Hello everybody, welcome to our half-year results, 2025, Pierre & Vacances and Center Parcs, with three of us here: Georges Sampeur , who is the Chair of the Board, and Philippe Lederman, who is the CFO of the Group. Let's have a look at the half-year results. We're here to talk about the first half of the year. We announced the revenue. The key word is really to take into account the fact that our business is a seasonal business and that you have to look beyond the 31st of March and also take into account calendar effects, because if you just look at H1 alone, you get a biased view. We'll be talking you through this because obviously the revenue and the results for H1 are affected by calendar effects. Looking ahead a little bit further, two points.
First of all, the in-depth work that has been done to enhance customer satisfaction across all brands for the first half of the year. Secondly, renovation and promoting the growth of our inventory for each of the brands. That is true for the coming half-year and the coming years. Looking forward a little bit, because you cannot just focus on the first half of the year. If we look at full-year trajectory for 2025, in the light of the momentum of reservations, our reservation portfolio is very full, and also our continued cost control at Group level, we can announce EBITDA guidance of above EUR 180 million for the full financial year of 2025. Let's take a look at the results of the first half of the year. Philippe,
thank you, Franck. Hello everybody. Let's take a look at a deeper dive and look at revenue.
You can see here that revenue has down slightly, - 0.9% for the first half of this financial year because of anticipated calendar effects, which means that some of the activity that would usually be in the first half of the year will be taking place in the second half of the year. We can subdivide this in two parts. We've got accommodation revenue and then other tourism activities. Let's look at accommodation first. It is down - 2.3% compared to H1 2024, but up 0.5% if you exclude the calendar shift effects. And if we drill down a little bit into the brands, you can see here Center Parcs - 4%, but stable if you exclude calendar effects. So I've said calendar effects. What are these? Easter last year was in March, but this year it's in April, so it's in the second half of the financial year.
You have the Easter weekend, but that is linked also to school holidays, which have shifted as well. Just one example: in H1, we had 16 fewer school holiday days than in Germany, nine in Belgium, as compared to last year. In the four countries where Center Parcs is operating, we've lost 28 school holiday days, but in the second half of the year, we'll have an extra 27. There's a calendar shift, and this means necessarily that there will be more business generated in H2. There's the calendar shift, but also note that there was one Center Parcs estate which was closed for a full two months in October and November because it was under renovation. That, of course, has an impact negatively on Center Parcs revenue. Finally, the average sales cost has increased by 2.3%. Yet there have been fewer school holiday days.
Of course, usually you can bill the highest cost during school holidays. This shows that we are enhancing our brand image and prestige. Let's look at Pierre & Vacances: +2.4% and +3.3% if you exclude the calendar shift. This is driven by very strong activity in Spain: +21.8%. We are going to continue development in Spain. We have increased the number of accommodation units by 14.3% there. Regarding the other activities, we had a drop in leasings because one of our residences, Avoriaz, was being renovated. If you look at the activity with the same perimeter for units, you can see that we have a stable activity. Pierre & Vacances, a very good winter season in the mountains. Two figures here to note: occupancy rate of 96% and average sales cost price also up 1.7%.
Let's look at Adagio, down 2.2%, but 1.7% if you exclude calendar shift. There's a drop in activity in France, down 3.9% in France, because we've withdrawn from two hotels in Lille and in Marseille. Also, in H1 2024, we had a very lot of business because of the Rugby Cup. In other countries, revenue is up. Accommodation revenue is plus 0.5%, excluding the calendar shift. If you look at other tourism activities, you can see that they've grown by 3.8%, driven by maeva.com, doing very well, very strong growth, + 21%, which confirms the relevance of the business model there, which is on-site presence and web presence. Other revenue is EUR 41.9 million. It was EUR 55 million last year. This confirms the Group is withdrawing from the real estate activities that it had.
