Earnings call transcript: Econocom Q2 2025 growth amid innovation push

Econocom Group SA reported strong financial performance for the second quarter of 2025, with total revenue reaching 1,421 million euros, marking a 6.6% growth year-over-year. The company's focus on technology management and financing resulted in an 18.4% increase in activity in this segment. The stock reacted positively, showing a 3.71% increase during the open market session, reflecting investor confidence in the company's strategic direction and financial health.

Key Takeaways

• Econocom's revenue grew by 6.6% in the first half of 2025.
• The Technology Management & Financing segment saw significant growth of 18.4%.
• The company is investing heavily in AI and service efficiency.
• Stock price increased by 3.71% following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Econocom demonstrated robust performance in the first half of 2025, with a 6.6% increase in total revenue compared to the previous year. This growth was driven by the company's diversified business model and strong presence in Western Europe. The Technology Management & Financing segment, a key driver of Econocom's revenue, expanded by 18.4%, showcasing the company's successful adaptation to market demands.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 1,421 million euros, up 6.6% year-over-year.
• Operating margin: 41.4%.
• Net profit from continuing operations: 18.7 million euros, compared to 17.3 million euros last year.
• Net financial debt: 208 million euros.
• Liquidity: 360 million euros.

Market Reaction

Econocom's stock price increased by 3.71% during the open market session, suggesting a positive investor response to the earnings report. The stock is trading within its 52-week range, with a high of 2.055 euros and a low of 1.55 euros, indicating steady investor interest and confidence in the company's strategic initiatives.

Outlook & Guidance

Econocom maintains its growth guidance for 2025 at 6.6%, with a focus on organic growth contributing 70% and acquisitions 30%. The company is expanding its offerings in infrastructure, networks, and security, and is preparing to sell its Sinotrade subsidiary. A potential large deal in Italy is also on the horizon, which could further boost revenue.

Executive Commentary

CEO Israel Garcia stated, "We are moving from Products & Solutions to workplace and infrastructure. More services around these products is going to give you more margin." He emphasized the company's flexibility and ability to quickly adapt to market conditions. Jean-Louis Bouchard, Chairman, compared AI's transformative potential to electricity, highlighting its long-term importance.

Risks and Challenges

• Public sector spending reduction could impact future revenue.
• Fragmented audiovisual integration market presents competitive challenges.
• Shift from CapEx to OpEx solutions may require strategic adjustments.
• Cybersecurity threats, as evidenced by the Sinotrade write-down, remain a concern.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the Sinotrade subsidiary's write-down due to cyberattacks. Executives explained their AI integration strategy and addressed challenges in the Products & Solutions market. The impact of tariffs on business operations was also discussed, with management highlighting their strategic flexibility in navigating these issues.

Full transcript - Econocom Group SA (ECONB) Q2 2025:

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Hello everybody. Can we start? Okay, good. Hello everybody. Welcome. Today in Puteaux for the analyst and investor meeting for the first half of 2025. The speaker for today will be our Founder, Jean-Louis Bouchard, Angel Benguigui and myself. Around the agenda, which will be as usual, some strategic updates, the performance of our first semester, some outlooks and welcoming, some Q and A from your side. I now leave the floor to Jean-Louis Bouchard. Yes, sir.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Okay, let me wake up. Somebody asked me when I was coming in if I was stressed. I'm not stressed, so everything's okay. I've been here a few times, so I'm kind of acquainted. Anyway, one year ago, just one year ago, on July 24, I made, I think, one of the most important decisions in my professional life, and probably the best one, was to appoint Angel Benguigui on the first row here as CEO of Econocom Group. Let me say thank you, Angel, because everything that you're going to see now has the stamp of Angel, like the room, the quality, the presentation, the atmosphere, the music. Probably a bit Spanish, but very Angel. The question you can probably ask me is why did it take me so long to make this decision?

For some time now, a lot of people were advising me that I should try to get more help, not to be so selfish, to be more clever, to be. I did look around and try to pass the helm to somebody else, especially after the years from 2010 to 2020 when we had tremendous growth in the group from €700 million to close to €3 billion. We had a fantastic team and a lot of people were tired because almost everywhere and then I was looking for somebody to take the helm. I tried my son Robert, who is not here today because he's very successful with his business that he's been running now for more than 15 years. He's a very talented man, but also lucky because he's building data centers and the market is quite good. He's doing a fantastic job.

Robert was not experienced with Econocom, so it was not the proper time to pass the power to him. At the same time, we had a financial crisis quite severe in 2018. The stars were not aligned for him to succeed. I had a decision to make. I had two very good people working with Econocom. I had Angel. Now he's been 19 years with Econocom. At that time, that is like six, seven years ago, he was 12 years with Econocom, very talented and doing a fantastic job at Econocom International out of France. At the same time, we had Laurent Roudil, who was doing a very good job in the Services Activity where we bought our main competitor in Services Activity in France in 2013.

He had joined the Econocom Services Activity with Osiatis Services Activity and made the service provider that we are today, which is very respected and is very successful too. I made the decision to choose Laurent instead of Angel. I remember we had the lunch together. Together. When I look at Angel and say, Angel, I did not choose you, I choose Laurent. He looked at me, he said, it's not very motivating. Then I knew I did not write the good choice, but okay, it was done. We tried with Laurent and eventually Laurent decided that it was too much for him. I went to Angel. We worked together a lot and now he's in charge. I really regret not to have made this choice many years ago. Okay, the choice is made. It's a good choice.

