Capgemini Aktie

Thank you, everyone, for being here. I'm happy to launch the 2026 Capgemini Capital Markets Day. Along with the members of the Capgemini leadership team, I look forward to spending this afternoon with you. During the upcoming presentations and conversations, we will share our strategy and market opportunities. We will hear client and partner perspectives and talk about performance and ambitions.

As usual, you'll be able to find the materials on the Investor page of our website, capgemini.com after the end of the event. And before we proceed, I would like to remind you that the information in this event contains forward-looking statements with respect to Capgemini's financial condition, results of operations, business strategy and plans.

Actual results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties, the risks described in the universal registration document Capgemini filed with the AMF. You have on screen the program of our afternoon. We will take 2 breaks and hold a Q&A session at the end of our program. We will not field questions during the event. Please keep them for the Q&A session, during which we will also take questions from our online audience. So let's begin. Let's make it real by hearing first from our clients and partners.

[Presentation]

And I'm now happy to welcome on stage Group CEO, Aiman Ezzat.

So good afternoon, and welcome to Capgemini's Capital Markets Day. So I want to extend my thanks to all of you for joining today. And the last time we gathered for Capital Markets Day was actually in March 2021 as we were emerging from the pandemic. Back then, we set ambitious goals for Capgemini midterm performance. We targeted 7% to 9% annual revenue growth at constant currency and operating margin of 14% by 2025.

So I'm pleased to report that over '21 to '25, we delivered a constant currency revenue CAGR of 7.3%, effectively achieving our growth ambition. Now this included strong organic revenue growth of 5.4%, squarely within our targeted 5% to 7% organic growth range. Importantly, we steadily increased our operating margin by 140 bps to 13.3% by 2023 and sustained it even as we navigated significant market volatility. A resilient far stronger than in prior downturns when margins fell by up to 150 basis points in 2008.

Now the strong performance delivering our growth target and improving and holding margins reflects the robustness of our strategy and execution even under difficult conditions. And beyond the financial metrics, Capgemini has fundamentally strengthened its business over the past few years. We have significantly expanded our presence beyond the CIO, deepening engagement across the C-suite as clients increasingly see us as business and technology transformation partners and not just an IT services company.

We have deepened our industry and sector expertise to differentiate our solution in addressing the specific needs of each market. And meanwhile, we have also accelerated our ecosystem strategy. Roughly 2/3 of our revenues are now tied to engagement with our main tech partners, highlighting how thoroughly we have embedded partnerships into our value proposition.

Data and AI and cloud were already embedded as the core pillars of our digital strategy well before the current generative AI wave, positioning us ahead of the curve as AI becomes pervasive. Now the net result is a more resilient, more diversified Capgemini, one with stronger client intimacy at the executive level, richer domain and IP-based offerings and a partner augmented business model that can deliver greater client value and sustained performance.

We have also delivered on our ESG commitments. Our progress on sustainability and inclusion has been exemplary. We have dramatically cut our carbon footprint already achieving key targets well ahead of schedule. By the end of 2025, we reduced our Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 94% versus 2019. And slashed business travel emissions per employee by 70%, exceeding our 2030 goal of 80% and 55%, respectively.

We also met our 2025 inclusion targets. Women representation in our global workforce reached 40%. And we added Ethics AI as a ninth ESG priority, underscoring our commitment to responsible technology adoption, and we truly believe that our ESG leadership is fundamental to long-term value creation and trust with stakeholders, reinforcing Capgemini brand and competitiveness in a world that rightly demands responsible innovation. These past 3 years have seen extraordinary uncertainty, inflationary pressures, shifting client spending partners and now the massive emergence of generative and Agentic AI.

Over the last 18 months, investors have begun to question the long-term economics of the industry in light of rapid AI advances. There is a widespread perception that generative AI could compress our industry's revenue growth and margins. And these concerns have weighed on sector valuation. IT services stock have fallen significantly from their peak in recent quarters. And my message today is that the rise of Generative AI and Agentic AI is not a threat to Capgemini. On the contrary, it represents a structural growth opportunity and a catalyst for margin expansion.

We are confident that Capgemini will remain a long-term winner in this new era, just as we have successfully navigated every technology-led transformation cycle in our industry, from the advent of ERP and global delivery to cloud computing and SaaS and the digital wave. In fact, Capgemini core mission, helping businesses transform and operate more effectively becomes even more critical in the age of AI agents. So today, we'll explain why AI is fundamentally a business transformation opportunity for us and for our clients, outline the 5 key AI-related value pools driving this transformation and demonstrate why Capgemini is uniquely positioned to capture these opportunities.

We will focus on economic logic and value creation, how the shift expands our addressable market, how we help clients realize tangible outcomes and how we ensure that efficiency gains translate in sustainable growth and profit for both our clients and Capgemini. So let's begin with the fundamental question, what is Agentic AI and why it is a structural shift for business value creation.

In simple terms, Agentic AI refers to AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and acting autonomously to execute tasks with minimal human intervention. Think of them as digital agents that don't just analyze or recommend but can take action across enterprise systems. Now this is a profound new way of working. Instead of humans using software tools, we are moving towards human delegating tasks to AI coworkers or digital colleagues, who can then carry out complex operation coordinate with other agents and people and continuously learn and improve.

For enterprises, this could drive step change improvement in cost, speed and innovation, unlocking new levels of growth and profitability when deployed effectively. However, harnessing Agentic AI potential is not as simple as plugging in a new tool. In fact, the gap between what today's AI promises and what enterprises actually achieve has widened significantly over the last year. Many organizations have experimented with AI pilots or chat bots, but few have realized significant value at scale. Why? Because capturing tangible business value from AI require more than just adopting the latest model or platform. It demands a comprehensive transformation, rethinking technology architecture data foundation, governance, operating models and the human AI interface. Deploying AI agents like a workforce introduces higher trust thresholds and complexity beyond traditional automation.

In other words to unlock AI's full value, companies must do the hard work of organizational change. Those that succeed will repute rewards and those that don't risk falling behind. The good news that our clients are ready to invest in this transformation. And Capgemini's expertise is exactly what they need to do it.

Enterprise spending on AI is rapidly shifting to 5 broad value pools, which together cover the full cycle of becoming an agentic enterprise. So let me provide some overview of how and how they create value for our clients and growth opportunities for Capgemini.

So the first value pool is modernizing enterprise technology. The journey to AI at scale begins with trusted AI-ready core systems and data. Many large companies are held back by technical debt in legacy application, incomplete data integration and aging infrastructure. Now AI is both spare and a solution for modernization. AI capabilities like cogeneration made previously daunting modernization project more feasible. Why? Modernized systems, cloud APIs, clean data, agile infrastructure and nonnegotiable prerequisites for effective AI.

The second one is the new Agentic AI tech stack. So beyond updating existing systems, companies need to adopt a new architecture for AI agents, what we call the Agentic tech stack. This stack comprises new layers of technology to allow AI agents to plan and execute tasks across enterprise workflows, deploying this stack is complex endeavor. It requires integrating of the platform with custom development, addressing specialized engineering challenges like multi-agent orchestration and navigating a shortage of advanced AI engineering skills.

The third value pool is the new Agentic control plane. As AI agents proliferate, businesses will soon be managing by digital workforce of millions of agents by the end of the decade. This explosion of AI workers is immensely powerful. But without proper governance and cost control, it will be like employing a huge workforce with unlimited roads and unlimited payroll. This is why a new AI control plane is needed in every enterprise. It's across enterprise management layer, the central nervous system of the agentic workforce to monitor, govern, secure and steer AI agents in real time.

The fourth value pool addresses Agentic products and services. The next wave of innovation will come through entirely new offerings powered by advanced AI from radically accelerated R&D cycle to AI-enhanced software and physical products. AI agents dramatically accelerate product design by generating and testing hundreds of options. Additionally, the convergence of software AI with industrial automation promises cognitive production lines and intelligent supply chain that continuously adapt and optimize. Our clients recognize that this innovation will be key to future growth and competitiveness.

And finally, the fifth one is Agentic enterprise operations. Agentic AI's first real showcase is on the business process themselves across the front office, middle office and back office. Now this goes beyond incremental productivity tweaks. It's about redesigning how work gets done by blending human employees and AI agents into new workflows. Budget traditionally allocated to non-IT operational costs, for example, industry-specific process, customer service centers, supply chain operation, finance and accounting are now potential sources of value and efficiency gains through AI. And I want to emphasize the importance of domain expertise in this value pool.

We strongly believe that reinventing processes with AI requires a deep understanding of how those processes run in practice. That's where the acquisition of WNS known for its deep industry and process expertise across verticals like banking, insurance, travel and shipping significantly strengthens our position as a global leader in Agentic-AI-powered intelligent operation. So together, these by-value pools spend the full scope of enterprise AI transformation, from modern IT foundations to new business models and offerings.

Each area drives significant services demand, and they reinforce each other. For example, modernizing core system is often a prerequisite for implementing agentic processes or launching new AI-powered products. And if I step back, the overall addressable market for technology and operation services is set to expand dramatically as AI adoption scales. We estimate that the services market, including agentic-driven transformation and operation will increase by around $400 billion to reach $1.9 trillion by 2030. So growing at a CAGR of 4% to 5%.

Crucially, much of this growth comes from net new areas of enterprise spend, capturing operational budget and transformation project that historically were not part of the IT services pile. We are not addressing technology cost, but the full operating cost of the enterprise. In other words, AI is expanding our opportunities rather than shrinking them by helping clients achieve the next wave of efficiency and innovation, we unlock new revenue streams for Capgemini while providing immense value to our customers.

Now how will Capgemini capture these opportunities and convert them into durable growth and margins. The answer lies in our positioning as the go-to partner for enterprise transformation and operation in the Agentic era. It's a natural evolution of our strategy. In 2025, we sharpened our vision as the leading outcome-centric transformation partner under our Make it real proposition. That vision means we are committed to delivering outcomes for clients way beyond just technology. It's embodied in our dual value creation model, transform and operate that we will share with you today.

In both cases, we align our success with the client success. We bring our prebuilt asset AI platforms and industry solution to accelerate results. And we leverage our ecosystem partnerships to ensure clients can harness the best of hyperscale cloud and AI platforms under one roof. This pivot from selling effort to delivering tangible results position us to capture and share in the value we create, enhancing our margin profile over time.

Executing this strategy requires world-class breadth and depth, and this is where Capgemini truly stands apart. Operating with AI skill is a profoundly multidisciplinary challenge. We have one of the industry broader sets of capabilities from C-suite strategy and transformation consulting to deep technology and engineering expertise, from cloud and data infrastructure services to AI and software engineering from managed operation and business process services to digital design, functional domain expertise, and robust change management. In short, we can help a client both engineer the solution and transform the organization to use it effectively. Few can credibly make that clean.

What's more? We can draw on a powerful ecosystem of partnership to access the best model and platform for our clients, while ensuring we remain agnostic and trusted business and technology partners. We are co-innovating with industry partners to address emerging needs around data sovereignty, security and compliance. Beyond Agentic AI, we are also riding the wave around sovereignty and defense, which we'll address in the future setting.

In summary, Capgemini enters the Agentic AI era from a position of strength, resilience and adaptability. We recognize the concerns swelling around our industry in light of AI. But we strongly believe the future will belong to those who help enterprises harness AI's full value, not just as a cost-efficiency lever but as a catalyst for end-to-end business transformation and new growth.

Capgemini is a transformation partner. We are helping clients reimagine their businesses from their technology foundation to their operating models to their products so they can thrive in a world where humans and AI work together at scale. And by doing so, we are expanding our role, capturing new value pools and ensuring that Capgemini on growth and margins remain robust for the long term.

Finally, let me turn to our financial ambition, which underpins our confidence in balance, attractive growth and value for our shareholders. We are targeting a constant currency revenue CAGR of 5.5% to 7.5% to 2028. On the profitability side, we are introducing a new all-in headline metric, adjusted operating profit, which is equal to operating profit before acquisition-related expenses. We do target an improvement between 2025 and 2028 of 130 to 150 bps. And on the organic free cash flow, we aim to generate more than EUR 6 billion over the period. This will result in double-digit shareholder return over the cycle.

So the group is entering this Agentic AI era as a business transformation leader with a clear vision, the right capability a proven model and credible financial discipline to deliver profitable growth. We are tremendously excited about the opportunities ahead, which address the full operating cost of our clients and expect further growth acceleration beyond the transition phase to the new agentic world. With that, I will conclude and say again, this new phase of transformation driven by Agentic AI is once in a generation chance to create value. It plays directly to Capgemini's strengths, and we stand ready to make the agentic AI opportunity real for our clients and doing so to drive our own growth, profitability and long-term value. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Aiman, for your introductory address. We will now have the first of several fireside chats this afternoon, and I'm going to ask this day on stages, you'll be gathering the first client perspective with Barclays Bank plc Chief Client Officer, Stephen Dainton. Stephen Dainton has over 30 years of leadership in global capital markets with expertise in equities and derivatives. As Chief Client Officer, he focuses on holistic client franchise growth and building strategic CXO-level relationships across region. So let's welcome on stage, Stephen Dainton.

Stephen, thank you for being with us. Please. So thank you for being with us. It's a great pleasure to have you, and of course, to be your partner. So the whole subject today is about AI.

So I have a few questions and -- of course, we look forward to share a bit your thoughts. So investors hear a lot about AI's technology theme. And from Barclays Vantage, is AI becoming a structural modernization cycle of large enterprises?

Well, firstly, thank you for having me. There is no doubt we are all in the midst of the -- sorry. We're all in the midst of an industrial revolution. Every region, every industry is going through a material industrial revolution that is truly exciting. As yet, we have not even seen the application layer. I think I just arrived and heard you speaking very lucidly about governance. And I think any industrial revolution requires a material amount of governance to ensure that you're taking the appropriate path. But if I look at it from the Barclays perspective, undoubtedly, over the course of the last 2 years, we have embraced the new technology and the application of that new technology within every single piece of workflow across every single one of the divisions in the firm. So I think, of course, it is a structural modernization but not just for us, for you and every single industry on the planet.

So talking about Barclays specifically. So how does this broader AI cycle connect with your own modernization agenda across the bank?

Well, I think, first of all, you've got to look at your technology debt. because before you put anything on top of something, you've got to make sure that it's sitting on a robust platform. And I think with Anne-Marie and Craig, who are our 2 key co-COOs in the organization, we've worked through understanding where our technology stack sits today and looking very, very closely at how we embellish that and bring the new technology on top of that. Number one, that's critically important.

Secondly, you have to have a plan. And understanding that plan is really important. And we've laid out, it's a note of public record, the catalyst program that both Craig and Anne-Marie have talked lucidly about. Around a number of key pillars within the organization that address workflow processes and procedures to simplify that journey. And very much, it's about improving workflow and productivity and it is extraordinary.

Even in my own job, the extent to which it is enabling that change at a velocity, which probably some of us could not have even imagined, so it's happening very, very quickly, and we haven't even started on the application layer fully. So the industrial change is real, sitting on a robust technology stack that enables you to compete productively in the future. In every single one, we have 5 operating divisions in every single one of those operating divisions.

So you -- I mean you talk about AI modernization have to go together. We cannot do AI without modernizing. Where do you see AI starting to really reshape critical banking workflows? And what does it take to skill that safely in a highly regulated environment?

Well, in markets and investment banking, where I grow, I mean, I'll give you an example. I started as an FX trader with a pencil and a blotter and a telephone, a bunch of screens and a series of brokers screaming at you, would take your blotter to your -- you would walk your blotter to the middle office, the middle office would confirm your trades. That's the notional and the rates and they would walk that back to the settlement's office so that the trades could settle, then we had a thing called the fax machine. It was truly revolutionary.

Some of you might not actually know what a fax machine looks like. It was very revolutionary at the time. We moved from a fax machine to PDFs to instant messaging. What you're having right now is an industrial revolution in every single composite of the workflow. And if you take it from my perspective, being able to look at, I'm presenting at a Capgemini event, I can look at exactly the returns on Capgemini. I can understand how much we pay them, how much they pay us instantaneously understanding who's engaged with who, what relevance do they have within the organization, instantaneously.

The improvement in productivity, previously, I was using an example in a previous session back at work where we would be discussing in a strategy session, a comparative position relative to one of our competitors. You can look at that today very dynamically if the data is housed inside your IR department with certain hierarchies, you can examine that in the meeting. So the productivity improvement, even where I sit, both at a strategic level, and at the tactical level is critically important.

As analysts, you will be embedding AI into your workflow, an analysis of your models, an analysis of the changes that you intend to make in the model, the sensitivity of that change in your model and you can be looking at that instantaneously. It allows you to make better judgments and adjust that sensitivity with the human in the loop, your judgment that is better informing the data set that you are seeing.

So you talk a bit about how AI start moving workflows and become part of the operating model. How do you see the role of partners changing? What do you expect differently from a partner as we move into this new world?

Well, look, first and foremost, it's strategy and the tactical delivery of that strategy. The first thing you have to understand is an enterprise understanding how an enterprise moves, how it evolves, and where that strategy is going. I think that is critically important on this journey where you have a trusted partner. Remember, you are sharing an enormous amount of data that is unique to you, unique to you. You need a trusted partner as Capgemini are with us on that journey that can both understand a strategic direction. So that is where do you want to go top.

And then underneath that, even in a market environment, the pre and post-trade environment is changing so dramatically. You need somebody with deep expertise in your industry, understanding how you enable that technology, understanding what good looks like and bringing some of the parameters of what has worked from their judgment that could work inside your enterprise. So I think it's really important. Enterprise understanding, ensuring that you are a trusted a deeply trusted partner. And those trusted partners are going to become more substantial in the organization, not less substantial. And I think that, that's a very important piece as you understand how the partnerships can get built over the course of the next 2 years, that is going to be critically important.

So that's going to bring us naturally to Capgemini, right? So as Barclays and Capgemini have worked together for many years, and the agenda is now moving from technology delivery to AI-enabled transformation, what would make Capgemini as the right partner for Barclays?

I think, first of all, you've worked with us. You've seen us on the journey. Venkat laid out 3 years ago, a very clear new strategic journey. You were part of that journey. Strategies tend to be a continuum. They tend not to be rapid pivot changes, particularly in mature and regulated industries. So first and foremost, you have to stay safe, and a big part of what Capgemini has worked with us on is ensuring that we are safe.

Secondly, as you look to deploy that strategy and understanding of what that strategy is and where you're trying to get to the destination is critically important, and Capgemini, as you know, have helped us materially on that journey. And then also within any taxonomy of a business, most firms have different divisions different products, really understanding that it is not linear.

So what happens in 1 division might not be relevant for another division, but it may have some application. I'll give you an example. We have 5 operating divisions, 5 different CRM systems. So bringing that together seamlessly, critically important within the compliance department, keeping us safe, the utilization of tools across this journey and understanding of the industry -- actually a deep understanding of the industry from our trusted partners is critically important.

So when we think about financial services, we think all the way from asset managers to insurance companies into banks, heavily regulated industries, ensuring that, that strategic pathway is enabled in a safe way is materially important for us and Capgemini, have advertised that and delivered that for us along the entirety of that journey. But we shouldn't underestimate the magnitude of change that all of us are going through today.

It is an incredible change up. And I think the point that you made earlier, the groups that embrace, deliver ensure that their people are trained because the single biggest advantage for us in our opinion at Barclays is our people actually learning will inform future outcomes. So the utilization of the new technology actually will develop new realms of opportunity that we haven't even discovered yet, but they actually have to use it.

So ensuring that you have that embedment in the organization, people are trained to use it, and they're not using AI as a sort of embellished Google Search. Some of you are smiling because that is actually what happened when you first deployed some of the newer technologies inside the building, but really learning what this new technology can do in your daily workflow gives you all a material advantage. And by that, I mean us all a material advantage for what it's going to look like in a year or 2. When you wrap around that, what good looks like from someone like Capgemini, that makes you a long-term trusted partner.

So sometimes people think about that as like, okay, we do a transformation, we are done. Do you think this is a onetime thing that basically you transform, you introduce agents and then things they're going to operate on their own? Or do you see a continuous path of evolution in that new world?

I've never seen a transformation that's ever done. So I think this is a rapid evolution, and it will go through many cycles. It will go through many cycles. And those cycles will adjust along that journey because as each industry discovers the deep relevancy of this changing technology for them they will be able to adjust their model to adapt to that. And that's why I made the point about our own employees have to adopt this technology because we're going to learn from them.

And I think that, that's really the powerful thing. The models that evolved out of the Internet era evolved rapidly. There were many firms in 2000 and 2001 that said that they were already Internet adopted. And if you look at the number of business models, fantastic companies that were Internet-ready in 2000 and 2001 that no longer exist or were materially taken over. It is because they did not embed culturally inside their building an understanding of what that could do to their business model. So I think that this is a rapid evolution, and I think this will not be a 2-year or a 3-year look at what we've done.

Every single business model, I don't say this lightly. Every single business model is going to go through a rapid evolution. And there will be very substantial winners as there was through the Internet age, and there will be very substantial disruptors who adopt the technology quicker, show that they are more nimble on a technology stack of relevance that is safe, and there will be large institutions that also adopt change and rapidly evolve their business models, they will be the winners over the course of the next 5 and 10 years.

Any last sort things towards to watch for or concerns as we deploy this huge digital workforce across enterprises?

Look, I worry constantly in a heavily regulated industry about governance. First and foremost, we have to demonstrate to all of our shareholders, our clients, are deposit makers, our regulators that we're a safe organization, staying safe on any evolution, a rapid evolution or a slow evolution is something that you have to have is the first core premise staying safe. So I think that I constantly worry about any time that you're enabling a large data set to be shared, whether that's inside a building, inside a division, a topco, you need to make sure that your rails are very, very solid and that the doors for entry are very, very solid. So I think governance from my perspective is mission-critical.

Secondly, adoption. We have 90,000 employees at Barclays. If 2,000 adopt it, we're going to move slow. If 10,000 adopt it, we're going to move faster. If 50,000 adopt it, the learning capability from the data capture of usage is going to allow us to adapt our operating model this year, next year and for the next 10 years. So adoption becomes a very important factor in the winners and the losers from my perspective. And you get there when you have trusted partners showing you that direction. I use this example. If any of you live in London, they introduced a 20-mile-an-hour speed limit. That's a guardrail. That was a guardrail. Many people exceeded that 20-mile an hour speed limit because they had actually looked up and seen the speed limit. But they very soon learned the lesson.

So ensuring that you have appropriate guardrails, that people operate inside when you have this number of agents that are going to consume the data and take direct paths to a conclusion, and that is why the human in the loop becomes critically important. I think this is a truly exciting phase for all of us in every single industry. And I think I'm lucky to be involved in it. And thank you for being involved with us.

Stephen, thank you. Thank you for the great partnership. Of course, looking forward to make that the most powerful bank leveraging AI.

Well, thank you very much for having me. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, gentlemen. I'd like now to invite Fernando Alvarez, Chief Strategy and Development Officer, tell us more in detail about the market opportunity and how AI will drive business value creation.

Welcome. Good afternoon to a warm London for a change. Last night, I was having dinner with one of the fire side that we will have today. And as we were getting involved in the conversation, I reflected after I came back. And I start realizing the crux of the conversation is how fast everything is moving. It is so fast -- and we were discussing one of the AI native providers that even they cannot keep up with their own models.

I think right now, what we need to understand is that we're in the middle of a structural shift of any price creation. And the purpose of our conversation today will gear around a business conversation. It's not exclusively all our technology and IT. This is a fundamental change that we're seeing in the conversations that we're engaging our clients and our partners. It's a conversation about transformation. It's a conversation about how to handle people, assets, intellectual property, an agentic workforce and the ability to understand the industry, the domain and the functions that you're going in, in order to enable growth. This makes a big difference. And if you close your eyes, you tell me how many people in the industry can navigate these waters with the trust and confidence that it takes to make this happen. Because you see here, this is not the first wave of innovation and transformation we go through.

I remember the days of client server, everybody telling you your days are numbered, you're going to be out. You're not going to be needed. Then came the days of outsourcing offshore development, onshore development, the days are numbered, how are you going to adapt. And then came the days of cloud and digital, I remember when all started, and everybody was talking about, oh, digital, it's just proof of concept. It doesn't scale. There's no money to be made.

In every single wave we adapted, we became resilient, and more important, we excel. What is the difference in my introspection from the conversation I was having last night over dinner to this wave. As I told you, things are moving very fast.

In the prior wave, we always have time to adapt. Here, we have to move. The clients have to move because the objective is the ability to address business value creation by increasing shareholder value, fantastic conversation. So that entails moving into the ability to deal with structural rotation of that growth that we're going through the wave we're in to the new wave we're confronting. And yes, that implies secular growth, and that implies also some compression. That's part of the game.

The question is, what's ahead and what it takes to be ahead? And what we intend today is to cover with my leagues, all the value pools that Aiman has been pointed out to you in which we see the upside. That's the purpose of the exercise. But the most important for me, personally, being in this industry for so long is the ability for the first time to grab a total addressable market quicker, faster and better because I will have people, assets and agentic workforce. That is what's going to catapult me to grab that total addressable market. So rather than, oh, my God, I don't know how to do this. We are embracing it as fast as we can at its speed at the industry is moving because we have that industry domain expertise knowledge to help our clients.

Let's go quickly one by one. Value pool, #1. There is absolutely everybody is enchanted with the tip of the iceberg. Everybody wants to talk about agents and agentic, everybody gets excited. But you know what, in order to enjoy that tip, you better have solid foundations. And that's how we started. If you don't have your foundation solid, if you want to take advantage of 2026 technology with 2000, 2016 foundations, good luck. Somebody has to tackle that, value pool #1.

Value pool #2. In order to do that, it will require a complete reset of the technology stack. What does that mean? It means that things cannot work in silos. The success of embracing agents and an agentic value architecture, it's based upon data. If the data is segmented and silo through an enterprise, good luck. Somebody needs to put that house in order. Value pool #2.

Value pool #3. When you do this, and you embrace this technology, agents become a workforce. And if you've now here, those of you who are at Sapphire in Orlando, SAP has an agent control AI control plane. Workday has an agent control plane. ServiceNow has one. Microsoft has one. AWA has one. Who is going to govern and manage that workforce? Somebody has to because all of the selling, these are not people informing anymore. These are not informing these are acting autonomously so that you need guardrails, you need cybersecurity, you need guidance, you need orchestration because the reality of the business that we're in, people still have legacy applications. There are some people still running mainframes. There are some people still running COBOL besides the SAPs and the bespoke development that is happening, how do we orchestrate that. Value pool #3, the agentic control plane. But it's not all our technology. I told you at the beginning that the conversation today is a business conversation.

Everything needs to land. What are the playing fields? What I told you earlier, industry, domain, functions, knowledge, how do you enable, how do you use this to make this happen? And here is where everything that we have comes into fruition. So we basically land in value pool #4. Playing fields. Products and services. And I hope now you start putting together all the decisions that we have been making for the last years as we have been building towards the momentum going forward.

We have a Capgemini engineering. That's a value pool of a wallet spend, waiting to take advantage of this opportunity, the ability to bring the physical anti-digital together. There is so much data to go after. There's so much opportunity to build bespoke applications, leveraging the different models and the different platforms that is there for us to grab. And you will hear a testimonial show after or 1 of our clients and how is making happen. Value pool #4.

Value pool #5. Here is where you all wonder, I remember, not long time ago, when we announced the WNS acquisition, you said, these guys are crazy. They're going after the BPO market space. BPO market. No. Trust me. The reason we did what we did is because we saw it coming. And we came to the conclusion that the best place to showcase agents and agentic is in the business process space. And that was the bet. The bet was to move from a talent-based model to our consulting-led AI power, technology, digital-driven model. And we made the bet. And today, in the Enterprise process transformation is probably our biggest upside. And it was the right bet, and we have built the momentum towards that. value pool #5.

So as we have been learning interacting with partners and clients. This is not an electrical switch. Everybody thinks light on agents, lights off, agents on, no more people, less people. It is a combination. It's a journey. It's an evolution. We are evolving from a talent-based model to a consulting-led knowledge, domain functions do not forget that, knowledge and domain functions, combined with the ability to leverage the power of AI and take all our heritage of technology and digital. You combine them all together, plus advisory and plus engineering, we're catering every single wallet spend pool in the market. And we're going about it, not only our technology, it's about resolving business problem, enabling them with technology. That's how our TAM is going to increase. And that is why we're so optimistic about it. And yes, we will invest in assets.

If you look and you will hear from my colleague, how it is restructured and the technology stack reset, that contextual semantic layer. That's where I'm going to build my assets in order to increase my value of my services. And I will do it by industries, by domain and by functions. I need to understand the pain point of my clients, and I need to have the ability to manage them and orchestrate them appropriately. And as Aiman was pointing out, slowly, quietly, one step at a time, we have built the strength of a very solid ecosystem of partners, because it's very easy to say, I have a one-to-one relationship with a partner and the #1 because I generate enough influence revenue for them. But when you tackle industries and business problems, you need an ecosystem of partners that can speed the language of that segment of that industry to resolve a problem. And that is what slowly we have been building and enabling the company to act.

What we have done, first of all, every single decision, every single acquisition had a purpose. Syniti. Syniti is an asset-led service company. It was the ability to understand how by leveraging an asset, I can create enough stickiness to elevate my value creation in the services I provide. Focus on data and AI, focus on the migration from on-premise to cloud.

Cloud4C. We made the bet, sovereignty, defense. It's a growth engine. We make the bet that the world is not only about public cloud. It's a hybrid cloud environment, an asset base, totally AI-enabled managed service platform built on open source. It allow us to deliver quicker, faster, better and address the hybrid environment and the sovereignty environment and, yes, the foundations to enter into a mid-market for those who are asking us to help them to get into that mid-market.

The last one, WNS. I already told you the logic behind it and why we did what we did and is the foundation of what we call intelligent operations. The consulting part. Now you see the relevance of the decision we made to bring Capgemini Consulting to Capgemini Invent and bring it closer to the decision-making process of when people are making decisions in the industry, tightly coupled with the advisory work with the technology work, which is the foundation of the conversation we're having today now that we're embracing agents and agentic. It is crucial for us to make that happen.

Finally, the ecosystems of partners. I told you earlier, 68% all our bookings last year gravitated around an ecosystem of partners, quietly, slowly and focus on industry knowledge and expertise. Sorry. Now we're making some very acute decisions -- acute decisions right now. You're probably going to get bombarded by everybody telling you, I have so many FTEs. I got 30,000 FTEs. No, I have 100,000 FTEs. I encourage you to go and find out what an FTE means. Ask Palantir, ask OpenAI and Anthropic. The skill sets required to their definition is something that we all are working on, but there is one thing you need to understand and why we are working closely with all of them. And FTE, one quality has, he has access to the source code of the models.

Why they were forward deployed? Yes, the forward deployed to the client, because of that knowledge, that unique, that talent and that skill allows to deliver the final outcome quicker because they have access to certain code that nobody else has. That's why it's so difficult to replicate. And that's why we decide that we will embrace the model. We will run with the model, but we will call them outcome deployed engineers because our objective is to deliver an outcome to our client, and we will embrace FTEs of all of them as 1 to deliver that outcome. And you will see a series of families of outcome deployed engineers to move into this new agentic value architecture, decision #1.

Decision #2, we acknowledge that the skill set requires are very unique. So we are launching AI enterprise hubs. The first one we launched in Google Next with Google. Next 1 I'm going to be OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, AWS and the ability to triangulate among themself by picking industries and lanes to scale our people and our teams according to the skills required. And finally, we are investing in Agentic control planes, but we will later focus with our portfolio teams in a very industry approach in order to be able to take those problems.

I think we have what it takes to deliver and then close your eyes and tell me who has the consulting capabilities, industry knowledge, domain expertise, scalability, the ability to address engineering and R&D, the ability to deal with technology and digital -- and finally, the ability to scale this to the levels that you see clients testimonials today requires for this to work and manage an agentic workforce, combined with people and assets to do effectively and efficiently. Tell me how many of those are there? How many clients will need. There will be in a lot of help, and we'll be there.

And one thing that we will focus today is to tell you how we will transform or transform and operate. We will partner with clients by helping them transform, and we will partner with clients, those who want us to transform, and by the way, can you operate this for us end to end. And here is when the intelligent operations shines and here is when intelligent industry shines in those areas in which it merits to go after those industries. And what we will do today for you is to go now value pool by value pool, explaining to you why we believe that in each one of these value pools that I dare to say we're the first one defining each one of these value pools in the market, and we will translate those to our best knowledge of what that total addressable market looks like, with the confidence, with the enthusiasm and its to tell you that we're here to stay, and there is a big future ahead of us. And this level of energy is not because I'm here today talking to you, it's because since all this is happening, this is the best thing that I've ever seen happening in our industry, and we will embrace it as fast as we can. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Fernando. I'm going to ask you to stay on stage as we're going to have for the last section before our first break. We're here of our partner perspective. Perhaps since you're going to lead this conversation, I will let you introduce our partner.

Thank you. Earlier in his career, our guest work in private equity and investment banking at TPG Sixth Street Partners and Goldman Sachs, then cofounded Mainstay, the Enterprise business fund of Opendoor in August 24. Today, he drives global business with governments, enterprises, research and ecosystems to accelerate responsible AI adoption and large-scale infrastructure deployment as Vice President of Global Business of OpenAI. Please welcome to join me, Nate Harbacek. I mean the first thing I have to say thank you because this gentleman landed from San Francisco yesterday, and he's reporting back to San Francisco at 6:00 today. So thank you very much for being here. It's always a pleasure to see you.

Likewise. It's a pleasure having me. We move quickly, but that's part of the fun.

Trust me. you move fast. So let me -- I have a series of things that you and I have this call, so let me ask you some questions to see how it flows. OpenAI is known for its pioneering role in pushing the AI front here. But what we're seeing now goes even beyond that. To our AI systems agentic platforms and enterprise-wide deployment. From your perspective, how should investors understand OpenAI's evolution and ambition in the enterprise market?

It's a great question. It's really great to be here talking about it with you guys because I think you guys are stakeholders in that with us. I think when you think about our role, our job is to push the frontier of intelligence. I think you see us doing that with the models themselves whether it's codecs and coding recently, the work that we've done with Roseland, our biology model. And then even last week, there was a publication that came out where we proved a mathematical hypothesis, one of the problems, that hadn't really been solved for 80 years.

And so you see us pushing the frontier of intelligence every day and the mission and the mandate of OpenAI is to push intelligence for the benefit of all humanity. And so that is foundational in bedrock. What's interesting what we've seen in the past 18 months is that is definitively not enough. And so you have to be bringing capability not just to a human, but to an enterprise. And so whether that is scaffolding whether that is the harness, whether that is the codex product itself, we're starting to move very rapidly into building the platforms, the agentic systems, the context layer and the understanding to really bring the technology into the enterprise.

Agentic AI is to drive structural shift. I mean, this is, I think, given that we all have a we're looking forward doing it how enterprises create value at scale. I mean, this is ultimately the challenge is, how do we scale it and how we create that value, moving from technology adoption to end-to-end enterprise transformation. So from an open AI vantage point, how do you see this market transforming?

Yes. I think we're still early when you think about it. To me, the analogy is kind of crawl, walk, run. The first phase in adoption was, in many cases, amazement, really touching the technology for the first time using it for writing or answering a question or enabled search or otherwise. It was a single player, individual use, individual productivity.

The walk, which we've seen over the past 18 months, has really been about individual workflows, creating agent that matches the capability of a given human to do a task that existed before and effectively superhuman skills and augmentation.

The run is going to be really embedded agentic workflows. So production-grade enterprise deployments of something, taking the technology and embedding it deeply in the enterprise with the context, the controls, the permissioning in the skills that it needs to operate and agents that are specifically not linked to an individual person, pushing the technology forward. And so you'll start to see entire workflows rearchitected around an agentic workflow, doing things that were either previously not capable or you had to do them in a different way, starting with human in the loop and in time, even without human in the loop at a scale and a capability level that we haven't really ever seen before.

And then I think sprinting is going to be when the models themselves are able to figure out what to do and able to take on problems for a company or all of humanity that have never been solved before. We're going to see the models themselves in the next couple of years, get to the point where they're capable of self-architecting new solutions or pushing capabilities forward in a way that has previously been impossible to understand. And to me, that's the evolution of what you're going to see.

Well, the breakthrough potential of is widely recognized, I mean, across all industries, I think we have been addressing that. The key question is how fast enterprise can convert that potential to scale value which we -- it's essential. From your perspective, what are the main barriers to deploy at an scale.

There are I think the first is it's a new way of thinking. The models themselves are incredibly intelligent today. But in reality, that frontier in terms of model capability and the gap to what they're being used on the enterprise is wide. And the drivers of that gap are -- you have to harness them the right way. They have to be embedded in the enterprise very deeply. You have to give them context, and so our Frontier platform has a context layer that is a knowledge base and just connected understanding of the entire context of the organization, system of record, history, knowledge, internal and PDF terms, understanding of workflows. You have to give them appropriate compliance and oversight in government.

So you have to do the things to the model that allow it to sit in the organization with enough context to be capable when you do and when you take the model and bring the organization from this lower level to the higher level and put it on the frontier, that is when the magic happens, but that is very hard. There's an analogy we use that, in many ways, like deploying this technology for the first time in a traditional enterprise is in many ways akin to open heart surgery. The models will get better in time, that surgery will evolve from open heart surgery into something that you could kind of do efficiently and it will exist. But that gap is broad. And to do that today, it requires sophisticated expertise, whether it's FTEs, as you spoke to earlier or individuals that are very capable of understanding the organization in taking that context the organizational structure and layering it into the model.

And that brings us directly to our partnership and the role of Capgemini as a founding member of the Frontier Alliance. From an opening perspective, what role does a partner like Capgemini play in converting Frontier AI into a measurable enterprise value?

Necessary, it's how I'd start. I think our role, and I alluded to this in my first answer, is to push the frontier of intelligence and model capabilities and to build the products in the platforms upon which the technology will sit. We need partners that are capable of understanding industries deeply that have the trust of customers that are able to explain to customers what this technology is as it's rapidly changing. So they have the credibility to go do a transformation. And then they have the scale to help us bring the technology to the world, which is our goal.

Even today, OpenAI has approximately 4,500, maybe 5,000 people sitting inside the organization. We are going to need an army of resources that both understand the industry and the customers that we're working with, who could help us bring this technology embedded deeply within the organization and then start driving commercial outcomes for customers. That is how we think about partnership.

And let's get into another topic because I remember when the -- it start leaking into the press that your formidable competitor and maybe yourself will be launching your own deployment companies that that was the end of all of us, and that will be it. But you basically launched recently the deployment company, which Capgemini is both an investor and a strategic deployment partner. How should investors understand the strategic importance of this move that we make with you?

Thank you for that, first and foremost. There's an African proverb that I've used a couple of times to describe how we think about the deployment company, which is how we think about it. I don't know if it's how the entire industry thinks about it, but we very firmly believe that if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, you go together.

The deployment company brings together 19 investors and a number of strategic partners that we believe will help enable us to deliver the technology quickly. I think it goes back to my previous answer. We have this amazing technology that is infinitely more capable than what people are seeing it adopted today in the enterprise for the reasons that we discussed. The way that I think about this is you guys understand your customers in the industries that you operate in, far better than we will for the short to middle term.

It is your job to understand what customers need to articulate that very clearly to us and us conversely to explain the technology to you and then to develop solutions for those customers, those industries that are revolutionary. And so we are going to need every resource that we can find to bring the amount of transformation to the world that AI has the potential to deliver, whether it's for drug design or in the energy space or in financial services or just in government efficiency as it will continue to exist. But to do that, we have to do that in partnership.

And the deployment company was our foray into the world and saying, the technology is ready to be deployed in the enterprise at a scale that we haven't really ever conceived before. There are hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of transformation that will happen in the enterprise space. Come help us can partner, let's grow what this technology can be together and bring it to the benefit of all humanity into all enterprises.

I mean as an, I've done many, many M&A transactions. And I was -- I had the pleasure of negotiating with Nate, which is very little negotiations. But he was, for me, fascinating because we have the opportunity of meeting your offices in San Francisco. At this speed. I mean there were 19 different -- the speed that you and your team was able to architect and the decision-making process that was made. And the concessions, I mean, we have some concerns that were accommodated. And our main message was whatever it is and, it has to be seen, and we need to be part of something that provides the value that you're articulating and they always commit to that, and they always have stick to that.

And for me, it was a -- it's a pleasure to be associated with that effort. So again, from our part, thank you very much for the opportunity because I know you were very, very oversubscribed. So you pick who you want to go fight with, and thank you for allowing us to be part of that process. Just to wrap up, if investors here need to keep one key takeaway to take one away from our discussion and our partnership with an enterprise as the enterprise move into deployment phase, what should it be?

I'll address that in a second. I'll go to your previous point just very quickly. Like part of selection is based on what we hear from customers. And customers understand who is capable of doing this. And there were a number of customers that were working with Capgemini that said they will help you deploy faster and better in the enterprise. And so part of that choice and selection, like subscription aside or otherwise, is based on ability to deliver value to customers, and for that, we are very grateful and we're grateful for the support.

In terms of takeaways, I think we're at a really interesting inflection point right now. I would say OpenAI has been around for a decade. A lot of that was innovation and amazement and proof that you could apply more compute to a problem and the models would get more intelligent. We're at this really interesting inflection point right now where we're moving from amaze individual productivity single-player tools to now entirely agentic systems. But what we need to see is impact and meaningful deployment in the enterprise.

And if we do, I think the future is going to be an incredible mix of technology, human enablement, capability, sustainability. And then just every week, we're going to see magical outcomes, whether in the drug design space, energy, technological systems, computer design or otherwise, like every day inside of OpenAI, we see magic. I think our job right now with partners is to bring that magic to the world. And so we're at this point where it's going to shift from individual use and amazement to real enterprise deployment and scale, and I'm very excited to be a part of that and gratefully Capgemini is here to help us.

I really, really thank you very much for you being here.

Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you very much. Just will now take our break and we can be here in 15 minutes.

[Break]

Okay. Welcome back for the second segment of this Capital Markets Day. I have the pleasure now of welcoming on stage Roshan Gya. He's the CEO of Northern Central Europe and Chairman of Capgemini Invent. And he's going to address the next 2 items on our agenda. First, Agentic AI technology and governance and second, Agentic AI product and services. Roshan Gya.

Hello. Hello, everyone. So in this section, I will now deep dive into the value pools that will shape the future growth of Capgemini Group. The slide that you see here has been presented by Fernando by Aiman, will be the compass for this section. So we will now start with the enterprise technology modernization part.

Every enterprise today, they want to be agentic. And first, before what the need is to become AI ready. And the reality today is that most enterprises are not ready. Over decades, companies have accumulated massive technical debt. application, fragmented data, obsolete architecture, challenges around interoperability and the reality, and we've heard it today, you cannot scale AI on top of this technical debt. This is why we Capgemini, we believe that the very first major value pool in this new AI era for us is modernization.

