ISS Aktie

Never heard such a long period of silence. Like Troels, our COO, just told me, every minute counts. And here we are well on time. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day. On behalf of the full team at ISS, I would like to welcome you very much to the Capital Markets Day 2026. We are delighted to host this at our friend's site, PwC in Hellerup, Copenhagen. Thank you so much, PwC, for creating this opportunity for us here today.

Today is an opportunity for us to showcase our strategy, to showcase the progress we've made so far as well as our ambitions for the future. Most importantly, it's an opportunity for you guys to touch -- get in touch with the management team, ask the questions and see firsthand how ISS creates value for our customers on a daily basis.

Before we begin, let me just briefly walk you through today's agenda. Throughout the day, our leadership team will create insights into the strategy, how we accelerate quality growth and how we create long-term shareholder value. We will start up with Kasper in a moment. He's our CEO and has been so for a bit more than 3 years, but he has a very long history with ISS. Kasper will share the strategic direction for the company, and he will share the opportunities ahead.

Then up to Carl-Fredrik. Carl-Fredrik, prior to meeting the EGM team, Carl-Fredrik was heading up ISS Norway. During his leadership in Norway, ISS Norway turned into the most -- one of the most profitable and efficient markets. You will also see that discussed later on in the presentation.

Then we will head on to Steven. And Steven, he is heading up the Americas region for us, and he's a facilities management industry veteran. Steven has spent more than 25 years successfully growing FM businesses and has obviously today going to spend time on his perspectives for the North American market and as well as the opportunities for ISS. Following the morning sessions, you will enjoy a good ISS lunch.

Then Troels will take the stage, and he will discuss how we will strengthen operational performance in the business. He will talk about how we further drive workplace efficiency. Troels's history with ISS also goes back. Troels is currently the Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that, Troels has been heading up and growing efficiency along some of our most important contracts, including Deutsche Telekom. Troels has also had several regional operational roles throughout his tenure in ISS.

Then we will hear from Liz. Liz covers people, and she will cover tech, and she will showcase how specifically this enables the strategy that we do, how it accelerates even further and how being the industry's leading frontline employer really matters to ISS. Some of you might recall this from the last Capital Markets Day in 2022. At that time, Liz was heading up the UK&I, where she successfully led the turnaround of that business.

After that, Mads, our CFO, who's got a background in oil and gas as well as banking, will take the stage. He will tie it all up in terms of the financial implications from the various inputs during the day. And he will do that in such a way that you will understand the financial targets that we've set out for the coming period in ISS. Finally, we will conclude the day with closing remarks from Kasper, also with a little bit of a longer Q&A session and the takeaways from today's discussions.

Before we get started, let me just talk briefly about safety. At ISS, safety is a prerequisite in terms of what we do. In the unlikely event of an emergency today, please take note of the fire exits today. And also do be aware that you walk around in the room, there are some extension cables on the tables. Please be careful not to trip in any of those. Should you need any assistance during the day, feel free to reach out to any ISS staff that you will see plenty of here today. And that, of course, includes Investor Relations. So with that, I would like to set the scene for today's discussions.

While we are gathered here in Hellerup at, as I said, one of our customer sites, the ISS story unfolds every day around the world. Placemakers spend their times often behind the scenes. They make sure that things are working and that our customers can drive growth in an efficient and attractive way. The video that you will see in a short minute illustrates why we at ISS believes that we're doing the right things. We will talk about ISS as an investment opportunity, and we will all tie it all together in terms of the purpose, our strategy and our execution. We will also give you a brief glimpse on what we do on a daily basis behind the scenes at more than 50,000 customer sites during the day. Let's begin.

[Presentation]

Kasper Fangel.

Good morning, everyone, and a very warm welcome to our 2026 Capital Markets Day. It is very nice to see so many familiar faces, but it's also very nice to see a lot of new people in the room. I know that we have a lot of people that are following this event online through the webcast and also a very warm welcome to each one of you as well. Today is a very exciting day. It's a day that we have been looking very much forward to because today, we have an opportunity to explain to you all the significant progress that we have made in the business over the last 3 years. And we're also excited about the fact that we have an opportunity to explain to you why we believe that we have a successful future ahead of us.

But today also marks what I think has been a very fruitful internal process because we have spent many long hours on preparing for this Capital Markets Day. And that is not only benefiting you, it's also benefiting us internally. We have had an opportunity to get full transparency to our expectations for the financial performance in the next foreseeable future until the end of 2028 and align that with the broader leadership team in ISS. And that means that today, you are seeing a plan that is not only my personal commitment, not only the commitment from the executive group management team, but the commitment from the broader leadership team in ISS. And that's important because in ISS, we are executing our strategy in our countries, and we are delivering our financial results in the countries. So it's very important that our country managers also understand where we're heading and are committed to deliver.

In my session, I will focus on 3 things. The first thing that I will explain to you is the market that we are operating within. Secondly, I would like to explain to you the details around why I say that we have made significant progress over the last 3 years. What does that mean? And thirdly, I will tell you how we are using our stronger platform to unlock the potential that we have in ISS.

Let's start with the market. We are very excited about the market that we are operating within. As I said in the video, there's plenty of opportunities, both for ISS and the competition to grow. If we look at the whole outsourced market today, then we have less than 1% of that market share. And the market is expected to grow in the foreseeable future, both outsourcing as a trend, but also the demand for single-service cleaning and integrated contracts. And it's very important to convey the message and that you understand that the market that we are operating in today is very different compared to how it was before COVID-19.

The conversations we had with customers before the pandemic was almost always centered around price. Today, the discussions we're having with customers are much more value-based. And that is the case because all businesses and all decision-makers appreciate that square meters is not just space. Square meters has to be an experience. It has to be something that is better than the alternative for staff, which is to work from home. And therefore, the investments that are going into office environments is bigger than what we saw before COVID-19. It's also clear that, what is creating engagement among staff is that you're working physically together. And when people are engaged, then they work in a more productive way.

Outsourcing as a trend is growing. And it has to do with the fact that there's a lot of uncertainty in the world at the moment. And I'm not only talking the geopolitical tensions that we have, the uncertainty at local level and regional level. And what we see is that, that is pushing outsourcing as a trend. Customers want to focus on what is core to them and are interested in liaising with strong partners that can take care of services that are still important to them, but not core. And that's exactly where opportunities comes up for ISS.

And lastly, on AI, artificial intelligence, that is pushing how work are getting done. And customers are expecting that their facility service partner can adapt accordingly. But AI is also producing commercial opportunities. The number of data centers that are being established today is significantly more than what we've seen historically. And lastly, AI is, of course, also giving us an opportunity to improve how we are working with our processes internally.

So the market is significant. How do we then get our -- how do we get our arms around the opportunities in the market? We have completed a significant survey where we asked more than 4,000 current customers and potential new customers. We asked them about what are they basing their decision upon when they are choosing which partner to use for facility services. And there are 3 things that comes up. The first thing is efficiency and standardization. In other words, price. If we are not competitive from a price point of view, then we're disqualified in a commercial process.

Secondly, on the experience part, I alluded to it before. It's clear that all businesses appreciate that if they don't invest into the office environment, then it's not better than the alternative and people will work from home. That is not creating engagement and you're lacking productivity. They are expecting that their facility management partner can help at a strategic level to design the setup for how that is done and created and help to run the facilities accordingly afterwards.

And on sustainability, customers are expecting from their facility management service partner that we are helping to accelerate their ESG agenda. On the environmental part, remember that approximately 40% of all CO2 emission is coming from facilities. They're expecting that we can help them to create a baseline and then help drive energy savings accordingly. And the theme that is getting more and more traction across local markets is social sustainability. I will explain later what I mean about that, and Liz will also double-click on that in the session that she has later today.

So of course, the key question is, how do we -- how are we then positioned to deliver on the needs of our customers. And we believe that we are uniquely positioned. And a big reason for that is that we self-deliver our services to our customers. And because that's essential to understand, I have 2 slides following this one where I would like to explain the details about that. We provide all the services that you can think of in a facility, and we do that with one point of contact. And we are a global company that are represented in 57 local markets, which is important because we are providing our services in a consistent way regardless of the geography. And lastly, we know how to scale. So when best practice is being spotted somewhere on a site, then we know how to scale that across the enterprise. And the same goes for innovation when that is invented.

So let me spend a bit of time on our operating model, the self-delivery model. The competition are providing their services through an account management team. And that account management team is liaising with subcontractors that are providing the services on the customer sites. In some instances, we see that the way that model is working is that you have one third independent party providing cleaning services, another one providing food services and a third one looking after technical services. In our model, we have an account team and that account team is managing our people, our workforce.

And why is that a benefit to our customers? Well, first and foremost, we own the user experience. It's our people that are providing the experience at our customer sites every single day. That is hard to do if you don't self-deliver the services, but you provide the services through a subcontractor, a third independent party. Because it's our people and we are managing the workforce and the cost base, we can also provide cost leadership to our customers by using productivity benchmarks. And then we do things across our enterprise in a consistent way with the same processes, the same methods and the same tools.

We train and we engage our people. In ISS, we handpick the people that we hire. And then we educate them in what good service and experience looks like. We meet them every single day, making sure that they are encouraged and motivated so that when they see the customers at their office premise, then they are thriving, they are operating at the best. You will see, for those of you that are here in the room, when we have the site tour later today, you will see an example of exactly that.

And on social sustainability, we have more than 325,000 people in ISS in our workforce. And what we can do together with customers is that we can assess what is the so-called swing factor in a local community and give people opportunities that they not necessarily would have had if that partnership didn't exist. And let me give you a few examples of that. In India, we are helping people that lives in poverty to have something meaningful to wake up to in the morning, something they could be proud about, a role with ISS where they're working at the sites of our customers. In the U.S. and the U.K., we are running programs around homeless people and disabled people.

And lastly, on compliance. Because we recruit people ourselves, we onboard them ourselves, then we can give the assurance around that we live up to the national legislation from a compliance point of view and also if there are specific requirements that are related to customers. All of this, just to say that if you don't self-deliver your services, it's incredibly hard to drive those benefits to customers.

So I said in my introduction that we have made significant progress over the last 3 years in ISS. And I'd like to give you some additional color on that. When we had our last Capital Markets Day at the end of 2022, we spoke about the so-called 4 hotspots. U.K., Deutsche Telekom, France and Danish Defense. All of those hotspots have been resolved in the past 3 years. And I'm also incredibly pleased with how we are operating the business today, which is very different compared to where we were 3 years ago. Those of you that have followed the company in that period of time will remember that I reduced the executive group management team from 13 people to 5 people, and it's working. It's working to give the best qualified, the best people a bigger avenue to provide the leadership upon. It takes bureaucracy of how we work, and it accelerates the momentum.

I'm also very pleased with the fact that we have simplified our strategy, and that is important because if people don't understand what we aspire to do, then of course, they're not running through the same avenue. And in a company where we have more than 325,000 people, then that articulation needs to be crisp and clear. I think we have managed that in a very good way, taking a lot of complexity out of how we have designed the strategy and how we are executing the strategy, which provides us -- which makes it easier to communicate. And I have to say that the engagement, the spirit, the enthusiasm that I experience in the company today is at the highest level that I've seen in the 17 years that I've been with the company.

And the good thing is it's coming nicely through in the numbers. This year, you should expect that the organic growth is greater than 6%. You should expect that the operating margin is around 5.25% and you should expect that the free cash flow is greater than DKK 3.1 billion. That is quite a significant improvement compared to where we've been historically. And we have learned from the past. So what we have in place in how we are operating today is a very strong governance where the right things are being discussed when that is needed. So as an example, we have in our governance that everything above a certain threshold is being discussed with the executive group management team and signed off as well. What that ensures is that we won't get hotspots in ISS again because we won't commit to things that we aren't able to deliver exactly what happened on the Deutsche Telekom contract. And we will not repeat the mistake that we did with Danish Defense.

So we have in place that if we are not sure about the data set that we have been provided that we are basing our pricing upon and therefore, have received from the customers, if there is a possibility that that's inaccurate, then we have a legal clause in our MSA, making sure that we can adjust the pricing a couple of months after we have gone live.

And the way that we operate our business today is with closeness. And I'm very, very pleased with the fact that we have a system in place that isn't rocket science, but needed in a low-margin business like ours, where there are business unit meetings taking place. Troels will explain a little bit more about it in his part with the countries on a regular basis. It goes down to business unit level and all the way down to site level. And then we have a thing in place, which a lot of people are laughing about, but I don't care because it matters. It's important. And that is a daily cash flow tracker. So every single day, we see the cash that has been delivered at the lowest units across our global enterprise.

And why is that important? That's important because when you know your cash flow, then you can do a proper quality of earnings assessment. And when you can do that, then you can see if there are smoke coming out of the system. When you address issues, when there's smoke coming out of the system, you prevent the fire to happen, incredibly powerful. And I'm also very pleased with the fact that we have found a balance between how we work with what is mandatory and pushed and owned by the group versus what is executed locally.

So when you -- when I speak about strategy later on in my presentation, you will see that we have a few strategic initiatives that are group initiatives, global initiatives that grows across the portfolio. And those are, of course, chosen because those are the ones that gives us scale benefits. That also means the things that are not global, that's anchored locally with the strong governance wrapped around that.

The team -- executive group management team, as I said, consists of 5 people. And today, you will not only hear from Mads and myself, you will hear from Liz, Troels and Carl-Fredrik. And Michael gave a good introduction on their background. But I will just say that it is really, really fruitful to have people in the executive group management team who understands how our business is working in the countries. And with that wealth of experience that we have in the executive group management team, that's important because that means we are discussing the right things and we are making decisions that are meaningful and powerful for our business in the countries.

Our platform today is in 57 countries. And you should not expect that we will divest any countries. You should not expect that we will enter into new markets. We are where we need to be to grow this business. We also have the service capabilities that we need in order to unlock the potential in the business. And we will continue to focus on segmentation, because our customers don't want to talk to a generalist. Our customers and potential new customers wants to talk to a partner that can advise them at a strategic level, and that you can't do if you're trying to be everything with everybody everywhere.

So we have a stronger platform. How are we then going to unlock the potential from the stronger platform? Well, as I've said several times already, then we have taken a lot of complexity out of how we have designed the strategy and how we are executing the strategy. And that is important in a very decentralized organization like ISS to align people. And what that means in practical terms is that our strategy can be displayed on one slide, and that's the slide that I have behind me here. I would like to take you through the components of this slide because that will make you understand the strategic decisions that we have made and how we are prioritizing.

So as I've said, we operate in a market that is full of growth opportunities. We have the right geographical footprint. And the reason why that is the right geographical footprint is because it mirrors the footprint of the customers that we want to serve. And the customers that we want to serve are customers in the following segments: financial services, professional services, technology, life science and local selective segments. The scale benefits across each of those segments is our self-delivery model because when we are delivering our self-delivery model at the highest quality, then we meet the needs of our customers. And those are price, it's the experience part and it's sustainability. And when we meet the needs of our customers, then we also deliver our mission to our customers at their sites. And our mission is that we make space for people and businesses to thrive.

And in order for us to continue that and deliver that to more and more customers, we are prioritizing. And we are prioritizing the following activities, categories, customer-centric growth, leading frontline employer and efficiency. On the customer-centric growth, we have a great offering, but we need to be better at commercializing it. We will continue to invest into becoming the leading frontline employer. We are a people company. And when our people are thriving, then we're unbeatable at the customer sites. And we will continue to work with our cost base and become more and more efficient. Troels will talk about that in his session around workforce management, and Mads will also touch upon that with shared -- the journey on our shared service center. The shared service center is a great example of how we are providing operating leverage in our business.

And each of our priorities and initiatives is powered with technology. We have evolved our thinking around technology a lot since the last Capital Markets Day. Today, we are only investing in technology that is linking to our priorities, not the other way around. And specifically, what we are investing in is what will be covered in the sessions from Carl-Fredrik and Troels and Liz later today. But one thing that I would like to single out is the work that has been done around cybersecurity. Many of you will remember that in 2020, ISS was hit by a severe malware attack. And we've used that opportunity to build a cybersecurity setup, which is not only keeping the company safe, but we're also using it as a competitive advantage, and it's well acknowledged by our customers.

And the good thing is that our strategy and the execution that we are making is all -- is paying off. It's working. So our cNPS is up with 10 points compared to the same period last year. Our employee turnover is down with 3 percentage points, and we work with our cost base in a much more efficient way today compared to what we have done in the past. And that's important because, of course, that is increasing our operating margin, but it also gives us an opportunity to be much stronger when we are putting prices forward in commercial processes.

So going forward, you should expect that the average annual organic growth over the period 2026 to 2028 is greater than 5%. What we have assumed in that target is that the contribution from prices, which is currently 4%, is decreasing in 2027 and 2028 to 2% to 3%. And we have assumed that our like-for-like growth, so growth with existing customers and new customers, is at least 2%. And then we have assumed a decent growth coming from project and above-base work. On operating margin, you should expect that our operating margin is increasing from the current level at 5.25% to between 5.5% and 6.0% in 2028. And you should expect that the margin next year in '27 is higher than the margin that we are having this year in '26. So margin is increasing in '27 and then increasing further in '28. And you should expect that the cash conversion for each of those years are greater than 60%.

Mads will cover the details around our capital allocation policy, but just a few words on it from my side. We are not changing our capital allocation policy. So our leverage range will stay at 2.0 to 2.5x. We'll continue to pay dividends of 20% to 40% of net adjusted profit. We are still interested in doing bolt-on acquisitions to the same extent as you've seen in the last 3 years in -- where we have opportunities that is a good strategic fit for us in markets where we have a strong platform and where we have a management team that have a proven track record and where, of course, that it works, the business case works from a financial point of view. And when you take the targets that I've just explained and you wrap the capital allocation around that, then, of course, -- that also means that there will be quite a significant amount of excess capital in the business for '27 and '28, and that will be returned to shareholders through additional share buyback programs.

So what I want you to take away from this session is the following things. First of all, that we operate in a market that is very attractive, that we have a platform today that has improved significantly, a platform that is ready to absorb growth and that we are incredibly focused in our execution. You will hear from Carl-Fredrik exactly what we do and what we do different today compared to what we have done in the past around customer-centric growth. We will zoom in on the United States of America or North America with Steven Quick. Clearly, that is a market where we have a lot of growth opportunities. Steven will cover where we are with the business today, and he will cover what we are focusing on in the future and also explain why that is different compared to the many attempts that ISS have had previously in the -- in North America.

And then Troels will cover efficiency. And Liz will talk to you about the initiatives that we have around becoming the -- continue to improve our position as a leading frontline employer. And all of those things are, of course, converting into our new midterm targets that Mads will double-click on. And I'm sure that all of you have either put whatever I mentioned around the targets and the capital allocation policy into a spreadsheet or done the calculation on the back of an envelope. And it's, of course, clear that with the plan that we are presenting today, then we are expecting that the earnings per share in 2028 and beyond is significantly improved compared to where we are today.

With that, I will close my session, and I will give the word to Carl-Fredrik. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Kasper, and good morning, everyone. My name is Carl-Fredrik Langard-Bjor, and I am the Group Chief Commercial and Revenue Officer in ISS. I've spent 25 years in the service industry coming from an American global staffing company as the CEO and Head of Corporate Accounts, Group CEO for the Nordic Staffing company and 15 years in ISS, 8 of which the country CEO for ISS Norway, one of the largest and most profitable countries we have across the world and 5 years together with my colleagues in EGM, the first 3 years as the regional CEO for Northern Europe and UK&I and the last 2 years as heading up growth, revenue and commercial. And the cornerstone of all those things that I've been doing has been about profitable growth.

It is a privilege today to speak with you on the topic of customer-centric growth and to build on our recent H1 announcement where we did 8.2% organic growth. And I want to take a moment to also recognize all the commercial resources in the ISS enterprise for a very, very strong performance in that time period. This growth is well above historical levels ISS has delivered over the last 25 years. And importantly, this growth is being driven by new business wins, account expansion, strong retention and with a stable impact from price increases. And at this point, I could end my presentation here. But sustainable growth does not happen by chance. Today, I will explain how we built the culture, the capabilities and the operating model that supports sustainable growth into our midterm outlook because growth does not happen by chance.

I'll turn first to how we created a stronger enterprise-wide growth culture to drive this commercial performance. Through sharpening our focus, as Kasper mentioned, we have made customer-centric growth 1 of 3 enterprise strategic priorities. But it does take targeted actions to make this come to life and to ensure that a commercial mindset truly lives and breaths throughout the full organization. To this end, together with my group management colleagues, we've implemented a number of targeted initiatives to strengthen the growth culture. And these include, among others, bringing our commercial community closer together through an annual growth summit. And this was not a thing of the past.

So embarking on the journey where we share best practices, we make sure that we come together as one team, and we're also dare to recognize has been a pillar on the growth journey so far. We've also launched global sales competition to involve everyone in ISS in what we are trying to achieve. And last but not least, not being afraid to celebrate our success while also making sure that we do learn from all our losses. And together, these initiatives has helped us make growth a shared responsibility by creating stronger commercial alignment, understanding of our common growth ambition and an awareness of growth accountability throughout ISS. We apply the same principles of transparency externally, regularly communicating both our large successes and the losses to the external market and everyone in this room today.

However, while sustainable growth starts with culture, we also know that culture alone is not enough. It must be complemented with a clear strategic approach to growth firmly embedded throughout the organization. Our customer-centric growth strategy spans every revenue lever across the customer life cycle, ensuring that customer needs and priorities are reflected in how we win, how we keep and how we grow our customer base. And this is why I'm presenting today as the Chief Commercial and Revenue Officer rather than the Chief Commercial Officer because growth is much more than just winning the new business.

Accordingly, accountability now extends across the full growth agenda with dedicated initiatives focused on winning new customers, strengthening customer relationships and retaining existing customers under the leadership of one single function. Next, I would like to showcase what this looks like in practice. We have implemented a very systematic approach across the full customer life cycle. It's steered by a single global function and built around the 3 priorities of win, keep and grow. Winning starts with focused segmentation, a consistent sales approach throughout the enterprise and a compelling IFS solutions tailored to the customer needs with efficient, standardized solution in our cleaning business.

Customer retention and expansions are supported through a range of initiatives implemented across our key account portfolio, representing 900 strategic accounts and as much as 71% of our revenue. These include, among others, structured customer listening programs, customer development plans and a strengthened approach to above base. And consistency is key. Our global initiatives provide a common framework on our systematic way of working while allowing the countries to adapt these with local initiatives. Steven Quick will explore this in more detail in the next session when we go into North America.

I will now take you through the specific initiatives we've implemented, how these are supported the growth we are currently seeing and why this demonstrates that growth also is sustainable going into the future. And let me start by winning new customers. I referenced the expansion of growth accountability across all the revenue levers, but let's make no mistake. New sales remain strategically important as we continue to expand our already significant customer base. And over recent years, we have significantly strengthened our ability to win new customers. And in this section, I will explain the key initiatives that has driven exactly this progress.

Our winning approach starts with identifying the most attractive segments for ISS, where demand for our services is the strongest and where ISS has a proven ability to create value. A clear segment-based approach to bidding across the markets provides a consistent structure for prioritizing opportunities across the enterprise. And across all of these markets, financial, professional services, technology and life sciences remains priority segments, reflecting their attractive global market dynamics and strong alignment towards the global ISS capabilities. But at the same time, countries do retain the flexibility to pursue opportunities in attractive local segments, for example, industry and manufacturing and defense, and they are all based on local robust business cases.

This approach creates alignment across the organization. Countries understand where we want to grow and understand where to prioritize their efforts, reducing the number of opportunistic bidding and promoting bidding based value on the win probability. I will now move to the criteria behind our segment choice and how this enable us to target a significant portion of the market opportunity. Our segment-focused commercial strategy across all markets is built upon opportunities where ISS has a clear right to win with profits. These are defined by our unique value proposition, established customer references, market attractiveness, profitability and payment terms. Together, these factors helps ensure that new wins continue to translate into sustainable margin and a very strong cash conversion.

We are not constrained by opportunity. Given the size of the market, success is not about pursuing every opportunity. It is about identifying where ISS is the best positioned to win and to create value over the long term. By maintaining a clear focus on our 4 prioritized segments, we ensure that ISS is well positioned to capture a meaningful share of the global outsourced market. And in addition, prioritized local segments provide a strong foundation to continue to grow into the years ahead. That said, identifying the right segments is only the first step. Now I'll take you through the initiatives we developed to ensure we engage proactively with target customers and demonstrate how ISS can create value for them from our first intervention and onwards.

To support this proactive customer engagement, targeted segment campaigns are specifically designed to show thought leadership on the most relevant topics for our prioritized segments. For target customers, we combine these segment campaigns with account-based marketing initiatives, which is focusing on the issues that matter most to them individually and promote where ISS can make the greatest difference. This is reinforced through our enterprise sales methodology, the ISS way of selling, which provides a structured approach to customer engagement across all the markets, always based on value. This also ensures we're not only engaged in the segments we want to compete, but also with the customers we want to win in a way that positions ISS as a strategic partner in the language that speaks to their core needs.

Differentiation is also equally important. Our leadership in workforce management under Troels Bjerg, our self-delivery model powered by more than 300,000 placemakers and our ability to create measurable social impact under Liz Benison's leadership creates a competitive advantage based on leading price competitiveness, exceptional customer experiences and an unrivaled measurable sustainable outcomes on a global scale. The result is a disciplined and consistent approach that keep customer needs and value-based outcomes at the center of every single interaction with a winning value proposition built on our global footprint and definitely a competitive advantage.

On the next slide, I will show the outcomes these initiatives have achieved. The impact of our approach is clear. And I've highlighted -- what I've highlighted has not been achieved through one single initiative. By focusing all the commercial resources on the priority segments, engaging proactively with customers throughout their buying processes and tailoring our scalable solution to their needs, we increased our new sales hit rate by almost 50% between 2023 and 2025. I will say that again. We increased our hit rates by almost 50% between 2023 and 2025. This improvement gives us the confidence that the strategic choices we have made are strengthening our commercial performance.

To further illustrate how these choices have translated into tangible performance outcomes, I would like to share a case study. The U.K. is a strong example of how segment-focused approach in action, transforming from a commercial hotspot in the past to a best practice example for the wider organization. Through a relentless focus on priority segments and proactive customer engagement, our U.K. business increased revenue won by 340% between 2021 and 2023, alongside a significant reduction in opportunistic bidding. Significant new business wins have continued to be announced across priority segments since 2024. And as you see, the Department for Work & Pensions, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, West Sussex County Council and the Bank of England are all announcements of more than DKK 100 million through a structured process in the U.K. to win more and bid less. This demonstrates the success of the model and its scalability through repeated commercial performance over time.

I will now move to the second section, focus on how we keep, how we retain and how we grow our customers. And as mentioned in the outset, our approach to growth does not stop with winning new customers. Some of our most attractive growth opportunities exist within the current customer base. And by focusing efforts on the customer relationships we have built over time and further strengthening these, we created a platform for both sustainable retention and future growth opportunities across our full portfolio.

I'll now turn my focus to the structured initiatives we have taken to keep and grow our existing partnerships. At the heart of our customer-centric growth strategy is the annual customer engagement survey, covering more than 900 key accounts and over 4,000 customer stakeholders. Each and every year, we receive feedback from a range of stakeholders across participating accounts, giving us the structured view of customer satisfaction. While the scale of the program is important, the real value lies in what we do with the feedback. Customer insight only creates value when it drives actions, transforming customer listening from a measurement exercise into a genuine driver of growth.

For us, the customer engagement is not simply a measurement exercise. Through our listen, think, plan and act framework, customer feedback is translated into targeted account actions to drive retention and account expansion with senior leader sponsorship of action plans. The program continues to evolve through initiatives designed to improve both coverage and effectiveness. For example, targeted pulse surveys for risk accounts that allows us to monitor progress, enhance existing action plans and ultimately turn retention risk into retentions secured. This disciplined approach has been a significant contributor to the 95% retention rate achieved in H1 2026. And let me also be clear, the ambition going forward is also to maintain the 95% retention rate.

This has also helped to drive a 10-point improvement in customer Net Promoter Score, demonstrating that value of systematic customer listening, combined with effective follow-through initiatives on a global scale. And the improvement in customer satisfaction are important, and they are a testament of the strength of the relationships that we have. And more importantly, they create a platform for further growth within the significant opportunity we have in our key account portfolio, which I will now go further into on the next slide.

With our key account portfolio alone, we have identified an estimated additional DKK 80 billion share of wallet opportunity through services that are not currently with ISS. Beyond this, further opportunities exist through cross-border account growth and above base. This is one of the most attractive opportunities available for us because it's built on relationships that already exists. We already understand these customers, their operating environments and priorities, allowing us to focus on expansion rather than acquisition. As such, these opportunities typically benefit from higher win rates, shorter sales cycles, allowing us to further enhance our efficiency in deploying the commercial resources.

And this opportunity, everyone, is significant. But what truly gives confidence is our growing ability to convert that opportunity into revenue. And I will now move to this by highlighting the outcomes that we have achieved. I've spoken about new wins and retentions and the results for account increases are equally compelling. Through our structured approach to customer engagement and account development, we have increased the hit rates of major scope increases by more than 130% between 2023 and 2025. This performance reflects the strength of the customer relationship we have and the effectiveness of our commercial initiatives built on data-led capabilities we have developed over the recent years.

And importantly, our established goal operating -- global operating platform enables us to more than just expand locally. It allows us to support customers consistently across geographies, which I will elaborate on very shortly. The growth opportunities with existing customers extend beyond major scope increases. They also support above-base revenue, which remains a significant growth lever. I will take you through what we've done to ensure we maximize opportunities, especially within above base. And to capture this opportunity more effectively, we have increased visibility of above-base opportunities, strengthen the sharing of best practices across markets, enhanced initiatives for both operational and commercial colleagues and supported execution through targeted global campaigns involving everyone at ISS.

And together, these initiatives help us to embed a more proactive approach to identifying and converting expansion opportunities within the current customer base. And this is contributing to a continued positive momentum. And we look forward to demonstrate how these initiatives translate into tangible customer value and commercial outcomes at the site level during later this afternoon. I have referenced international expansion of customers, which owning to our global footprint and consistent delivery model presents an attractive avenue to grow our customers into the future.

And like in the first section, I will end this section with a case study to demonstrate how international customer expansion comes to life. The example you see is customer-centric growth in practice, delivering for customers locally to turn this into strong local key accounts and then growing these customers across countries and regions throughout the globe. In this case, success in Spain, which grew the local relationship, leading to an extensive local customer expansion with a satisfied customer growing from DKK 5 million to DKK 100 million account. This satisfaction and proven ability to deliver locally developed the relationship to a point where we saw the opportunity to deliver across multiple ISS geographies.

Through offering the same standard solutions across markets, we have continued to grow the account to DKK 260 million with further recognized expansion opportunities globally with the potential to double existing revenue to more than DKK 600 million with a value proposition based on unmatched operational efficiency. This is what Troels also will speak to later in his session. This demonstrates that once trust has been established in one market, we are positioned excellent to support customers as their requirements evolve and expand our business alongside them internationally.

Our customer engagement survey helps us to identify satisfied customers with expansion potential, and we are further supporting international account expansion through dedicated farming resources to enable these opportunities to be converted at scale. I've taken you through the actions we have implemented across the pillars of win, keep and grow and the commercial outcomes that they have delivered and we will now look forward with regard to what this means to sustained future growth. In combination, the initiatives I have shown have created a more disciplined and scalable approach to growth across ISS. And it is strengthening our ability to win new customers, retain the strategic accounts and also expand the current customer base. As a result, we have built the capabilities, the processes and the customer relationships needed to support sustainable growth at scale, which are now embedded across the organization.

Let me turn to why we remain confident in the sustainability of our growth outlook and the opportunities that do lie ahead. The commercial outcomes we have delivered are encouraging and importantly, increasingly broad-based. We continue to announce contract wins and scope increases to the markets. And year-to-date, we have announced 11 positive new contracts, tracking very strongly against the 20 announced in 2025. And as you see, already exceeding the total for the full year of 2024. We're also seeing the benefits across the wider organization. The share of countries delivering positive volume growth before pricing has increased by 36%, demonstrating that growth is becoming more deeply embedded across ISS with contributions from multiple revenue levers and a broader range of markets across the full enterprise.

And at the same time, our commercial pipeline continues to strengthen with a 44% increase compared to 2024 with RFP stage and late-stage pipeline opportunities for new sales and scope increases also increasing with more than 40% compared with the same period 2 years ago. And this provides a greater visibility into future revenue opportunities. Combined with improving hit rates, these trends reinforce our confidence that the customer-centric approach we have built is continuing to translate into sustainable growth momentum.

I will now turn to what this means for our midterm outlook for growth. Looking ahead, we expect like-for-like growth to remain at 2% in each of the years 2027 and 2028 and improved contribution from projects and above base while the contribution from price increases is expected to below 2026 levels. More importantly, our growth profile is becoming increasingly balanced and resilient. Growth is supported not only by new business wins, but also by stronger customer retentions, account expansion and deeper customer engagement across our full portfolio. Having built the capabilities, the processes and commercial discipline outlined today, we remain confident in our ability to deliver growth above historical averages over the medium term, supported by a growth model that is increasingly scalable and customer-centric.