He will tell you what he's doing and he will present you his team and you can be very first resolved. Also, what he will tell you will show you how good the decision was. The second thing I wanted to tell you today is come back to what is Econocom? Every time we talk to the external world, everybody tried to, especially the bankers or the financial report, they try to compare us to competitors. Who can we compare to? It's not so easy because I cannot tell you one company doing the same thing as Econocom. Our great competitors would be Accenture or Capgemini. Capgemini and Accenture, they don't do financing and they don't provide equipment. I was asking, I was thinking, what would I like best for the future?

When I hear or talk about Econocom, I would like to be like Accenture, which is when I see a CV and I see that somebody has a part of his time, a few years within Accenture, it's always a big plus. I would like in the future that any CV with I've been at Econocom for two or three years or 10 years or 50 years or 55 years, that would be a very plus. Econocom is company a Cap or Accenture, smaller but same quality, but we can provide equipment and we can finance it. It's a huge difference. Don't always try to exactly think the same. We are different and we want to stay different. Andre is for you to speak.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Thank you, Jean-Louis. Thank you very much. Thank you everybody for being here. Thank you for the ones you came physically. Thank you for all the people that are looking at us through the video. I will try to quickly tell you some highlights on this first part of the year, the main points in my opinion. First of all, we are keeping going with the path of the strategic plan we built in 2023. I can tell you that we are progressing very well on that in the different streams. One of the main streams is the reinforcing of the salesforce. We are reorganizing the group, we are promoting the cross-selling around the group, we are delivering new offerings, we are investing in new tools in tech.

The first part, and this is the follow up of the strategic plan, is led by business development of the group, led by Israel Garcia, one of the members of the Comex. We progressed a lot and we will tell some examples in the qualitative part of the strategic plan. Second, the total revenue growth of this H1, plus 6.6%, seems to me to be very good. It's very boosted by the growth of the Technology Management & Financing activity, the backbone of the group, more than 18% with a very good evolution on the Services side, because it's 3.6% in an environment that, as you know, is not good at all. With just a slight decline in the distribution market, we are at minus 2.4%. Globally, I can say that knowing the environment, we are knowing in Europe a very good organic growth. We are happy with that.

On the inorganic growth and the M&A, that is an important aspect of our strategic plan. We finalized in H1 at the end of H1, four acquisitions in the audiovisual integration activity, one of the main pillars and one of the activities that we think that will be growing a lot in the next years in Europe. We will tell you more about that. In terms of reorganization, you know that we have a plan that is mission impossible. It can be funny, but it's very difficult to do it. We have to increase 160 sales and agents in net in three years: 2024, 2025, 2026. We reached the objectives in 2024, plus 57 sales and agents. In terms of agents, you know, the model of the agents is very important for the group.

As our founder Jean-Louis started Econocom Group SE with the agent model that is very resilient because a good agent used to deliver much more than good sales. We can say that since January 2024, we onboarded 41 new agents. We are following the performance of all these new sales and agents. So 57, as I said in 2024, the same objective for 2025. I think that we are progressing very well and we will be reaching, and the objectives will be then to come to the end of 2026 with more or less 600 sales and agents all over the group. For the growth, also, we are progressing and putting in place a cross-selling model. For the cross-selling model, we are doing a pilot in Spain, training all the sales and making that the sales work together from the different activities.

We had already good results on that, because with these pilots we are demonstrating that on a client base that was chosen for that, we already had good results. This is something that we will be deploying all over the group. On the acquisition side, you know that we just only bought one company since the starting of the strategic plan. It's BBnet, refurbishment company in Germany. As I said, some audiovisual integration acquisitions in the group. Coming back to the organization, first of all, people. We are reorganizing the teams and preparing the teams for developing the cross-selling, developing the synergies, aligning a certain number of activities all over the group. The alignment is a very important word for this transformation. As in Econocom, we always had an addition of different units working independently and delivering results. If the results were good, very good.

If the results were bad, you used to change the P&L manager and that's all. Now we want to become bigger. We want to become a bigger company and more efficient and more profitable. This is the plan. For that, we have to align a certain number of things. These are the different streams of the strategic plan. Second, I can tell you that we put in place in H1 a profit-sharing plan for about more than 20 managers in the group. The profit-sharing plan is based on the creation of value since the net result in 2024.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: To.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: The net result that we will have in 2027 and 2028. So the average of the net result 2027, 2028 compared to the net result of 2024. You will see that the net result that we have in H1 is not good, is not good at all, the net result. The commercial activity in H1 is very good. The difference is a one shot that we had to. Philippe will tell us about Sinotrade. This is something that, you know, in the legacy you have good things and bad things. This is a bad thing. We had some problems at the end of last year with this company. We have to make provisions that we will sell the company and that's all. We are looking for the growth and for the profitability of the whole business for the future.

This profit-sharing plan is based on the creation of value on the net result of the group for the next years. Our objective is to have a very nice net result in 2027 and 2028. Back2Life program is coming back to, is not only coming back to office, it's important coming back to office. After the COVID everybody was teleworking and so on. We are not so driving this as you have all to come back to the office every day. You have to come back to the live in the flesh. Meeting the clients, meeting the partners, having dinners and breakfasts and, you know, some P&L managers, good ones, they look for the activity of the sales, looking at the expenses. When you don't have expenses, you don't have meals and breakfast and so on. It's a very bad sign.