What has changed today is that agent AI itself now makes modernization faster, cheaper, it is economically viable with strong business case and it becomes mandatory if you want to go agentic. Programs that were previously considered to be too expensive, too risky, too complex, are now becoming feasible at scale. And this includes COBOL modernization, mainframe modernization, data foundation projects. And most importantly, what I want you to note is that this is not a short-term cycle opportunity for us. AI today is not eliminating enterprise complexity. It is increasing the vital need for transformation underneath. Fernando mentioned the iceberg. Very often, we look at the tip of the iceberg. But below, when you look at all the complexity that has to be managed, it's a lot of work. This is why, for us, this value pool, we believe that we are entering a multiyear modernization super cycle for a decade.

And today, clearly, we see a growing funnel in North America, in Europe on all these modernization topics. Now let's move on to the value pool 2. The Agentic technology stack. Since end of last year, we have seen a parting shift, shift has operated. We have moved from AI advisers, generate content, great photo, even generate recommendation based on your profile to go to a good restaurant to AI that executes. These AI that execute workflow, interact with a system that plan and can act autonomously. And tomorrow, this will evolve even further. We are now hearing about physical AI with humanoids, industrial AI, autonomous learning system. And this shift to Agentic AI represent today a breakthrough in enterprise execution system. And this is giving rise to a new hybrid workforce where humans and agent will collaborate at scale. And this is leading to a reset, a reset of the enterprise tech stack, because the Agentic world will run on a new tech stack. And now to understand better why this reset, what it is, what's the rationale behind it. Let's have a quick look at a video.

[Presentation]

So what is. As the new operating system of the enterprise, the new OS. At the very bottom here, you have a data application and infrastructure. it's a foundation. It's a system that runs the business today. And on top of that, we need to add 3 new AI-native layers. We've been talking about context and semantics. This is the layer that teaches how the business actually works.

When you have the model and enterprise integration, this allows you to choose whatever model. Is it a large language model, an SLM, you can use several models, and connected back end to the front end. And then you have the action layer, okay? So this is the layer where the agents work. We orchestrate the processes. And on top, there is the existing user experience, web mobile voice, that will need also to be transformed to move more towards outcome centric.

So what we see today is that technology vendors or building horizontal AI tools and technologies. But the enterprise execution is deeply industry-specific. It's vertical, a bank, a pharma, a manufacturer a telecom operator, they execute differently. So industry context becomes strategic. And this is a semantic and the control layer here, it is key. The workflow are different, regulations are different, operational risks are different and the economics are different. And this is where Capgemini creates value.

Over decades, we have accumulated workflow knowledge across all industries. All segment, very deep operational process understanding, in general expertise, industry semantics, domain knowledge. We at Capgemini, we bring contextualization to life. Our mission is to instantiate the technology in enterprise context to deliver business outcome. There is one motto for us. Without context, there is no intelligence at scale in enterprise, but context is our first moat.

And also, there is a question today is -- it's not about, okay, which model you will use. You have seen. These models are super intelligent. We are not even leveraging 10% of what they can deliver. The question is how do you turn this intelligence, which is abundant, it is accessible. It's democratized two, business outcome at scale and create value. And one of the biggest misconception today that we have is that the belief is that the value primarily sits in the model itself.

Choosing the model, whether it's OpenAI, it's Gemini, it's Anthropic, it's Google. It's just the beginning of a story. In the enterprise stack that you see here, the model is just an ingredient, okay? And it is very important, but the value sits around it. Enterprise do not and will not operate on model alone. They will need architecture, they will need orchestration, they will need API, integration, semantic business layer, data foundation. So what is our play as Capgemini in this value chain, but has emerged, there is a new value chain that has emerged of today. And we as Capgemini for decades we have been helping our clients in building and operating their IT states.

Now in this new technology era, the new Agentic era vendor will provide components, this will not change. for other new stack. And we Capgemini, we will architect, we will assemble, we'll put the globe on all the stack. We will contextualize it, we integrate it and operate it. And on top of our core strength that you already know, process expertise, data foundation, integration at scale transformation capability, we will accelerate and derisk this journey for our clients with our asset, our frameworks, our IP with new engagement and commitment model. So what I would like you to take away on this value pool are several message. The first one, it's not a one-off migration. It's a continuous evolution.

The stack is not likely onetime cloud migration, and it's done. It will evolve. It will take time. There will be new features that will come also that are still not here. If you look at physical AI, the new features that industrial company will have to embed in this stack, it's still not here. There will be new innovations that will be the extended enterprise. So meaning it's an evolution. Secondly, there will be no big, there will be no switch off and switch on moment. Traditional application and agentic execution will coexist for years even for decades for some clients. As the previous transformation cycle that we have seen, meaning we have different profile of clients and different profile of industries. You have clients that will be more restated, but we'll have more appetite for transformation. There will be those who will be more conservative. So meaning it will be an intelligence of portfolio of clients to serve with different tech stack profile and maturity.

An important message is the context layer, which our partner OpenAI was mentioning, it is never finished. Business context changes, it will be required to be configured once, to be updated product regulation, oncology knowledge graph, everything will have to be maintained continuously. And this create a durable value pool for us for Capgemini. The stack will keep on evolving for decades, and our client will require a long-term partner to help them in this reset.

In a nutshell, technology provides intelligence, and we, as Capgemini, we have the bridge between technology and business outcome as we have always been doing.

Now let's move on to our new moat, our third value pool which is the agentic control plane. Fernando has been mentioning, Aiman also. So far, we have been discussing about the new enterprise architecture. We've seen, but we need to do a reset of a stack. But now when AI is moving from generating content to executing work, a new reality is emerging. And this reality is today, we will have to put under control with thousands, hundreds of thousands of agents. Same as for the semantic layer without context, there is no intelligence, here without control, there won't be AI at scale. And it is about the agentic control plane.

So by 2029, we saw the figure, there will be more than 1 billion AI agents that are expected to operate across enterprise. We need to imagine the future with a digital workforce that we will need to register. We need to understand their role, their skills, their access right. The definition of what we can do, they can't do. And finally, very important, the cost, on consumption. And as such, we mentioned that there is a first reset that has to be operated around the stack. There is a second reset that has to be operated and this is the reset of a system of control and governance. Without this reset, it would be comparable, and Aiman already say that to having a huge workforce with unlimited rights and unlimited payroll in the organization. Imagine how it can be if you don't put that under control.

For our clients, this agentic control plane is the CHRO, the CFO and the CIO of the Agentic workforce. It's not a technical overlay. It's not a dashboard. It's not just a layer. It is the central nervous system of agentic enterprise. So what about Capgemini now? How do we play on this control plane?

Over the past 2 years, the discussion narrative on the market was, okay, GPT versus Claude versus Gemini, who has the strongest reasoning quality. We know that now, this model are far beyond what we can leverage right now. But one thing is when you shift from adoption of the ChatGPT and Claude from your phone that you are using and you start thinking about integrating it in the complex and living enterprise architecture, the question being asked are completely different.

Who decides what are the agents allowed to do, how -- who manages the agents across the enterprise who stopped them when something goes wrong and who is managing the costs? So this is not a model problem anymore. The model, as I mentioned, is just an ingredient in the stack. The reality is that there will be Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, subdue agent, you will have robotic agent, you will have AI agent. You will have thousands of agents from several providers. And therefore, what is important for our clients is that the strategic capability is the one that governs identity, permission, policies, orchestration, auditability and costs. And in this value pool, our mission is to help our clients as a trusted and neutral partner to reset the system of control and governance who will build it, we integrate it and we will help our clients to operate it.

So as a conclusion on this part, our role in this new agentic era is crystal clear for us. As you can see, for our clients, the new scarcity is not coding hours anymore. We know it. It is governed and trusted execution at scale. On the new tech stack that has to be built with a new central nervous system and how to make this operating system economically available, and we mentioned one important thing, it's adoption is to have a human AI chemistry.

Building this agentic enterprise is not a technology transformation, as Aiman mentioned. It's a business transformation. It's a system complex business transformation, and we require a new playbook of transformation. And we've released our framework of transformation, which is the AI resonance framework last year is to help our clients to move into this agentic enterprise. This transformation, when you look at it, we have been accompanying our clients for decades in several types of transformation. It's both an art and a science. It will recur to get the right balance between what is the right architecture, what is the right operating model, what is the right governance and what is the right economics, with a proper cultural transformation, blending human and AI to work at scale in enterprise.

And for us, our mission is to be the trusted architect of this new tech stack to build it and to operate it for our clients in this new era, and we make it real.

Now I'll finish this part. We will now move to -- it's the next section exactly. We'll move to the next section of our presentation, which is the next segment of the program. I will focus on the agentic product and service.

So on this value pool, here, what you see is that we have the foundations. We are building the tech stack. We have a control plane. How do we create value on a play field. Now when you bring all together Stack the technology and data and when we instantiate it on the agentic product and services, we have this.

Six years ago, we have launched our intelligent industry play. It was a new concept on the market. At that time, we had the conviction. It was the future of industry is the convergence of the physical, digital and biological world. And it is about the systemic and concurrent transformation of both core industrial processes, engineering, supply chain, manufacturing and the connected services and the product itself. Making the product more intelligent, autonomous with hyper-personalized experience.

Can I have the example of vehicles, network, medical device, industrial machine, infrastructure. Now when we look at the acceleration, what is happening right now, if you just pause and you step back and we project ourselves, what we see clearly today is that the compounding effect of technologies. It's not just -- I'm not just talking about agentic and GenAI because all the accessible technology around 5G, around connectivity, AR, via simulation, digital twin, when you blend it now with agentic and GenAI and soon physical AI robotics, you, this unleash a whole new wave of value in this field, the intelligent industry field. And with that, we can clearly envision a very different future in the way you, we, human beings, will move on the planet, will shop, we'll talk, will attend to our health, will work.

So this is opening for us as it was mentioned before, the biggest opportunity for Capgemini in 60 years. And how we will tap into this opportunity. The first wave of AI we've seen was about prediction. In the past years, we were talking about predictive maintenance, a lot it was prediction. The second wave is about generation. So GenAI, it's execution with Agentic AI. And the third wave, which is coming very soon is around autonomous optimization, which will be catalyzed by physical AI. In Capgemini, we call it the industrial learning loop. We will communicate soon on the market on this new value pool. And what is important is that this value pool is not a generic AI opportunity.

Understanding mission-critical environment is something that cannot be. We are talking here about connected defense, self-healing supply chain, agentic engineering for capital project management dock factory, and in the intelligent industry world, there is no tolerance for error. Mission-critical environment cannot be addressed with generic model. Factory cannot a medical device cannot guess. Today, we have stochastic model like Anthropic, OpenAI Gemini. They are not enough. Alone, they won't do the cut. To create value in the intelligent industry space what we need is that I need to understand clients' data. We need to understand the core process, the engineering constraint, the physical reality with the regulatory framework.

We need to do reinforcement learning. We need to do complex simulation. And today, Capgemini is the only player in the market that has this breadth of capability at scale engineering, scientific. We have 30,000 square meter of labs in Cambridge. And on top, our industry depth, we couple it with our large-scale transformation team, design, tech and data to capture this growth. In this value pool today, we are uniquely positioned to tap into this massive business opportunities.

As a conclusion, this is my personal conclusion is that in the 2 decades in the industry I have really seen a shift of this magnitude of impact. I strongly believe that this transformation will create values for years, if not decades to come for our people, for Capgemini and for our clients. Thank you.

Thank you. We now have another client perspective, we're going to hear. I'm going to welcome on stage Etienne Grass, Global, Chief AI Officer of Capgemini Invent. And he's going to welcome on stage Olivier Charmeil, the Executive Vice President, General Medicines of Sanofi. Just a few words about Olivier Charmeil. He began as mergers and acquisitions before joining Sanofi in 1994 and over more than 3 decades. He's held a series of global partnership -- leadership roles across Europe, Asia, China, covering vaccines, general medicine and emerging markets. And very recently, at the beginning of 2026, he served as Interim Chief Executive Officer. And today, Olivier joins us to share his perspective on how AI is transforming the health care industry.

Hello, Olivier. Thank you for being with us for this important moment. I will begin with having your reflection on the shift that Roshan shared, especially the 1 on how we read the enterprise stack. Also, this huge shift on the new generation of products and services that are coming? What is the perspective of Sanofi on that.

Yes. So everything that Roshan has been saying resonate very much with Sanofi. We don't see, of course, AI as another tool. We see it really as the way to transform the way we work, and truly across the value chain from -- of course, we are in the industry innovation. Our objective is to bring to patients new drugs. So it starts, of course, on the research side, on the development side because a significant part of what we do is developing and making clinical studies, of course, manufacturing. And so across the value chain, we see with the contribution of AI.

What are the implications? The implications are quite clear on the technology foundation, which is making sure that we have trust data that we have integrated system that we have, of course, the right governance and control that if we want to leverage AI, we need to make sure that we are controlling and at the end of the day, we have the management human oversight. In a company that has been built by acquisition, to say that we have integrated system, and we have trusted data is, of course, something that is not easy to say. So the ability to orchestrate agent with human oversight is something that is key.

The second dimension when you make sure that you have the tech stack is really the part related to business transformation. In order to have new products, new services, you need to make sure that you have, of course, solid foundation. And it's about redesigning your processes. And I would even argue across the value chain across R&D, across manufacturing, but I would go even beyond. I think our objective is definitely not to digitalize the past, is to reinvent and to build new processes that will allow us, of course, to extract new value. So it's really creating new AI-enabled products.

Can take a few examples of things that the human brain couldn't do. It's clear that using AI will allow us, and I have a couple of examples in mind, especially on the manufacturing side of the business, where we can give answer to questions that we didn't know even that we should raise those questions. And I have a couple of examples in terms of yield improvements because they were ton of data and couldn't we couldn't do that. So once the foundations are in place, we can become very concrete, and we can become very concrete, especially on the R&D side.

Yes. So that's my question. Actually, let's focus on R&D. We do together the patient program. It's an important program actually to speed up the clinical development. How do you see AI being up the access to drugs, making it faster, more patient centric, to.

So this actor patient program is an important program for us. For us, I mentioned a little bit earlier, our purpose is to make sure that we bring innovation to patients. And we bring innovation to patients there, a lot of debate and theoretical debate, should it be best-in-class, should it be first-in-class I think at the end of the day, the faster you move, I think the better it is. So making sure that we are live, of course, in a very competitive space. and there is also this purpose and bringing new innovation to patients, so to make sure that the patients have access to treatment. So where AI changed fundamentally what we do is, of course, on the clinical development side.

So here in order to be concrete, we work collectively with Capgemini on the protocol design. You know that 80% of the cost of inventing a molecule are on the development side of the business, performing clinical trial, massive clinical trials. It might change in the next 20 to 25 years, what I think there will be more and more synthetic clinical trials. But for the time being, those clinical trials are done on humans. So it's protocol design. It's making sure that you identify the right patients. We segment population in order to show the efficacy of the patients on the right population. And it's getting, of course, increasingly important.

At the moment, there is so much strain on -- but on financial expenses and health care budget and to make sure that the right patients are treated with the right drug. So it's about patient identification. It's also about site identification. I mentioned a little bit earlier that in order to move fast, you need to make sure that you identify the right side. There is competition across the industry to get access, for example, in the field of oncology to make sure that you reach the right site so that you can enroll pretty fast.

The last dimension of development, which is very important, is the regulatory preparation, the regulatory dossier. And there is a lot of work that is being done. And here, it's AI, and we have a couple of programs in place, and we are starting to see things that are concrete. It's hundreds of thousands of pages at. So here, it's obvious that AI is going to be transformational. But beyond that, it's not a process, it's a continuing of process and making sure that we get out of those fragmented process to ensure and that we are more data-driven at each and every step to make sure that all those predecessors are connected.

I take an example if you reverse back and you realize that, for example, you are not enrolling fast enough, it might mean that you have not selected the right sites. At some point, we did in this industry, what we call futility analysis to make -- to analyze a little bit before the end of the clinical trials, how things are moving. It might reorient the way you are going to recruit patients.

So with Capgemini, what we do here is really combining AI, data foundations, process redesign. And I think there are healthy debates from time to time, because one of my observation, we are, of course, in an hyper-regulated industry. I have often said that I feel that the agencies are more conservative than us you understand what I mean and to have people that can challenge us, of course, in a constructive way, I think, has a lot of value. So you see more and more AI factored into our day-to-day practice. And I think it's only the beginning. And I think it will have significantly impact in 2 directions.

The first one is we will be able to move faster, you understand what I mean. And the second one is, I think at the end of the day, it's going to be more efficient. You understand what I mean. So it's not only a productivity gain. I think it goes beyond productivity, and we have not been talking about the research part which is also important, which is probably more 5 to 10 years. One of the issue of this industry is that our return on investment are far too low, because you know you develop drug and you realize very late in the process when you have invested EUR 100 billion that they fail in Phase 3. So here, I feel also that even if it's more long-term better target identification, better understanding of the biology, I think it's going to be very transformational, and we want to be part of that game.

Sanofi is also really transforming the way you manufacture medicines actually, and it's also an area where we work together on smart operations was actually highlighted by Roshan. How do you see the role of AI, Agentic AI, physical AI, digital twin in, I would say, the design of more intelligence, resilient and control production systems.

So more and more, and we are in the -- I started my career, I've been with Sanofi for 30 years. And of course, we were in small molecules, a little bit on vaccines. But more and more, of course, we are in what we call biopharma. What is very specific with bio is, of course, it needs to be scalable. It needs to be reproductive. It's much more complex than any chemical process. So for us, at the moment of time where we are bringing to patient new drugs to make sure that we are able to scale capacity from the lab scale to something that is much bigger is, of course, of paramount importance, keeping in mind that we are in an industry that is highly regulated and everything that we do needs to be documented.

And everything that -- and when everything is documented, we need to be compliant, of course, with everything that is part of the process. And the process is often known as a product. So we have a very high ambition in terms of -- with our smart operation ambition. We see the next-generation factories as being significantly different from what we have today. I'm just back from China. I visited many manufacturing facilities. We are going to build the new manufacturing insulin factory. And we see both physical and virtual AI being -- playing an important role.

I was thinking that probably -- and it's not 5 years down the road. I think it's more 2 or 3 years around the road. We will have DAC factories. We will have humanoid robots. One of the big things that we do in order to get prepared for agency inspections is definitely our own inspection. In the world of tomorrow. And I think at some point, the FDA and EMA will do the same. We will have humanoid robots that will work. We spend a couple of hours 10,000 of sensors, and you will get a good understanding of what is the situation in your manufacturing facility.

The last point is, of course, digital twins, which allow you to test what you're doing to test the design to make sure that you build something that is fully optimized. This is what we are doing. We have 2 manufacturing facilities that also are twins and one in Germany, and one in China. And we want to make sure that we leverage our digital twins in order to make sure that we do right for the first time. So here, it's really about combining the expertise and our expectations are very clear. It's not so much working with smart people that have good engineers and Capgemini, of course, a full of engineers. It's really making sure that we embed those capabilities into the day to day operations. There is a big business transformation. The most difficult is not technology. I'm sorry to say that.

The most difficult in a company like us is to make sure that we transform the way we work. Easy to say, much more difficult to do.

That's exactly the question I was going to actually what you shared is that Agentic AI touches on very critical part of the company business,, R&D, manufacturing data platforms what do you expect for a partner like Capgemini to go from use cases to being a trusted transformation partner in your journey?

I think it's a very important question. I'm not expecting so much on the technology side because, of course, we know that here you are state of the art. But what we are expecting is a good combination between your technology expertise, engineering expertise but also life science. And this really a combination of both, that is very complex that create a lot of value. We are, again, in highly regulated environments. We have very critical processes. Those processes need to be end-to-end and you need then to have an understanding of each and every step of the development of a new drug and the manufacturing of the drug. So we need more than a technology provider.

We need really a transformation partner. And I've just mentioned the importance of changing things. So what matters is really the life industry expertise, the life science expertise that you have. It's also a deep understanding of our context. Again, one of the key points for us is to make sure that we improve the productivity index so that we generate a continuous flow of new products. This industry is about innovation. So making sure that you have a continuous flow of new products is, of course, very important.

And the last point that is important. I touched a little bit earlier when I mentioned not digitalizing the past. It's really making sure that we embed AI into our workflows that we accept to change our workflows when it's needed. And this is something I insist a lot vis-a-vis my team. It's again, not digitalizing the part. It's making sure that we have the right workflows, data and operation that will allow us to go to the next level.

Last point, which is key. And I think AI can be really transformational here. It's the end-to-end capability. And I think here, AI is unique. There are a lot of activities that we have done manually in the past. And now AI, of course, is truly transformative here. And I think it's a -- it's true across research, development, manufacturing, and I would argue even around commercialization and segmentation of passion. In order to be to be able to move fast. There is one dimension that is noteworthy. It's really the dimension of trust. Nothing is feasible without trust. I think it's true in any industry. I would argue that it's even more important in the pharmaceutical industry, of course. Why? Because we work on human.

I'm thanks, Olivier. I think there has been a very powerful illustration of several message that has been conveyed on the stack on the importance of the context actually layers also on the need of a control plane on manufacturing, critical activities, was the importance for us of having a deep industry expertise and of course, of trust. And I think -- thank you for being there. It's also a good illustration of trust. Thank you, Olivier.

Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. We see now Agentic AI creates value, let's see now how it transforms enterprise operations. And for this, I'm going to invite Franck Greverie, the Chief Technology and Portfolio Officer and leader of business lines, Capgemini. Franck Greverie.

Hello, everyone. So now we'll speak about the value pool #5. So everything we have discussed so far matters, but you know for us, transforming enterprise operations with Agentic AI is the biggest AI shift for the enterprise. And why that? Because this is where AI stop being a promise. This is where the value of AI becomes clearly visible and measurable for the CXOs. And it is key to understand that transforming enterprise operations with Agentic AI is a business transformation.

It's not a simple technology upgrade to better access data with agents or to automate with AI agents, a few tasks while keeping the same processes that were built for humans. Actually, when we are transforming enterprice operations with Agentic AI, it means 3 things: One, we reinvent the business process itself, so as it can be operated efficiently by a human workforce. Two, we build Agentic systems that operate the business, and it's very important to understand that. The Agentic system is operating the business. It changed how the entreprise works. It means systems that understand the context, make decisions and take actions autonomously based on business rules on context understanding.

Three, the result is not just efficiency. We create a step change in business outcomes. Outcomes the company couldn't achieve before. Put simply, our clients are moving from a company run by people and supported by software to a company run by a human AI workforce. That the shift, and that's where the value is. For Capgemini, we see 2 business opportunities, 2 distinct businesses. The first one, we call it Transform, as it was mentioned by Fernando earlier. This is for clients who want the upside of agentic transformation, but they want to keep running the process themselves. They don't want to outsource because sometimes you know the process is too strategic for them or sometimes they are not ready to do it. In this case, our accountability ends at go live. After that, we stay involved for maintenance and continuous upgrade.

The second type of project is different. We call it transform and operate or intelligent operations. Here, clients give us the transformation and the operations. Why? Because they want to move faster. They see us as an accelerator, the fastest way to capture the value that AI makes possible. In this model, we are fully accountable for the value and for the outcomes, we have skin in the game, and our pricing reflects that. It's tied to result.

Now one important point that was mentioned before. Intelligent operation is not what you know as BPO. It's fundamentally different. And let me show you on 4 points BPO on the left on intelligent operations on the right. BPO was about cost saving. Intelligent operations, it's about value creation. BPO was about process lift and shift. Intelligent operations is about process redesign. And it's a move from a human-based model to a human AI-based model. So it's a very, very different business. So that's a different model. And that's a different kind of value. Now, we have all been talking about value. But where does it actually come from?

Agentic transformation unlocks 2 sources of value. And these are not incremental gains. There is a step change for the enterprise. The first source of value is business outcomes, outcomes that AI now makes possible, outcomes that didn't exist before. Few examples, new customer experience, very different from what was known before, new revenue stream, faster execution, strong cash generation and more quality and compliance by design and an all new way of making decisions.

The second source of value is cost optimization, specifically the total cost of tech and operations. Agentic transformation change the cost equation. It's from mostly a human workforce to human AI workforce with significantly lower cost even after factoring in Agentic transformation and the AI tokens. So 2 sources of value, both transformational and the real step change.

Now a word on where we play. We go broad across horizontal processes on finance and accounting, HR, procurement, supply chain, customer service and marketing and across more than 10 industry-specific processes such as banking, insurance, travel, logistics, where we have deep domain expertise, significantly amplified by the WNS acquisition.

Now to make it concrete, I will share with you 3 examples of projects that we are doing with clients. The first project is a transform project. It's a global bank wanted to reinvent its call center, not the usual story, not adopting cloud-based call center technology or deploying a chatbot. They wanted something much bigger. They wanted an agentic customer engagement center, an agentic system that solves customer issues end-to-end with human stepping in only when it matters, while obviously proposing at the same time, proactive services to their clients. So this is don't want to take upgrade. They wanted a business agentic transformation, but they were not ready to outsource the operations. So here is the picture before the transformation.

Customer service was mainly reactive, almost no proactive engagements. Call centers agents had limited context, no clear view of the customer, no clear view of their journey and high attrition made even worse. And you know what, we have all been there. You call, you wait, you reexplain everything to its new call center agent and you have no idea when it ends. So here is what we unlock with the agentic process transformation is first new outcomes. A much better customer experience, through omnichannel, hyper-personalized engagement and self-service that actually works. And we target with our clients a 15% to 20% lift in customer satisfaction.

On top of that, customer service becomes an upsell engine, proactive, personalized. And here, we target $300 million upsell over 5 years. So it's very significant for them. 55% efficiency gain in the process operations translated into $150 million in savings over 5 years. So this is a complete reinvention of the customer service with huge net benefits for the bank.

Now let me share a second example, this one on intelligent operations. So you have an outsourcing dimension into it. It's one of the largest logistics company and they came to see us with a real challenge, managing invoice disputes with their customers. Every day, thousands of customer dispute because of long invoice, late deliveries, damage or loss shipment or many other reasons. And every dispute block cash collection. The volume was just huge between 15,000 and 40,000 cases a day. And of course, are complex, highly variable across many languages. So historically, it was mainly a manual work.

The result for the clients, only 55% of cases resolved, leading to frustrated customers on one side and growing write-off on the side of the clients. So what did we do?

We redesigned the process for AI. We build an agentic system to resolve autonomously disputes, and we operate it for them. And here's what we unlock. First, business outcome. Globally their case resolution moved from 55% to 85%. So it's very substantial. A strong improvement in customer experience with a net promotion score up by 20 points. And $80 million a year recovered on revenue leakage. So just imagine for 5 years, close to $400 million. Second, it unlocks the global optimization of their cost, a 75% efficiency gain in the process operations, translated into 40% net annual cost savings across the entire finance and accounting function. So you can see how important the benefits are just for one finance process.

Now imagine the potential at scale, and that's what I will show you on the last example. So it's another example on the intelligent operations project. This time for a multinational care manufacturer, the scale, 100 countries, more than 10 global delivery centers, team speaking 40 different languages. What was their goal to gain a competitive edge over their peers by reinventing 4 function at once and getting them to work together, finance and accounting, HR, procurement and supply chain.

So what did we do? Same playbook, as I've said before. We designed the process for AI, build an agentic system across the 4 functions, but with a value chain approach across the process, and we operate them. And here's what we unlock. First, business outcome. Globally, their case resolution moved from 55% to 85%. So it's very substantial. A strong improvement in customer experience with a net promotion score up by 20 points and $80 million a year recovered on revenue leakage. So just imagine for 5 years, close to $400 million.

Second, it unlocks a global optimization of their cost, a 75% efficiency gain in the process operations, translated into 40% net annual cost savings across the entire finance and accounting function. So you can see how important the benefits are just for one finance process. Now imagine the potential at scale. And that's what I will show you on the last example.

So it's another example on the intelligent operations project. This time for a multinational car manufacturer, the scale, 100 countries, more than 10 global delivery centers, team speaking 40 different languages. What was their goal? To gain a competitive edge over their peers by reinventing 4 functions at once and getting them to work together, finance and accounting, HR, procurement and supply chain. So what did we do? Same playbook, as I've said before.

We designed the process for AI, build an agent system across the 4 functions, but with a value chain approach across the process, and we operate them. And here's what we unlock. First, business outcome, around $1 billion over 7 years. So a very substantial outcome. Let me give you some ingredients of it, $250 million in supply chain, $150 million in procurement, $100 million in warranty optimization, leading to less revenue leakage.

And second, on cost optimization, a 50% efficiency gain in the process operation translated into $1.3 billion in savings over 7-years. So look to what happens when we combine 4 functions. Total enterprise value created over $2 billion in 7 years. That's the power of Intelligent Operations with a value chain approach. So you have seen the example. So you can see this opens for us a whole new market, a major opportunity for Capgemini. But let me tell you three things about that new market. First, the market is already strong today. Clients are investing. And we've seen an explosion of our business opportunities over the last few months. And our pipeline of business opportunities already exceeds $12 billion, and it's grown 30% year-to-date.

So our clients are investing for two main reasons. One, this is a breakthrough in value creation, and you have just seen the proof on the three examples I've presented. Two, and I think it's a very important point, Agentic AI systems give clients a new kind of flexibility, a more variable cost base, the ability to scale operations up and down with market conditions. So second point on the market. It keeps growing. Demand will only accelerate in the coming months. Imagine, our clients are already seeing value on a few processes. Now they want more. They want to extend it across most of their processes. They want tens of thousands of AI agents working for them. And for us, that's tens of thousands of AI agents to build, manage and evolve.

The third point on the market is also very important. This market is very dynamic. It's not a static market. These agentic transformation are not onetime projects, just the opposite. AI processes, business priorities are continuously evolving, which means for us a continuous demand for continuous transformation to get even more outcomes and optimize cost. So all that looks great. Now how do we make this? We have built a methodology, a five-step approach to deploy and operate agent fix system at scale. Let me focus on the two first steps and especially on the most important points. Step one, as it has been said several times today, we reinvent the process. The idea is simple.

Business process were built for humans, sequential step by step. We reinvent them for AI. It means that we eliminate and compress tasks. We run them in parallel, and we had feedback loops for continuous improvement. Step two, we designed the human AI operating model. Two things here. First, for every single task, we decide who does it? Is it fully autonomous AI, AI with human oversight, humans assisted by generative AI or humans alone. And second, obviously, we redefine the roles of the people. And this step, it has been mentioned by [ Ivan ] earlier, is only possible because of one thing, our deep operations expertise. We are running the process. And that expertise has been significantly amplified by the WNS acquisition. We have now a team of 100,000 people specialized in operations. That's the foundation of Intelligent Operations.

Now the last three steps. They are more technical, but this is where the magic happens. Let me start with the challenge of using an agentic system to operate a process. An agentic system is stochastic by design. It's probabilistic, which means out of the box, you can't use it to run business processes that need predictable, controlled behavior. But intelligent operations requires exactly that, predictability, control, governance and audit. So how do we solve it? We inject three unique ingredients across the three last steps of our approach. In the step 3, that you can see on the slide, we build a solid data foundation. And on top of it, a semantic layer where we encode with our deep knowledge, the intelligence of the business. And it corresponds to the two bottom layers on the screen.

In step 4, we designed enterprise-grade agentic system, not toy AI agents that you can build in a few minutes, that reliable orchestrated AI agents that can take actions autonomously. And in the step 5, the control [indiscernible] and the experience layer, we add values in two ways. One is the control plane, we are implementing the AI agent control mechanism to manage AI agents like we manage humans. We assign missions. We set guardrails. We monitor performance. We enforce compliance, and we optimize the token consumption. And two, on the experience layer, we are implementing our human-in-the-loop approach. So user can oversee the AI agents when it matters. The result is very important. It's a controllable, predictable agentic system with governance and audit by design, one that enterprise can truly rely on.

So as you leave today, I think two things to take away. Transforming enterprise operations with Agentic AI is the biggest AI shift for the enterprise. And the market is already strong today and continuously accelerating, and it's a major opportunity for Capgemini. We do think that we have the business process knowledge and the breadth of capabilities at scale to make it real. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Frank. To discuss further how Capgemini transforms enterprise operations, let's move on to our next fireside chat to hear another client perspective. And for this, I'll invite Aiman Ezzat to introduce our next guest.

Thank you. So as you just said, Agentic AI is reshaping enterprise operations. So let's bring this to life with one of our most strategic client partnerships, Unilever. So Unilever operates at massive scale, reaching 3.7 billion consumers in over 190 countries with a clear ambition to scale AI across the enterprise. For that, Capgemini is a key partner, helping turn that ambition into industrialized intelligent operations. So I'm very pleased to welcome [ JC Parada ], Chief Global Business Services Officer at Unilever. JC leads a critical engine driving transformation across Unilever's operation, and he's going to be joined by Rob Walker, Managing Director of Capgemini U.K. And together, they will share how we are moving from AI ambition to real impact at scale.

Hi JC. Thanks very much. Thank you for joining us. As we've heard today, it's all about Agentic and AI and intelligent operations. But provide us a little bit of context around global business services at Unilever. What does that mean to you?

Well, hello, everyone. Thank you, Rob, for the invitation, a privilege to be here. I think if you think about the context, let me say quickly that Unilever has decided to focus on three main priorities. When it comes to brands, it's about driving this side at the scale for organization, it's about playing to win. And when it comes to optimizing the enterprise, it's about making the company fit for the age of AI. Intelligent GBS is in this context, of course, we touch everything because of the size and the breadth of what we touch, but we have a [indiscernible] role in making the company fit for the age of AI.

Our objective is to focus on creating end-to-end intelligent workflows that can make the connections that create business impact and creates the conditions to scale up agentic to maximize the benefit. We have the unique ability to look across processes and across functions to find these meaningful connections that will deliver impact. In the end, our aim is to liberate our frontline colleagues to really -- from all the administrative burden, provide them more intelligent data and information and in the end, enable them to focus in winning in the marketplace.

Very good. And investors hear a lot about AI nowadays. You can't do anything without hearing about AI, but less so about how it's being industrialized inside organizations and particularly industrialized at scale. Maybe to start with, how are you thinking about that shift towards agentic AI at Unilever?

Well, I think it comes back to, first and foremost, to create this intelligent business processes, focus on business impact, drive significant levels of standardization and harmonization, which we do a lot through centralization and hubbing in partnership with Capgemini as you run a massive amount of our operations. That creates the base to infuse technology in a way that is scalable, not fragmented. That's the key point.

Of course, as you can imagine, this brings a significant change in the way people would work. I think we are -- the way you can think or we think about that is progressively, people used to do the work assisted by machines. But in this context, what we are doing is really having the machines doing the work assisted -- guided by people. That creates a massive shift in the skills and the role of our people. So bottom line, what I'm saying is intelligent processes, scale -- AI at scale and bring people along to be able to lead in the new world.

Very good. And in our conversations and here, we've heard a lot about domain understanding. Why is that so critical as we move towards agentic models?

Well, I think I believe the solutions are as good as the quality of the definition of the problem. The key issue that typically we have in the industry is that the problems are not properly defined and not properly articulated. I believe this is the central point. The AI solutions will be as good as that scope as that problem definition and as that articulation. That's really key. And this is when it comes one of the many elements of the relationship with Capgemini. We can have those discussions based on deep domain expertise and understanding of our operations among the two companies and put our intellects together to find the solution. That's why domain expertise is so critical to have the proper meaningful conversation at the right level.

Very good. And Unilever is a huge global organization, as Aiman mentioned, and you work with many partners over the years. How would you characterize Capgemini's role in the transformation that you've driven? And how is Capgemini helping Unilever navigate AI transformation across its global operations?

Well, first, I think we define Capgemini in the reinvention of our process operations as a really critical strategic partner. Specifically, we see Unilever as a strategic adviser and as helping us to execute operations at a scale. So with this in mind, with my own words, I think you have three -- the way I see this, you have three among many things, but you have three strategic and powerful arms, the consulting and expertise arm that basically provides all the domain expertise that you were exploring. The operational element that basically you can manage operations globally and with depth and you know my operations by heart. And then your ability to develop and infuse technology.

So if you keep that in mind also, Capgemini bring us perspective and help us to sharpen also our strategic thinking. What I mean is Capgemini with these two elements, the expertise and the operations, you can go really deep within our operations and help us to optimize operations in detail internally, but also can help us to orchestrate to find these meaningful connections, particularly leveraging the hubs. And even beyond that, you can give us industry, CPG industry perspective, which I use frequently to make sure that we are staying awake and up to speed with everything that is happening in the market and having a critical view in terms of creating competitive advantage. That's the way to see it. The way this happens in the day-to-day is -- I think it's very interesting. We don't focus quickly in our day-to-day discussions in going directly to the answers. We basically say, well, what is the problem? This thing -- this notion of defining precisely the problem and articulating it properly. Then we really engage in discussions like what is the real problem we're trying to solve? What is what the customers or the stakeholders are not happy about? What is holding us back to scale more or scale faster. and i beleive that's a very very rich discussion. and that can only be done because of the nature of the relationship and depth of your expertise and operations. So basically in short when you put these three elements together what we are seeing in Unilever the ability that we have created as an industry model together that is capable to drive scale and agility in a way that we haven't seen before at Unilever.

There is a combination of that domain content with operation scale embedded by technology and innovation. And I think the other aspect that we've spoken about, it's not just about back office or mid-office. Actually, it's really moving into the front office and operations and really customer-facing activity. And maybe help us bring this to life with an example of where you've seen that working at scale?

Sure. Well, we have been working now for a few years together, and there are different examples. So let me refer to one today, which is we started with a project called IOPS or integrated operations. That has been the precursor of a new function that we created 3-plus years ago, which is customer operations. basically with customer operation we have created an end to end flow that goes across functions focus on business impact and has delivered this proportionate impact for Unilever in cost cash productivity services and all that scope and has allowed us to infuse technology at scale, becoming today are most advanced model. And so others that you are also helping us in marketing and other areas and also scaling up of finance and scaling up quickly.

Basically this model is an extended version of the traditional go-to-market supply chain. We combine element of sales, sales promotion promotional planning and execution we connected these with the whole flow of the supply chain from demand planning and supply planning et cetera. We went to order management and delivery planning and delivery execution, customer delivery and basically collection, so basically we than put together pieces of supply chain finance and sales in a single workflow. We put these in hubs which you won for us and then basically you help us to consolidate our operations and bring rigor in much faster than we could have done in decades and you help us to drive standardization and harmonization, creating these flows that create the road to then with a very solid tech stack to be able to make the data flow in a consistent way with more consistent process, level of standardization reaching now 90%, which we only in our dreams in the past -- but basically today they are real and with that we have been able to scale a solution both in the vertical processes like supply planning, materials planning or delivery planning but also an orchestration in an end to end flow.

I think one of the key points is of course you have delivered significant value both in what we expected productivity, services, optimization, automation all the things that we know but to me the most important thing -- the most interesting thing what I have learnt is we have also found a way that there is that a lot of value comes not from what we were optimizing but from the things that the questions that we didn't know that we could ask but we found that we were not expecting and number one we found questions we didn't know before number two we have not been able to answer these questions before. And and today even we know the questions.

Our human capabilities fall short significantly of what it takes in terms of iterations and details to be able to answer those questions. I'm talking about millions of decisions per day that we didn't know we could make. Now we make it. We're covering 75% to 80% of those millions of decisions, which is simply impossible. We couldn't go beyond 3% of those solutions -- of those questions. Now that from a human standpoint, now that we know this question. But before, we didn't even know about those questions. That's what we have brought to reality.

I like that. It's a nice example of sort of unknown, unknown, so to speak, and what it allows you to unlock now. And when you look back, what do you see as some of the critical success factors around enabling this?

Well, I think the success factor, I think it goes around three elements, I would say. Mainly its about creating and putting in front of the organization a clear business benefit. I think the second is to create a model that in an organization like Unilever make sure that you can scale quickly at global levels because that drives credibility and consistency. And then the third point is to be able to create -- to manage properly change management and user adoption because that in the end is the make it or break it because technology and solutions are as good as what the users are willing to take. Honestly, those are the 3 elements that will ensure success and we have learned along the way to do better and better.

So it was very simple then. I mean, very straightforward. But I definitely get the perspective of start with the business outcome. That was a critical component. Look, we often hold up Unilever as being one of the most innovative companies, particularly in this intelligent operations. But even where you are, what is ahead for you for the next 12 months as you're looking for even further innovation? And what excites you most about the next phase?

Well, I think maybe if you refer to where we started, I think the most exciting thing is that we are really transforming Unilever operations at a scale. So basically, my key point is we are in the middle of a pivot. And what excites me the most is the ability to move GBS from the traditional [indiscernible] being a cost center -- on own operational dual operational engine to be a strategic partner of the business to create value for that is we are what we are finding the more and more value streams we are standardizing more we are giving more meaning to scale to technology to scale it up and we are guiding even in a HR functions in partnership with them to retransform the way we up skill people and we manage the operation successfully.

We are having some success, there a lot of them but we have a long way to go in short doing this transformation. I mean I mean the legacy that we all like to create is really landing this will make will make Unilever fully fit for the age of AI which is what we are looking for and I really appreciate the partnership that we have with Capgemini with every single asset is really enabling us to move their at pace.

Well, JC, I couldn't think of a better set of examples where you're talking about business outcomes, value streams and accelerating the opportunities with what you call IOS integrated operations, but we're now developing into intelligent operations. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

Indeed, thank you, gentlemen. Thank you very much. I'm now going to invite [indiscernible], who the Chief Operations and Delivery Officer, to tell us about the adoption of Agentic AI in Capgemini.

[Presentation]

Good afternoon. So you've understood from the previous speakers, the value pools that Agentic is creating for us. This section is going to be focused on how Agentic is transforming delivery. As you understood, throughout the past 25 years, we went through many evolutions. We transformed our infrastructure business to make it fit for the cloud. We adopted Agile and DevSecOps at scale for software engineering.

Obviously, we are today cloud, sorry, and cloud and digital represents about 80% of our business versus close to 0, 10 years ago. This means that over the years, we have developed muscles on how to manage those technology evolutions and practices on how to embed them in our delivery team. AI is definitely an inflection point in the industry, and it is impacting our delivery in two main dimensions. First of all, how we deliver services to our clients, but also what we deliver for those clients since you understood that we are building, deploying, operating and maintaining the new Agentic enterprise stack. Now let me focus on the how, and I'm going to focus on the technical delivery side of the how's.

First of all, we can already see today very concrete tangible benefits of Agentic in delivery. The first one is that it enables us to reduce the cycle time. This means that today, thanks to Agentic, we can develop applications 30% to 70% faster depending on the type of application. Application migration and application re-factoring can be executed today in half of the time. Obviously, it also enables us to increase the availability and the reliability of the information system. By being able to predict incidents before they occur, we can reduce about 20% of those incidents and the associated downtime. Today, thanks to Agentic, we are able to solve about 30% of the incidents without any human intervention. And overall, the meantime to repair an incident is decreasing by more than 10%. Obviously, with Agentic, the associated human effort is decreasing for a given task.

