Welcome to this webinar. We'll be commenting on the publication of our results. As usual, we're going to talk, first of all, about our wonderful employees. Some of them are still here. A lot of them have gone on holiday. In terms of staffing levels, we're slightly up. 6.5% increase in volumes, and that reflects the group's need to work on productivity today and in the future. Milestones. Geopolitics, of course, for the moment, not much visible impact on Thermador Groupe. However, things to talk about. A price impact. We've already talked about that with impact in terms of price rises that we've already passed on to our customers. No impact for the moment on the inflationary effect, but an impact in the future. To remind you, the main impact is on polyethylene and aluminum.
Maritime transport costs, well controlled, and the transport situation has not particularly affected because around 30% of our supplies are coming around the Cape of Good Hope, and so no major change because of these geopolitical events. Prices. The measurement that we did at the end of half year gives a negative impact of 0.9%. It was minus 0.4% at the end of the first quarter. We see that the second quarter was - 0.4, and we'll see for the outlook whether we change our annual forecasts. A word about secondary markets for the construction and three dynamic segments in this rather desperate market. Air-to-air heat pumps and air-to-water heat pumps and ventilation. Three of our subsidiaries are impacted in a positive way. Thermador and Isocel, which are on these markets for air-to-water, as in the terms of providing accessories to the manufacturers.
Axelair, which is on the air-to-air heat pumps because Axelair sells accessories to that market. Axelair is also specialized in ventilation and therefore benefits too from these two positive market trends. It's a pleasure for us to see that Axelair has gone into a breakeven situation, which is great news. New builds, new housing. I'd say, unfortunately, we've still got a slight improvement on building starts. I say unfortunately because it's not going very quick, and we'll see the prospects are not great. Weather, like every year now, a lot of rain in the spring and heat waves. Quite remarkable levels of heat wave in May, June, and July, and that has slightly helped Axelair, which sells mobile compact air conditioning units. It's a very small part of their turnover, but it's substantial in terms of its size.
However, for the watering markets, poor levels of sales compared to what we've known in the past. For Jetly, slightly positive but at a very low level historically. A word about Aello, which continues to win market share in the swimming pool market. Good news on the legal front also because we've had the verdict from the arbitral court because the former employer of Jérôme Chabaudie, who's the CEO of Aello, has been attacking us and him for the grounds of his appointment with us, and we've won that case. DPI Management, things are changing. We saw the arrival of new sales director. Very soon, the arrival of the future CEO of DPI, Alexandra Stajura, and she will be there full time from September 1st. She's got a long history with Thermador Groupe.
She arrived as a young woman. She's still young, of course, but she arrived a few years ago at Jetly, and she was administrative director and financial director at Odrea. She's taking on the challenge at DPI starting in September. I think she joined in 2008, so a quite normal length of service in Thermador Groupe. For the DIY market, in Mecafer, sold a lot of generators, which is a positive effect on their turnover for the first part of the year. However, for Odrea, continue to have difficulties with pretty brutal delisting from its customers. Odrea is currently working on diversifying its product range in Spain and also in e-commerce to try and find solutions. We've already seen progress in that area.
Look at the price and volume effects, you see this on this slide, slightly negative in terms of the price at 0.9%, 5.6% in organic sales growth. If we add up the two, we get to 6.5% of increase in volumes. If we compare these figures to the last six years, we've seen that the current trend is to go towards a positive impact in terms of price and volumes. That's encouraging. Patricia, I'm going to hand over to you for the figures.
In terms of turnover for the retail channel, turnover down 4.1% and negative price effect of -4.3%. That leads to a diversity between Odrea and Mecafer who continue to the similar levels, but Odrea has seen a negative situation in terms of its turnover. Concerning the pro channel, there we have the impact of our two new subsidiaries in 2025, C2AI and Quilinox, there we see the EUR 232 million compared to EUR 247 million. We've got an increase, 14.3% increase in turnover, and to constant scope, that will be 7.6%. There we have a price effect as well, which is less.