Now I suggest that we look at the operational report, two columns, H1 '24 on the right and H1 2025 on the left for comparison purposes. First of all, I'd like to remind you that the Group's activity is seasonal: 40% of our revenue in H1, 60% in H2, but costs are more or less evenly distributed over both halves of the year. H1 structurally always has a negative EBITDA. Furthermore, this is my second comment. Bear in mind that last year, EBITDA included the German COVID subsidy, which of course was not recurring: EUR 11 million. If you compare the EBITDA of this year, minus 40, with that of last year, the drop in minus 1 9 needs to be restated, taking into account the EUR 11 million in subsidy from Germany. Year- on- year, the drop is EUR 2 million. Why is this?
Because the calendar shift effects that we've described previously and that are illustrated here on this graph I'm indicating now, particularly the Easter holidays, accounts for EUR 15 million. There were site closures that account for EUR 5 million. The graph also shows that over this semester, this half-year, we have had a reversal of depreciation of the Longue de Gascogne site, which means a re-evaluation of the assets with an increase in the value because following the lower interest rates. EBITDA is minus EUR 40 million as compared to minus EUR 21 million, minus EUR 11 million because of the COVID German subsidy, and the remaining minus EUR 8 million can be explained because of the calendar shift effect, minus EUR 15 million, the closure of sites and renovation. This is offset by the Longue de Gascogne provision, so minus EUR 8 million.
If we go down to the bottom part of the P&L report, you can see that financial charges have increased, minus 4 to minus 8. You know that last year we reimbursed the full amount of our reinstalled debt to have an RCF line that we only draw when required. The financial charges should in principle fall. What happened is that last year there was a non-recurring item under financial charges. If you exclude the lease loans and that non-recurring factor, it goes down from minus 97 to minus 8, and that is actually a reduction. The cost of gross financial debt has fallen. The other operating expenses have fallen from EUR 14.9 million to EUR 13.5 million minus, and taxes, this relates mainly to the Netherlands, the net loss, which is in line with the drop in EBITDA. The final factor regarding these results, debt and cash here.
I should make two comments at the outset. First of all, we said that our activity is seasonal, and this leads to negative EBITDA structurally in the first half of the year. The same is true for cash. We have seasonal activity, and therefore we use up cash in H1 and we generate cash in H2. Also, we have set up this year, and in fact in 2024, a revolving credit facility that we can draw on when we need it, EUR 205 million. We reimbursed the total amount of pre-installed debt resulting from restructuring, and this means that we have really closed that chapter of restructuring completely once and for all. This means that the debt as of the 31st of March 2025 is as compared to the 30th of September 2024.
Comparing debt and cash situation in H1 - H2 is not very reliable, but you can see here that we've drawn EUR 80 million of RCF debt out of a total of EUR 125 million. We had EUR 50 million for property loans, EUR 6 million of other. That's EUR 136 million. And EUR 80 million cash. This gives you a net financial debt of EUR 57 million. We can confirm that in the first half of the year, the second half of the year, we'll have negative debt and we will be generating cash.
While we can see that business is slightly down because of calendar effects, but they have been offset, or they will be offset in H2, we have EBITDA, which is in line with turnover, seasonal cash with cash expenditure in H1 and cash generation in H2, and overall negative debt by the end of the year. That's it in a nutshell.
Thank you very much for the financials. Now, for the second half of our presentation, I'm going to talk about everything that we have done to enhance the customer experience and develop business, so how we can boost our brands to boost our business and create overall value for the Group. Our focus, all 13,000 employees, is to really boost customer satisfaction. That is what you have here on the screen. You have all of our brands, Center Parcs, Pierre & Vacances, maeva, Adagio. In the first half of the year, they experienced positive customer satisfaction growth. We can see this through the NPS, the Net Promoter Score. Center Parcs increased 4 points, hitting almost 20 NPS points, and a Google score, which is now at 4, which is absolutely key for customer satisfaction. Pierre & Vacances, their customer satisfaction also increased in France and in Spain.