However, Agentic has a cost, a token cost, and it can be significant. Therefore, effectiveness has to compound the decreasing cost of labor and the increasing cost of other tokens. Transformation is happening and is occurring. But as you heard before, it's going to happen over many years. CXOs are actively pushing for the adoption of Agentic within the enterprise. But the enterprise adoption of Agentic is still slow. Companies are still selecting the technology they want to go with, defining their governance model. Are they going to make sure that those agents that we are building are ensuring compliance with regulatory frameworks?

As you also understood, large enterprise have got very complex information system, but they are also slowing down the adoption at scale. Those information systems are made of hundreds of applications that have been developed over the years that are tightly or loosely integrated, which means that to be able to get the power of Agentic, we need to make sure that those agents can interact with the existing information system. And that complexity is slowing down the adoption at scale. Now this slide is a simplification of our delivery capabilities. As you understood today, we have much more breadth. But for the purpose of this, I just tried to regroup in four main categories.

The purpose of this slide is to explain to you that to adopt Agentic in delivery, it's much more than just providing technology and training to our workforce. First of all, as you heard from Fernando, over the past 6 months, we have signed very significant agreement with all the key AI technology provider, making sure that our workforce has got access to the broad set of capabilities and technology that Agentic is providing. We are increasing our already significant efforts in developing Capgemini delivery platform. Obviously, we are focusing on the up-skilling and the re-skilling of our workforce. We are delivering more than 25 million of hours of training on data, AI and Agentic. We have redefined individual KPIs for our employees, making sure that we can measure how well they are using Agentic in the delivery of their daily task.

To give you an example, for a software engineer, we are monitoring the quality of the code that they are producing, thanks to Agentic, but also the type of model they are using. More importantly, the number of tokens they are consuming on a daily basis. As you may know, a given developer can spend in 1 day in terms of token what another one will spend in a month. Therefore, managing that delivery cost is becoming very important. Obviously, we have also revisited the way we recruit and our selection criteria for candidates. For young professionals, we are focusing on problem solving, curiosity and communication, three dimensions that are key in the adoption of Agentic. More importantly, we have redefined all our operating processes, all our practice and methodologies. We have redefined the way we develop software using Agentic, the way we do product engineering, the way we run infrastructure on behalf of customers. And as you heard as well before, the way we combine human and digital to deliver enterprise business processes.

Now what does it mean for our workforce? On the left-hand side, you have the current split of our workforce, again, in a very simplified manner. On the right-hand side, it's an attempt to project what that workforce as it will evolve over the years and in the middle, what is changing. Listening to my -- to our previous speakers, you understood that there is a growing need for business process consultants to redefine and reinvent the enterprise business processes. The role of the software engineer is changing and is expanding throughout the software development life cycle. It now encompasses business analysis, development and testing. Software developers are working in a much smaller team that is usually [indiscernible] disciplinary. And to take a music analogy, the software engineer is becoming a conductor. Now to be able to orchestrate human and digital workforce, that software engineer has to be an expert in [indiscernible] score.

Agentic is also creating new roles within Capgemini. Agent enterprise architects that can define how those new developed agents will interact with the existing information system, a growing demand for data engineers, but also people who can manage the agent identity and their access management. Engineers that can test the quality of those agents, engineers that can orchestrate the agents within the delivery system. And obviously, in the control plane, we will find new engineers that will operate the control plane as well as experts in the token economy, people who will monitor on a daily basis the consumption and the quality of the token. In our application maintenance and in our infrastructure management capabilities, we are obviously automating all the repetitive tasks. The need for junior is decreasing in those categories. However, the demand for experts is increasing because we need an increasing number of Level 3 engineers who can tune and moderate the agents in production.

In the business process area, we obviously see a compression when we orchestrate both agent and digital workforce. However, the growing demand for intelligent operations make us think that the workforce evolution will be very moderate. I would like to take some examples on how we see the concrete benefits of Agentic in delivery. The first one is a car manufacturer. They have a legacy application running on mainframe that was managing all their car sales and car orders worldwide. The objective for them was to decrease the cost of technology and to move that application from mainframe to a new infrastructure. Thanks to Agentic, we did not only migrate that application, but we completely re-factored it in half of the time that was initially planned. We went into production with a new code with 0 defect. We improved the performance of the application by 90%, and our efforts has been reduced by 2/3.

The second example is in life science. It's about an employee IT service desk, where we are developing Agentic Systems to replace some of our service desk agents, but also to assist them when they fix issues from the employees. 85% of the chats today are [indiscernible] without any human intervention. Overall, the ticket resolution time has been decreased by 20%. The customer satisfaction has been increased to 4.9 out of 5, and the end-to-end cost of delivery has been decreased by 20%.

The last example is not a customer example. It's about a platform that has been developed by Capgemini called Malcolm. That platform is an asset that is today used by 7 customers. It is for the shipping and the trucking industry, and it is identifying the process from ordering through invoicing, up to receivable. Today, 27 million transactions managed. 50% of the bookings are made without any human intervention. The invoicing accuracy has been increased from 90% to 98%, and more importantly, this means that our customers have experienced a decreasing DSO of 8 days. So quite a significant impact for them.

Obviously, we consider Capgemini as the customer view for identification. This means that we are looking at all our key internal processes, eliminating the task, simplifying the process and reinventing new process that can be identified. With our technology partner, we have worked on a very innovative IT architecture for ourselves, where all our enterprise data are consolidated into a unique data hub that is collecting the data, transforming them and cleaning them and making them into data products that can be consumed by agents. Today, 40% of our customer proposals are deployed, thanks to Agentic, and we believe that by the end of the year, we will reach 80%.

One of our core processes is our supply chain. It's our ability to match the profile of our workforce with customer ask. In that area, we are also heavily using agents to identify the profiles to prepare the CVs to make sure that the match is done in a very rapid time. On average, we used to staff individuals within 20 days. Thanks to Agentic, we have shortened life cycle into 5 days. Going back to the value pool, you understood that the Agentic technology stack and the control plane are two very significant value pool going forward. Where I explained in the first part, how Agentic is changing our delivery. I'm not going to focus on the what. We discussed about those value pool.

And as you can imagine, this means that we need to build new capabilities to be able to build and deploy those value pools for our customers. What are those new capabilities? First of all, we need to develop those agents. As mentioned before, we are creating ODE, outcome deployed engineers. Those people are usually on site, working closely with the business side of the customer. They usually work in pairs with two type of profile. One ODE that will have a very deep functional business expertise and ODE that is much more hands on the keyboard developing the agents. To make an analogy again, if you are in an insurance company and we are trying to identify their process, one of those ODE will have to understand very well what an insurance claim is and how it is managed so that we can take the functional understanding and embark it in the agents we are developing.

Once those agents are developed, they need to be enabled in the existing information system. And here, we have an enablement team, which is very classic to what we're doing today with a growing need for data engineers, but also infrastructure experts, network experts, SaaS experts, software experts, people that understand the information system and can make those agents interact with the rest of the information system. Once those agents are built and deployed, then they need to be operated. Again, going back to what I said earlier, we expect that going forward, any enterprise employee will be assisted on average by 10 agents.

If you think at the size of the company, this means that every company will have hundreds of thousands of agents to manage. And you understood that the control plane is that capability and that capacity. In the control plane, we manage the user access of the agents. We give them an identity like humans. We are also defining what type of actions they are about to do and defining the guardrails that are so important for an enterprise to build the trust. We are orchestrating those agents among themselves. Obviously, we are monitoring them very closely, making sure that they act on purpose and that the output they are delivering and the actions they are taking is appropriate. We also make sure that they are protected from any cyber attack. And then finally, in that control plane, we have also experts of the token economies, managing on a daily basis the number of tokens consumed by those agents and tuning and adjusting so that the cost of the Agentic can be optimized.

This concludes how delivery is transforming within Capgemini in order to make sure that we harness the power of Agentic for us, but also for our clients. Thank you.

Thank you very much, [indiscernible]. I suggest we take a break. We'll take a quick 5-minute break and reconvene here for the last stretch of our Capital Markets Day.

[Break]

Okay. Welcome back for the last and the third part, our Capital Markets Day. For this to begin this last part, we're going to hear another client perspective. And for this, I'm going to ask CEO to come on stage with our guests. Lucas Farricini, the Chief Executive Officer of Imperial Brands plc. [indiscernible] a proven track record in multinational consumer goods companies around the world.

He joined Interbrands as CFO, previously was the CFO of ED&F Man Holdings and agricultural commodities and brokerage group. And earlier in his career, he spent 22 years with Nestle in various senior finance and general management roles allowing him to acquire deep knowledge of technology and its opportunities to enable change. Gentlemen.

Maybe a simple one to start with for the audience in the room, maybe you can give us a brief introduction on Imperial Brands and. .

Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for having me. Good afternoon, everyone. Impera Grounds is the fourth largest tobacco company in the world. We operate in over 100 markets. This is a very dynamic business. We have a product portfolio that spans from tobacco, all the way to what we call next-generation product. .

Anything from vapes or on nicotine pouches, heated tobacco. As I said, a very dynamic industry. The transition is really driven by consumer insights consumer demand, lots of innovation, and as you could expect, lots of regulation. We are known as the fragile has said, and we are a true challenger business. We focus on the consumer.

We are choiceful. We make choices. And we want to remain agile. Our business is anchored around 3 things: One is drive sustainable value through our combustible business. It is about building a meaningful NGP business, the next-generation business. And it is to transform ourselves for the tomorrow, to be ready for tomorrow, which is really twofold, gaining efficiency, being more agile, but also more data-led and being more consumer centric.

Okay. So we hear a lot about AI, much less about why it's actually being industrialized inside organizations like Imperial Brands. So start, could you share how AI fits into your broader strategy and transformation journeys towards 2030 goals.

And then ultimately, what are you trying to achieve and why this is critical for your business.

Yes. I think as a CEO, everybody talks about AI and sort of everything is AI nowadays. And so for us, it is really important to be a true challenger being choiceful and making sure that. We focus on that element of AI and identic AI that really helps us deploy our strategy.

And in sort of broad terms, there are sort of probably 2 avenues we're looking at. One is fully the efficiency? How do you become more efficient, more agile, which is sort of, for me, the ticket to the game, it's sort of the entry -- but the real uptake for us is how do we make sure that we actually deliver our strategy better in terms of how do we capture more opportunities for revenue growth by becoming more consumer-centric, having better insights, leveraging AI for that purpose.

That's really where we see the bigger opportunity in a very focused way and where we see our partnership with Captain I bring a lot of opportunities, both in the efficiency but mainly also in the revenue growth opportunity.

So based on the strategic importance of this transformation. So as you say, partnership can become critical. So when you think about the journey you embark on, what you look for in a partner and what kind of partner can fully operate at topic and deliver impact at scale .

Yes, I think for us, and again, we do that in other areas as well, like innovation, et cetera. We are a big company, but we are the fourth largest. We are a true challenger. And so we look at our partners, as true strategic partners. We don't look at partners service providers.

That's not where we believe the value is it's really in the strategic partnership. And I think [indiscernible] and I have really shown us in the short time that we've been together in this journey is that you really understand here for the strategy and importantly, know how to translate that into a true business outcome that leverages your industry knowledge and also your industry expertise.

Sorry, let me just continue. That's sort of the first piece. When we looked at cap terminal as well, what we could see is we are not trying just to move a certain element of our processes to a service provider, we're looking for a strategic partnership that in your case, showed very good knowledge about the end-to-end capability and how you can operate across a full value chain and show us how you integrate technology data into our operations.

So that capability to bring that into our operations was very important to us. And then finally, in the few months that we've been working together, there has been a solid build of trust, which is probably still a very important ingredient of any relationship.

And that trust is on an individual level, but also it is on an organizational level that you have traded that with us .

So I mean if you summarize in 2 or 3 words, what really is distinctive about the partnership with Capgemini in that transformation journey.

So I think, as I said before, for us, the importance is the capability to look at you as a strategic part is making sure that through the understanding that you have shown us and the interest in our strategic intent, you have really been able to translate that into a business outcome. .

And you do that through 2 things, which is basically through leveraging your expertise in the industry and technology, but also by leveraging your ability to operate across the full value chain. Those 2 things allow us to accelerate the transformation, accelerate the adoption of technology, accelerate the opportunity to simplify our organization, but also accelerate the opportunity for us to double down on our consumer capability, thanks to your input and with that, double down on our commercial opportunities.

So looking ahead, next 12 months, what is really exciting you the most about the next phase. I mean, what are your expectations in terms of what needs to be achieved? I think, firstly, I want to acknowledge that even though we only started and has signed a contract, I believe, it was last February, we had a very good start.

We were very quick out of the blocks assigned the contract in February. And by the first of April, we had 400 roles transferred to Capgemini and actually, very pleasingly, with a 99% retention rate, which is very important for us to show a good start. What I'm really excited about is the opportunity to accelerate that process now.

It's going from building the foundation to really scaling up the opportunity to simplify our business, to embed AI -- and again, for us, it is not just about using the technology. The technology itself is one thing. It's how to use the technology. How do you find that technology that helps us develop our strategy and bring value to our consumers and obviously to our shareholders.

And I think I'm excited that we can accelerate that. We can focus on the execution and we can focus also on deepening the relationship, which is at the very beginning. And we'll go for many years.

So when you look at the partnerships like that, how important is cultural fit, collaboration, I mean how would you characterize that? And how important it is for you for this to be successful?

It is very important to us in the sense that for us, I think the what is one element of any partnership. We've worked hard to define shared objectives, how do we make sure that our strategic intent also is linked to the incentive in the partnership.

So all these things work really well. We have mutual benefits, all that. But I think where it really matters is that you do understand our culture, who we are, what are we trying to do? Again, it is about how do we win with the consumer?

How do you understand our culture, how we do things, what is our challenge me -- so that is very important. And you have shown a lot of interest and care throughout the process to not just deliver an outcome or this is a solution.

This is the way we do things, but really understanding what we are looking for and adapting your solutions within, obviously, the benefit of the scale to our needs. That has been very helpful for us. And I think that is key for us and for the success going forward.

Chris, I mean, any final thoughts around basically level of expectation what is the level of change you'd expect at the end of the day in the organization. I mean you said you're moving from a challenger position.

I mean is your ambition through that to be able to leapfrog in some areas, some of your competitors and you think that this kind of large-scale transformation with its level of complexity, of course, can really help you achieve superior results and really move forward the need that significantly.

Yes, I do believe -- so a couple of things. Crosse transformation is quite significant. A, as a let, we don't look just at the efficiency, okay? I think the efficiency is hugely important. I've never met a consumer is willing to pay for in efficiency. But I think it is only half of the story.

What we are looking for is the added value of getting more revenue growth at scale and at pace and so it is a significant impact. And it is important that our employees understand that this is not a pure shared service and efficiency. This is not what we are trying to do.

And I think Captain and I have understood this very well, and it's helping us really to translate this opportunity in how do we unleash the potential of our great talent we have. Right now, our people are hugely motivated. They are very talented.

We've brought hundreds of people from outside combining them with our knowledge in tobacco and NGP. But they come in a company where the processes are broken, we can't really unleash our potential. If we can show our people that what we really try do is helping them to deliver their best every day and win with our consumer, that's really what we want to do.

Everything else is a consequence of our piping with your help, with your knowledge and the capability of accelerating that to do that quickly. And just to finalize, I mean, we've discussed this in previous discussions.

If you think of what we're trying to do, -- many other companies have gone this journey. They've probably taken 10, 15, 20 years. We're trying to get to that point in 2 years by doing an end-to-end design, we cannot do that without your help.

Look, thank you very much. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for the partnership and of course, looking forward to great achievements .

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you very much, I'll ask Fernando Alvarez to come back on stage in order to share with us more detail the evolution and expansion of total addressable markets.

Good. As you do, we do the thing, we work on models to justify the decisions that we made and we put a lot of the energy in defining these 5 value pools that we share with you today.

So what I will share with you is an effort that we have been working on for quite a while to get to some of the conclusions that we have shared with you. Rather than depending upon ourselves and our sources, which we do, we have a team to those staff for us, we decided to partner up with McKinsey.

And then when we work and approach McKinsey, we basically asked them what source of data and information could rely and share together to define and accelerate the definition of these 5 value pools.

So we decided to leverage the work they recently did for NASSCOM. And then when we realize and we studied that analysis they did, we realized 2 things. They were missing information on advisory capabilities, which is everything that has to do with the consulting part that we have been drumming on to it's very important.

But we also realize, as we have been realizing and dealing with other market analysts that there was not a lot of coverage on what we call R&D, engineering and research and development. because our objective was not only defining the 5 value pools that we share with you today, but also try to quantify the wallet spend pool that we were going after.

So we are trying, as what we have done today is to create a very clear laser focus framework that defines where our upside is in terms of we move forward as in we are [indiscernible] value architecture. So as a consequence of that, this is the result of that work.

First of all, -- it's a global business and technology service market. So that means we win and we set the stage to what we do. So we're focusing on the service market. So we left A lot of content, including Infrastructure as a Service is not included as part of the TAM.

That's the first thing. And then we came to the conclusion that and then we did the analysis for the period of 2025 to 2030. And we came to the conclusion in the work going back and forward and challenging each other that we expect this particular time to grow at a 4% to 5% CAGR during this particular period.

Under the same analysis, we were very laser focused in understanding the same way that there is an AI expansion, they also AI compression. And we were trying to make an assessment what does that mean. And we were in, in a very detailed modeling, what's behind each one of those value pools in order to quantify versus the real data that we were getting in terms of [indiscernible]

So we came to the conclusion that the AI expansion and the AI compression at a midpoint level is a net neutral during this particular period, give and take, as you can see there, depending on the fluctuation. Then in order to validate for us this validated for us the following.

This is what I was trying to articulate and my colleagues right to articulate throughout the presentations today that there is a structural growth driver rotation in terms of the rotation of what secular growth is versus the compression. And we see that now it's what we are trying to articulate with these 5 value pools of how this is evolving.

That's -- and then that led us to understand also as well that the agentive value pools that we are describing here in each 1 of the 5 are growing at an accelerated pace, ultimately surpassing the secular growth. So the assumptions start validating that the circular growth will continue.

Yes, there is some AI compression, but the speak only 5 value pools around agent architectures that we have defined surpassing. So the AI expansion during this period, 25% to 30%, it's give and take at a midpoint range $420 million versus $400 billion.

So it's a pretty, pretty conservative approach that we took rather than the aggressive approach in order to justify the decisions of where do we go in each 1 of these value pools. We decided we were challenged. What about after 2030? I mean, one of the arguments that we constantly in this particular rapid PACE market that I was describing to you, it's rather difficult to get our arms around 3 years. We went 5, and that's what happened beyond.

So we took the models. We took the same alleviations that we have agreed with on ourselves to give us a validation and we decided what that looks like beyond 2030, just for the sake of the argument of the analysis. And it came to the conclusion that the identic value will drive long-term market growth beyond 2030.

According to the information that we were again on AI. Compression will not be as aggressive during the period to 2035 as it was in 2030, 2025 to 2030, meaning if you give and take and you take the midrange point of this, the AI compression between the 2025 to 2030, more or let's say 20% to 25%. And if we do the same analysis beyond that point, 2030 to 2035, it takes us to between 10% to 15%. So the point I had is not an electrical switch, boom off.

We move on. It's nowhere to be seen. It's an evolution, but we see that the compression start diminishing as AI tax taking over the different elements of how do we address the business. So concluding in the analysis that the business and technology service market, again, with the conditions and the hit button maybe that we defined, especially we took Infrastructure-as-a-Service out should be growing between a 6% to 10% CAGR, you take the midrange point is around 8 moving forward.

Now that needs continue more analysis, continue more modeling, learning from it, validating the sources but that's more or less the analysis that we have done. And that helped us guide ourselves the definition of 5 value pools and the intensity of what we see in the short term, midterm and long term in the enablement on the growth of these 5 value pools.

And based upon that assessment, then I will leave [indiscernible] stage and share with you her vision or our vision of the ambitions moving forward. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Fernando. As you said, there's no time to welcome [indiscernible] Group Chief Financial Officer to share the group's 2028 Financial Ambition.

Hello, everyone, and thank you, [indiscernible] Thank you so much. Thank you all for having come today and joining us. Let me start off with our performance over the last few years. has said before, we have a track record of successfully navigating various technology wins. And over the past few years, we have demonstrated just that.

Since 2020, we have built high-quality portfolio that has positioned the group at the center of enterprise digital transformation across enterprise management, customer first and intelligent industries at the back of our leadership in digital and cloud.

We have built real strength around cloud, supported by deep strategic partnerships. And at the same time, we invested early in data and AI, which was 1 of the pillars of our 2021 strategic framework positioning the group well ahead of the next wave of transformation.

Now the results from this are clear. Between 2020 and 2025, we delivered a 7.3% revenue CAGR at constant currency. Excluding acquisitions, our organic growth was slightly above 5% CAGR, reflecting our ability to capture demand across the cycle.

Over the same period, we managed to expand our operating margin by 140 basis points and we are now one of the few global players to operate at a level reasonably higher than the pre-Corvid profitability.

Now this reflects a combination of factors. We have increased our exposure to higher-value services our clients, successfully addressing new playing fields within our clients' operations. And at the same time, we have maintained strong operational discipline, ensuring that our model remains resilient in what has been a fairly volatile environment.

This has translated into solid cash generation. Over the past 5 years, we delivered EUR 9.6 billion of cumulative organic free cash flow. This has allowed us to continue investing in the business reinforce our capabilities through targeted acquisitions and return capital consistently to shareholders.

Now as we enter the next phase, we do so from a position of strength with a balanced and disciplined financial model that continues to support both performance today and investment for the future. Now let me turn to the evolution of our profitability framework, which is an important element of how we communicate our performance.

We have listened and this evolution reflects the dialogue we've had with you, our investors. As our business continues to evolve, it is important that the way we measure performance evolves with it. And our headline profitability metric needs to provide a clear view of the group's all in operating performance.

Currently, we present a number of our other operating income and expenses below operating margin. We're now simplifying this by moving most of these lines above the line. So these items go above the line. So they will be included directly within our operating cost and fit within the operating performance we manage on a day-to-day basis.

This includes items such as share-based compensation and restructuring costs, which are a part of running and transforming the business over time. These, together with the other items previously reported under other operating income and expenses will now be included directly within the relevant operating cost lines.

We will, therefore, introduce this new refined view through a new metric, adjusted operating profit. Now this metric is simply the IFRS operating profit before acquisition-related expense. As such, it only excludes integration and acquisition costs and the amortization of intangibles linked to business combination.

Now by isolating these items that are directly linked to cost acquisition and they are mostly noncash, it provides a clearer and more consistent view of our all-in operating performance. I now come to our 2025 results would look in the context of this new profitability metric. As I outlined earlier, share-based compensation, restructuring and other items are reclassified into the relevant operating cost line.

Now that's cost of services rendered, G&A and selling expenses, resulting in the new metric of adjusted operating profit. Below this are the acquisition-related expenses to then arrive at the IFRS operating so you can see that from this in 2025, our 13.3% operating margin translates to a 10.8% in the adjusted operating profit metric.

Now moving forward and in terms of reporting, 2026 in particular, nothing changes. Our outlook and the way we report our financials for 2026 remains unchanged. We will apply this framework to the 2027 outlook that we will present next February, and it will be reflected in our financial statements from the first half of 2027.

Now to summarize, this change strengthens the relevance of our key profitability metric and provides a more comprehensive view of the group's operating performance. So now let me turn to our 2028 financial ambition. Our ambition is clear: to combine stronger growth with higher profitability while maintaining disciplined cash generation with the same execution rigor that has underpinned our performance in recent years. Starting with growth. We are targeting a CAGR of 5.5% to 7.5% at constant currency through to 2028. This includes around 2 points from M&A, primarily from WNS, which is already embedded.

This ambition is grounded in a reasonable view of market dynamics and reflective of our positioning across the key transformation opportunities, as you've heard from all our other speakers today. On profitability, we see a clear opportunity to further improve our all-in operating performance and not to my point and all-in operating performance over the next few years.

We are targeting an expansion of adjusted operating profit margin of 130 to 150 basis points versus 2025, reaching between 1.1% and 12.3% of the revenues by 2028. Now just to reiterate, this is our new measure of profitability, which incorporates the majority of what previously reported under other operating income and expenses and therefore provides a more complete all in view of our operating performance.

We also expect to maintain a strong level of organic free cash flow generation over the period, consistent with the discipline that we have demonstrated historically. This translates to over EUR 6 billion of organic free cash flow over the next 3 years. These ambitions are supported by a combination of growth drivers and operational improvements, which I will now walk you through.

Now turning to our revenue growth ambition through to 2028. Our objective is to accelerate growth and that rest are capturing the value created by AI, all our speakers have spoken about that. A genetic AI enterprise transformation will grow to be a meaningful chunk of our business.

Still, it's important to note that the non-agentic demand will not simply disappear. Even after taking into account the transitory impact from the ramp-up of AI native delivery -- it will still be an important part of what we will do in 2028 and beyond through 2030.

In addition, AI is both expanding our existing opportunities to create value and opening up new ones. The key aspect to note here is that we see AI will be a net incremental tailwind to our growth, and this will be across a number of value pools.

First, we will benefit from the acceleration of technology modernization. We're seeing this here and now as some of this is a clear prerequisite to building the agent tech stack. In this agent KI enterprise transformation landscape, intelligent operations stands out today. And we already see material traction on this value pool with double-digit growth across our digital business. services business and across both, of course, the Capgemini and WNS scope.

We expect the other AI value pools that Fernando talked about to increasingly pick up through this period and continue to support acceleration. Now this covers the agent tech stack, the agent control plane, Agentic products services, and they will increasingly be fundamental as organizations fully embrace the AI transformation. Taken together, these drivers support our ambition to deliver the 5.5% to 7.5% constant currency revenue CAGR through to 2028.

Now let me turn to margin expansion and to what gives us confidence in our ability to deliver it. Historically, margin expansion has come from delivering higher value services that continue to be a key element -- as AI embeds into enterprise transformation, our work becomes more strategic, more integrated, outcome-led and supporting a richer mix of services.

Our margin trajectory assumptions are, therefore, based on a number of factors. And a significant part of it is supported by levers that are already underway. Alongside developments within AI and the portfolio mix that I just talked about, -- the Fit for Growth initiatives that we announced earlier in the year will support the margin as we address the pocket of under absorption in Continental Europe and to accelerate the transformation of our capabilities to support our growth agenda.

WNS will contribute through its structurally margin accretive profile and the synergies we expect over time. And we will continue to maintain strict discipline on SG&A, which remains a clear priority for us. Now investments are an important part of this equation.

We are increasing our investments in offerings and selectively in the capabilities that strengthen our positioning and support future growth. All of this while retaining the flexibility to adjust as the market conditions evolve. So taken together, these drivers provide a clear and credible path to expand adjusted operating profit margin by 130 to 150 basis points between 2025 and 2028, reaching 12.1% to 12.3% of revenues.

So to summarize, and it's important here -- our margin expansion is broader than AI alone. It combines increasing client value creation with visible execution levers, which are not just dependent on external factors low. Now let me bring this together and show you how this translates into a clear path for strong earnings growth through 2028.

Now at the core, earnings growth is driven by our operating performance -- our revenue trajectory supported by a combination of structural demand, the expansion of AI-driven value pools provides that foundation. This is complemented by the expansion of our adjusted operating profit margin, which incorporates 7 levers, which I just talked about.

These levers are further complemented by the mechanical tailwind from the lower acquisition-related expenses as we exit the integration phase of WNS. At the same time, we factor in some headwinds with an increase in our effective tax rate and our financial expenses higher than in 2025 as we now have the full impact of the WNS acquisition debt.

Taken together, these elements support a high single-digit earnings CAGR over the period between 2025 and 2028. Now I'm going to call you for a minute and tell you what this implies. If you start from your consensus estimated earnings for 2026, I am talking about a solid double-digit CAGR to our 2028 earnings.

Now what matters most here, of course, is the quality of this growth. It comes from a balanced mix of top line growth, Capgemini specific execution levers and very disciplined financial management. So the message here is simple.

We have a clear path to the high single-digit earnings growth supported by our distinctive positioning in AI-led enterprise transformation, aided by the discipline of our operating model.

Now moving on, organic free cash flow generation is a core strength of our model and remains a central pillar of our financial framework. This is underpinned by our strong operating performance, and is, of course, driven by the acceleration of revenue growth and the expansion of our adjusted operating profit margin and our continued discipline across nonoperating items.

Together, these elements translate into a strong cumulative organic free cash flow generation of about EUR 6 billion over the period, with free cash flow consistently above net income, a continued area of focus -- this provides us flexibility to continue investing in the business while returning value to shareholders.

Now let's come to capital allocation and capital allocation through -- we will maintain a balanced and disciplined approach to redeploying our free cash flow across 4 priorities: dividends, share buyback, deleveraging and acquisitions. So starting with the direct returns to shareholders. Our dividend policy builds on a clear historical payout ratio of around 35%, which today represents an attractive yield of over 3%.

In terms of share buyback, we will continue to execute our EUR 2 billion program, which we launched last year, and this will clearly reduce the number of outstanding shares. Now taken together, these 2 elements represent around 5% annual return to the shareholders based on our current share price.

Deleveraging remains a priority over the next 3 years. with a lower level of acquisition activity, providing us the flexibility to pursue deleveraging. At the same time, our approach to M&A remains disciplined as implied by our growth CAGR ambition that embeds about 2 points from M&A, of which 1.7 points that already embarked, we expect to turn down M&A in the short term.

Now we will continue to pursue selective acquisitions where appropriate to strengthen our capabilities and enrich it cause our offerings. Overall, this framework reflects a balanced and consistent approach to capital allocation. combining continued investment in the business with attractive and sustainable returns to shareholders.

So let me now conclude by bringing all of this back to what matters most, which is shareholder value creation. There are 2 core components behind the value we intend to deliver. Number one, the first recourse is the earnings growth with a high single-digit net income CAGR from 2025 to 2028 period. The second component is direct cash returns to shareholders. through our dividend and share buyback program will deliver around 5% per annum to shareholders.

So taken together, earnings growth dividends and share buybacks result in a total shareholder return profile that is both attractive and well balanced. This ambition, we have built on reasonable and transparent assumptions. It does not rely on significant external tailwinds and aggressive scenarios. It is grounded on what we can focus on.

Our growth profile, our margin trajectory our cash generation and our discipline in capital allocation. As you've heard throughout the sessions this afternoon, we see a genetic AI as a clear structural growth opportunity and a capitalist for our margin expansion.

So with this, we're confident in our ability to deliver superior shareholder value supported by a balanced and disciplined financial model.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Lev. Thank you very much. I'm now going to invite Aiman on stage for his closing remarks before we move on to the Q&A session.

Okay. So before we move to the Q&A, and I'm sure there will be many questions, let me leave you with a few closing thoughts. So it's been a long but they trust you agree at Agentic AI warrants the extra time. But my message to you is extremely simple. First, agentic AI is not just the next wave. It is a step change. It will unlock significant value for clients while introducing new levels of complexity and navigating that complexity is exactly what we have in to do.

Second, to those who see this as a threat to our industry, our growth and our margin, we will prove them wrong quarter after quarter. The 5 value pools we shared are not theoretical. They are tangible, quantifiable, already underway and they expand our total addressable market. And third, we're not entering this new era unprepared.

We're entering from a position of strength, deep industry expertise, end-to-end capabilities, a powerful partner ecosystem and years of sustained investment in cloud, data and AI. But let me end on a personal note.

Now I've been in this industry for a long time, a very long time and witnessed many shifts and transformation. But I have never been more energized, more excited and more confident about Capgemini's future than I am today. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Aiman. We're going to set up quickly the stage for a Q&A session and have you back here with Nive and Fernando. Allow me first to share with our audience the following indications for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Let me add that we'll take questions from the room, of course, but also from our online viewers and over 350. And please do remember to proceed your question with your name and the company name. So the stage is nearly ready. We're going to begin in just a few seconds. And I will invite now Aiman, Nive and Fernando back on stage.

I barely finished my sentence as there were several hands that were raised, right there, you won't be surprised.

It's Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs. I kind of had a 2-part question. So I was intrigued -- it's starting --

There is not such last question, just to be clear.

I was intrigued by the slide in Nive's presentation around how the non-AI business is expected to kind of still stay roughly flat in absolute terms because I think the perception is obviously that there's a kind of compression from kind of AI. So can you just help us understand maybe with some examples of the kind of portfolio where that sort of compression may happen or how you offset that versus the incremental benefits from sort of AI?

And to the extent you can contextualize also in terms of gross margin because in the previous cycle, Capgemini has seen some pretty impressive gross margin expansion. So how should we think of that gross margin going forward?

And then one for Fernando. You've obviously been through multiple cycles in the industry. How does your relationships with perhaps the SaaS companies that you've had in the past change as you now talk about the domain expertise, industry expertise because we were at Sapphire Orlando and many of the SaaS companies, including SAP, talk about that being kind of a big moat.

So I'm curious to understand how those partnerships shift, particularly as you embrace OpenAI and Anthropic as new partners?

Three questions, not two. Okay. So let me start. So first, I'll address the revenue one. Listen, there is still growth. I mean this is what you don't realize. There is still growth in the secular stack. So we see a lot of it is going to be absorbed by the AI compression. So we say it's flattish projected a few years out. And here, we're talking to 2028. So '26 is there. We're talking about the next 2 years. There's growth coming from price increase, GDP increase, additional demand. Clients will not have moved and changed everything in the last -- in the next 2 years. We're talking about 2 years out. So yes, we do believe that we will not see growth there, but we'll not see a big deflation as well because there is additional demand. There's additional work going in some of the traditional stack that still continues.

Companies will not have changed everything in the next couple of years. So that's why we believe it will remain flat. On the gross margin?

On the gross margin more. So the expectation is, as has been in the past, the gross margin should continue to improve in the future. And the reason that is, is because we continuously will focus on the biggest lever, which is the whole portfolio mix, the AI as a value driver. And as we do more AI, there is more of the transformation we do, the outcome-based we do, the value creation we do, we expect to see -- be able to take a bigger part of that value creation, and therefore, the expectation will be the gross margin will continue to improve over a period of time.

Just to be clear, I think you really have to realize that we're not talking about incremental improvement at clients, we're talking about significant value creation. I mean whenever in history, at least for me in this industry, we have seen this significant leap of value creation. This is where we can capture the most margin progression. I mean that's why -- of course, here, we're talking 2028. You have to look beyond 2028 because here, we have puts and takes in the next 2 or 3 years. We are in transition. We're going to be in transition for the next 3 to 5 years. It's a completely new wave. That's why you have puts and takes in terms of that, and you don't see as much margin expansion in the next 2 or 3 years.

I think beyond that, there is a lot of potential because you create so much value that you can capture part of that and the client capture a lot, and we are both happy. And I think that we really have to have -- it's a significant change in terms of frame of mind. This is not an incremental progression. Honestly, if it's for incremental value, it's not worth doing. It's too complex, too risky, too much change in organization. So unless it really helps to leapfrog, nobody is going to do it because it is extremely complex.

I can tell you really missed our conversation at [indiscernible]. I would tell you, if I have to put it in one word, it's very interesting. This relationship right now. I think with the entrance, the dramatic entrance of the AI native, the ones you mentioned Entropic, OpenAI and Palantir, it accentuates the need of triangulation and it doubles down the fact that they need us more than ever. Now the question is, do I believe that they will disappear from the map? No. Do I believe SAP will be a formidable data and application system of record? Yes. Now the battle is on the functional extensions and the ability to deliver them quicker, faster and better for those clients, the ability to move from on-premise to cloud quicker, cheaper, faster, that's the battle that is about to start. But the point is we all need each other and our value in orchestrating that is essential.

Fred Boulan from Bank of America. Question on your business model evolution. Can you discuss a little bit how you see the transformation from a kind of traditional time and material towards outcome-based model? How do you think this will play out and impact your business model in the coming years?

Yes. Again, I think we talk about outcome-based because, yes, I think the difference is that a big part of our business was around deploying technology, okay? I mean we got on the engineering side, the operations side, but historically, has been around deploying technology. And technology has an indirect impact on value, okay? You implement SAP, hoping that finance productivity will increase, you'll be able to close book faster, et cetera. The difference here, the work we are doing leads to measurable value immediately. You see the impact when you transform a process and you identify it, you can see the result once the work is finished. It is not an indirect impact, it is a direct impact. Hence, you can measure tangible value creation in dollars and cents. It's no sense that could happen because now we have deployed the technology. And this makes it fundamentally different because now you can -- because you can measure that, you can tie part of what you get from the client to actually that value creation.

Now it is clear. This is going to -- some of it is going to happen over time. And some of it will be still linked to fixed cost or fixed price for the client plus a share of what gets created there. And I think this is really where the mentality is looking when you look at some of our other contracts, there is no contract which is purely outcome-based, okay? And to be frank, I would not sign on something on which I don't have the levers or I have minimal levers. That means tying my future or my payment to something that I have no control on. The difference here because we are transforming the process because we are improving the outcomes, I am involved in making it to the tangible value creation to which I'm happy, and I will create more certainty over time as they build the experience to say, yes, I can tie more of my future to that because I know it can be delivered, okay?

And over time, our confidence in terms of delivering it increases. If I take an accounts payable process or accounts receivable process, if I've identified 10x, I know where I put the agent, I know what we expect in terms of things, I know we're going to have the most impact, I know exactly what we get at the end. And yes, I can tie myself a little bit more to that. The time and material is already decreasing. Compared to where it was 4, 5 years ago, we were probably at 50%, we're down to 35%. It will not disappear. I think there'll still be resource base, but it might drop to 25%, 20%. I don't think it will drop below that. It's a gradual reduction because we see more and more transformational deals where clients are embarking us on larger transformation, which is not just about give me resources. But there will still be a resource business that will continue even if it's much smaller than what it used to be 3 or 4 years ago.

We go on this slide now, Laurent.

It's Laurent Daure from Cheuvreux. I have a question on the intelligent operation. The contract has been renewed, I would say, the last 6 months. We come with some savings comparing the cost to human plus agent versus human. What is happening on the size of the deals? Because I suppose you are adding new functionality. So do you manage to sign on a higher scope and higher revenues despite the savings you're giving them? So any granularity on this would be very useful.

So you get right. First, we are proactive. I don't want to -- I mean, in this environment, you don't want to wait until the end of the contract. So we are proactively approaching many clients with whom we have deals because the best client is the client you already have and proposing expansion of scope with higher level of savings and transformation. So in most cases, we'll end up with larger deals, but we are in that process, but today, we are not waiting for the contract is ending in 1 year. They might cut -- they might expect us to give us -- to give them more benefit. Let's wait, let's not do -- No, no, we are proactively going to the client, listen, there's a higher level of thing can be achieved, a higher level of efficiency, transformation and better outcome. And by the way, what we propose is to expand the scope and renew now by anticipation and start to deliver you the additional value. It tends to go pretty well in terms of discussions. Charles?

Michael Briest, UBS. Can we just dig in -- on intelligent operations, some really interesting examples from Frank around the automation savings. I guess if you were delivering that on top of a legacy contract that you were replacing internally, it will be quite deflationary. And I heard elsewhere was it 40x increase in the number of agents out there over the next 5, 6 years to 1 billion. Yet you're also saying Intelligent Operations, 100,000 people will grow. Can we sort of unpick that?

So it is not the math, but I'll explain to you with simple math, okay? If you have a business that has 100,000 people, even if -- I'm not saying we're doing 50%, but you do 50% productivity, you double the size of the business, you still have 100,000 people business. So what we're saying is that because the business is going to grow significantly. Even with delivering very high level of productivity, overall, we do expect the size of our people working in operation to basically remain flat or even slightly increase depending on the pace at which we are growing it.

How much will headcount grow over the next 3 years?

Again, listen, we're not putting a number. The problem I don't want to go into numbers. First, as you know, it's not headcount and headcounts depending where the headcounts are, it's not at all the same level of impact. I do not believe that we will see any big growth in headcounts and the growth of headcount will be much less than the revenue growth, okay? That's for sure because bit by bit, we are identifying and able to be able to drive that human and agent workforce. I don't say productivity because the reason why I don't use the word productivity because productivity is a mistake in terms of concept, okay? And I just want to spend a moment on that. When you transform a claim process and you bring agents in, you're not doing human productivity. You are basically mixing a human and agent workforce on the same process. And agents consume tokens. So we're actually paying them a salary. If it was productivity, then I would make an investment in an SAP system and I have direct productivity on my process. This is not what's happening. This is I'm changing the mix of who is delivering the process and there is a cost, which can be significant if it's not properly managed for the digital agents. And it's important to think about it this way as you think about the future is that you look at the overall tech plus operation cost. I am spending so much to support my claim process from a technology perspective, application perspective. I have so many people working and this is how much I'm spending from a people cost, that overall cost is my basket I'm starting with. And when I build my business case is by what am I replacing it?

Because you know what, the application will become simpler because I'm moving some of the functionalities into the agents who are now working on the process. And what I look from optimization is that overall cost, how do I optimize it? What is the business case if I was to go and drive this transformation, okay? And the simplification to say it's productivity cost is a fundamental mistake. The second one is to consider the tokens because I heard some people do it, it's a technology cost. Token is an operational concentration. You have digital workers in your process that consume tokens. You're paying them a salary. Token is an operational cost in the process. It is not a technology cost because as a client, if I look at how -- if I -- me in my company, when I look at how we're going to optimize the process, I consider token is not an IT cost, I say, how much are you going to consume in tokens? When I look at my delivery teams and we tell them, okay, we're going to give you whichever model, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini or whatever, they'll be able to improve quality, speed, et cetera. I ask them, what am I getting in return? Because the only thing you're going to see is an increase in cost.

So for me, the token in that case has become a delivery cost. It's part of my operating cost of delivery. It's not an IT cost. So all these concepts, I think, are very important. If not, we're going to make big reasoning mistake in terms of how we look at overall this new token economy and how we look at digital agent and the consumption of token. And if you may want to make it more complicated, the challenge between the digital workers and the human workers is the digital workers, you pay them a variable salary because their token consumption is not steady. So it makes it even more complex to be able to manage.

Go ahead.

It's Toby Ogg from JPMorgan. Bigger picture question. Clearly, there continues to be concerns in the market around the growth outlook for the whole of the IT services sector, not just Capgemini because of AI. You've clearly laid out your view this afternoon that AI is a net tailwind for you guys, not a headwind. What do you think the market is getting wrong or missing? And is there anything very specific that you can point to that's not being properly understood?