We've got increases in volume with the exception of two subsidiaries, Sodeco and Sectoriel, who have drops in volumes of sales. Not too worried about them, but we did comment that on the letter to the shareholders. That's consolidated turnover of 11.3% up compared to 5.6% to constant scope. That was the same trend as we had at the end of the first quarter. Now moving on to results, profit. What does that give in terms of operating and net profit?
In terms of operating profit, we are on 7.3% growth, which is greater than the increase in turnover, and we see the same trend on the net profit, 17.6% of profit. Some explanations for that concerning the trend changes to our profitability. It's important to see that We've got in 17.3%, we've got an increase in turnover, so we're above 12%, 12.8%, with the main element to explain that, the improvement in our margin. We've got a price effect as well, we were able to manage these price effects, and we benefited over the first half year of a euro-dollar exchange rate. I remind you that more than 30% of our purchases are in dollars. That's helped our margin. In terms of charges, when we look at those, they have increased 11.8%.
That is in line with the increase in turnover, the main items are, of course, headcount, personnel. If we look 2025 compared to 2026, we have 13.1% compared to 12.8% in 2025 last year. If we take into account for the first half of 2026, we have the two new subsidiaries. When we reprocess that data, that gives us a more or less stable situation of 12.7% compared to 12.8% last year. Also, we did increase salaries. We will need to continue to improve our productivity in order to maintain this momentum. As we continue with the analysis, we look at net profit has increased. In terms of a percentage of turnover, we have 9.09%. That is up compared to last year.
We have our tax rate has decreased slightly, and we have also a positive situation with our financial result through the dollar effect and also the investment of our cash, which we invested. I will comment on the level of cash, the cash situation a little later. We continue on this graph, which gives us the operating profit as a percentage of turnover between 2009 and 2026. I say we are at 12.2%, as I mentioned earlier. If we compare that to 2019, 2020, which are pre-COVID years, we are not quite back to those levels, but we are close to the levels because we were at 12.8% in 2019 and 2020. The introduction of our two new subsidiaries have affected that slightly in a downward direction.
In terms of subsidiary profitability, Axelair was created in 2013, which for the first half of 2026 has for the first time published positive results, partly because of the weather effect. They continue to have with their mobile compact air conditioning units and their traditional market of ventilation, they continue to have good performances. We saw that in the first quarter, and that has continued in the second quarter. We looked at the evolution, and we saw the business plan for Axelair, and we expect this level of profitability to continue to the end of the year. A little focused on the companies that last year were losing money at the end of June 2025. DPI first was affected by the amortization of goodwill relating to customer relationships, and that showed a negative result. This year to the end of 2026, that is not the case.
DPI is slightly positive in terms of profit. Thermacome work primarily on products in connection with new builds. We have a company which continues to be negative in 2026, with also the consolidative effect with the goodwill relating to customer relationships, which also has a negative impact, of course. Profitability of our two new subsidiaries, C2AI, which is fluid information and control. They have 4.2% level of profitability. When we talk about that level of 0.2, we are not quite in line with what we expected. We have lost 4% compared to the business plan, so that is something that they need to work on. We are hoping for their level of profitability to be improved in the second half year. For Quilinox, they are up exactly where we expected them to be in the business plan at 8.2%. Our financial structure.
Equity, the EUR 414 million, which can be compared to the capitalization of the value of the company of Thermador Groupe's shares, which is favorable. The value of our stock, this is something that we'd already observed at the end of March, and which is still a question at the end of June, with a drop in value in EUR and a drop in 5.6%. In the number of days of consumption, we have a drop of 28 days from 209 days, and we're now at 181 days compared to 209 days last year. Can we just come back with that one? Okay, for cash. With stock turning on a downward trend and that has an impact on our working capital requirements, that has an impact on cash capital. We've got a cash position of EUR 104 million.
The variation compared to June 2025, we've got an increase in our loans in connection with the loan taken out to purchase Quilinox. That was started at the end of September 2025, that loan repayments. We also mentioned that at the end of December, we had an exceptional level of cash because we were at 96.9%, but that continues because we're at EUR 104.2 million. That remains at a high level. In terms of net cash flow variation, we've got cash flow from operations EUR 32.1 million, change in working capital requirement with an increase in customer payables, receivables, excuse me, that gives us WCR EUR 1.8 million. A drop in stock also. One that slightly balances the customer payables. In terms of investment flows, that's obviously connected to our constructions that we started in the first half of 2026.
