Welcome to TP first quarter 2026 revenue conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions- and- answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to Jorge Amar, CEO. Please go ahead.
Excellent. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you are joining us, and thank you for being with us in the TP Q1 2026 revenue update call. My name is Jorge Amar, and as of March 16th, I have the honor of being the CEO of the TP Group. Today, I'm joined by Benoit Gabelle, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, and he will walk us in a bit through the more detailed numbers for today. Before we begin, I just wanna say that I look forward to these communications with the investor community. I've had the pleasure of talking to many of you over my first few weeks in the role, and your conversations are always very energizing. They keep us very honest. They help us sharpen our perspectives, so thank you for your engagement.
Thank you for your perspectives, and thank you for the questions that I'm sure will be very vigorous as always. With that, we have a very structured agenda for today. I will walk us quickly through some of the key highlights of the Q1. I will then hand it over to Benoit for a more detailed update on the walkthrough through the revenue numbers. Then I will just share with you some of the interesting things that I've been hearing by talking to our clients, our partners, our employees, the investor community, and just go through that in a little bit more detail so you can know what to expect for the rest of 2026.
After that, I will open it up for questions as always, and I am sure we already know that you have a few, and we are ready to take them. With that, let me get us into the key highlights of Q1. We start with, as we had anticipated in our last series of conversations, mostly after our annual results, that we were expecting a softer Q1, which is exactly what has played out. The overall revenue of the group came down at EUR 2.433 billion. That is a -2.2% in a like-for-like basis, -6.9% as reported.
What you see there from a Core Services perspective is that indeed the revenue came down at -1.7% like-for-like, reported -6.4%. What we are seeing on the Core Services on one side is a number of our vertical, both from a back office perspective, data labeling, data services perspective, that continues with tremendous double-digit growth, and you will see it a little bit more in detail in a few minutes. On the other side, the headwinds that we're experiencing are mostly three. Let me describe them a little bit more in detail for you. The first one is we see and we experience increased offshoring, which in many ways translates in good growth for some of our delivery locations, but of course, with the corresponding pressure on the top line at an overall level.
We also continue to see the trend that we had started experiencing a few quarters ago on the automation of trust and safety, and we continuously monitor the space as we have seen some developments, mostly in the U.S., for this particular line of business. Last but not least, we have seen that the current geopolitical environment has delayed the ramp-up of some of the contracts that we were expecting in Q1. The combination of those three things are driving the results that we report today. We know them. We don't minimize them, but we know exactly what they are, and we are working for each of them in more detail. When it comes to Specialized Services, revenue for Q1 is down -5.5%, reported is -9.9%. It's around EUR 332 million.
On this case in particular, what we see is two effects. The first one is we continue to operate against a very high basis of comparison for LLS, considering that some of the elements that have impacted this particular company of the group started developing at the end of Q1 2025 in the U.S. On the other side, this is the last quarter that we will see the high basis of comparison for TLScontact, our visa processing business, due to the loss of a contract that we experienced around Q1 last year. Those are the two elements that are explaining the softness in Specialized Services.
I will get into a little bit more detail later on what we are seeing also, not only on the numbers from a revenue perspective, but the momentum that we're getting in the acceleration of our 2026 plan for the Future Forward transformation. We're having a lot of very interesting conversations with clients that are looking for a reliable, transformative partner into their operations, and I will elaborate a little bit more into that. We continue to see great traction of our TP.ai FAB solutions, mostly in some of the new deals that we are getting. Pretty much every deal that we are winning today has a component of these, and I'll expand that in a little bit more detail later. We have also made some changes in our AI leadership, so we are very happy to announce that, we have a new Chief AI Officer for the group.
His name is Andreas Braun, and I will describe his profile later on. We are also reporting that our efficiencies program that we had already reported and highlighted to the investor community continues to be very well on track, which leads us to confirming our 2026 targets. This is just a quick summary. We will get into more details now, so I will pass it on to Benoit, so he can walk us through the revenue breakdown in the next few slides. Benoit?
