive companies to insource or outsource? I'll come to that, but let me give this third part which you asked, which is specifically, are the big technology companies of Silicon Valley, are you already beginning to see reduction in demand from 2024? Let me answer that specific one first. Actually, it's the other way around. We are increasing—we've seen more demand from Silicon Valley.
We did see a bit of a reduction because of the reasons that Daniel explained, year of efficiency, end of pandemic, and hence reduction some of the spend, but we're actually beginning to see an increase of that in 2024. So contrary to the overall GenAI hype, this, the reduction is not coming from the big technology companies. Then the final part, which is the second part, which you had asked, which is will it drive more insourcing and hence reduced outsourcing? The way we think about it is that's a different decision. Whether to employ AI or not, is different from whether to outsource or insource. Because even today, technically, whatever we do can be insourced, and it is done today. Even today, all the activities that Teleperformance does, two-thirds of that is in-house, and only one-third is outsourced.
So it's a case of glass half full or half empty. One may say that, "Look, I've got two-thirds, which is still in-house. I can get more from there." Or one may say that, "Okay, two-thirds is already out, so two-thirds is in-house, maybe they will take back the one-third." So those are two different decisions. It's nothing to do with AI.
Well, I hope we've answered your question, sir. Good. I think we've covered questions. Right. Questions that came through the website, there were three on the share buyback program, which you've covered in your answers. The questions were: Will there be another share buyback program? What is the strategy on share buybacks? And are we considering giving free shares rather than doing share buybacks? Another question is, what type of sector or business would you emphasize for your next acquisition in specialized services? Oh, well, I'll never say that. I'll never answer that question. I'll tell you one thing. The financial community, well, not everybody, but part of the financial community, which was not aware of the secret, criticized us for the surprise of the Majorel.
Well, it's good job that it was a surprise, because if there'd been a leak, that particular deal would never have happened. So, until a transaction is completed, we're really not going to say very much until the deal is done. Next question: Why do you communicate very little on your goal of EUR 15 billion in revenues over a 3-5-year time frame, which is in your annual report document? Well, it's an aspiration, it's a goal. At present, we have priorities. Our number one priority is to deliver 2024, rebuild trust, put the share price back where it should be, where it deserves to be.
And of course, with Bhupinder, we'll be working, and we've already been working on some aspects, but our 3-year plan, our 3-year plan or our 4-year plan has not been finalized. And at present, I think in the world we're living in, I think it's very difficult to finalize a 4-year plan because everything is changing much too fast, even though we're fully confident in market growth over the next 4 years. Last question: Do you think the share price will go up over the next 12 months? Well, as an individual, I'm probably the individual shareholder who lost the most money. I hope I'll contribute to the share price going back up again. Thank you very much for the questions.
Your questions were most interesting, and we'll now move to the vote on resolutions, and I'll hand over to Madame Sonia Schaeffer . Thank you. Before we go to the vote, I'll set out the quorum, 45,825 shareholders present with 74.82% of vote shares. I recall that there's a double voting right with registered shares held over four years regarding the majority rule. Your majority votes on a two-third majority for the extraordinary meeting. So you have a voting device for each resolution. If you want to vote for, press 1, if you want to vote against, press 2, and if you wish to abstain, press 3. A message on your device will show that your vote has been registered. The first resolution-...
is the approval of corporate social statements for the year 31st of December, 2023. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Second resolution is the approval of consolidated financial statements for the year ending 31st of December, 2023. Voting open. Voting ends. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Third resolution, approval of allocation of results for 2023, setting of the dividend at EUR 3.85 per share, ex-dividend 28th of this May, payment on the 30th of May. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Fourth resolution is, approval of statutory auditors, special report on regulated agreement, acknowledgement that no new agreements have been concluded. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Fifth resolution is the, approval of the information referred to in Article L. 22-10-9 of the Commercial Code for all company officers. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
Sixth resolution, approval of the fixed variable and exceptional components of total remuneration and benefits paid during 2023 to Mr. Daniel Julien, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Voting open. Vote is closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number seven, approval of the fixed variable and exceptional components of the total remuneration and benefits of any kind paid during 2023 to Mr. Olivier Rigaudy, Deputy Chief Operating Officer. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number eight, acknowledgement and approval of the absence of any element, fixed, variable, exceptional remuneration, and the absence of any benefit in kind paid in respect of 2023 to Mr. Bhupender Singh, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, with effect from the first of July 2023. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number nine, approval of the directors' remuneration policy. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution number 10, approval of the remuneration policy for the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for 2024. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 11, approval of the remuneration policy for the Deputy Executive Officer, Mr. Bhupender Singh. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 12, approval of the remuneration policy for the Deputy CEO and Group Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Olivier Rigaudy. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 13, appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit SAS as statutory auditor in charge of certifying sustainability information. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 14, ratification of the provisional appointment of Mr. Nazemi as a board director. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 15, ratification of the provisional appointment of Mr. Elalamy as a director. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution number 16, renewal of Mr. Elalamy's term of office as a director for three years. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 17, ratification of the provisional appointment of Madame Brigitte Daubry as a director. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. 18th resolution, renewal of Madame Daubry's term of office as a director for three years. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. 19th resolution, renewal of Mr. Julien's term of office as director for three years. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution number 20, renewal of Mr. Boulet's term of office, Mr. Alain Boulet, as a director for two years. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. 21st resolution, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to buy back its own shares under the terms of L. 22-10-62 of the French Commercial Code. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution 22, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the capital and/or debt securities with preemptive subscription rights. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Resolution 23, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and/or securities, giving access to the capital of the company through a public offering without preemptive subscription rights, but with the option to grant a priority subscription period. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. 24th resolution, delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to issue ordinary shares and/or securities through an offering, by means of a public offering referred to in article L. 411-2, with waiver of preemptive subscription rights. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
25th resolution, authorization to increase the amount of issues under the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th resolution, up to their respective ceilings and up to 50% of the initial issue. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.... 26th resolution: Delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the share capital by issuing ordinary shares and or securities, giving access to the share capital to remunerate contributions in kind of shares or securities. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. 27th resolution: Delegation of authority to the Board of Directors to increase the company's capital without preemptive subscription rights, for members of company savings scheme. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted.
28th resolution: Authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to allocate existing shares and/or shares to be issued free of charge to employees and/or certain corporate officers of the company or related companies. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Last resolution, resolution number 29: Powers to be granted to the board for formalities further to today's General Meeting. Voting open. Voting closed. Resolution adopted. Thank you. There are no further items remaining on the agenda. Thank you all very much for being with us. The meeting is adjourned.