We've already spent EUR 4 million on our CapEx investments, and that gives us a free cash flow level of nearly EUR 30 million. Our financing flows, which includes dividends and loans, the loan linked to the purchase of DPI at EUR 22.6 million. The working capital requirement, which is given in our distribution companies, the value of stock is important, is high, of course. We have operating working capital to net turnover. We were at 44% at the end of June 2025, and we're at 38.5% at the end of June 2026. We've got less stock. Customer payables have increased. Compared to June 2025, we had an increase as well, that's pretty stable.
In terms of payables to suppliers, we've also got stock in transit because we've got EUR 33 million of stock on the boats, and we've also got orders that have made orders early to protect themselves against the future price rises. We've also had negotiations with major purchasers to reduce this negative effect. There's also, I think, the effect of our good sales. Of course, that means we have to rebuild our stock levels for the second part of the year. I didn't mention it, but Domac is one of the companies which had to rebuild its stock levels because they had very high sales during the first half year. We see that impact on our supplier debt. I will continue now with the investments.
We started the year with an estimation at EUR 12.3 million, which we reduced because we thought that some of the projects were going to be behind schedule. We reviewed the situation with our property company and our subsidiaries. In fact, the level of investment will be at 11.6%, or EUR 11.5 million, sorry, for the second half of the year. For property, I remember that we've got three major projects this year. We've got Sferaco with the construction of an extension to their building, and that's on target in terms of timing. That's EUR 2.9 million for the property and EUR 5 million for the automated system. That's over a period of two years, so a lot of that is being spent in 2026. We've got C2AI.
They were renting a building in Décines, we decided to bring them closer to us to work in better synergy with our other companies, with C2AI in particular. That's planned for August, that they will come to Saint-Quentin-Fallavier in August. That's another refurb of a building. The third is Distrilabo. We've launched an acquisition through on building from purchasing on plans, and that will have more of an impact on the second half of 2026. In terms of our subsidiaries, we're working on the digitalization of our logistics. This is one of the biggest impacts. I think that's all. I'm going to hand over to Guillaume Robin to talk about our reinvested dividends.
A little quick look at our share price over a period of 12 years, which is available on our website in real time, which compare to the CAC 40 unlisted companies. For approximately a month now, we've seen a rebound in the Thermador share price. I would ask you to check our analysts. There are five of them who follow our share price, and that will give you a better insight into the future prospects for the Thermador Groupe share. Let's talk about outlooks. In terms of new homes, on the following curve, you'll see slightly positive trend in spite of ups and downs in terms of building starts, but it's pretty slow. However, that's the orange line. On the blue line, you see that building permits are stabilized. Again, it's pretty chaotic and there's no net upward trend.
Unfortunately, the increase in interest rates won't help that market. A little word about summer comfort because as you can imagine, something important. I talked about it a little earlier on. Exceptional month of June, and we'll see this in practical terms on two curves. CODIS, the chart for CODIS who monitor the distribution of sanitation heating, and also of wholesalers in France. You see this peak in activity in June, which is primarily due to this very high level of activity on air-to-air heat pumps and ventilation and air conditioning. We mustn't expect that level to be maintained, of course, because it's linked to the situation and the stocks are low. It's very probable, but this level will go down sharply in the months ahead.
There's a similar but lesser impact in the retail sector, that's the chart of INOHA, which we see on the screen. You see this peak in June of 5.4%, also helped by air conditioning demand. Again, we have to be prudent because this is really linked to the current situation with the climate. Okay, the water cycle. I talk about this every quarter because I think it's a future market for Thermador Groupe. The water and the rarity of water will increase water prices for water in France, that's inevitable. In Jetly, we have all the solutions you might need to process, redistribute DPI for networks, for drinking water, we're talking about the reuse of graywater.