Thank you, Jorge. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to everyone. We'll now look into more detail on the Q1 2026 revenue. You will see in the press release the detail of the numbers that we are showing now. Jorge, you mentioned the reported decrease of -6.9% overall for the group and a like-for-like negative growth of 2.2%. Just want to give some details about the impact of the acceleration of our TP Future Forward plan, where we have decided to combine all our collection business activities from Core plus AllianceOne into one single management to accelerate on synergies and business efficiencies. That leads us to transferring the AllianceOne revenues from Specialized Services to Americas region starting this year.
Smaller impact, TP Infinity was mostly present in Europe in the past, so was reported in EMEA, APAC. We have seen a growth in the U.S. in the past year. We expect still a good growth for this year, and so we have taken a stance to report the Americas part of TP Infinity into Americas region. Now moving more on the detail of the absolute numbers, we had a review of EUR 2.6 billion in Q1 2025. As you mentioned, Jorge, the biggest part of the decrease that we have observed in Q1 is linked with the effects with an impact of EUR 141 million on our top line.
Now talking more about the like-for-like comparison, EUR 55 million less of revenues, -2.2%, which includes a almost non-material hyperinflation impact of +0.1% linked with our operations in Argentina and in Turkey. We have a perimeter effect linked with the entry into the consolidation of ZP, which was reported only for two months in Q1 2025 and is reported three months this year. Agents Only , a business that we acquired in June 2025 and which has reported revenues this quarter, whereas it was not present in the group in Q1 2025. Moving on to the detail of the revenue by activities. You see that the balance in terms of revenues between Americas, EMEA region, and Specialized Services have not moved very significantly compared to last year.
We have 2% less for Americas balancing with Specialized Services in EMEA and APAC. This is also linked with the impact of the effects because Americas is mostly reported in USD. The revenue for Core Services, -1.7% like-for-like. This is hiding, unfortunately, a good news that you mentioned, Jorge, an acceleration of our back office and AI-powered solutions offering with good growth. This was effectively hidden because of the soft start of the year linked with, like you said, offshore delivery. Big increase of our activity in India, in Egypt, in South Africa, which are already very large operations, but still growing very fast.
We also see the impact of trust and safety, which is automated, as we expected or as we anticipated, which is being automated and which we are closely monitoring. Rebalanced, like you said, with our AI offering, not completely offset yet. A slower than expected ramp-up for some of the large contracts linked with the geopolitical turmoil and some clients taking more time for decisions. Specialized Services, - 5.5% like-for-like. Jorge, you mentioned that Q1 2025 was the last time when the TLS contact that was lost was still in effect. Reinstated for that impact, we would be at - 1% like-for-like.
Still, this is not in line with what we would like to see, and the big difference is linked with the high comparison basis for LLS in Q1 2025. We have seen, and that was a good news, especially in March, a good sequential improvement of the revenue growth throughout the quarter, which is giving good hopes for the coming month depending on how the policy in the U.S. will evolve. Now, if we look more at the breakdown by business line, we still see a good growth in care, which is most of our Core Services business.
We have seen, like I said earlier, very strong traction on AI-powered solutions, on back office, and also to some extent on sales, which we know is a good business in terms of margin and reliance over time. I will not repeat again the impact of the trust and safety, which has moved from 8% of the group revenue last year in Q1 to 6% this year. Moving on to the view by vertical, what we like and I think is a key differentiator of TP compared to some smaller competitors is the very diversified portfolio that we have with clients operating from almost all major verticals.
This was particularly true, I mean, in terms of benefit to be present, notably in financial services and insurance, as well as FMCG for Q1 2026, where we have experienced double-digit growth, and that we see continuing during the year. This helps offsetting the lower activity in the automotive industry, energy and utilities, and the media and entertainment, media and entertainment being the vertical where you would find most of the trust and safety business. With that, Jorge, handover to you for an outlook on the months to come.