The NPS is now at 46, which is 4.5 points above last year, and a Google rating of 4.1. For Adagio, we actually look at a rating out of 100, so it's not the same as the NPS. I mean, we do measure the NPS, but here this is a rating out of 100. It increased from 83 to 85 for the first half of the year. And maeva, NPS, it also increased 6 points going from 11 to 16. These are the key items, either for first-time customers or repeat customers. What this shows is that they want to come back, generating further turnover. On the right-hand side of the page, here we're talking about what we have done to improve our customer experience. I'm sure you're familiar with our renovation program for our Center Parcs. That's continuing. We've got two examples here.
We have the Eau de Bruyère, and Philippe told you about the two-month impact that we had from closure. We also have completely new Center Parcs there: EUR 66 million in investment, co-financed by the Group and the facility owners, 720 cottages completely renovated with a new customer segment that we're targeting. There has been a shift in segment. We decreased by 13% the comfort-type cottages. They used to represent 45%, but they have dropped, and we're at 70% now for premium, VIP, and exclusive-type cottages. Thanks to this renovation, when we look at the overall performance of that park from last year to now, we can have a 32% increase in RevPAR. It is a brand-new park. Figures are increasing. Customer satisfaction is increasing considerably, up 12 percentage points in satisfaction.
This is a perfect example of why we are continuing to do what we started over the past few years in the Netherlands and Belgium. On top of that, we're also continuing renovation work. We have a fine example here of our residency in Avoriaz. It is the renovation work of one of the emblematic buildings there. It's internal insulation that we're adding onto this building. It's for heat insulation. We have cut our energy consumption by 2, so cut it in half. We now have the best environmental performance with BBCA certification. For a four-star residency, we have completely overhauled the interior of the apartments. They are now redesigned. Half of the residency is being completed this year. The second half will be completed next year. This is a fine example of what we are doing for Pierre & Vacances in the mountains.
In addition to customer satisfaction and facility improvements, we also want to continue developing our network of facilities because we know that we have a lot of fixed costs, so therefore we need to continue developing. On that front, there are a lot of positive items I can share with you. We've just opened a new domain in Nordborg. It's the Nordborg Resort in Denmark. This is the fifth country now in which Center Parcs operates. We are operating for a third-party investor, which is again perfectly in line with the fact that we are going asset-light. We are reducing our real estate risk. We've got EUR 200 million invested in this park, 200 hectares big. It is our first Center Parcs facility in Scandinavia, located in Denmark. This is going to be a management contract type deal.
This is the first place where we are going to be running it as a contract, no longer owning, but leasing. It is a very different way of managing our risk and reducing our risk. We operate this in Danish kroner. On the left, you see the jetty going out to the dock, and then you also have the facilities on the right. This is actually a place that is doing very well with good sales. I think we already have 70% occupancy booked for August, and a lot of local Scandinavians, and 20% of the future customers are Danish. The first customers will be entering its doors on the 20th of June upon opening. We are looking at about DKK 30 million in turnover for the year. I think this is a fine example of this type of facility.
We have 440 cottages, minus, sorry, 25% of them are comfort-type cottages, but the rest of them are premium, 20% VIP. This is a perfect example of what we want to do with our brand. On the right-hand side, this is a facility extension for Villages Nature Paris. We have 193 cottages in between now and June. We'll be adding in roughly 85 cottages, premium, 108 VIP cottages. So 108 of those VIP cottages, they were opened up to the public just recently, and the premium cottages will be opened up by the end of June. Overall, that means 193 new cottages for Villages Nature Paris, taking the overall number of cottages to 1,061. 34% of them are VIP, and this bolsters our brand's position as being a premium brand.
Now, what we do know is that the visitors out there are about half of our visitors are going to attend EuroDisney, the Disneyland park just nearby. We can fit roughly six people in each cottage, whereas in the past, we used to only be able to fit four people per cottage. In doing this renovation, adding in these new cottages, we're actually increasing the average number of people that can fit in our cottages. I think these two places are fine examples of what Center Parcs has been doing. Pierre et Vacances, a lot has been happening in terms of going more asset-light. On the left-hand side, you can see our work in Spain and France. We have 27 residences under asset-light type management. It is either as a franchise or a contract management type base.