And before we conclude this session, I would like to leave you with 3 key messages. First, we have implemented a growth strategy that spans the entire customer life cycle from winning new customers to retaining and growing existing relationships. Secondly, this approach is delivering tangible results across every growth lever, highlighting that the growth we are delivering today is increasingly being driven by factors that are within our control. Thirdly, we now have the capabilities, the culture and the operating model in place to support sustainable profitable growth over the long term. And taken together, these factors gives us confidence in our growth outlook and our ability to continue creating value for customers, colleagues and for shareholders.

Thank you very much for your attention. I look forward to your questions during the Q&A session, I really do, and to demonstrate the elements of our strategy in action during the site tour. But as a final comment, there's one important part that I would like to say. All of the things that you have seen through the growth journey has been about absolute focus to win where we wanted to win and to make sure we drove everything as well into the direction where we're improving. And on that note, I am confident continue to grow this company into the future. Thank you.

I'm now going to pass it over to our CEO for the Americas, Mr. Steven Quick.

Good day, everybody. How are you? So you can see from my background here, I've spent about the last 2 decades working in various companies in this industry, whether it be service companies or large commercial real estate companies. All those mandates involve some sort of strategic transformation that involve growth.

What I want to do today is talk to you about really 4 areas of the North American business. I first just want to define the size of the market. I'm going to spend a minute and just talk about where we are today. I'm going to spend the bulk of my time talking about the investments that we've made and the changes that we've made to enable growth. And then I'm going to round it out with just talking about some leading indicators. Sounds good. All right.

So let's talk about the size of the market. The North American market is the largest FM market in the world at 29%. If you look at it through a slightly different lens and you think about the Global 2,000 largest corporations, 33% of them are in North America. The market remains fragmented, and we have relatively low market share. So really, what that translates into is we've got a lot of headroom in North America. So let's talk about the business today. We're organized in an East and a West region, and I'll talk about the rationale for that in a minute. You can see in these 2 regions, we're pretty equally distributed through revenue and employees. Our services are weighted toward food, and that's a function of a 2017 acquisition we did of Guckenheimer. And the rest of our services are really part of an IFS bundle, and you can see the distribution here.

Our segments are heavily weighted toward those global segments that Carl-Fredrik talked about. And I'm going to spend some time getting into that in the following sections. So that's our business today. So I've been in this industry a long time. I know ISS well. I competed against ISS when I was based in Europe. I partnered with ISS when I was at Cushman & Wakefield. And so when Kasper called me about this role, I was really excited because I absolutely believe the North American market is ready for a disruptor brand like ISS. There's a couple of macro trends that I think are really important to keep in mind here.

One is that I'm going to apologize right now. No one wants to talk about COVID, but the reality is corporate real estate departments are still struggling in a post-COVID world. Yes, we've seen people come back to the office, but not quite at the rate and not the consistency. And they're still struggling with amenities, what do you do, carrot, stick, all those kind of things that we've seen happen. This is not really resolved. But a couple of things are really clear and that the conversation with corporate real estate commerce departments, it's no longer about assets. It's about people. And that really plays well into our hands at ISS.

The other macro trend that we're seeing is the effect of AI. It's a slightly different perspective than everyone is talking about AI in kind of their daily lives. And that is that as AI becomes more prolific in the workplace, there's a premium put on the human experience. I was having a conversation last week with one of our large technology companies. They're in the AI space. They're a hyperscaler, and we had this exact conversation, that as AI becomes more prolific, those limited human experiences are going to become that much more precious, that much more powerful. And that serves us so well because we do have this hospitality mindset. It's rooted in the Guckenheimer acquisition, but it's not just food, it's all of our services come together.

Think about a really terrific hotel experience. We're translating that from the hotel to the workplace. That's what I mean by hospitality. This is in our DNA. We've done this for years. We're really good at this. The other thing that's really translating well into the North American market is, again, something we've done for a lot more than a century. And that is our care around our people and the communities that they live. We're leaning into our placemakers and the communities in what they live and they work. You can see this in our social media. It is a true differentiator in North America.

And self-delivery, you're going to hear about that a lot today. You're going to hear some more from me in a few minutes. But self-delivery in North America is something that's a little more -- I look at it from a slightly different perspective. The North American industry has been predominantly a property management model. What do I mean by that? It means that companies that were getting paid to manage a budget and to manage the subcontractors. That's not us. You know that by now, and you're definitely going to know it by the end of the day. But in order for us to really realize growth, we had to deal with some things that we've done in the past. So we've done that.

I mentioned our regions. Up until 18 months ago, we were organized separately with the food business. We never integrated Guckenheimer. And then we had the IFS business organized by some vertical markets. And what that realized -- what that really resulted in is we didn't -- we weren't realizing our scale. We weren't getting close to customers and we weren't cross-selling. So 18 months ago, we brought all the businesses together. We organized into regions. We're customer-centric. We have all of our capabilities now to bring to those relationships. And we're already seeing the results of that in retention rates and growth rates of those existing customers.

We didn't know who we were. Our focus was everywhere. Today, I can tell you our focus is crystal clear. And that's those global segments, financial professional services, technology, life science, and we also have an aviation segment, that is what we're focused on, nothing else. It's really important. We've got an enormous market. We've got an enormous opportunity. We've got to stay focused. Why those segments? Because we have references there, and we've got the right to win. Our differentiators are really resonating with those markets. We know that, so we're focused on them. We're not focused on anything else.

One of the other things we've done in the past is we didn't consistently bring strategic initiatives. Maybe that's a function of some of the leadership turnover. I don't know. But we have created this framework. Carl-Fredrik talked about it. We brought this to the business. Keep, grow, win, simple. Simplicity in this case serves us well. If we are not putting every initiative through a filter about delivering for clients and retaining those clients, growing that existing relationship or winning new work, it doesn't matter. We have to stay focused. The market is too big. Our opportunity is too immense. That's what we're doing today.

We have invested in the business. We invested in leadership and organization. One of the things we had to do is we had to upgrade our sales force. We had to bring people in that knew the North American market. But more importantly, the market had to know them. Because I had to show up with people that said, wow, ISS is here, they're here to play. They're serious and they're here to win. I had to send that signal, and we've done that. We've also trained our key account managers. At ISS, we are very good operators, not so great at growth. So what we've done is we've trained those key account managers, not to be salespeople, but to identify opportunities for growth and then bring in those salespeople that we had, we didn't invest in. So we're forming win teams now with our key account managers and those salespeople with very disciplined plans.

I talked about reorganizing the business, and I'm going to spend a minute on the next slide talking about my organization. Operationally, we invested in the platform, 3 areas. On the operational side of the platform, things like workforce management, which Troels is going to go into in a minute, strategic sourcing. We've also invested in technology. I want to have a scalable technology platform. So we've invested in digital recruiting, which Liz is going to go into some detail this afternoon. And also, we've invested in a procure-to-pay program. So now I've got a scalable backbone of technology.

And that hospitality framework I talked about, we've invested in that. We had to go grab people from the hospitality industry that really knew how to do this well because it is an art and to translate that again from that great hotel experience that you picture to the workplace. This is so crucial for today. Commercially, we've done a few things as well. We've invested in our growth channels. We had to understand where the opportunities are coming from.

Let me give you an example of one of these growth channels. In the North American market, more than 50% of the private sector opportunities are coming through a handful of bid consultants. Historically, we didn't know that. We didn't recognize that. We didn't manage it that way. Today, we manage that as a growth channel. We've got relationships with them. We've got a formal program. And informally, there's not a day that goes by that myself or one of my senior leaders are not talking to one of these bid consultants, a huge difference from what we've done before.

Capital projects is an adjacency to our business. It's a natural adjacency. But when you identify those opportunities, you have to have the subject matter expertise that can come have a conversation with the client to change that from an opportunity to a close. So I brought in some leadership and some capital market -- some capital projects expertise that really knows how to do this. I'm going to spend some time in the following slides around the investments we made in digital marketing and to talk a little bit about pricing as well.

So my leadership team. We have very purposely created a leadership team that's a blend of ISS veterans and industry professionals. I needed to have the ISS veterans because they need to understand that DNA, that ISS DNA around workforce management, around those CSR programs. That was an important bedrock. But I needed to bring people in that had run businesses, bigger businesses than this is today, so they're scalable, and they were winners. And once again, the industry had to know them. I purposely hired people that we put out an announcement and the market said, wow, ISS is serious this time. And it's really resonating. So I brought in a management team that the market knows. And they know exactly what good looks like and they know our competitors, and they know how to compete against them. So 7 of the 10 are new.

I talked about digital marketing. When I got here 2 years ago, what I realized was the North American market didn't know who ISS was. They weren't really sure. With this Guckenheimer brand, we had some false starts and they really didn't know. And so that could be a blessing or a curse, but we took it as an opportunity. So we've defined ourselves in the market in exactly the right way to accentuate those differentiation points that I talked about. So we've leaned into those announcements. We've leaned into hospitality. We've leaned into our CSR, and you can see that in our social media presence. It's huge. And one of the things about hospitality that I love is we announced hospitality and this whole idea around bringing that hotel experience to the workplace and our competitors, I started seeing it on their websites. All of a sudden, there's a hospitality tab. I love that because getting momentum in hospitality plays right into our hands, and that's really powerful.

Self-delivery is synonymous at ISS, right? They're really one of the same thing. You heard a lot from Kasper. You're going to hear more from Troels. But one of the things that we had to do in the Americas to just show up and say, we self-deliver, people said, so what? We had to translate the feature of self-delivery to the benefits to the clients. And that has not happened before. And we've done that, and we're doing that. One of the serendipitous things that I also found is kind of interesting is that when you do self-deliver all this work, you provide really great opportunities for your placemakers.

So we've got all these opportunities I've joined the business for people that started as an entry-level jobs and now they're managing groups of people, they're directors, their managers, there's executives, another really great impact. But you can see here the benefits for ISS and there's benefits for our clients. They're not mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, they're complementary, and that's really, really powerful. So if you take this away, the reality is if you really want to boil it down, self-delivery, higher quality and it's more efficient.

But one of the things we struggled with was how to price and discuss that efficiency. This is an important element. Go back to my property management model. In that property management model, there was a myopic focus on the management fee. And again, that management fee was to manage a budget and to manage subcontractors. We had historically not been pricing on an apples-to-apples basis because we didn't understand the game. So we weren't getting past the first or second round and opportunities that we should be. We've changed that now. We're now competing at the apples-to-apples level at the management level so that we can now get to the next round and have the conversation around the benefits, not the feature, but the benefits of self-perform.

Let me give you an example. We're in the final stages of a large media company, and they had come to market through one of those bid consultants. They had out-tasked, which means they had hired cleaners, technical services, et cetera, right? But they hadn't really bundled it all. So they're looking for a couple of things. They're looking for someone to manage that bundle, that property management model. They were looking for consistency of quality and delivery, and they're looking to reduce the total cost of delivery. So we didn't do the old thing that we did. We priced on an apples-to-apples basis the management fee. So we got past that first or second round and then allowed us to have the conversation with the client around exactly the benefits that ISS has to offer, a subtle but a really important -- a really important point.

So we were able to grab all that data and develop an operating plan, sit down with their senior executives and show them exactly where we're going to save money. In the past, we wouldn't have ever had the opportunity to have that conversation. because we weren't pricing it the right way. So back to my keep, grow, win mantra. On the retention side, one of the early indicators that we're really happy with is it's 9% improvement on the last 12-month basis. So what we're putting in place, I think, is really working well. In 2025, we've grown our existing book of business by 30%. You may have seen a couple of announcements, one a few weeks ago, one actually Friday, 2 of those growth opportunities that we're seeing that are over DKK 100 million. So that's starting to work as well. And on the win side, our qualified pipeline is up 300%.

Let me tell you why this really matters. The first thing you need to really focus on is qualified, because it's exactly in those markets that we said we're going to focus in on, financial professional services, technology, life sciences, aviation, that's it. So they're not just -- it's not just great. We have a bigger pipeline. It's we've got a bigger qualified pipeline in exactly the sectors where we can win, and we have the right to win. One of the things that I love to see and is starting to take root is we're learning how to say no to opportunities. Now they might sound counterintuitive to growth, but I'm starting to see the team develop a discipline in the go/no-go process where they're actually talking themselves into, we're not going to chase this one.

Why is that important? Because it tells me they've now got the confidence that we can win the stuff we're focusing in on. That is a huge mental shift from where we were before. So look, we've got a large, large market here that's ready for a challenger brand like ISS. I think we've dealt with some of the issues of the past. We've got a management team that's diverse, scalable, experienced. We've been able to take that self-delivery model and make it come to life in the North American market. So look, we've got a lot of work to do, but those early indicators are really giving me -- making me really proud. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Okay. Now we've been through 3 presentations, and I'm pretty sure that some of you will have a lot of questions following the questions from the audience here today, and Sophie will have a microphone. She will -- then we will also go online. So any questions, raise your hand. Casper, I think you were first.

Casper Blom from Danske Bank. I'll take just one question. But Kasper, you mentioned in your presentation that you continue to have a very disciplined view on M&A and only will go for that in countries that are ready for it. But as we now also hear that the whole of ISS is in a better and better shape, and I suppose more countries would also be prepared to potentially do M&A. So if you think about it that way around, should we expect that M&A can be sort of geographically more broad-based going forward?

You should think about M&A exactly in the same way as we have explained it previously. And what I mean with that is that we don't want to buy anything just for the sake of buying. We want to buy because it's the right strategic fit. And we want to buy when we are comfortable that we can drive synergies out of it. So it has to be a business case that is appealing, and it has to be done in a local market where we have a strong and proven track record with the management team.

And we don't see that there is a need for any transformational M&A, given the opportunities that you hopefully have grasped, we have covered all 3 of us in our presentations. Now it's about we are on the right avenue. It's about continuing to execute. It's about continuing to be better on articulating the value proposition to our customers. That's what Steve is talking to is better in the U.S., but we're not where it needs to be. It has improved but not still room for improvement. So if we are to buy anything, then it has to be because it allows us to better serve the needs of the customers. And at the moment, we don't see any need for that. And that's why the bolt-on M&A strategy remains.

Annelies.

Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Just on North America, you talked about what you've done about hiring people and showing the market that ISS is serious. So as a response to that, have you seen a change in the competitive intensity or any competitors trying to replicate what you're doing in response to the initiatives that you've taken?

Steve?

Yes. I think certainly, as we've progressed in the pipeline, the market has seen that and certainly, they're intense. I think other than the hospitality example I gave, that's probably the best example of how I can see people kind of starting to figure out how to compete against us.

Kristian Godiksen from SEB. So if I'm to play the devil's advocate here a bit, then you can argue that you've downgraded your target on the organic growth or the like-for-like more specifically as you previously expected a growth contribution of around 2% from existing clients and 1% to 2% from net contract wins. So just if you could help me bridge that a bit.

Yes. So what I can say is that the growth bridge that we put together with the assumptions around the above 5% for the period assumes if you just take all the components, that will help you understand how we look at it. Then we expect that the contribution from price is going to come down versus the current levels, which is 4% between 2% and 3%. So let me be clear on that one. If that's not the case, it is an assumption, then, of course, we expect that the growth will be that much higher. So if the contribution from growth remains at the same level as we see today, then we also expect that the organic growth will be that much higher.

Then we are saying above 5%, and we are saying like -- and above 5%, of course, is greater than 5%. And we are saying like-for-like growth of at least the level that we are trending at today, which is 2%. So I will not say that we are downgrading expectations versus where we have been from a growth perspective before. We see, as it hopefully is clear from the presentation, lots of opportunities. The pipeline is reflecting that. And the pipeline to what both Carl-Fredrik and Steve mentioned is not just artificial prospects in there that has no substance. It has substance. So no reason to believe that we shouldn't improve from the current levels that we are at today.

And Kristian, if I may also add, you also recall the glide path that we had in the past Capital Markets Day presentation. We don't have a glide path in this one here.

Yes. So it's more of a math, that I'm alluding to.

Exactly.

Can we ask more questions? Or is it one at a time?

You can ask one more.

[indiscernible] more, one more.

I'll limit myself to one then. On the hotspot, so you've resolved all your hotspots, and I know it obviously has a negative -- it's a negative abbreviation. But so -- but what are then the hotspots of today's agenda? Can you comment a bit on that maybe?

Yes. But the hotspot that I spoke to the 4 was, if we are to be brutally honest, something that was caused by ourselves. And in the portfolio today, we don't have similar issues, things where we have promised something to a customer and we can't deliver accordingly or things where the pricing has been made on a dream scenario that we don't have such things. That doesn't mean that we don't have smoke coming out of the system, as I mentioned. We have that, of course, from time to time, but we spot it and then we can address it before it becomes a fire. So there is that proactive approach to it. So the pipeline or the business today, the book of business today is healthier compared to what has been the past because the past -- when you do a mistake and you have committed to it, it's legal binding, then it's hard to get out of. We don't have such things today.

Just to add on to your question number one. When we say pipeline, and Steve alluded a bit to it in the Americas as well, it's not a pipeline because volume is important. It's a pipeline because quality is important. And when we say pipeline today, it's both increases as opportunities for increases and the new sales combined into one with the increase that we have been seeing. And also from a growth bridge point of view, you also see that we do call out the above-basin project work that we have the ambition that it is part of the growth bridge to reach the above 5% as an average for the period.

Thomas Lind Petersen from Nordea. Carl-Fredrik, you mentioned a significant growth opportunity with existing customers, I think, DKK 80 billion. Just wondering if you could put some numbers on what sort of share can you grab of that opportunity over the next 3, 5 years?

Yes. Thank you. I don't think I'm going to say that, we will capture the full DKK 80 billion over 3 years as a starting point. But what we see and when you see how we divided it as well, 1/3 is with competitors, 1/3 is in-sourced and 1/3 is with ISS. And if you look at what we have announced over the last 2 to 3 years as well, there's a lot of increases in there. That could be scope change, but it could also be geographically across in addition to.

I think I'm going to stand by the growth bridge that we have done. So to capture the part of the 2% per year, it needs to come from that avenue because when it does, we secure as well that we are doing it with the right quality as well as with the right execution with regards to this one. But definitely, you are correct. This is one of the avenues that can contribute well to the future growth, where we're changing the profile to a more sustainable growth over price into the 2 next years.

And Thomas, maybe also just a few comments from my side because it's really attractive that opportunity. And what I mean with that is that we know the DNA of the customer because we operate with them already. That also means that we know who are making the decisions. So you are some steps ahead already in that process. And what is the most appealing and important thing for them when we are presenting our value proposition. So what has happened in the past is not that the opportunity has not been there. But to me, the biggest difference now compared to the past is that now we don't put those opportunities on people's day job and say, go make sure how you're getting -- have that as an additional task to secure that.

Now we have people that are dedicated and it's their day job to make sure that they're working with this. So in a business like ours, people are busy with their day job. And if you add additional tasks on that, then the success rate is very low. That's different now. Dedicated teams that are working solely with those opportunities. And quite honestly, if you ask me, that's the reason why it has come through to the extent that has been the case in the last 18 months.

Mads.

Mads from Berenberg. This is one for you, Steven. So I think you alluded to it yourself. You have, I think, some very interesting clients in the U.S. You have -- I mean, they grow a lot. There's some good exposure there. You won something quite recently. If I slap on a couple of percent pricing next year, you have a decent retention rate. Is there any reason why we shouldn't expect growth in North America next year to be higher than the 5% or actually also meaningfully ahead of that?

I will let -- no, no.

I was going to hand it to you anyway.

Go ahead.

Look, I think we're doing all the right things, like we're pulling all the right levers. I've addressed those in my talk. So I'm not going to give you a number because it's a function of things that are beyond our control. We're doing all the things that we can control. And so we're cautiously optimistic is what I'd say.

And I think jokes aside because you're circling around the thing that, in my opinion, has been addressed in a wrong way in ISS historically because we pushed ourselves into a corner and promised certain things. I mean what is key to ISS now and of course, what is key to ISS now is that we're doing things right with a high level of quality. And then we know the opportunities are there. We know the team is there. We know the operating platform is there. The platform in the U.S. is ready to absorb growth without having to add overhead costs accordingly. So the operating leverage is really and it's operating in an efficient way.

But if we start to panic because all of a sudden, we have promised that in a couple of quarters, you will see double-digit growth. We are -- the things we are in control over, we can see that we are improving on a daily basis with that. We are not in control over when customers exactly are making their decisions. What we can say is that the pipeline is better than what it has been ever before and that our value proposition resonates more with the customers compared to what has been the case previously. And those are 2 very important data points for us to determine that we are moving in the right direction.

Tim.

Tim Ramskill from Bank of America. I've got 2. The first is just around, I guess, when you're delivering an acceleration in growth, and you've obviously talked a lot about discipline, what incentive structures do you have in place for your sales teams to sort of achieve that right balance? And I'll come back to the second one after that.

Do you want to start and then I can add.

I think you're into something that is just key if we want to make sure that we have the motivation and inspiration for the resources also going forward. In general speaking, there is, of course, strong incentive plans in place for what we define as commercial resources. But we have also that we will showcase later in the site tour, incentivized our, let's call them, operational resources to look for further growth. Combining that has been definitely a strength because it's also in a way where you move towards the same target where growth is more in the center also strategically of what we would like to achieve. But this is also following a path that we have done in the past, but delivering on those outcomes, of course, is supporting also the commercial resources to become successful.

And Tim, just an add-on to what Carl-Fredrik mentioned. Our salespeople don't obtain the right to their bonus unless what has been bid is also coming through in operations. So there is a true-up period post go-live to make sure that what -- within, of course, certain thresholds, but to make sure that what has been sold is also coming out in line with expectations.

I think that is learning from the past. Hence, what Kasper presented, the fact that you're not just responsible for a revenue, but also with the fact that the business case that we have approved is coming through in a follow-up later in the year.

My second question was around your priority segments. I guess you must still have legacy business that's not in those priority segments. So how do you -- how large is that? And how do you manage that, sort of proportion of the business?

Yes. Yes. So first of all, the reason why we have prioritized the segments that I went through, Tim, is because those are the ones that are valuing the experience that we can deliver with our self-delivery model. And that's actually also the case for the local segments. So yes, it is correct minor, but it's minor legacy business, which is outside that framework, if you will, but it's nothing that is significant in any way whatsoever.

It's Nicole Manion from UBS. Steven, you talked a bit about how you changed your approach to pricing, particularly around the management service fee -- management fee. But as you also said, ISS obviously isn't a property management company. So is this simple sort of changing the approach to pricing? Or what else are you kind of considering, if you like, in terms of how ISS competes with property management companies?

Well, I mean, on the pricing side, it really is -- again, these bid consultants have a very rigorous process. So it's making sure that you're actually pricing what they're asking for. And then if there's costs associated with the delivery, then we put those in the appropriate buckets. So it really is that simple to try to have that conversation around where our benefits really lie, which is in reducing the cost of delivery, total cost of delivery. So it really is that simple on the pricing side.

And maybe a little bit more context and Steve can also add further to on the U.S. because that will help you understand. I think. I mean, the complexity, Steve made the reference point to COVID-19, the complexity of having to make sure in a big real estate portfolio that there isn't any no-show or other issues with providers showing up in the office environment is, of course, incredibly complex to manage across 1,000 subcontractors. And that is something that has really helped our conversations with customers in the U.S. That has been an eye-opener. Okay, we want to focus on what is core in our business. And if we, at the same time, have to deal with making sure that we are managing 1,000-plus subcontractors, then we'll never get the time to really focus on our business. And COVID-19 and what happened over that crisis period, I think that is really an eye-opener for many decision-makers in the U.S.

Just 2 follow-ups. So first of all, you mentioned that you do not expect to make any changes geographically, but you have no presence in South America or Africa and you have some white spots in Eastern Europe as well. There's no temptation to go to some of these markets, maybe some of your existing clients are asking you to follow them where they are there? That would be the first question.

Yes. So for us, it is so important to stay focused. And as long as the opportunities are so significant as they are in the current environment with the footprint that we have, then it's about getting our arms around those opportunities. So that is really our priority to make sure that we continue to become even better in our offering to the potential customers in the geographies that we are today. And we don't want to add complexity into the portfolio with all of a sudden moving into a different part of the world when that is not needed to grow the business.

And then just a second question for you, Steven. Just curious on how confident you are on whether the current platform is large enough when considering some of your competitors that obviously, it's a huge market and there are some large U.S.-based competitors. So, just if you could speak a bit about that.

Yes. I think that it's very much consistent with my prioritization component, like so the market is large. Yes, there's some large competitors, but we just have to be really good about finding those opportunities that we can deliver well, and I think we're doing a good job with that. So I think we're big enough to be relevant. We've got a great global brand and it's just articulating those differentiations. So there really doesn't seem to be an issue, quite frankly. We're progressing these opportunities. We're leaning in a little harder as you would do, but kind of being the smaller competitor, I show up in a lot of the presentations, other CEOs are not showing up. So we're doing those kind of things you do when you're trying to grow and get bigger, but it does not come up as an objection really at all, quite frankly.

[indiscernible] across the U.S.

Yes. We can deliver anywhere in the U.S. and Canada and it doesn't become an issue.

It's Karl Green from RBC. Again, a question for you, Steven. Just on Guckenheimer, which, as you said, until 18 months ago, was largely run as a stand-alone business. Just roughly what percentage of revenues in Guckenheimer are actually IFM rather than pure food. So just thinking about the opportunity there to sell in multiservice into the existing opportunity. And just thinking about sort of relatedly, Sodexo finally getting its act together and moving down the avenue of strategic pricing. Are you going to have to adjust the way that Guckenheimer targets pricing and thinks about those broader commercial dynamics?

I think there's -- first of all, to answer your first question, I think the slide I put up is the food business, that 52% or 53%, that's food. The rest of it is in those other segments. So that's very much -- that answers the question. That is what it is. There's no blend there. So that's -- those are pure numbers. And so if that was your question, I think that's what you're asking.

Guckenheimer is doing corporate dining. And some of our -- really all of our larger food competitors are doing a lot of things. And so to stay -- we're a quality provider in the corporate space, and that's really resonating. And so we're not competing, of course, price is always important, but we're not chasing the lowest price. We're staying really focused on the segments that value our model because it's really, really different. And it's not -- if you look at some of those competitors, they're providing food to teenagers and feels. We're providing food in the corporate environment. And that's a big difference. And so with that, I think the conversation, we just need to be competitive on price, but the conversation is about quality. And again, that workplace experience is rooted in food.

And the parameter that weighs the most in terms of experience is food because everybody has an opinion about the lunch. And therefore, Guckenheimer is -- or the food business in the U.S. is incredibly important for us to grow the business going forward. And you have an interesting view there, which -- we have also been successful and we expect more from that. That is exactly to start with single-service food and then build on that platform and add further services. So basically make an integrated service offering out of food as the starting point. And the way there to get in is -- gets traction quickly because food is such an important thing for decision-makers given the fact that it's the emotional part that all staff is talking about.

In addition to that, I talked about bringing the regions together to provide all services. So as Kasper said, food could be a vanguard into a new opportunity, so could one of those others, too. But now that we're organized, we've got all of those arrows in our quiver, if you will, to then get in with whatever they're buying at that point. But he's right, food is one of the most emotional.

And I think if you look at it globally, right, very often, we are in contact with the right stakeholders when food is the centerpiece. So that means that you are able to drive not IFM, but IFS, hence, back to the self-delivery model and what we're trying to achieve. But we've seen that across many markets and definitely with the strength of the food business that we do have in the U.S. that drives opportunities going forward.

Casper.

Yes.

Just a question for Carl-Fredrik. One of the things I took away in your presentation was there was a lot of structure and a lot of process on how you handle customers, whether they're existing or potential customers. When you have all of these structures and systems, how do you combine that with the sort of ad hoc opportunities of project and above base, if you can sort of speak into how you combine those 2 things.

Thank you. Now I have 10 minutes answer to it. That was what I was looking for. But I think you're right, and it's a good catch as well. And maybe a bit in the past, we haven't built that much around structure, but more being opportunistic. And I think the U.K. example that is shown today is also saying, let's not try to do everything towards everyone. Let's be very focused on where we're good and what we want to do, put it into the right system, right resources, the right value proposition to make sure we win.

But what we also have changed in that, even though the structure is still there, is doubling down on what are the opportunities with the existing portfolio we have. As an example, above-base and projects, right, which has increased over the latter years, and it doesn't come for free. You still have to do a commercial process to be in place with the customer to make sure it comes to you. But in addition to, I think that's why I started with culture today. because you can have the best structure in the world. But if the culture is not about winning that opportunity being small or large, you're not going to come through because that's also putting the best team in front of the customer to make sure we understand what they are needing, but also that we proactively come with solutions to them, sharing the best practices from customers maybe in the same area or even globally in order to do so.

So it's the combination of strong structure with the things that we would like to do, also data-led. We use a lot of data to make sure that we understand which opportunities which is out there, driven, for example, with the probability. And why should we go after something with a probability, which is very low versus a probability that is very high. Their structure supports also on the -- what we've done in the past, but I'm not going to shy away from the importance of commercial culture to make sure you're actually winning those opportunities. And this is probably also why we dare to put in a ticket in the growth journey when it comes to above-base and projects that you will experience later today as well.

But Casper, it's a fair question and don't think that structure is the same as bureaucracy because it's actually -- it's -- the structure in our ISS context is about building the framework, making sure that people understand what are the boundaries, how does the framework look. Then there are bespoke solutions that are obviously designed to fit in the local context and all things. So it's not bureaucracy around everything needs to be approved and it goes into SteerCo and all of that. It's just to make sure that people are running in the same direction on the same avenue. But then how you are selling in Turkey, of course, is different compared to how you're selling in Norway and third nuance that needs to be applied in the U.S. So rest assured, the entrepreneurship lives in ISS at a high level, but it's structured.

Thank you, Kasper. Thank you, Carl-Fredrik. Thank you, Steven. Thank you for all your questions. Now it's time for something we do really well at ISS. Now it's time for lunch. Before you head out to lunch, there will be a 40-minute lunch break. Then again, look at your name tags because when you hear the bell in 40 minutes' time, you need to find the sign for the person beholding a sign 1, 2 or 3 with your site tour group. So 40 minutes lunch, then on to the site tour and then back to here. Lunch is served right outside. Thank you so much.

Now we'll talk about efficiency, and I would like to welcome Troels Bjerg, our COO, to the stage.

Good afternoon. Okay. And welcome back. I hope you had a great site tour. I'm Troels Bjerg, the Group CEO, as Michael just mentioned, and I've been with the company for 17 years, all the time in operational roles. So it's the second time I'm the group COO. I have been regional CEO 4 times and over the years, literally have been responsible for all countries in IS. All of our country operations and our global key account setup reports up to the group COO. And I'm also the sponsor of a number of our large client engagements and partnership and involved in many others.

In this section, I will take you through how we work with efficiency in operations and how this is becoming our single most important driver of profitable growth. We have always been strong operators in ISS. We have -- for 125 years, we have managed our hours and our costs closer than anyone else. In ISS, 1 minute per hour equals 1% profit, up or down. So we have to be close every minute, every hour, every day. But there was a period of time in our recent history where we started to lack some of that rigor. We moved our focus. We lost some of the closeness. We lost the touch.

This touch is now back, and we are invigorating performance management, the ISS way in a big way. So this has got 4 elements to it. In ISS, we have passion for performance. The first element is a strong performance culture throughout the business, something I believe is critically important. We take pride in doing what we say and deliver our numbers always. We literally hate being off target. As a second element, we have simplified the organization and removed regional layers, so all countries report directly to the group COO via area COOs. This gives clarity, closeness and speed. As a third element, we have monthly business reviews with all reporting units, sites, accounts through the organizational layers and up to the group COO. And we all look at the same metrics. We use the same reports.

We know our hours and our direct cash flow daily, and this gives transparency, accountability for results and it drives performance. This also means that I get involved in many performance issues across our business, and that is by design. As Casper said, we want to detect any smoke coming out of the system early before anything starts burning. We know how important this is, and we have our scars on the back to remind us. And that is also why that ISS early warning system in operations is closeness.

As a fourth element, we are putting in benchmarks for all key metrics, and we rank performance to spread what works best from somewhere in the business to everywhere in the business. And that is how we constantly drive improvement. Invigorating performance management, the ISS Way has been a big driver for our improved financial performance over the last 1.5 years, and it will continue to yield further improvements.

Before we start discussing efficiency improvements in operations, I would like to explain the nature of ISS portfolio business. Around 80% of our revenues is recurring portfolio business and the dynamic of this part of our business is that margins automatically decline over time by increasing wages and costs, customer glide paths, contract losses with mature margin profiles and contract wins with immature margin profiles.

Our management task in operations is then to drive margins up again by price increases, most of which is contractual, and a number of other margin improving actions, including productivity uplift. This also means that on an ongoing basis, a certain proportion of efficiency measures in operations are utilized to get our margins back, so to speak, while the uptick in margins year-on-year requires additional measures. And this is what our workforce management program is all about. IFS customers in our strategic segments are looking for both experience and cost savings.

The essence of our unique customer value proposition is that we can deliver the best service experience outcomes with the lowest input of hours and costs. And because we self-deliver, it is our people that we hire, train and develop to deliver great service moments for our customers, and it is our wage costs that we manage to drive efficiency based on global benchmarks and best practices in operations. And this is what makes our self-delivered IFS model a unique competitive advantage. Great service moments do not just happen. They are carefully curated.