I think what is not properly understood is basically is what we just showed is what does it mean to scale an agentic enterprise? What are the different things that need to be changed from the -- some of the obvious ones like the tech debt, that's the first value pool and everybody got that. The technology stack, I don't think people getting that. The complexity of building the new agentic technology stack. There's a difference between giving a developer Claude to improve the software productivity and getting agents to operate on a critical process. It's fundamentally different. So if you want to be able to do that, you need to build the technology stack. The control plane, do you want to have tens of thousands of digital workers running across your organization with unlimited access to making changes without any governance and unlimited cost, probably don't want to. You're going to have chaos. And then how do you actually get the value out of that, the transformation on the product and service side and the transformation on the enterprise process side.

Well, I don't think people have been presented with that picture. This is the kind of transformation that enterprises will have to go through if they really want to become an agentic enterprise, which is different from I have deployed a few agents right and left, and I'm getting some benefit. Here, we're talking about fundamental transformation. I mean you're talking about processes. I can tell you in the future, you might be talking about changes of organization because you might be looking at the end-to-end processes that cross functions and the way you organize your function might not make sense anymore in an agentic world.

So we're talking about significant enterprise transformation, which is not going to happen overnight, but the potential in terms of value creation is so huge that basically people are going to get on there and we start bit by bit on that learning curve because it is a learning curve process after process, area after area, building the agentic transformation. But for that, they better have what I call the prerequisite, which is the agent tech stack and the control pain. If you don't have that in place and you start doing massive transformation, you might end up in an uncontrollable environment.

And through that, I think what fundamentally changes is that we are not tapping in the IT cost or in the transformation budget. Our play becomes the whole operating cost of the firm because that's what you're looking to optimize. It's not one specific pool, it's the whole operating cost because for enterprises, that's what's going to be a play in the agent transformation.

Balajee Tirupati from Citi. Thank you for hosting us and taking us through in detail your view of the industry and Capgemini's evolution with agentic AI qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Firstly, the 5 AI-driven value pools. I appreciate the unprecedented pace of technology evolution and enterprise willingness to adopt the technology. However, opportunity and time line-wise, where you see these drivers evolution over coming years in terms of contribution in your 2028 growth outlook?

And then in that context, in 2026, between AI incremental opportunity versus compression, are we estimating net contribution or headwind to the revenue growth? And second part of the question, if I may, do you see the engagement from enterprises to be ready to harness the technology as well as the availability of new tools actually presenting an opportunity for a compressed modernization?

For a...

For a compressed modernization.

What do you mean by that? Faster modernization?

Faster modernization....

Yes. So if I look at your first question, Balaji, the expectation is that we expect that if we consider the secular demand as we talked about it as well as if you look at the compression, we expect there or thereabouts for it to be sort of flat. So actually, if you did not -- if you look at -- if I come back to Fernando's [indiscernible], if you just consider those 2 items, then we'd be flat until 2028 and beyond. But the excitement or the interest is really those other value pools beyond, which is the tech debt modernization, the intelligent operations and the other value pools. So capturing that element of demand is very important for us because that will, of course, then give us that net incremental as we go on and moving forward.

And you asked about '26. I mean we have -- we already have some of that playing on, of course. But net-net, we are still growing, and we still have positive organic growth. Q1 was good. Q2 looks good. So I think overall, we're seeing that playing across already in a number of areas because we see the agentic part growing. We see some of the digital intelligent operation that will start to kick in, in terms of higher level of revenues. And we see, yes, there are areas of compression that are happening, of course, as we renew some of the deals, we have areas of expansion and areas of compression, and that's normal, and that's something we expect.

Your second question is around can you -- yes. Listen, I think the interesting thing is we start to see -- every CEO, we say we have -- I have to accelerate AI adoption, okay? What does that mean? I think it can mean very different things. When we have discussions, and maybe I'll ask Roshan to talk about 1 or 2 examples, we start discussing about things around the tech stack reset. Honestly, we have some CIOs or CTOs or even CEOs because we talk to CEOs in compensate, this is the first time I understand what is changing, okay? And we talk about the control plane. They get it. I've talked to Chairmen. I talked to CEOs, and I start to explain and project what does it mean to have an energetic workforce. And we start to explain why you need the governance, why you need the control plane. It's good discussion. And now we're being asked by a number of client CEOs to run master classes for the top layer to explain what this new world looks like and what it implies. Roshan, maybe you want to talk about -- talk about a couple of examples of clients without, of course, saying who the client is. We start talking about the tech stack.

So to complete, when you look at this new value pool and what Fernando explained when we talk about the total addressable market, we said it's a combination of 3 wallets today. The first one, which is our historical wallet, which is the IT spend, around 1.9 trillion, meaning the IT spend. And then there is a second wallet also because when you are saying what Capgemini -- what market is getting wrong about Capgemini? Capgemini is not just an IT company. We are the biggest engineering company in the world. It's 50,000 engineers. So there is an engineering part, the IT part and the BPO. So these 3 wallets, when you say now how clients are executing on that, I will talk about the intelligent operations today. Already, we see an acceleration in this kind of deals. But here, the objective is really, first, well, we have seen [indiscernible] around cost takeout, more agility, more flexibility in the organization. And here, identification has concrete application, and we have a lot of ongoing deals.

The second one, when you look into the intelligent industry space, the more complex mission-critical, today, clients start applying it on specific projects first, not directly at enterprise level because you understand the level of mission-critical operation, you can't apply it specific -- they will start applying on a specific program. For instance, for an OEM today, we are working, the big challenge, how do I compress the lead time in my car program development compared to Chinese are doing it much faster. But for that, you can't completely change the stack. This will impact other projects. So you start applying it on a specific program. You start thinking, okay, how will engineering, manufacturing, the R&D will reduce the lead time through agentic, removing a lot of interfaces. So we start getting proof points. This is where we start getting a full tech stack but apply on a particular program. And then when it will get successful, then we can roll out because there's a question on adoption.

And when it comes to IT, Karin mentioned it, we see today apply to our delivery. But now what we are seeing with our clients, how we get through that, when we have big large ADM contract that comes under renewal or we have clients who are thinking about renewing, I would say, their contract with an SAP, with the Salesforce comes a question around, this is our job as adviser first. The new tech stack looks like that. How do you plan the evolution so that you have a total cost of ownership of this tech stack, which is economically viable. So where you start getting into this strategic discussion, reflecting with clients, what is the architecture of a new tech stack and how they progress. You have seen the different layer. What stays as a system of record. The next 3 layer, do I do it with OpenAI? Do I do it with Anthropic or both of them or Google? And then how do I transform the experience layer?

So this kind of big complex systemic transformation, we see today an appetite for our clients once they have big contracts that are at stake, how do I reflect. Because here, we see it's a deal that will run 5, 8, 10 years. It's not a switch on, switch off. But the more you anticipate, the faster you will build it because we know it's a competitive advantage for clients, the one who will move faster to that, they will leapfrog their peers in the industry.

Thank you, Roshan. So just we're going to take the next question from the Internet. But just to summarize part of what Roshan is saying. When we go for renewal, even like an EDM contract, we move the discussion from the renewal -- just the renewal of the EDM contract is how do we help them get ready for the next phase, which is basically getting their agentic tech stack. So what is the compression on the ADM becomes a broader discussion around beyond the ADM renewal, which, yes, there will be some compression because we'll automate and use agentic and generative AI to be able to deliver is actually how do we help use that time and that effort to basically get ready to have the agentic stack done. So we have the next question from...

You referred to a transition phase. What does that mean for financials short term and long term?

No, listen, I think for the financial we have done transition in the past where there was some deflation, right? So the deflation, I think Fernando explained it a bit is it's at the front end. You don't get deflation over 10 years. So we're taking the deflation now over the next 3 to 5 years. At the same time, we have the growth. When the deflation stops, then you get accelerated growth, okay? But I think the growth is tempered over the next 3 to 5 years, for the next 3 for sure, 5 potentially by the deflation.

When the deflation starts slowing down because it's not continuous, then you will see a further growth acceleration. And that's what we expect. Frank, on the margin, the same thing. We are in transition on a number of things. As we time more, as we deliver more value and there's more basically value being created at client, we can share more in that, and that provides the additional margin expansion that we want to go for.

Nicolas David, ODDO BHF. I have a question regarding -- you mentioned several times that AI transformation is more a business transformation rather than a technology transformation. Given that, are you happy with your consulting skill right now? Or do you need to scale up a bit business? And also, don't you think that it will open the door for business consulting players to enter more aggressively into this market and scale up also in the AI transformation? And is it why you are not factoring market share gains in your growth prospects for the next 3 years because your growth target is in line with the market growth?

Listen, I think it's a good question. Yes, you need -- we need to continue to reinforce some of our business consulting skills. But remember, this is not process reengineering. It's process redesign or reinvention. And for that, you need to understand every step of the process. You need people who know how to run the process. A claim adjuster knows how to do that process. So when we have claim adjusters in our operation, they can help redesign how it works. I'm sorry, a consultant cannot do that because a consultant day-to-day job is not to do claim adjustment. And that's what the big difference is. So you need the consultants because they can help redesign, but you also need the people who are actually currently doing the claim adjustment who know how to do that, and you need both. And you need the technology and you need -- so it is not one thing, but it's a transformation because at the end, we are transforming the businesses. We are not deploying technology hoping for the better, we are actually -- the process will have changed once we finish our work. But the process change is not just about process reengineering. It has all the other components, defining the agents, building the data products, checking for cybersecurity. And yes, there are some consulting aspects like the human AI interface, et cetera, that we have to work on, okay? And of course, I mean, you heard some of the client testimonial that we have gone through reinforce some of this message. It's not as simple as a BPR. It doesn't stop there.

Sven Merkt from Barclays. Just one question maybe on core modernization. I would be interested to hear what percentage of your revenue that represents today, how you think about how this might develop in the mix over the coming years? How quickly are your clients really able to work through all that tech debt? And what's the durability of this revenue stream?

Frank, I'm not sure it's easy to measure because it's always mixed with other things. Franck, do you want to talk a bit about the core system modernization?

Yes. So the first thing, I think, important in modernization is, as you're most probably aware of it, most of the transactions today on the market are still run by mainframes. And it has been a totally untouched market. So that's what we call a blue ocean opportunity because you have hundreds and hundreds of mainframe to replace. So the first thing we have done, we have done it in 2 steps. We have built roughly 2 years ago an approach with generative AI that make possible the modernization of mainframes. But now we have identified fully the process. And so we are seeing a huge acceleration, a huge number of opportunities on that. That's one example.

But when you think also about modernization, all what was presented earlier by Roshan, you have to modernize the different parts of the company. That is when you take a large company today, you have maybe 3,000, 4,000 custom applications. So a large part of them have to be modernized. So on that, it's also an opportunity because before sometimes to modernize an application, you need 6 months. Now with the acceleration of AI, you can modernize your application landscape much faster and so on. It's the same for the data layer. It's the same for all the layers. So we are seeing a strong appetite from clients to reduce their technical debt because for them, their technical debt was really blocking their innovation capabilities. So that's a huge opportunity on the market.

Richard Nguyen from Bernstein. Today, we talk a lot about the IT stack. My question is more about on the R&D engineering part. Can you please tell us a little bit about how AI is impacting your business there regarding the pricing, regarding the business activity, things like that? And how do you see that evolve in the future?

So listen, it's not different than in IT. There are some areas like in the areas of software, for example, we do see, of course, an enhancement in terms of productivity, even more on the product side, sometimes on the commercial application side. But at the same time, we're discussing with clients around how we're going to leverage a lot more all the -- that part of the discussion we're having with Siemens, how we're going to build agents who can do engineering work. And it creates complexity. If you think about engineering, one of the -- it tends sometimes to be a bit more resource-based, right? And there is a reason for that. Because if you want work to be done, you need to be able to specify the work. And most engineering don't work this way. People work together, they talk to each other, et cetera, they enable. If you want to have agents deliver something, you're going to have to learn how to specify things, okay? And I can promise you, when you talk to a lot of engineering clients, it's extremely complicated. This is why often you see it as we bring engineers to clients to work with their teams as opposed they specify plenty of things, they give it to us and say, go do that for me. Why? Because that means they will know how to do specifications. And you're going to see in many companies, it's extremely difficult to do because writing specification to define the work, which is what you need to tell the agents to do is extremely complex.

So on one area, on the software, it is moving faster. In some other areas, it's going to be slower because of that, okay? But we have all the transformation as well that's coming from the physical AI that are creating new opportunity. It's one of the areas we are working on. We even have our deep tech arm in Cambridge, where we're already doing very, very advanced things in some of these areas around physical AI, including rebuilding the whole software for some human aids, et cetera, and things like that. So we see it as -- so there are compression areas, the expansion areas. There's all the new areas in terms of helping to develop that Roshan talked about about the new products and services of the future, embedding agents.

Plus, as you embed agents, what we call the VNV, the verification and validation becomes even more critical because I have to make sure that the agents safeguards, rail guards, everything is much better even than in some of the processes, commercial processes you're using. So there is, yes, plenty of potential. And yes, there is compression on some areas like you'd have in IT or in process, but you also have a lot of new areas where we see opportunities to be able to develop. And again, it's a very interesting discussion with clients because it's also new for them. It's not like older products exist.

So there are some clients with whom we had discussion in aerospace about basically co-investing to build some of the specific engineering capability because we know there is shortage in the market of some of these skills. So the question is, how do we focus building some of these engineering agents, if you want, in areas where we expect shortage of skills to be able to compensate some of that and not to slow down some of the potential development work that some of these clients need to do in the future.

We'll take one more question.

So I'll take 2 questions. Okay, 3 questions. They told me one question, but I'll take 3.

It's George Webb from Morgan Stanley. Yes, I mean talking about customer behavior a little bit, but it was mentioned earlier, and we hear it more broadly as well. There's a little bit of, I guess, paralysis out there from some customers who don't know what the right technology bets are to be making at this point in time. If you look across the broader ecosystem, actually outperforming organic growth at the moment, but generally speaking, at a low ebb. What do you think it's going to take for customers to get more confident about making these big decisions?

Because it doesn't feel like the pace of technology clarity or transformation is going to be easier in 6 months' time compared to today. So what might it take for customers to gain that confidence?

Listen, I think there's different areas. I think on the technology debt is probably the area that's moving faster. On some of the other areas, what's going to be challenging is the scalability of skills. The limitation might not be client ambition to want to do is basically do you have enough people who can know how to architect the future of business, reinvent the processes because it's a learning experience. We are learning. We're deploying agents. It takes time for clients even to approve sometimes up to 6 months before we can deploy anything because they are afraid, because of the guardrail, because of legal, because of compliance, et cetera. So what is going to slow down? Everything. It's not the technology, it's the skills and the governance to get the decisions made for clients to be ready to take the risks to make it happen. okay? And it's an experience curve. Of course, we're going to go with the experience curve.

So there are some areas like you say, okay, software development, everybody is going to be using some form of LLM to help become more productive. But when you come to deploying enterprise critical process, it's going to be a little bit slower because what sets stick if something goes wrong, is a lot more critical than if a software developer has developed some bad code.

I said 1, 2 No, it's I took one of your questions. You can try at the cocktail after.

It's Ben Castillo from BNP Paribas. Fernando, a question for you on that market growth slide. It's got a lot of attention, as you may have expected. What underpins your confidence that, that AI compression effect moderates or is temporary in some way? Why does that not just keep accelerating as a headwind as the technology improves, and therefore, clients want to extract even more efficiencies? Maybe asked a different way, when might that AI compression headwind peak in your view? How far along in the journey are we?

It's a good question. And there's a lot of intangible elements around it, unfortunately. It's based upon -- to be quite honest, we created a taxonomy that defines what typically in terms of the analysis have done tends to compress more than other elements of the taxonomy. It would not go away. This is a transitory process. We are basically doing our best assessment of the information that we have at hand in partnership with what McKinsey has provided to us. So the calculations that we did is definitely -- and I think maybe expressed it in the context of CAP. It is noticeable. It's happening right now. But we believe in the elements that define that compression, they tend to be less effective or they diminish post after the 5-year term based upon our best estimates on the information that we have in front of us. So I believe after 5 years, you should not even call a compression, but that's -- it is what it is. I mean it's very difficult to play with the time frames because it's moving -- to be honest, it's moving very fast.

But remember, it's a balancing act, yes. Because if there's compression, that means there's acceleration on the other side, okay? That means we're able to deploy it faster. That means there's more acceleration of growth on the new agentic stack for them to be more compression. So there are certain things which are a bit upfront trivial that we get too quickly. But suddenly, you're going to be very limited in terms of compression unless you're able to accelerate on the other side. That's why it's a balancing act. If it compresses faster, that means it's moving faster on the other side as well. The growth is faster. And I have the last question.

Nooshin from Deutsche Bank. I appreciate the strong momentum in AI demand and sizable intelligent operations pipeline. Could you help us bring that into financial delivery? Are you seeing faster conversion from AI pipeline into bookings? And once signed, how quickly do these projects typically convert into revenue?

Listen, again, it depends on the nature of the work. When it is transform and operate like some of the intelligent operations, it takes a bit of time, but then the ramp-up is massive because the first thing you get is a massive transfer of people, which, of course, the revenue, but it takes a bit of time to be able to make the transfer because it's more complex in a certain way. When it works on some of the transformation programs, the revenue tends to come a bit faster, right, because you ramp up the team on the client side and we're able to start the project team much faster. So in a certain way, the revenue tends to be a bit faster in terms of -- both in terms of decision-making and in terms of work.

But again, it's going to be a gradual thing because no client is going to say, okay, can I transform my enterprise and here is 15 processes, bring your 300 consultants and change everything. I don't think anybody is going to do that because of the risk associated. So people are all going through a learning curve. We work with insurance company. We started on claim. One of the big things, for example, is underwriting. So everybody is rushing to see how they can do faster underwriting. Why? Because they have to answer to brokers. And if they're not fast enough, then they're not in the game anymore. If the others are all identified their process of underwriting and they are the one who are not identified. They cannot submit quotes fast enough compared to their competitors and they're out of the game. Suddenly, everybody is rushing to see how to identify underwriting.

So there are cycles depending on the industries that are quite different. We're working on some very advanced things and Karen is involved in that with telco clients to look at trying to build completely autonomous networks, okay? That will be a massive program if it starts, very complex to deliver, but definitely, if we do the first one, then there's a whole bunch of others behind. So this is the way we think. We think about -- remember, the whole discussion that we have had is that it's very, very industry focused. Autonomous network is very specific to telcos. But if we do it with one client, then there's a whole lineup of clients that will be interested in able to do that. And that's where we look at to pay some of the investments that we have to do. Thank you very much.

Aiman, Fernando. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, this marks the end of the Capital Markets Day. Thank you very much for your presence and your attention, your presence here and online, there are more than 350 of you. And we hope to see you soon. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to welcome you to [indiscernible] for our Annual General Meeting. As you have noticed, we've changed venues this year. Please be reassured this is a onetime exception, and we will try to go back to Pavillon Gabriel next year. Once again, this year to facilitate dialogue, please note that the meeting is being broadcast live on our website. Please be aware that you may be filmed during the broadcast. The broadcast is available in English for informational purposes only. Only the French version is authoritative and shareholders unable to attend [indiscernible] were given the opportunity to access an online platform to ask questions live and remotely during our Q&A session.

I would like to invite them to submit their questions now by logging into the Lumi Connect platform using the access codes provided to them in advance. I propose that we form the bureau of the meeting. As Chairman of the Board of Directors, I will serve as Chair. And I propose that we appoint as scrutineers the 2 shareholders present who hold the highest number of votes and who accepted these roles. They're seated in the first row. Mr. Christoph [indiscernible], representing the ESAB Supervisory Board and Mr. [indiscernible] of the meeting appoints as Secretary of the meeting, Mr. Olivier Lepick, with the bureau thus constituted, I declare the meeting open. Also present on the podium are Aiman Ezzat, Chief Executive Officer; Nive Bhagat, Chief Financial Officer.

And in the front row are the members of your Board of Directors and certain members of the Executive Committee. I ask the Secretary of the meeting to review the legal format [indiscernible] for an ordinary general meeting. So that's 8,029 shareholders and 132,975,928 shares. For the extraordinary general meeting, the quorum is 79.28%. So that's 8,023 shareholders. The quorum is met for the ordinary and the extraordinary meetings, and we can validly deliberate. The final quorum will be confirmed to you before voting begins because it might evolve slightly throughout this general meeting.

A copy of the notice of meeting and the 2025 universal registration document including the management report, the Board's report on corporate governance and the Board's report on the draft resolutions presented at this general meeting has been made available to you at the entrance and on your voting tablets. And now I'll give the floor back to [indiscernible] who is going to share with you the agenda of this general meeting.

Thank you, Olivier. So we are going to follow the following agenda. I will say a few words as the Chairman of the Board, our CEO, Aiman Ezzat, will review 2025 and then the work done under his supervision to improve the group's strategic positioning, Ms. Navy Bhagat will present the 2025 results, then we will listen to James Robey, Dr. James Robey, who will present an update on the group's climate strategy because we're committed to reviewing the strategy every 3 years. Then Frederic will take the floor as a member of the Board and Chair of the Ethics and Governance Committee. He will share with you an update of that were done by the year. And we'll present the candidates submitted for your approval. Then Patrick Pouyanne, the Chair of the Compensation Committee will share with you how the resolutions on say on pay have been drafted. And finally, we will listen to the statutory auditors who will share with you a brief summary of their reports on the financial statements. then there will be our Q&A session, and we'll finish with the vote on the 30 resolutions.

I would like to say just a few words before giving the floor to our CEO for the core of this general meeting. So let me share with you a few points. The first point is maybe the most difficult one. What should a Board of Directors do when it's confronted with negative fluctuations of the share price. The first thing is that we are in a very volatile context because of harsh geopolitical conditions, and the share price was challenged and shaken by the disruption created by AI. Some may think that it might be complicated for our sector, not just for Capgemini, but for the whole IT industry. Aiman will share his point of view with you and the belief that he shared with the Board, but generally speaking, what did the Board do about it.

The Board tried to understand the various points of view. We shared the analysis with the members of the Board. The Board was also involved trying to understand these phenomena. The directors were trained on AI matters, it was involved in financial communication. As you know, the Board sessions are now happening in alignment with the financial communications made by our CEO, quarterly communications, and we spend time analyzing them, amending them, approving them. So the Board was significantly involved in financial communications based on the warm relationship between the Board and the CEO. So the Board is watching this evolution with some kind of sadness, we're not very optimistic, but we fully trust our group and comforted by what Aiman said about the industry. In the impact of AI on our agenda and our clients' businesses. Then I would like to say something about a complicated topic that matters a lot to me, something that happened about our subsidiary. Government Services.

As you know, Aiman proposed to the Board of Directors that we divest the government's solutions entity. There was a media campaign in the press, very emotional, and it revolved around ethics. Ethics is one of the main values of the group. When [indiscernible] key values of the group, honesty was #1. At the time, I told [indiscernible] that we should replace honesty with integrity, which I thought was a bit broader. It was hard for me to convince him, and he was the founder. So I decided to follow him. And honesty included integrity. For 14 years now, the group has been ranked as 1 of the most ethical companies in the world by an entity called Etisphere. So in this context, revealed by the press the press revealed a contract signed by one of our entities to own at 100%, Capgemini government solution. As soon as we learned this one I thought that the Board needed to convene. I call the Chair of the Ethics and Governance Committee, Frederic, and we decided that we needed to meet immediately.

There are several nationalities in the Board, 40% of foreign directors, and we met on the fifth day that followed the situation. So the first meeting took place on a Saturday morning. It's not conclusive because the Board needed to understand the legal ins and outs of the situation. And we met again on Sunday, which shows how involved we were. And we learned that the subsidiary Government Solution is doing its business under very special terms. So there's a special framework for foreign influence from the U.S. point of view, France is a foreign influence, and it operates within a security framework imposed by federal authorities in the U.S., which means there's a separation of its operations from the group, and it forbids any influence of the parent company on its operations.

Your Board wanted to know everything about the situation, including legal issues to precisely assess the consequences of any action. So on this basis, we realize that the only opportunity for us because we couldn't take action on the subsidiary was to follow the proposal made by the CEO, which is divesting the entity. Based on a certain threshold, the CEO makes a proposal for divestments. And we agreed to do this divestment, there were certain accounting procedures to allow for the separation. They are being completed at the moment. it will be completed as soon as possible. And recently, we took stock of the procedure because we want to move forward as quickly as possible. The Board also asked the CEO to proceed to a rigorous comprehensive review of other comparable situations, but the review did not identify any other similar situation.

Last point of my presentation, I would like to go back to my mandate and the changes in the Board. Well, the first time attendant the Board was 30 years ago. I was appointed as a Director, 26 years ago, so I've been the Chair of the Board for 14 years. I'm reaching the end of my term and in agreement with the other directors, it seemed desirable to prepare for future transitions. For me to stay on and if you confirm me there will be -- the other members of the Board suggested that I should remain share. I am strongly committed to this Board. and committed to supporting the CEO and the shareholders to make progress.

And I would like to say a few words to the people who are going to leave us. First, there's a Megan Clarken, she was the CEO of Criteo. So she had a great technical expertise, but she moved back to her home country in New Zealand, and she couldn't keep working with us. We need to replace her quickly, and we co-opted Lila Tretikov, and her appointment will be submitted for your vote. There are 2 other people who are leaving us, 2 pillars of the Board, and I would like to pay tribute to them. Xavier Musca, who joined us 12 years ago. I think I was the 1 who called him to ask him to join us, so he's been the Chair of the Audit Committee. It was a true pillar release. Some people said recently that every time there was a debate or discussion they looked at Xavier's reaction because he was our compass really. [indiscernible] going to miss us. And [indiscernible] has been involved in different positions since he left Societe Generale.

He's been the Chair of the Ethics and Governance Committee when [indiscernible] left us, and we worked hand in hand to manage the governance of the group. You're leaving us, Frederic, I regret it. But as people used to say, the King is dead along with the king. It means that we are going to welcome new people, and I hope that you will vote to approve the arrival of [indiscernible] and the renewal of Maya Ferrara's term. So I hope that these members will be great replacements for those who left us, and they will do their very best to support your Board of Directors. Dear shareholders, I would like to thank you for your loyalty, and I think we need you to support the group.

Thank you, Paul. So before giving the floor to Aiman Ezzat for his comments, let us watch a short video summing up what the group did over the past year.

[Presentation]

Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, directors, I'm very glad to be here with you today for our Annual General Meeting. And this year, we're meeting at Pavin Vanda, just of and iconic Square, which at one time was called [indiscernible], the square of conquests, what better way to introduce our group achievements. This general meeting is an important moment in the life of our company. It's a time to report on and to account to you for our activities and results. It's also a time to take a step back, look beyond the figures and the curves and give meaning to our trajectory. And this moment is especially important because we are operating in a world that's more complex, more unpredictable, more demanding economic pressures persist, geopolitical tensions are becoming entrenched, technological disruptions are coming in at an unprecedented pace. This instability can no longer be described as a blip. It's become structural. It's part of the landscape we operate in.

Against this unstable and enduringly unstable backdrop, our performance over the past year takes on special signification. I'd like to share with you the key lessons we've learned before outlining our outlook for 2026 and our strategy for creating sustainable value. To sum up 2025 in 2 words, I would say, recovery and transformation. First and foremost, 2025 has been a year of recovery with a return to growth from the second quarter onwards at constant exchange rates. This growth gradually strengthened over the following quarters, enabling us to exceed our growth targets. And this return to growth was an essential prerequisite for a services company such as ours, and it was accompanied by rigorous execution.

We've met our targets for operating margin and organic free cash flow. And for you, ladies and gentlemen, our shareholders, this translates into a dividend which is held firm at EUR 3.40. Our business has grown in different ways depending on geography and sector. Nevertheless, performance in all business segments improved over the course of the year. Sectors that slowed down in 2024, also returned to growth in 2025. With the exception of the industrial sector, although it too has begun to pick up again. Similarly, all of our geographies recorded a gradual improvement in performance and trend was driven in particular by the U.S. and the U.K. France experienced a more challenging trajectory due to economic conditions that remain strained in a number of industries.

However, we are now approaching 2026 with cautious confidence, and we're anticipating a gradual return to growth in this market. These results are an opportunity for me to thank the board for its support as well as all Capgemini employees and the management team, thank them, thank you all for your commitment, agility and responsiveness throughout the year. But 2025 was not just a year of recovery. It was also a year of transformation. A transformation largely driven by the very strong rise of artificial intelligence, in particular, agentic AI. Demand from our customers has been and continues to be driven by cloud, data, AI and digital business process services with a strong focus on efficiency and optimization. So let's take a look at France. At a time when Orange, which we've been supporting for over 50 years, is in a situation where it needs to operate increasingly complex networks with more data, traffic and security requirements AI necessarily needs to become a tool like any other, not a lab experiment, but a driver of very large-scale reliability.

And this momentum is also reflected in a significant number of major transformation contracts such as our strategic partnership with McDonald's, just renewed for 5 years. These are all signs of our clients' confidence in our ability to lead complex, large-scale transformation projects in support of growth and value creation. And this momentum is also underpinned by the assertive strategic decisions taken during the year. Notably, our 2 major acquisitions, WNS and Cloud first C. With WNS, we have created a market leader in intelligence operations. It is ideally positioned to meet the strong demand coming from our clients to transform their businesses and processes using Agentic AI. And proof is the mega deal worth several hundred million euros signed a few months ago. with a Fortune 500 company for the transformation and operation of many processes across multiple functions.

And with Cloud4C for, we are strengthening our leadership in managed cloud services meaning the growing need of large companies, the need to operate, secure and automate complex, hybrid and sovereign cloud environments at scale while ensuring performance, regulatory compliance and operational control. And finally, transformation because we are adapting our skills and talents at a much faster pace to respond to technological changes and the evolving demands of our clients. And this has translated into a number of Fit for Growth initiatives currently being implemented in several countries. So now let's look ahead to 2026. The year is already well underway. And we can already outline a number of insights that will benefit the group. First of all, the drop in our share price, alluded to by Paul, and we're all aware of this drop. It's not a one-off or isolated trend it's affecting in the same way, all the major global players in our sector, as we've seen with Accenture, down 39% since the start of the year compared with 32% for Capgemini and $0.35 for Infosys.

This reflects the concerns of some investors regarding the long-term growth and sustainability of our industry. We do not share these concerns because what we see in practice is the strength and relevance of our business model. Our business is growing. It's profitable. It's built for the long term, and we'll have the opportunity to discuss this further at our Investor Day on the 27th of Maine, London. Our results for the first quarter of 2026 is confirmed that the year has got off to a solid start in line with the last quarter of despite the macroeconomic and geopolitical context that we've already mentioned. The initial signs we have for the second quarter are encouraging. And if the trend continues, growth in 2026 should be strong.

This outlook is based on a number of key drivers. Firstly, the rise of agentic AI, the growing focus on sovereignty issues and developments in the defense sector. 2026 will be a critical milestone for Agentic AI. The aim is to move from the experimentation stage to industrialization and achieving measurable economic results. But that scale-up is a far more complex operation than 1 might think. To achieve this, our clients must deploy AI across their entire organization and build on solid foundations, i.e., high-quality data, infrastructure, governance, cybersecurity and, of course, trust. The human factor is particularly crucial. No value can be created at scale if teams can't work with AI efficiently. And this is a very deep transformation that is at play, and that's precisely where a company can make a difference. By harnessing a diverse range of expertise from strategy to operations, including architecture, particularly in data and AI and engineering.

By rounding off this expertise with in-depth industry and business process knowledge and thanks to all the ground experience gained from tens of thousands of projects. Also, by drawing on a world-class ecosystem. To take 1 example, we are 1 of the few partners selected by -- selected to be partners by a company such as Open AI and Google. So we see this every day, our model has never been more relevant in supporting our clients through the transformations they need to address. Our model positions Capgemini as the catalyst for the large-scale deployment of AI, a role that we will be examining further at our next Investor Day. And sovereignty defense are also key drivers of our growth in 2026. Our clients are expressing a growing demand for support in defining and implementing their sovereignty strategies. As the leading European industry player, we help them build solutions that enable them to reduce their strategic dependencies while ensuring their competitiveness. through high-level partnerships with standard-setting players in the defense sector.

The momentum we are seeing is being driven by 2 major trends. On the one hand, the rapid rise in production in Europe and on the other, growing demand from European defense ministries for modern digital software solutions. And we are responding to this by combining our digital expertise, our ability to scale up and our cross-border delivery capabilities. Before concluding, I would like to reiterate a simple belief, technology only makes sense if it is used to drive sustainable progress. And our performance does not boil down to mere financial indicators, it's also measured by the sustainable value we create for our customers, our employees and society as a whole. And that is what guides our ESG strategy, which focuses on achieving concrete results, 94% reduction in our Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emissions compared to 2019. And and women now making up over 40% of our workforce. In a rapidly changing world, our value stems from our ability to turn vision into action, and that's the essence of our tagline make it real.

We have a robust model, committed teams and is clear strategy, but above all, a proven ability to operate in complex environments. Transforming technological promises into concrete useful and responsible solutions and combining artificial intelligence with human intelligence, this is the aspiration that guides us, and that's what will make us keep moving forward with high standards, responsibility and unwavering confidence in Capgemini's future. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you very much, Aiman. Now as we just heard from Aiman financial results are not a full translation of our performance, but those results are nevertheless very important. So I will be asking Nive Bhagat to come and present 2025 results. Nive has made great strides forward in French, but she will still be presenting in English. And so for the French people in the audience who require translation headphones are at your disposal. Thank you.

Thank you, Olivier. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to present the 2025 results for the group. And I will now switch to English. Thank you for your understanding. Performance in 2025 reflects a very strong operational execution across the group. With revenue growth exceeding expectations and margin and cash generation objectives met, We delivered very solid revenues of EUR 22,465 million, up 1.7% and on a reported basis and 3.4% at constant currency, placing us above the top end of the outlook we had upgraded in October 2025. Now revenue growth rates gradually improved quarter-after-quarter and reached 10.6% at constant currency in Q4. This includes around 6.5 percentage points of scope impact, primarily from the WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions, which were both completed in Q4. This wasn't a single sector or a single region effect. We saw broad-based improvement across all businesses, regions and sectors.

On profitability, we maintained our operating margin at 13.3%, stable year-on-year. Net profit group share amounted to EUR 1,601 million, with basic EPS at EUR 9.46. Normalized EPS, which excludes other operating income and expense items stood at EUR 12.95, up 5.8% year-on-year. Finally, we delivered organic free cash flow of EUR 1,949 million, in line with the around EUR 1.9 billion target set at the beginning of the year. This is a strong testament to our cash generation discipline. The sequential improvement was clearly visible across our businesses. Growth rates gradually improved throughout the year not only on a constant currency basis, but also excluding acquisitions. Strategy & Transformation Services represented 8% of group total revenues grew 2.4% at constant currency for the full year. with a clear acceleration in Q4 to 6%. Application & Technology services, our core business and 63% of group total revenues returned to growth in 2025 at plus 4.6% for the full year and plus 7.4% in Q4.

Finally, Total revenues in operations and engineering services accounting for 29% of group total revenues increased by 4.9% for the full year and 20.8% in Q4. Now let me explain this as the acquisition of WNS and Cloud4C had a visible impact on this business line in Q4. Digital Business Process Services is clearly the fastest-growing business with double-digit growth on a like-for-like basis, so across both Capgemini and WNS. In addition, cloud infrastructure services and engineering both returned to growth in Q4. Before reviewing regions, a brief word on revenue trends by sector at constant currency. financial services and telco, media and technology were the most dynamic sectors in 2025, growing 9.2% and 7.7%, respectively, with gradual acceleration throughout the year. the manufacturing sector, while still under some pressure, also improved progressively and returned to growth in Q4, limiting its decline to minus 2.1% for the full year.

All other sectors posted low to mid-single-digit revenue growth. Turning now to revenues by region at constant currency. Almost all regions improved throughout the year, except France, which contracted in each quarter of the year. North America revenues grew 7.3% year-on-year. The U.K. and Ireland increased by 10.5%. France declined by 4.1% in an environment that remained challenging throughout the year with a persisting weakness in the manufacturing sector. The rest of Europe showed resilience with a limited decline to 0.7% and Finally, revenues in Asia Pacific and Latin America grew 13.8%. The scope impact from WNS and Cloud4C was mainly visible in North America, U.K. and Ireland and Asia Pacific and Latin America lifting Q4 growth in these regions to around 20% at constant currency.

On profitability, North America operating margin expanded 40 basis points to 16.9%, while U.K. and Ireland held a strong 18%. 170 basis points below a record 2024, which still remains at a very healthy level. Operating margin in France was 10.9% compared to 10.2% last year. This improvement was driven by one-off items. Excluding these one-off items, there was no improvement in underlying margin. Asia Pacific and Latin America was 12.6%, plus 20 basis points, and the rest of Europe ended at 11.4%, down by 60 basis points. Now let me walk you through the operating margin bridge. Gross margin was 27.1%, down 30 basis points year-on-year, reflecting a prolonged soft market in Continental Europe, including France. I would nevertheless highlight that our gross margin has been significantly more resilient in this down cycle than in any other previous downturn. Against this backdrop, we maintained strict cost discipline and tightened our selling expenses by 20 bps and our G&A expenses by 10 basis points.

As a result, group operating margin remained stable at 13.3%, holding the operating margin despite the challenges we have faced in Continental Europe is a proof point that our operating model is resilient and shows the continued effectiveness of our cost management processes. Now moving from operating margin to the bottom line. Other operating income and expenses increased to EUR 784 million, mainly due to higher restructuring costs as well as acquisition and integration costs, following the large transactions completed in 2025. This brings operating profit to EUR 2.199 million or 9.8% of the revenues, down from 10.7% last year. Given those items, net financial expenses amounted to EUR 30 million in 2025 compared to a net income of EUR 13 million in 2024, reflecting higher interest costs. Our income tax expense decreased to EUR 534 million, benefiting from positive one-off items. After financial and tax expenses, minority interest and equity affiliates, Group net profit stood at EUR 1,061 million, down 4.2%.

Active share capital management enabled us to reduce the average number of outstanding shares by 0.5%. Basic EPS is EUR 9.46 down 3.7%, while normalized EPS is EUR 12.95, which is up 5.8% year-on-year. Now finally, a few words about the group's balance sheet and capital allocation. Shareholders' equity remained broadly stable at EUR 11,672 million at year-end. We maintained a strong cash generation in 2025 with EUR 1,949 million of organic free cash flow, stable year-on-year. This year, again, the conversion ratio of our net profit to organic free cash flow was clearly above 1 at 1.2.

In terms of capital allocation, we deployed close to EUR 4.6 billion in 2025, approximately EUR 3.8 billion for the acquisition of WNS and Cloud4C, EUR 1.1 billion on shareholder returns, split between EUR 578 million of dividends and EUR 542 million of share buybacks. The employee shareholding plan led to a EUR 299 million capital increase, leading to a net outflow of EUR 4.6 billion. As regards our financial debt, we redeemed EUR 800 million of bond debt at maturity in June and then successfully completed a EUR 4 billion bond issuance in September. Net debt closed at EUR 5.3 billion. As anticipated, the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio stands at 1.6. This compares to 0.7% a year ago. And as a reminder, this was 2.8 post the Altran acquisition.

In 2026, as we integrate WNS, we expect limited M&A activity and will accelerate our share buybacks in line with the EUR 2 billion program announced in July 2025. To conclude, our performance in 2025 demonstrates the strength of Capgemini's strategic positioning as a trusted business transformation partner for our clients. and the continued success of the group's transformation to improve its resilience in a challenging demand environment. Now finally, as regards our net profit allocation, net income of the group parent company, Capgemini SE amounted to EUR 587 million in 2025 compared with EUR 834 million in 2024. Despite the decrease in net income, the Board of Directors decided to maintain a stable dividend per share compared to the previous year and therefore, to submit for approval to this Annual General Meeting a dividend of EUR 3.40 per share.

This represents a total distribution of EUR 578 million based on the number of shares entitled to dividend as at December 31, 2025. On that note, thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Nive. Financial results do not reflect everything, and we are going to ask James Robey to present the group's climate strategy. The group has been very active on this topic. James, in English, please.

Thank you, Olivier, and good afternoon. I'm James Robey, Capgemini's Global Head of Environmental Sustainability. And I'm pleased to be here this afternoon to give you an update on our climate strategy. and talk you through the progress we've made and how this is continuing to add value to our business. I'll also touch on what comes next, including the integration of WNS into our climate program. When we accelerated our climate ambition in 2020, committing to become a net 0 business, we did so knowing that it would not be easy. Since then, the operating environment has become more complex, geopolitical uncertainty, volatile energy markets, supply chain disruption and now the rapid scale-up of digital and AI technologies.

Against that backdrop, maintaining momentum on climate is both a test of resilience and a signal of our commitment. Our long-term ambition remains clear. a 90% absolute reduction in Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions by 2040 from a baseline of 2019, with the final 10% neutralized through high-quality carbon removal. We've also set near-term targets for 2030, an 80% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions, 55% reduction in business travel and commuting per employee and a 50% absolute reduction in purchased goods and services related emissions. These commitments are complemented by a set of interim targets covering electricity, our fleet and the investment in carbon credits, which go beyond our value chain. However, we need more than targets to ensure that we deliver our ambition. That's why our approach is framed through our clear 10-point sustainability plan which structures everything we do, from energy and travel to procurement, digital sustainability, governance and employee skills.

It gives us discipline, transparency and pace. The transformation needed to achieve our plans does not happen without strong governance. Oversight of our climate strategy sits with our Net Zero Board made up with key members of our executive committee, including our CEO. This ensures climate decisions are integrated with business strategy and not treated as a parallel activity. Indeed, last year, we carried out our third full climate change risk assessment fully aligned with the CSRD, the findings fed directly into our climate transition planning process. Operationally, our globally certified environmental management system now covers 98% of our global head count across 39 countries.

In 2026, we will focus on extending this coverage across the newly acquired WNS operations. ensuring consistency and control as we grow. So how are we progressing? Well, in '19 -- in 2025, we reached a major milestone 100% renewable electricity across our global operations in line with our public RE100 commitment. As a result, we have already exceeded our 2040 Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reduction target, and overall, we are ahead of track in terms of reducing our emissions. This did not happen by chance. It was driven by a systematic focus on improvement. For Scope 1 and 2 emissions, this involved energy efficiency as well as renewables. We focused on our investment in areas of greatest impact, particularly in India, which accounts for more than half of our global energy consumption, particularly in India, our Energy Command Center now continues to play a central role in translating real-time data into operational savings.

Alongside this, we have invested significantly in on-site solar generation, the gold standard for renewable energy, particularly in India. On commuting and travel, we continue to decouple emissions from growth, prioritizing virtual collaboration and enabling low carbon travel for teams. For example, prioritizing rail over short-haul flights and accelerating the transition of our electric vehicles into our fleet. Our annual commuting survey engages over 1/4 of our people and enables us to inform initiatives such as cycle to work schemes in France, mobility budgets in Germany and our EV fleet rollout in India. These changes reduce emissions, lower costs and improve employee experience. Supply chain emissions remain our largest challenge, accounting for over 40% of our footprint. In response, we've replaced our net 0 supplier program with a stronger ESG pledge, requiring suppliers to disclose emissions, set SBTi validated targets and shared credible transition plans.