Excellent. Thank you, Benoit. As, of course, you see and you can feel from our tone, we're definitely not where we wanna be in terms of the revenue that we that we are reporting to you, but this was anticipated. This was already what we were seeing and what we had communicated to the investor community in the, in the last time that we were able to chat, which was just a few weeks ago as I was being as I was appointed the CEO. With this, let me also turn on the other side.
You know, what to expect for the rest of 2026, and as I continue my tour of talking to, again, a number of our clients, our partners, our employees, start sharing back with you what I'm hearing and how that can inform some of the movements and some of the actions that we will take in 2026. I think this one is just a quick reminder, and I think probably Thomas and Olivier shared a version of this in their last set of communications around the direction of travel as part of our Future Forward strategy, which has a component around how do we reimagine and evolve our Core Services, mostly because what we are hearing from clients is the need of a partner that is a stable partner that they can trust on, and that they can work on some of their own bigger, more transformational ideas.
That's a big component, and that we continue working on as we also see that many of our partners are starting and have started the discussions around vendor consolidation. TP is at the center of that conversation as well, and we're very well positioned in that space. The second pillar is around all the work that we are doing to migrate more and more of our revenue to an outcome-based arrangement. We continue to see very strong performance and growth in our sales and revenue as a service line of business. The same we're seeing in collections, the same we're seeing in a number of vertical back office solutions. All that gives us a lot of hope of the potential that those lines of businesses have.
Last but not least, AI is also opening up a new series of opportunities, LLM and SLM model training. How do we do more data labeling, data annotation. How do we become much more relevant in that space. You know, that it's opening up a new set of opportunities in what I call the AI value chain. Of course, doing that, it doesn't happen by accident. This means that we need to take a number of actions when it comes to reshaping our operating model, our processes, our talent, our skills and capabilities, our partnerships. All that is what you will start seeing more and more, and I look forward to sharing more of the details as I go through this transformation.
I've also taken the time to talk to many of our top clients, and thank you for the trust, the candid feedback, and the very open conversation on that. What I've heard is, on one side, a number of our clients are in this, you know, transformational moment. They are thinking about how to leverage AI and other technologies into their own operation. To do that, they need that reliable partner. They need that partner that knows the inner workings of many of these organizations and know their processes, their data, and that's what makes us being very, very well-positioned, uniquely positioned in that space. A number of our clients are coming to us not only with a conversation about what I call efficiency AI, which is doing exactly what you're doing today with fewer resources.
A number of the conversations that I've had are around what I called opportunity AI, which is everything that you wish you could do that you're not doing today because of cost, because of limitations, because of time to process, and we're engaging in those conversations. That's incredibly exciting because of the opportunities that we can unlock together is just the opportunity is massive. I've also heard a real concern from a number of the leaders in our space about what is the cost of technology. One thing is to execute a small proof of concept with just a few things here and there.
When you start scaling that up and when you start looking at what is the overall profile of cost, that remains a point of concern as they are seeing how quickly some of those costs can increase and vis-a-vis some of the human activities, how to balance it all. Last but not least, from a technology perspective, you know, we continue to see the emergence of a number of different AI players with very unique and very distinct capabilities. I think we're also encouraged by some of the developments in this space, considering just how easy it has become for many companies to develop some of these solutions, and the same for us that we're partnering with our clients in doing that.
Therefore, we believe that being what I call tech agnostic, but in a way means being able to quickly react and be very agile in partnering with our clients on their technology solutions remains something that we are focused on. I already teased it out that we are hearing more and more this notion of being more of a transformational partner that is just not only delivering headcount, but is delivering a true reimagination of a process, a true reinvention of how to treat customers, how to handle some of the concerns that our customers have. They are turning to us, their outsourcing partners, to be a key element in that. That is, of course, something that you cannot do with a multitude of vendors.
We are hearing more and more, and I've been in many conversations on this around how to drive vendor consolidation. Therefore, they wanna be with a partner that is, you know, not only reliable, that they can trust, that they have been with. As you know, our average tenure of relationship is over 13 years. They wanna be also with a partner that has the financial strength and stability to be that partner long term. That is all that I've heard from our clients and something that will definitely inform more and more the type of actions that we drive internally. On the other side, I've already made some decisions when it comes to aligning our business and getting it closer to our clients.