On this PwC side, we deliver IFS -- and the experience you have all had today from the welcome in the morning over the feeling of hospitality throughout the day and also from your site tours right now is all part of how we deliver great service experience through our ISS service experience system. First, we designed the customers' work journey. We define the touch points with our services, and then we decide what should the experience be for each touch point to best support our customers' employees in their work journey of Workday being enjoyable, being productive and being collaborative. We put standard operating procedures around each of those touch points so that we know that what worked fantastically well today can be repeated tomorrow. We hire for service attitude and we train for skills. You will hear this talk about our recruitment process just a little bit later.

And all our new employees go through extensive service training, focusing on core service behaviors to deliver great service moments. And now they have become ISS placemakers. We also train our managers in leading service experience. With the Apple program, we recognize ISS placemakers and have demonstrated that they have found their purpose in delivering great customer experience. We start every day at our customer sites with a team board meeting for our placemakers, getting ready for delivering great service moments on all touch points and making sure that the ownership of exactly that is with the full team. You also saw this on your site tour today.

Finally, we ask the users of our customers' workplace, how satisfied they are with the outcomes of our services and by understanding the relationship between satisfaction, importance and cost to deliver, we can, over time, create the best and most important service experience outcomes with the lowest input of hours and costs. So this is a structured continuous improvement process that never really stops. Because we self-deliver our services, our main cost component is wage cost, 65% of revenues and last year, DKK 55 billion. This is where we can create very significant scale effects by getting the best practices in terms of productivity and management of hours to all our sites. This is what we call workforce management, and this is one of the 8 strategic initiatives that Casper showed you this morning.

Our wage costs are managed by our 10,000 first-line managers, so the first management level in ISS that has got P&L and people responsibility. In 2025, cleaning was 42% of ISS revenues, and we have worked with our global cleaning productivity program in an industrialized way across all our countries for 3.5 years now. And we can see that productivity levels are very different between local markets because of large differences in the relative cost of labor. In concrete terms, the difference between market productivity in Norway in the one end of the scale and Indonesia in the other end of the scale is factor 2.5. All other national cleaning markets where ISS works are somewhere in between those 2 points. And what this means is that what takes us 2.5 hours to clean in Indonesia, we can clean in 1 hour in Norway. By scaling our ability to create the highest outcome of cleanliness with the lowest input of hours as we do in Norway to all our country operations, we have a very significant potential for productivity improvements in cleaning far beyond the local markets, current productivity levels and our competitors cannot do that.

We achieved this by scaling global productivity benchmarks instead of local productivity benchmarks to everywhere in the business. We use our tried and tested cleaning methods, which essentially is about taking waste out of cleaning processes. For example, in Indonesia, our employees would walk in and out of a room to be cleaned 17x on average. On those Indonesian sites where we have rolled out now our global cleaning productivity program, our employees now walk in once and they walk out once exactly as we do in Norway. This requires standardized tools, systematic training and engaged employees who understand what clean looks like and how to produce it.

And finally, we document the outcomes of cleaning to our customers in terms of cleanliness delivered as opposed to just delivering the input hours. This makes ISS a global leader in cleaning quality and productivity. And we can achieve this without any significant use of technology, except our unique global cost calculation and productivity benchmarking system, ISS 1 cost. And we can see the results coming through for real, both in terms of productivity gains translating into increased margins and in our ability to win and grow customers based on our systematic approach.

The case study of international growth with a technology customer that Karl Fredrik took you through this morning is exactly that. We have delegated to our 10,000 first-line managers to control our wage costs. Every day, around 1/3 of our scheduled workforce require proactive management because of sickness, time off, change of work plans, above base work and many other unscheduled events, which is normal course of our business. This morning, today, -- our 10,000 first-line managers across the globe took around 150,000 decisions on the use of overtime, extra hours, replanning activities and much more, all impacting our wage cost and thereby also our business results at the end of September. 150,000 decisions a day.

That is DKK 36 million decentralized decisions on DKK 55 billion in wage costs, where the easiest decision to take is also the most expensive. And the most cost-effective decision is the hardest because it requires planning, training, transparency of data, effective processes and supporting systems. Workforce management is all about supporting our first-line managers in taking the best and most cost-effective decisions every day. 36 million right decisions a year, also freeing up time for them leading their teams and creating great customer experience. And our programmatic approach to workforce management is also taking complexity out of the business in a very significant way.

Based on sampling the workforce management processes across our 4 best practice countries, Finland, Switzerland, Spain and Pacific, we have now implemented one end-to-end workforce management process across all ISS countries. The process starts by costing any new bids and any new site based on global productivity benchmarks. So we know that the waste cost productivity in all target hours is market-leading. Then we built the most effective rosters and work schedules to meet the target hours in the most cost-effective way.

We manage our hours worked on a daily basis to meet the targets. And if we overspend hours on one day, we make sure to get those hours back before the end of the month to stay on plan. We monitor and control the hours paid, and we make sure to get the value out of the other end of that process and hold on to it. This is a complete end-to-end workforce management process framework, enabling us to effectively scale our productivity and hours management capabilities and potentials globally.

I mentioned before that we now know how to create significant productivity and hours management uplifts without much use of technology. This is important because we do not need to wait for future technology developments, we can get to results now. But of course, we are working on AI enterprise solutions in our workforce management end-to-end process where it really matters and where the big values sit. -- to drive further wage cost efficiencies. And let me just give you 3 examples of that.

We see an upside in moving from preventive maintenance of our customers' technical assets to predictive maintenance by applying AI solutions, leveraging the very large data sets that we already have in our asset registers. This can help us maximize asset uptime while minimizing maintenance cost and risk. We are currently working on an AI predictive maintenance solution for some of our very largest customers in ISS. Rostering and scheduling of large IFS contracts is an extremely complex process, involving a very high number of variables such as placemaker skill sets, formal trainings and certificates, labor laws, union agreements and pay rates across geographies, frequencies and timing, demand management of service outcomes and much, much more.

We now have our first AI-based rostering and scheduling solution in pilot. First results are very promising with meaningful wage cost savings. And this is where our human experts work in tandem with an AI agent in an iterative process, building more and more efficient work schedules and all the time improving performance. It is really fascinating to see. I talked about our 10,000 first-line managers making -- yes, taking 36 million decisions a year on DKK 55 billion in wage costs. We've started the work on an AI agent to support our first-line managers in making the best and most cost-effective decisions every day by converting large dispersed and dynamic data sets into work planning intelligence, cutting through the complexity and time pressure to get to the most effective decisions real time.

These are 3 examples of AI enterprise solutions in operations with swing factor potential. But in addition, our countries and accounts are developing and using thousands of AI-supported service solutions every day from food waste reductions over contract scope management to water quality controls and much more, all based on training in AI literacy and of course, with a proper governance. We have 850 cleaning cobots in action across our customer sites. And no one has more experience in this field than ISS, and we now understand in detail what the business cases look like. The fact is that today, we can only use cleaning cobots with a positive cost-benefit ratio in what is equal to 3% of our total cleaning scope, so large common areas in airports and hospitals, for example.

And for sites where there is a positive business case, we can typically reduce total wage cost on that site between 0.5% and 1%. So we view the overall efficiency potential for ISS from increased use of cobots in cleaning as limited with the current technology standards and price points. We are potentially, but also cautiously more excited about humanoids. It is very early days, as I'm sure you all appreciate for humanoids as the technology has not yet matured. We have started a program to see if and how we can increase productivity and cleaning further with humanoids. And we believe that with our insights into best practices, both in terms of quality assurance and productivity based on taking waste out of cleaning processes, we are better placed than anyone else to train and coach the most effective and efficient cleaning humanoids in future.

We do not know yet if this will be a game changer or a fad in cleaning. But if it works, it will be a competitive advantage to ISS that will complement the work we do with real people, delivering experience and productivity. We see workforce management powered by technology as the single biggest driver of profitable growth in ISS. We launched this strategic initiative at our Capital Markets Day in 2022. And since then, we have seen gross benefits ramping up. In 3.5 years, we have removed 28 million work hours from our business with this program. So far, we have mostly focused on cleaning.

So to help you understand what 28 million work hours mean, it translates into approximately 9,500 FTEs, which is a reduction of our cleaning workforce against an end of year 2022 baseline of an estimated 6.5% in 3.5 years. And the future potential is much bigger. When freed up, this potential can then be used for supporting pricing and growth. It can be invested in new technology, including AI and robotics, of course, to drive further productivity uplifts. And it can be fueling margin expansion. In 2026, we take the first steps towards our updated margin target of 5.5% to 6% in 2028 with an increase in the dtac run rate following the agreement announced in May and an underlying improvement across countries driven by operating leverage and workforce management effects to get to around 5.25%.

The stepping stones from there to 5.5% to 6% margin in 2028 will be an operating leverage component as our overheads are becoming more scalable following the execution of the OneISS strategy and a majority of the total margin uplift coming from continued workforce management effects, as I have just taken you through. I would like to leave you with 3 key takeaways. First, our sales delivery model drives the highest customer experience outcomes with the lowest input of hours and cost. Second, workforce management will continue to unlock large wage cost effects and the potential is significant. And third, ISS will be scaling AI technology to drive further efficiency potentials in operations. Thank you very much.

I will leave over to my colleague, Liz Benison.

Good afternoon, everybody. I feel like we're on the home straight nearly now. So it's been a long day so far. So I am Liz Benison, I joined ISS in 2021 after a career predominantly in technology companies and then a couple of leadership stints in Serco and AREVA. And a number of us met, as Michael mentioned this morning, at Capital Markets Day in London in 2022 when I was responsible for the U.K. and Ireland business.

But for the last couple of years, I've been in the group center, and I'm responsible for our global P&C agenda and also the technology agenda as well. Now we've been talking a lot over the last -- the rest of the day around self-delivery. And that's where this ambition of ours to be recognized as the world's leading frontline employer really starts to kick in because our people are essentially the foundation of that self-delivery model and indeed of those great customer experiences that we've been talking about.

So over the course of the next 20 minutes, what I want to talk to you about is how we're improving our employee experience through the use of technology and AI. And we're, therefore, creating measurable value for our employees, for our customers, for the business, but also for the wider society. And hopefully, I'm going to convince you in that time that this just isn't just the right thing to do, it's also a source of real competitive advantage. So self-delivery basically means that our people are our products, and therefore, everything starts and finishes really with our people.

Now as Casper mentioned at the very outset today, our purpose is to create space for people and businesses to thrive. But we can only do that for our customers if first, we ensure that our people can thrive. Now within that 325,000 people that we employ, we have many, many nationalities. We say over 100 there. We think it's probably closer to 200. They speak many, many languages. At any point in time today, we have 5 generations operating within that workforce as well. Now that diversity is a huge strength to us as an organization, but it also makes it a real challenge to operate consistently at scale.

But we believe that's a challenge that's worth us tackling because when our people thrive, they deliver those exceptional service moments to customers that we've been talking about. And ultimately, that powers this profitable growth, as explained there by that virtuous circle. Now of course, this isn't new. People have always been at the heart of ISS right the way back when we first started in Fredericksburg in 1901. In the middle of this slide is this wonderful lady called Gerda Bull. Now Gerda was with us in the 1940s, and we think she was one of the first HR directors anywhere in the world.

And Gerder's job was basically to make sure that those lovely ladies in the top right-hand corner that they got to their jobs looking lovely in their very, very smart uniforms, but also ready and prepped to do a great day's work for the customers that they served. And so long before there were HR processes and policies and systems and whatever, ISS understood a really simple principle. And that principle is that people who are supported perform better. And that principle hasn't changed. What's really changed since then is our ability to deliver that consistently at scale. So over the past 3 years, we've been very deliberately focusing in on the operational impact of our people and culture processes. So people and culture has become much more of a core business function rather than a support function. And that's true at the global level, but it's equally true at the country level and right down the way at the site as well.

And we've become much more data and metrics led. And we've really focused in on the very core processes that make a difference to this business. So that's attracting great people in through the door. It's enabling them to succeed throughout their time in their roles. And it's also engaging them, motivating them throughout that time. And the results after 3 years of going at this are already encouraging. So turnover in that 3-year period at a global level has reduced by 3 percentage points. And when we measure our engagement, which we do now globally on an annual basis, not only is that increasing, but it's also sitting at 8 percentage points above the external benchmark that we use, which is companies that look a lot like us.

And also, we're now using the same platform to measure both that user experience that Charles talked about, the customer satisfaction experience that Carl Fredrik talked about and also our employee engagement. And therefore, we can form some very meaningful correlations through the data that we're generating there. And so we can really prove through data now that really engaged employees are a very deterministic factor in great customer satisfaction. So when Casper talked at the very outset of the day around the One pager, and he talked about 8 very focused initiatives that we were investing in to deliver on our strategy.

And 4 of those sit under the banner of becoming the leading frontline employer. And that's what I'm going to spend the rest of the time on now. So of those 4 -- the first one is all around creating what we call a seamless people journey. And so this is really the people platform that is from the very first moment that somebody gets attracted to work for IFS right the way through how they join us and on board is how we make that a more scalable experience for our people. The second one is all around this thing called social sustainability, which again, Casper has spoken to, Charles mentioned as well. Steve mentioned its importance in the U.S. market. So what are we doing to really strengthen our approach to that.

The third one is we have invested in making sure that our people data at a global level and a local level is as rigorous as our finance data because we need to really understand those people metrics and the levers and the drivers behind those metrics as well as we understand our financial measures. So we've invested in making sure that we have great enterprise-wide people data and can really provide those comparisons and hopefully help our frontline managers make those operational decisions that Charles talked about.

And finally, as you would expect of an organization like us, safety remains incredibly important and part of our strategy going forward, and we're reinvigorating everything we do around safety with new processes, new systems and probably most importantly, we're really reinvigorating the culture around health and safety in our business. And again, concentrating much more now on psychological safety, which, again, in the world today is probably just as important as physical safety for our people and also for our customers who occupy the sites that we service. So I'm going to drill down on those first 2. But what I just want to explain first is how we're doing this because these are not big monolithic programs that are going to take us 4 years to deliver before we see any value.

These are agile programs that are delivering value in small drops as we go along. And most of the heavy lifting on these will be done by the end of 2027. So seamless people journey. So what we wanted to do was make sure that ISS was a very easy and engaging place to work for, for our 325,00 pacemakers. So we've taken a global approach but a holistic end-to-end approach as well in going through each of those key steps along that journey and designing them to the point that they create these moments that matter to our people. So we talked in the room up there about onboarding a person's first day, their first week, their first month. It's really important to them within ISS, how that goes, how engaged they feel, how important they're made to feel during that time.

So we've taken each of those moments that matter and designed processes and systems and culture that sits behind supporting those moments that matter. And -- we know that when we look after those moments that matter, the results are really, really tangible. So we know that if we look into recruitment, we can make it much faster to hire people, which then in turn creates less staff shortages, less need for overtime. We can really reduce the admin burden on those first-line managers and throughout the organization.

And again, that then frees them up to do those more value-adding things. We can have higher engagement, which we know correlates to great customer service, and we can also importantly, lower that turnover. And this becomes a really key part of that customer value proposition for us because what a customer most wants to know, they want to know that the same site team that they saw last week who were here and motivated, engaged will be the same team next week, next month, next year, that they won't be constantly turning the faces in front of them and that they'll be engaged, they'll be switched on, they'll be eager to do the best that they can do. And they want to take pride in those people when they develop into becoming -- from being a cleaner to be a cleaning supervisor.

Our customers take pride in those people and their development just as much as we do. And they want to know that we've got a system that sits behind all of that to make that happen, to make those great engaged placemakers be on their site in exactly the way that they value. So we're now going to go down into the first 2 steps on that journey. So the first one is all around explore and apply. So we know that we're operating in talent scarcity. Most of our countries in one way or another are struggling to get enough people through the door on a day-to-day basis. And that's a result of demographics. It's a result of not particularly helpful immigration laws in some countries as well.

And so it is a fight to get these people to come and work for ISS rather than to work for Walmart, for example, or Amazon. And so what we did was we took -- we looked at our old processes, which were fairly traditional, a little bit fragmented, potentially slow for our candidates and also for our managers. And we gathered a set of our global expertise around this subject, and we've redesigned the whole process to say, to really understand where do we need the humans to get involved in this? Where does that human interaction really, really matter in that whole journey between iEXplore and iApply? Where can we make it much slicker, more effective using AI. So imagine for a second that you're a placemaker looking for a new role, you might be on a job board. And our AI agent will interact with you on that job board and we'll start to manage that process for you with you. So it will straight away pick up on what your native language is and it will switch to using your native language.

And then it will guide you through the very, very simple steps to apply to work for ISS. But also in the background, it's looking at your skills, it's looking at your location, and it's working out which opportunities that we have will be best placed for you as well. So we're more likely to target you towards an opportunity that you're going to be successful in getting and that you're going to thrive when you join it as well. It then then helps the first-line manager as well because their role in this is also very, very critical. So the AI then helps them schedule the interview. So without them having to do anything whatsoever, the interview appears in their calendar. All the notes for the interview appear in the meeting invite. And again, the set of questions that we particularly want to ask this candidate will also appear as if by magic into the calendar invite. And that's really important when you go back to what Charles talked about because he talked about this thing about hiring for attitude. So this is one of the ways that we make sure our first-line managers are equipped to have those conversations to see if this is somebody that could really develop with us and that has that service mindset that we're looking for.

Another nice piece of this is that it makes sure that we follow up with the candidate, whether they are successful or not successful. And again, that's really, really important because we want any candidate to go with a positive -- to go away with a positive experience with ISS. And that's really important to us because there could be another opportunity that they're a better fit for in a few weeks' time. But also, they'll be part of the community, and they'll be talking about what a positive experience they have with us.

And we get an awful lot of our placemakers through recommendations of family and friends. So that whole candidate experience, whether it's successful or not, is really important to us as well. So this solution has been live now in the U.S. business. Steve mentioned it, and we're seeing really, really positive results from that and a really great take-up as well from those first-line managers. They're incredibly positive about the way this is working for them. We're seeing shorter times to hire, which is really, really cool. That was the sort of primary driver that we did this for.

We're also seeing more candidates accepting offers. So we're getting more candidates per job and then more candidates accept our offers when we make them. But then interestingly enough, we're also seeing a really interesting reduction in that 3-month -- that early 3-month turnover as well. So they're landing with us in better shape because they've had a much more positive experience. They understand the role they're going to be doing, the site they're going to be working on, and therefore, they're landing better, too. So good testing in the U.S. market. We'll go live in 2 more markets in Q4 this year, and then we roll out at pace during 2027.

We're working with a really great partner. And again, we are a really interesting case for them because of our breadth and our scale. And so we are a flagship customer for them, which means that we get a lot of access into their road maps to their product development and so on. So overall, we're providing a much better candidate experience and a much better business outcome.

Now the next one, you've got a quick view of in the site tour, but a great recruitment process only gets us so far because we then need to onboard people and make sure that we give them continuous support throughout their time with us as well. And this is where the MSS app comes in. Now those of you who were here in '22 will remember, we did talk about this back in '22. It was very early days back then. But effectively, my ISS is our digital front door for -- ultimately for everyone in the company. So it's an off-the-shelf experience tool that we've put into an ISS wrapper.

And obviously, we're developing custom content for that, both at the enterprise level, at the country level and then ultimately down to site level as well. So as of today, we've got just over 100,000 registered users. So they are people who've downloaded the app and created their own credentials within it. And we've got 70,000 who are using it regularly on at least a weekly basis. And as you saw earlier, it provides this globally consistent experience for everybody, but it also allows us to deeply personalize that experience as well.

So it's, again, in their language. It's very useful in onboarding, but also beyond that, we can use it as a comms channel, so we can send them out news that is relevant to them about the organization. There's a lot of practical use cases like the pacelips and the rosters. There's also some really engaging things that we can do with this as well. Our Australian business, for example, providing access to discounts in local supermarkets and so on through that are only available to the pacemakers if they use this as their channel. And it also plays a very important role in our survey capability as well. This is the way that we gather survey data and therefore, create that great insight into how our placemakers are feeling and what we need to course correct on.

So it's driving engagement. It's driving retention definitely. But it's also -- you should view this as the conduit by which we will send all other AI services to our placemakers and to those first-line managers in the future. It's also secure. So again, it means that our 325,000 people will be authenticating onto our network in a secure way, which again, when Casper talked about how proud we are of our cyber credentials, this is a very important part of that. Okay. Then coming on to social sustainability. And again, Casper talked about this at the beginning of the day. So this is something that we're immensely proud of. By the nature of what we do, we create opportunity for those who are, for whatever reason, distant from the traditional labor force.

Now that could be because they've been long-term unemployed. It could be that they're youth people who haven't yet had any experience, any skills. It could be people with disabilities. And just in bringing those people into our organization and supporting them through a career with us, we create social value. It's inherent in the services that we provide. So that's not new. To be honest, we've been doing that all the way back through the years. It creates these brilliant stories that we can all tell about people who've had these amazing careers with us despite coming from a fairly disadvantaged background. But 2 things are new about social sustainability for us now. So the first one is that increasingly, this is becoming a very important part of procurement, particularly public procurement, but also in some cases, private sector procurement as well. So certainly, in the U.K., this has been important in public sector tendering for a long time now.

And in the recent big wins that we've had in the U.K., social value has played a core part in the evaluation criteria. And our ability to be better than our competition in this space is something that's helped us win those bids when we've not always been the cheapest. So sometimes we can overachieve on the quality score, and that allows us a bit more freedom in pricing. But that's the U.K., but this is also -- Steve mentioned it, it's also an important criteria in bidding in the U.S. It's increasingly so in Australia. And then just last week, very helpfully, the EU proposed a new procurement framework for public sector awards. And within that, they are going to mandate a 50% quality weighting on labor-intensive public contract awards.

And the examples that they used of labor-intensive contracts were facility services contracts. So that means that social value will be an important part of that 50%. And again, that gives us freedom then to actually put in some more quality into the overall bid and compensate for a slightly higher price. So this is, we think, is really exciting because this is becoming very, very important to customers and is a very important way that governments are making sure that public contracts return value to the society. So that's the first thing that's new.

The second thing that is new, though, is we've been working on a way to quantify this because we know it's great to tell stories. But of course, what everybody wants to hear is well, what's the value in that? And they want to know that, that's an externally certifiable value, and it's something that is directly comparable country to country and also potentially bu versus our competition. So the way that we're doing that is we're partnering with an organization that's in the U.K. called the Social Value Portal. So the Social Value Pal was founded when the Social Value Act came into being in the U.K. about 10 years ago. And they have become the de facto methodology for sort of giving a monetary value to social value in the U.K. And what they've done is they've created proxy values for social actions that you take and turn them into hard currency. So what we're doing is we're working with Social Value Portal and some other organizations such as Accenture, Amazon and Roche.

And together, we've created a task force, which is to take that methodology and get that rolled out across the globe. And so for ISS, we can now do this in 10 of our countries. And ultimately, we see the need to get to 17. So working through that task force and working with Social Value Portal, we'll roll that methodology out to at least 17 markets. But I think it's a little bit easier if I just bring it to life in an example. So this is a global banking customer of ours. And this is the sort of statement of the social value that we created operating that contract with them in 2025.

So we created GBP 37 million worth of social value through that contract. Now the first bit is all around how we've created meaningful employment for around about 1,000 people that work on that contract globally. And this is things like we pay living wage on that contract. We don't have to pay living wage in many of the markets, but we've chosen together to pay living wage because we know that's the right thing to do. It also has some interesting business benefits as well. People tend to stay. They take less less sickness, less absence. We're also looking at how we bring in -- so we've agreed with the customer particular groups that are distant from the labor force that we're going to work together on bringing into that contract. So in this case, it's the long-term unemployed, how do we get them back into meaningful work and also new apprentices. And this is also one of the contracts where we're working on a small number of homeless people as well to break that cycle between I don't have a job because I don't have a home, I don't have a home because I don't have a job. Great stories.

But again, we can now put a monetary value on that as well. We're supporting local communities and particularly, we work with local SMEs to create local jobs together, and we're supporting the well-being of our people. And we can sort of set our stall out with that customer at the beginning of the contract about the good we're going to do together. And now together, we can talk about the social value that, that's creating. So if I leave you with 3 key messages, it's firstly, that exceptional service starts with engaged and enabled employees. It was true in 1901, and it's still true today. Technology and AI are helping us create a better employee experience for our employees, whilst also driving those measurable business outcomes and social sustainability is a key differentiator for ISF and increasingly will become a strategic lever for customer loyalty and greater growth. Thank you. And I think we're on to questions now.

Thank you very much, Liz. Thank you very much, Ts. We will also bring Kasper to the stage. So feel free to raise your hand.

So a couple of questions from my side. Interested in the conviction in the road map for the margin expansion. So it seems to stem primarily from the workforce management. So yes, degree of conviction in that? And then what are the key levers in order for you to reach the 5.5% or the 6.0% operating margin target?

Yes. Thanks, Christian. It's not a surprise you're asking that question. So thanks for putting it out there. So let me start and then Tors will add accordingly. We are going to improve margins from the current levels through 2 levers. The first one is operating leverage. And operating leverage obviously means that we will absorb our growth without adding additional overhead costs. That has traditionally been an issue in ISS. We've not been able to do that, but things has changed over the last 3 years. And to give you some specific examples of what have changed, we have established a shared service center in Gdansk, where our key generic processes are automated. So no need for additional staff as we are absorbing additional revenue.

And the evidence of that is actually in our first half report, where we are showing growth of more than 8%, 8.2% to be precise. And the corporate cost is flat nominal wise versus the comparable period, the same period last year. Additionally, I can give you another example, which is in the U.K., we are growing with double-digit growth at the moment and have not added overhead costs as -- in the mobilization of this additional volume. So that's different, but it's real, it's coming through, and that will continue to be the case over the next foreseeable future. Then we have on the other part on efficiency, where Troels will also add some color.

First and foremost, it's important for you to understand that it's working because that part is the key component around us talking about a margin of 5.25% today and not where we initially were at the Capital Markets Day around 4%. The key component for getting us there significantly over and beyond what we had gained from improving the run rate on Deutsche Telekom is coming from that particular lever. And then that comes back to what I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation because, of course, you can have an aspiration about this is what you hope and you think and you believe. But in our case, these are opportunities that are signed off with our local business leaders, which is the country managers. That's the plan and confirmed and signed off by the business leaders. But it's also important for us to convey the fact that in this margin target of 5.5% to 6.0%, the reason why there is 0.5 percentage point of spend is that we don't want to lock ourselves into the position that ISS was in a while ago where we are guiding on 1/10 or 2/10. It has worked very well the last 3-plus years that we have the maneuver room to do what is right for the business. So in this margin target for 2028, where we're improving margins in '27 versus '26 and improving further in '28, there is also factored in a level of investments that we'll continue to do to make sure that this is sustainable because you will not see margins going backwards beyond '28.

This will be the new level that ISS will operate at. So it's not that we're squeezing a lemon and then all of a sudden, the margins are starting to go backwards. Therefore, we have factored in the additional investments. And then you can say, so what is going to take us to the high end and what is going to take us to the low end? Well, investments is one part of it. If it's the right thing for the business to spend some -- to make some investments to make sure that we continue to grow the business with underlying growth, then we'll do that. And then, of course, there's also execution. Even though we have a plan and it's detailed and we can see it all the way down to site level, then it needs to come through. But there, we have a very good stomach. Troels, do you have anything to add?

Well, there's not a lot on the productivity side and the workforce management side, it is, as Kasper said, we have financial targets with our countries, but we also, below those, have very concrete targets on how much do we need to get out of workforce management and productivity. And there are basically 3 pools of value in this end-to-end process that I showed you. The first is, as I also said, to make sure that we always set our target hours based on global productivity benchmarks. So when you have a factor 2.5 between highest and lowest, then of course, there's a lot of value there. 100% confident in that. That's simply just how quickly can we scale.

Then there's a mid-section where I also talked about that using AI technology to build even more effective and efficient rosters, which particularly for large contracts is a very complex thing. There's a lot of value there. There will be some time to invest in AI and get it really to work before you can scale that in a big way. And then at the end of the day, it is when you have target hours, how do you make sure to stick to those target hours and not use temporary workers, not use overtime, and we don't need much technology for that either.

So these first and last source of value, we are already tapping into that. And therefore, I'm very confident to say that we have enough we have enough value coming out of workforce management to take us to that margin journey that we showed you, both the lower part and the upper part. And then it is, as Kasper said, we will take some choices then what do we invest out of that value into growth and what do we invest into technology, of course, always with a positive business case.

And one final tweak on that, which is different compared to when we have been talking about targets previously because there, we have been dependent on things that were partly or entirely out of our own control. So for instance, the Deutsche Telekom, yes, we were confident and the process were going according to plan. But you never know until you have a signed agreement. Here, we have a plan where the things that we need to execute are within our own control, which is something that we are very pleased with.

Just a quick follow-up on the workforce management opportunity. So is that fully exhausted in '28? Or is that fully implemented there?

It will not be fully implemented in '28. We have, as you know, 325,000 people. We have more than 50,000 sites. And there are some potentials where we can touch a relatively small part of our business and increase the value a lot, and then there will be others where there's a longer time and effort to get that value out. But the point is just that this year, we are ahead of plan. And I can see how we can scale faster than we believed we could 1 or 2 years ago. And therefore, I'm not nervous at all for having the firing power we need in order to deliver on the targets we have set out today.

It's Tim Ramskill from Bank of America again. So just probably a question for Liz. Just in terms of the employee turnover piece, what's the further direction of travel in terms of improvement? What do you think is feasible? And then related to that, as employee turnover has improved, how does that impact you in terms of the cost of your hiring function and all that goes with bringing people on board?

So again, a well-expected question. So we've gone 3 percentage points at a global level over the last 3 years. We're already running -- half 1 '26, we're running 2% or 3% below that 30%. So this looks like it will land yes, 2 or 3 percentage points below. Where do I think it can go? I honestly don't know because what's really interesting to us is the much more nuanced version of within a particular country and indeed even within a particular contract and a particular site, what is actionable for us. So -- because not all turnover is necessarily bad for us as well.

And there's a different cost associated, obviously, country by country, but also skill set by skill set. So cleaner is relatively easy to train a new cleaner for a general cleaning purpose. So there's a relatively lower cost for that. But if we're losing technical services people, then, of course, there's a very, very different cost to that. So what we're driving to be able to do is to measure it at a much, much more granular level and then really pull the levers to get to that optimum per country of what the turnover needs to be. We're in an earlier stage of treating this like a core operational KPI than we are, for example, on productivity.

But that's the sort of same logic that we're starting to apply around it. In terms of costs, there are direct costs, of course, you need less recruiters if you're recruiting less people. The digital recruitment business case includes some of that, but it also includes a switch out of the old technology as well, which is a good cost saving. There's obviously less administrative time. So it takes our managers' time to hire people. If we can squeeze that down, that's obviously time back again as well.

And then, of course, there are operational benefits as well, but we need to be careful not to double count those with the workforce management ones. So for example, if we're not gapping post, then we're not having to pay overtime, we're not having to bring in temporary workers, but we need to be very cautious not to double count those ones.

Allen Wells from Jefferies. You've talked a little bit about, obviously, the opportunity from AI. But can I ask just your opinion on some of the potential structural threats from AI. Obviously, we read, we hear around kind of the white collar workforce reduction potential as this technology is implemented. Your key focus areas, financial services, professional services could be in the fiery line, if you believe some of the literature as well. How do you guys think about that as you plan for the next 3 to 5 years? What are your customers saying around office space planning? Yes, just quite interested if you can a little bit of color around that, please?

Yes, I can take it. It's -- within the segments, we have chosen that we also went through today, and this site is perhaps a good representation of that. A lot of the customers we speak to, they want to have people coming to the site. And then, of course, they work with AI in order to enhance and improve their processes. But most of the people we talk to, they don't see that they -- at least not on the medium term that there is a big change coming from working with AI. I'm sure you read the same reports as we do in terms of what could it potentially mean. But I think it's very much back to the point that Steve made this morning as people work more and more with AI than the human factor. So what people can do and the interaction between people becomes more important, and that means also that we see some of those customers where that is a factor starting to invest more in that because they see how important it is to attract the right human talent in that process.

Annelies from Morgan Stanley. Sticking with a similar theme, can I ask about the robots, please? So I'm surprised that the wage cost savings are so low for where you're automating the cleaning. So could you talk a little bit about what drives the decision to make those investments? Is it coming from the customers? Is it coming from you? And I think you said 3% of your total cleaning scope could be automated. Do you expect that to change? And therefore, will you continue to roll out this technology? And what could that mean for wage cost savings over time?

Yes. I spoke about the robots, and I also noted that with the current technology standards and with current cost and price points that it can, of course, change in future. But the way to think about it, you think about this building, for example, -- and then you think about these cleaning cobots, how relatively small proportion of the surfaces that such a robot would be able to do, cannot do the restrooms, for example. And when we clean, we don't only clean floors. We clean tabletops.

We clean door handles, we clean all kinds of other things. And when you add the time we use on a site like this together, that is where -- not this particular site, but in average that we see that it's only about 3% of our scope where there is a meaningful business case with this. And of course, these cleaning robots, they also compete, so to speak, with our increased human productivity all the time. So that also means that probably our hurdle rate is different than many other people. And when we get everybody up to the same level as Norway, then that business case will look different again.