If you have some expenses, it's a very good sign because we have to meet the clients. In the COVID period I think that in many companies the bad habit of many sales were to try to do business through the screen. This does not work. The Back2Life program is a global program for all the group in order to try everybody to become alive, to see the clients, to come to events, to come to the office, to meet the partners and to meet the colleagues. For developing the cross-selling around the group we developed a project that is a one portfolio. One portfolio is like we speak about all the offerings of the group on the different pillars that we built through the strategic plan: services around the workplace, around the infrastructure, networks and security, around the audiovisual integration, and around the asset-based finance for strategic assets.

The one portfolio that is an internal document allows all the sales managers and all the sales to know about the global offering of the group. When they come to see a client, it is much more, I would say, valuable for the sales to say, okay, I am just sales coming from leasing activity. You know, we know how to do many things in our group. Maybe sales coming to leasing is not coming back to the office with a new contract on leasing, but maybe with a new contract of a distribution of workplace. We are training people in other countries in order to develop this idea and this knowledge for all the sales and the pre-sales of the group. I was just speaking about the very successful integration of BBnet. BBnet is a very nice company and has a very good CEO.

For telling you about BBnet, I think that the best is to look and hear at this video of Marco that will tell us exactly what is BBnet.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: BBnet is a company in Germany, IT.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Refurbishing company, and we specialize on notebooks.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Computers, monitors, and mobiles.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: We give them a second life through refurbishment and have a quality brand called TechXL.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: We sell our refurbished products to the reseller with two years of warranty.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Also on Microsoft authorized refurbishment.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: Econocom and BBnet is a perfect match because Econocom provides to its customers new.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: High quality IT products and after the.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: lease term, we can buy it back.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Refurbish it and bring it into.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: A second market together with Econocom Group SE.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: We like to be the number one.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: IT refurbisher across Europe, not just in refurbishment.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: We also like to expand our Services.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Especially in IT audit and also data.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: Erasure, because refurbishment is not always also a compromise.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: It's a smart, efficient way to sell IT devices.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Many thanks to Marco and many thanks to Christoph Blaiser, the Country Manager of Germany that is here with us today. Marco is now part of the Executive Committee of Christoph in Germany and Poland. We already are growing a lot in Germany and BBnet is a very nice acquisition. A very good company, is very Germanic, well organized, solid, very good. We made also some other acquisitions in these months. We worked on some audiovisual projects and there are three acquisitions, majority stakeholding acquisitions, so between 70% and 80%. We bought also the portfolio and the team of a company in UK. I will start with Germany because I think that Germany, as we already said, is one of the main focus for the development in Europe of Econocom as it's the largest economy and a very rich country. I really think that it's a rich country.

When I go there I really see that it's very powerful and compared to Spain it's really much more. When you have a €1 million deal in Spain, you have a €4 million deal in Germany, €2 million deal in France and you know, we bought the majority stake in ICT that is one of the leaders in the audiovisual in Germany. Audiovisual is a market that is very fragmented and with €40 million sales and 160 people, so very good to have them on board. We are completing our operation in Spain on audiovisual. We already have about €40 million, €50 million turnover in audiovisual in Spain and we bought Avanthia.

There is €8 million sales with 50 people, but a very good company in terms of offering and they are very specialized in museums, digital museums and they do a lot of business also in some Latin America countries. We bought also in Ireland ISS, 30 people, €10 million. We are developing with that our business in Ireland and as I said, the portfolio in UK. This portfolio in UK is already integrated in our Products & Solutions activity in UK and we also have, and I remember a very good operation in audiovisual in the Netherlands, a very good one also in Belgium, a very good one also in France, where we are winning very nice deals and also in Spain. With Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, UK, Ireland, we still need something in Italy, but we have a very good network in audiovisual.

What we are going to do is to have a global governance of coordination between these companies in order to unify the branding and unifying the offering and to be, we are the leaders in audiovisual but to be seen as the main clients as clearly the main leader in audiovisual integration in Europe. Now I will ask my colleague Philippe to tell us about figures.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Let me share with you some figure in respect of the first semester of the 2025 exercise. In terms of growth we've been able to deliver 16.6% growth for this semester with turnover up to €1,421,000,000, which is quite an achievement with operational leverage allowing us to have an operating margin at 41.4%. This is quite an achievement which was the combination of all the effort mentioned by Angel Benguigui in terms of organic growth plus the benefit of the integration of BBnet for the first semester, which allow us to have 70 basis points of additional growth.

In respect of the profit, what is worth to be mentioned is that this increase in the profit, which increased faster than the path of the revenue, even 8.5% increase in the operating margin was achieved despite an investment in the salesforce as also mentioned by Angel Benguigui, as well as tooling of the organization with Renew, investment in the CapEx, in the tools, in the software, so on and so forth. This growth was driven by our Technology Management & Financing (TMF) activity which demonstrated a very solid growth of 18.4%. It was to be mentioned that it is within this business unit that BBnet is included as BBnet is closing the circle of the life cycle of the IT units which are leased by TMF.

In this business also we had a very strong operational leverage which allow us to have €25.3 million operating margin on the first semester. In the Products & Solutions division we experiment quite a difficult market and it's fair to say that I think we overperformed the market. We were better than our competitor. Despite that, we had a slight decrease of 2.4% in our revenues due to this reduction, due to the reduction of certain public spending, including notably in France, as well as some, let's say, wait and see approach due to the renewed governance of the United States of America, as well as a certain level of pressure on the pricing due to the reduction of the market. Hence, our result decreased from 14.2 down to 5.2.