Our management teams are fully committed to delivering that and to accelerate the transformation, and we are seeing very promising early results that I really look forward to sharing more with you in the coming calls. We have also made some changes to our IT and AI operating model, and as such, we are very happy to announce the appointment of Andreas Braun as our new Chief AI Officer for the group that he will be joining us as of Monday. On that, just a quick few words on Andreas.
Andreas, we're very, very happy he's joining us, and he will own our mission to scale our AI capabilities, scaling them from a client-facing perspective, scaling them internally as we turn some of the internal things that we're doing also into some business opportunities for us and to work with that partner ecosystem that we have. Thank you for all the multiple AI companies that have reached out over the last few weeks to talk and to have and to share ideas with us. Andreas comes most recently from BCG X, Boston Consulting Group. Before that, he was with Microsoft, before that Allianz, before that with Accenture, and I think his profile is very unique. He's very unique because he's not approaching AI only from a technology perspective. He also approach it from a business building perspective.
That is what gets us really, really excited, and we really look forward to working with him over the next few years. On top of Andreas, we will also have a team of very experienced practitioners and AI professionals that are joining us as well in the next few weeks, and we will share more with you as we finalize the revamp of this organization. Now, what are they inheriting. Well, they are inheriting a very robust set of solutions that we have been able to create in TP.ai FAB. We are very happy to announce and to report that we're roughly you know we have over 550 client AI projects live today in Q1 2026.
You can see there that we have seen, you know, an acceleration in the momentum in Q1 with over 50+ deals that we have won in this space. This gives us a lot of hope in terms of we see the traction. This is not just a technology market. This is a real business driver because we are being able to win business, we're being able to secure business from our clients given the strength of some of these solutions. Maybe let me bring that to reality and to life a little bit more. Here we have an example, and this is a client. It's a large financial institution that we serve in India.
They came to us with a clear exam question of like, "Hey, help me manage my customer interactions, and help me manage them with your human workforce. Help me manage it with your hybrid workforce." TP.ai FAB Connect, our agentic voice solution. We were able to deeply partner with them. What gets me really excited and why I wanted to highlight this example with all of you is. We're not only a tech provider, we're not only a human provider, we're bringing the interconnection and the feedback loop between the agentic workforce and the human workforce. On top of that, we were able to partner with them into embedding the solutions from just, you know, not only the contact center technology, but also getting into their core banking system and their architecture.
With that, we were also able to bring some of our expertise on back office solutions for banking and financial services, which is starting to become much more relevant. In a world where the technology is becoming more and more a commodity, the expertise and not just the, I say I have expertise, but the real expertise of process excellence, process reengineering, understanding the limitations on the system, understanding the functionalities and everything that can be possible for our clients becomes essential. Therefore, this solution, being able to again, bring the agentic workforce, the human workforce, the deep understanding and expertise in this particular vertical allowed us to not only secure this client, but also drive some vendor consolidation in this space, which is what gets me really, really excited about it.
That's why I also wanted to share, just to bring to life that some of the numbers that we see in this slide are translating into these business opportunities. With that, what you see here is our commitment to the 2026 guidance on a group like-for-like revenue of roughly 0%-2%, even in the current market context. The same delivering the guidance on stable margin at 14.6%. The same on the free cash flow of EUR 800 million-EUR 850 million, excluding of course non-recurring items that we have highlighted already, and you see below in that slide of roughly EUR 70 million-EUR 90 million of restructuring costs expected in 2026.
We see a softer H1, but a true acceleration on the second half of the year, given the pipeline that we are seeing, given the conversations we're having with clients, given the momentum that we have seen in our Specialized Services division that continues to accelerate month-over-month. All this gives us the confidence on these numbers. Last, I briefly touched it at the beginning of our call. We are also very pleased with the development of our Future Forward efficiency program that is not only driving efficiencies from just a pure procurement space, for instance, but that is really helping us retool how we do work, how we go to clients, how do we contract, how do we price.