But who knows about what the next generation of robots is, could we do restrooms? And if we could, we would, of course, look at it. So I'm not saying that we will never use robots. I'm just saying that don't expect that there is a huge uplift for us in that for those reasons I went through. And then as I also said, we are cautiously excited about humanoids, but we think that it's some time away before that it's a productivity game. It can be an interesting thing to do, but it's time -- some time to see the productivity uplifts coming from there, if ever.

Thomas Lind Petersen from Nordea. This question on social sustainability, social value. So no doubt that it has been a meaningful part of the turnaround and the wins in the U.K. Now you allude to the EU proposal of a minimum 50% quality weight in public tenders. What does that mean for the European facility management market? And what does it mean for ISS? Also, how are you positioned versus competitors in terms of winning this? And you also alluded to private companies doing this. Can you elaborate a little bit on that as well?

Yes. Okay, where to start. So the European legislation is -- it's proposed legislation at this point. So of course, it will take time. But what we've been doing is getting ready for this because we think this is the way the market is going to go. But the language that the governments are using is the same. Everybody is worried about employability. Everybody is worried about the gap between the rich and the poor and whatever. So this is -- and everyone is under fire for outsourcing public sector contracts as well. So we know that, that's going to go. The wind is going in the right direction. So what we think is that this will mean that European public sector tenders go the same way as the U.K., where anything up to 50% is a quality score and a key component of that quality score is your social value story and how you put that. Where are we versus the competition? So I think, again, this goes back to this self-delivery piece as well because if I'm one of our competitors who doesn't self-deliver, I can make a commitment to say, I'm going to put 5% disabled people into the workforce on this contract, but they can't make that happen, whereas we can absolutely make that happen because we control the recruitment, so we can make sure the recruiters work to that profile. We control how those people get onboarded, so we can make sure they've got the support that they need, the extra support that they need from whatever community they come from. And we can manage that all the way through. So that's why I think the self-delivery thing plays back in. I also think this is in our culture. If you talk to any ISS person anywhere in the world, the thing that will make them the most proud is they will tell you a brilliant story about someone who came in from a disparate -- some sort of disparate group and had a great success story in ISS. So this is so deep in the culture. That's kind of hard to put into a marking schema, but it's really important.

And just super quickly, it is definitely spreading fast outside the U.K. So I'll give you some examples. The number of meetings that I've had with CEOs or executives in the segments that we are targeting. So let's take financial institutions as an example. It is very hard to put substance behind the social sustainability agenda as a bank. I mean what many banks are doing is that they're donating to a good purpose. However, by donating, you also have to control the governance and the compliance around that. So it builds up complexity. And you can even argue is that substance that you give an amount of money to a good purpose, but somebody else is doing it here. It's in a partnership where the customer is opening up their site. And together, we are scanning, as I said in my presentation, in that particular location what is the swing factor in that local community. And it can be various things. It can be to engage and include homeless people. It can be disabled people, people that do not have necessarily the same opportunity as many others. And there, it starts to become something that is much more powerful. We are managing the program, but the customer is opening up the site. And that resonates when we and I are having conversations with executives, resonates a lot, I have to say.

And just on the private sector question. So we're part of this global task force. And one of the companies that's in there is a global logistics company, and they've told us that they will start to roll out 5% of social value in all of their procurement contracts going forward. So again, just the names that are in that task force tell you that there's a big private sector interest in this as well.

Okay. Thank you so much. I believe it's now time for a coffee. So if you go outside, we will have 20 minutes. So 10 to 4, we'll be back in here, and we will go up with the final session, which will include mass.

And then we will do also a larger Q&A session at the end. Okay, everybody. I hope you're all fueled up again now. Now I'd like to present Mads Holm, our CFO, to the stage. Welcome.

Hello, and welcome back after a quick coffee break. So today, I will focus on what progress means from a financial perspective. And the starting point is simple. We're entering the next phase for ISS from a much stronger financials. We delivered on our commitments made at the lab Capital Market Day. We strengthened earnings, returns, cash generation and the resilience of our platform. And now we accelerate sustainable growth, margin improvements, while maintaining disciplined capital allocation.

And for our shareholders, that matters. A strong earnings base, higher returns, consistent cash generation provide us with greater flexibility, both to reinvest when returns are attractive and to return excess capital when they are not. So the financial story today is not only about high earnings. It's about the quality, resilience, capital allocation and how will that translate into compounding shareholder value over time.

Now let me begin with the commitments that we made at our last Capital Market Day. At our Capital Market Day back in '22, we set 3 clear ambitions: organic growth, operating margin and cash conversion. And on a guidance basis, we have collectively delivered on our promises. And importantly, these metrics should not be seen in isolation. We have delivered growth while improving profitability and converting into cash. That combination truly matters because it speaks to the quality of the growth that we have delivered in the period. We addressed and sold our 4 hotspots, improved execution and created a more resilient business.

We have reduced operational volatility, strengthened the underlying quality of our portfolio. At the same time, commercial momentum has accelerated and our ability to win and grow with customers has improved. The important point for you all in this room today -- we set targets and we deliver on the targets. And from an investor perspective, consistency has value. The more consistent the operating performance becomes, the greater visibility on earnings and cash generation. It also means that a higher degree of management focus and capital can be directed towards creating growth rather than fixing underperforming parts of our business.

Now we enter the next phase from a position of strength. We have a healthier portfolio, stronger execution and greater financial capacity, and we can put our full focus on growing the business. So as we move into the next period, the ambition is not to change the formula that has worked. It's to build on it, profitable growth, higher margins and continue to converting into cash. That operational delivery has translated directly into stronger earnings and returns. This slide capture one of the things that I think most about as the CFO of ISS, how earnings and disciplined investments compound shareholder value over time. Since 2014, earnings per share has been fully restored at just above DKK 7 per share for the last 12 months. This is the highest level shown on the graph, and it's above pre-COVID levels.

It's a result of both higher net profit combined with a lower share count. Return on invested capital has doubled and has increased to 16% after tax, including goodwill. That recovery is driven by stronger earnings, but also how we selectively deploy our capital. And that distinction matters. Earning growth creates value with the incremental capital required to support the growth earns an attractive return. In simple terms, as long as we can reinvest our capital at returns above our cost of capital, we are creating real value for our shareholders. We are not pursuing growth at any price. Every capital decision must compete on returns, whether it's an acquisition, investment in organic growth or distribution to our shareholders.

The hurdle is therefore not simply whether an investment grows earnings, but whether the expected returns can justify the capital we put at risk. And why this matters? EPS and ROIC reinforces each other. Better execution grows our earnings, better capital discipline protect our returns. And importantly, that combination determines the quality of the growth we are delivering. The ambition is to grow earnings while maintaining strong returns on capital employed. That gives us 2 powerful levers for value creation, increase the earnings base and reinvest selectively where we can earn attractive incremental returns. And together, we compound value over time. This return-based mindset is the foundation of our capital allocation framework.

Since we started our buyback journey in 2024, we have announced DKK 7.6 billion in share buybacks. We have paid DKK 1.5 billion in dividends. We total distributed DKK 9.1 billion to our shareholders. At the same time, we have reduced the share count with 14%, 18% if we take current holding of own shares into considerations. And at the same time, we have also invested DKK 1.7 billion in bolt-on acquisitions. And our priorities are clear. protect the balance sheet and maintain a leverage of 2 to 2.5x, preserve our investment-grade credit rating and invest organically into the business, pay an annual dividend of 20% to 40% of adjusted net profit and return surplus capital to our shareholders when we do not identify better risk adjustment alternatives.

So to sum up, we have slightly balanced our capital allocation priorities. Buybacks and M&A are now assessed on an equal return base. Remember, financial flexibility is not an invitation to spend. It's an ability to choose what's the best way to utilize our excess cash. So what must an acquisition meet before it earns the right to our capital. As highly anticipated by some, but definitely not revolutionary, here is our M&A playbook. And the key word here is selective.

The individual target must have a clear strategic fit. It must be financially attractive, and there must be low-risk synergies. And more importantly, it has to be based on a realistic business case. But before considering a target, the country must meet 3 nonnegotiable, a stable country outlook, a well-functioning operating platform with the ability to integrate and an experienced management team, as Kasper alluded to, who's done this before. And we focus on bolt-on acquisition where ISS already understands the market and has the capability and capacity to integrate successfully.

We, therefore, not look only whether a target is attractive, but whether we are the right owner and whether our local organization has the capacity to realize the value. And listen, we do not have a volume acquisition target. A strong balance sheet never creates an obligation to do a deal. M&A earns its right in place only if it offer better returns than the alternative.

Now Spain show how this discipline creates value in practice. Spain has a stable market, a strong operational platform and experienced local management team. The acquisitions of Grbofisa, GrboBN and Gabrialri added complementary capabilities, scale and geographical strength to our current platform. They increased key account coverage, strengthened our Madrid position, added health care expertise and reinforced our leadership position in the Basque country.

And importantly, these were not only acquisitions of revenue. They strengthened density, they strengthen capabilities, customer relevance in areas where we already had a strong operating platform. And the financial outcome is clear. 12% revenue CAGR from '22 to '25, 19% operating profit CAGR over the same period. Profit grew materially faster than revenue, and that is the clearest evidence of integration synergies and operating leverage coming through.

We are seeing the benefits at scale through the existing platform, including better utilization of our overheads, procurement opportunities and stronger operational leverage. And this is exactly what we look for in bolt-on acquisition, not simply the acquired earnings, but the ability to improve the economics of the combined business. Importantly, this was achieved while Spain delivered solid growth and cash conversion above group levels in the period. So the value creation is not depending on one matrix. We have combined inorganic growth with continued organic momentum, margin improvement and a strong cash conversion. This is what I would call high-quality growth. more earnings, improving returns and strong cash conversion of those earnings. Spain demonstrates that disciplined M&A can strengthen the customer proposition and improve group profitability.

And importantly, it demonstrates that when you acquire into a strong existing platform, the value of the combined business can be greater than the simple sum of the 2 alone. And Spain is not an isolated example. The playbook is working across our portfolio. Across these transactions, the strategic logic is consistent, add capability, strengthen local scale and create measurable returns. Switzerland, Spain and Norway are clear synergy cases, utilizing our existing platform and delivering strong results. Austria, New Zealand and Belgium added additional capability to our existing platform, broadening our value proposition in local markets.

And we also remain transparent when performance is mixed. Blue Bridge delivered its band margin, but growth has been disappointing following a customer loss and a temporary headwind in project works in Belgium. That transparency matters. Disciplined M&A means tracking every investment against its original business case, not simply celebrate the completion of a case. And importantly, we look at the full equation, the earnings contribution, the realization of cost and commercial synergies, the return on the capital invested and whether the strategic rationale is actually materializing.

We are satisfied with a ratio 8 out of 9, delivering above initial business case. And for me, the important point is not simply the 8 out of 9, is that the performance gives us evidence that our M&A playbook works. We are buying for clear strategic reasons. We are delivering the synergies, and we are holding ourselves accountable for the returns afterwards. And that gives me confidence that M&A can remain a disciplined value creation lever for ISS when and only when the right opportunities are there. That same discipline we are also taking directly into the CFO organization. We are transforming finance from a predominantly local model, as Kasper alluded to, into a real scalable global platform. And the foundation has been established. The Gdansk service center is operational. Core back-office processes have been migrated and governance and controls have been stabilized. We have scaled the European scope moving from 30 people to now 250 transitioned FTEs while structurally reducing the corresponding footprint in countries.

The important point is not simply about centralization. It's a crucial part of our digitalization journey. We're standardizing processes, reducing duplication and creating a finance structure that can support a larger business without the same increase in complexity or cost. And in the next phase, we go global, scale from approximately 250 roles in Europe to more than 500 people supporting also APAC and Americas. Following the consolidation of activities, we are implementing automatization and AI to further enhance effectivity and effectiveness. This is expected to deliver approximately DKK 100 million in annual gross benefit from efficiency and labor arbitrage, but the economics go beyond the direct cost savings.

A more standardized platform gives us better quality, faster reporting, stronger controls and greater process resilience. In addition, it free up times in countries, enabling more customer-facing time. So it's not simply a cost reduction program. It gives ISS stronger control, greater resilience, better data and a finance function capable of supporting growth. In other words, we are reducing cost to serve while improving the quality of the platform at the same time. Over time, we do see a larger potential to bring further functions into the FSC journey.

Together, stronger operations and the scale of the platform allows us to raise our ambitions on behalf of ISS. Our new financial ambitions are clear. Average organic growth above 5%, an operating margin of 5.5% to 6% in '28 and a cash conversion above 60%. But these are not 3 isolated targets. They form one value-creating algorithm. Better execution drives quality growth, scale and productivity convert growth into margin.

Strong cash generation creates flexibility to investment and to shareholder returns. And let me unpack the algorithm beginning with the growth part. We expect organic growth of more than 5% on average annually for '26, '28. The composition of growth will change versus what you have seen ISS deliver in the past. We assume the contribution from net price increases to be less in '27 and '28 compared to '26. In its place, like-for-like growth, volume and net new will contribute with an ambition of at least 2%. That mix shift matters. It means a greater share of growth will come from underlying activity.

And additionally, there's another lever where we see opportunities, projects and above base. Historically, projects and above base have been the growth lever with the least visibility. That is why when entering a year, we have typically assumed a broadly flat contribution from above base. The approach to visibility hasn't changed. What does change is our commercial ambition. We're increasing the focus on systematically identifying additional services and opportunities with our existing customers where we already have a strong relationship, operational presence and customer insight. And you have seen some of the things at this side right here today.

So the growth algorithm becomes increasingly balanced, at least 2% from like-for-like, a more deliberate contribution from above base and a stable contribution from pricing. The objective is not therefore only just more growth, but higher quality and more sustainable growth. With a stronger contribution from volume and net new wins, scale becomes a more powerful margin driver. We started from a 5% operating margin in '25. We expect approximately 5.25% in '26, and we are targeting 5.5% to 6% by '28.

The contribution is broad-based, a better dTAC run rate, continued improvement in the underlying business, operating leverage from growth and scale and stronger workforce management and continued efficiency improvements. And importantly, these are not abstract finance assumptions. They connect directly to the business area presentations you have heard earlier today. Karl Fok spoke about scale, operating leverage, how a larger and more efficient platform allows growth to drop through at a higher rate.

Steve spoke about the opportunity in North America where stronger growth and scale can improve the economics in the regions over time. Tal showed how workforce management and operational efficiency can improve productivity, deployment of our people while simplifying the way we operate and taking cost and complexity out of our business. Liz showed why our people agenda is also a financial lever, how stronger engagement, smarter recruitment and better retention can reduce employee turnover, recruitment cost by improved productivity and ultimately support a more efficient cost base.

And I talked about how the finance function will support margin from scale benefits from our shared service center journey. This is why margin improvement is not depending on just one market, one program on one exceptional item. It comes from better execution across the full group and the quality of the margin improvement matters. We are not simply taking cost out of the business. We are improving the structural efficiency of the operating model while we continue to invest in growth. Our world-class cost base allows each additional unit of quality growth to create more value. In other words, the combination of scale, workforce productivity and efficiency is what drives the next steps in our margin journey.

Profitable growth must ultimately translate into cash, and that remains a core discipline, as Kasper mentioned, in ISS. We expect a cash conversion above 60% in '26, '27 and '28. And for me, the important point is not only the percentage, it's what sits behind it. ISS has a capital-light business model, and our ambition is to ensure that a high proportion of that earnings we generate ultimately converts into cash. That requires disciplined work across working capital and CapEx. And as earnings grow, maintaining a strong cash conversion becomes increasingly powerful for us. It means that profitable growth translates into incremental free cash flow rather than requiring a disproportionate amount of additional capital to support that growth. This is an important part of our compounding equation that we have talked about earlier today, and it gives us the financial flexibility.

We can fund the investment required to grow the business, maintain a resilient balance sheet and still generate substantial cash to our shareholders. So when you put the pieces together, higher returns, strong returns on capital and disciplined cash conversion, the result is increasing capacity for shareholder distribution over time. That is ultimately what we want our financial framework to deliver. Now let me bring the full story together. And the story is actually the same as the one I opened with. We delivered, we strengthened and now we accelerate. We delivered the financial commitments for our Capital Market Day in '22, and we restored the earnings per share. We strengthened the platform through better execution, disciplined capital allocation and selective bolt-on M&A. Spain demonstrates how the M&A playbook can create tangible value, strengthen capabilities, improving margins and generating attractive returns on invested capital.

Our growth algorithm is becoming more sustainable with a larger contribution from volume and net new alongside a more deliberate focus on a cost base. Our stronger underlying business, operating leverage, greater scale and better workforce management will support further margin expansion in the next years.

And importantly, the profitable growth is expected to translate into strong cash generation. That gives us a financial lever for capacity to continue investing in the business while maintaining a resilient balance sheet and deliver attractive shareholder returns. So the capital allocation principle remains very simple. We will invest where returns are compelling. Otherwise, surplus capital belong to our shareholders. That discipline matters because ultimately, our objective is not simply to grow ISS, is to grow earnings and returns per share and to compound shareholder value over time. I look forward to updating you each quarter on our process against these ambitions. ISS enter this next chapter from a position of strength with a stronger business, a very clear financial framework and a disciplined plan to compound shareholder value over time. Thank you very much.

And I think for this time, we will actually favor the online questions for the first one because they haven't had an opportunity yet. So now you'll be able to ask questions to the entire team. And as I said, I will start by reading out the first question, which we have received online, and then we will open up the floor for remaining questions. So the first one here is very relevant, a question on M&A. What kind of cash do you expect to spend on M&A in the coming years? Is DKK 500 million per year a good starting point to think about?

I can start and then you can add. So -- we don't want to be specific because it's not the specific amount that is the determined factor. What is the determined factor is that we're doing the right things. And if we are comfortable that M&A lives up to the criteria that you have heard about 3 times today, then that's the right thing for our shareholders, for our business and therefore, our shareholders to do that. But at this point in time, it will be absolutely fair to factor in that the level of M&A is the same as we have seen in the previous 3 years. There's nothing in the pipeline indicating that should be significantly smaller or higher.

I think it's -- I fully support what you say, Kasper. But I also think -- and I've been mentioning in a lot of investor meetings as well, it's also about focus. it's a focus on delivering on our daily basis rather than chasing opportunities of M&A. And I think the level of M&A that we have done in previous years is a good indication of what you could expect for the next period to come because at the end of it, the most important part is that we focus on continuing improving the underlying business because that is really what's creating the real value for our shareholders.

Kristian?

So first question is just on the household clarification question. Just on the above 5% organic growth target, is that a yearly target for '27 and '28? Or is that benefiting the higher growth in '26? I guess, based on your presentation, it's the former, but I just want to be clear on that.

Yes, it's above 5% for the -- annually for the period.

So a CAGR not.

CAGR, yes.

So it could be below 5% basically in '27 and then you still reach the target?

Depending on what we're delivering in '26, where we have above 6%. But clearly, it's above 5% and that will be an annual average that is basically adding up to that total for the period.

But interesting to note here, Kristian, is, of course, that when we say above 5%, we mean above 5%. We only mean 5.1%. So you've seen the building blocks. You heard the arguments from the team here. But you are right, mathematically, that could be the case.

Okay. Okay. That was just a household question. And then the real question then, just wondering how you compare returns on share buyback versus M&A. You say you measured on a return basis. Just what are the factors here in order for timing?

Yes. I can start and you get on. So there are several factors into it. The EPS growth is one of the ones we look at, but we also look into how -- what type of risk are we doing. We have talked a lot about we're very selective in which country we are. That's why we try to derisk the acquisition as much as possible. It's not only one matrix we are looking at. That's also what I mentioned, but the EPS is one of the ones that we look at, I can in particular, mention to you. But it's a broader game of a lot of things, but that is definitely one of the more important financial metrics that we take into consideration before doing M&A.

And I will support that. I mean, basically, the way that we put it forward and discuss with the committee from the Board is we look at the alternative. So we look at, well, this M&A, what is that going to do to EPS for -- over the case of the business case, then we have very clear criteria that it cannot be all sorts of me mouse actions that are delivering the synergies. We got to see basically per individual and how we're adjusting the cost base, and it has to be things that are within our own control and not depending on other factors coming through. And then we look at if we use that cash on buying back our own shares, how would that impact the EPS. And then that's the 2 criteria that we are setting up and comparing against.

To start with, please, can we just touch on the free cash flow piece, the conversion. It was at least my impression that I mean you've been doing a lot of work, obviously, first on the seasonality of the cash flow getting less tilt towards the second half. But also it was essentially also my understanding that maybe there would be a little bit more room -- I mean, maybe it was my own assumptions and my own wishful thinking, but I thought there was room for maybe further improvements in the cash conversion. And I thought you're starting to make some money in Germany.

I know I thought there was going to be some essentially offsets you have some big tax loss carryforwards that you can utilize in Germany. I thought there was just these different buckets around that would mean that, yes, sustainably, you could drive the cash conversion to be higher. So I'm just trying to understand, like am I completely wrong here? Or are you essentially a tad conservative in the sense that, yes, the underlying cash conversion has improved and yes, maybe are tad conservative?

Yes. So I can start. First of all, we are saying above 60%. And you also have to remember with the period we are moving into where we see growth, hopefully, to be a strong contributor to ICS going forward. Even if we are very strict around managing our working capital, growth can impact the cash conversion as well. So I actually think that the 60%, we've been quite close to the 60% over a period of time. You're right, we have been working a lot on it. We have also seen that in the last couple of years, there's been a little bit of overperformance on the cash part.

And we were definitely focusing on continue to improve the cash conversion because as Kasper alluded to, I mean, we are tracking it daily, and it's a super important proof point that cash is actually coming through. and you see the smoke in the system before. But with the growth where we are moving also depending where we are growing because you have different payment terms depending on where you see the growth, the 60% is actually a pretty strong number.

But again, it's above 60%. And the last part is, I would say, is that as we're growing the top line and the margin is moving in the right direction, of course, that will also give a nominal high amount of cash coming out ultimately.

That is nothing indicating that our payment terms with customers would worsen. And it's also important to understand the broader business context here because when when we win a significant customer, then one of the win criteria is it's a partnership. And clearly, it's not a partnership if we have to wait 90, 100 days to get the payments from the customers, and we are paying our staff on a biweekly basis. And customers understand that. So don't be worried about that there is a worsening in the payment terms.

And then I will say above 60% is quite a conversion of our profit. So maintaining that requires, obviously, a lot of hard work, especially in an environment where we are growing. And the last thing I will say is that we're committing to the above 60%. But remember, we have between DKK 5 billion and DKK 6 billion with the current volume, DKK 5 billion and DKK 6 billion of payments that are coming in between Christmas and New Year. So what you've seen in the past around some prepayments coming in earlier, it's -- all of that is included in our above 60% that we commit to. So it's just to make sure that you understand the complexity in all of this.

Mikel from ABG. Just 2 quick ones from my side. The price increases from Turkey, the contribution from there, is that at the same level for the whole target period? That's the first one.

Yes. So we have assumed that the price increases, so therefore, the contribution from prices is decreasing in Turkey. And that's an assumption. That's also why I said that -- I mean, of course, it's not that we just assume without having tested with sources. We're doing everything we can to get the intelligence around that. But minimum wages in Turkey is not announced until at some point of time in December for the following year. And if that amount is at the same level as it has been in the last 3 years, then the contribution from prices will also be higher and then our organic growth will be higher for '27 and '28 compared to what we assumed and showed you today. But it is an assumption, and we'll know more about that at the end of the year.

And over that period, Kasper alluded to, I mean, from a price increases perspective, Turkey has been around half of the price increase, just to give you a little bit of number of what we have seen historically. And that's been quite stable over the last 2 or 3 years.

But now you're assuming that it will be less than 50% going forward. Okay. And then the second one, and that's on the global financial platform. You said that you will benefit from around DKK 100 million on an annual basis. Is that from '28, '27? Or when will that happen?

It's a good question, but that is only -- and Kasper alluded to it a little bit earlier today, that's the scope that we have migrated now. We have migrated to 250 people. We are taking out corresponding in countries. So you can say it's something that will ramp up to that amount. Now the counterpart of that equation is that includes the scope of Europe. We talk also about having additional centers in APAC and in Americas. And that, of course, will offset investments.

And that, of course, depending on what kind of speed we are doing it with, that will, of course, take some of the benefits out. But -- it is real. It's coming through. We also touched upon other advantages by the shared service center platform for the scalability as we grow the company, but that is only limited on the first side. So it depends upon how fast we go with APAC and Americas, which we are looking at right now.

Can you just give some kind of time horizon on this? Is it 3 years? Is it 2 years?

No, I would say that the DKK 250 million and the scope and the gross amount that is adding up, that is, of course, coming through in -- within the next years. But what I would say is that the counterpart is, of course, the investment if we go fast on APAC and Americas in the same period.

Two questions one at a time. I mean, I guess, on the dividend, you've got a fairly wide kind of guidance range on the payout ratio, 20% to 40%, and you've been pretty close to the lower end of that. So just interested in the thoughts around did you debate tightening that range, kind of what would -- what could or might lead you to a payout ratio at the upper end of that range?

Yes. So on the dividend side, I mean, we said 20% to 40% of adjusted net profit. I'm not going to comment about where that will change. It's discussions, of course, Casper and I, we have ongoing about how do we distribute excess capital to shareholders in the best and most powerful way -- so far, we have utilized the opportunities of share buyback to a large extent and still believe that 20% dividend is actually a good number. Whether that will be the case forward over the next period as we allude to here, that remains to be seen, but that is a discussion that we have ongoing. There's no trigger points when I say now we move up in dividend and we do something else. It's how we feel and what we think is the best use of the excess cash we generate.

And then the second was just around the margin guidance. I guess, just very simplistically, is there anything in terms of the bridge from '26 to '28 that we ought to think about in terms of 2027. So anything at this early -- I appreciate you'll give guidance on 2027 eventually, but is there anything that's sort of in your minds as to how it shapes '26 to '28?

It's the same components as we have already provided color on today. But what we have clearly mentioned is that the margin will -- so the ratio will be higher in '27 versus '26. And what's behind that is operating leverage and then it is the efficiency program that is going to improve the margins. At the same time, as I said before, sufficient room for the necessary investments to make sure that we do what is right for the company in the long term.

It's Karl Green from RBC again. First question, just around return on invested capital. Clearly, what happens to that over the next 2 to 3 years will largely depend on M&A activity. If we think about the potential for organic return on invested capital improvement, -- you've already said that working capital demands are unlikely to increase. Is there anything else in terms of the ingredients of ROIC, which would stop it from improving organically? Margins up, capital intensity probably no worse? That's the first question.

No, I don't see anything why it should worsen over time. As I alluded to, I mean, we also given where we see the margin and Kasper alluded to that we see a market improvement towards 28%, and we alluded to 5.5% to 6%. And we continue to be extremely selective in the way we deploy capital. I don't see anything that should worsen that number, definitely not.

And there's nothing to be aware of either on the earnings per share. Hence, our comment around that with everything you have heard today, I mean, obviously, it's a back of an envelope calculation. The earnings per share, our clear expectation because we deliver on the target that we put out here is that, that will improve significantly from the current -- from currently an improvement in '27 and '28 and also beyond.

Great. And then a second question, just on the step-up in above base revenues or at least you're including that in projections. Does that partially reflect the fact that you're seeing more recurring revenues from that? So for example, the JPA that we saw earlier, which presumably isn't just a one-off, whereas the elevator modification that is a one-off. Just in terms of the balance of the projects there, has there been a shift? Will there be a shift? Or is it just more of the same?

Yes. Carl Fredrik, do you want to comment on that?

I think it's a good question because we do call it a one-off to your point. But what we're seeing as well is when a customer has given us some good projects and above base, it's very often in a position where we get trusted because the quality of deliveries are good. Then it can come back again the year after, might be in a slightly different versions than the ones you had the year before.

But at least you are in that direction together with the customer to continue doing so. But it's item by item, you will have more one-offs when it comes to above base than almost like a portfolio going on for 3 to 4 to 5 years ahead. And I think one of the reasons why we do put it in now is the efforts that has been put in with regards to creating that credibility with these customers and making sure that we continue on that path as well with the customer portfolio going forward.

But out of our total top line, base is recurring, and that's base services that we invoice at 12 of every month. The above base spend is discretionary. I mean it is more volatile than the base, obviously. There's nothing indicating that we will see a structural change to that at the moment. But it is the lever where customers, if for whatever reason they need to save money, then they can do that by cutting back on above base.

That being said, though, because it's 20% of our revenue. There is -- the vast majority of what we have in above base are things that there will always be a need for a repair of a door, change of filters in a building. And then you have the part that is discretionary, which is an employee event, certain things that you can cut back on in case that is needed. And then the other thing that makes us indicate and commit to the fact that we will see growth in above base going forward is that as you've hopefully understood from the site tour, we work with above base in a different way compared to what we've done in the past.

And there are 3 things that are important to note there. The first thing is that our site managers have clear visibility to what is in base. And that's important because then they can spot the commercial opportunities for tasks that are not in base and cover that as above base. And then the quotation, the way to get to quickly a work order for that work has been improved a lot and digitalized across our business. So it doesn't take years to work through the process of issuing a quote and an invoice ultimately. And the last thing is our people are incentivized to target above base based on certain criteria that ensures that it's good business for us.

And just -- it has been relatively stable from a revenue perspective to Kasper's point. I mean we delivered 16% in '24, and we also had a 16% of total revenue in '25. So the level of projects and above base has been relatively stable of the percentage of total revenue.

Casper Blom from Danske Bank. I got the mic. Two questions, please. The first is a little bit of a follow-up to the question on above base. You've talked about how the office experience is important for many of your customers. They want to drive people to actually go to the office. What do you see as the biggest risk of that changing? Would it be something as simple as a recession and all of a sudden, you don't have to fight to get people to go to the office, just them to do it? Or do you see any other threats out there that could sort of ruin that trend?

Yes. Do you want to give a U.S. perspective, Steve, on that you are.

I don't -- no, I don't really see anything other than COVID event or something like that, that's really catastrophic. -- that would change that. So I don't see that. And you could even argue that recession might actually bring people back to the office because they work their jobs, so they might try to be more visible. So you probably argue that either way, but I don't see anything that's going to change that.

And from a global perspective, we do see customers that are cutting down on square meters, and we also see customers that are intending to cut down on square meters in the future. But the interesting thing is that the cost per share meter is increasing accordingly. So I mean, really, this thing, I mean, Gallup has been out with a survey around that, that disengagement post-COVID-19, I mean, the negative impact that is having on productivity and GDP is massive. It is really truly understood and acknowledged in the industries where we are -- in the segments that we are targeting that it creates engagement to work together. not necessarily 5 days a week, but definitely some days during the week.

And if you -- that's what we see more and more. If you push people through a policy and you have to be there. I mean, nobody wants to be told what to do. You don't get that engagement unless people when they wake up in the morning, they say, okay, I want to get into the office environment because that is really an inspiring place to be, and it's a nice place to work together with my colleagues.

And when people are engaged, then they are more productive. Therefore, the current outlook at the moment that there's nothing indicating that the spend on facilities services will decrease. I will actually say the opposite.

One of the things let me just add to that is that if you look at -- there's been a flight to quality. So if you look at Class A office versus the other classes, there's dramatically more people coming back into the office. And so there's definitely this flight to quality, which I think supports what Kasper said, too. So I don't -- I think it's going just the opposite.

I think just one last thing on it. We are a portfolio business, and we want to be a portfolio business. What we've seen, though, through the work that has been ongoing is that non-portfolio is also a good opportunity for us. But it is more volatile. You could get into some very strong projects and above base during 1 year, which might not be there for the next year. But with the lens on those drivers that we see now, that's why we also dare to put in a ticket within the growth bridge that we're seeing currently.

And to Kasper's point, when we are in debates and dialogues with customers, they are saying, sure, we might reduce some square meters, but we want to do more services for the people being in the building. that can equal out the revenue and also drive some other kind of services that they will need into that space to make sure they drive engagement with their employees.

Yes. And then you can see it triggers a lot of enthusiasm, your question. So well done, Kersten. And then you can link that into Kristian's question around, well, I need to understand because, of course, what he's fishing for is, well, could we end up in a situation where we deliver 4% organic growth in '28. And yes, we could. It's math. But what will be the driving factor behind that is price increases. It's not the like-for-like that we are committed to. We don't see -- that we are committed to and we will deliver an underlying growth, growth with existing customers, growth with new customers that is at least at the level that we're looking at the moment of 2%.

But what we don't want is to sit and speculate at this point in time around what is the price contribution going to be for Turkey as an example. I mean I can guarantee you we have done our homework on talking to people that are supposed to be experts in what minimum wages are turning out to be in Turkey in the next 2 years. And you ask 10 people and you get 10 different answers on that.

I understand you don't want to guide on that. The second question is probably a little bit easier. So it's from can you give any kind of guidance on what to expect on CapEx and net working capital for the next couple of years? Is it business as usual or?

I would say business as usual. That's a fair assumption.

And what that means is that our depreciation will be at the same level of CapEx, slightly below the 2%, including IFRS 16.

Jourdain from ODO BHF. A question on North America and the data center demand. Could you please share with us your approach to this segment, your offering there and maybe also some indications on your pipeline because we're seeing some of your peers, I'm referring to Sodexo, Compass, Samar that are gaining a lot of contracts there. So any information on this?

