Where QUILINOX is based, and QUILINOX has plans to build on this land. To ensure the development of the subsidiary, we've decided to buy the land as well. As usual, we've taken out a loan to finance this acquisition. It was the case for C2AI as well. We've got working with our normal partners, CIC Lyonnaise de Banque, and Société Générale. These are seven-year fixed-rate loans without guarantees. That's the financial aspect. In terms of management, there are two shareholders who will stay in the company.
Ils sont donc Francisco Quiles, and Fernando Mari, and Lionel Monroe, who will represent Thermador Groupe as Chairman.
He will be joining them tomorrow. They started on this integration process.
We're very happy, I would say. It's an opportunity for us to welcome the 40 employees and directors from this company. I'm sure they'll have a fantastic future in Thermador Groupe. Welcome to all of you. Now look at the different distribution channels. Complete, you're familiar with this chart. Just to show you where those two new companies sit in this configuration, you see that QUILINOX and C2AI are both in the industrial market and the international markets, which corresponds to our strategy, our long-term strategy, which is based on industry and export. A quick look at the price effect, because the negative price effect at the end of the third quarter has not changed compared to the second quarter. You see on the orange bars on this chart, it shows you the price effect.
You remember that between 2022 and 2023, we've passed on prices beyond 20% increases to our customers. This adjustment we're seeing now is completely natural and fairly moderate to the increases just after COVID. New housing in France with a slightly more detailed curve than usual, with housing starts and building permits granted month by month. It really seems that we've gone past that low point, especially in terms of building starts. We'll keep an eye on that over the coming months. For those who are watching for the first time, I would just remind you that new housing in France impacts only 10% of our consolidated turnover in France, and that would be PVTube, two subsidiaries, and Thermacom. Looking at the wholesalers in electrical equipment and sanitary solutions, Cohedis, that's the next slide.
You'll see for the first time for a long while, there's a positive figure for September, 1.5%. However, on the DIY side, it's slightly downbeat again, and it continues. There was a little spike in May, as you can see on the positive line, but it has not followed through to the end of the year for DIY. A look at industry indicators, index. This is the PMI index, which certainly industry will be the major part of our turnover next year with the arrival of these new companies. You'll see that these indicators that we see in front of us now for France on the left-hand side and on the right-hand side for Europe are around 50. That means that the market is stable in the manufacturing industry. That will help our companies working in industry. A few words about turnover.
As we said, in retail, we have not very good results in terms of turnover for our subsidiaries involved in the resale markets. We've got a drop of 9.4%. If we look at the professional channel, and that includes subsidiaries involved in public works, swimming pools, industry, and construction, those subsidiaries are reporting - .9%. I think it's interesting to look at the third quarter because we communicated a recovery effect on the second quarter, and indeed, we've seen an improvement through. We see this with 13 of our subsidiaries that have actually shown growth in terms of turnover in the third quarter, in spite of the price effect of - 1.5%. This is fairly encouraging, I would say, for this third quarter, both for construction, watering, and industry, of course. The other elements, you'll see that there's a notion of constant scope.
There are the columns 2025 and 2025 constant scope. Basically, there are two subsidiaries that have brought in EUR 5 million turnover, which is Alto Metering and C2AI. They were brought, which was brought 30th of June, and Alto Metering was the third quarter of last year. You see that that's EUR 5 million. You'll see that in the constant has gone from the constant scope at 315. Overall, if we look at the Q3, we've got + 2.2% to constant scope. Now, the impact on our financial structure remains very solid because we have equity which is above EUR 384 million. That's a result of our capital and the accumulation of profits. That goes hand in hand with the capitalization of the stock market value of the company. We regularly communicate on the value of our share because that shows our management of our WCR. We're talking about stock here.