A number of things that I've heard very loud and clear that our clients want us to make progress on. We're seeing the performance, we're seeing the delivery, we're seeing the actions happen. All of these for 2026, and then of course, we have already communicated our long-term guidance that you see here in this slide, that we've covered many times before. With that, before we open it up for questions that I'm sure you have many, and we'll be here to answer them with Benoit. Again, I don't wanna say that we're happy with the results, but this is what we anticipated coming in.
Hopefully, what you take away from this is that I'm now on the ground talking to our clients, talking to our team members, talking to our partners, and making sure that we make the right pivots to deliver on the guidance of 2026 and the same on the long-term guidance. With that, we'll turn it now to questions from the audience, and we're ready. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six. The next question comes from Rémi Grenu from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good evening, Jorge. Good evening, Benoit. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got three on my side. The first one is on Core Services momentum. I think you're flagging the geopolitical uncertainty. Can you give us a little bit more flavor on the level of activity in March versus the rest of the quarter? Just want to understand if there's been a deterioration since the beginning of the Middle East situation, and how you would expect Q2 to look like if we put together this macro uncertainty, the offshoring, and the overall pipeline for contracts. That's for Core Services. The second question is on LLS. I think you're a little bit more positive in the press release, saying that the momentum has improved through the quarter.
Just want to understand if it is just March being better on the back of the easier comp base or are you seeing a daily pickup in volume of activity that would make you more confident on that part of the business? The third one is on the transformative deals and the outsourcing from clients. I think you were as well referring to a few of these deals back at the full- year results presentation, saying a few hundred of million of euros, potentially larger deals, transformative, et cetera. Can you just make an update on that pipeline and if you expect these to come through at some point? Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you, Rémi. Maybe the answer to question one and question three are related in a way. Definitely we continue to hear, and we continue in conversations with many of our clients, for these large transformative deals. The ones that we knew at the last time we chatted are still there, and we continue talking to our clients as they go through their own internal changes. They go through some uncertainty in terms of, you know, deciding to move ahead given the geopolitical environment, particularly with rates going up and down from a financing perspective. That has been a little bit correlated. Just to finish on your first question on what are we expecting. Yes, we did see a slower ramp up, particularly in EMEA, that you see that in the results as well.
We saw a slower ramp up of some of the contracts towards February and March. Of course, that we hope that now in April, May and June, we see a pickup on that. Given the situation, it would be too adventurous for me to say with full certainty that that is going to be the case. That is something that we continue monitoring and hopefully some of the macroeconomic situations get better for all of us. That at the same time that impacts the business. Those are the two sides of the coin. That's why I think your question one and three are interrelated. On the question on LLS, definitely we see momentum, so March over March is better, but we have seen that momentum growing all throughout the quarter.
Every month was a little bit better. Not only that the previous year, it was a little bit better than the last month. We continue to see activity picked up in that space. We've also had some wins of large hospital systems and other type of clients in the space of LLS, and that gives us the confidence that we see the strength building up on LLS in particular. That is what we're seeing there.
Thank you very much. Very clear. Thank you.
Of course.
The next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. I also have three, please. Just the first one, around your comments about monitoring the space on content moderation. Could you maybe sort of spell out a bit what you mean there? Are you sort of, you know, assessing your position in this part of the market? Then the second question, just on offshoring. Obviously, you've been seeing very strong demand for offshore for the last few years now, but obviously that means that base is moving higher all the time. Has the rate of growth in offshore sort of still been accelerating at this point or are you seeing kind of any plateauing or moderation at this stage? And then finally, appreciate this is a sales update, but I can see you've reiterated the guide on restructuring of EUR 70 million-EUR 90 million.