Certain number of our competitor in this first semester which are only focused on distribution experiment negative profit during this first semester. I think it's important to see the resilience of our business model for Products & Solutions as well as the portfolio effect which we benefited from. In between our three activities on the Services business, we experimented a steady growth of 3.6% in between last year and this first semester with the adequate level of margin, which is still one of the most profitable business unit of the group. With a margin ending up at 4.2%.

There are continuous efforts in the Services business to improve the margin, including notably enhanced operator thanks to AI solutions, including a certain number of tooling to reduce the time of execution of the ticket as well as the pace of growth of the business in order to be able to answer for client need with new tools and a better experience. During this first semester, as a certain number of you know, we raised a new bond issuance of €225 million which was aiming to refinance the tranche of €60 million of the bond issuance which was issued in 2022. Initially we targeted €100 million. We were fortunate enough to raise €225 million thanks to the confidence demonstrated by the pool of investors we had within our 2022 bond issuance as well as welcoming new investors around the table which will support the execution of the strategic plan.

Within the portfolio of Econocom, there have been a certain number of operations which are the legacy of acquisition. There is a very strong history of acquisition within Econocom, which was built both organically as well as inorganically. Following the 2023 strategic plan, a certain number of activities were marked as non-core. The decision taken there was to focus energy, effort, management bandwidth, and financial resources on a certain number of business units which you know, Technology Management & Financing, Products & Solutions, Services, and the geography we mentioned in this context. Sinotrade is an e-procurement software company which was acquired at the late 2010s, I think in 2019, which is one of the world leaders in the e-procurement business.

With the full comprehensive chain of procurement, the company operates worldwide with presence in all the major European countries as well as the States and has the benefit of 85 very experienced professionals. It is also part of the Magic Quadrant of Gartner for its business of e-procurement. As I mentioned earlier, early this year, in February, the company experienced losses during the second half of 2024, which impacted negatively our result end of last year. During this first semester we also had negative results, slightly lower, but still, which are the consequences of strong managerial decision taken by the group with the reinforcement of the management team, with the reorganizations, with certain adjustments of the labor force, with investment in the IT infrastructure, with upgrade of the tooling, with new features, including AI in the product, which is now launched as Sinotrade 5.

In this context, we decided to write down the goodwill of Sinotrade by €10 million to cope with the revised environment and the disposal of the company in the forthcoming quarters. In terms of simplified P&L, as you can see, the underlying operational performance of the group is very strong, much better than last year, with net profit from continuing operation of €18.7 million compared to €17.3 million. While the net profit is negatively affected by Sinotrade, both in terms of negative result as well as the €10 million write-off, the 2024 result was positively impacted by the capital gain in conjunction with the disposal of Lesabe for an amount of €8 million. In terms of net financial debt, the debt as of end of June stands at €208 million, which is totally under control compared to the figure of last year's.

A few comments on this slide which were to be mentioned. The first one is that in terms of operational cash flows during July 2024 and June 2025, we had the benefit of a cash flow of €137 million with a strong increase compared to the €125 million which we experienced during the same period of the previous years. The non-recurring items of minus €16 million are the reflections of the strong reform and reorganization we are doing within the group during those two semesters under the leadership of Angel Benguigui. At the very bottom you can see that the losses of Sinotrade, minus €15 million, including minus €12 million, reflect the two semesters which were quite complicated for Sinotrade, on which we hope that the next semester will be close to profitability and in no case at the same level.

In terms of structure of our net financial indebtedness as of end of June, we benefit from a very strong liquidity of €360 million. We have a combination of short-term and long-term public instrument with commercial paper for €25 million, €368 million of bond issuance as a combination of the 2022 vintage and the newly raised 2025 bond issuance, and other corporate financing, mainly term loan with banks for €175 million. This net financial debt has to be seen in light of a factoring and reverse factoring program which is at European-wide level for €210 million, which is more or less the same as last year, same period. Beside the financial figures, one thing which is very important is ESG.

Not only because we as a family company, family-controlled company, are deeply involved in ESG, but also because this is now mandatory within the tender offer we are responding with our clients and competitors. We now have an increase of additional 2% on the Ecovadis rating. We are now within the top five for our Ecofactory business unit. Not only are we gold medal at group level, but we are platinum there. Ecofactory is an operation which is more or less the same as BBnet, based in Montpellier, which is refurbishing mainly iPhone and mobile phone, and is now Platinum in the Ecovadis environment.