Four additional sites in 2025 with some fantastic destinations in Portugal, Italy, the Alps, not just the French Alps, but we'll talk about that in just a moment. Also in Spain, with a huge boost in business development with six new destinations, 16 hotels in Spain that we're currently operating. With these six new destinations as hotels that we're opening this year, you can see the list there with some fantastic locations with the Canary Islands, Ibiza, Alicante. In terms of our Beyond Reinvention, we're talking about 3,600 new accommodation units between now and 2028 for Pierre et Vacances. That's roughly 800-900 each year. This year in 2025, we're actually going to be opening 1,000. 1,000 units opened, which are going to add into the overall number of Pierre et Vacances units.
Pierre & Vacances are continually increasing the number of new units. What we can see is that our business development and our park development is actually outpacing the rate at which we're closing other facilities. We are seeing a net increase. In terms of Apart Hotel, we have two new facilities, London, which opened just last week, and Stuttgart is set to open on the 1st of July. Here we see our international expansion to some of Europe's leading capital cities. This is part of Adagio's growth plan, where we are going to have 180 Apart Hotels by 2030, increasing our geographical spread. Talking about maeva.com now, they have both online and physical presence. It's an online booking platform, but there are also physical spaces, either in campgrounds under the maeva brand or in private rental situations.
We have five new seasonal rental agencies opened in the first half of 2025 and new campgrounds, 17 new campgrounds affiliated with the maeva brand in 2025. That is over 100 physical facilities around France for our customers. We just spoke about customer satisfaction and park renovation. The final point I want to talk about, and it is a fundamental topic for all, even us in tourism, and that is generative AI. We have been tackling this topic from a number of points of view. We are doing it with a very clear mind, but also being very realistic. On the left-hand side, what we are talking about here is how we want Gen AI to be driven by a strong hub of experts. We have 130 experts across all of our various functions, so IT, but also revenue management, e-commerce, sales, marketing.
Experts who can work together across functions and ask some fundamental questions. How can we use Gen AI in coding, in the way we promote and market our product? How can we use Gen AI? This is very much top-down coming from experts. That's one way of doing the work. From a bottom-up approach, we want Gen AI to be used by all. We want it to be a secure solution for all employees. Any employee with access to a computer, here we're talking about 3,500 employees who have access to full Gen AI. We're not using licenses because licenses can cost a lot to run. We have our own in-house AI solution, which is called Alfred. It is a system where all of our employees can ask any sort of question in any language to help them.
You see both top-down and bottom-up: Gen AI Pioneer Club and Gen AI for All. This is a way of helping us boost productivity and reduce costs. With all of that in mind, this is going to help generate use cases for customers. You have six perfect examples down the bottom of what we're currently working on. We've been working on it since March, to be specific. The two key points I wanted to say here are on the top right. It's the WhatsApp conversational reservation tool. There are two brands. maeva.com is actually creating its own tool, which is going to go live in just the next few days. Center Parcs is also going to incorporate its own reservation tool on its website, so we'll be able to compare the two. We also have the WhatsApp conversational during-stay support.
This is for customers or people in our facilities. If they need assistance, if they need maintenance, for example, they can use the WhatsApp conversational bot. Center Parcs has already gone live with it, and it is a WhatsApp line which is up and ready to go for three of the parks. Pierre & Vacances, by July, will have its own tool. We will be able to compare and contrast the two tools to use the best of both worlds. [S'agit sur le].
That is what I had to share with you regarding H1, regarding our approach, our various activities, enhancing client satisfaction, continuing renovating our portfolio, and we are continuing to develop our approach to Gen AI as well. Now, finally, before we wrap up, which I will leave to Georges, Philippe told you that the first half of the year was rather specific.
If you look at calendar in March, as compared to March 2024, there was a drop of earnings of EUR 15 million because of the Easter holidays and the school holidays. If you look at April, we have won back in April 2025 compared to the previous year, EUR 35 million in revenue. That is plus 30% compared to last year. We need to have a broader overview to look at the year as a whole, which will end on the 30th of September. If you consider that the second half of the year accounts for 60% of annual revenue, and you look at achievement rates of May, you can see that we are over 70% of the objective for our H2 for the financial year. The third quarter has already reached more than 75% of our objective, and for the fourth quarter, more than 50% of the objective set.