It's important at this point also to recognize AI, both in terms of the opportunity it presents, but also its environmental impacts. As for its impacts, we are working closely with our strategic partners and our internal IT teams to quantify the impact of our internal use of AI in terms of carbon, in terms of energy and in terms of water. Now whilst there is still uncertainty, we are continuing to improve our understanding of these impacts, which currently look manageable within our overall net 0 trajectory.

Furthermore, AI also provides significant sustainability opportunities. This year, we're expanding the AI capabilities within our Energy Command Center in India to enhance real-time monitoring, fault detection and diagnostics in our Indian campuses and in some of our key international sites. Returning to our Net Zero program. While decarbonization remains our priority, we know that climate action does not stop with carbon. Biodiversity and water whilst not defined material in terms of the risks for the business today are important, and we're activating biodiversity plans at key sites, along with water-saving initiatives in water stress regions. This is in addition to our continued focus on the circular economy and eliminating waste.

We are also very aware that our actions to decarbonize the business by 2040, to not eliminate the very real of CO2 in the atmosphere today. In 2020, we committed that from 2025 onwards, we would purchase and retire carbon credits aligned to our operational footprint and from 2030 for our full value chain. Our portfolio is deliberately diversified, supporting both avoidance and removal solutions. Our membership of initiatives such as the leaf coenition supporting countries to end deforestation and the first movers coalition on permanent carbon removal are helping to scale up credible approaches. At this point, I'd like to pause for a short video to sum up our approach and some of our progress to date.

[Presentation]

Working collaboratively with others is indeed a critical part of our program. Externally, we work through partnerships and advocate for a green economy. We're founding a partner supporting UNICEF's ambition to equip over 100 million young people with green and digital skills through the green Rising program. We participate in many industry coalitions publishing reports, convening events that influence markets and policy. This ecosystem activity strengthens our brand, attracts talent and reinforces trust with clients and investors alike. From the client perspective, our own commitment to sustainability and our continued progress is crucial to our credibility to deliver sustainability solutions. We continue to accelerate this momentum and last year delivered over 8,700 projects with sustainability impacts for more than 1,000 clients, helping them to reduce cost, carbon and manage risk along with complying with regulation and building resilience.

Climate strategy when executed well is not a cost center. It's a source of operational efficiency, differentiation and long-term value. So looking ahead to what's next. Well, the integration of WNS is a critical part of the strategy to ensure that we remain on target with 1 global operating system. And of course, we remain focused on building on the work we're doing to fully understand and manage the carbon impacts of AI. Just over 5 years into our Net Zero journey, our progress is real, but not linear. One thing we've learned is we need to adapt and strengthen our delivery model. The challenges ahead for all companies, including our own, are very real. Now we outlined those in our recently published 5-year review. Please do feel free to download the review if you would like more information. So as we look ahead, our commitment is unchanged. The next phase of our transformation is already underway. It will be much harder, but it will be even more impactful. Thank you for your continued support.

Thank you, James. As you can see, the group's performance is not only financial, and the climate journey is quite remarkable. I would like to thank James and his team for implementing it so efficiently. You have the opportunity to ask questions on ESG aspects and on the climate strategy during the Q&A session. In the meantime, we'd like to ask Mr. Frederic Oudea to share his report on the group's governance. Thank you, Frederic. .

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, it falls to me as Lead Director and Chair of the Ethics and Governance Committee to present a report on the Board's activities in my own activities during the 2025 financial year in accordance with the Board of Directors rules of procedure. As Paul said, this will be my final presentation to the AGM. I have chosen for personal reasons not to seek the renewal of my term of office as a Director, which expires today. It's been an honor to serve Capgemini during my 2 terms of office. And I'd like to thank you, dear shareholders, as well as my colleagues on the Board of Directors for your trust. So looking at the Board's activity in 2025, we reviewed a number of ongoing strategic initiatives in a very busy fiscal year 2025. We focused on the most strategic products particular operations in the United States and our strategy regarding artificial intelligence, both generative and agentic.

Your Board also reviewed and refined the performance indicators for the group's medium-term strategic directions. The Board also reviewed acquisition projects, the acquisition of WNS, already mentioned and Cloud4C as well as other external growth opportunities and ongoing integrations. Also, your Board reviewed governance and talent management issues. We spent a long time examining the succession process for executive corporate officers, including in emergency situations and prepared for upcoming milestones. Today, the Board is proposing that you approve the reappointment of Mr. Paul Erman for a final term. We consider that the reappointment of Mr. [indiscernible] as Chairman of the Board, will thus ensure proper coordination of the forthcoming sessions of the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer during the period 2026 to 2030.

The Board of Directors also intends to appoint Mr. Patrick Pouyanne, Lead Director following the Annual General Meeting. As an experienced executive, Mr. Patrick Pouyanne, is very well acquainted with our company. he has been serving as an independent member of the Board for 9 years, and he took part in the previous succession process for the Chief Executive Officer. Today, he chairs the Compensation Committee and is a member of the Ethics and Governance Committee. And lastly, in 2025, your Board of Directors also reviewed the succession planning arrangements for senior management teams as well as the measures implemented to attract, develop and retain talent. Your Board is an active and dedicated Board. You have some numbers up on the board, 11 Board meetings with a very high rate of attendance, 95% and Three executive sessions and the detail of the work of the Board committees in 2025 are set out in our universal registration document.

Coming now to the assessment of the Board of Directors in 2025. This was an external assessment conducted with the assistance of an external consultant under my responsibility. And like for previous years, there were individual interviews conducted with each director and the objective being to assess the effective functioning of the Board its appropriate composition and the effective contribution of each director and a summary was presented to the Board at its 12th of February 2026 meeting. If we look at the conclusions of the assessment, it highlights continued progress made since 2022, which was the last external assessment. Progress in both the functioning of the Board and its committees and also the excellent quality of discussions and the opportunity for each director to take part in a debate. Directors noted in particular, progress made regarding the Board's involvement in defining and monitoring strategic priorities and notably the introduction of regularly updated indicators.

Furthermore, the measures implemented regarding talent management. We're welcomed as were the meetings with operational executives, which should continue going forward. The directors consider the composition of the Board to be balanced with regard to the group's challenges and the objectives set for 2026 and highlighted the high level of expertise and commitment amongst directors. And lastly, the directors expressed a high level of satisfaction, the functioning and organization of the Board and its committees and they particularly value the executive sessions. There were 3 in 2025. and they were devoted notably to anticipating governance issues effectively as well as they also welcome the quality of strategic seminars and continuing professional development sessions.

Priorities for 2026 are in line with this, and in particular, with the major issues that I mentioned, and they arise from the assessment of its strategy in 2 main areas. Two main areas: continued involvement of the Board in defining strategy and monitoring strategic priorities, the development of activities in the U.S.A. and AI and get AI activities. And secondly, monitoring the integration of WNS and Cloud4C to ensure that they are probably integrated. Second area, continuing work on succession plans to prepare for the succession of executive directors, including monitoring the development of members of the Executive Management Committee. And as we did over the past 2 years, to continue planning for the replacement of directors over the period 2026 to 2030.

As for the functioning of the Board itself and its operations, we decided to introduce a tool that would help focus our agenda. So an annual Board of Directors' agenda so that we can ensure we give the proper focus to strategic issues and risk monitoring. As for the Board itself, it set itself 4 specific objectives regarding its composition for 2020 to '26, diversity of profiles and skills, international diversity, staggered renewal of terms of office, and maintaining a moderate number of directors to ensure consistency and collegial decision decision-making.

In 2025, the staggered renewal of term of office was observed in particular through the renewal of the terms of 2 directors, Mr. Patrick Pouyanne, Mr. Kurt Sievers; and the appointment of a new Director, Mr. Jean-Marc Chery. The renewal of the terms of Kurt Sievers and Patrick Pouyanne, the appointment of Mr. Jean-Marc Chery and the co-opting of [indiscernible] at the start of the year. Also, helped to maintain the international composition of the Board and its profile diversity. We also decided to keep at a number of 15 members, the size of the Board. This includes 2 directors representing employees and one representing employee shareholders. So the Board is made up of 40% foreign nationals and 42% women. All of the members bring a wealth of commentary experience and expertise to your Board which also comprises individuals who are both diverse and complementary in professional and cultural terms, whilst remaining true to the group's history and values, thereby enabling it to carry out its duties in a spirit of collegiality and openness of mind.

And so what are we proposing in terms of resolutions this year. Well, first of all, as I mentioned, we proposed the renewal of the term of office of 2 directors for a period of 4 years. We propose that you ratify the cooptation of a director for the remainder of their predecessors term and the appointment of 2 directors for a period of 4 years. So firstly, [indiscernible], renewal of his term of office. That's resolution #11. He has been Chairman of the Board of Directors since the 20th of May 2020. And he brings to the Board his knowledge of the company, of course, but also his experience of business growth, transformation and corporate digitalization, his expertise in innovation and technology and an in-depth knowledge of the group, which as he recalled, he's been involved in for many years, having led it for 18 years. 12th Resolution, we propose the renewal of the term of Ms. Maria Ferraro, an independent director. She joined the Board of Directors of Capgemini on the 19th of May 2022 was appointed to the Audit and Risk Committee on the same date. Maria Ferraro throughout her career, acquired financial expertise and solid experience in the industrial technology and energy sectors within a global group at the heart of the development of smart industry.

She also brings to the Board her expertise in inclusion and diversity as well as her knowledge of the European and Asian markets. In Resolution #13, we propose that you ratify the appointment of Ms. [indiscernible]. She is an independent director. She joined the Board of Directors on the fifth of January of this year. replacing Ms. Megan Clarken, as Paul indicated she had to step down for personal reasons. She is a French-American national, and she's a recognized expert in artificial intelligence and innovation-driven business transformation. She's currently a partner in charge for AI strategy at the International Venture Capital Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Inc. and she brings to the Board her technological skills and recognized expertise in AI and technology-driven business transformation.

Lastly, we proposed to replace the outgoing directors, Xavier Musca and myself to appoint Ms. Veronica and Mr. Lu [indiscernible] as members of the Board of Directors for a term of 4 years. So these are resolutions 14 and 15. Ms. Val and Mr. [indiscernible] will be considered independent as per the criteria of the asset medcode towards the company adheres, and these proposals reflect the Board's aim to maintain a diversity of profiles and industry expertise while strengthening gender parity within the Board. I would now like to invite Ms. [indiscernible] and Mr. [indiscernible] to introduce themselves briefly. Ms. [indiscernible] was unable to be present in the room today. So she will be conveying a recorded message. Over to you, [indiscernible] .

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. Good afternoon. I'm very pleased to be with you here this afternoon to say a few words about my professional career over the last 43 years. I started out at Arthur Andersen in 1983 as an auditor, then I spend a couple of decades at JPMorgan in [indiscernible] New York, where held operational role as Global Head of Operations for Investment Banking and a member of the Executive Committee as well as Global Head of Operations and Technology for shared services. I came back to France after 20 years to join AXA as Chief Operating Officer and member of the Executive Committee in charge of technology for operational centers in India as well as responsible for global digital and data marketing. Then I joined Publicis as General Manager in charge of Technology and Mergers and Acquisitions.

In 2020, I decided to embark on a new chapter in my professional career in a nonexecutive capacity. I'm currently Chair of CNP, where I support the Managing Director and contribute to international development. I'm also lead director at Kering and a member of the Board of Valeo, Rothchild and the Gustavo Foundation. I believe I can bring to the Board my operational and international experience gained over the years as well as my experience of governance and human resources. And this is something that acquired over my very long career. If you decide to appoint me today as Director, you will be choosing someone who is a tuned to the various challenges faced by your company. And please be assured that you can always count on my dedication and energy within Capgemini. I'll be working to support Capgemini over the coming years and will endeavor to contribute to its success. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Veronique and Frederic. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very glad to be here today, and I'd like to thank the Board of Directors for their trust in proposing my name to your Annual General Meeting. I'm an engineer, and I started in digital technology. When I was little, I began my career 33 years ago in earth observation satellites, at a time when data systems and image processing were reserved for a very narrow focused applications, specialist applications. They were the only ones to have access to the necessary computing power. Then I had a very career that took me to the French Ministry of Finance and Corporate Investment Banking at an American bank, and then I spent a decade at Schneider Electric and international roles before heading up the EDF Group. And I have a very deep experience of the transformation of industries and organizations, and I've been able to see that you need to be very focused to carry this forward.

And my experience over the last 15 years, was combined with new experience in AI at the time when I headed up EDF, we were faced with the biggest industrial challenge, it ever experienced, stress corrosion cracking issues that affected nuclear plants. And without AI, we would have been incapable of dealing with the issue. And I would be very glad to join Capgemini, a company I've been monitoring following for many, many years. This will contribute to my knowledge of the major infrastructure sectors, engineering, industrial automation. So [indiscernible] at the bar very high we have to replace Frederic [indiscernible] and this is a humbling candidacy, and I will put all my efforts into meeting your expectations. Thank you very much.

And we have a video for Lilatriticoff. Dear shareholders. My name is [indiscernible], and I'm honored to introduce myself to you today. I'm French and American and engineer by training, and I have spent my career at the intersection of technology, business transformation and human impact. I started my first company from the human genome project. a lab in which I built a first genomic browser. From that moment on, I saw software not only as a tool for efficiency, method to accelerate how humanity understands the world, term scientific discovery and the economic value and the sufficient scale changes markets and societies. That conviction has guided my career as an engineer, entrepreneur, CEO, investor and technology executive across the United States and Europe. I have led the like Media Foundation, worked on industrial and energy transformation at ANGI, served as Deputy CEO at Microsoft. And today, as partner and head of AI strategy at NEA, I work with companies building at the frontier of Intelligent Systems. I'm excited to join Capgemini at the decisive moment.

AI is not simply another wave of digital transformation. It is beginning to reconfigure entire value chains from minerals to bits, how products are designed, how factories operate, how energy is optimized, how supply chains are secured, how software is built and how decisions are made. This creates a major strategic opportunity for Capgemini. Clients do not only need advice on AI. They need a trusted partner who can help them reshape their business to connect strategy and technology, engineering and data and cybersecurity and change management. They need help moving from pilots to production from productivity gains to new business models and from fragmented experiments to enterprise-wide transformation. This is where Capgemini has distinctive strengths that can propel it to the very front of the AI wave. We are already seeing them today. deep partner relationships, global delivery, industry expertise, engineering capabilities, and of course, culture of execution.

My contribution will be to help the Board support the management in converting these strengths into durable advantages, especially as AI becomes embedded in every layer of enterprise value creation. I also believe sovereignty and agency will be central to the next chapter of technology. As AI, cloud, data cyber systems become strategic infrastructure, clients must innovate quickly while preserving control, resilience security. Capgemini's international reach, European routes and local depth positioned strongly to serve that need. My commitment is to bring technical depth international perspective and the builder's mindset to the Board. I want to support Capgemini in scaling AI, strengthening client list and converting technological challenge in the durable value for shareholder, client employees and society. Thank you for your trust.

So that closes the governance chapter. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Olivier. And the Secretary of the Ethics and Governance Committee, that's me, Thank you for your years of service. I learned a lot working by your side. I'd now like to ask Mr. Patrick Pouyanne to come up to the rostrum to present the resolutions concerning executive remuneration, i.e., say on pay over to you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is my responsibility as the Chair of the Board's Compensation Committee to present to you the details of the group's compensation policy for executive officers and its implementation. The compensation policy in place across the group hasn't changed. It is established in accordance with legal provisions and the governance rules of the [indiscernible] code. It is designed to be transparent for shareholders. Alan aligned with the company's performance and strategy as well as its commitments regarding corporate, social and environmental responsibility. It is described in detail in the 2025 universal registration document. You're asked to vote on the compensation policy for directors and executive officers [indiscernible] Chairman of the Board; Aiman Ezzat, CEO. Regarding the compensation policy of our directors, 2 resolutions are submitted for your approval. Resolution #5 concerns the payment to directors of an amount of EUR 100,659,200 for the year 2025, below the maximum available budget of EUR 1.7 million. So that's resolution #5. For 2026. Resolution #10, we propose to increase the maximum budget unchanged since 2022 to EUR 1.9 million. So that's a 10% increase in line with the inflation over the period.

This proposed adjustment applies solely to compensation linked to actual attendance at Board and committee meetings with other compensation terms remaining unchanged. Compensation linked to actual attendance at Board and committee would move from 500 to 5,000 to EUR 6,000 -- with regard to the compensation of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for 2025 since May 2022, it's been solely based on director compensation for 2025, it amounts to EUR 355,500, EUR 250,000 for serving as Chairman of the Board, EUR 30,000 for serving as Chairman of the Strategy and CSR committee and EUR 75,500 based on Paul's actual attendance at board meetings and committee meetings. He attends all Board and committee meetings. So he is entitled to the maximum remuneration possible, and he deserves it.

Regarding the 2026 compensation policy for the Chairman of the Board, it remains unchanged, and it's based solely on the compensation as a director, as mentioned before. Resolution #7, the compensation of your CEO Aiman Ezzat, for the year 2025, it consists as previous years. And as it was proposed, when his term was renewed 2 years ago of a fixed portion of EUR 1.3 million. And variable portion amounting to up to 180% of the fixed compensation. This variable portion is divided into 3 parts. There are financial indicators, amounting to 60% of the fixed compensation upon achievement of targets, which may reach up to 120% of targets are exceeded, quantitative nonfinancial indicators amounted to 20% of the fixed compensation upon achievement of targets, which may reach up to 30% if the targets are exceeded to the maximum extent and then qualitative personal objectives corresponding to the implementation of the company strategy, which may represent up to 30% of the fixed compensation.

The application of these criteria for 2025 show a variable component of 1.42,362 representing 17.9% of the fixed compensation, which is below the maximum possible of 180%. Mr. Ezzat also benefits from a long-term savings plan, which replaces the supplementary pension plan closed in 2015, of which Mr. Ezzat was not a beneficiary. This long-term savings plan is payable over 2 years based on a target amount representing 40% of his annual fixed compensation based on the criteria the financial criteria, it was set as EUR 501,852 for the year 2025, representing a 38.6% of fixed compensation with half payable in mid-2026, and the other half in mid-2027. And finally, in order to align the CEO's interest with the company's long-term performance. The CEO is granted performance-based shares. Performance is evaluated over a 3-year period. Granted volume is aligned with the compensation policy that you adopted last year, and it's capped at the IFRS value, which is an amount equal to the CEO's cash compensation covering the fixed and variable portions as well as the long-term savings plan.

The nature of the performance conditions for the shares granted in 2025 remains unchanged from previous years. relative share performance, free cash flow generation and social environmental responsibility, 2 criteria, diversity and environment and climate-related objectives. Mr. Ezzat in October 2025, received a performance-based share grant of 30,000 shares in accordance with the compensation policy. Those are the elements submitted for your vote under Resolution #7 and in accordance with the compensation policy approved last year. I will now turn to the last item, the compensation policy for 2026, so that's resolution #9, it's quite simple because it remains unchanged. As the Board committed to it when your CEO was renewed for his new term of office, the Board announced that the compensation policy will remain unchanged for the new term.

Fixed compensation stays at EUR 300,000. Variable compensation will apply based on the same criteria that I just mentioned. So up to a maximum of 180% of the fixed compensation. And regarding the personal objectives, Well, they have been updated by the Board in line with the group's strategy. So there's a strategy with key clients, the strategic plan based on geographies in the U.S.A. And as Frederic [indiscernible] has said, monitoring recent acquisitions, that's a key point as you know, with the acquisitions of WNS and Cloud4C. Finally, Mr. Ezzat will continue to benefit from a performance-based long-term savings plan under the same terms, and the possibility of being awarded performance shares.

For this new performance plan, starting in 2026, there are now 4 criteria versus a 3 before. So we'll keep the relative share performance, the free cash flow generation, the social environmental responsibility with the weight of 20%, we decided to add revenue growth as the fourth criteria. Now I would like to recall that the CEO is subject to a noncompete clause and continues to be eligible for severance pay. In the event of involuntary termination subject to performance conditions, and he's also terminated his employment contract and Wave Tax directors' compensation. These are the main points supporting resolutions 5 through 10 submitted for your approval which pertain to the compensation policy for corporate officers and its implementation.

Personally, I would like to say a few words. I would like to congratulate [indiscernible] the Board together, and I will miss you. I will try to take over from you for the 3 remaining years and I will do my best to apply the same methods based on collective intelligence under Paul's kind supervision. Thank you.

Thank you, Patrick. Now I would like to ask [indiscernible] on behalf of the joint statutory auditors to present and summarize their reports, as well as the report of [indiscernible] pertaining to the certification of sustainability-related information.

Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the Board of statutory auditors, the firm PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit [indiscernible]. I have the honor of reporting to you on our engagement for the 2025 fiscal year. I would like to summarize the terms of our various reports which have been made available to you by the company and are included in the 2025 URD. I will begin with our report on the group's consolidated financial statements, which were prepared in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the European Union. We have certified the financial statements without qualification or comment. We identified as key audit matters. Those items deemed to be the most significant and which, therefore, received particular attention during our work.

For each of these key audit matters were described in our report, the reasons that led us to identify them, the nature of the risk identified and the audit response we provided. For 2025, these key audit matters concerned 2 areas: revenue recognition based on percentage of completion for multiyear contracts and the assessment of the recoverable amount of goodwill. We remind you that the fundamental objective of our engagement is to obtain reasonable assurance regarding the fairness, regularity and true and fair view of the financial statements. and to ensure that there are free raw material misstatements. To this end, we conduct our work across all significant entities of the Capgemini group, both in France and abroad. Our approach is tailored to the group's activities various business lines and organizational structure.

As for the review of the management report and other documents addressed to shareholders, it does not call for any specific comment. Regarding our report on the annual financial statements of Capgemini SE, which are prepared in accordance with French accounting principles, we considered the valuation of investments at Capgemini's subsidiaries to be a key audit matter. We have certified these financial statements without qualification with a note regarding the first-time application of ANC Regulations 2022 06 modernization of financial statements and ANC 2024 07 distinction between liabilities and other equity as of December 31, 2025. With regard to our special report on regulated agreements, we were not notified of any new agreements entered into during the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024.

A report also states that none of the agreements entered into and authorized in prior fiscal years continued in fiscal year 2024. Finally, with regard to the extraordinary portion of your Annual General Meeting, we have issued 5 reports concerning draft resolutions submitted for your vote this afternoon and relating to capital transactions. We have not made any observations regarding the terms and conditions proposed to you by the Board of Directors. Regarding the sustainability report. On behalf of [indiscernible] Mazars, I have the honor of reporting to you on our review of the sustainability statement for fiscal year 2024. This report is structured in 3 parts and enables us to issue our limited assurance conclusions in response to the requirements of the CSRD.

We have not identified any material errors emissions or inconsistencies related to compliance with sustainability reporting standards in determining the disclosed information -- the accuracy of the sustainability information in compliance with the disclosure requirements set forth in Article 8 of regulation, the taxonomy. In 2025, we considered the following items to help in the subject of particular attention. On the 1 hand, the information disclosed regarding climate change mentioned in Section 4.21E1 climate change the sustainability report. And on the other hand, the information disclosed regarding the group's workforce, 4.7 as 1 company workforce Human Capital. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much, Mr. [indiscernible]. I would now like to ask the representative of Grant Thornton, whose appointment as statutory auditors responsible for the statutory audit of the financial statements replacing PricewaterhouseCoopers submitted to this shareholders' meeting for approval to please stand so that we can see you. Thank you, and welcome to Capgemini.

Now we are now waiting to the Q&A session. session that you were all expecting for information, the company received written questions prior to the AGM as every year. And as every year, the answers are available on our website. We will spend 25 minutes on this Q&A session. We'll take questions from the floor and also through the secure platform available to shareholders online who may still submit their questions.

I actually received have received a large number of questions since the beginning of this AGM regarding different topics, AI, CGS. So we may come back to this point. And for shareholders present in the room, so that as many of you as possible can speak, we would like to ask you to respect the allocated time limit. So that's 1 minute per question, 25 minutes, There's a short amount of time, and there are many, many questions. The ushers have microphones. [Operator Instructions] Let us get started with a question that was received online, and it is about the CGS issue.

Dear Chairman because one of our shareholders is asking us the following question. Capgemini has been through an unprecedented crisis because of the services provided to -- through one of its subsidiaries in the U.S.A. and Mr. Ezzat, could you please be kind enough to explain to us how this kind of situation may have happened? And what are the type of measures that you can take for it not to happen again.

Thank you. Of course, that's an important question. So Paul said a few words, but I can add to it. The contract was made with CGS, Capgemini Government Solutions and U.S. entity, which as you know has to meet foreign influence requirements under a special security agreement, SSA, whereby operations -- its operations needed to be hermetically sealed from Capgemini [indiscernible] operations. So this has been going on for many years, and we never had any kind of reporting. And it means that the parent company cannot be involved in CGS' operations. So Capgemini felt that the usual legal requirements in the U.S. to allow a U.S. entity to undertake federal operations made it impossible for us to fully control what was going on in that entity.

We could not make sure that it acted in accordance with our own values. Therefore, we decided to divest. The process has been ongoing since the first of February. We are presently screening offers, screening bids, and we hope that to complete that phase to make a decision as soon as possible. We also audited did a governance audit of all subsidies across the group, and we identified no similar governance issues of the same type. So we feel that we do have good control over operations undertaken by other entities.

We have questions in the room. There are microphones.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the Board, just to pick up on what you said about the divestment of the subsidiary in the U.S., does that mean that you are exiting that industry, that market, which was a good 1 until now. What will the impact be on 2026 accounts following the sale of the company. You said you wanted to sell as quickly as possible. Why? Because this -- you might make a bad sale.

So Debt has increased by 77%. What measures have been taken to ensure that Capgemini will stay on track in 2026 and 2027? What will be the impact of those acquisitions on your different numbers?

I'll take the first question. I'll ask Nive to answer the second question. Firstly, as you know, is a very small company, 0.4% of our global revenue, and it's a small share of our revenue in the U.S. And the classified operations are an even smaller share of that. So we're not against working with the U.S. federal government. However, we no longer have to meet the requirements, allowing us to work on classified projects because that introduces a lot of constraints. So Capgemini America cannot work for the U.S. government, but not under those same constraints. So we can still take on federal projects, but after the entity is sold, we will not be able to be involved in classified projects. As for the impact, we'll have to see the conditions under which it will be sold, the terms and conditions at what price.

We're not trying to sell it off as quickly as possible. We've simply begun to process the same kind of process for any kind of sale or acquisition. We're not trying to expedite the process at all we are trying to make the right kind of operation for the shareholders. So we are really attentive to the terms and conditions. Do you want to talk about the debt?

Sorry, could I'm going to have to translate for Nive?

Yes, you did buy 2 cooperation and the debt of the company to be decreased by 77%. How will those 2 cooperations that you just bought, improved the revenue and the sales of the company in '26, '27 and so on. .

Well, thank you, sir. Thank you for the question. In terms of both the WNS and Cloud4C, especially if you look at WNS, it is actually growing for us at double digit, as I think Aiman mentioned before. So it's a very good business, and we're actually seeing a very good pipeline with a lot of opportunities. So we believe that at the back of some of the synergies that we've announced to the market, revenue synergies, which we'd announced saying $100 million to $140 million by the end of 2027 run rate as well as the cost synergies. We believe that it is a good buy, and therefore, we will be able to, over a period of time, generate the revenue, generate the profit. And therefore, we will be able to to be able to repay our debt over the course of time. So we believe that this was a good opportunity to buy, especially at the back of what Aiman said about intelligent operations and AI. It's a very good segue that helps us to create a bigger and larger market.

If I may add something. The very first results that we see are really positive. So we've been able to acquire EUR $100 million or euro contract in intelligent operations, but we also see an opportunity to treble our business over the past 9 months. So this and we had excellent conditions. The conditions were met to buy this very good company. and there are great opportunities out there, a great pipeline. These are long-term contracts that are negotiated over several months, and we see an increase in the opportunities before us. And so this consolidates our view that this was the right move. There are many questions on AI and on the share price. I will read these questions. They've come online. First question. I the rise deployment and adoption of AI by your customers, is this a risk and a threat for Capgemini? Or do you think that this will make for a sustainable business. Also, is this an asset or a destruction for the group. We see lots of many -- the valuation of many companies just melt away. Is this good for Capgemini. You have some competitors that have left the market that have disappeared does Capgemini intend to do to ensure that it will remain relevant some banks have failed over AI.

Also, the share price of Capgemini has really dwindled over the past few months. Could Mr. Ezzat please explain the reasons and how you intend to recover and how fast.

Okay. That was very fast. So I didn't have enough time to draw different thing down. I'll try and answer as best I can. Let's start from the beginning. We really believe in AI as 1 of the biggest opportunities for the group over the past 60 years of its history. So it's not just about adopting a new technology. it is about deeply transforming how businesses work. Every single process, how every single decision is made and not just on the technology level. Of course, there's a big technology dimension, but AI will really transform enterprises very deeply. Since we saw chat GPT 3 years ago, more and more people are starting to understand these issues, and we'll be presenting this at the next Investor Day in a week or 2. But we're trying companies are trying to understand just how big the effort this transformation will require.

And therefore, that's a huge potential for the group. There's a lot of value to share. And we understand today that the opportunities are out there. We see what needs to be done, massive opportunities. That's true transformation of our group, of our skills. That's true but we're also facing a huge market. There's a real appetite. Our clients are thirsty for AI, and they need support in order not to lose ground. So it's a real performance issue. And we really have to ensure that we are not wasting any time. 3 years ago, we thought the models, you just plug them in, develop 3 agents and then the machine would do the rest. No. Customers today see the scale of complexity of the transformation, the depth and breadth of what they need to do to prepare for introducing AI for it to work.

So we'll be looking at that next week. So yes, the changes are complex. There are uncertainties. Investors are wondering whether all the white collars might be replaced, might be left without a job. But we believe the opposite because we really need a lot of work to prepare for this future. This will take a bit of time for everyone to get on board and share our belief. But I think that the next few months and quarters should be spent explaining and educating. And we really believe in the future and the great potential out there for Capgemini.

Okay. So we hope to get back to the EUR 200 mark very soon. Thanks to all that A question from the room, from number one, please. Jean Dac, individual investors, 20 minutes for question. That's not very much. we can extend that time, of course, if questions keep coming and it's 25 minutes that we've planned for. So you have a lot of deferred amounts, but EUR 37 per share, 35% of your market cap are -- will these carryforwards reduce over time, do you think? And also questions on governance. There's a great resolution to appoint Mr. [indiscernible] I think that's great because he winning on his benefits as Honorary Director, at EDF. However, I have doubts about Mr. Pouyanne future Lead Director. As I said, last year at the AGM I really don't understand his presence at the Board because when you go to [indiscernible] AGM, you can't enter with a telephone or a computer. So I really don't think he's interested in IT or knows anything about IT.

I think the Board of Directors should look at the invitation to Total's AGM. So unless I'm mistaken, that's not a question, it's a comment. No, I'm leading up to a question. Why do you propose him to be lead director. He would -- he's already has 9 years of service on the board. So [indiscernible] mean that he can only serve 3 more years.

Right. Maybe you could take the second question. First, why Patrick Pouyanne, on the Board of Directors Well, the governance committee has has recorded the departure of Frederic and Xavier. Sian Herbert-Jones has been or rather it can stay on the board another 2 years because there's a maximum of 12. Patrick still has 3 years to go. So we went for the horse with most number of years, if you like. And I think that Patrick is interested in technology -- because sometimes I think that Total makes the most of what Patrick learns here and really applies technology in a very smart way. I'm not sure about his use of [indiscernible] phone. He's always sending me messages and e-mail. So I know he knows how to use technology. As for the carryforwards, Nive or Aiman, would you like to answer that, Nive, the carryforwards? Retained earnings, Nive. The amount of retained earnings. Why are the retained earnings so high? And are they meant to last ?

Of course, our retained earnings is from a profit perspective and because we have the retained earnings, we're able to use it, of course, to pay the dividend. So is that the question? Is that the question? .

Can you please ask a question again. Maybe it wasn't clear enough.

Well, why is our retained earnings important? It's important for the company to pay the dividend with that retained earnings, we cannot pay dividends. So obviously, we're trying to maintain it, increase it as much as we can to make sure that the company is robust so that we can compensate our shareholders with dividends.

This is the case in many companies. It's about the future of the company if there's a bad year, then the company is robust enough and can pay its shareholders. Okay, about financial questions.

From a shareholder outside. Why is there a degradation of the free cash flow between 2025 and 2026.

Okay. Answer then. Thank you for the question. As far as the organic free cash flow is concerned, I think before I answer the question, I think it's important to reiterate that our conversion, our net income to free cash flow. I mean, our conversion is very good. It's above 1. In fact, it's 1.2. So that's very good from an industry perspective. Now coming back to this particular year, we have had a couple of headwinds. One is because of currencies, of course, the currency fluctuations. And the second, of course, has been because of certain items under what we call other operating income and expenses. And that, of course, has lowered that a little bit.

But of course, had that not been the case, we would have been higher than where we are. But in that context, I think it's important, again, to reiterate that our focus for 2026 continues to be the conversion and that conversion of free cash flow to net income is something that we're very, very focused on, and we expect that, that will be above 1 even this year.

Thank you. Question in the room, #2 at the back.

Individual shareholder. I'm watching the share price evolve, but I feel quite comfortable with it. So when the share price goes down, why isn't there any press release to reassure us?

Well, I think that the company's duty is to give to the market all the information that we have. And you've heard Aiman convey his trust about the deterioration of the share price. So there are major AI players getting ready for IPOs, and they're saying that their products are so powerful that many jobs are going to become obsolete this threat against our profession, created a lot of panic. People said that our end value would be brought to 0 because we will be terminated by AI. You've heard Aiman. We are convinced of the opposite. AI is a great adventure ahead of us. He didn't take too many risks because he said that the market would be convinced of it in the next quarters or years. So it will take time for speculation around AI to calm down.

AI needs facilitators, agents and Capgemini is one of them. Our job is to inform the market. Aiman talked about a meeting that will take place next week with analysts. So we will communicate with the public at this occasion. Next question in the room, #3.

Thank you for giving me the floor. I represent the form for Responsible Investment, and for investors, our members of the form. And thank you for your answers. Regarding CGS and the connection with [indiscernible] I'll try to be brief because you've already provided us with quite a few elements. I would like to have additional information regarding the audit that you talked about governance, and you said that there was -- the findings was that there were no similar situation. Could you commit to publishing the conclusions of the internal audit. And we're broadly speaking -- are you going to improve your vigilance framework to align it with international standards given the changing nature of political risks and everything related to human rights.

Actually, we've had several calls before this AGM, and you asked questions in writing. So we answered your questions. in writing, and I think that Mr. Ezzat will provide you with a clarification. We consider that the system that is in place today enables us to review all aspects in terms of contracts, clients risks. So we conduct ethical reviews on clients. So we have a system that we think is robust today, and it has no flaws. Once again, we were faced with a very specific situation because of the separation between operations, we had no visibility on what was happening in the subsidiary, but our system is great. It works very well, and we've never had any problem. As you just said today, there are risk profiles, and there's a committee at group level that will review contracts and companies based on risks, geographies, sectors, businesses, potential governmental influence. These risks will be reported to the group. That will be reviewed and assessed. There might be an ethical assessment of the client and internal audit before we enter a contractual agreement.

So I consider that this is a robust functioning. It's already in place, and we need to continue. We need to keep being vigilant -- you can never be perfect. But as of today, we think that the system works very well. What happened was a very specific case that we addressed. Thank you, if you allow me, because I'm in charge of risk management for the group. The track record of Capgemini is quite exceptional actually for 14 years. We've been ranked among the most [indiscernible] companies in the world. As Mr. Ezzat said, the risk mitigation process is improved year after year, and we've demonstrated that our system is robust, even though we took this case very seriously. Other questions?

[indiscernible] a company that's due to my heart. Thank you very much. Mr. [indiscernible] , an individual shareholder. We would like to ask you about against resolution 6 and 7. Capgemini claims these values, but the only measure is project that will lead to the destruction of many jobs just to support the share price. It's a testimony to the failure of the executive corporate officers and it will create a significant social impact across Capgemini, how can you account for the relevance of these resolutions, and how can you explain that the leaders have given up on the values.

Shareholders, Don't forget that the share price of the group relies on a group of people, so behind the 2,409 jobs that will disappear. Well, there are people, employees, lives. We share your opinion -- what you said about people, we are a company providing services. And we know that the wealth of the company is based on its people. I think that we need more context regarding this layoff plan, which is a voluntary plan. We adapt to technological changes and market evolutions. It is necessary. We adapt to clients' demand regarding companies of our sector when, well, we need their sectoral deficits, impacting our clients, and in some sectors, there is a major slowdown in the automotive sector, for example. It went through a very challenging period in Europe. And actually, it's still the case today.

And also, there are technological innovations that are accelerating, leading to changing customers' demand creating challenges and opportunities. So this plan is based on volunteers, the goal is to develop new skills that our clients need, and we want to offer our employee new career perspectives when necessary. Social support, and the plan to update skills have been defined in the collective plan, and it was submitted to the representatives of trade unions. It was a collaborative process. We explained why we needed to do it. We are trying to find solutions regarding certain positions that don't exist anymore in certain areas. In the automotive sector, for example, these jobs will not come back. So if we can find a potential evolution of our employees' jobs. That's great. Otherwise, we come up with voluntary departure plan.

I think it's a responsible behavior. Otherwise, these people will not have any future in the company or no clients to work with. So it's a voluntary plan. It was based on a collaborative process. And it's also our responsibility to manage our employees' careers in an environment that changed a lot since they first joined the company. Thank you.

Another question in the room. I think you raised -- you asked questions in writing, but you also have questions that you would like to ask now.

Thank you, [indiscernible] shareholder for the climate. The questions that I'm going to ask are not going to be a repetition of what I asked in writing. First of all, congratulations for your climate strategy, and that's something that we'd like to insist on because all companies do not come up with such transition plans like you. So that's great. Then regarding the ICE case, There was an industrial accident, we talked about business issues, but I think that there's a deterioration deriving from this case, you talked about Salama. I know him very well. You talked about integrity. And there are the 6 other values. So the question is, based on the report of Mr. Oudea, what was done at the Ethics Committee. Mr. Ezzat, you just said that you would have found the solution to guarantee that in the future, Capgemini would never face this type of situation that goes against integrity morality and human rights.

The ICE case is a matter of human rights. And there's a complicity of Capgemini Four standards were violated the standards in terms of sustainability report, vigilance plan ethical rules and human rights values that you have promoted in your CSR charter. And there are people called Mr. Pouyanne and Mr. Oudea. Mr. Pouyanne has been renewed. So I'm asking you 1 question if 1 of your employees were led to such an industrial accident, which has an impact on the share price, what other choice would you have but dismiss them in -- some people are patting themselves on the back for the job they did so it's a shame regarding the 10,000 people who have been led out of the country.

I would like you to shorten your questions, sir.

So what about Capgemini? Is there potential provision to give money to the people who were illegally expelled from the country. You did not answer about making a provision. No, there is no provision for compensation. And so you're not planning on compensation victims -- compensating victims. So another question is, will you engage the liability of directors who make EUR 120,000 per year just to be on the Ethics and Governance Committee. So you have a responsibility.

I'm sorry. You have spoken way beyond your allotted one minute. So we will be answering your claims, which we feel are groundless. So very quickly. First of all, facts, you are not presenting facts as they are at no illegal activity ascribable to an entity of the group or a director, a corporate officer has been identified. Therefore, there are no -- we need not provision any sum in our accounts. We did admit that there was a governance issue because we had no control over those operations. So that is exactly what we said. So it's a governance issue. At this stage, when we spoke, we felt that we could not fully ensure that, that entity's activities respected our values. And indeed, they moved outside of their agreement. So the CGS issue is a governance subsidiary governance issue.

Yes, I'd like to answer about the committee members. I said that every year, the Ethics and Governance Committee is reported to on compliance with ethical principles. We get a full report on enforcement of ethical principles across the group. That report was incomplete because since that subsidiary falls outside of the scope of ethical reporting. Well, there was that report could have been deemed to be -- to have a defect, it was lacking, but that is because of the very structure of the company and the relationship between the subsidiary and the parent company. And in order to remedy that, the CEO suggested that we divest the company and no longer take part indirectly in that kind of activity. Also since that subsidiary was outside of the scope of the ethical review, Capgemini officers were not involved.

Now when I was apprised of the event, I decided that we should meet immediately, so we met on the Saturday morning. Frederic Oudea as Head of the Governance and Ethics Committee, gave us his summary of the situation and his analysis, we had a debate and all of the members of the committee, including Patrick Pouyanne spoke up very strongly in favor of compliance with our ethics and values. And the behavior of the 4 members of the group is irreproachable.

So we have been allowed to go a little bit over the allotted time for questions, but we have gone much over the allotted time. So we're going to move on to the next section, i.e., voting on the resolutions. And the vote will now be open. You all have an individual voting tablet, which you received when you signed off, and for each shareholders, you have the number of shares that you represent. A few are reluctant technology users. Here is a video that will explain how to use the tablet. So you'll be able to vote on the 30 resolutions put to you after watching this shortened informative video. In order to vote at this AGM you have received a voting tablet. It is personal to you. and is to be used only for this AGM. It serves no other purpose outside of the AGM. When a resolution is called, the voting window is displayed automatically on the tablet even if it is in sleep mode, it is very simple to use, press on the button that corresponds to your choice, for, abstain or against.

Press on okay to confirm before the voting is closed. Once your vote has been confirmed, you may not modify it. Please return your tablet when you exit the room. Indeed, don't take the tablet home. So the majority is only based on 4 and against votes, abstentions are not votes against. And I will not be reading the full text of the resolutions. I will only read the text. We are voting based on simple majority, plus 50% for the ordinary meeting and the majority of 2/3 for the extraordinary resolution. So the quorum has slightly changed since the beginning of the meeting for the ordinary meeting, we moved from [indiscernible] and and quorum for the extraordinary meeting has moved up from 79.28% to 79.32% of the shareholders. So 8,302 shareholders and 8,308 shareholders, the last figure being for the ordinary meeting.

So I will read the summary of the resolutions. Resolution #1, approval of the 2025 company financial statements, Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed and the resolution is carried 99.87%. Thank you, Resolution #2, approval of 2025 consolidated financial statements voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And the resolution is carried with 99.99% of the vote. So there must be 1 shareholder voted against given the annual report. Resolution #3, provision of earnings and calculation of the dividend. Voting open.

[Voting]

And the resolution is carried with 99.95% of the votes. Resolution #4, regulated agreements, special report of the statutory auditors. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And the resolution is carried with 99.99% of the votes. Resolution #5 approval of the report on the compensation of corporate officers, voting open.