When we look at the different activities at Jetly, we see that the reuse of water is the most dynamic part of their business, with a second quarter which was better than the first for Jetly. I would also like to underline, we saw earlier with Aello, but also Sferaco, who have L' Essor, for example, one of the specialists of water distribution in France, they continue to take market share. A little word on another activity, which is parallel in terms of the product, but not in terms of the water cycle. That subject is the electrification in France and Europe. When we talk about electrification, that means electrical networks and dry networks, those are polyethylene networks. Those are the same producers for the wet and dry networks. That could help DPI.
They are one of those companies that were involved in the water cycle market in the Thermador Groupe. Industry, next. A quick focus on the general context. The PMI index gives the general situation in France on the left and in Europe on the right. We see it's slightly above 50%, it's slightly in progression. Also a few points also for the industry sector linked to geopolitics. The public authorities, whether European or France oriented, indeed throughout the world, they are increasing their strategic storage of hydrocarbons, that can present interesting opportunities for the Groupe. Valves, for example, there are products destined for oil and gas industries. We also have opportunities in the field of climatic engineering.
You might say we're talking about industry, but in climate engineering, I give the example of deep geothermal, we have industrial valves for that market, that means having this dual use of these valves is an opportunity for the Groupe. A look at staff now. We're going to focus on the Holdings staff and their IT team. Just to tell you, we are planning to increase the strength on this team to answer the demands of our subsidiaries. There were nine people in the IT department in 2021. I hope that there'll be 20 in 2024 and 2026, by 2030, there will be 33 employees working for the Groupe. Also to increase cybersecurity, of course, in the Groupe. A word about prices. It's going to be a difficult forecasting exercise.
At the beginning of the year, I said there will be a 2% positive price impact. Given what we've seen in the first half of the year, I think that for the third quarter will be better, will be more positive in terms of price. I would revise my forecast downwards with a price impact of between 1% and 2%. A few words about the international sector with diverse fortunes. Where it's most difficult is for Odrea in Spain, as well as the delisting of certain clients, from some of their clients. They're trying to identify new channels and also new product ranges and developing e-commerce in Spain. That's one of the projects that started in the first half, and that will continue in the second half. Thank you, Patricia, for that bit of information about Spain.
In Europe, sorry, still in Spain, Quilinox is following good momentum since the beginning of the year. These are activities which are buoyant, particularly the agrofoods sector. Good dynamic in Europe generally with excellent first half year of Sferaco. It celebrates its 20th anniversary and will be finishing this year with a record turnover. Also, it would be worth underlining their profitability rate, which has increased by 2%. Not only are they increasing turnover, but they're also increasing their profit margin. Sodeco in Belgium, a slight decline in the first quarter in terms of turnover, but there's a number of projects which could allow them to get back to more positive fortunes.
I would remind you, on the 1st of September, we've got the arrival of the person who is 100% dedicated to searching for new companies for potential purchase acquisition in Europe to accelerate our external growth in Europe. A word about geopolitics. Unfortunately, the global wars currently going on are having an impact on the international economy and of course, on the French economy too, and there's no real signs of an end to these conflicts. We are imagining long-term effects, especially on interest rates, in particular in terms of the price of polyethylene and the price of aluminum. Of course, later on transport costs, the maritime transport costs. We have a level of hedging, which allows us take us through to the beginning of 2027.
If the situation continues, these wars continue, we will have to pass on increases in prices on these maritime shipping costs. In terms of the outlook, there's a question which has come in concerning DPI. "Can you give us the color and the trend for DPI for the future? Can we hope for a sustainable return to growth and 2023's turnover rate of EUR 42 million?" Yes, potentially certainly there to get to that level. Even though there have been ups and downs, it's quite possible for DPI to get back to that level. We're going through a transition, of course, a change in the general management and the sales department. Some of the teams have been renewed.