I think at the time of the full- year update, so as of end February, you talked about EUR 56 million in costs year- to- date that have sort of been committed. Just wanted to ask about, you know, why these costs are so front-loaded, and if there's any sort of risk to the upside on that restructuring amount, given the ongoing change around AI. Obviously, a new Chief AI Officer in the group, and so on. Any detail there would be really helpful. Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Nicole. Let me start with content moderation. Look, definitely we're seeing the continuation of the trend of automation in this space. We're also seeing and monitoring very closely some of the developments in the U.S. with regards to content moderation and the role that social networks are having in lives and livelihoods in that space. That is the space that we're constantly monitoring. In my conversations with some of our clients in this space, they are telling us that, of course, as a result of some of the developments that we've seen in the United States, they are getting increased regulatory pressure. As such, you know, how do they balance their human moderation vis-à-vis their AI moderation.
That is a space that we continue to have a conversation with them in ways that are not only, "Hey, of course, there's automation that can go and continue in that space," but at the same time, how do you get the human in the loop in that space. Given some of the developments that we have seen, given the effects that, you know, content moderation can have, what is the impact for their own operations. We're very, very active in these discussions with our clients. Again, we are seeing a little bit more of the pressure for them in this space. So definitely that is what we're monitoring and of course, we will continue to assess that space. The second question was on-
Offshoring, i s it accelerating or not?
We are seeing a higher rate of offshoring in Q1 in that space, probably a little bit higher than what it was before. The rates, we continue to see very healthy growth for our India operation, as Benoit said, South Africa, Egypt. I'm not seeing particularly a big pressure on the pricing side in that space, but we continue to see very healthy growth in some of those operations for us. The last one was on the restructuring cost. Yes, I think, Benoit, you can confirm with me, it was EUR 56 million.
Yeah, EUR 56 million was corresponding to what was announced at the time we released our results.
Yep.
Your question was why is it front-loaded? The answer is it's better to restructure and get the savings in a full-year basis. Effectively, the plan has been set so as to invest as much as we can early in the year and so that we expect to see the benefits on our margin by year-end. This was factored in our EBITA projection for 2026.
Exactly. Hopefully it answers your point on the restructuring. As a reminder also, most of our AI expenses also flow through our P&L as OpEx. You know, in terms of any CapEx or restructuring costs that we need to do that, we can manage it within our OpEx guidance.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Of course.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a few for me, please. You've done some reclassification of activities. Can you remind us that TP Infinity was recognized previously? Will you be giving us the margin reclassification? It'll be helpful to have the quarterly revenue numbers, but maybe just the margin data as well, that would be helpful. Thank you. Second question is, you've had some time to think about business. As you think about transforming TP, do you see scope to unlock value through maybe some divestments, disposals, et cetera? Would love to get some color there. Thank you. Then I think, the last one, just to get some clarity on the guidance again. I think you indicated that you still expect a soft first half and improvement in second half of the year.
Does this mean that we should expect declines overall in first half? Thank you.
Great. It was a little bit hard to hear you at the beginning, so let me make sure that we got the question right. I think the question was, if we're gonna give also the margin breakdown for some of the reclassification that we've completed in Q1. Is that correct?
Correct. Just the rationale behind it, please. Thank you.
Yep.
No. On the rationale for the reclassification of TP Infinity, like I said, TP Infinity was one single unit of our Core Services reported mostly in EMEA because 90% of the revenues were from EMEA and managed in EMEA. We expanded our operations in the U.S. starting last year. You have the breakdown. You see that it's around $3 million per quarter. You have the breakdown of revenues in the press release. Because this is growing, we expect it to effectively be reported separately. It reports under America with Core Services in America now, starting in January of this year. This is why we align it.
I don't think we will disclose separately the margin on this business because for us it's one of the component of the business, so it will still be reported as part of Core Services for the moment, unless that becomes a very material part of the business and with a different dynamic, but it's not the case yet.
Yeah. Exactly. I think your second question was a quick update on the portfolio, strategic portfolio review. With that, what I can tell you is that exercise, if you remember with some of you that I've discussed a few weeks ago, we have the mandate from the board to conduct that strategic portfolio review. The portfolio review is in full swing, and we are already deep into the analysis that has. Before someone else asks me, I will put it out there. Of course, some of the decisions that we make in that space will have implications on some of the capital allocation decisions. We are looking into that space all as a block. You know, I will come back to the investor community when I have more news to report in that space.