Yes. We are providing services for data centers, predominantly for our technology companies. I think right now, we're more than 20 data centers that we're providing ongoing services for. And so those services are been food and then some technical services. So our expectation is it continues to grow with, obviously, the hyperscalers and the AI. So that's really where we're at. I don't know if I can really speak to our competitors, but that's where we're at.

Allen Wells from Jefferies again. Just 2 very quick ones. Just back on the above base. Obviously, there's confidence in a more sustainable contribution there. But could you maybe just put a little bit of color about the margin on the above base? We've always been a bit of debate in the past about is it margin accretive? Is it not just depending on what the projects are coming in, but as a general comment there.

Troels, do you want to that? -- want to take that one?

Yes. It's -- in general, and there will be exceptions to that. But in general, it is margin accretive and therefore, in many ways, help us. And the key is exactly what you have seen today. So the key is to be the partner for a large customer across all services because that gives you access to, of course, the services, but it also gives you access to have that particular dialogue with the customer. And then there can be particular projects where we would get help from other people and we are managing it and then it may not be as margin accretive. But in general, yes.

But it is not so that if we don't deliver the modest or the decent organic growth in '27 and '28, then that will impact. It's not a swing factor. Tor is right in what he's saying. But in the big scheme of things, we're not depending on that growth coming through at higher margins to deliver on our margin target.

Clear. And then just thinking back on the building blocks on the margin. Obviously, we're seeing strong growth in 2026. Part of that includes the ramp that we've seen in contracts like DWP, which I think goes live in October. If we were to see a normalization back towards, let's just say, 5% or above 5% from pushing 7% this year, is there a benefit in easing mobilization costs that we can expect in the margin in '27 and '28 if growth is a little bit lower just year-on-year?

Yes. Again, so a couple of things on mobilization. I mean the the key accounts that we are winning typically, it's built around the partnership. And that also means that there is a mobilization cost is built into the commercial model. So it's not that as we grow, then our margin will be threatened in the short term. We do have some incremental mobilization costs that we decide to do because it's the right thing to do, like, for instance, on the DWP, we had incremental mobilization costs because we knew that there is a significant project opportunity on DWP, and therefore, we decided to put a project team in proactively and have that overhead cost without having offsetting revenue.

So I mean, I think the way to look at it is that mobilization cost is not a swing factor that will put margin at risk. And to your comment around operating leverage, well, clearly, we have operating leverage on the contribution on revenue from like-for-like, so from growth with existing customers and net new. And that one, we are fully committing to price increases, the operating leverage is not there. And that's why we feel good about the benefit from operating leverage in '27 and '28.

So just on the modeling of the share buyback. So the leverage target of 2.0 to 2.5, is that an end of year target where you're benefiting from seasonality? Or is that at every quarter? Or how does that work?

It's still an end year target.

Okay. And then on the retention rate, the assumption in the above 2% like-for-like growth in your previous target from the last CMD, you assumed 93.5%, and you have an ambition of 95% in retention rate, sorry. So just wondering what is baked into the above 2% like-for-like?

It's as Carl Fredrik said, it's the 95%. And on the 95%, we have room for improvement. And what I mean with that is that if we look at the -- some of the customers that we are losing today, we shouldn't be losing them. That's why the key account development program that Karl Fredrik mentioned about in his session is absolutely critical. We will not get to 100% retention, but we can become better than what we are currently at. But what we have assumed in our target setting is the 95%.

It's, however, also quite important to understand that there's retention and retention in the sense that for large customers, IFS customers, we should have as high retention rate as possible. If you then double-click on some of our single-service cleaning business, the change costs are not very high. So the demobilization and mobilization costs are not high. And therefore, it's not a big margin impact to have that change. And since we, in some countries, have single-service cleaning where, for example, we work for municipalities, it can be quite digital, but it's not a problem.

Okay. We now have a question from the webcast saying, why have you been avoiding acquisitions in the U.K. given the changing structure of this market, especially given it's the most mature market in a global FM context?

It's a perfect question for...

So I think everybody knows the history of the U.K. It was a hotspot 4 years ago. We have recovered the margin. We've done a lot of good work with Charles and his team around the operational footprint of the U.K. made it much, much more robust. We built a finance platform back there. We put a great infrastructure into the U.K. business now. And at the same time, we've developed a very, very strong pipeline, particularly in public sector.

So 4 years ago, we knew that there was going to be a real -- a whole host of tenders coming out of public sector in a period of time, and we set ourselves a target for bagging as much of that as we possibly could so that we get the business to be 50-50 private and public. And that's really where we've been up to now.

And we're driving great organic growth in the U.K. business through that strategy. So right now, we don't really need to do M&A in the U.K. But now that the business is a good, solid platform again, it comes into play. And I'm certain the U.K. team would love to be on that chart with all the others in the not-too-distant future.

Yes. And it's -- first of all, it's a good question, and it's an even better answer. But it also well illustrates what we mean about focus because we would not see the growth we see -- I'm convinced we'll not see the growth we're seeing in the U.K. currently if we had embarked on an acquisition journey there. And it's exactly the same way we are thinking about M&A across the enterprise.

And then there is probably also an allusion to the consolidation that is happening in the U.K. at the moment. Of course, we're keeping a close eye on that. But as with everything, when there is turbulence and a significant acquisition will create turbulence, then there's also opportunities. So we're ready to grab those opportunities.

Any more questions from the audience here? Kristian? You never disappointed.

So just wondering on the operating leverage that you touched upon had not been a successful path previously. What has changed in the platform in order for you to reap those benefits?

Yes. So I would say that if you look at our business, what is happening in the back office, then it's a lot of transactions. I mean you need to register hours, you need to pay those hours and produce pay slips to our people, our placemakers. You need to raise purchase orders, work orders. You need to invoice that to customers. And we have come a long way on automizing that. Mads is alluding to the fact that there are still opportunities.

Yes, there is and there probably always will be, but we have come a long way on streamlining our generic processes. Otherwise, we couldn't do what we have done with our European business and put the shared service center in place in Gdansk. And the data points that I look at that shows that it's working is exactly, as I mentioned before, it is that our overhead costs are nominally the same in the first half of this year compared to what it was in the first half of last year, and that's with an organic growth rate of 8.2%.

Scalability, That's the biggest part of it. I don't know if Bjerg has anything.

I think that there's one more driver, which is really, in my mind, very important, and that is that you have you have synergies in your overheads. And the way to get synergies in overheads is to have a very, very focused business that don't go to all kinds of different segments, but work with a few segments because in that way, you can cross use your overheads, and that's exactly what is a result of the OneISS strategy. Kasper talked about how we now have the strategy road maps in place in each country, and it's becoming more and more and more one platform, and that helps to drive operating leverage.

Okay. Thank you so much for your questions. Now Kasper will just do the closing remarks.

Thank you. And that will be relatively short. But before I do that, I would just like to to thank the team for what I think has been some really solid and great presentations throughout the day. A lot of hard work has gone into that, but thank you for presenting that in a crisp and clear way also with a high level of energy, so much appreciated. I'd also like to thank each one of you for your interest in ISS and participating in this Capital Markets Day either in person or virtually.

And hopefully, you will leave today's Capital Markets Day with a clear understanding of the fact that ISS is one of the leading providers in a large and fast-growing market. And hopefully, you will also understand that our self-delivery platform provides benefits to our customers, and that is exactly what is positively differentiating ourselves from the competition. And we have aligned our global business on a much more clear and simple strategy where we're taking a lot of complexity out of both how we design the strategy and how we execute our strategy. And the good thing is that it's working.

We can see that there are tangible outcomes coming out of that already. Now we will continue to execute and we'll put even more horsepower behind that and therefore, accelerate the higher quality growth and expand our margins because our margins will continue to convert into a strong cash flow, and we will use that cash flow with a high level of capital discipline through our unchanged capital allocation policy. And while we are laser-focused on delivering the strong financial results, then we will also continue to put substance, especially around the social sustainability agenda, both because it's the right thing to do as one of the largest private employers globally, actually in top 20 with more than 325,000 people, but also because it makes sense from a commercial point of view.

And the key thing really that we want to get across to you today is that when you combine all of those things into earnings per share, then our earnings per share power, our earnings per share will increase significantly from where we are today until 2028, but also beyond because what we do is with the right quality and it's sustainable. Thank you very much for participating. Thanks for the good dialogue.

And again, thank you very much for your interest in ISS. For those of you that are traveling, safe travels to you, thanks for what I think has been a really good day. And also very, very big credit and thank you to the team who has organized this day. There's been long hours being put into the preparation of this day, both from our facility management team, but definitely also for our project team and our Investor Relationship team. We remain available through Investor Relationship and of course, also Mads and myself if you have, and I hope you do, some follow-up questions on the strong content that has been presented today. Thank you.

And while we understand that, obviously, some of you want to go home, go to the airport, go somewhere else, there will also be just a bit of a snack outside. So feel free to stay for those of you who have the time. Thank you so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ISS H1 2026 Interim Report. I'm Sergen, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] And the conference being recorded. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, Group Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to this conference call. We appreciate you joining us here today to discuss our H1 2026 interim report, which we released earlier this morning. As I said, I'm Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, heading up Investor Relations here at ISS.

Joining me today in the room is our CEO, Kasper Fangel; our CFO, Mads Holm; and Anne Sophie Riis from the IR team. Before we begin, please take a quick view at the disclaimer in the back, and then I will hand over to Kasper to start the presentation. Please move to Slide #4.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we review our first half results. I'm pleased with the progress we delivered in the first half of the year. Importantly, the underlying business continues to strengthen. Organic growth remained healthy, supported by new wins, higher customer activity and continued project work. At the same time, we improved both margins and cash flow compared with the first half of last year, reflecting the operational improvements we've been driving across the business.

In the second quarter, we delivered organic growth of 8.9%, including a like-for-like contribution of 2% for the third consecutive quarter in a row. Above-base growth remains strong, particularly across our European markets. This reflects the continued progress we are making in embedding a stronger commercial culture throughout the organization from our frontline operations to group leadership in line with our strategic priorities. Across the business, we continue to execute well against our strategic priorities, strengthening both our commercial performance and operational discipline.

For the first half of 2026, our operating margin was 4.6%. This reflects both the continued improvement in the underlying business and the contribution from a better run rate of the Deutsche Telekom contract post the settlement agreement. Mads will walk you through the individual drivers in more detail shortly. Free cash flow for the first half of 2026 was DKK 600 million, benefiting from the improved underlying business, lower seasonal working capital movements and the onetime cash payment of DKK 600 million received from Deutsche Telekom as expected. Commercial momentum also remained encouraging. Year-to-date, we have announced 13 contract changes, of which 10 were positive. This supports our ambition to improve the quality of our revenue growth while maintaining healthy commercial discipline.

We also continue to improve key commercial metrics with our retention rate increasing to 95%. While there's still work to do, I'm encouraged by the progress we are making. The business continues to move in the right direction. Our commercial momentum remains positive, and our pipeline provides confidence as we move through the remainder of '26. I also want to touch on the important milestone we reached with Deutsche Telekom during the second quarter. As you recall, on 19th of May, we reached a settlement agreement with DTAG. The agreement marks an important step forward in our long-standing partnership and establishes a stronger foundation for our future collaboration.

In addition to agreeing updated commercial terms, we successfully extended the contract by 6 years. The agreement now runs until the end of 2035, providing greater visibility and supporting a more sustainable commercial relationship going forward. Finally, a brief update on Toma. Following the acquisition on the 7th of May, the Competition Authority granted final approval in June. And I'm very pleased to welcome more than 4,000 employees from Toma, and I'm happy to see the first phase of the integration is progressing according to plan.

As we close the second quarter, I can confident reconfirm our outlook for 2026. And I look forward to seeing you at our Capital Markets Day on the 14th of September, where we'll share more about the next phase of our journey and take a deeper dive into our business, our strategy and the opportunities ahead.

Next slide, please. Looking back, 2025 was a good year for ISS. And I'm pleased to see that the strong momentum in executing our strategy has continued into the first half of 2026. As I said, we will, of course, take a deeper dive into our strategy at our Capital Markets Day on September 14. But for now, let me highlight a few key takeaways from the second quarter. During the quarter, we made targeted commercial investments in selected growth opportunities in the U.S. These investments support our long-term growth ambition and position us well to capture attractive opportunities going forward.

I'm also very pleased with the closeness and the transparency we have in the business today, which is underpinned by a first half financial performance that is almost exactly in line with what we expected. I believe this level of closeness and transparency is key to continuing and accelerating the journey we are on.

Finally, let me touch on our third priority, ensuring high engagement across the organization. ISS is, first and foremost, a people business. The engagement of our colleagues is fundamental to delivering great service for our customers and creating sustainable value for our shareholders. I'm particularly proud to see our people recognized externally for their achievements. During the quarter, ISS Singapore was honored with the best FM Partner Award at the Facility Management Expert Summit, recognizing the strong partnerships and high-quality service delivered by our local team. In the U.K., ISS was ranked #1 in 5 categories in 2026 IFM brand survey, including most focused on customer needs and the brand FM professionals most aspire to work for.

We were also shortlisted for 5 nominations across 4 categories at the IWFM Impact Awards, recognizing our work in areas such as social value, inclusion and community impact. These recognitions are a testament to the dedication of our people and reinforce that our focus on customers, service excellence and engagement is making a tangible difference across our markets. Overall, the first half confirms that our strategy is delivering as planned. We continue to execute our strategy to deliver profitable growth and strengthen engagement across the organization. With these priorities firmly in place, we are well positioned to continue creating long-term value for our customers and our shareholders.

Let me now turn to our contract announcements. Since our last update, we have continued doing what we do best, helping our customers create exceptional workplace experiences. Our focus remains clear, delivering outstanding service every day through our self-delivery model and our people-first approach. You have seen this slide before, but we continue to include it because it demonstrates that our strategy is delivering tangible results. A significant share of our growth continues to come from existing customers, where we are expanding relationships through additional services and broader geographical reach. This is attractive growth as it builds on established partnerships, deep customer knowledge and a proven ability to deliver.

At the same time, we remain focused on winning new business in our 4 core segments and chosen local segments where we see the strongest long-term opportunities. We also remain disciplined pursuing opportunities where our value proposition is strongest and where we can create sustainable, profitable growth. Demand for integrated workplace experiences continues to be strong across our markets, and ISS is well positioned to capture that demand. The commercial momentum we delivered in the second quarter, together with the contract announcements we have made and the pipeline we see today are very encouraging. Taken together, our contract announcements over the past 18 months demonstrate a clear trend. We continue to improve the quality of our growth by building deeper customer relationships, winning attractive new business and executing with greater commercial discipline.

With that, let's move to the next slide. Let me now turn to the composition of our organic growth and what it tells us about the improving quality of our performance. As discussed on the previous slide, our commercial strategy is focused not only on growing but on delivering more sustainable and profitable growth. In recent years, organic growth has primarily been driven by pricing with a significant contribution from our exposure to Turkey. At the same time, net new wins were affected by contract trims and exits, reflecting the deliberate decisions we made to improve the quality and profitability of our portfolio. Over the past year, that picture has gradually changed. We continue to see the progress in the first half of 2026, which reinforces that the improvements are becoming more firmly established.

As you can see on the slide, both net new wins and volume growth have improved meaningfully. It also reflects the broader progress we are making in executing our strategy, clear accountability, stronger commercial ownership closer to our customers and operations and continued momentum in the rollout of our scalable initiatives. Going forward, our focus remains on deepening relationships with existing customers while adding new customers to the portfolio. This will be supported by targeted commercial investments, but always with a clear focus on returns, pricing discipline and profitable growth.

With that, let's turn to the next slide. Before I conclude the business update, I would like to briefly address our contract maturity profile. During the first half of the year, we have made very good progress in extending our contracts up for renewal. Our maturity profile for 2026 remains at 1%, while our retention rate has improved to 95%. This outcome reflects a stronger commercial discipline, earlier engagement with customers and a more proactive approach to managing expirations. Importantly, this ties directly back to the strategy and execution of stronger commercial ownership, clear accountability and a more focused organization.

With that, I will now hand over to Mads for an update on our financials.

Thank you, Kasper. Let me take you through the financial performance for the second quarter and first half. As Kasper highlighted, the business continued to strengthen during the period. Compared with the first half of 2025, revenue increased by DKK 3 billion, while earnings per share improved by 29%. This reflects the continued improvement in the underlying business, including structural run rate improvements made on the DTAG contract post the settlement. Organic growth was 8.9% in the second quarter with positive contribution for all main growth drivers. Above base was particularly strong and included the one-off impact from the DTAG settlement.

Turning to profitability. The operating margin for the first half was 4.6%. The underlying margin continued to improve compared with the same period last year. Free cash flow for the first half was positive DKK 600 million. This includes the timing effect of the DKK 600 million payment received from DTAG as well as improved underlying cash generation and lower seasonal working capital movements compared with last year. Overall, the first half results demonstrate continued progress across revenue, profitability and cash flow, and we remain well on track to deliver our full year outlook.

Let us now turn to the regional performance. Overall, all regions delivered positive organic growth in the quarter, broadly in line with our expectations. Starting with Northern Europe, the region delivered organic growth of 4% in the second quarter. Growth was supported by the mobilization of contract awarded in 2025 and 2026, including [ Kovi ], Belux and DWP. This was partly offset by 2 previously announced contract losses and 2 scope reductions. Above base was positive across the region, although slightly lower than first quarter, reflecting improved commercial execution and continued demand from existing customers. The underlying margin improved in the first half compared to the same period last year. This improvement was, however, partly offset by mobilization costs related to new contract start-ups.

Turning to Central and Southern Europe. The region continued to deliver strong growth of 18% in the second quarter. Growth was primarily driven by price increases, particularly in Turkey. We also saw a solid above base contribution and a positive impact from net new wins, confirming the continued commercial momentum across the region. Organic growth also included a one-off contribution from DTAG. The margin improved across all countries compared with the first half of last year. In Asia Pacific, organic growth was 6% in the quarter. Performance was particularly strong in Pacific and India, supported by the Australian defense contract and continued volume growth with existing customers. The margin was impacted by legal costs in Hong Kong relating to the devastating Wang Fuk Court fire at the end of '25.

Finally, turning to the Americas, performance developed broadly as expected. Organic growth was negatively impacted by net new wins, primarily due to a number of smaller contract exits in Chile. This was partly offset by supportive volume growth during the quarter. In the U.S., organic growth was flat, while Mexico delivered solid growth. The regional margin was impacted by targeted commercial investments in the U.S. and restructuring costs in Chile following the exit of a few contracts. As mentioned earlier, these investments are intended to strengthen our long-term commercial position.

At our Capital Market Day, we will provide a deeper review of the U.S. business and share further detail on our strategy and priorities going forward. Overall, the regional performance reinforced the broader message you heard today. Growth is becoming more broad-based, commercial execution is improving and the quality of the underlying business continues to strengthen. This is consistent with the progress we are making in executing our strategy to deliver profitable growth and improved financial performance.

Next slide, please. In second quarter, we delivered organic growth of 8.9% with contribution from all 4 growth levers: pricing, volume, net new and above base. While we expected both volume and net new to be solid, we saw stronger-than-anticipated contribution from above base, primarily DTAG one-off benefit. This is an important proof point and ties directly back to the strategy update from Kasper. The performance reflects a stronger commercial mindset at site level, clear accountability and better execution closer to the customer, all of which are key elements of our strategy. Above base was supported by the positive one-off impact from DTAG in the quarter. As you know, we cannot share the exact amount, but as we have said before, the impact is meaningful in the quarter, but immaterial to the full year growth outlook.

Turning to net new. Performance in the quarter was positively impacted by DWP, [ Kovi ], Belux, Australian Defense and FCDO as well as contract start-up across Central and Southern Europe. These wins reflect both our focused approach to targeting group segments and our ability to convert opportunity into high-quality contracts. Net new was also negatively impacted by 2 contract losses in Northern Europe. On to volume. This was negatively impacted by 2 contract reductions in Northern Europe, one announced at the beginning of 2025 and one in third quarter 2025. However, this was more than offset by the full quarter effect of the expansion in Brisbane in Australia, Virgin in Northern Europe and a new defense customer in Europe as well as other contract expansions from 2025.

As a result, when combining net new and volume, we are pleased to report another quarter with solid like-for-like growth of 2%. This marks the third quarter in a row with strong underlying growth quality. Finally, above base revenue for the quarter ended at 3%, driven by a broad-based strong performance across the European regions, a contribution from DWP and one-off from DTAG. Overall, second quarter confirms that our organic growth is becoming more balanced, more diversified and increasingly driven by the right underlying factors, consistent with the strategy and commercial priorities we have outlined.

Next slide, please. Let me now turn to margins. For the first half of 2026, we delivered a margin of 4.6%. As mentioned before, the underlying business continued to improve across all regions. Combined with the improved run rate on DTAG, this supported the guidance upgrade we announced in May to a margin of around 5.25% for the full year. As previously mentioned, the first half margin also benefited from the DTAG settlement. The improvements are being implemented throughout the year with the timing resulting in a greater benefit in the first half. For the full year, these improvements to the contractual profitability are expected to contribute to a run rate uplift of 10 to 15 basis points annually to the group.

What I believe is the most important is that the underlying margin trajectory continues to improve. At the same time, we are investing in contract mobilization, commercial initiatives and future growth opportunities while continuing to deliver on our profitability commitments and focus on growing absolute earnings. This demonstrates that we are improving the quality of the business while maintaining financial discipline.

With that, let me turn to free cash flow. Free cash flow for the first half ended at positive DKK 600 million. The free cash flow was positively impacted by the timing effect of the DKK 600 million from the settlement with DTAG and improvements in operating profit. Working capital benefited from tight receivables management. This was partly offset by higher tax payments and higher interest expenses. The underlying discipline around collections and working capital remains critical and cash generation continues to be a top management priority across all countries.

Let's go to the next slide for a brief update on capital allocation policy. Finally, let me provide an update on capital allocation and shareholder returns. In April, we paid the proposed dividend of approximately DKK 500 million, corresponding to DKK 3.2 per share. Our share buyback program is also progressing as planned. And last week, we concluded the first tranche of the share buyback program. Following the Deutsche Telekom settlement, we increased the program by additional DKK 600 million, bringing the total program to DKK 3.1 billion. In May, we canceled 14.2 million shares following the authorization received at the Annual General Meeting in April. This reduced our total share count to DKK 160 million, representing a reduction of more than 8% this year. Combined, the dividend and the ongoing share buyback represent a payout yield of 8%.

This reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation. We remain focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in the business and returning excess capital to shareholders when that represent the most attractive use of funds. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged. We pursue acquisition only where they meet our strict strategic and financial criteria. Toma is a good example of this approach. The acquisition was announced early in the quarter and final competition approval was received in June. As Kasper mentioned earlier, the integration is progressing according to plan, and we remain confident that Toma will strengthen our position in the Nordic region and create long-term value.

Let me finish with a brief update on Turkey post the Actera transaction. Following Actera's exit, we have now completed the planned recapitalization of the business, reducing the debt level and lowered the financing costs. We remain on track to deliver the expected 3% EPS uplift on an annualized basis.

With that, I will hand it back to Kasper. Please turn to Slide 18.

Thank you, Mads. Following another solid quarter, we are pleased to reconfirm the guidance for 2026 that we upgraded in May. We continue to expect organic growth of above 6% for the full year. Pricing, including the contribution from Turkey, is still expected to be the largest growth driver. However, as we've shown today, the growth composition is becoming more balanced with stronger contributions from volume growth, net new wins and above-base activity.

Our focus on expanding with existing customers continues to deliver results, while we are also making progress in winning new customers within our target segments. At the same time, stronger commercial ownership at site level is helping us identify and capture more opportunities closer to our customers, supporting our above-base contribution. However, as always, visibility on above-base activity remains more limited, but the momentum we see is encouraging. On profitability, we remain on track and reconfirm our full year margin guidance of around 5.25%. Overall, the first half reinforces the message you have heard throughout today's presentation. Our strategy is delivering, commercial execution is improving and the quality of our growth continues to strengthen.

Please turn to the next slide. To echo Mads, we keep a relentless focus on cash flow at ISS, and we are on track to deliver a cash conversion of above 60%. This equals above DKK 2.7 billion in underlying cash flow, adjusting for the DKK 200 million negative impact from invoices with due date in 2026 that was paid in 2025 and including the payment from Deutsche Telekom, we expect free cash flow of above DKK 3.1 billion for the full year.

Please turn to the next and final slide. As we wrap up today's presentation, let me take a step back and bring together the key messages. Our equity story remains unchanged. ISS is a global market leader in an attractive facility service market with long-term structural growth opportunities. We combine this strong market position with disciplined execution, a clear commercial strategy and a relentless focus on profitable growth. As you've heard throughout today's presentation, we are continuing to improve the quality of our business.

Commercial momentum is strengthening. Underlying growth is becoming more balanced. financial performance and cash generation are improving. At the same time, we remain disciplined in how we allocate capital, investing in the business while returning excess capital to our shareholders. The first half of 2026 demonstrates that our strategy is delivering. We have strengthened the underlying business, reached an important long-term agreement with Deutsche Telekom, continued to improve our commercial execution and maintained the financial discipline needed to support sustainable value creation. Looking ahead, our priorities remain unchanged. We will continue executing our strategy to deliver profitable growth, deliver consistent financial performance and ensure strong engagement across the organization. We are confident that these priorities will continue to strengthen ISS and create long-term value for our customers and our shareholders.

Finally, I would like to thank all our placemakers around the world. Your commitment and professionalism are what make ISS successful every day. I would also like to thank our customers for their continued trust and partnership. With that, we conclude today's presentation, and I hope to see you all at our upcoming Capital Markets Day in Copenhagen on the 14th of September. And now we are ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Mads Brinkmann from Berenberg.

Just if we start on the guidance, please. On top line, obviously, very strong print in Q2. And just, I guess, the implied growth. I know you guide for above 6%, but I'm still just struggling to understand why you haven't raised guidance further. I mean the implied growth in H2 is now 4%. I know you flagged Q4 is a tough comp, but still assuming that Q3 is sort of not too dissimilar to Q1, maybe not Q2, but Q1 at least, then I mean, it looks like you're in a very, very good place. So why haven't you lifted guidance on that one, please?

And then separately, on the free cash flow, this goes back to the upgrade you did in May. Obviously, you lifted organic growth and on the margin and at least just on my back of the envelope calculation, that would sort of mean an incremental DKK 200 million in post-tax EBIT. So I'm just trying to understand why the guidance when you upgrade this was only upgraded by the DKK 600 million payment related to Deutsche Telekom and not sort of the operating performance of the business as well. Does it mean that you essentially you have a cushion for -- if you need to invest more in H2 or mobilize new contracts? Or what's the deal here?

And then secondly, sorry, just lastly on DTAG, you mentioned the 10 to 15 bps uplift here over the longer run or sort of over the year. And just want to make sure I haven't missed this, sorry, is this on the same scope of services? Or is this an expanded scope of services as well?

Thank you very much, Mads. Many Mads mad in the room. Do you want to take the guidance and the free cash flow, then I can talk to the DTAG?

First of all, I think it's a little bit of a notch too early. And as you allude to yourself, we are saying that above 6 percentages. And that, of course, doesn't mean that we're delivering 6.01%. That believes that we have maybe as you alluded to, a caution, but we are confident in delivering above the 6%, which is therefore also derisked to a large extent. You touched upon another point yourself, which is, of course, the tough comp base in the fourth quarter, where we had several contracts start up last year, including the DWP.

And then the last one, I just want to emphasize when it comes to it. We are still uncertain, of course, about the above-base activity, not because we are seeing any trend. But still, as alluded to in the beginning, it's just a not too early to see where we are on the above base side. Looking at the free cash flow side, I mean, we are mentioning a number, but we're also targeting a cash conversion of 60%. And that's the primary goal. And remember, we also alluded to that we will deliver above the DKK 3.1 billion. And of course, we will see that any additional earnings will, of course, be moved into cash. So therefore, the above DKK 3.1 billion also includes an upside, of course.

Thank you very much, Mads. And in regards to your question on Deutsche Telekom, it's on the same scope. So there's no changes to the scope.

Fair enough. That's very clear. But maybe just -- I know it's limited to what you can say, but in essence, I mean, I'm just trying to understand the sort of the retroactive sort of backward-looking impact in the quarter here in DTAG. I know it's on group level, you say it's not meaningful, but I mean the growth in Central and Southern Europe, of course, very, very high. So I'm just trying to understand the retrospect -- sorry, I can't speak today, but the impact going back a few years, I mean, is that essentially from when you initiated the arbitration, I believe it was '22? Or does it go further back than that? Any color would be much appreciated, please.

No, no, I totally understand, Mads. And as I'm sure you will understand, it's limited what I can disclose, as you are saying yourself because that's what we agreed with the customer. So I can't give you the exact details in terms of value, but I can give you some more color that will be helpful. So the one-off is booked as project volume in Q2, and that's where we have a contribution of 3% in the quarter to the organic growth. And if I strip out the DTAG impact, then I would still have a decent contribution from project work in Q2.

Yes. I mean is it fair to assume a flat above base underlying quarter-over-quarter?

In Q2, you mean? Yes. No, because there will not be a decent contribution. So it is a positive contribution in the quarter, also excluding the DTAG one-off impact.

No, okay. Sorry, fair enough. So I just meant like -- you did 1.5% in Q1, so 1.5% in Q2 is not unreasonable ex DTAG.

The next question comes from Thomas Petersen from Nordea.

Congrats on the strong results here. Maybe sort of a follow-up on Masses. So regarding Central and Southern Europe, so obviously, super strong growth here. Can you split the underlying growth between pricing in Turkey and then Germany/DTAG and other regional momentum? So that would be my first question. And then the second one would be around Americas. If you could just give us a bit of an update here because it remains weak, at least in terms of organic growth here and margin is also declining. So what is also expected in time line for Americas margin to recover? That would be my 2 questions.

Thanks, Thomas. So in terms of Central and Southern and just zooming in on Q2 in isolation, it's very pleasing to see that the like-for-like growth, so the net new contract wins and the scope changes are high. So that's a significant contribution. So that does not have anything to do with the DTAG one-off, and it doesn't have anything to do with prices and Turkey, as you're alluding to.

Then, of course, we have the same impact on prices in the second quarter as we had in the first quarter. So nothing there that is really moving. So what is the difference in Q2 versus Q1 for Central and Southern is a stronger like-for-like and then, of course, an uptick in the project work due to ongoing project work, excluding DTAG and then the DTAG on top. That's the color on Central and Southern. And in terms of your question on the U.S. then I just want to say that my enthusiasm around the U.S. has not faded away in -- over the course of Q2.

I had the pleasure to be in the U.S. meeting current customers and potential new customers and spending time with our team there for a full week last week. And I got reconfirmed in the fact that we are doing all the right things, and we are investing in all the right things. Of course, we will provide more color on the Capital Markets Day where our Country Manager, Steven Quick, will give a dedicated presentation on the U.S. And I don't want to repeat mistakes that has been done in ISS previously by saying comes a certain quarter or a certain month, then you will see the significant breakthrough in the U.S. What we are focused on and what I'm focused on is that we are doing the right things.

We can see we are becoming stronger, and that's also the case in Q2 and that the pipeline is healthy, then over time, we will see the return. And of course, we need a return because it's a significant investment. So we are doing this with the expectation that the return will come through. And then we are also mindful and of course, humble about the fact that we need to be able to afford to do those investments in the U.S. So I think it is also -- when you assess that whole thing, it's also important to look at it in a broader context. And you can see that our corporate costs in the first half of 2026 is the same nominal cost as in the first half of 2022, and that's with an organic growth of 8.2% in the first half.

So it's not that we're just spending money in the U.S. We are very mindful of the fact that we need to be able to afford it and do it in a focused way and investing in the right things.

Can I just a quick follow-up on the U.S. Are the U.S. commercial investments now largely complete? Or should we expect the continued margin pressure in H2?

I mean the short answer to that is that the margins in Americas for the second half of this year will be at the same ratio level as the second half of last year.

The next question comes from Kristian Godiksen from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side as well. So you have had a strong momentum in the U.K. and especially within government contracts, winning especially contracts from Mitie. So I was just wondering what your view is with Mitie being taken over by the OCS group? Is that creating a stronger competitor? Or what's your view on that? That would be the first question.

And then secondly, maybe if you could comment a bit on this year being more successful in having commercial momentum in expansion of existing contracts rather than new wins. Are there any reasons for that? And then I noticed that on Slide 18 on the outlook, on the contrary, it looks like growth contribution in the outlook is less for volume growth than for net new wins, which was not the case in the Q1 presentation. So maybe if you could put some color on that as well. That would be my 2 questions, I guess.

Thank you, Kristian, for those questions. So first of all, in terms of what is happening in the U.K. with Mitie and OCS, of course, we are following that closely, similar to how we are following all other local markets that we are operating within and what is happening in the market. What I will say as an overall consideration around that is that we operate in margins where there are -- in markets where there are opportunities for both us and the competition to grow.

So massive opportunities, and that goes for U.K. as well, not only for the scope that is outsourced today, but if you're also adding into the equation the work that is in-sourced today. But of course, we are following the OCS and Mitie situation. I think it's too early to be conclusive of it, but we are proactive and very close to that. But don't see that as a structural thing that will hinder growth for us globally and also not isolated for the U.K. In terms of your question on expansions with existing customers. it is a strategic initiative. And as you will recall, that's exactly what we have worked on in the last 3 years, and it's really starting to come through now.