We've got EUR 165 million of stock compared to EUR 174.9 million at the end of Q3 2024. We've got the indicator of number of days of stock, which is compared to the days of sales. At the end of September, we had 196 days of stock compared to 190 days last year. We've got a slight increase in stock. I should remind you the delivery times are about three weeks longer for our shipments coming from Asia. That means we have to have a bigger buffer stock in our subsidiaries, and that explains part of that difference. We think there's also an improvement to be found in terms of number of days, and we'll communicate on those dates and those stock values at the end of December. We've been able to report a very positive cash position, EUR +85 million compared to EUR 46.8 million this time last year, increasing cash position.
We're coming out of the watering and the swimming pool season. Those companies have not yet bought their new stock for next season. At the end of September, there's a favorable position. It's what we could call a high position in terms of cash. This is really whatever. It's still a record level. That's thanks to our buyers, in particular in the subsidiaries, but also our accountants who keep an eye on customer payables and work regularly with them to have this low-risk position with the customers. In terms of loans, I mentioned the two new loans for shares in C2AI and QUILINOX.
QUILINOX at the end of September, so EUR 47.6 million compared to EUR 32.6 million.
Through those new loans, we've continued to reimburse our existing loans according to the installment repayment schedules. We also wanted to make a comment on customer receivables. I think everybody has heard about the increasing number of bankruptcies and so forth. We're very vigilant about that, and we have risks which are considered as low and controlled. In the next slide, it shows you the development in cash position. The white bars show the end of December position for those previous 10 years. You can see that it is a very high level at EUR 85 million, but that's in relation with our investments. We'd planned EUR 9.3 million investments at the beginning of the year. At the end of June, we decided to go down to EUR 6.6 million. That's simply because those projects, the difference of EUR 2.7 million there, those would be projects which have been delayed to next year.
We've also got projects that will be paid for before the end of the year. The major ones would include property, which is EUR 2.4 million, and we will maintain that amount for 2025. In major investments, in terms of CapEx, there's the automation project for logistics at Sferaco, and that's EUR 1.7 million. That will be paid before the end of December for that automation project. We've also got projects for buildings for next year in Alsace for the purchase of a plot of land for Distrilabo and an extension project for Sferaco to accommodate the new automated solution. Those will be CapEx investments for next year. That moves us onto our share price.
In the short term, it's fairly rational. In the long term, it's pretty irrational, let's be honest.
If we take it over a long period, and this is over a period of 10 years, you can see that every day on our website in real time, day after day. This is from yesterday, and that shows an overall return for Thermador Groupe at 10.3% compared to 8.6% for the CAC 40 in general. A few words about the prospects. We're going to move on to fairly short-term solutions given the unstable political situation in France in terms of the government, which is obviously not going to help some of our businesses, in particular new housing. These outlooks are fairly prudent for the next few months because we've got no certainty about what's going to happen. It could, for example, have an impact on the morale of the households and reduce their spending, for example, in terms of spending on new housing.
For the grants, MaPrimeRénov' and the CEE grants schemes, MaPrimeRénov' is really at its lowest point. We think that it won't have any great effect on the work, the activities of the group in the longer term. However, the energy savings certificates, which is a mechanism financed by the energy providers and therefore paid for by consumers, this measure will certainly be extended from January 1st, 2026, because we're going to be moving into the sixth period of these energy saving programs in France. This period will begin in 2026 and finish in 2030. We are still waiting for the decree concerning that energy renovation program. It was expected for autumn. In the autumn of 2025, we still haven't got it yet. It's true that autumn is not yet over. Things have slowed that down, especially in the government.
In terms of DIY, our customers say that footfall in their DIY shops is not good. The morale of the French people, the French spender, is low. Our retail activities have no real outlook for the immediate future. Public works, unfortunately, it's the same sort of trend. The political context in France is not encouraging public work projects because they're generally financed by state funds. The upcoming municipal elections are not helping that either because things tend to grind to a halt at those periods. No great shakes for the fourth quarter. For industry, more positive because our market shares are low. We continue to find organic growth through new products, new markets, new customers. Moving on to acquisitions, there's nothing significant or sufficiently advanced to talk to you about today.