Thanks to this and the BBnet acquisition, we increase our positive footprint with more than 600,000 units refurbished within the group, hence reducing our carbon footprint. This also allows us to have positive discussion with certain clients and customers to exchange our economy of carbon footprint with them. We launched in particular in France a Maecenas de competence in the Services business, allowing people who are in between jobs to share their knowledge, their experience as professionals with young girls or people in need and improve the positive impact of our company within our community. Now I will leave the floor to Angel Benguigui to give some outlook for 2025.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: First of all, the main takeaways. First of all, continuous transformation of the group, following all the streams of the strategic plan we built. I have to say on that that in H1 we also take the opportunity of deep diving in our Services activity with our advisors of Boston Consulting, but it was a very interesting exercise in order to be much more focused on the decisions to be taken for the next years.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: To be short.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: We were looking at all the services on one side, all the services around the workplace. The main conclusion was that the confirmation of the investments to be made in artificial intelligence tools in order to improve the efficiency of the activity for the next years. Quentin Bouchard is in charge of the Global Tech of the group and is working very closely to all the services activities led by Philippe Goullioud. On the other side.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: We were.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Also seeing that we need some more acquisitions on the infrastructure, networks, and security activity. We have a lot of business on the workplace services and not enough in integration of infrastructure on networks and security. First, we will invest in tools and artificial intelligence in order to become more efficient and more profitable on the workplace services. Second, we will be looking and we are already with a pipe of positions of infrastructure networks and security and the acceleration of growth. This is something that will allow me to tell you that our guideline for the year was to be better in growth than last year, meaning that last year we had 3.6% growth. We can say that at least for 2025, we think that we will be at 6.6% growth, the same level as the first half of the year. This is our new guideline for 2025.

Thank you very much. We are very pleased to answer all the questions you may have. I will ask Jean-Louis if you want to come to the scenario and the COMEX for answering your question. Questions, please. Any kind of question related to the business.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Of course.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Yes, please. First of all, about Sinotrade. I have to say, last year we had two cyber attacks on these subsidiaries.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Okay?

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: At the end of the year, this was something that was impacting negatively. It was new elements that we had. We decided to change the management. First, in Q1 this year, we realized that we had to make some exceptional restructuring of the company and investments in infrastructure, just in order to be protected against other eventual attacks and to improve the platform of the group. These are the reasons why this is appearing now. It's not something that is in our books in five years and we just are rising it right now. It's because we had new elements at the end of last year that we realized with an audit made by the new management, that we needed to put some exceptionals for investing in reducing the structure and to invest in our infrastructure. For the second, we are working with Bearing Capital.

Maybe you can tell us something about that, Philippe. For the selling of the company, because we really want to sell.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Yes. We are working since the second quarter of this year in depth preparation for the disposal in parallel, the reorganization of the company. It has to be made in sequence. First, reorganizing the company and putting it in the right context and the right shapes. We retain the banks, which is Bearing Point Capital, to advise us on the disposal. We perform certain number of preparatory works, and our objective and intention is to conclude the disposal of this company during the second semester of this 2025 fiscal year.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: What is the price?

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Due to the context of the forthcoming disposal of the company, will not disclose the value of the company in our book.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: No, you don't disclose the amount in your book.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: It is disclosed in our books, and it's how much it is in our books.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: I have not our books today. I will have it.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: It's in a range of 2 to 3 times revenue.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Is the company losing money in operational, or is it many exceptional and first time?

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Right now the company is still losing money on operations. We are working hard to complete the reorganizations, and our expectation is to break profitability during the course of next years. We have reasonable hypothesis in terms of turnover development, including new clients. Very prudent approach on one end, as well as more operational performance and linear organizations, which is a main driver of coming back to profitabilities.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Regarding the distribution business, maybe Israel, you.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: can answer you that question. This situation is joined to the conversation we had last year, same time, more or less, when we were discussing our situation of the market. The situation of the market in distribution was expected to be growing more. Windows 11 is still coming later. That's creating a really big competent in front of our competitors. We're having a strong fight for the pricing, and that's really one of the problems that we are having there. That's quite similar. If you check exactly the same, the situation with the competitors, you're going to find more or less the same. Nothing different is expected for the second part of the year. A really good improvement on that.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Good morning, Frederic Anderson from ING.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Could you provide us with a bit more insight on the revenue evolution and TMF side, especially on geographical breakdown, including France? Yes, of course I can say that in France we had a double digit growth. Not only in France. France is going to come. Leasing in France is a leader in the market. Even if we think that we can do much more and we are reinforcing the teams and the management. We had a double digit improvement. We also are growing a lot in Italy. We also are growing a lot in Germany and we also are growing a lot in Spain. These are for the moment the four main countries for the TMF activity. As TMF is the backbone of the group, we have the activity in all the countries where we are.

Even if these are the main ones, we are developing also the business and we are growing also the business in all the countries. Just one country not develop the growth in this, but you always have an exception. Globally the growth is a very good one. I have to say that there is a good growth in it, leasing, refinanced without recourse with our partners and funders. We are also progressing on the strategic assets financing.

Yes, I have a question on the platform. Do you have a more precise timeline regarding the acquisition or development of the infrastructure division? If so, in which country will it take place?

We have now infra network and security activities in France, in Spain, in Belgium, but we would like to have a good division in Italy also. We would like to be reinforced in fact in other countries. Through the analysis that we made with Boston, we were seeing that this is a market that will have a big growth in the next years. Everybody's obsessed with data centers, everybody's obsessed about data. When we speak about artificial intelligence, we are speaking also about data servers and so on. In the infrastructure world, we can see four pillars. We have the servers, we have the storage, we have networks, and we have security. We have just to align. We have to align exactly our offering. We would like to have an aligned offering in all our countries.

We don't need for that big acquisitions, we need medium sized acquisitions with very good teams because it's essential to have good engineers and very good sales and pre sales for developing this activity with a good profitability.

I continue with the question on the platform, how is AI integrated in your strategy? I think. Question for Quentin.