[Voting]

And voting closed. Resolution is carried. 97.63% Resolution #6, approval of fixed, variable, exceptional components of compensation for Mr. Pouyanne, Chairman of the Board, voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Mr. Pouyanne's compensation is approved with 90% of the votes. Resolution #7, approval of the compensation for 2025, Mr. Aiman Ezzat, Chief Executive Officer. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And Mr. Ezzat's compensation is approved with 95.28% of the votes. Number 8, approval of the compensation policy of the 2026 for the Chairman of the Board of Directors voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And the resolution is carried with 95.9% of the vote. Resolution 9, approval of the 2020 compensation policy applicable to the Chief Executive Officer voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And the compensation for the Chief Executive Officer of 2026 is approved with 93.35% of the vote. Number 10, increase in the total compensation amount for directors and approval of the compensation policy applicable to directors in 2026 voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And this resolution is adopted with 97.03% of votes. Resolution #11, renewal of the term of Mr. Paul [indiscernible] as Director, Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Congratulations to Paul [indiscernible], whose term is renewed with 93.97% of the vote. Resolution #12. Renewal of the term of office of Ms. Maria Ferraro, Director, Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And Ms. Mario Ferraro is renewed for 4 years, with 98.39% of the votes. Resolution 13. Ratification of the co-optation of Ms. [indiscernible] Director.

[Voting]

Voting closed. And Ms. [indiscernible] is confirmed as director and 98.31% of votes. Resolution #14, Appointment of Ms. Veronika [indiscernible] as Director. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Congratulations, Ms. [indiscernible], you are now a director, You've been elected by 98.58% of our shareholders. Resolution #15 appointment of Mr. [indiscernible] as Director.

[Voting]

[Foreign Language] Voting on resolution 16 is closed. And the term is renewed with 98.72% of votes. Congratulations to for [indiscernible]. Resolution #17 appointment of Grant Thornton as statutory auditor in charge of certifying financial statements voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Grant Thornton is appointed with 99.92% of votes. Resolution 18 renewal of the term of office of [indiscernible] a statutory auditor responsible for certifying sustainability information. Voting open.

[Voting]

The term of office is renewed with 98.7% of the votes. 19th resolution, authorization of a share buyback program. Voting open.

[Voting]

And voting is closed. And the share buyback program is adopted with 99.82% of the votes. Resolution 20. Authorization to cancel shares bought by by the company under the share buyback program voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The authorization is approved with 99.53% of the votes. Resolution #21, delegation to increase the share capital by a maximum per value amount of EUR 1.5 billion. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The resolution is carried with 98.41% of the votes, Resolution #22, delegation to issue shares and/or securities granting access to the company's share capital. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is carried with 95.51% of the votes. Resolution #23, delegation to issue with cancellation of preemptive subscription rights, ordinary shares and/or securities granting access to the company's share capital by way of public offers are then those referred to in Article L4112 one of the French monitor and Financial Code. Please vote now.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is carried with 94.35% of the votes. Resolution 24 delegation to issue with the cancellation of preemptive subscription rights, ordinary shares and/or securities granting access to the capital. way of public offers referred to in Article L4112 of the French monitoring financial code Voting is open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The resolution is carried with 92.26% of the votes. Resolution 25, delegation to increase the number of securities to be issued in the event of a share capital increase with retention or cancellation of preemptive subscription rights of voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The resolution is adopted with 88.64% of the votes. Resolution 26 authorization to issue ordinary shares and/or securities granting access to the company's share capital in consideration for contributions in kind to the company or equity securities or securities granting access to share capital. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. Resolution is carried with 93.86% of the votes. Resolution 27, authorization to grant performance shares to employees and corporate officers of the company and its subsidiaries voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The authorization is approved with 94.68% of the votes. Resolution 28, delegation of authority to issue ordinary shares and/or securities to the company's share capital to members of the Capgemini Group employee savings plan, voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The delegation is approved with 98.73% of the votes. Resolution 29, delegation to issue ordinary shares and/or securities granting access to the share capital for employees of non-French subsidiaries. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting is closed. The delegation is adopted with 98.73% of the votes. Resolution 30 powers to carry out formalities. Voting open.

[Voting]

Voting closed. The resolution is carried with 99.99% of the votes, so reaching the end of the voting process. I would like to thank the shareholders for their trust. You can see that the adoption rates were quite high before we wrap up this meeting before giving the floor to [indiscernible] would like dear shareholders to inform you that following a recent decree in the modernization of shareholder communication procedures. For future general meetings, Capgemini will send notices to registered shareholders electronically rather than by mail. So it's very important that the company have a valid e-mail address for each shareholder.

To this end, Optiva will send you a letter at a later date. And we suggest you read it very carefully in order to provide a valid e-mail address. Please return your tablets and your translation headsets at the entrance of the room before going to the cocktail, I would like [indiscernible] elected Chairman to conclude the meeting.

Well, it is now my role to close this AGM. Thank you for your participation. Thank you for your votes. I'd like to invite you to the cocktail reception, and I hope to see you next year. Thank you very much.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Capgemini Quarter 1 2026 Revenues Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Aiman Ezzat, CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this Q1 2026 revenue call. I'll be joined today by our CFO, Nive Bhagat. So the group had a solid start of the year, actually slightly better than what we anticipated. We generated revenue of EUR 5.943 billion which represents a year-on-year growth of 11% at constant exchange rates. Now this reflects robust underlying momentum in line with Q4 as well as the expected contribution from the acquisition of WNS and Cloud4C. Bookings were up 6.2% at constant exchange rates, reaching EUR 6.54 billion, which demonstrate a strong commercial momentum.

Now growth rates in Q1 are fueled by solid organic trends, complemented by the scope impact of WNS and C4C. From a sector perspective, all major sectors are growing when excluding acquisitions, strong underlying growth in financial services, public sector and TMT, supported by AI-led transformation. From a dual standpoint, the stronger traction is in North America and in the U.K. backed by solid underlying demand, while Continental Europe, including France, is gradually recovering.

Finally, from a business perspective, both strategy and transformation and application and technology have maintained their good momentum. Operations & Engineering grew by 25%. Beyond the scope impact of WNS and Cloud4C activities, it's important to note double-digit like-for-like growth for our digital business process services, which confirm that this remains the fastest growing segment in our business. And what's driving our performance this quarter is very clear. It's focusing on clients' large-scale transformation programs.

Clients are accelerating AI adoption and the conversation have moved to agentic AI to transform end-to-end operation and processes. And that shift is forcing a CEO-level agenda around modernizing core technology stacks, data foundation and operating model. So AI can scale safely and deliver measurable impact. So in this context, we are seeing strong momentum around agentic AI driven by clear trends. First, AI is now simply part of every client conversation.

Clients are looking at AI, either to drive cost efficiency or to improve business outcomes such as faster delivery, higher reliability, stronger compliance, higher customer satisfaction or better overall operation performance. Second, clients are clearly stepping up the pace of AI-driven transformation. We see a real shift from isolated use cases and stand-alone tools to AI embedded into end-to-end core processes. To enable that, they have to modernize the core technology stack. That's why we increasingly brought into big architecture discussions at scale, which now includes C-level executives around the table.

Now we are well positioned to capture this demand. Our offering portfolio, now enriched with intelligent operations is leading to some noticeable deal in Q1. Just to mention a couple of them for U.S. utility provider we are designing, developing and scaling an agentic AI operation platform spanning across customer operations, supply chain, support function and issue resolution. This platform represents a next approach to how large organization harness AI, not as a standalone tool, but as an integrated layer embedded directly in employees way of working.

Also for European banking clients, we are replacing fragmented processes, notably onboarding and due diligence with Agentic end-to-end automation. This will allow our clients to reduce its operational efforts strengthened regulatory compliance at lower cost, reinforce data quality, achieve faster processing times and a more scalable operating model, thus realizing measurable business value.

So on AI, the message from clients is very clear. It is we need to see measurable business impact. And to get there, they need to run AI at enterprise scale, which implies getting the foundations right, including data quality infrastructure readiness, governance, cyber and trust. And if there's one critical element that people tend to underestimate, it is the human side. This is about people working effectively with AI to ensure that we capture the value at scale. And that's exactly where we make the difference.

We are one of the few partners selected by OpenAI, Anthropic to help enterprises capture value from AI because delivering value from AI requires a much broader set of expertise, from strategy and transformation to technology and deep architecture through data and AI engineering and operations. And this needs to be complemented by deep industry knowledge and real domain process expertise. In parallel, we're also accelerating our own AI transformation with 4 streams, all equally important solutions, workforce upskilling, delivery and operations. We are developing, for example, solution that are AI by design, whether we're talking about SAP implementation or SDLC or others. And the point is simple, with a disciplined end-to-end value approach, we consistently turn AI investments into scalable and sustainable value, both for our clients and also for Capgemini.

A quick note on defense. We continue to see stronger momentum in defense, driven by 2 structural trends, a sharp ramp-up in defense manufacturing across Europe, including new entrants from civilian industry, and a growing demand from European ministries of defense for software-defined digitally enabled solution to modernize systems and architectures.

Now this creates an opportunity to partner in building sovereign European solutions. Our defense business is scaling across 3 areas, helping industrial players scale manufacturing, especially civilian entrants with the digital and systems capabilities required, accelerating innovation platform to develop, integrate and deploy next-generation defense technologies faster and expanding our role in cross-border programs by addressing demand for new air and ground system architecture across Europe.

Together, these trends transform our position as a key partner in Europe's defense ecosystem, combining scale, digital expertise and cross-border delivery.

Now moving on to the outlook. So Q1 was solid, with underlying growth in line with Q4. For Q2, we expect around 10% constant currency growth, including approximately 6.5% from inorganic contribution. The group's financial target for 2026 are unchanged, revenue growth of around 6.5% up to 8.5% at constant exchange rates and operating margin of 13.6% to 13.8% and on organic free cash flow of around EUR 1.8 billion to EUR 1.9 billion.

Our assumption on inorganic contribution and the impact of the Fit for Growth initiatives are also unchanged.

And with that, I will hand over to Nive.

Thank you, Aiman, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with the top line. Q1 2026 represents a solid start to the year. Group revenues came in at EUR 5,943 million, slightly ahead of our expectations, up 7% year-on-year on a reported basis. Underlying trends remain steady across the group, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

At constant currency, revenue growth was 11% in the quarter, including around 6.5 percentage points of scope primarily from the WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions. As anticipated, foreign exchange was a headwind in Q1, with a negative impact of 400 basis points. Based on current exchange rates, we expect FX to be less of a drag going forward with an impact of around minus 1 to minus 1.5 points in Q2 and broadly similar for the full year 2026.

Turning to revenues by sector. We saw a solid underlying performance in Q1. On a like-for-like basis, financial services, TMT and the public sector continue to grow at good pace. Manufacturing saw a modest improvement, although it remains subdued. This underlying momentum was further supported by the contribution from WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions with the impact most visible across Financial Services, Energy & Utilities, Services and Consumer Goods & Retail.

At constant currency, Financial Services was the strongest sector growing by 21.9%, followed by Services at 17.4%. All other sectors delivered growth of around 10%, broadly in line with Q4 2025, apart from Manufacturing at 3.5%.

Revenues by region. Looking at the business geographically, momentum remained strong in Q1. On a like-for-like basis, North America and U.K. & Ireland delivered another quarter of robust growth. France showed improvement, while still slightly negative, and the rest of Europe remained broadly flat. As in the previous quarter, the scope impact from WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions was most visible in North America, the U.K. and Asia Pacific. At constant currency, North America grew by 20.7%, driven by strong performances in financial services alongside solid growth in TMT and Manufacturing. U.K. & Ireland delivered 21.7% with strong growth across almost all sectors.

France declined by minus 1%. Growth in Financial Services and Energy & Utilities was more than offset by weakness in consumer goods and retail and the public sector, while Manufacturing, improved, albeit remaining slightly negative. The rest of Europe grew by 1.7% with strong public sector performance and the return to growth in consumer goods and retail more than compensating for ongoing manufacturing softness.

Finally, Asia Pacific and Latin America recorded the strongest growth at 26.9%, primarily driven by Financial Services, with solid traction also seen in Consumer Goods & Retail and Energy & Utilities.

Moving to revenues by business line. Strategy & Transformation delivered growth of 6.2% at constant exchange rates. Applications & Technology Services, which is our core business, posted a 4.8% growth. Operations & Engineering Services grew by 25.2%. This reflects solid underlying growth across the portfolio, further reinforced by the contribution from the WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions.

At this moment, I would like to highlight 1 important point. Digital business process services maintained double-digit growth in Q1 on a like-for-like basis across both Capgemini and WNS. This clearly confirms the strategic rationale and the strong commercial traction we're seeing in the space.

Turning to bookings. We recorded EUR 6.1 billion in Q1, up 6.2% at constant currency. Our book-to-bill came in at 1.02, which is slightly above our 10-year average for the quarter. What is particularly encouraging is the continued momentum we're seeing in large transformation deals and longer-term client commitments. This is especially evident around areas such as AI, intelligent operations and defense which remain key drivers of demand.

Now before moving to headcount, a quick update on the Fit for Growth initiatives. You will see the bulk of the 2026 fixed charges in H1 with the benefit starting to come through in H2 of this year.

Finally, a quick word on headcount. We closed the quarter at 421,000 employees, up 23% year-on-year, reflecting the integration of WNS since Q4 last year. Compared to year-end 2025, headcount is broadly stable, down around 0.6%. Offshore leverage stands at 66%, up 8 points year-on-year with the WNS integration and flat versus the end of 2025. Since first January 2026, our last 12-month attrition rate now includes WNS and stood at 18.6% in Q1.

On a like-for-like basis, this represents a 1.2 point decrease year-on-year.

On that note, Aiman, I will hand back to you for the Q&A.

Okay. Please go ahead with the Q&A instructions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays.

Congrats on a good quarter. Maybe first on the outlook for the rest of the year. The full year guidance implies a slowdown on an organic basis. I know you normally not raised the guidance at the Q1 results, but how should we think about the implied performance for the rest of the year? Is there a conservatism baked in? Or is there any other reason you would point out? And then secondly, I noticed that application technology sequentially slowed. Can you just provide us a bit of color what drove this?

Okay. Listen, as we said, we don't trade at the end of Q1. We don't see a change in the environment so far. So it's -- we'll review guidance as required at the end of H1. We gave you some visibility on Q2. And so far, the -- we are quite confident for the rest of the year.

On the application and technology sequentially slowing down, there's nothing really to flag there specifically. I mean it's not a trend. I think it could be some fluctuations or start-up of contracts. But I mean, from my perspective, there's nothing special to flag.

Okay. Perfect. And maybe just rephrasing maybe the first question a little bit. I mean when we're looking at the Q2 guidance that you have just given us, it's also kind of a slowdown versus Q1. Is there anything you would point out there, any puts and takes we should consider when we're thinking about Q2?

Really nothing special. I mean again, it's pretty much in line with Q1, we see around. We'll see where we end up. I mean we're not going to give guidance of plus or minus 10, 20, 30 bps or something like that. So we're not in that level of detail. I think it shows that we continue with a similar momentum going into Q2. There's no change in the environment for us. I mean we don't see a slowdown. We don't see clients scaling back. We don't see things getting canceled or delayed. For me, there's absolutely no change in the environment right now.

Our next question comes from the line of Balajee Tirupati from Citi.

Firstly, congratulations on my side as well. And 2 questions, if I may. First on competitive intensity, with uncertain macro and many of and many of our peers seeing growth pressure, are you observing any incremental change in competitive intensity? And second question on increasing organization's AI investments. Are you seeing acceleration of AI projects moving to production as well as new AI capabilities coming, changing your clients' expectation of what they can achieve with the technology and altering their tech investment decision?

So on the competitive intensity, honestly, I don't see a change. I mean it has been quite competitive for the last 3 years, I would say, because there's been less growth overall. But I cannot say that there's been any change in competitive intensity from our perspective. Clients, they're not yet into production. But I think the realization is that we're moving away from a proof of concept and use cases, individual use cases to understanding that if you want to see a real benefit coming from AI, at enterprise scale, you really have to start looking at fundamental transformation, okay?

And that's really what we start embarking on. I mean we have big discussions and projects starting with clients and really, you have to reconceive your tech stack. It's a different one in the agentic world. You have to start putting in place the components to be able to run AI at scale. I mean you see that -- I mean, you're creating a digital -- it's a fundamental change going from Gen AI to agentic AI. Agentic AI is really making the difference. But you're creating a digital workforce, you're going to have to be able to manage it.

I mean we see the consequences, people start to see some of the consequences. If you don't put the right guardrails, it's not only about defining what agents should do, but it's about clearly defining what agent should not do. You have to define the red line. So it is complex. It's a complex work with a lot of potential, but it requires significant transformation. And I think clients start to really realize that and I think as opposed to some of the tech work we used to do in the past, here, we're doing transformational work that's clearly visible.

When we implement something, we see directly the results. It's not something -- we're not going to enable something to happen. We're actually making things happen. So it becomes visible. And clients are expecting that visibility and we're expecting to see that impact. So this is not a tech budget. You are fundamentally transforming companies. If you're hyper automating processes and improving fulfillment rate, this is what's financing that investment. It is not the tech budget that's financing that investment.

So we have to -- we need to start shifting around where the money to do this work is coming from. It's not coming from the tech budget.

Our next question comes from the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I also have 2 questions and also congrats for the first quarter. The first is on the large transformation program you were alluding to, I was interested to see if you see a difference by regions. And more importantly, if you compare the gross margin you could achieve on such project, are they comparable to the rest of the business or higher?

And my second question is, I know it's early stage, but the partnership you have with OpenAI and Anthropic, on typical contract, how do you share the value with them? How is the split between what the customer will pay to the LLM and what you will get in revenue?

Okay. So on the first question, we -- there's definitely more traction in the Anglo-Saxon world today than there is in Continental Europe, right? It doesn't mean that there's no activity in Continental Europe. It's starting. But the urgency seems higher definitely in the U.K. and the U.S. than it is in Continental Europe, okay? But we see good programs as well in Continental Europe. So I think it will accelerate. But yes, there is a lag as usual from that perspective.

On the gross margin on this type of deal, Laurent, I think all these things are too early. I mean, as I said, the commercial models are evolving bit by bit.

We are at the early stage of some of this transformation. What -- the way I would look at it is different is the potential for value creation is much higher. And it is visible. The difference here is that the value creation is visible. If I go and transform an end-to-end process with agentic, I see the results immediately. It's not I'm developing a technology that's supposed to enable a business, which hopefully will deliver results. So it's measurable, it's visible. And that, of course, will provide opportunities as we deliver to consider the fact that, yes, we should be able to deliver higher gross margin if we create significant value.

On the value sharing on partnership with OpenAI, Anthropic, remember, at the end of the day, what they're looking for is consumption, okay? Tokens. This will be the revenue model. We are looking for creating value through services. So we still -- we are definitely not at all on the same driver. I'd say I put OpenAI closer to a software company in terms of what they're looking for in a certain way as opposed to us, which as a service, which are looking to deliver revenue from the transformation. So we are complementary. It's not really a value sharing model, but there's a source of value, and we are sharing it.

Our next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.

If I can follow up on the kind of pricing discussion. Is there any area where you see some price pressure for more efficient delivery supported by Gen AI? How do you think about the opportunity around some traditional software implementation? Do you see some faster and cheaper delivery on specific process, say, kind of SAP cloud transformation? How do you think about the opportunity around those processes?

So I mean, I don't think there's any price pressure. I mean there is, of course, listen, if you do managed services deal today, clients have some anticipation in terms of some of the benefits we're going to be able to deliver from deploying Gen AI or agentic AI as part of our delivery, it's nothing new. It has been the case now already for several quarters. So I don't consider it being a price pressure. I think there is an anticipation that's different already, you know very well, every time we do managed services deal or managed services renewal, the client expect some cost reduction. So I don't call it as price pressure, I call it as being improvement that's expected and hence, you basically have to deliver more for the same amount of money.

On software -- on traditional software implementation and things like that, yes, I mean, we are redesigning solution delivery, of course. So if you look at SAP, for example, we are reinventing how we deploy SAP. And we are embedding, of course, GenAI and agentic AI as part of that. And part of it, yes, we're going to be able to do that faster in a more efficient way and hopefully at a lower cost as well. So it is part of what we do. But now we're doing it by design before we are giving tools to people telling them, try to make it better.

And now we are designing how things should happen for us to be able to deliver more efficiently. And we are redesigning a number of our solutions by embedding as expected, agentic AI and GenAI as part of the design of the solution. So it will all be by design versus hoping that people by using some tools will be able to become more efficient.

Okay. And if I may have a follow-up. Q1 growth still very healthy versus the rest of the industry. Any specific area you can call out that can explain that outperformance? I mean is it an exposure on some specific end markets where you have stronger momentum? I mean any specific area you can flag?

I think it's really -- as you know, we have been focusing on execution, especially focusing around how we can really drive value from AI, what are the fundamentals we need to tackle, really thinking strategically about what really needs to happen there that's not just about use cases or basically, how do you say, staffing a few people to go and do some high-end work.

But we really think about transformation and what do we need to line up to be able to drive this transformation. And I think it's starting to pay off in terms of credibility, in terms of getting embarked in some good large-scale transformation programs. And of course, more to come around that when -- at the Capital Market Day.

Our next question comes from the line of George Webb of Morgan Stanley.

A couple of questions, please. I mean, firstly, you mentioned the slightly better-than-expected Q1. Where did you see that outperformance versus your expectations prior to the quarter? Or was it pretty broad-based? And then secondly is kind of a twist on some of the questions that have already been asked. With regards to the latest waves of agentic AI coding tools and the innovation that's come out over the last few months, are your developers seeing any kind of step changes with regards to the ability to reduce delivery time lines and effort in certain project types? Or are those kind of feeling more like incremental improvements than significant ones?

So on the outperformance, I would say probably where we came a bit ahead is in U.K. and North America. On the agentic AI, yes, I mean, we see a difference, but it is not across the board. I think what is difficult is basically what's happening at scale. So yes, there are some areas where we see a real difference, but there are some areas where we still find it complicated to be able to deploy.

And also, it depends on client environment and clients themselves. Some clients are still pretty hesitant around some of these. So it is a mixed bag, but where we're able to really deploy well and we're able to have a clean environment with a proactive client and good working environment and the perfect skills, yes, you get really -- you can start to really see some good impact, and that's positive.

Our next question comes from the line of Mo Moawalla from Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on the good performance in Q1 also relative to peers. I had 2. Firstly, could you talk where you are on the extraction of some of the revenue synergies on WNS? I know you sounded quite optimistic in terms of the pipeline, but where are we? I know it's still early in the year. And to what is this also kind of driving the connection to some of these kind of larger transformation deals that you're talking about?

And then secondly, just in terms of sort of gross margin evolution, there's obviously pressure on the customer side, you talked about kind of agentic AI now starting to go from pilot to more mainstream projects or larger transformation, how should we think of the kind of impact of this in terms of the gross margin? And really, I would be interesting to get some perspective from prior cycles. So for example, when you went from on-prem to cloud, there was a sort of perception of, look, IT services are not going to be needed. But in the end, digital and cloud drove that big mix improvement. So curious to get your perspective on that kind of more medium-term evolution of the margin as agentic goes more mainstream.

Okay. So listen, on revenue synergies from WNS, as you know, we are quite satisfied so far in terms of some of what's being generated. The pipeline is pretty strong. As you know, it takes a bit of time to shape some of these new larger deals, but they are there. Some very large deals are being shaped up on the back of our intelligent operation concept. So I mean, I'm -- frankly, I'm really quite satisfied, and it's really working well. And we're really generating double-digit growth on the legacy Capgemini part and the WNS part. So -- and it's quite profitable. So I think it's so far, so good from that perspective.

On the gross margin, listen, again, for me, you have to think about it is the ability to be able to have improvement in gross margin is coming from value creation, okay? If you take the example, when we move to offshore, the reason why there was margin expansion because there was so much value being created that the value could be shared. And here, I think with the agentic AI transformation, we are on the brink of something that's similar. If you're really able to deliver the value that is expected, there's enough value creation for us and the client to be able to share into that value, okay? If it's an incremental improvement, it gets squeezed. But we are at the early stage. So the value is not yet delivered.

There's a perspective about delivering the value, but we haven't yet delivered the value at scale. But if you're able to deliver the value at scale, it will accelerate the deployment and clients will be more willing to give part of that value away to people who really help them achieve it. And that's why we're trying to position ourselves. It's really showing that the value can be created. And I insist, this is a business transformation. It is not a technology transformation. It's a business transformation, supported by technology.

And what makes it different is that the value we create is visible, tangible and measurable, okay? It will not come in the future as a consequence of technology deployment. And I think that makes a whole difference because we are associated directly with visible, tangible value creation. And I think that puts us in a great place to see how we can share better in terms of that value creation.

Our next question comes from the line of Nicolas David from ODDO BHF.

Congrats for the very strong start to the year. I have 2. Actually, the first one is regarding the cyclicality of the sector in the context of current macro, which is as you pointed out, currently not affecting the business, but let's say, that if the conflict in Iran continues, maybe it could have an impact. Do you think that this time the sector could be a bit more or a bit less cyclical than previous cycle, macro cycle given that discretionary spending is already at a very low level and there is a sentiment of emergency from client to invest in AI? Or do you think that it's going to be cyclical like it has always been?

And my second question is regarding Continental Europe. You are mentioning improvements there, but it's not really visible in the constant currency figures. So is there something that we don't see in the CC figure that you want to point out showing that there is real improvement, notably in terms of other Europe. And we have seen some of your peers in that region, rebounding a bit faster than you. So I know that you're overexposed to automotive, which is a tough sector, but do you think that you can take some action to revise the growth faster.

Notably Manufacturing also, you point Manufacturing as a growth driver in the U.S., the drag in Europe. So why is there such a difference between the 2?

Okay. So on the cyclicality of the sector, I mean, listen, I don't see any signs of anything slowing down so far. And yes, the urgency around the AI investment is what was going to carry the sector growth, okay? So right now, I feel quite comfortable. We haven't seen any early signs of things slowing down. So that's positive.

On Continental Europe, listen, again, when I look at the details, I look at our different countries, the underlying trends, we are improving. France has improved. France would end up getting back to growth. I remember we were at minus 4% or 5%, 2 or 3 quarters ago. So yes, no, things are improving. In part, we have some unfavorable mix that basically playing against us. Auto is still negative in Europe. So we take auto. It's positive in the U.S., it's negative in Europe. Still negative, so it's still a drag in Europe. It's fading away but it's still a drag.

On the other side, aerospace and defense, for example, is now quite positive, same thing on Life Sciences. So we start to see improving trends in Europe. It's slower because of the mix and the size that we have. And then we have 1 or 2 areas of weakness that we're trying to address in some countries, specifically in the next 2 or 3 quarters. But overall, I'm quite confident on the fact that Europe is rebounding and that we will see a better growth rate going into H2.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Briest from UBS.

Yes. Nive, I think you talked about margin trends for the year being back-end loaded. Can you give a bit more sort of context around that? I'm assuming that WNS has a sort of positive impact on the first half, but how should we think about the seasonality of margins this year given the Fit for Growth program, maybe having more of a second half impact? Is the historical H1, H2 sort of trend something we should look for?

And then WNS, I think, historically got about 20% of its revenues from travel and leisure and shipping and logistics. And I appreciate your comments, Aiman, about broader demand seems constant. But anything you could say about the profile of customers in those sectors and whether you're expecting any sort of challenges in Q2, and that's why you're looking for a slight deceleration in organic growth?

Okay. Michael, let me address the first point. So I think I first want to reiterate that we are confident about our full year margin guidance. I just want to set that out upfront. Now as far as H1 is concerned, we expect the reported margin to be broadly in line with last year. And coming back to your point on seasonality. The seasonality is pretty straightforward. The benefits from the Fit for Growth initiative will be visible in H2 and not H1. And I think to further sort of mention that in the context of the Continental Europe point that was asked earlier and Aiman made, we do have some bench that continues to sort of build up in Q1. So it's like a bit of a headwind there, which we expect will then get sorted and resort in H2 as we go through from our Fit for Growth initiatives. So sort of that gives you a perspective of essentially how we're thinking about margins.

So the revenue from travel and leisure, no. frankly, we don't see -- we haven't seen any slowdown so far. There might be small fluctuation, but there's nothing that's significant that would impact the revenue at this stage, Michael.

And maybe just to confirm, you're saying stable on last year's Capgemini stand-alone margin for H1 because WNS obviously was a higher-margin business. You're not saying pro forma.

I'm saying on a like-for-like basis, yes.

On a like for like basis.

Meaning the full Capgemini, Capgemini plus WNS. That's what I mean.

Our next question comes from the line of Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas.

Just 2 for me, please. Just one on bookings, up 6%. Could you just give us a sense of the contribution from WNS and Cloud4C in here. I'm just curious on the bookings front, how is that relative to your expectations? Did you see any impact in late March from the Middle East conflict? And second question just on gross margins, please, again. You mentioned last year, Continental Europe was a drag here. We're seeing some stabilization, some improvement. How confident are you that last year was a sort of low point for gross margins and perhaps some thoughts on the trajectory from here?

Okay. Sorry. So on bookings contribution, I mean, at this stage on WNS, we take bookings equal revenue. So when we make acquisition for the first couple of quarters, we don't track direct bookings, and we take booking equal revenue because most of the time when some of these companies don't really track bookings directly the same way we do them as we have a different way of doing it. So it will be -- we start tracking real bookings from WNS starting in Q2.

But overall, taking the concept of bookings out the business expectation coming out of WNS and the growth remains pretty good. So what we have in the pipeline, the deal we're signing will continue to fuel growth in the coming quarters, if that's really what was underlying your question.

On the gross margin -- sorry, what is a -- yes, I'm not sure about the low point of last year on gross margin, I'm not sure I understand the question. If you can rephrase it, please.

Sure. Yes. Last year, gross margin saw a little bit of pressure. Our understanding was that was really driven by the softness in Europe. And we're now starting to see Europe stabilize. You're talking about some improvement there. So I guess with that in mind, should we think that last year gross margins were low point and it should trend higher from here?

Yes. We should see improvement as we deploy our Fit for Growth program. Okay. So we should definitely see improvement in H2. It's a bit early to talk about the one in H1. But for the full year, we should see improvement as fit for growth to get deeper.

It kicks into H2 more than H1.

Thank you very much. That was the last question. We wish you a great day and look forward to interacting with you pretty soon. Next time, Capital Market Day, May 27. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Capgemini Full Year 2025 Results Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Aiman Ezzat, CEO. Sir, Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for joining us for the Full year 2025 results call, and I'm joined, of course, by our CFO, Nive Bhagat. So Capgemini delivered a solid set of results for 2025. Operating margin and organic free cash flow were on target and revenue growth finished above the upgraded guidance. In a demand environment that remained largely unchanged, our underlying performance strengthened quarter after quarter with momentum improving across regions, businesses and sectors. We won where clients invest in cloud, data and AI and digital business process services. We captured where it matters most to clients, the large transformation programs.

For the year, revenues were EUR 22.46 billion, representing 3.4% growth at constant currency with around 2.5 points of scope impact. Bookings were EUR 24.36 billion, which represents a solid 1.08 book-to-bill for the year and a strong 1.21 in Q4, which is really an evidence of sustained commercial traction driven by a higher number of large deals. We demonstrated the strong resilience of our operating margin at 13.3% and organic free cash flow at EUR 1.95 billion in spite of cost pressure due to a higher bench in Continental Europe. Normalized EPS stands at EUR 12.95, plus 5.8% year-on-year. In line with our dividend policy, the Board will propose a EUR 3.4 per share dividend at the Annual General Meeting.

So in a fast-changing environment, we also took strategic steps to lead in AI, Intelligent Operations and to reinforce our position on Sovereignty, and I will discuss these market trends shortly. So we finished the year on a strong note with another improvement in our underlying growth in Q4. Constant currency growth was 10.6% in Q4, including a scope impact of about 6.5 points, driven primarily by WNS and Cloud4C.

Now stepping back and focusing on the underlying trend, we clearly see the benefits from the actions implemented over the last quarter. All regions improved between Q1 and Q4. North America recorded the strongest acceleration, while U.K. and Ireland and APAC and LatAm improved on an already solid performance. France gradually improved, but it remains challenging at year-end. The recovery in the rest of Europe was more pronounced and is now back to growth. The improvement is also visible across sectors, which all have significantly improved since the beginning of the year, even manufacturing is now stable year-on-year, excluding M&A impact.

Finally, from a business perspective, Operations and Engineering recorded the strongest acceleration, both at constant currency and organically with double-digit growth in digital BPS across both Capgemini and WNS. One of the highlights of 2025 is the strength of our ecosystem of technology partnerships. Today, more than 2/3 of our bookings are associated with our top 12 technology partners. And in a world driven by cloud data and AI, cyber and sovereignty, clients are looking for solutions combining ecosystem of technology partners and services provided by relevant transformational focus, leveraging industry domain and functional expertise.

I also want to highlight specifically the Defense sector, which continues to enjoy double-digit growth in 2025. And as the leading European player, Capgemini is uniquely positioned to capture this structural growth opportunity. I do expect to see further acceleration in the next 2 to 3 years as Europe ramps up its defense programs. So we expect good growth to continue in H1. For Q1, in line with traditional seasonality, constant currency growth should be in the range of 8.5% to 9.5% in constant currency with around 6.5 points of contribution from M&A.

So quick words about our 2025 ESG policy achievements. So again, here, we demonstrated continued improvement in corporate responsibility with major progress on our ESG road map. So let me highlight a few points. From an environment standpoint, we accelerated towards our target of being net zero across all scopes by 2040, reaching 100% renewable electricity for all operations. We also made notable progress in gender balance. Proportion of women in the global workforce reached 40.5%, up 7 points since 2019. And for women among executives, leadership position, we reached 30.5%, up 13 points since 2019.

Finally, on governance, we made further progress around cybersecurity with a CyberVadis score of 990 out of 1,000, positioning us as the leader in our industry.

Now let's focus on our growth engine. And of course, let's start with AI. So AI in the enterprise has become a reality. Maturity is increasing about its possibilities, but also about what it will take to achieve real adoption and measurable results. So 2026 is really the moment of truth for AI, the moment where AI must transition from [indiscernible] to measurable business impact embedded in core operations, delivering value through AI-powered transformation. As we move to transformation, there is a growing awareness that the foundations are not yet in place, whether we're talking about infrastructure, data, standardized governance, risk and compliance frameworks. In practice, clients face siloed legacy systems preventing AI workflow orchestration, poor data availability and quality preventing AI performance and fine-tuning and legacy workloads running on-premise and preventing AI compute at scale.

Finally, it's about human AI collaboration and trust. This is where the real complexity lies. This is our playing field. All this complexity, this is where we can drive real transformation requiring strong business acumen, domain knowledge, transformation capabilities, data and AI and technology depth. And in this context, Capgemini has the right capabilities and set up to deliver AI transformation to our clients, leveraging appropriate ecosystem and partnerships.

Now let's take a couple of examples to make that more concrete. So just -- the first client example is a client who want to identify its procurement activities end-to-end to be more competitive. So from strategy and sourcing to procure to pay and end-to-end processes. So we are currently building a suite of 7 Agentic products that will provide market intelligence, assist buyers in the sourcing phase, analyze supplier responses to tenders, automate food cost calculations, simulate cost scenarios, analyze cost variances, consolidate forecasting, draft contracts and automate value tracking. As you see, the scope is pretty comprehensive. And the product is targeted to deliver tangible impact in the short term, strengthen working capital by optimizing payment terms, reducing inventory exposure and improving the cash impact of procurement, decrease operational and purchasing costs through automation and smarter decision-making and lower process execution costs and reduce reliance on manual efforts across procurement workflow. We can already document EUR 27 million of savings to date to what has been achieved.

Our second client was facing issues of data center reliability with significant financial impact up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per minute of downtime of outage in addition to reputation damage. We developed a physics-informed AI model, identifying abnormal variation to predict and prevent equipment catastrophic failures, and alerting platform integrated with existing order workflow that's not requiring any operator training and a global and unified view of equipment operation, relationship and performance, feeding back operational and design improvement. Implemented and live, our solution has successfully prevented and mitigated catastrophic events, saving our customers millions and millions every year. And just one key metric, we have avoided around 50 critical incidents prevented per year.

Now moving on to the second vector of growth, which is Intelligent Operations, which we consider still to be the largest showcase for Agentic AI. WNS was acquired in that context to provide the scale and vertical expertise required to lead in this market. The integration is proceeding as planned and should be operational in H2. I can confirm that the benefits are on track. Let me remind you, annual run rate of revenue synergies of EUR 100 million to EUR 140 million by the end of 2027 and annual run rate of cost synergies of EUR 50 million to EUR 70 million also by the end of 2027. The go-to-market activities as expected, are vibrant, and we have today 100 cross-selling opportunities identified. The Intelligent Operations pipeline of opportunities also growing with some very large deals in pursuit. With Intelligent Operations, we are leveraging AI to reshape and run entire areas of client business operation to achieve end-to-end strategic value creation by combining cost efficiencies and enhanced business outcomes. Happy to report that we closed our first mega deal of over EUR 600 million for a large global company, covering multiple functions and processes based on a true Agentic AI-led transformation solution, delivering significant cost reduction and enhanced business outcome and operating on a non-FTE based commercial model. So this is the largest of several contracts signed in the last 4 months with some potential extensions of scope. And this is a clear proof that the Intelligent Operations strategy is working and will be one of our growth pillars in the coming years.

Let me move on now to sovereignty, where we see a significant appetite from clients to help them develop and implement their sovereignty strategy. This has become a huge topic in today's multipolar world. I took this as proof -- I take it as proof, this striking figure. Over 50% of services contracts will include some sovereignty requirements by 2029, up from 5% in 2025 according to Gartner. And sovereignty is not a monolithic framework, but is composed of 4 key dimensions: Data, operations, technology and regulation, and no one can really be sovereign across the full value chain. Now it is clear that as the largest European player, we are the driving force in developing offerings, ecosystems and partnerships to help large organizations implement sovereignty enabling solutions adapted to their needs and environment. We reinforced our solutions portfolio with the acquisition of Cloud4C, providing hyperautomated, AI-ready, locally governed cloud operation with sovereign compliant monitoring, disaster recovery, cybersecurity and continuity and in addition, with specialization across some industries and sovereign compliance frameworks.

Now we are leveraging Cloud4C setup to create a European-hosted mirror platform to operate our European customers' sovereign workload. This is a perfect complement to our Bleu SecNumCloud JV with Orange in France. We are also leveraging our core partners, sovereign solution. We made 3 announcements in the past week with Google Cloud, AWS and Microsoft in addition to the sovereign technology partnership signed with SAP in November. Now we are extremely well positioned to capture the growth trend on sovereignty. Now the market is moving fast. And while a few areas have been softer in recent years, the opportunity set ahead of us is really compelling, especially in AI, Intelligent Operations and Sovereignty, as I have outlined earlier. We are executing a clear plan with selective strategic M&A, disciplined investment and a sharper focus on where we lead.

Today, we are accelerating also our capability shift in order to deliver on the growth agenda. This will translate in a number of country-specific workforce and skills adaptation initiatives, leading to an estimated EUR 700 million restructuring over the next 2 years. These Fit for Growth local initiatives strengthen our competitive position and support sustained and profitable growth.

For 2026, our targets are clear: Constant currency revenue growth of around 6.5% to 8.5%, with inorganic contribution of around 4.5 to 5 points. Operating margin of 13.6% to 13.8%. Organic free cash flow of around EUR 1.8 billion to EUR 1.9 billion, including the estimated year-on-year increase of around EUR 200 million in restructuring cash out. In 2026, we're going to demonstrate our ability to set the group on a new profitable growth agenda around AI, Intelligent Operations and Sovereignty. And this will further reinforce the group's financial profile. We are clearly pivoting the group to be the catalyst for enterprise-wide AI adoption, more to come during the Capital Markets Day in May.

Thank you for your attention, and I now hand over to Nive.

Thank you, Aiman, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with the headlines for FY '25. We delivered a solid top line at EUR 22,465 million, which is up plus 1.7% on a reported basis and plus 3.4% at constant currency, placing us above the top end of the outlook we upgraded in October. This shows that our growth initiatives put in place over the year yielded results despite a mixed environment. On profitability, we protected the operating margin at 13.3%, stable year-on-year and in line with the guidance we set. Holding the operating margin despite the challenges we have faced in Continental Europe is proof point that our operating model is more resilient than ever before and shows the continued effectiveness of our cost discipline. Net profit group share ended at EUR 1,601 million with basic EPS at EUR 9.46. Normalized EPS, which strips out the other operating income and expense items was EUR 12.95, plus 5.8% year-on-year. Finally, we delivered organic free cash flow of EUR 1,949 million, in line with the around EUR 1.9 billion target we set at the beginning of the year, a strong testament to our financial discipline and focus.

Let me take a moment to talk you now through the shape of the year. Growth rates gradually improved quarter after quarter at constant currency, but also ex M&A. Underlying growth strengthened further into Q4 and after taking into account the scope impact of around 6.5 points, our constant currency growth reached 10.6%. I'm happy to confirm that the organic growth in Q4 was therefore around 4%. To this effect, there is an error on Slide 27 of the pack.

Now reflecting on the acceleration since the beginning of the year, what gives us confidence is that this wasn't a single sector or single region spike. We saw broad-based improvement across all businesses, regions and sectors. Currency impact was negative at 370 bps, so that's minus 370 bps in Q4 and minus 170 bps for FY '25. Based on current rates, currency headwinds should continue into Q1 2026 at slightly over 4 points and then settle at minus 1 to minus 1.5 points for the full year 2026. In summary, while the demand environment has remained largely unchanged, our current momentum is clearly stronger than it was a year ago.

Turning to bookings. This was EUR 24.4 billion for the year with a very solid EUR 7.2 billion in Q4. In constant currency, our bookings are up plus 3.9% for the year and plus 9.1% in Q4, which mirrors the improvement in revenue momentum we just discussed. The book-to-bill of 1.21 in the quarter and 1.08 for the year is strong by historical standards, and this reflects 2 things. We continue to win in clients, new strategic priorities, particularly data and AI, and we won a higher number of large deals, which brings some added visibility. As Aiman said earlier, our portfolio investments from cloud, data and AI to digital core modernization, Sovereignty and Intelligent Operations continues to show good conversion, which sets us up well for the future.

From a sector perspective, the improvement extended into Q4 on a like-for-like basis. This is also visible in manufacturing, which was stable in Q4. This solid performance was complemented by the contribution of WNS and Cloud4C acquisitions, which was mostly visible in the services, financial services, energy and utilities and consumer goods and retail sectors.