In general terms, we're, of course, oriented towards opportunities with European companies, preferably in the area of industry or the water cycle markets. That answers one of the questions we've already had on the webinar. We've been asked if these acquisitions could be made in China, and the answer to that is no. We've got enough to do in Europe, not to go to any other continents for the moment. The second question concerns acquisitions. Thierry, who asked:
[Foreign language] Est-ce que l'arrivée de QUILINOX permettait au groupe de se positionner sur l'industrie agroalimentaire?
He's wondering if that allows the group to find new customers in the agri-foods business. Okay, we will obviously improve our position in Spain. In France, we're already suppliers to the agri-foods business, but for products that QUILINOX don't necessarily already have, and vice versa. There are synergies to be found with products like pumps that we already sell in France. These are resilient industries, so there'll be work to be done there. In terms of the price effect, going back to my slide, it should stabilize at close to -1.5% for the second semester. Next year, it's pretty sure we'll be moving towards slight inflation because most of our suppliers in Europe, two-thirds of our suppliers, are already talking about increases in prices in 2026.
Staff, finally, as I mentioned at the beginning of the webinar, and I'm going to talk about it again with Patricia, who will give us more additional information. You know that we are particularly attentive to the absenteeism rate, which has increased in the last few years. We're hoping to have an impact on that. We are not going to lie down and accept it. It's been the case in many countries, this increase in many companies in the country. We've got to be careful to introduce equitable measures so that the people who are 100% at work all the time don't suffer from the absenteeism of people who may be taking advantage of the very secure French system. There'll also be measures to accompany our employees to encourage more presence in our companies.
Yes, though we're talking about operating preventative actions.
In recent years, we've got the Quality of Life and Working Conditions survey, which is every three years, and we're up to the third version. That gives rise to a number of actions in terms of working conditions. That's a really good tool that helps our employees to express their thoughts, any dissatisfaction they feel, and any suggestions for improvement. That's the first tool. The second was to work on musculoskeletal disorders, MST. A lot of our people work in logistics, of course, and people who have been with us a very long time. As they get older, of course, the MST is more difficult as they approach retirement. We're accompanying them on that particular aspect of posture in particular. We've been doing that for two years now, and it's working pretty well. It's called Ma Vision.
It also includes people who are on the phones in the offices, not just the people in the warehouses. Those profiles have joined the program. That has been financed mostly by Groupama, which is our insurance company, which works our health insurance program. We've also got working on inner soles, so orthopedic correction for inner soles in working shoes, additional comfort for people who have to work, who have to wear safety equipment, PPI, and PPE, sorry. That includes safety shoes. We're also working with the work doctor and with the work psychologist to help people with well-being at work. That means that in some cases, we can offer support to our employees in the work environment. That's a plus, of course. There's another project that I wanted to tell you about, which we've been working on for more than 18 months. That is to run medical checkups.
We're doing that with a clinic in Lyon and potentially in Bourg-en-Bresse , which is nearer to us. This is for employees over 50 and based here in Saint-Quentin-en-Fallavier. I think in two days, all the slots were filled. Seventeen employees will be having a full medical checkup for prevention in terms of different illnesses. That's obviously a big thing. Given the interest that people are showing in that, we'll be continuing with that in 2026, opening up new slots for employees. Those are all about prevention, of course, and to allow our employees to feel good at work and for those that are not feeling so good to feel better physically or mentally.
In terms of prevention, diagnosis and tests are particularly oriented towards the principal cause of death in France, les maladies cardiovasculaires, and cancers as well.
What we want to try and do is to do prevention to avoid health accidents, serious health accidents of that sort. I also would like to mention that we were involved in October for Pink October, for the fight against breast cancer. We've broadened that scope throughout the group to support the Ligue de la Cancer, so the League Against Cancer. We're running races to help with that. We're going to finish with outlooks looking towards the past. You can see on this slide, organic growth by quarter. Each bar shows growth per quarter. You'll see that this is the first positive quarter for a couple of years. I don't want you to—I'm not going to extrapolate and suggest that the fourth quarter will be +4%. Of course, we're hoping for a recovery. I think it's going to be very progressive, and we have to be cautious with those predictions.