It is ongoing. We are looking. We have discussed with a number of partners, and we are having very, very interesting conversations of different ways to unlock value, but nothing firm that I can report as of right now. I will come back to you on that one. I think I'm missing one question, right?
Was the softer H1 and whether we expect a growth in H1 compared to the overall guidance.
We are expecting a softer H1, as we said, and you know, we're working day in, day out with our teams, and definitely an acceleration of our growth to hit our guidance in the second half. With that, you can make the estimates of where we are going to be in the second quarter of the year, with a softer start and then the recovery on the upswing, not the recovery, the upswing on the second half.
Thank you. Just to clarify, you don't expect the inflection of the growth to happen in the second quarter. It's more a second half weighting.
It's a second half. Yeah. We see-
Yeah, yeah.
An acceleration of the momentum of all the actions that we're putting in place. Of course, we expect them to materialize as expected, on the second half.
Thank you.
Of course.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Karl Green from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, good evening to you both. The first question is just about the outsourcing dynamics, which I think you said in your narrative. Clients are regarding as a core strategic lever. Just in terms of that particular point, could you drill down a little bit and explain, you know, what they're thinking at the moment? You know, whether it is a core strategic lever because they're thinking more about the offshoring or it is that technology integration. Linked to that, have you had many instances of clients who have gone away and tried to implement and integrate AI solutions themselves, and it's not worked out quite as well as they would have hoped, and then come to you for support and realized that they can't go it alone?
That's probably two parts to one question there. The second question, much more straightforwardly, just in terms of the trust and safety business, just how far off peak are the activities in both the Americas and Europe? I mean, it seems that, you know, Europe isn't quite as far down the automation process as the Americas. Just to get a sense as to, you know, basically how much further either of those businesses has potentially got to fall, please. Thank you.
Yep. Let me start with the partner and the strategic discussions that we're seeing there. Look, clients are coming to us, and they are saying like, "Hey, definitely AI is going to reshape some of the processes that we're doing, some of the operations that we have." We certainly cannot do that with a multitude of partners. We wanna do that with a few strategic partners that get us. Like, that's the quote that I've heard from one client is like, "You guys get us. You guys have been with us for so many years. You know our processes. You know our data. You know the kind of things that we need to do and the kind of things that we don't wanna do with our clients.
We wanna partner with you. We wanna partner in these deals where, you know, they see outsourcing as a strategic lever because in many cases we are one of the primary partners for them. In other cases, they see the strength of our offers vis-a-vis some of our competitors in this space that we're able to offer both, you know, the reliability, the security, the global reach, the set of AI solutions that we have. They are coming to us and saying like, "Hey, it would be too expensive for me to do it internally," or "It would be too complicated for me to do some of these things internally. I wanna do that with a, you know, reduced number of partners that are more strategic and that are there for us." That's the dynamic that we are seeing.
As part of those conversations we've had, I've had a few of the partners, you know, our clients telling us, like, "Hey, we tried this AI solution. We tried this, you know, knowledge management system. We tried this agentic voice bot, and we really didn't get the uplift or the reduction that we were hoping. We would really benefit from having your expertise in our processes, your expertise into what you do, and help us drive a little bit more." Again, a little bit of the conversation in that space is not only on let's do the same with fewer humans, and this is the part that excites me the most. It's like, "Hey, help me do things that I cannot do today.
Help me make sure that I reach out proactively to clients when I know I'm gonna have an issue. Help me do collections in a very different way than what I'm doing today." These are the kind of conversations that we are having. It is not only about like, "Hey, help me implement the tool. It's helping me unlock the value that comes with the tool." Of course, there's the technology component, but of course there's the process expertise. Of course, there is a knowledge of the strategy and the objectives that organization wants to drive. That's the most exciting part, particularly in a world, and I'll emphasize it again, in a world where we are seeing that the technology is becoming much more accessible and that a lot of the technology that is out there in the market is more and more of a commodity.