Turning now to the full year, again at constant currency. Financial services and TMT sectors were the most dynamic in 2025, growing plus 9.2% and plus 7.7%, respectively. With the exception of manufacturing, which remained slightly negative, all the other sectors posted low to mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2025. Geographically, Q4 showed a step-up in underlying trends in our largest regions. North America improved and rest of Europe returned to positive growth. Growth rate improved in France, although still negative in Q4. The scope impact from WNS and Cloud4C is most visible in North America, United Kingdom and Ireland and in Asia Pacific and Latin America. In Q4, this is lifting these regions' already solid growth rates to around 20% on a constant currency basis.

For the full year at constant currency, revenues in North America increased by plus 7.3% year-on-year. This has been fueled by continued underlying acceleration throughout the year with strong performance of financial services and to a lesser extent, in the TMT and manufacturing sectors. United Kingdom and Ireland region grew plus 10.5%, primarily driven by robust underlying momentum, notably in the financial services, TMT and public sectors. France revenues decreased by minus 4.1% in a challenging environment as illustrated by the persistent weakness of the manufacturing sector and the contraction of the energy utilities and the consumer goods and retail sectors.

In the Rest of Europe region, revenues declined by minus 0.7%. The good performance of the public sector and the growth in Energy & Utilities and the services sectors were offset by a weak manufacturing sector. Finally, revenues in the Asia Pacific and Latin America region grew plus 13.8%, driven by financial services as well as the solid traction in the consumer goods and retail and TMT sectors.

On profitability, North America operating margin expanded 40 bps, so that's plus 40 bps to 16.9%, while U.K. and Ireland held a strong 18%, which is 170 bps below a record 2024, which remains a very healthy level. Operating margin in France stands at 10.9% compared to 10.2% last year. As commented in H1, this improvement has been driven by one-off items. Excluding these one-offs, there has been no improvement in the underlying margin. Asia Pacific and Latin America was 12.6% at plus 20 bps and the rest of Europe ended at 11.4% at minus 60 bps. Across our businesses, the Q4 sequential uplift was also visible. Growth rates improved across all business lines on a constant currency basis, but also ex M&A. Strategy and operations, which has no M&A impact, improved significantly. This came with some contrast across regions as we have seen during previous quarters. The other highlight is Operations and Engineering. Let me unpack this as both WNS and Cloud4C are reported here. Starting with digital BPS, this is clearly the fastest-growing business. We have double-digit growth on a like-for-like basis across both Capgemini and WNS. Cloud Services and Engineering are also now positive.

Moving on to the full year at constant currency. Applications and Technology grew plus 4.6%. Operations and Engineering, plus 4.9% and Strategy and Transformation at plus 2.4%. In terms of head count evolution, head count closed at 423,400, up 24% year-on-year and 19% since end of September, primarily reflecting the WNS integration. WNS is also accretive to our offshore leverage. Offshore leverage moved from 60% in September to 66% at the year-end. This is up plus 8 points year-on-year. Attrition was slightly down to 14.9% on a last 12-month basis before we incorporate WNS data in 2026.

Let's now look at the operating margin bridge. Gross margin was 27.1%, down 30 bps year-on-year. This primarily reflects a prolonged soft market in Continental Europe. In this context, I would like to point out that our gross margin has been significantly more resilient than in any other previous down cycle. Additionally, in the current demand environment, we have tightened our selling expenses by 20 bps and our G&A by 10 bps. The net result is operating margin stable at 13.3% within the range guided for the year.

Moving on to financial results. With the interest expense of the new bonds and lower interest income on cash, we moved from a net interest income of EUR 13 million last year to a net expense of EUR 30 million this year. On income tax, the effective tax rate is down year-on-year to 24.6% at the back of some noncash positive one-offs, which I did mention in H1.

Now looking from operating margins to the bottom line. As anticipated, other operating income and expenses are up year-on-year at EUR 784 million. The restructuring costs amounted to EUR 205 million, in line with our comments in July. And with the acquisition of WNS, our acquisition and integration costs are at EUR 97 million. This takes the operating profit to EUR 2,199 million, which is 9.8% of revenues, down from 10.7% last year, given those noncore items.

After financial and tax effects previously discussed, group net profit stands at EUR 1,601 million, down 4.2%. Basic EPS is EUR 9.46, down minus 3.7%, while normalized EPS was EUR 12.95, up plus 5.8% year-on-year. On cash generation and capital allocation, we generated EUR 1,949 million of organic free cash flow, stable year-on-year and in line with our around EUR 1.9 billion target. This year, again, the conversion of our net profit to organic free cash flow is clearly above 1 at 1.2x. In terms of our capital allocation, in 2025, we deployed around EUR 4.9 billion, approximately EUR 3.8 billion on WNS and C4C, EUR 1.1 billion on shareholder returns, which was split between EUR 578 million of dividends and EUR 542 million of buybacks. The employee shareholder program led to a EUR 0.3 billion capital increase, leading to a net outflow of EUR 4.6 billion. On the balance sheet, we redeemed the EUR 0.8 billion bond in June and then successfully completed a EUR 4 billion bond issue in September. We closed the year at EUR 5.3 billion of net debt. And as anticipated, the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio stands at 1.66, and this compares to 0.7x a year ago. And as a reminder, this was 2.8x post the Altron acquisition. In 2026, as we integrate WNS, we expect limited M&A and will accelerate our buybacks, which is consistent with the EUR 2 billion share buyback program announced in July.

On that note, Aiman, I hand back to you.

Thank you, Nive. So before we move on to the Q&A, let me briefly acknowledge the current market volatility that reflects the perception and uncertainty of AI-related impacts. So what matters, however, is unchanged. Capgemini fundamentals are solid. Our strategic priorities are clear, and our teams remain fully focused on our clients' needs. Now listening to our large Global 2000 clients, their needs are rooted in who they are, complex organization that requires end-to-end transformation capabilities, global execution at scale, deep industry expertise, technology-agnostic integration and rigorous regulatory compliance governance. These structural needs do not disappear with AI, they become even more essential. And that makes Capgemini's role integral as organizations navigate the future. The adoption of AI and GenAI will drive sustained profitable growth for the group and value for all our stakeholders. In 2026, we'll affirm our critical role in making AI real for our clients.

With that, let's open the Q&A and to allow a maximum number of people in the queue to ask questions, I kindly ask you to restrict yourself to one question and a single follow-up. Operator, could you please share the Q&A instructions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Congratulations for the fourth quarter first. So two questions for me. As you can guess, given the increasing scope impact in the fourth quarter, it's a bit tough for us to reconcile the numbers. I know you will not share with us the organic performance by regions, but I was interested to see if you could provide a bit more insight of the underlying organic trends in the main regions between the third and fourth quarter. In other words, if you've seen further improvements in U.S. and U.K. or if the improvement mostly come from a better Europe?

And then my follow-up is probably going to talk more during the CMD on that. But when you discuss with clients, their midterm ambition and their potential budget, I would say, 3, 4 years out, when they look at the additional business regarding AI versus the savings that you will bring to them, do you see them having in mind a reduction of their budget? Or what is their stance at the moment?

Listen, underlying organic and -- Nive can add precision to that. I mean, for me, everything is trending in the positive direction. I mean, definitely in North America, we continue to see further acceleration, which really underlines the recovery. U.K., France has improved and rest of Europe has improved. So -- and on the organic number, just to remind you, Nive said that the organic number is around 4% in Q4 overall for the group.

And I think just to add, geographically, Q4 has showed a step-up in underlying trends across all our regions. So North America has improved. Yes, rest of Europe has returned to positive growth. And of course, we have seen some improvements as far as France is concerned as well.

Okay. On your second question, I don't think clients are thinking this way about reduction, et cetera. Clients are looking at how critical it is for them to adopt AI and where it can have an impact, both from a strategic perspective and from this. They are not thinking about, okay, I'm going to save money, I'm going to reduce my spend, et cetera. They're looking about how can I get real value out of AI, and they're ready to put the money on the table to make it happen because they consider that as being critical to their future in terms of transformation. I don't think we have -- I have seen clients discussing in 3, 4 years down the line, when I do the -- will I reduce my IT cost or will I reduce my spend on AI, et cetera, anything like that. Laurent, I don't think we are there. I think clients are really around where is the value creation. This is moving fast, how I can adopt it, where can I deploy it? How do I get benefit out of it, whether it's savings, time to market, innovation, better customer relationship, et cetera. And this is really what focus is a lot more than predicting what they will do in 3 or 4 years. I mean you see the uncertainty that's creating in many industries, including in ours by AI and really people are dealing with that more than trying to plan, am I going to save money and reduce my IT budgets in 3 or 4 years.

We will now take the next question. And the question comes from the line of Nicolas David from ODDO BHF.

Congrats from my side as well for this very strong end of the year. My first question is regarding the Q4 to Q1 trends you are describing. Could you help us understand if in Q4, you saw some kind of exceptional budget flush or elements which prompt you to expect an organic growth at the low to mid-range of your guidance you described for Q1, a bit below what you saw in Q4? Or is it just comps or a bit of caution?

And second question is, when you discuss with clients and you are signing contracts about identification of workflows, could you help us understand if those projects are done and those identification projects are done inside the traditional cloud business software with tool provided by the software providers, the legacy software provider? Or are they designed using new entrants tools or tools that you are developing yourself around the historical application layers?

Okay. Listen, on the Q4 to Q1, it's more, I think, the seasonality that basically that you see that's going to impact thing, okay? I mean we'll always build some caution in what we say around where we head, but we are quite confident around the growth that we see in front of us. I mean, no specific concern that we see in terms of the business going into Q1. On the project, I think it's all of the above. Because, as you know, everybody wants to put their AI agents, their AI models, drive the consumption towards them. So whether you talk about software vendors and the Agentic layer, you talk about the hyperscalers and you talk about all the new entrants like OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, et cetera. All of the above work, they're all winning some business. We work with all of them. And the question is what is the pertinent solution for the client based on what he needs and who, at the end of the day, based on the strategy, whether it's short term or medium term, based on who has been the most convincing to them in terms of what they are pitching, and this is really what the clients go. But in a number of cases, they're also experimenting. Many clients have not have a long-term strategy, deciding of saying this is what I will do, this is my line and I will not move from it. And I think -- if people evolve and bring the right solution that are really pertinent to the client, to the client industries and specific environment, that is what they will adopt. What we have the client is navigate through some of that and ensure that they actually get real value because this is not about what solution or what agency going to adopt is how to make it happen in your critical processes, how to ensure that they're enterprise scale, how to ensure that they are safe, how to ensure that you can trust, how to ensure that the human AI model works. That's really where the complexity lies. But at this stage, we don't see clients saying, I will go this way or this way. I think it's still pretty open.

All right. But based on what you see, you believe that incumbent software player can be relevant in this move.

Yes. I mean, again, I heard a number of technology CEOs talk about it, including from the hyperscalers recently. I mean, the thing about the death of software, I think, is a bit premature. The question is, what value are you bringing? If you don't evolve, I mean, same thing in our industry. If you don't evolve, software vendors don't evolve, then they will have a lesser role to play in the future. But you have to evolve to be able to embrace and bring the value to clients. At the end of the day, what clients are looking is not should I buy a software, should I buy an [indiscernible], I want value delivered. Who can help me deliver tangible value. That's what they're looking for. And if you play in there, then you have a role to play. If you don't contribute to that, then you get commoditized and basically downplayed over time. Simple.

Your next question today comes from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays.

Your guidance for 2026 is obviously very solid, but still below the exit rate of Q4 on an organic basis. Can you help us to square this? And was there anything exceptional in Q4? Or have you just baked in significant conservatism into the guide? I noticed you called out still a complex macro environment earlier.

And then secondly, a lot of focus, obviously, on helping your clients adopting AI. But can you speak a bit more about your internal road map to adopt AI to drive efficiency and what financial impact that could have over the long term?

Okay. So listen, the guidance, I mean, when you start the year, I mean, we still have an environment that's basically not the most stable environment. So yes, we're going to have some conservatism as we start the year, and we'll see how the year plays out. But when you see the geopolitics, discussion around tariffs and a number of hot points across the world, you're going to have to be cautious and not just replicate what we see in Q4 of saying this is how the year is going to look out. So we see a solid H1. We have good views on H2, but we know there's still fluctuations that can happen along the year. If I go to your -- to the folks, I think it's a very good question around how we're adopting AI. So first, there is 2 key areas. In addition, we talked a bit about what we're doing with clients, 2 key areas.

One is our operations, second thing in our delivery. So in our delivery, we are pushing. And it was slow because some of it is linked to our client environment. We work mainly in our client environment. If they don't provide us the tool, et cetera, we cannot really take advantage of that. And then there is client conservatism about what we use, what impact it's going to have, is it safe, et cetera, before just going for the savings. We start to see some more accelerated benefits in some areas. I cannot -- so it's not across the board still, but we really start to see pockets where we're gaining maturity, clients are gaining maturity and where we see we can progress faster. I mean, typically, if you take our offering in Intelligent Operations, that's what we do. I mean we are basically telling the client, we take this over, we're going to do the Agentic transformation. And of course, by doing that, as you imagine, we go up the experience curve quite quickly because we are adopting internally in our delivery model, how to make that happen. And we have a number of success. I talked about a couple of examples, but there's a number of others. So we are going up that experience curve area by area, business by business to see how we can accelerate the adoption. And of course, we're pushing for a strong acceleration this year, okay?

The second part is in our Operations. And here, we have developed and created an internal platform data. So what we push to our clients, we have done it. We have built all the LLM layers above that with one of the technology partners, one of the large technology partners. And we are now -- have started developing the different Agentic layers. HR agent, sales agent, finance agent, proposal agent. So we are deploying internally what we're preaching to our clients. I think we'll probably dive more in detail around the number of these elements at Capital Markets Day and talk about what the impact that we see in terms of the future as we both adopt and deploy more of the solution also at clients.

Your next question today comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.

If I can just stay on the AI debate. So the bear case on the IT services industry, as you know, is around the negative impact from cutting efficiency, massive simplification in software deployment. Can you share with us what you think the market is missing and how CAP can maintain its relevance in that new ecosystem? And if I can get a follow-up around pricing. I mean, is there any specific area where you do see significant price pressure from more efficient delivery supported by GenAI?

So listen, again, I recognize the market is looking for clear evidence that AI is already translating into tangible value, whether it's gross margin or both. And for me, shifting the perception is not about making promise, it's really about execution. And that's really what we're focusing on. We're focusing on execution around growth, around margin, on cash flow, also providing more and more visibility and understanding about the trajectory in terms of how AI is progressing. We are embedding AI across all our offerings. So we are redesigning our offering in a certain way. So it's by design, not telling people see how you can use AI to improve things. Basically, we are designing how AI should be used. And I think this is what really where everybody is going and where we're helping our clients to go. You have to redesign your processes, the way you work and everything around the impact of AI. But I can tell you really when I -- besides examples, when I really talk to clients, the level of adoption we're still at the beginning. And because the transformation is complex, this is not easy things to do. And our best response to some of the fears in the market today is on delivering value, delivering value, explaining where we are winning, explaining the partners with whom we're signing who basically talk with them around how we're delivering value and how we need them and some will come in the near future, additional ones. So it's really about proof points. I mean this is our best response is proving that this works, that we're able to create value across the value chain of what we're doing in Capgemini.

On the pricing, I don't think there's any change. There's not a specific area of pricing pressure. The environment is competitive. And of course, as you demonstrate more value creation potential, you, of course, can be able to generate better margin in certain areas. And I think this is really what we are focusing on.

And the next question comes from the line of Mo Moawalla from Goldman Sachs.

And it's encouraging to see the revenue inflection. On the revenue growth, first of all, I just wanted to sort of clarify how is the kind of discretionary spending environment? To what extent did you get a bit of sort of budget flush effect? And then looking forward, you talked about some encouraging pipeline on intelligent operations. Is that something that's sort of baked into the guidance in terms of -- or is that sort of going to be as part of the conservatism you talked about?

And then secondly, while the kind of growth is inflecting, we are seeing this kind of erosion on the gross margin. Can you sort of just help us understand that dynamic going forward? And that should we sort of anticipate that continuous kind of erosion in gross margin as pricing environment remains tough and you're kind of having to see some deflationary effect from AI? And is that sort of then what can you do on the OpEx side to try to kind of manage that impact on the operating margin?

So first on the revenue growth. No, I mean, I don't consider there was any budget flush coming into Q4. I think it's really real growth that we have driven and improving across the board, as we said, even manufacturing now is not a headwind anymore because even excluding M&A, manufacturing has become flattish. So it's all trending in the right direction. From Intelligent Ops, we will never bet to include in our forecast some very large deals. So in our guidance, we will never bet on large deals. The other thing, just remember so that we don't get -- we understand the full impact of that. Some of these deals, as we say, these are complex deals. I mean we're talking about clients ending up a chunk of their operation and trusting us to run them and to transform them. So this is not -- it takes time to be able to close some of these deals.

And the second thing, it takes time to transition. So the revenue doesn't come immediately. So a deal that we have today in the pipeline will have minimal impact in 2026, will have full impact in 2027, okay, just so that to you have a back of the envelope idea on that. Nive, on the gross margin.

Yes. On the gross margin, clearly, of course, this primarily reflects a fairly tough -- prolonged tough market that, of course, we've had in Continental Europe. And I think that's really one of the reasons why the gross margin is where it is. Now having said that, I think the gross margin has been far more resilient in this down cycle than any previous down cycle. And I think if I go back into the past, if I looked at the period of the financial crisis, I think we were down about 180 bps. If I look at COVID, we were down about 120 bps, whereas this time it's 30 bps. So not to sound defensive, but to say, I think we've been pretty resilient through this period of time despite, of course, 7 quarters of negative constant currency growth, just as a reminder. Now coming back, though, to the margin levers, I think, I've always said that the mix and portfolio mix is our biggest area of focus when it comes to that improvement. So that's an area of focus that will continue to happen. And all these investments we've made through our acquisitions, through the portfolio to what we see is going to help with that growth going forward. But additionally, yes, our Fit for Growth initiatives that Aiman just talked about will address some of that and will address some of the margin accretion from that perspective. And we will also, of course, continue to look at everything in terms of our operational parameters. So whether it's SG&A and looking at onshore/offshore, looking at what we do with our pyramid, et cetera, all of those aspects, we will continue to look at very strongly. So the focus is very much an improvement to gross margin as we go ahead, Mo.

Your next question today comes from the line of Michael Briest from UBS.

Can you talk a little bit more about the Fit for Growth program? What your ambition is with the EUR 700 million restructuring envelope? And then thinking about head count more broadly, Obviously, you're using AI internally. WNS, there's an opportunity there around automation. Can you talk about how you expect head count to develop through the course of the year?

And then just on the follow-up would be that EUR 600 million deal that you announced, Aiman, congratulations. How does that sort of fit into the GBP 100 million to GBP 140 million revenue synergies? It seems early to have won something so soon after the deal closed. But you mentioned the full pipeline. Can you give some more context on that and how quickly you can get to that GBP 100 million plus synergies?

Okay. For the Fit for Growth program, I mean, listen, recognition that, first, I mean, you have seen that over the last few quarters, we get some -- we had some challenging environments in Europe, okay, across a number of countries. Some of them are linked to sectors. But also, we are anticipating some evolution from the technology and notably from AI in terms of evolution around some capabilities. So I think -- and we have to do quite a bit of reskilling also in some areas to be able to prepare our workforce for the future. So this is really what this Fit for Growth program is about. This is about basically realigning some capabilities with where we see now the opportunities coming up, whether they're Intelligent Operations, AI, Sovereignty or some other pockets which are emerging where we need to invest. So what we did is basically said we have to move fast. The market is moving fast, and this is about basically doing fast, something that we could do over several years is that we don't have time to waste. We really have to act fast, and we took the decision to be able to accelerate what we do traditionally over time to do it at a much faster pace. So that's for the Fit for Growth program.

On the head count, you're always going to have both aspects. Growth drives head count. And at the same time, we're pushing very hard on AI and automation. Doing large Intelligent Operations deal adds us head counts. On the other side, we also drive a lot of productivity in some of the existing contracts. So the 2 will change. So think in the specific year, how the account is going to evolve will depend very much on the mix of business that we're going to win, how much is onshore, how much is offshore, et cetera. I think what -- the way I would look at it is I definitely expect that over the midterm, what we will see is an increase of revenue per head count. Right now, basically by embarking a large BPO business from WNS, we reduce effectively that because the revenue per head in this type of business is lower. But over time, I definitely expect a trend where with the leverage of Agentic AI, et cetera, we will be driving the revenue per head up. And on Intelligent Operations, we always said, I remember, since you have been following us for a long time, we did all the accretion in terms of revenue, the synergy of revenue on the IGATE deal on one deal, on one client.

And here, basically, yes, we are. We're going to be able to do probably on some of the couple of large deals, a large part of the revenue accretion. It's going to take time for some of this to be able to ramp up.

And just in addition to some of these large deals, also don't neglect the cross-selling opportunities. I mentioned 100 cross-selling opportunities. When you see the size of both businesses on our side, on their side, 100 cross-selling opportunities is a lot of deals. Some of them are small, but some of them are pretty large. I think I answered your three questions.

So we'll be taking one final question as we're coming almost up to the hour.

Your final question comes from the line of Balajee Tirupati from Citi.

Congratulations, Aiman and Nive, on a strong close to 2025, also on winning the mega deal. If I can start with Intelligent Operations, first question there, could you share at this stage, how is the maturity of pipeline of similar mega deals looking at this moment? And also what your thought is about the sustainability of the double-digit growth you're seeing in Intelligent Operations?

And if I may also ask a second question on evolution of AI tools and plug-ins. I do appreciate enterprises are still in early stage of adoption and the readiness is probably at nascent stage as well. So are you seeing or expecting the scope of productivity gains possible increasing and broadening the context not limited to, but for example, comment from Palantir around achieving complex for migration in as little as couple of weeks. How you would expect analyst community to reconcile with that?

So first, I mean, listen, the pipeline, as you know, when you get to large deals, I mean, the closing time is always somewhat difficult to be able to estimate because they can go on for months and months and months before we're able to get to that. But the pipeline is good. We have some very large deals, but we also have some deals which are multi-steps. There's a client with whom we signed the first step around 2 or 3 functions at the end of last year. And now we are basically looking at scope expansion already this year, probably in the first half and maybe another one again later in the year. So they don't all come as one single deal. Sometimes they come as multiple steps in terms of closing some of these deals. But we have good confidence about ability to sustain double-digit growth when we see the pipeline and the deals that we have. I've good confidence for the near future to sustain the double-digit growth around all that business.

On the AI tools and productivity gains, the productivity is coming bit by bit. Whenever I talk to clients, everybody has some nice cases when I ask them at scale. I think there have been interviews with CIOs of large banks recently. When you say what they say, we're still at the beginning because the reality is that besides generating code on an LLM and really trying to integrate that into an enterprise that's very complex with legacy systems, siloed data and all the like, it's a lot more complex. So it takes more time. And yes, there is a gap between CEO's expectation, I can tell you and what his team is able to deliver today. So everybody is trying to accelerate, but there is challenges. On things like Palantir, I think, again, people end up with the headline and they don't dig in detail, okay? And whenever we see something else, we take it seriously. We take it seriously about what is happening, are we missing something, et cetera. And we dig in detail, and we really understand what it is. I think you need to get some people maybe in your organization or other to really dig in detail about what it is. It is -- yes, there is advancement in certain areas. When you look really into the detail of what it is and to what it applies, it's not going to make your SAP migration in 2 weeks, okay? So don't stay on the headline, dig a little bit more in detail. As I say, we take things seriously. We did it. And we understand what exactly what is behind. There is advancements in some areas, but it's not stratospheric in terms of suddenly you can do SAP migration in 2 weeks, okay? That's the headline that people took and that headline is significantly wrong. And some of what they do, really the way it shows applies more to an environment of SMB data than it applies to large corporations, okay?

I love to go into the detail around that, but I assure you, we are not concerned after digging.

Thank you very much. I appreciate, of course, the exchange and all the questions and looking forward to interact with you over the coming days and weeks.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Capgemini Q3 2025 Revenues Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Aiman Ezzat, CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this Q3 2025 revenue call. Today, I'm joined by our CFO, Nive Bhagat. So let's go straight to it. Q3 was a strong quarter for the group better than expected, and this performance is a result of our team's mobilization, targeted actions initiated end of last year and the relevance of our AI-powered business and technology partner positioning. Even in a demand environment that remains largely unchanged, our performance improved steadily in 2025.

The group generated revenues of EUR 5.393 billion, up 2.9% year-on-year at constant currency. This is 2.2 points improvement compared to second quarter of 2025 growth rate of 0.7%. And this improvement has been pretty broad-based. Booking totaled EUR 5.161 billion in Q3 2025, an increase of 1.5% at constant exchange rate. Now this represents a book-to-bill ratio of 0.96 for the period, in line with traditional seasonality.

So the constant currency growth rate improved across most regions, businesses and sectors. By geography, North America recorded the strongest acceleration, reaching 7% year-on-year at constant currency. Growth rates also improved in the U.K. and Ireland and Asia Pacific and Latin America and the gradual improvement in Continental Europe exists, including in France. It has continued to improve a little bit in the third quarter.

From a sector perspective, the strongest growth are in Financial Services and TMT, which is still showing a high single digit. Manufacturing sector continues to improve, but it's still slightly declining year-on-year.

And finally, by business, Application & Technology Services posted a solid growth of 5.7%. Operations & Engineering total revenue also increased by 1.3% with a very strong growth in Business Services, while Strategy & Transformation Services are slightly up by 0.7% year-on-year.

And qualitatively, clients continue to invest selectively. They prioritize initiatives that support operational efficiency and strategic transformation over growth-oriented projects. This continues to define the demand environment in our industry. So in this context, we continue to see strong interest in technology-led solutions that deliver tangible business value. This translates into sustained demand for cloud, digital core, data estate modernization and AI and GenAI solution.

So let me highlight a few deals booked this quarter to illustrate this. For Telia, we are delivering a unified and future-ready digital commerce experience solution enabling personalized journeys, dynamic pricing and seamless system integration. This will enhance customer experience, accelerate product launches and ensure consistency across all digital touch points. And this also lays the foundation for agentic solution development.

For the Netherlands Police, Capgemini will carry out a major digital core upgrade. This project replaces the current legacy system with a modern integrated and future-proof SAP platform that enhances service delivery, reduces complexity and cost and ensures data quality, compliance and agility across the organization. This project will enable the Netherlands police to modernize and streamline their business operation.

And finally, Capgemini will deliver and manage a sovereign cloud infrastructure for a European public sector client. This involves transitioning all client IT system and application to the sovereign cloud and safeguarding dedicated hardware in regional data centers. As a strategic partner, Capgemini takes end-to-end responsibility for the operation of the clients' critical IT infrastructure and applications.

Now our positioning as a business and technology transformation partner for our clients is well recognized. Leading industry analyst firms consistently rank Capgemini as a leader across the key capabilities of the digital economy. Let me just cite a few over the past few months. In Cloud, both Forrester and IDC ranked us as the leader in areas such as application modernization and multicloud managed services, which are both critical to clients seeking to accelerate their digital transformation.

In data and AI, both IDC and Everest have praised our leadership in application development services for AI and AI-enabled transformation and industry-specific AI capabilities. And this underscores our ability to deliver tangible business value for our clients by leveraging AI technologies. We are also recognized for our strong foundation in business process services. This position is now further strengthened with the acquisition of WNS, which expands our scale and unlocks new value with Agentic AI-enabled intelligent operation.

Finally, we continue to lead in the Intelligent Industry, where our expertise in connected products, IoT and engineering services positions us at the forefront of industrial innovation. Now this recognition validates our strategy and confirm that Capgemini is uniquely positioned to help clients navigate and thrive in an AI-driven world.

So speaking of AI, we are accelerating the integration of AI across all our service portfolio in every industry we serve. It enables clients to deliver tangible business value. Our end-to-end AI transformation approach for clients is composed of 3 main elements: the Compass, the Capgemini Resonance AI framework, which helps clients to set the right priorities and lay the groundwork for successful AI adoption. Our portfolio of AI-first offerings to turn the promise of AI into reality. And RAISE, our platform that makes large-scale deployments possible.

So today, I want to focus on RAISE. Moving AI proof of concept to AI in production and operated is complex for a large-scale organization. To get the benefits from AI transformation, enterprise need AI for business. AI agents that can move to production and be operated is what we call enterprise-ready AI agents as opposed to what we could call toy agents. To make it real, we have developed the first enterprise-ready AI agent engineering platform, RAISE Builder. The builder enables to design agents that are reliable, adaptable and secure through the entire life cycle. It also avoids vendor lock-in. It's compatible with the 3 main hyperscalers and enables seamless integration and interoperability with other AI agents.

On top of the RAISE Builder, we also have a gallery of 350 prebuilt enterprise-grade AI agents. We are also leveraging AI for our own operations. We have recently launched our proprietary and AI-powered data and knowledge management platform to empower our people. It's cost-effective, secure, compliant and ready for Agentic AI at scale and available across the whole group with an innovative data structure that we are showcasing to our clients.

So our investment in proprietary platform, delivery frameworks and talent, combined with strategic partnerships positions us as a recognized leader in AI. This is reflected in robust deal wins, bringing generative AI and Agentic AI to over 8% of group bookings. Our clients trust us, and we are delivering value for them.

Let me take a couple of examples. We recently signed a strategic partnership with Bank of Queensland to entail AI-powered business process and technology transformation. We will completely transform some of the process such as collections or financial crime, leveraging AI. We will not only simplify and hyperautomate operation, but also deliver best-in-class and innovative experience for customers and bankers. This strategic partnership also helps BOQ access scale AI operation and equip their teams with an AI academy.

Also in our collaboration with Orano, we are deploying autonomous humanoid robots to replace manual intervention in nuclear radiation zones directly improving worker safety and operational resilience. This is physical AI, the convergence of AI and robotics into intelligent machines that navigate and act like human-like dexterity. It's a breakthrough that transform our cutting-edge lab research into real business value today.

Now with the acquisition of WNS now complete, we lead on the intelligent operation market, addressing a new and fast-growing demand for Agentic AI-powered business operations. Since the advent of GenAI, enterprises have focused significant attention and increasing investment on GenAI and more broadly AI. Today, clients are gaining maturity around how to best leverage GenAI and understand the limitation of an approach solely based on developing use cases and trying to scale them.

Over the past 12 months, this has led to the emergence of new sizable business opportunities. Clients now consider large transformation contracts with a much broader scope to cover a significant part of their operations. They are looking for a partner who cannot only run their business processes, but who can fundamentally transform their operation, leveraging data, AI and technology. The objective is not just about efficiency and cost reduction, but a significant improvement in business outcomes. This is why transformation of business processes will be the showcase of GenAI and Agentic AI. It's about delivering business value shifting to outcome-based pricing for next-gen IP-led services.

And to achieve this, Intelligent Operation must combine consulting-led process reengineering, industry-specific solution and platform, domain knowledge, deep AI expertise technology, of course, and digital operations at scale. And with the acquisition of WNS, we are uniquely positioned to capture the demand for Intelligent Operations and lead in this fast-growing market opportunity.

Going to the outlook. We had another -- after another good progression in terms of growth, we update the outlook for the year. We raised again our growth objective, now our operating margin target and keep our organic free cash flow target unchanged. So let's be clear, now we expect demand environment is going to remain unchanged for the coming quarters. So we don't see really any improvement in the demand environment as such. So after the solid improvement we delivered in Q3, we're not counting on an organic growth that will continue to accelerate in Q4. But it also clearly implies that the second half is shaping up to be stronger than we initially expected. And with this, we are now targeting 2025 organic growth to be slightly positive versus slightly negative to flat previously.

With the WNS acquisition complete, we are also updating the scope impact on revenue growth. WNS will contribute around 4 points to Q4 growth and 1 point to full year growth. All in, this brings our constant currency growth target for 2025 to be between 2% and 2.5%, up from previously minus 1% to plus 1%. And this is above the high end of our initial guidance given in February. The top end of this range assumes a stable demand environment, while the bottom end accounts for some unforeseen headwinds.

Our margin and cash -- we aim to demonstrate again the resilience of our model despite the challenging environment, we target an operating margin of 13.3% to 13.4% and an organic free cash flow of around EUR 1.9 billion. Thank you for your attention. And now I hand over to Nive.

Thank you, Aiman, and good morning, everyone. Let's kick off with our quarterly revenue growth. As Aiman has just highlighted, we've seen our activity trends improve further in Q3, thanks to the targeted actions we've put in place over the past year. This progress is showing up across most regions, sectors and businesses, and I will get into those details in just a moment.

At constant currency, Q3 revenues grew by 2.9% year-on-year. That's a 220 basis point improvement over Q2. For the first 9 months of the year, our constant currency growth stands at plus 1%. Like in the first half, M&A contributed about 1 point in Q3. As recently announced, WNS will be consolidated from October 17, 2025, which will lead to a total scope impact of around 5 points in Q4 and around 2 points for the full year.

Now let's talk about FX. Currency headwinds have picked up with a negative impact of 2.6 points in Q3, largely driven by the USD depreciation against the euro. This led to a reported growth of plus 0.3% in Q3. For the first 9 months, the FX impact -- pardon me, the FX impact was minus 1.1 points and the reported growth minus 0.1%. Looking ahead, we expect the FX to represent a 3.5 to 4-point headwind in Q4, which means the full year negative impact should be within the minus 1.5 to minus 2-point range as shared in July this year.

Let's start by looking at our revenues by sector. At constant currency, Financial Services and TMT delivered strong year-on-year growth in Q3 at plus 8.5% and plus 7.2%, respectively, building on their solid momentum from Q2. Consumer Goods & Retail also picked up, returning to slight growth at plus 1.8% in Q3. Public Sector and Energy & Utilities maintained solid momentum at plus 3.4% and plus 2.3%, respectively. Manufacturing and Services improved in Q3 versus Q2 with the decline limited to minus 2.6% and minus 0.5%, respectively.

To summarize, the strongest acceleration between Q2 and Q3 came from Financial Services and Consumer Goods & Retail, complemented by a visible improvement in Public Sector and Manufacturing Sector, which benefited from growth in Life Sciences.

When looking at the revenues by region, this acceleration between Q2 and Q3 is visible in all the regions of the group. At constant currency, North America saw revenues rise plus 7% year-on-year, driven by Financial Services, TMT and Manufacturing, especially in Life Sciences. U.K. and Ireland grew by plus 9% with robust broad-based growth led by Financial Services and TMT.

France declined by minus 4.7%, which is a slight improvement over the previous quarter. Revenues in rest of Europe are down by minus 1.5% compared with minus 2.3% in Q2. Solid growth in Public, Consumer Goods & Retail and Financial Services was offset by softness in manufacturing. Asia Pacific and Latin America grew by plus 13.6% with particularly strong growth in Financial Services, Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities and TMT.

Now looking at our revenues by business. At constant currency, total revenues of Strategy & Transformation Services were slightly up plus 0.7% year-on-year. Applications & Technology Services, our core business posted solid growth of plus 5.7%. This represents a 250 basis point acceleration when compared to Q2. Lastly, Operations & Engineering is back to growth in Q3 at plus 1.3%. We are particularly pleased with the performance of our Business Services, which delivered another quarter of strong growth.

Turning to bookings. Q3 bookings totaled EUR 5,161 million, up 1.5% at constant currency rates. The book-to-bill ratio for the quarter reached a solid 0.96, in line with our traditional seasonal pattern at this time of year. Our sales pipeline is also up year-on-year, and we continue to see a good funnel of large deal opportunities.

Now let's talk about headcount. Total headcount stands at 354,700 employees at the end of September 2025, up by 4.7% year-on-year. Our onshore headcount decreased by about 1% year-on-year, while offshore increased by 9%. Consequently, offshore leverage is now 60%, up by 3 points compared with September 2024. This is mainly driven by strong traction in segments with higher offshore leverage, such as Financial Services, North America and the U.K. Finally, attrition remained stable over the past quarter. This brings our last 12-month attrition rate to 15.6% at the end of September 2025, essentially stable year-on-year.

Let me now take a moment to highlight a milestone that reflects the confidence of the debt capital market on our strategy. In September, we successfully completed a EUR 4 billion bond issuance to finance the WNS acquisition. The response was remarkable. The offering was oversubscribed more than 3x, and this allowed us to secure very attractive pricing. With the acquisition of WNS, we're uniquely positioned to lead the Intelligent Operations market and generate profitable growth by serving the fast-growing demand for Agentic AI-powered business operations.

On that note, Aiman, I hand back to you for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Nive. So let's now open the Q&A. So to allow us for a maximum number of people in the queue to ask questions, kindly ask you to restrict yourself to one question and a single follow-up. Operator, could you please share the Q&A instructions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Balajee Tirupati from Citi.

Glad to see the continued growth recovery and back to positive organic growth. Aiman, the results year-till-date have been better-than-expected despite macro which probably has been unsupportive at the least. Could you share color on some of the drivers behind that? And in the unchanged demand environment, do you see these actions continue to help you going forward? And then I have a follow-up question.

Yes, remember, the actions, we launched a whole bunch of them at the end of last year, which is really around basically creating a stronger focus in terms of the go-to-market going beyond some of the large accounts to really expand our focus beyond that, also a lot more discipline in terms of execution, frankly, around our deals, our bids, but also our delivery. So overall, we have put a lot more emphasis to accelerate some of the deployment.

And as you know, we also have done some changes from a leadership perspective, and it's paying off. We have a very disciplined approach. We have, of course, reinforced a number of our offerings to be much more AI-led. So we are aligning to the current environment of what our clients are expecting us to do with a strong focus around really delivering tangible results because that's really becoming the key element with clients.

I think there is investment possible that clients want to see tangible value delivered, not just technology deployment. And I think that's really an evolution that we are seeing in the market to which we have adapted, which has been supportive in terms of us being able to continue to expand our market shares, notably as you have seen outside of Continental Europe, but even in Continental Europe in a number of countries.

And a follow-up on the headcount evolution. I appreciate current growth driven by North America and U.K. Still is the contrasting evolution between onshore and offshore headcount is also a reflection of clients' cost consideration across regions? And how should we think of margin implication of the same?

Yes. I mean, I say nothing it's just cost consideration. It basically is we are declining in Europe. So Europe has less offshore leverage. We have more headcounts in Europe. So we are reducing headcounts onshore. I mean headcounts are not coming down in the onshore. They're not coming down in the U.K. or in the U.S. because we are in strong growth. But they are definitely coming down in Continental Europe. That's really the driver of headcount reduction onshore.

On the other side, yes, I mean, on the offshore side, notably in India, but not only in India, we really see -- continue to see continued growth that support basically the growth we have in the U.K. and U.S., as you mentioned. I mean, today, frankly, I think all this is priced pretty competitively. I don't think there's a big driver in terms of margin. There's no driver in terms of margin linked to the fact there's more offshore growth. I mean that was true in the past. I don't think today it surprises anymore.

We will now take the next question from the line of Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on the quarter. Just 2 from me. Firstly, just in terms of sort of the environment, how should we think about, even you mentioned that the kind of spending environment is still quite challenged. How should we think about sort of the implied kind of Q4 exit rates and kind of visibility that you have around sort of organic growth next year?

And secondly, I know that you called out sort of gross margin and weakness and pricing pressure in July. We've seen increasingly more and more players in the industry call this out. How was that sort of evolved in the third quarter? And then just a quick clarification. The organic free cash flow guidance, does that include any WNS contribution? Or has it been pro forma?

Okay. Listen, on the exit rate, I mean, right now, as I said, we don't see an acceleration. But right now, we expect Q4 to be in line with Q3 on the organic basis. The rest will come from the additional 4 points in terms of growth coming from the inclusion of WNS. But -- so in all good terms, we should have an exit rate, which is similar to what we see in Q3. Next year, it's too early. So I will not comment on next year. We talk about next year in February. If we can wait until then, we'll have more visibility, and I think I'll be in a more comfortable position to comment. But of course, we are positive about the fact that we have a positive exit rate at the end of this year.

On the pricing pressure, it's still there. I mean there's no change in the pricing pressure. The market remains competitive. There's no change in the environment. And our clients continue to be focused really around operational efficiency, around cost, around productivity. We start to see some green shoots around clients getting to focus -- start focusing on growth, but I think it's really too minimal at this stage to be able to take that into account, which means in that kind of environment with limited growth, the pricing pressure remains quite important.

So move to your question on organic free cash flow, yes, it does include the WNS contribution. Just to note, the full year contribution from WNS is about EUR 100 million. But then if you take less than a quarter on this year, it doesn't necessarily make it as material in that context. So I think that hopefully answers your question.

We will now take the next question from the line of Sven Merkt from Barclays.

Maybe first, the regional questions. North America has been obviously very strong. Can you comment just what the read across from this region is to the rest of the business because it has been.

Sorry, the read across?

From North America to the rest of the business, given that the region has been seen in the past as a leading indicator? And then maybe a second question on the margin. You lowered that slightly despite a slight accretion from WNS. And I hear you pointed out that this is due to regional mix, but is there anything else you would point out?

Sure. So first, on the read across, I mean, to frank, I don't see a read across, I think we have such differences between regions today. I don't -- we have different mixes in terms of industries and the economies are at different stages. So I don't really read across. We're trying to see how we can improve our position and our growth in all regions, but I would not see the acceleration in North America as being like an early sign of potential acceleration in Europe. I mean you see the situation in France remains quite unstable, and we don't see really a big recovery in France, and we're still impacted by manufacturing in a large part of the rest of Europe.

So we'll continue to push for improvement, but I will not overread from NA to Europe, if that's what's underlying your question. On the margin side, we just -- we're tightening the margin because we are now 2 months before the end of the year. So we give a more realistic picture about where we expect to land. I mean, frankly, the WNS impact, we're talking about a couple of months, it's really not material on our results. And right now, we still have to consolidate all the numbers and see exactly what is the real impact, but we really see it as being minimal for 2025.

We will now take the next question from the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Congrats for the quarter. I have 2 questions. The first is if you could update us on the trend in your BPO business and potentially could share the performance of WNS in the third quarter? And my follow-up is sorry to ask again on the margin side. But you have an acceleration of the organic growth of roughly 2% in the second half instead of being flat, and we don't see that translating into margins. So going into next year, what kind of acceleration in growth rate would be needed to start to have some kind of leverage on the profitability?

So first on our Business Process Services, our growth rate is above 10%, a few points above 10%. So I think we are doing extremely well. And we did say that we expect a pretty strong growth in our Business Services. On WNS, I cannot really update you on the Q3 at this stage, but it is in line with the expectation as far as I understand from the numbers. As you know, we don't have fully audited numbers. So -- but it is from what I have seen in line with the expectation that they have given for their Q2 because it's Q2 in their fiscal year.

On the margin side, again, we see that the environment with a lot of pricing pressure, if you haven't noticed. It hasn't significantly changed. So I mean, for the margin pressure to go away, it's not -- it's our growth, but it's also the overall market. The market is soft. As long as the overall market is soft, people are really very aggressive on pricing. And this is the current situation, and this is not going to change unless the overall market expand at a faster pace. So it's our growth, but it's also the growth of the overall market, Laurent, that has to be taken into account.