We finish with our predictions and our slides. The first questions are coming in. Thierry would like to know what the impact of the variation of the dollar or the increasing strength of the euro is having on transport. There are three questions there. You start with the dollar, Patricia.
Just to remind you, we pay 30% of our purchases in dollars, and we hedge in spots. It's not very exotic, but it allows us good visibility for our subsidiaries to monitor their purchases in dollars. We've seen an improvement in the rate, of course. This improvement started because we've had about six months of stock. We're starting to see a benefit now in the second half of the year. The indicator will be the commercial margin, of course, the profit margin, and in particular subsidiaries that are involved in DIY because those subsidiaries which buy from Asia.
We buy about $130 million per year to pay our suppliers from there.
We spend EUR 130 million a year, and 30%.
wondering why you were asking me the question again, but...
I was just wondering why you asked me the question again. It's 30%, and the total value is EUR 130 million a year from Asia.
[Foreign language] Et sur le transport ?
On...
[Foreign language] C'est surtout en fait au niveau de l'Asia où on participe au...
For Asia.
[Foreign language] Donc tout ce qui concerne l'Asia, on est sur aussi 30% de nos achats.
Thirty percent of our purchases.
It's since March 1.
From the 1st of March.
[Foreign language] Contractualisé avec deux transitaires pour avoir des...
equipment, plumbing fittings, pumps, and solar panels.
[Foreign language] Là auparavant, puisqu'on a toujours été sur des prix d'achat.
Two transporters to have fixed prices.
[Foreign language] Et cette transitaire, on aurait dû nous transitaire pour forcément avoir des gains à l'achat.
That will help us in terms of purchasing, in terms of value, but also better monitoring, and so better quality. These new people have a more structured approach to this. We're improving our costs and hopefully...
[Foreign language] Communiquer au 30 juin le gain, parce que c'était un peu trop tôt.
We're not able to communicate on the gain that we've made to the end of June.
[Foreign language] Parce que nous exploitons un gain.
We are expecting to see a gain there. We'll communicate on that later. There is no impact of the tariffs because we buy practically nothing from the U.S. There are indirect impacts, of course, because, as you know, Chinese suppliers are particularly offensive, and they're looking to recover volumes in Europe that they've lost in the U.S. Some of our suppliers are suppliers to the U.S. as well. I've got a question from Cornys.
In English, [Foreign language] est-ce que vous avez un cash pooling en place? C'est en lien avec la trésorerie? Oui, en fait, on a mis en place un cash pooling.
Do you have a cash pooling in place? Yes, for the French part. For France, we have put it in place. For Spain, we're going to put it in place. That allows us to increase the cash position for the whole of Thermador Groupe.
On a consolidated basis.
We have investments on a consolidated basis. We remunerate our subsidiaries when they have profit, when they have a positive cash position, so they earn a commission on positive cash position. Is the question, what are you planning to do with this strong cash position between now and the end of the year? Of course, we'll have some cash to pay our dividends in April next year. Maybe you'll remember that Thermador Groupe is one of the few companies that has never reduced the absolute value of its dividends. I think that's going to take up a substantial part. Any ideas, Patricia, for the rest? We'll finance our investments, our capital investments. The question was besides CapEx. Next year, there will be investments, of course, and the working cash requirement, so the WCR.
[Foreign language] Il faut s'assurer que tout rentre.
Growth is coming back. Stocks have been rebuilt. Subsidiaries will need cash for stocks.
[Foreign language] Et après, effectivement, on est quand même toujours très prudents.
Of course, we're always very cautious. We'll invest that money to balance out the cost of our borrowings, and that comes out level.
We have achieved a positive financial result of EUR 1 million.
We had a positive balance of EUR 1 million in terms of net profit last year. Question from Jean-Pierre, linked to cash.
to the equity base?