We have a structured approach around it. We have the right setup where people are working together across countries on making sure that opportunities to grow outside your own remit, outside your local market is fostered in a good and not bureaucratic way. And we are working on stakeholder management, making sure that we speak to the right people in terms of the people that are making the decisions. So I'm pleased with the progress. And the good thing is that we have not untapped all those opportunities that we have with our existing customers. So it's still a growth lever that you will hear more about at the Capital Markets Day, but there are still, I would actually call it, significant opportunities to be had around that growth opportunity.

And then in terms of the outlook, I appreciate you looking at the details on that, and that's very clear. It's -- there's nothing material that has changed there. It's immaterial, Kristian, minor rounding. So nothing structural that has changed since the last update in terms of outlook and the contribution from volume.

Okay. Okay. Because I noticed on the retention rate, maybe I guess that's the flip side on that. So that's actually improving. So how sustainable is this 95%? I'm just trying to square it, obviously, that volume growth is -- it seems like there's a small notch decline there. And then on the contrary, you have retention rates going up.

Yes. And that's a fair question. What I can say as a simple answer to that is that we see no reason why retention rate shouldn't remain at 95% for the remainder of the year.

The next question comes from [ Oliver Benenbal ] from DNB Carnegie.

You flagged a one-off revenue adjustment from the DA settlement recognized as part of Q2 above base work. I realize you cannot specify the size, but could you please provide some comments on its impact on earnings and specifically how we should think about its impact on EBIT? And also a question on Americas. Could you please provide an update on the pipeline progressions and what initiatives you are working with? And separately, how are you thinking about M&A as a tool to accelerate presence in the U.S.?

Yes. Thank you for those questions. In terms of Deutsche Telekom, I think I have covered the revenue recognition in one of the previous questions. So just a quick recap on that. It's booked as project volume in Q2. We have a contribution of 3% in Q2 from project volume. And if I exclude the impact from the DTAG one-off impact, then we still have a decent growth in project volume in Q2. So that's the closest I can come to magnitude.

And then in terms of -- from a margin perspective, the settlement agreement has allowed us to improve the contractual profitability. So what we and I call the run rate to a level where it benefits group margins with 10 to 15 basis points annually. And that's the case for 2026, and that will stick going forward as a minimum improvement. And then in terms of the Americas pipeline, I think I alluded to it before. The pipeline in Americas has improved over the course of Q2, and we have further progressed in some of the process that we are attending in. That's not the same as saying that we are winning, but we are obviously making positive progress. And you get feedback also from customers that are in those processes.

And what I meant about that we are improving is that, that feedback that we and I are getting are more and more positive around the U.S. So we are both strengthening our go-to-market and our proposition -- value proposition that we are putting forward to our customers. And at the same time, our operating model is also improving, working in a more efficient way. So I am optimistic and I remain optimistic about the Americas and in particular, the U.S. And from an M&A perspective, don't expect M&A in the next chapters in Americas for us.

We want to make sure that what I've just alluded to here in such a positive way is also coming through. And that's the test that we can deliver and things are coming through. Once then we have that comfort that things are coming through, then we can talk about accelerating things with inorganic growth in the U.S. But it's not the plan and not on the table to do that in the initial phase.

The next question comes from Nicole Manion from UBS.

Just one on Northern Europe, please. I think you said that volume and net new were slightly negative in Q2. Obviously, aware of the exits and scope reductions you've announced there. But given the size of what's still ramping up, would maybe have expected the balance to sort of still be slightly positive on maybe the net new. Is there anything to be aware of in the region in terms of maybe some smaller unannounced exits or reductions or perhaps the phasing of some of the contracts that are ramping up or down?

Thanks, Nicole. So in Northern Europe, the contract exits that we have announced in February '26 or the , it was not 2, but that's -- it's the first quarter where that has a full impact in Q2. And then 2 of the wins and the expansions that we have announced in the region does not have a full impact in Q2 as -- and that's totally as expected. We do expect organic growth to improve in the third quarter in Northern Europe. So I think that's the summary of what I just mentioned. So the third quarter organic growth is expected to be stronger in Q3 versus what we saw in Q2.

The next question comes from [indiscernible] from ABG Sundal Collier.

I just have one question, and that's about the U.S. Some of your peers over there has been somewhat vocal about increased demand within technical services from hyperscalers. Is that something you have noticed as well? And do you think your current capabilities can meet this demand?

Thank you. Super question. Much appreciated. And you're indeed right. That's an exciting opportunity and something that we, of course, also are looking at and reviewing at the moment. But I'll be honest with you and say that particularly what you're referring to in terms of technical services in data centers in the U.S. with the scale-up and the ramp-up that is happening there is not something that you should expect in the short term will be a contribution to us.

On the other side, though, in data centers, they also need janitorial services, cleaning services, and they need food to be fed. And that is something that we have -- where we have the capabilities in the U.S. today. And also are excited about some of the conversations that we are having to deliver those offerings to the many data centers that are popping up in the U.S.

The next question comes from Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley.

Two questions, please. So firstly, on the additional legal fees in APAC, could you quantify the impact to the margin there? And would you expect a similar impact in Q3 and Q4 until the matter in Hong Kong is resolved? I think the review is expected for Q4. And then secondly, all these wildfires in Europe, have you had any customers affected by that or any impact to your business operations in those regions in Q3?

Thank you. So the -- if we exclude -- so we just look at the underlying and we exclude the incremental costs related to legal fees, then the margins are slightly improving in Asia Pacific in the first half. And we do not expect cost of the same magnitude in the second half as we had in the first half related to that particular case in Hong Kong. And on your last -- or your second question on the wildfires, that's obviously devastating. And no, we have not luckily had any customers or any of our people that have been involved or caught by the wildfires in Europe during the summertime.

The next question comes from Casper Blom from Danske Bank.

And just yet another follow-up on the DTAG, sorry, sorry about that. But Kasper, you've given us quite some building blocks to try and triangulate what the revenue impact is. This one-off revenue that you have from the DTAG settlement in the quarter, is that one we should think about as having like 100% margin? Is that just a full drop-through without any cost related to it? And then secondly, on Northern Europe, you mentioned these mobilization costs related to new contracts having an impact on the margin in the first half. Will we see similar cost in the second half of the year? Or should it then, how could you say, reverse into more business and thereby a higher margin?

Thank you, Casper. So first, on the mobilization costs incurred in Northern Europe in the first half, that will fade away in the second half. And yes, we expect higher margins in the second half versus the first half for the exact reason that you are mentioning, new business is coming in and these incremental costs will fade away. On the revenue recognition and whether that has a 100% drop-through, absolutely not.

Let me explain how it works. So basically, the revenue that we are recognizing in Q2, that's -- it's that revenue that we are using to generate the run rate improvements of the 10 to 15 bps annually that I mentioned before. So that will be implemented throughout the year of 2026, revenue being recognized in the first half and then offset by costs during the year. And that is what leads to the 10 to 15 bps uptick underlying positive impact at group level.

So no, it's not a full drop-through. There are cost against it both in the first half, and that will come gradually throughout the year and then give this nice uptick of 10 to 15 basis points for the full year, which sticks. So it will sit there as a minimum also going forward.

That's very clear, Kasper. If I may follow up, the 10 to 15 basis points run rate improvement that you speak to and you're also saying that it will stick. Is it also correctly understood that we should expect more on top of this over the next, I don't know, 2 to 3 years as you gradually improve the Deutsche Telekom contract towards group average margins?

I think the first point to understand here is that this is 10 to 15 points at group level. So of course, when the Deutsche Telekom revenue is around DKK 4 billion, then you will see that it's quite a meaningful uptick to the run rate on that contract. We are getting that right, and we are implementing that as we speak. We can already see here in the first half that it's coming nicely through. And I'm convinced that we will get it done over the course of this year.

So let's focus on that first before we start to talk about further improvements from Deutsche Telekom. One step by the time, I'm very pleased with the settlement with Deutsche Telekom. The way we are working together now looking forward and helping each other to create win-win situations in the partnership is a completely different ball game compared to how it used to be. So I'm optimistic about the future, but I'm not going to sit here on a call and say 10 to 15 basis points, and then you should expect significantly more on top of that one step at a time, and we're in a very good position as of today.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Kasper Fangel for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for attending. Thanks for the good questions in the Q&A session. Much appreciated. Our IR team obviously remains available today, and we are also looking forward to meet many of you in the coming days in the upcoming roadshow. And then I have to say we are incredibly excited about the Capital Markets Day on the 14th of September here in Copenhagen, where I hope to see as many as possible of you attending in person or if not in person than virtually on the Capital Markets Day. But with that, thank you very much indeed for your interest in the business, in the company, in ISS, and have a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ISS Q1 2026 Trading Update Conference Call. I am Mathilde, the Chorus Call operator. The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, Group Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us this morning to discuss our 2026 Q1 released earlier today. I'm Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, heading up Investor Relations here at ISS. Joining me today in our room is our CEO, Kasper Fangel; our CFO, Mads Holm; and Anne Sophie Riis from the IR team.

Before we begin, please take a quick view at the disclaimer, and then I will hand it over to Kasper, to start the presentation. Please move on to Slide #4.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we review our first quarter trading update. We have started the year with a strong performance.

In the first quarter, we delivered organic growth of 7.4% with a solid like-for-like contribution of 2% for the second quarter in a row. Growth was supported by a strong above-base contribution, particularly from our European regions. This performance reflects the progress we have made in strengthening our commercial mindset across the organization, all the way down to site level, fully in line with our strategy. More broadly, we continue to strengthen the business across the board during the quarter and made solid progress on all strategic priorities. I will share more details on that in the next slide.

We began the year with 7 contract announcements, and I'm pleased to report that 6 of those were positive. This provides a strong foundation for a successful 2026, and supports a continued improvement in the quality of our revenue growth. Also our maturity profile is historically strong at this time of the year, with only 1% of contracts up for renewal for the year.

While there's still work ahead of us, we are encouraged by the continuous improvements we are making and the growing momentum across the business. This is also reflected in our pipeline, which remains solid and encouraging as we move further into the year. On our other KPIs, margin and free cash flow, performance is developing in line with expectations, and we, therefore, comfortably reconfirm our full year guidance.

Finally, on Deutsche Telekom, we are still awaiting a ruling by the tribunal. In parallel, we are engaging in discussions on a potential settlement aimed at resolving disputed claims, creating clarity on contractual positions going forward and further strengthening the collaboration and partnership between ISS and Deutsche Telekom. We continue to expect a final outcome in the first half of this year.

As you all know, last week, we made an agreement to buy Actera's remaining stake in Turkey, where we already have a strong business platform and an attractive long-term market opportunity. The transaction strengthens our ability to fully capture value creation, and we'll deep dive into the business case later in this presentation. Next slide, please.

Let me now briefly update you on our strategy and how it continues to translate into execution. Looking back, 2025 was a good year for ISS, and the progress we made is clearly carrying into the first quarter. We have made progress in the areas that matter the most to our business, executing our strategy to deliver profitable growth, delivering consistent financial performance and ensuring strong engagement across the organization.

Starting with strategy execution. The first key result is stronger commercial momentum and improved underlying growth. Our strategy is focused. We are targeting new customers in selected segments, expanding with existing customers through additional services and geographical reach and importantly, strengthening commercial ownership at site level. A central ambition has been to ensure that our strategy moves out of the PowerPoint and down to site level so that both our placemakers and our customers can feel a tangible difference in day-to-day execution. The progress we are seeing in the first quarter confirms that this is happening.

In parallel, we are seeing good momentum in the rollout of scalable initiatives. These initiatives are deliberately few and practical, focused on areas where scale matters the most, enabling growth, engaging our people and delivering services in a simpler and more efficient way. Embedment is progressing well, and we see clear traction across markets.

Turning to financial performance. Our #1 priority is continued consistency quarter after quarter. In the first quarter, we delivered organic growth of 7.4%, reflecting solid underlying momentum. And as I said, margin and free cash flow are developing as expected, supported by disciplined execution. Finally, on engagement, we continue to see strong momentum across the organization. ISS is a people business, and engagement is critical to delivering high-quality services and sustainable financial performance. We recorded the highest ever participation in our recent employee survey, giving us deeper insights and a stronger basis for action. At the same time, cross-organizational initiatives are being implemented, reinforcing collaboration, clarity and accountability across the business.

Overall, Q1 confirms that our strategy is delivering as planned. Strategy execution is on track, financial performance is consistent and engagement across the organization remains strong. With these elements aligned, we are well positioned for the next phase of growth. Next slide, please.

As you already know, last week, we reached an agreement with Actera, the private equity fund that invested alongside us in Turkey back in 2021. That partnership was designed from the outset as a structured and derisked way to enter a high potential market and accelerate growth, particularly within government health care. It allowed us to scale faster in a complex market environment while sharing risk and benefiting from Actera's strong local expertise.

Today, ISS Turkey is a significant part of the group as one of our largest countries. The business generates around DKK 6.5 billion in revenue, equivalent to roughly 8% of group revenue, with margins and cash conversion above group average. With 45,000 employees, Turkey is also our largest country by number of colleagues, highlighting both the scale and strategic importance of the platform we have built.

Since entering the partnership, the business has scaled significantly, delivering a revenue CAGR of around 25% from 2021 to 2025 in Danish kroner. The collaboration with Actera has been instrumental in that journey and has helped position ISS Turkey as a strong and resilient platform in a dynamic market environment. Importantly, this was always a partnership with a clear industrial logic and with a shared understanding that a future ownership change could be considered, provided it happened at the right time and at the right price. As we have communicated earlier, an increase in ownership was always contingent on the transaction, meeting the criteria of our capital allocation policy.

As you know, we consistently weigh M&A opportunities against organic growth investments and share buybacks, and we apply the same criteria here. Turkey is a high potential growth market, supported by a structural outsourcing trend. Customers are increasingly transitioning from smaller local providers to professional integrated facility services providers, and ISS Turkey benefits directly from that shift.

We see a strong commercial pipeline, particularly driven by multiservice contracts within Life Science and Financial Services, 2 core group segments, which strongly supports the strategic and capital allocation logic behind this transaction. Next slide, please.

Turning to the financial implications. This transaction is fundamentally about gaining full control of a highly attractive cash flow stream at a price that clearly makes sense for ISS and for our shareholders. By increasing ownership, we get access to Actera's cash flow generation of the Turkish business. And importantly, the transaction is EPS accretive with a clear positive spread versus buying back our own shares. The combination of lower interest costs -- as we are now able to change the capital structure of the local entity -- along with the reduction in minority interest, translate into an EPS uplift of around 3%, which is meaningful. Finally, on leverage, the impact is very limited, increasing net debt to EBITDA by only around 0.1x, keeping us fully within our capital allocation framework and financial policy.

To sum up, we already have a strong position in an attractive and growing market. This transaction carves out complexity and uncertainty, and I'm convinced that the Turkish business will accelerate further going forward. Next slide, please.

Let me now turn to our contract announcements. Since our last update, we have continued doing what we do best, helping our customers create exceptional service moments at their workplaces. Our focus remains clear, delivering outstanding customer experiences every day, driven by our self-delivery model and a strong service mindset. You will be very familiar with this slide by now, but it remains an important one as it clearly illustrates that our strategic efforts are paying off.

A significant part of our growth continues to come from existing customers. This is a lower risk and high-impact way to expand as we already understand their needs. They trust our capabilities, and we are well positioned to extend and deepen our partnerships.

When it comes to new business, we continue to target our 4 core segments, which represents the most attractive long-term opportunities globally for ISS. At the same time, we remain open to local segments when the business case is compelling. What is important is discipline, prioritizing opportunities where our value proposition truly resonates and where we can deliver high-quality profitable growth.

Demand for workplace experience continues to increase across markets, and ISS is well positioned to capture that demand. Our strong execution in the first quarter, combined with the contract announcements we have made and the pipeline we see today, reinforces our confidence going forward. Taken together, our 2025 announcements and the momentum we have carried into the start of the year indicate that 2026 will be a year where we continue to grow revenues with higher quality, supported by solid customer relationships, disciplined execution and a strong pipeline.

With that, let's turn to the next slide. Let me now turn to the development in our growth composition and what underpins the quality of our performance. As you know, over the last couple of years, organic growth has primarily been driven by price increases, including a significant contribution from our exposure in Turkey. At the same time, net new wins were negatively impacted by contract trimming and exits, largely driven by deliberate strategic choices to improve the quality of our portfolio.

Over the past year, we have made important progress on that front. Through a continued focus on portfolio optimization, we exited 2025 in a position that is positive from an underlying growth perspective, something that we have not seen for several years. This improvement is the result of disciplined execution, stronger commercial focus and a clear prioritization of where we want to grow.

As you can see on the slide, both net new wins and volume growth have improved meaningfully. And this represents the second quarter in a row where we are seeing stronger underlying growth quality. This development is closely linked to the strategic themes I highlighted earlier: a leaner organization, clear accountability, stronger commercial ownership at site level and momentum in the rollout of scalable initiatives. Going forward, we expect our increased focus to continue securing growth with existing customers while adding new customers to the portfolio, supported by targeted commercial investments and discipline.

Looking ahead to our growth algorithm for 2026 and beyond, we expect both volume and net new wins to become a larger contributor to organic growth. At the same time, pricing is expected to be lower than in recent years. This shift is an important component of our ambition to continue improving revenue quality over time.

With that, let's turn to the next slide. Before I conclude the business update, I would like to briefly address our contract maturity profile. During the first quarter, we have made very good progress in extending contracts up for renewal. We reduced our maturity profile from 4% to 1%, which represents a historical low level for ISS. In the first quarter alone, we successfully extended a large contract of more than DKK 700 million in addition to several extensions above DKK 200 million. This outcome reflects stronger commercial discipline, earlier engagement with customers and a more proactive approach to managing expiries. Importantly, this ties directly back to the strategy and execution of stronger commercial ownership, clear accountability and a more focused organization.

We are seeing tangible results from our increased attention to contract maturities. Staying ahead of expirations regardless of size is critical to protecting revenue and supporting sustainable growth.

With that, I will now hand over to Mads for an update on our financials.

Thanks, Kasper. Let me walk you through the organic growth for the first quarter. In first quarter, we delivered organic growth of 7.4% with contribution from all 4 growth levers; pricing, volume, net new, and above-base. While we expected both volume and net new to be solid, we saw stronger-than-anticipated contribution from above-base revenue, primarily driven by Europe. This is an important proof point and ties directly back to the strategy update from Kasper.

The performance reflects a stronger commercial mindset at site level, clear accountability and better execution closer to the customer, all of which are key elements of our strategy. Starting with net new, performance in the quarter was positively impacted by DWP, COWI, Velux and Australian Defense as well as contract start-up across Central and Southern Europe. These wins reflect both our focused approach to targeting group segments and our ability to convert opportunities into high-quality contracts.

Turning to volume. This was negatively impacted by the 2 contract reduction in Northern Europe announced at the beginning of 2025 and in the third quarter of 2025. However, this was more than offset by the full quarter effect of the expansion in Brisbane in Australia, Virgin in Northern Europe as well as other contract expansions from 2025. As a result, when combining net new volume, we are pleased to report another solid quarter with like-for-like growth of 2%. This marks the second quarter in a row with strong underlying growth quality, and we continue to see this trend going forward in 2026.

Finally, above-base revenue for the quarter ended at 1.5%, driven by broad-based strong performance across the European regions, including a contribution from DWP. Overall, first quarter confirms that our organic growth is becoming more balanced, more diversified and increasingly driven by the right underlying factors, consistent with the strategy and commercial priorities we have outlined.

Next slide, please. Overall, all regions, except the Americas delivered positive organic growth in the first quarter, in line with our expectation. Starting with Northern Europe, the region delivered organic growth of 7%, supported by the start-up of contracts from 2025, as well as 2026, such as COWI and DWP and the expansions of Virgin. Growth was partly offset by the announced contract loss in the third quarter of 2025, as well as scope reduction announced in third quarter 2025 and one in first quarter 2025.

I would also like to highlight a strong above-base performance across the region, reflecting improved commercial execution. In Central and Southern Europe, we continue to see strong growth with organic growth of 10% in the first quarter. This was primarily driven by price increases, particularly related to Turkey. In addition, we saw solid above-base performance and a positive contribution from net new wins, confirming the continued momentum in the region.

Turning to Asia Pacific. Organic growth was 6% for the quarter. Performance was particularly strong in Pacific, India, Singapore, Indonesia, driven by the start-up of Australia Defense and volume growth with existing customers. As a reminder, roughly half of the contract announced in 2025 originated from Asia and Pacific, underlying the strength of our position in the region.

Finally, in the Americas, performance developed as expected. Organic growth was negatively impacted by net new, driven by smaller losses, while volume growth was solid in the quarter. In the U.S., organic growth was broadly flat. Chile was negatively impacted by smaller losses, while Mexico delivered solid growth. At our upcoming Capital Markets Day, we will provide a deep dive into our U.S. business and share further insight on our strategy going forward.

That said, I'm encouraged to see early signs of underlying stabilization, including a small positive net new position in the quarter driven by smaller wins. Overall, the regional performance in the first quarter reinforces the broader message you have heard today. Growth is increasingly broad-based, execution improving and underlying quality continues to strengthen, consistent with the strategy and commercial focus we have outlined. Next slide, please.

Finally, let me provide an update on our capital returns for the year. In April, we paid out the proposed dividend of around DKK 500 million, corresponding to DKK 3.2 per share. Our share buyback program initiated in connection with the full year result is also progressing as planned. As of yesterday, we have purchased shares worth around DKK 500 million under the total DKK 2.5 billion program. In addition, we got the authorization to cancel 14.2 million shares at the AGM in April. This reduces the total share count to DKK 160 million, corresponding to more than 8% reduction in the total share count.

Combining the dividend and the ongoing buyback, ISS is delivering a healthy payout yield of 8%. This strong yield reflects our disciplined approach to capital allocation. Rather than sitting on excess cash, we consistently deploy it where we can create the most value for our shareholders, as you heard Kasper stating earlier.

You're all familiar with our capital allocation priorities by now. And as you know, we only proceed with M&A if these meet our strict capital allocation criteria. This year, we have announced a minor acquisition of Cater Plus in New Zealand, a bolt-on acquisition with the purpose of bringing our catering footprint in New Zealand and where we've already seen clear operational and strategic benefits.

In addition, we are assessing a bolt-on opportunity that will significantly strengthen our market position in a specific region with a clear and tangible synergy case from the outset. As always, we will only proceed if it meets our strict capital allocation criteria. We will share more details when finalized.

With that, I'll hand it back to Kasper. Please turn to Slide 17.

Thank you, Mads. Let me finish with a few comments on our outlook. With the first quarter behind us, I can confidently reconfirm our guidance for 2026. Q1 delivered a strong start to the year and supports our expectation of continued sustainable growth going forward. Across all of ISS' markets, we see significant opportunities to grow our business, supported by our targeted investments and the strengthening of our commercial function. We continue to expect organic growth above 5% in 2026.

Pricing is still expected to be the main contributor to organic growth, driven partly by Turkey. However, as you have seen today, we also expect a more balanced contribution from the other growth levers. Project and above-base had a strong start to the year, but as usual, visibility remains more limited. As outlined earlier, our commercial initiative on growing with existing customers is paying off, and we expect this to contribute meaningfully to the growth in 2026.

In parallel, we are delivering on our focused execution to secure new customers within our targeted segments, and we continue to strengthen the commercial mindset at site level to spot and capture above-base opportunities. All of this is consistent with the progress we have shared with you today with improved growth quality, stronger commercial momentum and disciplined execution.

On margins, we are also on track and therefore, reconfirm our guidance of a margin above 5%. Overall, Q1 has given us a strong and encouraging start to the year. Execution is on track. Our strategy is delivering, and we remain confident in our ability to continue building a high-quality, sustainable growth platform for ISS. Next slide, please.

We keep a relentless focus on cash flow in ISS, and we are on track to deliver a cash conversion of above 60%. This equals above DKK 2.7 billion in underlying cash flow, adjusting for the DKK 200 million negative impact from the 2025 prepayment. We expect free cash flow of above DKK 2.5 billion before any positive impacts from Deutsche Telekom. We still expect payment from Deutsche Telekom for the amount withheld in the past, which will bring our expectations to the free cash flow, including Deutsche Telekom payments at above DKK 3.1 billion for the full year. Please turn to the next and final slide.

As we wrap up today, let me briefly step back and highlight how ISS' strategy and performance come together to deliver sustainable shareholder value. Our equity story is clear. ISS holds a strong market leadership position in a global facility service market that continues to grow above GDP. We combine this with a relentless focus on profitability, disciplined execution and a clear commercial agenda. Strong cash flow gives us the flexibility to reinvest in the business while continuing to return capital to shareholders, underpinned by the disciplined capital allocation and a strong sustainability agenda that provides a real competitive advantage.

Turning briefly to performance. Q1 marks a strong start to the year. We delivered another quarter of solid execution, with improved growth quality, strengthening commercial momentum and consistent financial performance, demonstrating the resilience of ISS in an uncertain environment. Looking ahead, our focus is unchanged to deliver as we promise quarter after quarter. We are investing in the business, strengthening our commercial organization, simplifying how we operate and building a stronger ISS. The strategy is clear. The investments are in place and accountability across the organization has never been stronger.

Let me finish by thanking our placemakers. Your dedication and professionalism define ISS and earn the trust of our customers every day. And to our customers, thank you for your continued partnership.

2026 is shaping up to be an exciting year for ISS as we build on strong momentum and celebrate our 125 years anniversary, a milestone that reflects the strength of our people, our customer relationships and the ISS platform.

With that, we conclude today's presentation, and we'll now take your questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Mads Brinkmann from Berenberg.

Just 2 quick ones for me. You did provide some color on the above-base. I was just wondering, I think you talked about DWP and actually doing some above-base work for them. But maybe just please, if you could add some color on the strength of above-base in Europe and whether that is predominantly driven by new clients, including DWP? And what -- I mean, outside of that, what kind of project work or above-base work it is? I mean that is one of them, whether it's essentially more variable or whether it's the work that is more sort of, I mean, contractual, but not necessarily in the contracts. I don't know if I'm explaining that well, but that would be the first one, please.

On the second one, I mean the Americas, obviously as expected, I guess, at least the U.S. And I think based on some of the comments from, I think, the Chairman at the AGM, you expect to start to see some wins this year. And I think you also alluded to a small net positive, Mads. Maybe I caught that right, but please if you could confirm that. But just on Americas, like when will we start to see the sort of bigger wins here and maybe also not just the DKK 100 million, but essentially, I mean, stuff between DKK 300 million and DKK 500 million. Do have any sort of hope that this will happen this year? Or is it a 2027 thing? That's all for me.

Thank you, Mads. Two good questions. Let me start with your question around the U.S. So just to get the data right, in the first quarter, the U.S. growth was flat. So flat organic growth in Q1. And I'm actually pleased with the progress -- underlying progress in the U.S. in the first quarter. Obviously, I'm not pleased with flat growth. We got to see a return from the investments, but I'm convinced it will come through over time.

In the first quarter, our pipeline has become more lucrative. We have moved further ahead in our discussions with the prospects, the opportunities we have in the U.S. I can see that in the conversations we are having with the decision-makers in the U.S. is getting much more detailed. And I can see that our value proposition starts to resonate with our potential customers in the U.S. So I am still of the belief that it's a matter of time before we will start to see an accelerated growth in the U.S., but I don't -- still don't want to commit to timing.

I have been enough years in this business and in this company where I've been surprised about the positive conversations with customers where decision-making progress has dragged on longer than what I expected, and I expected a decision to be just around the corner. And therefore, I don't want to put forward a specific quarter and say this is the quarter where you will -- you should expect the growth to really come through in the U.S. But I want to be clear, of course, we want to have positive growth, significant growth in the U.S. The investments we are making are the right ones and the underlying movement in securing that has moved in the first quarter of this year.

In terms of your question on project work and the contribution to organic growth in the first quarter, then DWP is definitely a part of that. We have a positive contribution of approximately 1.5% on project work in the first quarter. And it's just pleasing to see the strong mobilization that our U.K. team have done. Remember, we did some investments to establish a project team well in advance of us going live exactly for the reasons that we are seeing now coming through that we knew about the pipeline and the opportunities on DWP, and we could deliver accordingly, and that is coming through. And no reason to believe that this shouldn't stick. Is it going to be to the same magnitude specifically on DWP? I don't know, but it's definitely not going to fade away to 0.

Overall, on above-base work and project work in general, we remain cautious because the visibility is always lower, what is going to happen in the second quarter, especially with what we're seeing in the world around the Middle East and energy prices being at record high levels. Is that going to impact the discretionary spend on the customer side? We don't see that as a signal as of today, but could it change over the next quarter or so? Of course, it could. But again, it's not that we are seeing a collapse today. Actually, it is in line with what we have generated in the first quarter.

Just to follow up on the last bit. So essentially, you're saying so far in Q2, you're running at the same pace that you saw in Q1 on above-base?

I mean, of course, we're not far into Q2. We obviously have provisionary actuals or numbers for April, and that also looks to be a solid month for ISS.

The next question comes from the line of Kristian Godiksen from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side. So first of all, just interested in the sequential change in the expected development in like-for-like and price development from the slide you showed in Q4 with the Q4 results. And then compared to this time, especially for the like-for-like in Q4 2026, it seems like that's lower now. And maybe could you also comment on the uncertainty in the growth composition from prices in Q4 2026?

The second question, it sounds like based on the prepared remarks from Mads that you're looking into a sizable M&A transaction, and that is fairly imminent. And I guess the deal certainty must be high, based on you mentioning on the Board. I guess, can you provide some more color on the size and bolt-on in terms of what, I guess, the U.S. continues to be premature in terms of the organization being ready to make a sizable acquisition.

Thank you, Kristian. Two good questions, as always, from you. Let me take the first one, and then Mads will take the next one. So actually, the contribution to underlying growth, so both growth with existing customers, scope and also net new contract wins is ballpark the same in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter last year. And in terms of prices, the contribution is also ballpark the same in the first quarter compared to what we had in the fourth quarter. So it's actually pretty much the same contribution from a percentage point of view in the first quarter of this year compared to the last quarter of last year. Mads, over to you for comments on the second question.

Yes. Thank you very much, Kristian. So first of all, this is a great opportunity for ISS. But let me underpin, we are talking about a bolt-on acquisition and negotiations are still ongoing. Why this place? Well, first of all, it's a place that -- where we have a strong management team, is aligned with our strategy. It's also aligned with the capital allocation policy. And that means, Kristian, that it fulfills all the checks and balances that we have talked of before.

The other part is that when we look from the case as such, this is also a clear synergy case similar to exactly what we have done in recent years and where we had illustrated to the market that we have been able to provide value. And also, more importantly, even with this acquisition, we are still within our leverage ratio at the end of the year, which means 2x to 2.5x. So all should be very clear and very similar to earlier transactions.

Kristian, I'm -- we are lucky that we have a good IR team here in the room that said they believe your question was more related to -- not to the fourth quarter of 2025. The first one I answered, but what is happening over the course of this year, so the fourth quarter of '26; and there, I would just say that the thing to point out that you need to be aware of is, of course, the comparison on net new because we had DWP volume DKK 300 million in the fourth quarter of last year. So we're up against a strong comparison.

From growth with existing customers, the visibility we have as of today, we believe that that is going to be ballpark the same over the course of this year.

Yes. It was more to the sequential change that from what you presented in connection with the Q4 results. I'm specifically referring to the Slide 10 in terms of where they overlap previously and you also have a bigger tail downwards in terms of like-for-like at the new slide compared to the one you had in Q4. So I was a bit more curious on that one. It seems like also the price composition is a bit more uncertain now than it was previously or at least in a more upwards going direction.

Yes. I think you had my comments before. I mean, remember, this is an illustration. I think I provided the color, so I'll just duplicate what I just said before. But remember, of course, this is an illustration on the chart.

We now have a question from the line of Allen Wells from Jefferies.

Just a couple from me, please. Firstly, can I -- just looking at the pricing side of the business, obviously, the guidance for the full year, I think its 3.5-ish percent is strong, obviously, pricing in Q1, and that does suggest a downward trend in pricing through the year. As we sit here today, obviously, with inflation creeping up more energy-based and obviously wage base. But how do you think about that trend? And what would be the drivers of the deflationary environment from here?

Specifically, when we think about Turkey, I'm assuming that the acquisition growth and the pricing impact will be captured in M&A growth this year. But as you think about the mid-term and you comment on lower pricing moving forward, how does the additional exposure to Turkey drive group pricing over that mid-term? I'm assuming it's going to be accretive to the pricing story. That's my first couple of questions.

Secondly, just as we think about the above-base business, the comments you make suggest there's been some kind of momentum around the commercial mindset within the business. And we've talked before around a structural shift in certain areas where some customers are just looking at less contracted more above-base. Can you maybe just update us on that? Are we going to see a period of just slightly higher above-base moving through this business? And then maybe just linked to that, any comment around the margins on above-base work, which used to be quite accretive. In more recent years, you've talked about it being more neutral. But is that still the case moving forward?

Yes. So thanks, Allen. So first of all, on Turkey, remember that we have always consolidated the results in Turkey because we have been the majority shareholder. So they have been fully consolidated and will continue to be consolidated going forward. So there's no change in that regard as a consequence of the -- of us acquiring the 40% from Actera.