We will now take the next question from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.

So a question for me on -- just following up on this pricing question. So you say remain tough, but are you seeing some specific segments where delivery supported by GenAI is driving much more significant pricing pressure, and that's offset by some areas where you see incremental demand around data strategy. So interesting to hear what kind of role GenAI is playing in the pricing environment or not?

And then in particular, interesting around your GenAI slide and platform, et cetera. From a client perspective, what -- can you share a little bit what entail in terms of investment in their data strategy, infrastructure choices, et cetera? And then if I may, a follow-up on the free cash flow side, any specific elements you want to call out for this year and next? I mean, in particular, there is a discussion around corporate tax rate in France. So we're keen to hear your thoughts around that, any working capital elements you want to flag?

Okay. So listen, I believe, will led by GenAI. I mean, there has been high client expectation at the beginning. I think this is becoming a bit more realistic. It doesn't change really the pricing environment. But as we have seen, not only us, but a number of companies in our sector have small group that continue to add headcount, it shows that for the moment, the expected impact that everybody expects in terms of significant improvement within productivity is not happening, okay? We're not saying that there's no improvement, but it's quite limited for the moment. And I think it's not playing that much in terms of the pricing. I think the tension on the pricing environment is much more coming from just the soft market than it is in terms of the real impact of GenAI today on pricing. On the -- you had a question regarding the -- the second question was around? Free cash flow?

Yes, question was around any specific investments you're seeing from a client perspective around their data strategy or infrastructure...

Yes. So -- sorry, listen, it's a very good question. I spent a couple of weeks in California, and I had a lot of interaction and some events with a number of U.S. CEOs who tend to be a little bit more advanced around trying to deploy and experiencing with GenAI. When you ask them what is your #1 impediment to deploying AI at scale? The question -- the answer is, to a large extent, data integrity and data availability. So it's clear that the modernization of data estates and providing ready data to be able to feed Agentic AI and GenAI is a critical aspect. So I think you'll see over the coming 12 to 24 months, a significant increase in work around data as clients now realize that this is really the main impediment to deploying AI at scale. So it's a valid point. This is really where a lot of the focus is today.

Coming to the organic free cash flow point, clearly, we maintain our guidance for organic free cash flow. But I'd like to remind you that this year, we have a higher cash tax rate in comparison to the previous year because, of course, we've got the impact of the French surtax that we have to pay out, but there's, of course, also the currency headwinds and generally lower income from cash. So in that context, I think the fact that we maintain that guidance, I think, is pretty resilient.

Now having said that, it is, of course, a tough environment, and it takes a lot of fiscal discipline to be able to generate that cash, whether it's invoicing or whether it's collection, whether it's billing, et cetera, our teams are on it every single day. So it's not easy, but it's something that we stick by.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nicolas David from ODDO BHF.

First question is regarding the Q4 organic growth. Could you give us a bit of color regarding the reason why you don't expect further acceleration? Because in Q3, you posted a nice acceleration. And when you look at the quarter-on-quarter performance implied by even if you are at 2% again organic in Q4, it would imply a deterioration of the Q-on-Q, let's say, compared to seasonality, historical seasonality. Does it mean that there is some sectors that could deteriorate? Or do you expect a very, very high level of [ follow ] but I think that last year follow were also pretty high. So yes, any color would be helpful, maybe manufacturing and a bit on manufacturing here would be great.

Listen, it's improving, but we see the environment doesn't improve. So I mean, it's quite challenging to be able to drive improvement. We still have a drag that will continue in Europe, especially in France. So we have headwinds as well. So I don't think we can continue to improve independent of the environment. I think we are -- we have been able to gain market share. We have been able to kind of address some challenges we had and to be able to get to reasonable even slower organic growth. And I think it's good.

Now I don't expect significant accelerations in the short term without some change in the environment. The year-on-year comparison with so many changes of mix of environment, et cetera, it is really very difficult to say that Q4 compared to Q3 would be a bit less than last year or thing like that. I think there are too many moving elements to kind of really go to some simplification, I would say, in terms of assessment. I think we are happy to be able to sustain the organic growth and have a good exit rate coming out of Q4 going into next year.

All right. And my follow-up would be on commercial momentum. Do you see evidence of very large outsourcing deals relying both on IT and BPO with Agentic AI transformation in the market, do you see more of them already?

If you think about Intelligent Operation, yes, definitely, I see traction. I see we are well positioned on some very large deals. So yes, I'm quite positive about what we see today and the impact of Intelligent Operation on basically winning some very large deals in the near future.

We will now take the next question from the line of Charles Brennan from Jefferies.

I'm trying to get my arms around the margin downgrade for the year. I think with new contracts, we're used to margins being low to begin with and then margins building over time. As we move more towards outcome-based pricing, does that get more extreme? Is it more cost consumptive in the early phase? And is that a contributor to the margin outlook for the year? Or is the margin outlook for the year just as simple as price pressure? And then secondly, on WNS, I think Nive, you alluded to the fact that cash flow historically hasn't been particularly good at WNS. Are there any levers that you can pull to improve that? Or is it just a more working capital consumptive business than Capgemini?

Thank you, Charles. I see that you're making a big effort to be positive. When you take the margin guidance from 13.3%, 13.5% to 13.3% to 13.4%, I don't consider that as being a margin downgrade. We're talking about 10 bps. I think it's normal that at this time of the year, as we are going in the last 2 months of the year, we are able to give you a bit more precise outlook by tightening a little bit the margin. I consider it's not a margin downgrade, it's just basically tightening a little bit the margin outlook, and we are still quite resilient in terms of margin in an environment that's extremely price competitive, and it takes a lot of work to sustain the margin in this type of environment.

So I am pretty satisfied with what we're delivering. A lot of these new deals have been very competitive basically upfront in terms of investments to be able to start them up. Outcome-based pricing, although it's picking up, it's still a very small part of the revenue. Over a long period of time, yes, we do expect to see positive impact from outcome-based pricing.

So Charles, I think -- just to clarify, I think what I said earlier in response to Mo's question was more that WNS generates a range of about EUR 100 million free cash flow per year, and that wouldn't be very material in the context of what we're talking about this year. But coming back to how we will work with them on it is we will -- we do what we do on various other acquisitions. We will apply very strong financial discipline to the WNS form of cash flow as well, whether it is in terms of conversion, whether it is in terms of billing, invoicing, et cetera. So we manage that very, very carefully. So no change there. And of course, I remind you that our free cash flow conversion has been pretty good. So that's something that we will continue to be very focused on.

We will now take the next question from the line of Adam Wood from Morgan Stanley.

Adam Wood, here. In terms of [indiscernible] on the revenue upgrade, Aiman. So I've got 2 questions, if I could. First of all, maybe just on the actions you've taken through the year. I mean I think very clearly, we've seen the impact of that in North America, I guess, it's the market as well. When we turn to Continental Europe, I mean, have the actions that you've taken their worked their way through and that's the limit of what you can do and now it really is just down to the macro turning and the environment improving? Or is there still more that you can do internally with actions that you take to change the course of business, particularly in France, but also in the rest of Europe?

And then maybe secondly, on WNS. Now you've got into the group, could you maybe give us some first impressions there? And you talked about some very big transformational deals that you're better positioned for and that happen straight away that all you needed was that deal and the scale to happen? Or is there a time lag where customers need to see the businesses get integrated, the offers integrated, you willing...

Adam, you have to slow down a little bit because I couldn't follow all your second question. So can you come back on the question on WNS?

Of course. On WNS, so really just first impressions now that you have control of the company, have you found that? And then you spoke about big transformational deals in that area. Can you close them almost straight away because all customers needed was to see that deal close to give them the confidence that you'd be able to run? Or do you need some time to put the offers together, demonstrate that the 2 companies are working together before customers will commit those very large deals to you?

Okay. So thank you. First, on the actions in Europe, I mean, frankly, we still have a pretty big impact in Europe coming from manufacturing and specifically auto. I think if you unify auto, the picture looks better, which I think is important. So it's not only auto, of course, we have -- in France, it's not just about the auto sector. But definitely in some other countries, it's really auto has had a significant impact and it is still weighing. So I think over time, as we stabilize that start getting better, but it's gradual from that perspective. So we continue to take action in Europe.

As you imagine, we're trying to continue to boost the top line. And we see some positive impacts. As you see in the rest of Europe, we see the top line improving a little bit. So I think we have still some actions to take there and to basically bit by bit to really stabilize our auto environment, which has been a major drag, including in our manufacturing.

On WNS, and you say now that you're in, we are in for a few days now. So it's a bit early to be able to really draw that but there's no surprise so far. The interactions with the leadership have been positive. We already have a number of cross-selling opportunities to be working together, quite a few actually, a lot of demands to be able to work together on a number of deals and also from clients.

I think on Intelligent Operation, yes, it has provide credibility. We are closing on a very large deal. And I think the fact that we made the WNS acquisition, not just because of the capabilities, also I think by making such a big investment, credibility with clients about the fact that this is important to us, and we really believe and it is playing already in some of the deals. So I think it does have a positive impact and the deal we are about to transform, I don't know if we have got it, if we hadn't made that announcement about the acquisition of WNS. So yes, I am pretty positive about the impact.

We will now take the next question from the line of Michael Briest from UBS.

Just digging into WNS, I appreciate it's only a few days since you closed it, but there's maybe 20, 30 customers that have sizable relationships with it. Can you talk about the overlap and what sort of opportunities you see for the Capgemini heritage business there and if you already have a relationship with some of those customers? And then, Aiman, you also talked about software and AI. Can you give some context to how big an opportunity you see that? I'm aware of the blur relationship with Microsoft and Orange in France. But where else are you looking to sort of expand there?

Well, first, on the overlap, frankly, I think the good news is that we have limited overlap. When I look at some of the largest clients, it's clients where we are not. So I think that's good news for us because that will provide a lot of cross-selling opportunity. And vice versa, they're really very, very strong in the insurance sector. Here, we have some overlap in some clients, but it also reinforces our strategic position with some of these clients, but there's also many insurance clients and many banking clients where they are not and where we are present.

So -- and here, I really see positive cross-selling opportunities. And in general, I think there is -- there are some very nice clients which were not in the U.K., in the U.S., in Australia, where we're really going to start working on joint account planning and see what we can do in terms of joint proposal.

On the sovereign AI opportunity, I mean, frankly, it's sovereign, not necessarily AI, sovereignty. AI plays, yes, if you engage in a large language model, but I think we have seen an increase, of course, this year in terms of requirement for sovereignty, not always well defined, but definitely, people have become much more sensitive, not only in Europe, if you go to Asia Pacific or Middle East, I think it's also quite important in terms of how to protect notably the sensitive data and sometimes goes beyond that to continuity of operation.

Look, it's a growing opportunity. I think Bleu is part of the solution, and it will be coming live in the coming weeks. But I think beyond Bleu, there is also the investments we have done in Cloud4C, which really start looking at providing very optimized cloud environment, private cloud environment, which I think is going to be part of the sovereignty solution.

So you see that the sovereignty solution will move to a much more hybrid environment in terms of cloud and the private cloud will become a more significant part of that solution to be able to provide sovereignty. So that's part of what we're working on. And we have a discussion with many actors across Europe and the U.S. to see what has the option to be able to provide -- to address some of the client concern around sovereignty.

We will now take the next question from the line of Toby Ogg from JPMorgan.

Perhaps just following up just on the outcome-based pricing. Aiman, you mentioned a small part of the revenue and kind of seeing signs that's picking up. Could you just give us some examples of where you've been able to successfully implement outcome-based pricing? And then just how you can actually drive that outcome-based pricing given the competitive intensity of the industry? And then just a follow-up just on the margins. I appreciate it's a bit early on the growth as discussed. But on the margin side, there should be a bit more visibility around cost evolution investments, et cetera. Any factors we should be thinking about puts and takes on the margin for 2026?

Okay. On outcome-based pricing, listen, again, I think it's early days. So what we have seen outcome-based pricing in areas like can be transaction-led, for example. So where clients in typically, it can be sometimes even in an infrastructure managed environment or in a digital BPS environment, where clients are going to be paid by transaction or paid by server or thing like that, which is linked to really a volume, not really linked to a team with the cost, et cetera. And this is something that has been increasing. The other thing is we see also mixed environments.

So we have, for example, a client where we have an environment where some of the pricing of the contract is linked to the revenue growth, okay? So it's not a very large part, but part of the contract is linked to actually to their top line. It's good. We bet on a client that has good growth. So it's supportive in terms of margin. But -- so it's really mixed quite a bit. But where we will see a lot is going to be around really delivering tangible results.

And I think in Intelligent Operation, you probably see a bigger proportion where clients do expect cost reduction as part of the contract, but also measuring specific outcome improvement in outcomes. And we see in some of the latest deals. It's really part of the discussion. It's part of what they value in terms of what we bring, which is not just commitment around the fact that we're going to reduce costs on some processes. It's also the fact that we are committing to delivering business outcome out of this process.

So on margin, particularly, the puts and takes remain not very different to what we've talked about earlier, which is -- the focus being entirely on the mix shift. So our portfolio shift is an area that we look at very significantly for that margin improvement. So that's an area that doesn't change in any sense. But then the focus on operational effectiveness, control on areas like SG&A, et cetera, continue to be an area of focus. So that will not change going into 2026. All of that will remain.

We will now take the last question from the line of Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas.

Just one for me, please. On the manufacturing market. Obviously, still declining, but we're seeing some sort of improvement in the year-over-year rate of decline. Just wanted to dig in a bit. Could you comment more specifically on what you've seen in the automotive sector so far in H2? How are those conversations evolve now with some improved trade visibility? And perhaps it's early, but thinking into next year, could you share a little bit about how those customers in the auto sector are thinking about their IT budgets into 2026?

Yes. The way you think about the auto sector is not just environment, it's just a model of deliveries is evolving. So there's going to be an increase in demand, but the demand which is much more offshore-driven than what it has been up to now, okay? If I take, for example, the example of engineering, engineering tend to be traditionally delivered onshore for many of our European auto clients, and that's really moving away from there.

So as I said before, the structural change -- what we see in auto is a structural change in terms of demand, but also in terms of delivery model. And I think that it's not -- we don't expect to see a rebound in auto, and it weighs heavily on manufacturing. I think our Manufacturing numbers will look much better if auto was flat. So it's really -- it's a drag for the moment. So it's good. We know where it's contained.

I'd say outside of auto, we see really good growth in some other sectors, like even industrial manufacturing is back to growth. Our Life Sciences had good growth. So we are positive on the fact that once we are able to address the challenges around auto, we will be back to growth in Manufacturing. So -- but for the moment and for probably the next 2 or 3 quarters, it will remain a drag really on our Manufacturing top line.

Thank you all. I look forward to interact with you over the coming weeks, if not, see you in February for the full year. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Capgemini H1 2025 Results Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Aiman Ezzat. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us for this H1 2025 results call. I'll be joined today by our CFO, Nive Bhagat. Our performance continues to improve through the first half of the year and Q2 slightly exceeded expectations. In the volatile economic environment and persistently soft demand, we have demonstrated the strong resilience and adaptability in navigating these challenging conditions.

We see the benefits of the actions announced in Q3 2024. The revenue growth rate gradually improved quarter after quarter, and the group returned to positive constant currency growth at plus 0.7% year-on-year. For H1 2025, revenue reached EUR 1.107 billion, up 0.2% year-on-year. Bookings totaled EUR 11.993 billion over the period, plus 2.1% year-on-year. The commercial momentum is solid with a book-to-bill of 1.08 despite client decision cycle that remains lengthy in this environment.

The operating margin amounts to EUR 1.377 billion or 12.4% of revenues, so stable year-on-year. In a challenging environment, the performance in H1 demonstrate the resilience of the group's operating model and the improvement of our operational efficiency.

Our organic free cash flow features a traditional seasonal pattern, as you know, so plus EUR 60 million in H1 2025 and the normalized EPS stands at EUR 6.

So in Q2, revenue growth was stable or continue to gradually improve compared to the previous quarter across all regions, businesses and most sectors. First, from a geographic perspective, growth rates in the U.K. and Ireland, North America and Asia Pacific and Latin America have accelerated. Growth rate in Continental Europe, including France, more stable.

From a sector perspective, financial services and TMT sectors continued to accelerate, reach mid-single-digit constant currency growth. Manufacturing also improved, but continued to weigh on the group growth. Finally, from a business perspective, strategy and transformation and application and technology maintained their positive growth rates. The strongest improvement came from operations and engineering, fueled by improvement across all the business lines, particularly in Business Services, which recorded high single-digit growth.

During the first half of the year, clients remain focused on driving efficiency feeds through cost transformation program, discretionary spend was still muted, our positioning as the business and technology transformation partner of our clients is well recognized and in that context, Capgemini continues to enjoy strong traction, thanks to our high-value service offering. This is particularly visible in cloud and Data AI. So to illustrate this, let me share a few examples.

On cloud, Capgemini secured a multiyear framework agreement reinforcing our role as a trusted adviser and strategic partner to a key public sector client in Europe. Our solution is anchored in the integration of cutting-edge cloud technologies, including sovereign cloud capabilities tailored for high security environment. It outlines a clear pathway towards sovereign cloud infrastructure while driving the modernization of applications and processes to enable a next-generation digital platform for public service delivery.

On the intelligence industry side, Capgemini secured a strategic contract to support a leading global aerospace company. The objective of this engagement is to accelerate production while significantly reducing nonconformances. Our delivery model played a decisive role in securing the contract. It combines the use of Generative AI to create comprehensive design solution based on historical analysis and follow the same deployment model that ensures continued support through globally distributed technical teams. Finally, Capgemini has been chosen as a strategic part of a U.S. high-tech company to spearhead its global finance transformation. To that end, we will design formalize and deploy a multiyear finance transformation road map that define and prioritizes a portfolio of viable transformation projects within all finance capabilities. Ultimately, we will operate the clients' operational finance activities and move them to best-in-class processes while optimizing them, thanks to technology such as AI.

If you look at the underlying trends in the market now, we see continuous traction for the technologies at the core of tech-driven business transformation. There is a clear appetite for digital core. It's driven by strong demand for a giant ERP-enabled business transformation. Companies today have a cloud-first strategy. Cloud continues to be a major subject of interest and huge discussion with our clients as they design their data and AI strategy. And in the realm of data and AI, we see strong demand to harness advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to generate actionable insights and fuel innovation.

Now thanks to our end-to-end model, our industry expertise and strong ecosystem of partners, we are well positioned to capture this demand at scale. At the same time, we observed some fast rising traction and accelerating momentum in some new areas. First, on defense and sovereignty, momentum is particularly high in Europe. We are very well positioned being 1 of the very few European scale players combining a leading position in all relevant capabilities and industries. On intelligent operations to transform and operate horizontal and vertical business processes, leveraging Gen AI, Agentic AI. With the acquisition of WNS, we will provide the group with the skill and vertical sector expertise to capture that rapidly emerging strategic opportunity created by the PARADIGME shift from traditional BPS to Agentic AI powered intelligent operations. And of course, continue to see fast rising demand in Gen AI Agentic AI more generally.

Now coming to the Agentic AI, the market is showing strong momentum, which together, Gen AI and Agentic AI contributed to over 7% of our Q2 bookings. We continue to invest in strategic assets to strengthen our position and accelerate notably, the launch of the Resona AI framework, our strategic blueprint designed to help lead us conceptualize structure and drive successful AI-powered transformation.

The expansion of our AFS portfolio, we have structured and enrich our offering by enterprise domain to comprehensively address client needs and the continuous enhancement of our RAC platform now featuring gallery of AI agents, Gen AI assistant and Agentic systems. We have also introduced an Agentic AI builder a robust suite of tools and framework to design orchestrate and monitor multi-agent workflows.

So let's highlight a couple of examples from our Q2 wins. For global media firm, we opened new frontier with intelligent operations for finance to transform that predominantly manual operation. We developed a suite of AI agents that automate complex variable tasks and empower real-time data-driven decision-making, enhancing efficiency and strategic insight. For U.S. energy clients, we refactor a legacy application using Generative AI and Agentic AI technology to capline proprietary accelerators that automates quote conversion. AI enables the analysis of legacy cost structures and suggest or automate refactoring steps to improve maintainability, performance and integration with modern systems. This makes this effort a scalable proof of concept for modernizing numerous other applications, improving operational efficiency and reducing time to market.

Finally, for a global life science client, we automate the analysis of the build of materials to accelerate generation of environmental report for medicines by leveraging Gen AI, the time to produce ISO compliant report can be reduced from several weeks to minutes. This acceleration enables our clients to respond faster to tenders requirements, protecting billions of annual revenues at risk.

Now turning to the outlook. As we enter Q3, we see some stability in the environment. While we update our growth outlook today, we decided to retain the core expense adopted at the beginning of the year. So in order to account for the uncertainty created by geopolitical tensions and a slow economy. So after this good H1 performance, we narrow our constant currency growth outlook to between minus 1% and plus 1%.

On the M&A contribution to growth, it is now assumed to be limited to around 1 point versus 1- to 2-point initiatives. This means that we are narrowing up the underlying target. The operating margin target of 13.3% to 13.5% and the organic free cash flow objective of around EUR 1.1 billion remain unchanged. As a reminder, our auto does not take into account the contemplated acquisition of WNS.

Thank you for your attention and now hand over to Nive.

Thank you, Aiman, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share with you the highlights of our H1 2025 results. After a good start to the year, our Q2 revenues also came slightly above our expectations. Overall, group revenues reached EUR 11,107 million in H1 2025, up plus 0.2% at constant currency and slightly down minus 0.3% on a reported basis. Operating margin amounted to EUR 1,377 million or 12.4% of revenues stable year-on-year. After other operating expenses, financial and income tax expenses, the net profit group share reached EUR 724 million compared with EUR 835 million in H1 last year.

Basic EPS stands at EUR 4.26, down minus 13% year-on-year, while normalized EPS is plus 2% year-on-year to EUR 6. Finally, we generated an organic free cash flow of EUR 60 million in H1 2025 compared to EUR 163 million in H1 last year.

Moving on to our quarterly revenue growth. Our revenue growth rate gradually improved during H1, and the group returned positive constant currency growth in Q2 at plus 0.7% year-on-year. This was notably supported by the targeted actions that we had announced at the end of Q3 2024. This represents 110 basis point improvement compared with the Q1 growth rate and brings this to plus 2% of our constant currency growth for H1.

In line with our comments at the beginning of the year, M&A contributed around 1 point over the period.

Turning to FX. With the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, currency movements became a headwind in Q2 with a negative impact of 170 basis points. For the first half of the year, FX had a negative impact of 50 basis points. As a result, the reported growth was minus 1% in Q2 and minus 0.3% for H1. At this point in the year, we expect the FX impact to remain a headwind in the second part of this year, leading to a negative impact from minus 1.5 to minus 2 points for the full year.

Moving on to bookings. The group enjoyed a solid commercial momentum in the first half of the year. Bookings totaled EUR 12 billion in H1 with EUR 6.1 billion in Q2. This represents constant currency growth of plus 2.1% and plus 1.5% year-on-year, respectively. Book-to-bill reached 1.10 in Q2. This brings our H1 book-to-bill ratio to a strong 1.08.

Looking first to revenues by sector. Most of our sectors enjoyed a gradual improvement in the revenue growth rates through the first half of the year. Therefore, I will focus my comments first on Q2.

The financial services and TMT sectors each grew plus 5.5% year-on-year at constant currency, marking their fifth consecutive quarter of improvement. While the manufacturing sector remained weak in Q2 at minus 4% year-on-year on a high basis of comparison in Q2 last year. It also improved visibly with the growth rate up by 190 basis points versus Q1.

The energy and utilities and public sectors remained solid in Q2, up 2.3% and plus 1.4%, respectively, although decelerating slightly versus their Q1 growth rates.

Lastly, goods and retail sector and the services sector remained under pressure in Q2 with a slight contraction similar to Q1 at minus 1.3% and minus 1.7%, respectively.

Moving on to revenues by regions. Let's start with Q2 revenue trends and see how they compare to those reported in Q1. Growth rates continue to improve in North America, [indiscernible] and in the Asia Pacific and Latin America regions, all of which were already very solid in Q1. France and the rest of Europe region reported growth rates in Q2, similar to Q1.

Turning now to H1, where I discuss year-on-year growth at construct currency. Revenue growth in North America was 1.6% and reached 6% in the United Kingdom and Ireland region. In both regions, growth was mainly driven by Financial Services, TMT and energy and utility sectors. Asia Pacific and Latin America region enjoyed strong growth at plus 8.7%, mainly fueled by the financial services and TMT sectors that enjoyed double-digit growth. Conversely, revenues in France and rest of Europe region declined by minus 5% and minus 2.3%, respectively. In both regions, growth in Brazilian public and TMT sectors was more than offset by lower activity in the manufacturing and consumer goods and retail sectors.

Moving on to our operating margin by region. As is often the case with half year results, we experienced more fluctuations in regional margin evolution than what we typically do on a full year basis. So please keep in mind that H1 regional margin evolution does not necessarily provide a full representation of what the full year evolution will be.

Operating margin in North America improved by 80 basis points to 16.3%. For France, you might remember that last year's operating margin was affected by one-off items. Excluding these one-offs, there has been no improvement in the underlying margin. Operating margin in the U.K. and Ireland region remained at high level at 18.1%, although it declined by 240 basis points compared with the record level reached in H1 last year.

Lastly, operating margin in the Rest of Europe and Asia Pacific and Latin America regions was down year-on-year by 70 and 40 basis points, respectively.

Moving on to revenue by business. All our businesses delivered higher year-on-year revenue growth rates in Q2 2025 when compared to Q1. The strongest progress came from operations and engineering with visible improvement across all its business lines. We are notably pleased to report that Business Services recorded high single-digit growth in Q2.

Turning now to H1 at constant currency. Total revenue as Strategy & Transformation Services grew by plus 1.3%. Total revenues of Applications & Technology Services, which is Capgemini's core business was up by plus 2.6%. Conversely, operations and engineering total revenues decreased by minus 1.5%.

Now moving on to the headcount evolution. Total headcount stands at 349,400 employees at the end of June 2025, up by 4% year-on-year and by 2% since the end of March 2025. While our onshore headcount decreased slightly by 1% year-on-year, our offshore head count increased by 7% over the period. Consequently, the offshore leverage stands at 59% in June 2025, up by 2 points compared with June 2024. Lastly, attrition increased slightly over the past quarter. This brings our last 12-month attrition rate to 16.1% at the end of June 2025, up by almost 1 point year-on-year, but still well within our normal operating stage.

Moving on now to the analysis of our operating margins. The continued shift in Capgemini's mix of offerings towards more innovative and value-added services, combined with a strong focus on cost discipline, enabled the group to offset the impact of current market softness on our gross margin. At 26.4% gross margin was down 30 basis points year-on-year, but still 20 basis points above H1 2023 level. After an increase last year, selling expenses and G&A expenses are now down by 10 and 20 basis points, respectively. Consequently, the operating margin remained stable at 12.4% of revenues in H1 2025. This demonstrates again the resilience of the group's operating model in a challenging environment.

Moving on to the next slide. Our net financial result is an income of EUR 16 million compared to EUR 20 million in H1 2024. The income tax expense decreased by EUR 66 million year-on-year to EUR 260 million. The effective tax rate stands at 26.2% in H1 2025, down from 28% for the same period last year. This is due to a positive noncash one-off tax item that will not repeat in H2. Hence, our ETR will be higher for the full year, and this is no impact on our cash tax rate that is expected to be substantially higher in 2025 than it was last year.

Let's turn to the recap of our P&L from operating margin to net income. The other operating income and expenses represent a net expense of EUR 401 million, up by EUR 164 million year-on-year. This was notably driven by restructuring costs, which are not only higher this year as anticipated but also more skewed to H1 in 2025. This stood at EUR 136 million in H1 2025 versus EUR 53 million in H1 2024. Consequently, our operating profit amounts to EUR 976 million or 8.8% of revenues compared with EUR 1,147 million at 10.3% in H1 last year.

After financial and tax expenses, share of equity affiliates and noncontrolling interest, the group share in net profit is down minus 13% year-on-year at EUR 7.24 million. While the basic EPS is also down minus 13% to EUR 4.26, our normalized EPS is up plus 2% year-on-year to EUR 6.

Finally, let's have a look at the evolution of our organic free cash flow and net debt. We generated an organic free cash flow of EUR 60 million in H1. As you know, our cash generation pattern is highly skewed to the second half of the year.

A few final words on capital allocation. In H1 2025, the group paid dividends of EUR 578 million and invested EUR 28 million on bolt-on acquisitions. Consequently, our net debt stands at EUR 2.8 billion at the end of H1. This compares with EUR 2.8 billion at the end of H1. Last year and EUR 2.1 billion at the end 2024.

As you saw in our press release this morning, the Board of Directors have approved a new multiyear share buyback program of EUR 2 billion, which will essentially be funded by the group's organic free cash flow. As a reminder, -- in June 2025, the group redeemed in full and at maturity, the EUR 800 million bond issued in June 2025.

So on that note, I hand back to Aiman for Q&A session.

Thank you, Nive. Let's now open the Q&A and to allow a maximum number of people in the queue to ask questions. I kindly ask you to restrict yourself to 1 question and a single follow-up. Operator, could you please share the Q&A instructions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Sven Merkt from Barclays.

Great. Just a question on the outlook. The guidance implies at the midpoint, a similar performance in H2 as we have seen in H1. Can you speak a bit about the upside and downside risk to this if macro shouldn't deteriorate, should we see an improvement in the second half given the easier comps?

As you know, we are pretty cautious because changing the environment can be pretty brutal. We, for the moment, see some stability going in Q3. So we can expect for the Q3 to be similar to Q2, that's what we see. So of course, it all depends after that of what the environment looks like going into Q4. But as I say, they see too much uncertainty to be able to really be sure about how Q4 looks like, and that's why we're going to remain cautious from that perspective.

Can I follow up maybe on the margin as well. Given we have seen a flat development in the first half, the second half could see an improvement. What would drive that improvement? I've seen -- we see a pickup in hiring, but the utilization improved as well in the second quarter? How does that feed into the margin outlook for the second half?

The pickup in hiring is in offshore. So let's be clear here. I think it's very important to understand that right now, we do continue to see a decrease of headcount in Europe, especially in Continental Europe. On the other side, we see a continued increase in headcounts in offshore driven notably by U.S. recovery and financial services, which, as you know, operate with a pretty high offshore leverage. On the margin, the market remains quite competitive and we try to be able to maintain our operating margin and if there's a possibility to improve will improve, but it remains a pretty challenging environment from that perspective.

Our next question comes from the line of Mohammed Moawalla from Goldman Sachs.

Great. Two for me. Firstly, just in terms of the organic growth development, you've kind of hit this sort of flattish level. You talked about kind of a stable environment and now similar kind of growth in Q3. But -- how do you think about your visibility into the kind of back half of the year, particularly with some of the kind of trade agreements kind of being formed. What does it sort of take for that sort of exit rate to sort of accelerate.

And also by region, I know North America is inflected, but you obviously would probably need some inflection in Europe. So just curious on your visibility into kind of the year-end if we get some of this kind of resolution.

And then secondly, when we think about the gross margin, Nive, how should we think about that for the rest of the year? I know it was down 30 bps in the first half, but you see sort of scope for that to sort of improve? Or should it be similar to what we saw in H1?

I think for the moment on the visibility, again, we have good visibility, but as you know, things can change pretty quickly. I'm not necessarily read the fact that we have a lot of stability on the tariffs for the moment. Yes, there's an agreement between Europe and the U.S. but I don't feel that everybody is aligned and consider that this is a positive thing for Europe, if you read between the lines. So it's a good sign that there's an agreement, but we have to see what is going to be the impact of this agreement. And there's still volatility overall. I think it's -- I prefer to remain cautious at this stage. Of course, we'd love to see stability and some improvements through the end of the year, and that will be the positive scenario. But for the moment, I prefer to remain core. We see it in Q3 going to but I will be cautious going into Q4 for at the moment.

And that will define the exit rate by region. I mean, we see -- as you see, we can see improvements right now in North America, where both financial services and the rest of the business has done some recovery, but you especially continental make quite challenges for them.

So Moh, coming to the gross margin. As I did mention, while gross margin is down year-on-year, it is up if you look at it versus 2023 by 20 bps. And as Aiman did mention, it is a tough environment, but we are very focused, and we continue to focus on the portfolio mix, which, as you know, is a very important area which we focus on in terms of that margin improvement as much as we're focused on operational parameters as era. So we're doing everything that we possibly can across the piece to try and improve it. But I think we will continue to be focused on the portfolio mix as best as we can.

Our next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.

Just a quick question around the restructuring costs that increased substantially in the first half. And if you mentioned there is some seasonality here this year and the cost actually skewed to the first half. Can you talk a little bit about your -- I mean maybe recap what's going on in terms of restructuring, what is the scope for the costs this year and on a more structural basis? I mean is this something we should assume is going to get more significant? And maybe you follow up around the head count side. So pretty significant increase in Q2.

We have some peers, especially in India announcing restructuring plans. So it would be great to share a little bit your outlook around the headcount side into the rest of the year and next year.

The restructuring, as you know, I mean, here, the -- some of this is driven, of course, by the evolution of our headcounts in Europe, and that's what has driven some of this restructuring.

Listen, on the -- I mean, for me, I don't see anything structural. We have some adjustments to make to take into account an evolution in terms of demand and some structural changes in the market. But for me, it's not -- it doesn't mean that we have a recurring increase in restructuring costs. But there is some adjustment to be made, and we continue making them to ensure that we have an economically sound and adapted workforce through the demand that we see in the market.

On the account evolution, again, I insist, it is offshore growth, okay, because this is what's supporting the drive in terms of growth in like financial services, largely as well APAC growth and also all the North American growth in general. But we still have a headcount reduction, which are ongoing in Europe based on the evolution of demand. So yes, there's positive account evolution driven by offshore and driven by to make sure some of the businesses which are currently growing, okay? But we still have some other areas where we have head count reductions.

And as long as we see growth in North American financial services that will continue to drive the headcount increase in volumes, but which will continue to be focused mainly in offshore.

Just to add to what Aiman said, most of the restructuring was H1, as I did mention. So I expect that for the full year, we'll probably be somewhat similar to what we did in 2023. So that's sort of number. That's, I think, what...

Sorry, is it similar to '23?

Yes, at least similar to 2023.

Our next question comes from the line of Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas.

Just 1 on regional margin development, please. So U.K. and Ireland, it looks to be down 240 basis points in the year despite very strong growth. Just any comments there on like close for France, seeing some improvement on the margin. That was obviously more of a pain point last year. and that's on a stable revenue decline. So just if you could expand a little bit on the moving parts in those 2 regions? And then just a clarification, if that's okay, just on the buyback. Have you given any indication on the time frame for that capital to be deployed?

I think a number of questions there. So I think the first thing is that as you are aware, with the half year results, we tend to sort of experience some fluctuations, which do not necessarily translate to a full year basis. But as I specifically mentioned on France, I did mention last year that there was one-offs and that one-offs don't come into play now, which essentially means if you look at the underlying margin, there hasn't really been any improvement. And I do believe that the U.K. and Ireland margin is 1 of the strongest and is very strong in terms of where we are. So that's where we are on that.

On share buyback, if you could just repeat the...

Oh, it's a market or share buyback. So it would probably be over the next 2 to 3 years in that context.

The next question comes from the side of [indiscernible] from Morgan Stanley.

Two questions, please. The first 1 is on the share buyback program. Is the buyback meant to just offset the option valuation? Or is it bigger than this? And then the second question is on the gross margin evolution. I think it declined. Can you please talk about this and explain why?

On the share buyback, no, it goes beyond the deneutralization of management incentives. So yes, it does have an intent to reduce the overall number of shares over the next 3 years.

Okay. On the gross margin, as I just mentioned earlier, the gross margin is down year-on-year, but versus 2023, we have improved gross margin by 20 bps -- the focus is very much on improving our portfolio mix as we go ahead, and that would be a very important focus area for us. But as you can see, beyond the gross margin, we're doing a lot of work on our operational parameters, as I said earlier, SG&A, et cetera, as well. So the focus will continue to be the portfolio mix, and that's where we're focused really.

We have the next question comes from the line of Laurent Daure from Kepler Chevron.

Two questions as well for me. First 1 is on the pricing condition. I know it's a competitive market. But have you seen recently some clients asking for additional rebates because of the G&A ramp up, which could explain the slight erosion in gross margin because utilization rates have seen have been trending pretty well. And I guess you're still doing the work on portfolio. So the pricing of conditions of the market will be useful to share.

And my second question is on the cash. You did well in the first half, confirmed the full year some peers in the market have talked about delayed cash collection. Do you see -- you start to see the same. And are you still very comfortable with EUR 1.9 billion by the end of the year in free cash flow?

Pricing conditions. It's a competitive market. I mean we see a slow growth rate. We have some of our Indian peers who are shrinking year-on-year, as you imagine, it remains a very competitive pricing environment. And do clients embed or ask for some of the Gen AI savings? Of course. I mean, this is not new. It has already been in the case for several quarters where today, clients do expect some savings in productivity. We don't post in the same way in cost, as you know, less cost reduction. But there is some expectation in some of these contracts in terms of delivering some of the general savings. It's part of the pressure we see on gross margin, but it's the overall competitive market. I mean it's what we expect when the growth is still low and the environment is still unstable. There is quite a bit of price competitiveness, which has not significantly increased compared to previous quarters, which I think is important to remember that.

Yes. So on the organic free cash flow, so yes, we clearly maintain our guidance. But having said that, it is a demanding environment. there is pressure on DSOs. And if you then mechanically take the effect of the currency headwind and, of course, the margin profile, it adds its own level of pressure, but we continue to have very strong discipline -- fiscal discipline. And yes, we believe at this stage, it is definitely challenging but feasible to be able to do it. So it takes a lot of fiscal discipline to be able to do it.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Briest from UBS.

Automotive and aerospace, I think, have been quite challenging industries for a while. I think particularly aerospace in the second half of last year sort of step down. Can you talk about the trends there in the first half and the outlook for the second half specifically. And then just on BPO, I think on the announcement of the deal, you talked about high single-digit growth there. What's happening in the rest of the operations portfolio. Can you talk about the sort of portfolio versus outsourcing?

First on the manufacturing space. Automotive, not surprisingly still under pressure. And we still have a big impact year-on-year, and that's part of what we driving manufacturing down. Aerospace is still slightly declining, but we start to see some improvement going into the second half and probably definitely going to next year. So as I said, they have always shown a lot of confidence regarding the aerospace perspective and it was just a little bit a cycle in terms of evolution of demand, and I'm still very confident about the recovery of the sector.

Automotive, as I said before, we have some structural changes and you have to adapt to them.

As it relates to operations, as you know, we don't provide really growth rates by operation, but I'm happy to share with you the perspectives. Our cloud infrastructure business has some support, of course, from all the cloud continuous demand. So it is improving. I'm not going to say it's growing a lot, but it is improving because there is, of course, some pluses and minus there, but overall, I would say it's solid. On the engineering side, we have the impact of the manufacturing sector. So yes, I mean, this is not a growth in growth right now, but we see development, for example, we are in double-digit growth in areas like consumer products, it's something that we have invested in. We see good perspective on life sciences, and we see a rebounding market probably going to next year on Aerospace.

So -- but in the meantime, I think we have to adjust to some of the structural changes and impact that we have year-on-year coming from the auto sector that stimulates pretty heavily there and overall in manufacturing. But again, with good perspective in terms of evolution based on where we see growth areas and some of the winding impact that will come from notable impact of automotive.

Our next question comes from Charles Brennan from Jefferies.

Great. Actually, firstly, just a clarification and sorry to labor the point on the buyback. But I don't think I'm clever enough to go through the option vesting schedule. Can you just tell us how much of the EUR 2 billion you've allocated to offset share option dilution versus actually reducing the share count?

And then secondly, just in terms of business dynamics, I think a number of your peers are talking to demand being biased to vendor consolidation deals. Are you participating in those? And is that contributing to your gross margin development? And everyone seems to be claiming they are a beneficiary of vendor consolidation arithmetically, it feels like someone should be losing from that process. Who do you see as the net losers?

Again, I don't think we'll go into detail regarding how much of that is us, et cetera, because it depends on the timing of the buyback. So of course, the faster the buyback, the more it has impact in terms of reduction of share counts. The slower the buybacks, the less impact they will have. So it depends if it's done over 2 years, 3 years. So it's difficult to say that this is allocated to this or that because depending on the timing.

What do you think the annual cost of the share option dilution is and then we can make our own assumptions...

We issue about 1% of share capital. So the reality is it's a bit less than 1% that we need on a yearly basis. So the rest will go towards net reduction of shares.

On the vendor consolidation, yes, we are in vendor consolidation. Listen, the vendor condition game is very simple. If you're small, you probably get squeezed out. If you're big, you stay in a new win, okay? So it's usually a simple exercise. Of course, you are competitive at the end of the day. But for us, we see ourselves like some of our peers have claimed as in that winner as part of this consolidation. I think where you really have the positive impact is in some new deals, which are not necessarily vendor consolidation is what people are actually putting out bids and there's a number of new deals of people who are putting a lot more out in terms of potential outsourcing and offshoring than what they have traditionally done. And this is where you're really going to get beneficiary from a real growth. Does this have an impact? Yes. Nothing new. We have been in that business for a long time. Every time that says a consolidation, you're basically giving upfront savings. It takes 18 to 24 months to try to recover some of these margins. The reality, yes, it does -- this was somewhat in the gross margin. Yes, of course, because when you win some of the consolidation at the front end, it tends to have a negative impact on the gross margin side.

Thank you. And the next question will be the last question.

The last question comes from [indiscernible] Redburn.

Just a question on France. I think at Q1, you said that the growth trough was behind you, but growth is kind of stable at minus 5% or so. Just wondering if that weakness driven by the crossover in France in aerospace and automotive. Just any clarity on what's driving that sluggish market would be helpful.

Yes, I would -- I think we have a broad weakness in France, okay? I don't want to attribute it only to Aerospace. I think Aerospace has weighed a little bit. Automotive has raised more -- but overall, we had a slowdown in France, okay? As you can see from a number of players. It's not just specific. I think an adjustment that's going through. Overall, there's a lower level of activity and confidence in the business environment that has basically weighed quite a bit on the spend. We expect that this is stabilizing. So it will improve a bit by bit. But overall, we don't have perspective in the short term of a big pickup in France.

Thank you for the questions. With that, I would like to hand the call back to the management for closing.

Okay. Thank you very much. As you see -- we start to see some improvements. Some of the actions that we started in Q3 last year are really to have an impact, and we look forward to continue to work on this and continue to progress. We look forward to interacting with all of you over the coming days and weeks. Thank you again, and look forward to interact with you as we reach our Q3 results. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.