It'll take time for things to settle down, but we're very confident that they will return to those levels given that, as I said to you earlier, DPI is on certain markets, in particular electrification, which are buoyant and promising markets for the future. polyethylene prices will have an impact. I hardly dare to talk about the price impact, but it will obviously increase their turnover. The increase in price of polyethylenes are up to 45%, but it goes up so quickly because it's linked to the oil price. I'm pretty cautious about talking about that. If the prices of polyethylene increase too high, then that'll block the market. It's not necessarily always a positive thing. When we had the EUR 43 million turnover, there was a more positive effect of price increases at the time.
Subsequently, there were the reverse effect where the prices went down, and therefore a drop in price and turnover. The last graph to look over the last six years in terms of organic growth per quarter. You see the first two quarters, the base effect of this second part of the year will be less favorable because in terms of organic growth, we were +2.2% on the third quarter of 2025 and -1.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025. The second part of the year will certainly be more complicated than the first half of the year for Thermador Groupe. I've finished. We're now going to answer your questions, and I'm going to go immediately to see if there are any questions up for us already. No questions on the English side.
You talked about the drop in price, do you have a drop in raw material prices?" Yes, of course, we do have. I talked about polyethylene. It goes up and goes down very quickly at the moment. The drop that we've recorded since the moment when the Strait of Hormuz opened temporarily and the prices dropped, well, it's going up again now. In terms of metals, there's a long-term upward trend, except occasional drops in prices. We don't see any possibility of reductions in raw material prices. We have no hedging for that, and that's a question we get asked. We have hedging for the dollars but not for raw materials because the manufacturers who organize themselves to cover that risk. For the dollar and the impact of the dollar on Thermador Groupe, a little comment. It's extremely difficult to predict anything in this field.
You can see that the Fed, who was supposed to be having a more aggressive position. At least that was Mr. Trump's wishes. We see that the new governor of the Fed is very cautious because of inflation in the U.S. Interest rates, at least the long-term American interest rate, is not going down because inflation is present. That can have an impact on the dollar, not necessarily favorable to the dollar, but also an effect on interest rates in a more general sense. We have to keep a close eye on that, even though it's very difficult to predict what's going to happen. Maybe Patricia can give us a reminder of how we treat this euro-dollar exchange rate. We do long-term. We work to the IFRS accountancy rules.
We do long-term purchasing on EUR 25 million in our portfolio to pay for the supply debts that we have in the second half of the year. That won't cover all of them, but we are looking at repurchasing these forward rates because we think that the rate will be less favorable. It'll be beyond the rate of 115. We do forward purchasing to six-month rates for the moment. We don't go further than six months. I see no new questions in the chat. Two hypotheses, either we've been very clear in everything we've said and you've got no questions, or you're all exhausted by this first part of the year and ready to get off on holiday. I've got on the English side, we've got a question, Anglo-Saxon waking up.
It's Albert Gardiner who asks, "Could you discuss the outlook for additional acquisitions a bit more, particular on the international side?" It's true that when we look at our turnover internationally, we're still around 18.9% because we've got the arrival of Quilinox. As we specified in our strategy, our objective is to rebalance France and internationally, and to focus acquisitions on industry and water cycle because when we see the capitalization of the companies, we see that we've got more added value and maybe more synergy with companies in the water cycle and valves. For the moment, we have no new news to tell you, to talk to you about. We've got no projects internationally which are sufficiently advanced or sufficiently detailed to be able to talk to you about that now.
That's why we decided to appoint this person who will work on that full-time in order to permanently have ideas of possibilities, opportunities, and be able to react to these potential operations at the level of the group. We did have one opportunity at the beginning of the year, but the company in question is going to be sold much more expensively at a much higher level than we had proposed because we need to ensure a good return on investment, and in particular for our shareholders. Of course, we will remain active, but not at just any price. We, of course, as usual, are prudent with your money. Okay. For the moment, I don't have any other questions. You know that Patricia and I, even though we are having holidays in August, we're always happy to answer your questions.
If you want to, from September onwards, if you want to talk to us, we're available to speak to you, webinar or Visio, whatever. If we have no more questions, we'll wind up this webinar. Thanking you all very much for your attention and wishing you all a very lovely summer. Thank you for joining us today, and have a great summer. Bye-bye