I mean, you're saying that you have -- you're giving the answer yourself to prices over the course of this year. The 4% we're looking at in the first quarter is expected to slightly reduce due to comparison, simply just due to comparison and the fact that we have more volume in the second part of this year. So it's going to reduce slightly.

Remember that the vast majority of our cost base is wages. And typically, wages are adjusted once a year in the beginning of the year, and it will be a rare exception if it's more than that. We don't see any signals anywhere in any local markets where we believe that there will be a wage increase during the year, this year. That is not something that we have visibility to at the moment. So we expect pricing to continue to contribute with ballpark the same percentage that you've seen in the first quarter and for the rest of the year.

In terms of above-base, it is a deliberate initiative that we have worked a lot on in ISS because there are great growth opportunities for our operators because they are the ones that are spotting opportunities at the customer sites, spotting opportunities for us being able to do things that sits outside the ordinary scope that we deliver on a recurring basis. We have done a couple of concrete things.

We have done a significant piece of work on making it very easy, not through a long bind of an MSA where they need to determine themselves what is in scope and what is out of scope. But to do an overview sheet where our operators knows this is what we are paid for delivering. And then when they're spotting things that are not listed there, then that's above-base to make that visible and very tangible. And then incentivizing our local teams and the site teams to get their arms around the above-base opportunities. And that is what is coming through and why you've seen the percentage of total revenue increasing over the last 2 years.

I see no reason why that shouldn't continue going forward. But of course, above-base work is more uncertain by nature. It is the discretionary part where customers can add and reduce. But so far, we remain positive about that from a growth perspective.

From a margin perspective, it varies. We have some above-base projects that are very lucrative financially. That's where we can do the above-base work with our existing workforce. So costs that are already covered. Then of course, it's very accretive, but we also have above-base work where we are taking care of more the administrative burden, and therefore, it's a smaller markup fee that we're getting for taking care of that administrative task. In consolidation, I will say that above-base work is accretive to margins, but it's not a swing factor.

The next question comes from the line of Zach Al-Qaryooti from Morgan Stanley.

Just one question left for me. I think just bringing together a lot of the moving pieces towards the full year guidance that we've discussed already. Just taking a step back from that, could you maybe elaborate what is the key factor within there that led you to decide not to upgrade the guidance today? And maybe just more in recent weeks following the quarter end, is there anything you're seeing on customer sentiment since the Middle East conflict that's making you a little bit more conservative?

Thank you, Zach. The answer to your question is that it's early in the year. We are off to a very good start. And of course, with such a Q1, we are more comfortable with our full year guidance now compared to when we spoke to you in February and initially gave the guidance for the full year. On above-base and projects, as I said, we do not have indication from customers that they're going to cut back significantly. But it is an uncertain world and the visibility we have on above-base work is less.

So what is going to happen in the second half, again, we don't see any warning signs, but it could come. So that's why we believe that sticking to the above 5% and continue to focus on the commercial momentum, that's the right thing to do, and then we will obviously update along the year.

We now have a question from the line of Thomas Lind from Nordea.

Two questions regarding, I guess, public contracts. So the first one is regarding the social value model. And sorry, this is a bit educational here. But just wondering if you could tell us a bit about the social value model that you have in -- I think, in the U.K., which was a contributor to winning the DWP. I think you previously said something about that you're rolling it out to other countries. And I was just wondering if you could give us a bit of an update on all that.

The second question would be regarding all the defense growth opportunities that we see in -- especially, I guess, in Europe and also some of the other countries. If you could give us any color on the pipeline here and I guess, opportunities, risks? Yes, sorry for the broad question, but any color here would be appreciated.

Thanks, Thomas, and thanks for especially your first questions. Very happy to share with you the social sustainability and the contribution that we are giving to local society in collaboration with customers. So the whole purpose of that is that we, in collaboration with our customers, can tap into the local community and figure out where there is a swing factor where we can help people that do not necessarily have great opportunities to get a job and have something meaningful to wake up to in the morning to get a job and something exciting to wake up to. And we are doing that to a great extent in the U.K., but it's also spreading across other local markets. Because remember, for many companies, it's hard for them to put substance behind social sustainability.

On the environmental part in ESG, companies are pumping billions into energy reductions and reducing the CO2 emission. But if you're a bank, it's in isolation, it's hard to get meaningful substance behind social sustainability. And that we can do in collaboration with our customers. So we are running programs where we are helping disabled people to get a job. We have a program in the U.K. and in the U.S. where homeless people are also being helped. We are helping people getting out of poverty in India. And we are implementing that as one of the strategic initiatives across our local markets. And it is the right thing to do, but it's also important commercially because we can help our customers to, as I said, put substance behind the social agenda.

We're also moving ahead and trying to quantify. So what is actually in monetary terms, the impact from those great initiatives and trying to convert that into an economical value. We're not there quite yet, but basically, it is to look at what is the alternative if these people were to be supported by the authorities and didn't have a work, what would that then cost the society. But we are very proud of it.

We are giving people opportunities that they not necessarily would have had if ISS didn't exist. So it's a very important initiative for us. And as I said, it is being rolled out across our local markets as we speak.

Mads, do you want to take the second question around defense?

Yes. So as I also alluded to in my speech here, I mean, we were positively impacted in the quarter by the start-up of Australian Defense. And you're completely right. We are seeing, of course, that a lot of money is being allocated into defense. We are, of course, monitoring that close. This is a good proof point that we're relevant also as a partner for defense contract start-ups. And therefore, of course, we bring the learnings that we have here in Australia with us across the board into other places as well. This is the benefit of us winning in certain places and taking that learning and those learning with us when we are looking for other opportunities, but we are very much aware that the defense segment is a growing segment right now.

We now have a question from the line of Casper Blom from Danske Bank.

Of course, also congrats from my side on the strong start to the year. First, a follow-up on the deal in Turkey. You've made it quite clear with the 3% EPS impact from minorities and lower financials. But could you give us a bit of guidance on when you expect that this will actually be visible in numbers? Will it be a full 3% EPS increase already in 2027? Or how long will it take for you guys to get the interest rates down or interest payment down?

Secondly, on the chart you show with the contract maturity and the 1% that is up for renewal this year. There's 8% renewal for 2027. Can you speak a bit to how much of that you can start addressing already here in 2026 to sort of, I would say, lower the uncertainty when we start looking more into 2027, 8 months from now?

Thank you, Kasper. So the 3% increase to EPS, you will see with full impact in the numbers for '27. And then you will see a gradual impact over the course of this year, but the full year impact is from '27 and onwards.

On your question of renewals, first of all, in the 8% up for renewal next year, there are none of them where we see a red flag. So there's nothing that I will highlight as particularly risky. And that means that in many instances, we are already talking to customers now. So the short answer to your question is, yes, we can, and we already are addressing that as we speak.

We now have a question from the line of Klaus Kehl from Nykredit.

Previously, you gave us some data points on Turkey and no doubt that the business has been doing very well over the last couple of years. But I guess a lot has been driven by prices. So could you give us some comments on the like-for-like growth they have realized over the last couple of years?

Also a follow-up question to Turkey. And just to be absolutely sure, you have full access to the cash flow from Turkey, right? That would be my 2 questions.

Thank you, Klaus. So good clarifying questions. Let me hopefully be crisp and clear in my answer to that. So we have seen over the last 3 years, double-digit underlying growth, so excluding prices in Turkey. And that is coming both from growth with existing customers, and it's coming from new wins. So very strong growth in Turkey.

On your second question around the cash flow, yes, as of today, we -- I mean, we own 90% of ISS Turkey and management owns 10%. So 90% of the cash flow we have access to as of now.

Just to be clear, there's no restrictions at all or any funny things we should be aware of?

Nothing at all. And Turkey has generated a very strong cash contribution over the last decade, and it has accelerated post 2021, and increased from there on. So we are very pleased with us now not having to share the cash flow with Actera, but we have access to that strong cash flow. And that's also a part of, to Casper's question, what we will use to repay expensive debt so that you're seeing the EPS uptick coming through accordingly.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Kasper Fangel, Group CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. There are a lot of people attending this conference call. Thank you so much for your interest in ISS. Very much appreciated. Thanks for the good questions in the Q&A session.

Our IR team, obviously, will remain available to take further questions over the next couple of days. And then both Mads and myself are very much looking forward to meet many of you for the upcoming roadshow.

So greetings from Sonny, Copenhagen, and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you.

Welcome to ISS Annual Report 2025 Presentation. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections to this, please disconnect your phone lines. [Operator Instructions] Today's speakers will be CEO, Kasper Fangel; and CFO, Mads Holm.

First, I would like to hand it over to Head of Investor Relations, Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen. Michael, please begin.

Thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our conference call. We appreciate you joining us today to discuss our 2025 results, which were released earlier this morning. As said, I'm Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, heading up Investor Relations here at ISS. Joining me in the room today is our CEO, Kasper Fangel; our CFO, Mads Holm; and Anna e Sophia Ris from the IR team.

Before we begin, please take a quick view at the disclaimer, and then I will hand it over to Kasper to start the presentation. Please move to Slide #4.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you taking the time to join us as we review our results for the full year 2025.

Looking back on the year, we strengthened the business across the board and delivered solid progress on all strategic priorities. I'll share more details on that in the next slide. Our financial results ended in line with expectations, and we saw an uptick in commercial momentum driven by our strategic investments and our relentless focus on sustainable growth.

While there's still work ahead of us, we're encouraged by the continuous improvements we are making and the growing momentum across the business. We concluded the year with 25 contract announcements, and I'm pleased to report that 22 of those were positive. This lays a strong foundation for a successful 2026 and increases our revenue growth quality as we become less dependent on pricing alone.

Additionally, I'm pleased to share that we have started the year with positive momentum with a solid and encouraging pipeline.

In 2026, we expect an organic growth of above 5%, with a greater contribution from net new wins and volume, a margin above 5% and an underlying cash conversion above 60%. As it is well known to all of you, we maintain a stringent and disciplined approach in prioritizing how we allocate capital. And as a part of our continued commitment to deliver value to our shareholders, we are pleased to announce a new share buyback program of DKK 2.5 billion.

In 2025, we successfully completed 2 smaller bold-on acquisitions, strengthening our local presence in Spain and Austria. These acquisitions have already started delivering synergies and are adding value to ISS.

Looking ahead to 2026, we'll continue to assess each potential target in details while maintaining flexibility to prioritize share buybacks and when they offer the best return for our shareholders.

The final oral hearing in the arbitration proceedings took place in mid-July 2025. The parties await a ruling by the Tribunal and have in parallel engaged in discussions on a potential settlement, which aim at settling disputed claims creating clarity on contractual positions going forward and further strengthening the collaboration and partnership between ISS and Deutsche Telekom. We expect a final outcome in the first half of 2026. And I appreciate that you're all eager to hear more details, but I know you will appreciate that this is a sensitive commercial matter, so we won't be able to provide further details.

As you already know, late in '25, there was a tragic incident at a customer site in Hong Kong. This devastating event resulted in the loss of life, and we are deeply saddened by it. My thoughts and deepest condolences go out to everyone affected by this strategy, including the families and the broader community. We stand with them during this incredible difficult time.

Please turn to Slide 6 for a view of our strategic initiatives. Back in December 2024, we launched the next phase of our strategy. sharpening our focus on what's better most to our customers. As you may recall, we clarified our 4 targeted group segments and identified 3 core customer needs that guide our execution. One customer experience; two, sustainability and free efficiency. Price and sustainability are fundamental our license to operate, but our true differentiator, is delivering an exceptional customer experience. When we get this right, we grow with our customers, help bring people back to the workplace and create a compelling and sticky value proposition through consistently high-quality service delivery.

To deliver on this, we focus on 3 priorities: one, group commercial operating model becoming true the leading frontline employer and free driving efficiency. These are supported by 8 global initiatives, where we see significant scale benefits from building capabilities at group level and deploying them consistently across countries.

Let me briefly highlight some of the initiatives where we made strong progress this year. We have implemented a new commercial operating model that sharpens how we win and scale global and regional customers. As a result, we are seeing improvements in pipeline quality internationalization of major accounts and win rates. Through our partnership with the U.K.-based social value portal, we can now measure and demonstrate our community impact. Five countries completed full assessment in 2025 with 5 more planned for 2026, all with impressive outcomes in terms of the social value we deliver in those countries. At the same time, by the end of 2025, almost 140,000 recognized qualifications will have been achieved by our placemakers and their families since 2022, strengthening capability and retention. We're also modernizing our recruitment with AI-driven tools improving both speed and quality, which is especially important in today's tight labor markets and will help reduce turnover over time. We continue to advance our workforce management program improving productivity across key markets. We now have clear best practices and country road maps in place, which we expect will drive further gains. We're also progressing well with the transition of local finance activities to our financial shared service center in Poland and remain on track for our 2026 European markets.

Overall, we're executing with discipline across all 3 priorities, strengthening our commercial foundation and investing in our people and improving efficiency. We look forward to sharing more details at our Capital Markets Day later this year.

Since our last update, we continue doing what we do best, helping our customers create exceptional service moment at their work basis. Our focus remains clear, delivering outstanding customer experiences every day, driven by our self-delivery model and a strong service mindset. You're all familiar with this slide by now, and it clearly illustrates that our strategic efforts are paying off. We are seeing growth in existing customers, which is a lower risk high-impact way to expand as we already understand their needs, and they trust what ISS stands for. We continue to target our 4 core segments for new business. but we remain open to local segments if the business case is compelling. These core segments represent the greatest opportunities globally for future growth at ISS. Not only do we have deep expertise in these areas, but they are also where our value proposition truly resonates. And the results are clear, the demand for workplace experience is increasing. Our 2025 announcement, combined with our '26 pipeline, make me confident that 2026 will be a year where we will grow revenues with higher quality.

Let's turn to the next slide, please. Over the last couple of years, our organic growth has primarily been driven by price increases, particularly due to our exposure to Turkey. While net new wins has been negatively impacted by contract trimming and exits mainly for strategic reasons. Over the last year, we've improved our portfolio to a 2025 exit position which is positive from an underlying growth perspective, something that we have not seen in recent years. And going forward, we believe that our increased focus will continue to secure growth with our existing customers and add new customers to the portfolio. As you can see, we've significantly improved our net new and volume growth, and we remain committed to continuing this through continued focus, including making the right commercial investments.

Looking ahead to our growth algorithm for '26 and beyond, I expect both volume and net new wins to become a higher contributor, while pricing will likely stabilize as inflation pressure ease. I'll go into more detail on this at our upcoming Capital Markets Day.

Next slide, please. Before I conclude the business update. I want to address our maturity profile. I'm pleased that we have secured our 2 largest big-ticket items in '25. As you know, One was in the U.S., which also included an expansion though under DKK 100 million. In 2025, we only experienced 1 contract loss above DKK 100 million. And just recently, we lost another contract in early '26. The latter is a perfect example of a contract we don't intend to renew where the commercial terms simply became unattractive. ISS will only engage in contracts where the financials make sense or where there is a strategic benefit to the business. Let me be clear that the latter is the exception, not the rule. We closed the year with a retention rate of 94%. And while this is an improvement from '24, we are working hard to improve that number. It's critical that we stay focused and proactive on all expirations, regardless of size.

Finally, I'd like to highlight our 2026 maturity profile. The contracts offer renewal in are more fragmented than those in '25 with fewer big-ticket items and less dependency. But let me emphasize, this doesn't mean less importance nor focus, every contract is important to ISS and a top priority for us.

And now I will hand over to Mads for an update on our financials.

Thank you, Kasper. And now a few words on the financials. In the past 3 years, we've grown our top line by more than DKK 10 billion and significantly improved our EPS. This year, we delivered 9% EPS growth, further demonstrating our robust financial performance and delivering exactly as promised. Our fourth quarter ended on a solid note with financial metrics meeting expectations and delivering full year results accordingly. The organic growth ended at 4.1% in the fourth quarter, while the organic growth for the full year of 2025 amounted to 4.3%. And a decrease compared to 2024, driven by a tough comparison base from the one-off restoration work in North America. As expected, our underlying performance improved in the second half of 2025. And with an operating margin of 5.8%, offset by ongoing investments in the business. This brings our full year operating margin to just above 5% for the year. Our cash flow delivered ahead of plans with DKK 2.7 billion of free cash flow for the full year, supported by a DKK 200 million prepayment, but also driven by higher underlying quality.

Please proceed to the next slide for a breakdown of the regional performance. All regions, except the Americas delivered positive organic growth in the fourth quarter, in line with our expectations. In Northern Europe, we recorded fourth quarter organic growth of 5.3%, supported by the start-up of DWP, offset by announced contract loss and scope reduction both in the U.K.

I would also like to highlight a strong and broad above base performance across the region. We continue to see strong growth in Central and Southern Europe, the fourth quarter ended at 12.5%, primarily driven by price increases in Turkey. Additionally, we saw solid growth in above base and positive contribution from net new wins.

In Asia and Pacific, we delivered organic growth of 7%, with particularly strong performance in Pacific, India and Singapore, driven by new contract startups and volume growth with existing customers. As a reminder, roughly half of the contract announced in 2025 originated from APAC.

Finally, performance in the America was as expected. The main headwind came from the restoration work in the U.S. in connection with the hurricane last year. Excluding the restoration work, U.S. came in flat in the quarter. Furthermore, the region faces a headwind from contract exits in U.S. and Mexico from last year. At our upcoming Capital Markets Day, we will provide a deep dive into our U.S. business and share insights on our strategy going forward, but I'm pleased to see underlying stabilization in the business and the large retention, including a small scope increase in the U.S. in the later part of fourth quarter.

Next slide, please. For the full year, we delivered organic growth of 4.3%, driven primarily by successful implementation of price increases, which contributed by around 4.5%. Turkey was slightly below half of that increase. As you may recall, we adjusted our organic growth guidance in connection with the third quarter due to a contract exit and timing of new contract start-ups. Therefore, our growth algorithm had a like-for-like contribution for the full year, but I'm very pleased to see the underlying like-for-like improvement 2 percentage points in fourth quarter versus third quarter. In the fourth quarter, net new was positively impacted by the startup of DWP, Velox and a contract win in Central and Southern Europe, while there was a headwind from the before mentioned contract loss in the U.K. Volume growth in the fourth quarter was positively impacted by the Bison Airport start-up in fourth quarter, alongside other contract launches earlier in the year. However, it was negatively affected by the announced scope reduction in fourth quarter 2025 in the U.K. Above base revenue for the quarter ended at minus 2%, impacted by significant headwinds from last year's hurricane-related restoration work in the Americas, while we saw an improvement in above base revenue across all other regions.

Next slide, please. ISS has been on a margin recovery journey over the past 5 years, improving from an operating margin is 0% in 2020 to a current margin of above 5%. This progress is a direct result of our focused execution of the One ISS strategy emphasizing selective tenders driving profitable growth and consistently managing costs.

As we close out 2025, we finished the year with a margin slightly above 5%. The margin this year was impacted by commercial investments in the U.S. and EGM changes in the beginning of first half both fully absorbed in our margin guidance. We also continue to invest in our shared service center in Gdansk with all European countries expected to be integrated by year-end. By leveraging wage arbitrage, we are maintaining strong momentum and reinvesting to onboard additional processes later this year and exploring potential expansion beyond Europe. What's truly important here is that we have been able to invest significant amounts into contract start-up and reinvest in the business while still delivering on our margins.

Please turn to the next slide for some thoughts on our free cash flow. Free cash flow for 2025 was DKK 2.7 billion, equaling a cash conversion of 64%, those slightly ahead of guidance. This was driven by DKK 200 million of prepayments rather close to year-end, primarily driven by customer receivables before due date. Hence, adjusting for that, we slightly overdelivered at DKK 2.5 billion. Working capital benefited from tight receivables management and a slight improvement in DSO compared to last year. Also, it's worth noticing that the factoring balance grew less than organic growth for the full year. hence, increasing the quality of our free cash flow once again.

Let's go to the next slide for a brief update on capital allocation policy. I'm pleased to share that this morning, we are launching a share buyback program of DKK 2.5 billion, in line with our capital allocation policy. DKK 2.5 billion is a starting point. and we will reevaluate the situation late in the year to ensure our capital deployment remains aligned with our priorities. ISS buyback journey began in 2024, and we continue to maintain a strong focus on doing what is best for our shareholders. All excess capital belongs to our investors, and we are committed to deploying that capital in a way that maximizes long-term value for our investors. Combined with our proposed dividend of 20% of net profit equaling DKK 3.2 per share, we are delivering a total payout yield of above 7% to our shareholders. During the year, we completed 2 acquisitions in total, Gabiality in Spain and Fran in Austria, combining adding 0.8% on group revenue on a full year basis for a total enterprise value of around DKK 300 million. The reason for us doing only to is that we continue to look very diligently at the business cases and they have to generate long-term benefits to ISS including short-term financial benefits through synergies and smooth integration, as mentioned before. The multiple for both acquisitions after synergies are attractive compared to ISS' current trading multiples, reflecting our disciplined approach to capital deployment and both acquisitions are performing according to plan.

In 2026, we will continue to do what creates most shareholder value. We will continue to evaluate M&A opportunities where there either is a strong strategic fit a clear operational synergy or it simply makes financial sense. Above all, every M&A decision must be value accretive for our business and for our shareholders.

That concludes the financial update. I'll pass it back to Kasper, who will walk us through the outlook for 2026. Please turn to the next slide.

Thank you, Mads. We continue to see significant growth opportunities across all of ISS's markets with each region presenting -- promising potential for further expansion. With our strategic investments and the strengthening of our commercial function, we're confident in achieving a higher like-for-like growth than in the previous couple of years. Therefore, we are guiding for above 5% organic growth for 2026.

As I mentioned earlier, in '26, we anticipate a slight shift in our organic growth algorithm with less reliance on pricing and a greater contribution from like-for-like growth, driven by higher volume and net new wins.

Regarding margins, we are guiding for an operating margin of above 5%. Once again, I want to emphasize that our focus is on driving the absolute growth of EBITDA and not just adding incremental basis points to the margin. We need and we want the flexibility to reinvest in relevant growth opportunities. Our priority is increasing ISS' absolute earnings power while maintaining high cash conversion. This, we believe, is the best way to generate shareholder value.

Now let's move to next slide to review our free cash flow guidance. We keep a relentless focus on cash flow in ISS. And also in '26, we expect to deliver an underlying cash conversion of above 60%. This equals above DKK 2.7 billion in underlying cash flow, adjusting for the DKK 200 million negative impact from the 2025 prepayment we expect free cash flow of above DKK 2.5 billion before any positive impacts from Deutsche Telekom. We still expect payment from Deutsche Telekom for the amounts we've held in the past, which will bring our expectations to the free cash flow, including Deutsche Telekom payments at above DKK 3.1 billion for the full year.

Please turn to the next and final slide. As we wrap up, I would like to highlight how ISS strategy and performance combined to deliver sustainable shareholder value. Our equity story can be summarized as follows: ISS has a strong market leadership in a growing facility service market with a GDP plus growth rate. We will maintain a relentless focus on profitability, driven by our operational discipline. We generate robust cash flow, giving us the flexibility to reinvest in growth while returning capital to our shareholders. This foundation is reinforced by disciplined capital allocation, balancing reinvestment bolt-on M&A and share buybacks. On top of that, we have a strong sustainability agenda, which not only reflects our values, but also provides us with a meaningful competitive advantage.

Taken together, these strengths position ISS to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value creation for our shareholders.

In summary, 2025 was another solid year for ISS. We delivered in line with all key parameters, demonstrating strong stability and consistency showing the resilience of our company despite elevated macroeconomic uncertainty.

Looking ahead, our focus is to continue delivering as we promised, quarter after quarter. We are on the right track, making the necessary investments and building a stronger ISS than ever before. I'm confident that we will continue to accelerate. The strength of ISS are undeniable. Our strategy is clear. The investments are in place, the leadership is strong, and we're simplifying the way we operate. This ensures that all 325,000 of us are moving in the same direction together.

Let me finish by thanking our place makers. Your dedication and care in every service moment define ISS and earn the trust of our customers every day. To our customers, thank you for your partnership. We remain committed to helping you achieve your desired outcomes.

Finally, I want to extend my thanks to all the investors we've met throughout the year. Your trust and support make all the difference. And I look forward to continuing our journey together. We look forward to seeing all of you at our upcoming Capital Markets Day later in 2026, where we'll deep dive much deeper into our value drivers, sharing the progress we've made, the initiatives underway and what's on the horizon as we look to the future. 2026 is an incredibly exciting year for us. Not only do we have significant business plans, but we are also celebrating our 125-year anniversary. This milestone is a celebration of the impact that we have had on millions of people, our successes with trusted customers, our contributions to local communities and, of course, the incredible talents who have used this company as a platform to realize their dreams and ambitions.

With that, we've concluded the presentation, and we will now open the floor for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Mads Brinkmann from Berenberg.

If we can just start on organic growth, please. I appreciate that this year, you're guiding of above 5% instead of the 4% to 6%. I assume there's a level of confidence in being able to do that. But is an element of conservatism here. I mean I think on the volume side, it's probably relatively straightforward in terms of what you have so far announced last year. But if I look at the pricing side, I know you're guiding for above free. But if I look at my numbers, it looks like the pricing is going to be closer to 4, and it's going to be free. And I think by now, you should have a pretty good idea of how pricing looks like. And I think also just bearing in mind on organic growth, that, of course, as you alluded to, you only have 4% of larger contracts up for renewal, which is in '26, which is down year-over-year. and retention looked good in Q4. So I'm just wondering if there's an element of conservatism here and if things doesn't actually point more to something like 6% or the high end of the previous range.

Then my second question, please, on the margin. I mean I appreciate you say that you're investing, and I think there's also a restructuring charge in there that means that the margin would have been 6, 7 bps higher or something, but in there, we've had One ISS, we've had margin accretive acquisitions and in theory, better leverage on the top line. So why are we not seeing like why we're not seeing more impact -- positive impact on the margin here?

And just on the margin as well. I understand the U.S. is down. I think that was well flagged and understood, but I'm a little bit puzzled by the fact that Southern Europe was actually down. I think it was down 60 bps year-over-year in H2, at least. So maybe if you could just comment on what drove that development in Central under Europe as well, please?

And then just lastly, a quick 1 on the phasing of the margin. Sorry, if I missed it, but I guess this year was around 165 bps normally but in '24, it was probably close to 200. So just any guidance on how we should think about that into 26?

Thanks for the good questions. I appreciate it. So first of all, we are guiding above 5% on organic growth because we are confident that the growth will be above 5% this year. And just to help you on the building blocks that you alluded to yourself, which will give you some additional color. We expect prices this year to be higher than what we've seen historically, but lower than what we saw in '25 in last year. And then you are indeed right, we expect underlying growth to be positive over the course of this year, '26, and that's both growth with existing customers, and it's also on the net new win. That's also what you've seen in the fourth quarter of 2025, and we expect that to continue throughout 2026. And then, of course, we have the last component, which is project volume which is more difficult to predict. However, there's nothing pointing in the direction that we should see a structural decrease in project volume. But it is early in the year. We've had a good start to the year, but it's too early to predict exactly where that is ending up from a project point of view. Hopefully, that gives you some color on where we are on organic growth. And then, of course, the things that you're mentioning, I agree on that, we will continue to update you on a quarterly basis in terms of progress. But overall, we believe that we have turned a corner here and are starting to see the underlying growth coming through, which we are very pleased about.

From a margin point of view, you are indeed right that we are investing into Americas, and I'll come back to your comment around Central and Southern and investing into Americas and delivering the 5%, which is the same ratio as in 2024, of course, means that the rest of the business is improving. So there is an improvement in the rest of the business in '25 versus '24. And that has -- and then we have done those investments into the Americas. And of course, we are investing because we are expecting to see a return. So we are following the progress in the U.S. a lot. We believe we are doing absolutely the right things. Now we have the management team in place. The plan is clear. The pipeline is building and now we need to convert those opportunities into new wins for us as a company.

Then you alluded a little bit to indirectly, well, is 5% just the limit in terms of profitability to the ISS business. And of course, it's 1 of the areas that we'll deep dive into in a Capital Markets Day. I don't want to socialize the discussion where we don't have concrete data and substance in that discussion. So at the Capital Markets Day, you should expect that we will come with data that will show you where the opportunities are and also show you how we are intending to get our arms around those opportunities and then how that is converting into financial expectations in the midterm and in the long term. Specifically on your comment on Central and Southern. It's simply us that has accelerated some investments there, predominantly related to the shared service center that Mads has mentioned and communicated several times, we've done that here in the fourth quarter. So nothing in regards to trading, it's some incremental cost that we've incurred in November and December, which will pay a return obviously going forward.

And lastly, on pacing, you should expect normal pacing on margin over the course of '26. So you mentioned the 1.5% yourself. That's a good data point to use for modeling purposes in terms of phasing on margin this year.

The next question is from the line of Remi Grenu from Morgan Stanley.

Just a few questions on my side. So talking about the shared services centers and trying to understand a bit the phasing of investments. So can you help us understand what's been the net contribution to margin in 2025? So the costs you've put on the table versus the gains you've made already in year 1? And how that compares to your planned investments in 2026. And again, you're going to realize on the '25 investment and '26 as well. So yes, just trying to understand a little bit what could be the support to margin this initiative versus what you've done in '25 already. So that would be the first one.

The second 1 is on the comment you made, Mads, on the share buyback. I think you alluded to the fact it could be -- you left the door open for that share buyback to be increase at some point this year. So I'm trying to understand what's the potential upside there, which is driving this comment. Is it simply about better cash generation, working capital management or view that M&A spend this year could be a little bit lower than what you've done in 2025 or just increased confidence on the detail contract. And I appreciate you probably don't want to comment on the last point, but just I would put that there as well.

And the last 1 is to elaborate a little bit on the previous question on organic growth. I mean I concur to the point that it seems a little bit conservative also on the net win side, I mean at least 1 point. I know that the guidance is open indeed, but DWP alone on a stand-alone basis should bring close to that contribution in 2026, I guess. So I'm just trying to understand if I'm missing anything there in terms of potential loss of contracts in with the small clients, which could be an offset or the 1 point contribution from at least 1 point contribution from net win is just to remain on the conservative side?

Yes. Thank you very much, Remi. I will start to address 2 of your questions, and then Kasper will take the 2 last one. If we take the share buyback, you're absolutely right. As said in my presentation, the DKK 2.5 billion is a starting point. We have kept a very flexible approach to capital distribution. And it is based on an ongoing evaluation depending on where we see both leverage but also what Kasper and I are comfortable with alongside, recommending to potentially increase at a later stage. Then you allude to the detach case and money from there, Kasper can comment on it. But in reality, that means we are having a flexible approach. We have also shown them both in '24 and '25 that we were able to increase the share buyback and over the course of both years.

When it comes to the shared service center journey, it did have a negative impact on our 2025 margin. The reason for it is that to Kasper's point before, was that we were able to accelerate. We had an opportunity to do so. And therefore, we decided to do it because we believe it's the right thing for ISS going forward.

For '26 purpose from a margin perspective, I think you should expect that the shared service center to will be more less neutral because things are starting to come through and long side as we invest. So for '25 negative, for '26 flat.

Yes. And on your comment on Deutsche Telekom, nothing has changed in terms of our expectations to the outcome, nothing compared to what we have communicated previously. So Deutsche Telekom is owing us some money from the past, and we still feel confident that we will get that cash to a magnitude of the DKK 600 million that we mentioned all the way along. So no changes to that. And in terms of of your questions on conservatism on the organic growth. I mean, it's early in the year. And with the horizon we -- the transparency we have as of today, we're looking into a year where we are very positive and optimistic about the organic growth for 2026. And then, of course, we will update you each quarter. And as I said, we have had a good start to the year. So the first data that are coming out in terms of the results for the first couple of months in the year are looking good. And then you mentioned in terms of losses. I mean we have a retention rate of 94%, which is an improvement versus the 93% that saw last time, so it's moving in the right direction. But of course, we lose customers. Otherwise, that retention rate will be 10%. But I'm factoring that into the comments that I made earlier around that we are in a better place commercially, but it is early in the year.

The next question is from Kristian Godiksen from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side as well. So first of all, an additional question on the guidance, which seems conservative, especially on the net new wins based on when you compile all your contract announcements I reckon obviously that it's open ended, but maybe you could elaborate a bit on why it's only above 1%. Are there anything in terms of the retention rate or pruning of contracts below DKK 100 million we can't see? Or are you just cautious being early in the year and wanted to go back to the track record you have back in how you guided back in 2023. That would be the first question.

And then the second question, obviously, I'm aware you can't comment too much on the details and detain the dispute with them. But then a technical household question from my side, is I'm not a lawyer or expert in German arbitration rule. So just can you put the arbitration proceedings on hold if you and DTAG with that? And yes, if you are staying to the arbitration that you are closing in on bilateral agreement, that would be the question on DTAG and then maybe you could comment on the underlying profitability you most recently, I remembered you said that it's black numbers now but still margin dilutive?

And then on the third question, just also a follow-up on the shared service center. You mentioned that 9 countries is now on. What does that make up in terms of the percentage of total countries that need to be implemented. And yes, maybe you can comment on the underlying cost savings coming through when you deduct for the implementation costs?