Sorry, I missed the question.
The question of a possible increase in capital, Patricia will answer that later. For an acquisition, an increase in capital is something we've never done before to raise cash. We could do it, of course. I see that Jean-Pierre would sign up for that if we thought it was useful to do that. Mais pour l'instant, ça ne fait pas partie des options.
For the moment, that's not one of our options. In terms of use of cash for acquisitions, I think you've answered that partly. I think I should say that once the interest rates are good and there's no guarantees on the loans and they're fairly low rates over seven-year periods for fixed rates, I think it's something that we should use that tool. We have access to it. I should remind you, last year, we made two acquisitions last year, which were financed from equity for EUR 3.4 million.
[Foreign language] Et en fait, c'était un fonds de commerce qui a été racheté par Soloto sur ses fonds propres également.
Sedequa's acquisition too was from its own equity. Of course, this will all depend on how interest rates change in our relationships with some of our banks. It is also an opportunity to work with our banks and show them that we are loyal to them.
What about an acquisition in the U.K.? When I mentioned Europe in my heart, the U.K. is still part of Europe.
Yes, we have to work with the U.K. with Syfco. If we do see an opportunity for an acquisition in the U.K., we would happily jump on it. Of course, Neil, our interpreter, will be happy with that. Question from Thierry.
With the group growing every year, is there a reorganization of work for logistics in the warehouses? No, not particularly linked to the size of the group. It depends on the size, the number of companies.
Logistics problems are handled inside each subsidiary. Syvako, Audrea, the bigger companies with a large number of people in their warehouses, and even Thermador too. For the moment, besides the automation project at Syveco that Patricia talked about before, there is no major change, no different working times. We hope to serve our customers in the best possible way in a working day rather than in two or three shifts. For the moment, no change, no major change.
Would you like to add something?
Is there anything you'd like to say?
navigate post-COVID price increases and political uncertainty.
Allows our customers, all our customers who are at the end of their business days, means that we receive their orders the next morning. Because we're well organized, we can prepare during the day and the customer can be delivered within 48 hours. If we had quicker logistics, we could go quicker, but that costs money, of course. That's not what the customer wants. In our trading system, it allows us to close the switchboard at 5:00 P.M., and this software, Lacy Commerce, allows us to carry on working through the night, basically. Thierry is asking us if we are present at Investia Day. No, we decided not to go to Investia Day this year for budgetary reasons because the cost to the group was EUR 35,000. In difficult years like the one we're having at the moment, everything is all relative, of course.
We wanted to limit our expenditure, and that's why this year we decided not to attend. That doesn't mean we'll never go again, but for this year, we're not.
[Foreign language] On retente tout de même le coût pour les valeurs moyennes parce qu'effectivement, pour des sociétés de grande taille, les coûts similaires sont complètement...
Of course, it's unfortunate that for a company of a medium size like our own, it's a big amount of investment, EUR 35,000. Whereas, of course, for a big company, it's nothing really.
[Foreign language] Envisagez-vous des rachats d'actions ?
Are you thinking about buying back shares in the Anglo-Saxon way?
Non.
No, we don't...
[Foreign language] Pourquoi l'Anglo-Saxon?
What do you mean in the Anglo-Saxon way? I should say, that's the way I understand it. That means we buy back shares to destroy them and therefore increase the value of our shares. We're not going to do that because our objective is really to promote the liquidity of the share, i.e., the volume of transactions.
[Foreign language] La lacunité de manque de titres à disposition au marché?
The lack of shares on the market wouldn't be an advantage to it. We're too small for that to be of any advantage to us.
Jean-François, what is the impact of AI on the group?
[Foreign language] Ça se traduit déjà par des ressources.
[Foreign language] On peut commencer.
[Foreign language] Donc ça, ça se traduit comment? Ça se traduit par plusieurs...
So...
[Foreign language] En fait, la création d'un comité de pilotage de travail sur...