All of this is actually very reassuring regarding H2. We're predicting strong growth in H2, more than 5% as compared to the second half of 2024. We can say this given the achievement rates. In parallel to that, the group is continuing to monitor very closely its costs and to bring costs down and continue implementing its savings plan as presented to you. With all of that, by the end of May, we feel very comfortable saying that EBITDA will be more than EUR 180 million for the whole of the financial year. That was the message we wanted to get across to you in presenting these H1 results. Now Georges will be winding up. Thank you very much indeed, Frank. Thank you, Philippe.
I would like to say that a huge amount of work has been done over the last three years by the team.
We have given more autonomy to the various brands in the group so that they can develop fully in their sector. We can see this with Pierre & Vacances after the mopping up of activities that were generating losses and launching new activities. We're on a sounder basis. We've got good client satisfaction with a mix of cottages that help to enhance performances. The same is true for Adagio. We are meeting our targets and have been over the last three years. This is very reassuring for investors, undoubtedly. If I have to make a comment regarding our business line, it's very resilient. This sector is very resilient. If you read in the press, households are having to cut back on spending. Nonetheless, if you look at their holiday plans, you can see it's like an advertisement for our residences.
We provide an excellent leisure and stay experience. It's high quality. It's fun. This is something that households choose to continue spending money on. This is encouraging for us in hoping to meet our objectives, which we will. Thank you very much. Thank you, Georges. We will now be taking any questions online. We have a question from Emmanuel.
Thank you for the presentation. I have a number of questions. What is the potential for full year revenue for the management contract as opposed to the leasing system for the cottages, 440 units? Question about Landesgasconne. Why do you still have assets when the business model is to be asset-light? What about the landing of financial net debt 2024-2025? I do not quite understand the minus EUR 33 million.
EBITDA guidance. Let me take the first question, contract management for Center Parcs.
It's a very good approach. It's de-risked. We want to keep our leasing costs down as much as possible. In a country like Denmark, it's a good idea to de-risk and not have those costs when you're moving out into a new country. The figures are very good there in terms of reservations, but it's a choice that we've made, management contract. How does that compare to leasing? The revenue is about 10% of the fees. That's 10%. That's about EUR 3 million for Center Parcs there. If you convert that into EBITDA, you get a very good conversion rate because the revenue is almost all converted into EBITDA as compared to a leasing type model. The fees account for about 10% of revenue. That's very good compared to leasing. Landesgasconne. Why do we still own this given that we have an asset-light model? It's temporary.
We're not intending to keep ownership of the asset, but we're not in a rush. We're waiting to get a satisfactory price before selling and dropping interest rates favorable. We're not in a rush to sell in 2025. Probably won't happen in 2025, probably more in 2026 or 2027. We're waiting to get the right price. The third question, if we could go back to this, about forecasts of net financial debt, it will be negative. We're not committing to a particular figure, but it will be negative. By the end of the year, we will not need to be drawing on the RCF.
What about Center Parcs?
The EBITDA margin. It's a very dynamic brand. In the second half of the year, we've got revenue forecasts of between 8%-9% of growth for accommodation.
All the non-accommodation part, 60% in the Center Parcs is usually for accommodation and 40% for food and retail and other activities. We see growth there is systematically higher than for accommodation year on year. There we are expecting very strong growth. We are not going to give a figure for the EBITDA margin, but we expect it to be in double digits, EBITDA over revenue. Top line growth hypothesis we have answered. Miriam Mariotte. M&A, is this part of your growth strategy? The last transaction goes back to 2023 with Vacances Soleil. Vacances Soleil was a very good transaction in terms of earnings growth for maeva.com and H2. Three quarters of that is due to Vacances Soleil. Vacances Soleil has very good sales performance at the moment, whether it be the conversion rate or costs. It is very much in line with maeva.com, the site.