Quentin Bouchard, Global Tech Lead, Econocom Group SE: Thank you, Anne. Good morning. AI is, let's say, a topic that is across every topic that we've seen. It's really a transformation and really a really interesting topic to work on. This is the first thing, and what we see is that there are many big players, especially in the States, but also in Europe and Asia, that are bringing big solutions, very powerful solutions, very interesting solutions for CRM, for ERP, but also for digital experience users, for IT services. They are really big innovations and possibilities, but they are very big because they need to invest billions of billions to.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: Have really good tools.

Quentin Bouchard, Global Tech Lead, Econocom Group SE: We have the big customer as well, wants to make the use of it. What we see is that we can build still the go-between as we are in EPS or as we are in leasing, go between those big actors and our big customers in order to make it for real and to get the value, because most of the time we buy a nice software, but we don't get the value. We've been testing a lot. Our approach is to be very iterative and test in prod, deliver in prod as fast as possible to get the feedback, because it's innovation. Let's be quick and get the feedback and then adapt and see what is working for us, for our customers, and for the specific sector we work in, which is IT services, and develop special agent for develop, integrate, use spatial agent dedicated to our sector.

This is the way we approach, and with Philippe Goullioud and with all the people in the Services, but also in EPS and TMF, we did deploy in prod, get the feedback, and we also do it internally. We integrated a chatbot, as everyone did, and we deployed it very quickly internally and have it tested by the internal users. We get some feedback and I proposed to our Chairman to test it quite quickly and he said, what is it? It's the shit, it doesn't work, I don't have any questions. We knew a little bit. We went back and we worked during three months or four months to bring back with more added value to say, for example, now you can create a ticket automatically to the service desk. You can talk with it, because you couldn't talk with it.

Also, the data is really important because we put at the beginning to go really fast, some knowledge base within the system. Now we have much more concrete and complete knowledge base. With this now we say, and also we review the look and feel, we have something a bit better and it's bringing a bit of value. This is really the iterative approach that we have on this topic.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: No, let me help.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: Continue.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Just a minute. If you want to understand AI, let's compare it to electricity. 200 years ago, electricity did exist, but nobody was using it. You had in electricity, you have a lot of different engines, very small, very big, all sizes of engine. You have a lot of different types of electricity, which is alternative electricity, high voltage, low voltage, continued, discontinued, whatever. AI is the same. You have the engine is a software and the fluid itself is data. When you talk about data, you have different engines and different data. Typically, when you go try to use data, always look at where do your data come from. Typically, I used to use Google like 20 times a day. Now I use probably Google 6, 7 times a day and chat or whatever.

ChatGPT, typically about 15 times a day today, but every time, where is the data coming from, is it on the web, is it internally, is it on our data, is it on somebody else's data? You have to match it because everybody says AI, AI, AI, AI, but you have thousands of different engines and a lot of different data. You have huge data. For example, the big platform like X have huge data. Or in Econocom, we have our internal data, we have our customers' data. Where do you use your engine and where does the power come from? This takes time to build engines and to build data. It's happening, but it's happening fast.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: At one point regarding this matter, we were reviewing right now the internal part of AI. Okay, but it's also joined to our future. What is our portfolio? In our portfolio we are also developing a lot the AI solutions for our customers. Just to explain, yesterday I was in a management meeting with one of the companies of the group and what we could see is the big increase in the backlog. Huge increase in the backlog, of course in %, because as you can imagine the things are starting slowly, but a big increase in projects in AI. The future is there. Also joining to the first question, how are we going to improve that part of the margin? Do we have a plan for that? Just to see that there is a problem with the margin in Products & Solutions is something that is in the graph.

Nothing special, but yes. Do you have a plan in order to develop it? That's the one. We are moving our portfolio, we are moving, trying to find which are the solutions that are giving more added value to our customers. Based on that, that's how we expect a good profitability based on the improvement in our new solutions we have. That's just to join up.

Perhaps for you, Israel, also a question on the audiovisual integration acquisition. Can you elaborate on the acquisition price of the four tactical acquisitions, both from an absolute perspective and EV/EBIT multiple, please?

That's a very good question, but it's a nice secret just how we're bidding companies in which multiply. That's something that is in the market and I'm sure that depends on. I think that when you are trying to, and I can give you my personal experience because I was a company working in AI and Econocom in the year 2018 decided to buy my company. I can tell you that for me there is one thing very, very important: is Econocom giving a project to these companies? Do we have a project for them? More than discussing a multiple of the big dies, which is the business plan we can develop together in order to find a correct future. That's the way we are working with them. We are not only working with multiply by 2 but 10 over 20.

The idea is how we are going to evolve it in the next year, your business together with us, which is the growth. To give you an idea on what happened, for example, in my experience, when I bought my company, my company was around €10 million more or less, but a very good profitability. We were a very nice profitability. After four years the company was double the size and double the profitability. That's for me how we have to answer to the market. It's not a question, and that's a question I discuss a lot with all the private investors on which is the multiplier and so on. We have to define for when you have a real investor in front of us. The important thing is not only how we multiply the EBITDA, it's do we have a project together for the future?

That's the answer for that question.

I have a lot of questions on the platform, I continue, but feel free to ask in the room. What is the guidance on debt? There is another question on the 2020 quantify guidance, how sensitive is it to macroeconomic headwinds or changes, especially in public sector spending?