Therefore, the true differentiation comes from people that know their business versus the people that just have a technology capability. That is the space and the conversations that we're having. If I go to your other question on trust and safety, the reason we are seeing it more in America is for just a simple reason. I think a number of the LLMs are better trained in English than in some of the other languages where we perform some of the content moderation and trust and safety activities, and therefore we see more impact first there. Doesn't mean that it will not get to some of the other languages, but that is what we are seeing.
Again, it's a space that we see already the evolution given some of the developments in the U.S. in that space and the increased regulatory pressure that some of our clients are getting. We will continue to monitor that. We will continue to make the investments on getting into the real high value-added activities without within trust and safety, but that is a little bit of what explains the delta between Americas and EMEA and APAC.
Very clear. Thank you.
Great.
The next question comes from Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Ben, you might be on mute.
Ben Wild, your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.
Hi. Sorry, everyone. Thank you. Two questions, please. The first one is hopefully a simple one. Can you help us understand roughly what the unit price differentials are between onshore voice, offshore voice, and AI solutions within Core Services today? Then a second question just on the free cash flow. There's a comment in the press release.
That FCF will be H2-weighted this year. We've already discussed the H2 weighting to growth and also the H1 weighting to non-recurring restructuring cost items. Are there any other specific items that mean FCF will be H2-weighted, and what kind of split between H1 FCF and H2 FCF would you expect? Thank you.
Yeah. A price differential, I think this you can also get from multiple sources in terms of what we see in the delta on price, you know, 20%, 30% or even depending on the geography, up to 50% difference from a unit of a cost per minute, if we can still use that metric in an AI-enabled, you know, world. That is just to give you a rough sense of the onshore versus offshore. The AI solutions. Look, we're partnering with many companies, and each of them has a very different way of pricing it. Some of them are pricing also per minute. We are seeing some of those prices per minute be at parity or higher than some of our prices at, offshore locations mostly, and even in some onshore location, it's getting close. We are seeing that.
We see the price per minute. We see the price per token or consumption, and there are a very few selected number of partners that we're really excited about, that they are partnering with us on a per-resolution or per-outcome basis. It's hard to say, you know, it's X percent cheaper or not because the basis for comparison on that are different given the way that they are pricing it. Again, in the places where we see a price per minute, we see that it's getting closer and closer to some of the offshore prices that we can get. If on top of that you get some of the very interesting developments that we are seeing right now on translation for certain parts of the business, then it starts to become a more complicated equation to solve in that space.
That is just to give you a sense a little bit of the dynamics that we're seeing from a pricing perspective. Benoit, do you wanna comment on the restructuring costs?
Yeah, normally we don't comment on, for Q1. Effectively we have incurred a big part of the restructuring costs in Q1. We will continue to do so in the coming months. When it comes to the balance of the free cash flow, as we mentioned in the press release, we expect to have broadly the same type of allocation that we have seen last year, I mean, net of those restructuring costs, which is a slow free cash flow in H1 and most of it coming in H2 with the same type of seasonality and roughly the same percentages.
Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to Mr. Amar for any closing remarks.
Excellent. Well, thank you for the questions. I was expecting them to be very vigorous as always, and I'm sure you will have a few more over the next few days, and we remain at your disposal to answer any additional clarifying questions. Again, we're reporting a Q1 that is, first, as anticipated, and second, not where we wanna be. I want you all to have the confidence that we are working very, very hard day in, day out since I took over as CEO to get us on the right track to accelerate the transformation and to be able to report.
I really look forward to coming to these calls to report some of the progress that we are seeing, that we are already working on, that we're executing throughout the company from a revenue perspective, from an AI perspective, and now welcoming Andreas to the group, and also from a cost and profitability perspective. More to come. I look forward to sharing some of those updates with you. With that, we will see you at the end of the first half in our next call. Thank you very much.