Creation of a staying company that's working on AI in our processes. The first process that was worked on...
[Foreign language] C'est la capture des commandes.
Order capturing, the OCRization, isolation of orders. That means recognition, character recognition. We wanted to increase this proportion using AI to capture these orders automatically. We are working with an ERP publisher to integrate AI. That's the first project that we've adopted. Then...
[Foreign language] la différence sur notre marché, même avec l’arrivée de nouvelles technologies.
The knowledge of our sales teams, technical teams, and sales teams. Our technical data sheets, this is a subject which is of interest to us to work on and to secure. Of course, AI always raises the question of security.
[Foreign language] Choisissant d'avoir des solutions chez nous, et après...
We've chosen to have solutions in-house. We've set up what we call an AI permit to train our employees in the use of AI to ensure they understand the rules to be respected. We developed that with a young lady.
[Foreign language] Qui a été placée par plus de 140 salariés déjà.
Who's introduced this AI permit, which has been used by 140 of employees. We're going step by step with AI. We're measuring the return on investment. In particular, we want it to be a tool for our employees to allow them to work on certain tasks using AI. There's lots of IT involved, of course, but not only. Our operational teams will be increasingly called upon.
Productivity gains, probably yes, to answer your question, Jean-François, but we cannot measure that for the moment. We've taken all these initiatives because we believe that AI will be part of our lives, of course, as was internet before. We've already integrated AI because we've been working on a sourcing module, which is used by six of our subsidiaries, which is a sales forecasting tool.
[Foreign language] Ça n'a pas été réentraîné, donc nous allons retravailler les données.
You need to feed the machine, have to feed the beast. That will continue. That's part of the works we plan to go back to, and we're planning that at the moment.
Jean-Louis, is it planned to change the listing market?
I'm wondering if there's a plan to change the stock market in the medium term. No, no. Thermador Groupe will stay on the existing stock market, which, of course, is restrictive in terms of regulations and accounting standards. It does give us an easier vision to get through the next stages of our development. It's true that we do suffer from the regulations, the excessive regulations. As we're already organized to respond to those requirements, we believe that we should continue in that same way and maybe ask the regulators to be more moderate and slacken a bit their regulations. That's why we've decided to stay there. Thierry, asking you a question about cyber attacks. In terms of confidentiality, we never address these questions with investors. I won't talk about that.
Just to say that we have people inside Thermador Groupe working on these topics, and they work internally on cybersecurity because we're really aware of the danger. Don't worry. It's a risk that has been identified and controlled. I have no more questions for the moment. It's 8:49 P.M.
[Foreign language] Thierry, tu as quelque chose à dire?
Jean-François, the impact on the future tax policy, I am very familiar with Jean-François. I really don't know what the tax policy will be in the future. What is sure is that the shareholders are particularly solicited because it can put them in a bad mood. Apart from that, I don't think that corporation tax will be changed in a major way.
Because Thermador Groupe has never sought to optimize its operations fiscally, I don't think that we will be facing any changes from a tax point of view. This morning, we looked at the next finance law for 2026, the budget. We've got the CVAE tax, that's all.
[Foreign language] La demande de suppression qui va intervenir plus tôt, donc pour nous, c'est bénéfique.
We will gain from that. We're not taxed in terms of exceptional contributions, so there's very little impact at our level. Those are subjects we keep an eye on, of course. We were monitoring that only this morning. There's no impact for the moment. No holding planned to be set up in the Cayman Islands for Thermador Groupe. No major impact. There are a few minutes left if you have any more questions. If it's not the case, we're going to bring this webinar to a close. 94 participants.
[Foreign language] En vacances, mais assidus.
Thank you to all of you for your loyalty, your presence, your questions, and your interest in Thermador Groupe. I wish you all an excellent evening. The next webinar will be in a few months in January.
[Foreign language] Merci beaucoup.
To report on the full year 2025.
[Foreign language] Merci à vous, bonne soirée.
Thank you to you. Good evening.