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: On the net financial debt, in February this year we mentioned that the guidance for indebtedness was to remain within the one time EBITDA published net debt range. Right now we are confirming this guidance. We are working hard to have the financial discipline of cash conversion, increasing our cash flow, and optimizing the investment. In respect of the headwind, we think that the bulk of the negative headwind in terms of FUVIK spending is almost behind us. We have suffered that in France, not above. We are expecting that the second semester will allow us to rebound, including in certain geographies like France and others, to be in a position to recoup growth and momentum in terms of operational leverage thanks to the effort which has been performed during the first semester.

Thank you. A question for Angel. What is your view after one year of your leadership, and what are the key milestones achieved?

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: I think that the most important is that we are aligning the activities and the countries, we are aligning the group and we are starting having a quite good organic growth. You remember that in the strategic plan we said organic growth will be 70% and acquisitions 30%. You see that in terms of acquisitions we are behind what we said in our strategic plan, because in terms of acquisitions, you never know when you will have the good opportunities. We made some acquisitions in refurbishment and audiovisual integration because we think that is like Israel was saying, very synergetic. The investment will have a very good return for bigger acquisitions. It depends. We work on some big deals. We are working now in a big deal in Italy. Maybe it can come, maybe not.

We will not be doing things that are not very synergetic and with the prices that can be reasonable, because we don't have a lot of debt and we don't have to be pushed by even the strategic plan that we made. Maybe some other big ones will come or not and when we'll see. For me the main is to transform the group and the organic world and for the organic growth, the reinforcement of the sales that is evolving very well. This is what will give us a return in the next years. More questions, please. Yes, it depends a lot about the owners of the companies that are for sale. Private equity are squeezed because they bought companies some years ago when the interest rates were 0% and the multiples were very high. Now they want to sell, but they don't want to write off losses.

In this case it's difficult. The prices now are different. When we look for companies to acquire.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Now they are not.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: The shareholders are not private equity owners. I think that multiples of EBIT or EBITDA are going down, related to what it was four years ago, three years ago, and that it will remain much more the same, the same level. Because interest rates are in Europe at 2% and seem to remain stable. We look for companies that are in multiples that are realistic for the present situation and not business between private equity owners. You know, private equity, sometimes they buy and sell between them in order to move the money. It depends on the activity. In security the multiple can be higher than in distribution, for example. It depends on the level of the services and the value added of the companies. We are not looking for very big companies. We are looking for companies with a high quality of integration.

Security is a very interesting question because security is more and more important for the infrastructure integration deals, for the audiovisual integration deals, for example, in video conferencing, security is key. This is something that will be very useful for different offerings that we have. We will need to be reinforcing that in all the countries.

Do you have an explanation for the sharp slowdown in the growth of your Services division in Q2?

I will ask Philippe Goullioud to answer because he's the President of Services and Distribution in France, and I am sure that he has the answer to that. Thank you very much for the question, Anne. Welcome.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: On the Q2, there are two explanations.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: I think one is the month of May in France is a little bit day off habits of in France. We have this impact of the month of May and the day of May. There is a conjunctural aspect in fact in it because Services is business also and we lose some business and we are winning some business. Sometimes the beginning period and the.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Ending periods are not the same.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: There is some part of the year where we have business ending and other business starting, and they're all not joined on the same date. That's the explanation for Q2. Thank you, and thank you for the question.

Another question on Products & Solutions activity, what are the main levers to restore growth and margin in this segment?

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: Okay, I think I've been already explaining a bit about this matter.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: So.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: If you're a Products & Solutions company and you're thinking about only being a pure box mover, your future is very bad. Okay, so the company since two years ago we started developing new solutions and trying to merge and change from Products & Solutions to workplace and infrastructure. More services around these products is going to give you more margin. That's the main solution we're going to be and we're working on that.

Thank you. Try to find other question but you.

If you want, I can tell you that also based. You find it, maybe give you more time just to give that to help you a bit. There is also, again, sorry for talking a lot about the one portfolio, but again it's part of our core in order to develop and see exactly which business are going well, which are the kind of solutions are going well and giving good margin or not. One of the things we are seeing is that if you have a very good sales network with the capability to give more added value to our customers, the margin is immediately growing. That's something that we saw Angel Benguigui explained before. The pilot we're making in Spain with around some customers, some salespeople moving in around €30 million.

It's not big, but it's just a pilot, and this change we are making there gave us an increase of more than 23% not only in revenue but even higher in the part of the margin. Why? Because the main thing is that we are training, especially to our salespeople, where is really the added value we can give to our customers. Our customers are going to be really more happy on our solutions. What is needed. Of course, some of the solutions maybe are not in the country, but we are using the capabilities we have in other countries in order to give the support. Joining that effort is the way to find a better margin for the future.

As you can imagine, now we have to go into the second step and scale the project, and that's the process that we are going to start working since the beginning of the next year. That gives you more ideas on how we are developing and the solutions. The situation of the Products & Solutions market, it is what it is. The market is this way. If you check the situation of more or less all the companies that are working in this, even I can tell you, and I'm not happy with it, but I can tell you that we have in a positive situation because we are in a positive market. The solution in other companies is even worse. I'm sure that with these kind of changes things are going better and even the market is going to improve for sure in the second part of the year.

Did you have time and it's okay now?

Yeah, that's okay. Thank you. Another question on Products & Solutions activity. What is the impact of the tariff on this business and the impact for Econocom.