Campsites also very good in H2 in terms of afforded reservations. There are others underway. We have acquired five agencies for maeva. The debt level of the group, we will be negative net debt in 2025, means that we can take out more debt and to consider M&A transactions now, which we could not three years ago. We are on the lookout for good opportunities in terms of M&A. Have you got an internal AI charter for responsible deployment? Yes, absolutely. This is essential. We do have a charter, and it has been rolled out with all of the workforce, the whole team. We want to generalize the use of AI. We do not want people to be going straight to ChatGPT, and then everything will be in the public domain, which is not appropriate.
We have a charter which sets out the rights and the responsibilities of everybody in the company. We have our internal tool, Alfred. We have this tool, which is an interface between us and OpenAI, so that not everything goes straight out into the public domain. We have the charter, and we have the internal tool. Ella Zarouque has two questions. Could we have more details about the worsening of EBITDA in Center Parcs? Minus EUR 47 million. Minus EUR 5 million are linked to the calendar shift. Minus EUR 5 million to the temporary closure of Eau de Brière over two months and plus EUR 12 million because of inventory impairment. That is where the situation is worse because Center Parcs has very high operating costs over the year. Center Parcs takes the brunt of the calendar shift effect.
I gave you the figures regarding fewer school holidays in Germany, in Belgium, and this hits Center Parcs hardest because of their overheads. There has also been a lot of renovation. The EUR 5 million figure we gave you, four of that is the Eau de Brière domain, and then we have Avoriaz as well for Pierre & Vacances. EUR 12 million regarding the reserve. That is not Center Parcs. That comes under our real estate business line. I think that what we need to add in the bridge is that the German COVID subsidy of EUR 11 million had been accounted for under Center Parcs. It was registered in Germany because it is a German subsidy. Those are the main components of the EBITDA bridge. Center Parcs is the brand that bears the full brunt of any drop in revenue because of its high overhead.
There is another point we did not zoom in on, but we should, the cost saving program. What are the cost savings planned for in the financial year and what has been achieved in H1? I do not know if we can give a detailed breakdown. Our figure for the end of '26 was made available. That was an objective. We are in line with the figure that we gave for the end of 2026 objective, and the plan is being rolled out in keeping with that objective. EUR 55 million savings last year. I think we said more than EUR 60 in 2026, but we will be there. In fact, we are likely to do much better. We are on track. In fact, we are ahead of what was planned. [Toujours sur la.]
A follow-up question from Miriam on M&A.
What are going to be likely targets for Pierre & Vacances in terms of sector and geography?
There are two ways we can tackle this, and both of them are going to be profitable for Pierre & Vacances. We have a well-positioned stock. We've been growing business. We've been looking at operations as well, and we're developing in two key geographies. First, the mountains, European Alps, not just the French Alps, so all across the Alps. Pierre & Vacances is doing very well, especially over the last winter. It's outstripping performance in terms of occupancy rates, especially when we compare similar residences to our own. In France, we do want to expand a bit further, but it's really across the Mediterranean region. We're doing very well in Spain. We have businesses in Italy, so we want to increase that there.
We want to also increase business in Portugal. For us, it's the Mediterranean region and the Alps. For non-recurrent items, we've got a question there. Instead of giving you guidance on full year, we could give you detail on what we've already booked. We have EUR 13 million in non-recurring fees, and that can be broken down into EUR 6 million for restructuring costs. That's a cash effect, quite simple. EUR 3.5 million in non-recurring provisions. We had to depreciate debt from a Chinese business that we're pulling out of. That's EUR 3.5 million for non-recurring provisions, no cash effect. Then EUR 2.6 million in costs tied to our free share program, again, a non-cash effect.
We have a few more questions here.
In talking about China, there's no longer any risk there. We're no longer part of JVs, especially for two key locations there.
China, there is no risk for us there. We have pulled out of all of our risk positions. It was an essential step for us. We have answered the question about non-recurrent items, exceptional costs as well. We have answered that question. I think that brings us to the end of our questions. I'll just wait a few seconds in case there are any more coming in. Certainly, for the questions we have up on the screen here, we have answered all of them.
Brilliant.
Thank you very much. I wish you all the very best for the long weekend.