Okay, that's a good question. The tariff, to talk about the tariff you have to check exactly what's happening today at 11:00 A.M. just to know what is the situation. Anyway, tariff, what is giving is a bit of uncertain to the situation of the business. As you can imagine, all the big companies, they don't know exactly what they're going to find the following day. What it gives us is a real situation in the market and the market is also frightened. Everything is frightened. That's giving a really increasing prices and that's something that is happening. For that, that's the situation. For me the good question is which is the solution we have for that? As Econocom we are seeing and you could see today a very good growth on the TMF business.

That's part of it also because the situation is that we are seeing that the Products & Solutions business is moving a lot into more OpEx solutions, not CapEx solutions. We are joining forces between the team of Products & Solutions and the team of TMF and the solutions we are giving to the market is every day reducing that increase in prices because we are moving into OpEx as the situation of the interest rates is going down. That gives you more comfort to our customers. Anyway, tariff is something I think we're going to be leading during the next year, two years, if something changes. The market should be flexible. I think that's another important thing that we have in Econocom is that we are flexible.

We are very good reading the situation of the market and just moving the company very quickly depending on the situation of the market. We are also a European company, so quite in our internal market, it's not really having big issues. Of course, when you're talking about the world of the PC, the increase in prices every day, they change. Not possible many times to change these prices into the contracts because you have a global contract. Those kind of things of course are impacting in the margin and the net result of the company.

Thank you. There is a question on the governance transformation. How has it impacted operational efficiency and decision making? I think this is mainly for you, so I can repeat it. How has the governance transformation impacted operational efficiency and decision making?

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: I think I take a lot more time off. I play. My golf is increasing. I mean, he doesn't agree with it, but we are playing golf next week together, so I can tell you more about it. There is a tremendous job being done and we are seeing the first result. It's a big transformation. You see, the team is new. 1 year ago Philippe was somewhere else. That's a big change. We had a very good team in finance, but they were tired so we changed it. Israel is traveling all over the world, but very much involved everywhere, including the UK and having a lot of fun in the UK, which is very promising. Hanzel is busy, but okay. I'm very optimistic. You know, with Econocom, everybody is happy, except journalists. Because if you're a shareholder. I've been a shareholder for many years.

I'm very happy with it.

Israel Garcia, Business Development Executive, Econocom Group SE: Okay.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: The banks. There are many bankers in this group. They're very happy because they don't lose money, they make money. Every time the journalist, they come up and they are disappointed. Economic people are happy and we're having fun, so it's okay.

Thank you. I have no other question on the platform.

We have a good deal. Very cursed, but we're happy with your questions.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: You are happy as a shareholder if.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: You keep your shares? Yes, yes, I've been a shareholder for 30 years. I'm very happy with them. They give dividends. When I started, I used to have 37% of the company. Now I control like 60%. I don't have that. Yes, we still keep on buying shares. Yes.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Excuse me, how much was it on the first out?

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: The number of shares first up varies very little, because probably 3 or 4 million shares.

Moderator/Unidentified Speaker, Econocom Group SE: I've seen €15 million.

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: That's right, €15 million. Yes. Number of shares is about 5 million, so it's about €10 million. We stopped buying, you know, one month ago, when we knew what we are obliged to do and to respect. Now we'll start buying some shares again.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: Do you buy shares also as a shareholder, or do you stay at the same level?

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: I stay at the same level, but the company buys and then destroys shares. It's the same.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: You spoke in the past to have an adjustment with some investors. Any news on this point?

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: Yeah, we had offers on it, but at this time we don't need it. You know, in 52 years we had only one year where we lost money. That was in 1993. I know, I know, I don't like to lose money. At that time what happened is we were mainly IBM secondhand and leasing operators in IBM. We had started distribution, which was new with the PC. We also had a very good service company doing maintenance. When IBM crashed its price, the IBM pricing at that time, IBM was 80% of the market. Today it's not IBM anymore. The price went, when all the equipment, only central units. Thanks for us. The tapes and disk drives and so on, they kept their price. Also the printers. The main central units, they dropped from 100 to 10.

From one day on, the price of the equipment that used to be €100, well, the maintenance was €10. Then the rental price was at the price of the maintenance. We had inventory and we had leasing. At the end of the leasing contract, surprise, worth nil. Our revenue went down from $1 billion in one year to $300 million. That was kind of tough. It's still in my head. When you think it can come, you understand why it's so diversified. We have normally three types of business, now the fourth one with audiovisual. Every time you see one is going better, the other one is going up and down and up and down. We keep it diversified. We have the pace of growing. The pace is like Europe. You can compare Econocom to Europe, but there's one main difference. Why is it European?

Because our customers are being European and they want us to be European. The demand is for us to be at least in Western Europe, but more than Western Europe. Every country is doing up, down, better, longer, different, it changes, but more or less. Now Italy is doing very well in Europe. You know that Greece has recovered a lot. We're following the European pace. The big difference is that we don't have a real, real leader in Europe, where in Econocom you have a real leader and it's me. That's a big difference. We know where we want to go. I think the day we find a very good European leader to manage Europe, I think we, we all Europeans will have fun and we'll be proud of it. Maybe Melon or maybe, I don't know, Mao. I'm not sure. This is something else. There's no more questions.

Maybe in the room somebody else wants to speak. Everybody's already thirsty and hungry.

Angel Benguigui, CEO, Econocom Group SE: No?

Jean-Louis Bouchard, Founder, Econocom Group SE: You're sure? Last time. 2, 1, 0. Thank you very much. Bye bye.

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