Yes. Kristian, so let me start on the shared service center journey. I will not give you a direct number about how we see the improvement underlying because what is really important here is that we keep investing in. What I said before was that we expect the margin neutral contribution for '26. But what I also said in my presentation is that we are also evaluating to establish shared service center outside Europe. And that means both from our APAC region, but it also mean from our U.S. region. So depending upon how we accelerate those journeys and how we look at that journey depends on how the margin contribution from the shared service center will be over time. I think what is most important here, we are doing this because it's the right thing for ISS. We are doing it because it's economies of scale, and it makes a lot of sense. And there's no doubt that over time, this will definitely be the right thing, but it will be 1 of the points that we can do into details at our upcoming Capital Market Day.

Yes. Thank you, Mads. And on your questions on organic growth and DTAG, just a few words on that. I mean I think you mentioned it yourself. So the organic growth of above 5%, that's a floor. And it is early in the year, and we are predicting a as accurate complete as we can. I'm not going to give you the building blocks per quarter. But for the full year, we expect that the underlying growth both for net new is -- and on growth with existing customers. is significantly better than what we have seen in '25. And you're seeing it starting to come around here in the fourth quarter of where volume with existing customers is a contribution of 1.5% and 0.5% on net new.

In terms of DTAG, as I said in my presentation, it is a sensitive legal matter. And for commercial reasons, it's limited what I can disclose further Christian. So the development that we are putting in the report and telling you is that there are 2 tracks now to resolve this matter. There is the ongoing arbitration case. And then there are conversations with the customer that are ongoing. And again, in terms of outcome, our expectation has not changed. And if we are to settle through conversations with the customer, well, then it's going to be at terms that are attractive to ISS and of course, also attract to Deutsche Telekom, but that means that what they was from the past is getting paid and that we are getting a fruitful outcome in terms of commercials going forward.

Okay. Okay. Can I just maybe ask 1 follow-up question on the organic growth part. So obviously, I reckon that it's a flow guidance of the above 5% with more on the specific 1 on the net new wins of above 1%, are there anything there below the DKK 100 million that we should be aware of or some contract pruning or on the retention rate is something that you can't see from just the contract announcement tables that you put out to be aware of?

No. And that's -- it's a fair question and observation. Of course, the 94%, as I said, we do lose customers. Some of them you have seen you announced because they are above DKK 100 million, we also lose some that are below DKK 100 million. Otherwise, our retention rate will be 100%. And 94%, it's improved, but there's nothing structural that we see where there is a need for us to exit contract over the course of this year or anything that is sitting in the retention that can add up to a significant amount.

Okay. Very good. Just reaching out the number then above 1. When I look at all your contract announcements where there was something in there that I missed. Okay. I hope not.

The next question is from the line of Allen Wells from Jefferies.

A couple from me, please. Just circling back on the margin. You also mentioned that obviously, the Americas margin continues to be impacted by the desire to continue to invest in that business. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about that investment where exactly it's going maybe when we're going to start to see a bit more of a return on that, what the pipeline looks like in North America, and we've talked a little bit about the opportunity and the kind of the wallet opportunity in the U.S. for a while now with limited success. So just where you are in terms of confidence on the Americas and the progress there. And then also looking at the margin in addition to the Americas, people have talked about the shared service centers. It also looks like there's a bit of an impact from maybe DKK 60 million from kind of provisions or restructuring above the line in the second half versus first half, is that correct? And then maybe you can just talk a little bit about what that relates to?

And then finally, just to maybe ask the tech question in a slightly different way. My understanding was that there's always been an ongoing dialogue between the 2 companies through this process. So when we see the language around strengthening the collaboration and partnership between ISS, Deutsche Telekom. Could you maybe just comment as has something changed there in the last 3 to 6 months in terms of what's included in that dialogue or what's being said that you felt like you wanted to comment on that now.

Yes. Allen, let me go through those questions. So starting with Deutsche Telekom. You're right that it's our biggest customer. And of course, that means that you have ongoing conversations due to just running operations. But the conversations around the arbitration around the dispute has progressed, and that's why we're putting that up there as an additional disclosure. And in terms of your question on the DKK 60 million, that's exactly what I mentioned before. that's an addition to provisions that has been booked in the fourth quarter of the plus DKK 60 million. And that has to do, as I said, with the acceleration of the program predominantly on the shared service center. So that's included in the 5% margin and that expense has been taken in the fourth quarter, of course, because we expect to see the benefit coming through over the course of this year and going forward. And then in terms of margins in the U.S. and the investments.

Well, what are we investing in? What we have done over the course of 2025 is that we have made changes to the management team. So there is a new established management team under the leadership of Stephen Quick. And I have to say that the caliber of that management team makes me incredibly excited. It's people within their different responsible activities that are very clear in explaining how are we going to use that to really get going on the growth and now the plan is there. And of course, the next step is to continue to build the pipeline and then convert these opportunities into new wins. And it takes some time to do that. The pipeline is better now compared to what it has been in the past, but it needs to be even better. And I'm not going to do the same mistake as we have done many times in ISS before and say, well, give it a couple of quarters. And then things will be absolutely driving in the U.S. from a growth perspective. because I know it takes time, but I can't predict with equity when we are cracking the nut and things are coming through. But what I can say is we are doing the right things. We have the right product in place, we have the right people in place. The value proposition is shaping up. The pipeline is growing, and then we're working hard on converting that into significant new wins for us.

The next question is from the line of Nicole Manion from UBS.

Just 1 follow-up question, please, on Remi's question on net new but maybe specifically on DWP. I understand it might be difficult to give precise numbers, but obviously, it's a particularly large contract and some of these larger contracts in terms run up in a bit of a staged way. So could you give any detail here, just so we can think about accurately about the impact on net new as the contract ramps to full scale over the year? And any insight generally into how that ramp has sort of gone versus your expectations so far?

Yes, we went live with DWP in the beginning of October. And the volume is coming through from a base point of view as expected. And we also expect that there will be good commercial opportunities on above base on that contract going forward. We haven't seen that fully utilized or in the numbers for '25, but we are very excited about that in the future. And overall, it's a big mobilization that we've done in -- on DWP. And the consolidated view is that things are going according to plan. But that's not the same as saying that everything is just driving a ton of hard work that you would expect just normal ordinary business that needs to be right. on that account, and we are working through that. So we are where we expect it to be, not better, not worse on DWP, but in line both from an operational delivery point of view with expectations and also from a financial point of view.

The next question is from the line of Klaus Kehl from Nykredit.

Yes. First of all, a question related to the U.S. You have mentioned a couple of times that you have invested quite a lot in U.S. your pipeline is growing, et cetera, et cetera. But I guess my question is if you invest in the U.S., then it must have been a drag on your margins in '25. Is that correct?

And secondly, in this regard, will it also be a drag in '26? Or would it be more neutral or what kind of assumptions do you have in your guidance? That's the first question.

Yes. So Klaus, you're, of course, right in what you're saying. The ratio in the Americas is lower than it was in '24. And that is as an outcome as a consequence of the investments that I've spoken to in the U.S. And we don't guide on regional performance for quarters, neither for full year. But I expect that the ratio will certainly not decline from what we saw in '25. So we need to see some improvements to that number in '26, and we are confident with that because a lot of the cost that was included in '25 are also incremental of onetime nature. So a reasonable expectation is to assume that the profitability will increase in the Americas in '26. But again, I want to be very clear because all of what we are circling around here comes back to how ISS is guiding now compared to how ISS used to guide in the so-called old days. And the good thing about the way we are guiding now is that we have maneuver room to do what is right for the business. I remember the days where we had an expectation, and I promised to the market that we would increase our ratio with the tenth every year. And the problem with that was that we delivered that, but it was coming to do what is right for the business in the midterm and in the long term. And we and I are not going to make that mistake.

Okay. That's perfectly clear. And then just a question related to the BOSS business. here in the beginning of the year, it has been extremely cold, at least in the Nordics. And I also believe it's the same picture in the U.S. So has that, in any way, affected your above base in the beginning of the new year here? I mean I guess it will be a positive impact.

Yes. I mean the weather in all looking at it from a helicopter point of view, it's not what is the swing factor on the above base generation. It's more the what we are doing, taking care of critical infrastructure in buildings. That's where the bulk of the above base revenue is. So what you're talking to is a minor but insignificant benefit with some snow removal and these sort of things that, of course, will be a positive but not something that will move the needle from an enterprise point of view.

As time runs fast here, we will take the last follow-up question from Mads Brinkmann from Berenberg.

I know you alluded to it a little bit, Kasper. Just wondering if we could talk a little bit about the pipeline in a little bit more detail both on net new and underlying. I see that -- and basically just looking around, there's a couple of your competitors up with having contracts up for renewal in '26. And I guess it's an open secret there's a big mining contract open somewhere. I think -- would it be fair to assume that you guys aren't running for that one?

And then more specifically, I think on underlying sort of volume expansions with existing customers last year, you did very well. announced a host of new expansions, but I mean, in all fairness, many of them were smaller, of course, in the grand scheme of things, they add up. But I know these things take time, but just considering that you also have some quite large customers. Is it fair to expect that in '26, it's going to be the year where maybe on average or that -- maybe I don't know it, but that you will see some of these expansions also going meaningfully above DKK 100 million per expansion? Yes, sorry, that's my question.

Yes. So we are operating in a market that has changed a lot post COVID-19, and that makes us very excited because it gives opportunities for both us and the competition, to be honest, and that's both local opportunities, it's regional opportunities and it's global opportunities. And office today for all businesses regardless of country and industry is not just square meters. It is -- it has to be a place where the company feel comfortable that their staff wants -- has a desire to get into the office space. And it's a place that is better than the alternative, which is to work from home.

Why is that so important? Well, because that physical presence in the offense, means that people are getting more engaged. And when people are more engaged, then they're also more productive. So it's important for their business performance. And that's why today, when we are discussing our solutions with customers, then it's not only a procurement and a finance discussion. It's a discussion with the executive level and the CEO in many instances, being involved. And it's reflected in our pipeline. These opportunities coming through, and that's both in the local pipeline. It's in the regional pipeline, and also some global opportunities. So I'm not going to promise anything about that you will see x number of contracts being won in this year and starting up next year. That will not be credible. But I will say to you that we have a healthy pipeline, and we believe that from a setup in terms of how we are set up commercially that we are stronger today compared to what was the case a year ago.

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone. Thanks for prioritizing this call. Very much appreciate it. Thank you for the good questions. Our IR team remains available for the rest of the day and the coming days. Mads and myself will meet many of you in person, in our roadshow that will start in Denmark tomorrow, and then we will be in the U.K. next week. So looking forward to meet you in person and continue the dialogue. Thank you so much. Thanks for the interest in the company and have a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you.

Welcome to the ISS Trading Update for Q3 2025. Today's call is being recorded. I would like to introduce Group CEO, Kasper Fangel; Group CFO, Mads Holm; and Group Head of Investor Relations, Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen. Speakers, please begin.

Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to our conference call. We appreciate you joining us today to discuss our Q3 trading update released earlier in the morning. As said, I'm Michael Vitfell-Rasmussen, heading up Investor Relations here at ISS. Joining me today in the room is our CEO, Kasper Fangel; our CFO, Mads Holm; and -- and Sophie Riis from the IR team.

Before we begin, please take a quick view of disclaimer, and then I will hand it over to start the presentation. Please move to Slide #4.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our third quarter 2025 Trading Update. We delivered a third quarter fully in line with expectations, reflecting steady progress on our strategic priorities, strong commercial momentum and disciplined execution, keeping our overall strategy firmly on track. And while there is still more to do, we are encouraged by the improvements we make day by day and the underlying momentum across the business.

Let's begin with an overview of our progress and the key drivers behind the financial results. We delivered Q3 in line with expectations on all 3 KPIs. Growth was 4.9%, an improvement against Q2 of 3.8%. But more importantly, underlying growth is accelerating as new contracts ramps up as well as we are expanding our services with existing customers. Our focused execution is delivering results. We secured a larger number of contract extensions and added new logos throughout the year.

All in all, we continue to see signs that our efforts to strengthen the commercial engine are paying off. That said, a significant portion of the new logos we secured are back-end loaded, with start-up dates towards the end of 2025 or early '26. And as a consequence, we are narrowing our guidance range from 4% to 6% to 4% to 5%, leaving us with a strong exit rate for 2025.

When you look at Q4, remember the uncertainty around the potential level of above base and not least, a very challenging comparison base we have from last year. We successfully went live with DWP on October 1. And thanks to a well-executed modernization, operations are running as planned. a major achievement for the team on such a large contract and a strong demonstration of our business ability to deliver.

The process with Deutsche Telekom is progressing as planned, and no news does not equal bad news. And now awaiting the final ruling from the court. Our view on the likely outcome remain unchanged since our last update in connection with Q2, and we continue to firmly believe that we are well positioned in the arbitration process.

Finally, we are pleased to see that our credit rating upgrade reflecting our strong financial position and consistent execution. Since we last spoke, we've continued to do what we do best, helping our customers create exceptional service moments at their workplaces. Our focus remains on delivering great customer experiences every day, powered by our self-delivery model and a strong service mindset. By combining that with our ongoing commercial initiatives, we're continuing to see solid momentum both in new wins and meaningful expansions with existing customers.

So far this year, including Brisbane Airport, we just announced this morning, we have announced 21 contracts, 9 new wins, 9 expansions, 2 scope productions and 1 loss. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of these contracts will start up in the latter part of this year or early 2026, which means we won't see material impact from them until 2026. While this was a bit on our 2025 growth rate, it provides a strong foundation for '26, a year where we'll maintain our dedicated focus on execution within our 4 chosen segments, continue to pursue local opportunities and grow with our existing customers. Simply by doing what we do best, creating workplace experiences that truly matter and delivering unique service moments.

I'm encouraged when I look at the market environment we are operating in today. Office trends are generally improving across most markets. And as many of you have probably noticed yourself, employers are increasingly updating their return-to-office policies to bring people back together. In this transition, ISS plays an important role, helping create workplaces that attract employees back through a pull rather than a push effect. Our value proposition is centered around making the workplace better, spaces that inspire, connect and enable productivity.

And while I can't share specific numbers, we do feel the positive impact of more employees returning to the office. And over time, I'm confident these trends will continue to support our growth into '26. From the growth we've seen this quarter, we are observing an underlying like-for-like improvement in both volume and net new wins. The narrowing of the guidance is purely related to timing of contract start-ups and an earlier exit of the recent and out contract loss. We've also improved our retention rate to 94% this quarter, which I will elaborate on in the next slide.

Our 2025 expiries have decreased from 3% to 2% since we last spoke in August. We still have 2 big ticket items up for renewal this year, and we remain confident on a successful outcome of the current processes. I'm also pleased with the fact that an increasing number of our extensions often results in an expanded scope, driven by our commercial and on-site team's ability to identify and capture growth opportunities.

We have had 2 scope reductions and 1 loss during 2025 so far, which, of course, is disappointing. But also the nature of our business and we keep full focus on doing what is best for the business and not driving into 2 aggressive terms and conditions.

And now I will hand over to Mads for an update on our financials.

Thank you, Kasper. Turning to our financials for the third quarter of 2025. We delivered a solid result with performed as planned. We delivered organic growth of 4.9% with an improvement in like-for-like growth since the second quarter. The organic growth in the quarter was primarily driven by implementation of price increases, which contributed by around 4.5%. This underlines the resilience of our business model as we continue to successfully pass on inflationary pressure, particularly wage-related cost increases to protect our margins.

Volume growth had a positive contribution of around 1%, primarily driven by increased activity level at customer sites, mainly in Northern Europe and APAC as well as scope increases across the regions. As expected, net contract wins had a negative contribution of around 1%. Recall that the majority of the contracts we have announced year-to-date will start up late 2025 and early 2026.

Projects and above base activity contributed around 0.5% and grew organically by 3% in third quarter despite a tough comparison base from last year. Growth was mainly related to customers' refurbishment programs and other smaller above base work, which are large contribution from Central and Southern Europe. As you know, we don't report on margins or cash flow in our trading update. But I want to emphasize that both are progressing as planned, and we remain fully confident in achieving our full year targets.

Next slide, please. All regions, except America has delivered positive organic growth in the third quarter, in line with our expectations. In Northern Europe, we recorded third quarter organic growth of 1% with a challenging comparison due to the annualization effect from DEFRA and the Danish Building and Property Agency which went live in second quarter 2024. That, combined with a tough, above base comparison for third quarter 2024.

Recall DWP in the U.K. successfully went live on the 1st of October. Business is running according to plan, and the full impact will be reflected in the fourth quarter. We continue to see strong growth in Central and Southern Europe, primarily driven by price increases in Turkey. Additionally, we saw solid growth in above base and positive contribution from net new wins. In Asia Pacific, we delivered organic growth of 9%, with particular strong performance in the Pacific region and in India, driven by new contract startups and volume growth with existing customers. As a reminder, roughly half of the year-to-date announced contracts originate from APAC.

Finally, performance in the Americas was broadly as expected. The main headwind came from the annualization of a few smaller contract exits outside the U.S. We haven't seen larger wins in the region, but we remain patient and disciplined, focused on securing healthy, long-term contracts rather than chasing short-term growth.

U.S. came in flat, in line with expectations. At our upcoming Capital Market Day, we will provide a deep dive into our U.S. business and share insight on our strategy going forward. And just a reminder, the fourth quarter will face a very tough comparison due to the one-off restoration work following last year's hurricane.

Next slide, please. We are around 2/3 through our share buyback program, delivering a total shareholder payout yield of approximately 10%. In line with our capital allocation policy, we continue to pursue smaller bolt-on acquisitions in selected markets when they are value accretive. During the quarter, we completed the acquisition of Garbialdi, a company based in North Spain. This acquisition strengthened our regional presence and established us as the market leader in the area. It's a perfect strategic fit with Grupo Fissa, which we acquired in 2023, and it brings clear low-risk synergies, particularly within back office functions.

We expect synergies to come through already at the start of 2026. Garbialdi adds approximately 0.6% to group revenue on an annual basis and the acquisition multiple is very attractive compared to ISS current trading multiple, reflecting our disciplined approach to capital deployment. We will continue to evaluate bolt-on opportunities where there either is a strong strategic fit or clear operational synergies, but most importantly, where it can create long-term shareholder value.

As Kasper mentioned in the beginning of the presentation, I also want to highlight our Moody's upgrade. Our credit rating was improved from Baa3 positive to Baa2 stable, a clear recognition of our strong financial position and improved track record of disciplined and reliable execution.

Please turn to the next slide where Kasper will provide additional color on our 2025 outlook.

Thank you, Mads. First of all, I'm pleased to report a sequential like-for-like improvement in underlying growth since Q2. While net new wins remained slightly negative, the overall trajectory is positive and we're moving in the right direction. In the first 3 quarters have progressed in line with our expectations. However, the timing of contract wins and losses have differed from our initial forecast. Specifically, new wins are more back-end loaded than anticipated, and we are exiting a particular loss faster than expected. As a result, we're slightly adjusting the contribution from net new wins and are narrowing our organic growth guidance to 4% to 5%, positioning us with a strong exit rate heading into 2026.

On margins, we remain fully on track and reconfirm our guidance of above 5%. Next slide, please. We also reconfirm our cash flow guidance for the year. We still expect the strong underlying cash flow generation to be maintained in 2025. The guidance of above DKK 2.4 billion is in line with the above 60% cash conversion, adjusting for the DKK 200 million negative impact from 2024 prepayments. We still expect payment from DTAG for the amounts withheld in previous years. And providing its received in '25, that will bring our expectations to the free cash flow, including DTAG payments at above DKK 3 billion.

Please turn to the next and final slide. As we wrap up, I would like to highlight how ISS' strategy and performance combined to deliver sustainable shareholder value. Our equity story can be summarized as follows: ISS has a strong market leadership in a growing facility service market with a GDP plus growth rate. We maintain a relentless focus on profitability, driven by operational discipline. We generate robust cash flow, giving us the flexibility to reinvest in growth, while returning capital to our shareholders. This foundation is reinforced by disciplined capital allocation, balancing reinvestment, bolt-on M&A and share buybacks.

On top of that, we have a strong sustainability agenda, which not only reflects our values, but also provides us with a meaningful competitive advantage. Taken together, these strengths position ISS to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value creation for our shareholders. In summary, Q3 was another solid quarter for ISS. We delivered in line on all key parameters, demonstrating strong stability and consistency. And this shows the resilience of our company despite elevated macroeconomic uncertainty.

I'm proud of that performance. And looking ahead, I'm confident we will continue to accelerate. The strength of ISS are undeniable. Our strategy is clear, the investments are in place and the leadership is strong, and we are simplifying the way we operate. This ensures that all of our -- 325,000 of us are moving in the same direction together. And let me finish by thanking our place makers. Your dedication and care in every service moment define ISS and earn the trust of our customers every single day.

To our customers, thank you for your partnership. We remain committed to helping you achieve your desired outcomes. And with that, I've concluded the presentation, and we will now open the floor for Q&A. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from the line of Mads Brinkmann, from Berenberg.

If we could just start on the extensions and the ticket items that you talked about, Kasper. I'm just wondering, I know it's at least the biggest one of them, I guess, is very much by year-end, so end of December. But I'm just wondering, like which other contracts like you alluded to yourself, you've been able to extend quite a few, but also expand those contracts. I was wondering whether you could have some color on these last 2 big ticket items if the extensions are are dragging on just because it actually includes potential negotiations about scope increases as well, that would be very helpful.

And then on M&A, especially the Spanish one, I mean just taking this into context, it seems on the face of it to be value accretive and a cheap acquisition, so to say. But just looking at it, you've added 3 acquisitions in Spain over the last 3 years, DKK 1.6 billion. So you're taking Spain on very crude math to like a top 5 country larger than Germany. I'm just -- if you could help understand, please, in terms of the the bigger picture here, the strategy of why you've been so acquisitive in Spain. I know you've bought stuff in Switzerland as well, but it's just it hasn't occurred at least in the past that Spain sort of a big strategic priority. So I'm just wondering why you keep buying stuff in Spain other than it being cheap in the short run.

And then sorry, I'll do a third on the margin, please. I know you don't comment on it or so you haven't reported on it. But just if you could tell us whether the margin for Q3 has been in line or above the margin in Q3 last year, please?

Thank you, Mads, and good morning to you as well. Thanks for 3, very valid and good questions. I will take the first one around extension, and then Mads will talk to your question around M&A and margin. So first of all, Mads, we have reduced the percentage from 3% to 2% here in Q3, and you are indeed right, that a number of the extensions has also resulted in expansions. And we have announced those of them that are above DKK 100 million, but we also have a significant number of below DKK 100 million, where the same pattern has occurred, which is good. And it is really about expanding both into new service lines with our existing customers, but also to expand across borders. And it's a great growth opportunity for us. We are starting to see it coming through in the numbers with an improvement in Q3 but we expect that also to be a good growth lever for us in the future because we know the customers, we know the DNA. We know what we're trying to solve for in terms of outcome and therefore, we can put together strong value propositions.

On the particular 2 that are left this year, then first of all, there's no delay in the plants here at all. It has always been the plan, that these are going to be extended very late in the year. So there is no delay. And I will also not highlight any particular red flags. The process are going according to plan. We're having the right discussions with the customers, and we feel comfortable around that this is a good process where we'll also be successful. But of course, we never celebrate before we have obtained the signature.

Mads, M&A and margin, over to you.

Yes. So Mads, you're right, we're doing an acquisition in Spain. We see Spain as a solid market, and we have a very strong management team in Spain who are really, really good at these integrations. And that's also why Spain is one of the few countries where we allow M&A. And it's also a place with a healthy margin. And you're completely right. There are cheap opportunities in Spain, which makes it a very attractive multiple game, which we talked about last year. we buy a certain price, we take out the synergy. We have a multiple in the mid-single digit. And then you add on top the ISS digit. And as we have seen here, we will be able to take out the synergies early 2026. Therefore, of course, we do this because it's the best spend of capital, and that is part of what we do in Spain, part of what we do in the group when the opportunity is right.

Looking into the margin, we reported a margin for 4.2% in the first half of the year. And we have guided above 5% for the full year. And we see the 5% as the floor, as we have mentioned earlier. Of course, the seasonality effect of third quarter is coming through. And we keep doing what's right for ISS, and that also means that with the 5% floor, we have the manure room to make the right investments for ISS throughout the full year. So we're on track to deliver the margin on a floor, which is 5%. And we are seeing -- we are on track to deliver on it.

If I may just follow up, sorry, on the M&A side of things. Just maybe for the full year, I think you said previously, we should expect DKK 500 million, DKK 600 million like you did last year in terms of M&A spend. Is that the same that we should think about this year, given that you've done to now, I think, I guess, around DKK 300 million in spend, something like that. So another DKK 200 million, DKK 300 million, is that fair to expect for the remainder of the year? Or I mean, is it too late in the year now for you to do any more?

I think what we have said is that the DKK 500 million DKK 600 million, which we've done earlier is a good guesstimate. I think it would be fair to say this year, we will most likely end up a little bit lower than that.

The next question is from the line of Mr.Remi, from Morgan Stanley.

Just 2 questions from my side. So the first one would be on the series of contracts that you...

Remi, really sorry to interrupt you, but we can't hear the question, sorry. It seems like you're very far away from from the mic, can you move closer?

Is it better now?

It's better. Sorry -- thank you.

Okay. Sounds good. So yes, I mean, I just want to elaborate a little bit on the contracts you've announced, the wind, the expansion, the losses. I mean, I understand whatever is above DKK 100 million. But I'm trying to -- can you help us understand the volume growth rates taking into account all these contracts that you expect entering 2026? So if I'm kind of doing the math back of the envelope, I'm kind of getting to 1.5% to 2% growth contribution from everything you've announced to date in terms of run rate contribution to next year. So just wanted to understand whether you thought that this assumption was in the right ballpark? And if not then, what I'm missing there? So that would be the first question.

The second one is, I think Kasper, at the beginning of the presentation, you referred to continued sign of commercial momentum improvement. So aside from this contract that you've announced, so what's in the discussion with customers or in the quantitative KPIs makes you confident that you continue to see that that momentum flowing to IFS?

Yes. Thanks, Remi. Much appreciated. So let me start with the pipeline. The pipeline continues to look healthy and lucrative. And that's both on local customers, it is on regional customers, and it's also on global big ticket items. And it is clear that I have -- what I have shared with you several times before that an office environment is just so much more important to all businesses, post-COVID compared to what was the case before COVID. Because it really comes to the realization of business decision makers, the way that you engage your staff is to get them physically together, not necessarily every day during the week, but you got to do it at least a few days during the week.

And we all know that having a policy in place and trying to force people into the office environment, that's not going to last as a sustainable solution. You've got to find an office environment that is appealing and inspiring where people have a desire to get in and they are finding the alternative, which is to stay and work from home less attractive compared to getting into the office space. And we are seeing that with the local customers and with the regional customers and, of course, also with the global customers.

And there, we can help because we have the solutions that can help to drive these outcomes. And that is what continues to fuel the pipeline. Specifically on your on your building blocks, remember, we are starting DWP up, which is over DKK 1 billion, DKK 1.2 billion to be precise. That has started up in October. So that's DKK 300 million of revenue in the fourth quarter, so a big ticket item that is helping the growth contribution on net new.

And then you mentioned the contract announcement yourself. I don't want to give you any specific numbers, but I will just make a few additional comments that will help you to understand the building blocks for the fourth quarter because in the fourth quarter, we also get both on volume and net new contribution from a full quarter impact of contracts that have started up in Q3 and expanded in Q3 over the course of Q3, so a full quarterly impact of that in Q4. And then we have, as you rightfully said yourself, the ones that are taking in and are going live in Q4. So, all in all, we are very positive about entering -- sorry, exiting this year with a solid exit position setting us up for a good growth in 2026.

Next up, we have Allen Wells from Jefferies.

Just a couple for me. Obviously, you flagged in that last answer that the DWP contract starting in October ramping. Could you maybe just provide a little bit of more kind of anecdotal detail around how that ramp started kind of [indiscernible] Bit months in, what are the learnings? And maybe is there any impacts on from that on the decision to narrow the guidance, I assume not, but maybe you can just clarify. That's my first question.

And then secondly, obviously, you flagged the uncertainty in 4Q on above base. I'm mindful, obviously, we've got the hurricane comp that you've also flagged, but we are approaching the half point of this quarter. So interested to see what you're hearing and seeing so far from decisions from your customers around kind of above base in Q4? And if that carries on for the rest of the quarter in the trend that we've seen so far, what does that actually mean for the above base level for this quarter?

Thanks, Allen. So a little bit more color on DWP. I mean, as I said in my presentation, massive credits to our team in the U.K. and specifically to to the individuals that have worked a long time with the mobilization of DWP. It's very well done. And I would say the learning for us and that is that when you are absorbing such a significant portion of volume, you also got to prepare well in advance. And that's exactly what we have done with -- on DWP, making sure that all the details were worked through, and there was a diligent process around each of the service lines before we went live, and that is paying off, and that's why I'm so pleased to report that that things operationally are going well. And there's no link to the narrowing of guidance related to DWP.

As I said before in my presentation, the reason why we are narrowing the guidance to 4% to 5%, and is simply because of a few contract leases that are starting up later than what we expected, plus the loss that we have announced earlier in the year that is mobilizing faster than what we initially expected, but no drama around that.

And then in terms of above base, I mean, for the full year, we expect a negative -- a slight negative contribution from projects. And that, of course, also implies that it's going to be a negative in Q4 because we have a positive contribution year-to-date Q3 of 1%, and that is purely related to the hurricane, the comparison from last year the restoration work that Mads spoke about in his presentation in Q4 in the U.S. We don't see any structural changes on above base where customers are cutting back on their spend on projects. So no structural changes in that regards.

The next question is from Kristian Godiksen from SEB.

A couple of questions from my side. So on the DWP, maybe I'll just follow up. Could you maybe comment a bit on the potential for the above base. You've previously stated that that DKK 1.2 billion is for the core part of the contract and then there is -- there was significant potential for above base. So that would be the first question.

And then secondly, if you could perhaps review a bit more on the initiatives on -- in the U.S. whether they are gaining traction or not and how far progressed you are there? And then just thirdly, a household question on the -- you stated a couple of times that like-for-like growth -- but I'm a bit unsure what you are adjusting for, maybe could you comment a bit on that? That would be the first 3 questions, and then I can jump back.

Yes. Thanks, Kristian, and good morning to you as well. So on DWP, of course, on such a significant customer with such a geographical presence in the U.K. There is also a good opportunity for additional work above scopes, additional project work. And -- but we've got to earn our right to get that and win that. And that we do, of course, by delivering on the base and making sure that we're competitive on above base. And we are confident that we can do that, but we are not there yet. So that is work in progress. But yes, there is a chunk of opportunities. but it's not something that comes for free. It's something that we need to earn our right to get, and we're working hard on that on a daily basis.

In terms of the U.S. Then first, a data point that will help, I think, to understand the current context in the U.S. The growth in the third quarter in the United States of America is flat. So 0-ish. And that, of course, means that the annualization of the losses have stopped, but it also means that we haven't won any meaningful items yet in the U.S.

And the question then is, are we doing the right things? And do we have the right setup to make a breakthrough in the U.S. going forward. And I absolutely believe that is the case. We have the right leadership team in place. As Mads said, the plan is there, and you will, of course, when we have a Capital Markets Day at some point of time next year, that will be one of the agenda items that you will get additional details on. But the plan is exactly as I want a plan to be. It's a laser sharp, it's focused. It's with a few things that is moving the needle from a growth perspective and therefore, also from a value perspective.

And then with a strong governance model around that we're also executing accordingly.

But I will also highlight that we are patient. It takes time. It's not something that comes overnight. What is critical to us is that we can see the arrows pointing in the right direction. And we can see that we are becoming a little bit better every day. That is the case, but -- and then be patient about the timing. Then at some point of time, we will also start to see the acceleration coming through in the U.S.

Your third question, Godiksen, I didn't get that. The like-for-like comparison you mentioned. So maybe just a little bit more color on that if you want that answered.

Yes, please. So I can do that. And then maybe just one follow-up on the U.S. part. The flat is a -- just to be sure, are the platform than basically in place now in order for you to begin to start win these contracts that you see out in the market was just -- that was just a follow-up. And on the household question on life that you mentioned like-for-like, I can't remember you mentioned -- you used the term like-for-like before and only referred to organic growth. I was just wondering if there was anything specific to adjust for in...

Yes. Okay. Okay. A housekeeping question. There is nothing to -- I think what you're referring to here is that I mentioned that I'm pleased to see that the contribution from volume to growing with existing customers is improving in Q3 compared to the first half position. And the same goes for net new contracts.

So if I look at that consolidated, we had a negative contribution in Q2 of approximately 1.5%, and that is flat in Q3. So the arrow is pointing in the right direction, and it's starting to come through in the numbers. That's what I meant. And then in terms of the U.S. on the platform, I mean I think in summary, a good way to describe it is that we have a platform in place now in the U.S. that -- where we have the people and the expertise that we need to fuel the engine with horsepower from a commercial point of view. And we have the platform in place where we can absorb that organic growth without having to increase our overhead costs accordingly. And that has been built over the last 12-plus months. So now it's about having the laser focus on the prospects in your pipeline and converting these opportunities into new wins and push that over the finish line.

Perfect. Perfect. Just a very brief follow-up on the growth contribution. Now I understand it. Can you tell me or what was the reason for the sequential improvement for the existing customers?

For the volume?

Yes.

Yes. It's simply the the expansions that we've also communicated externally that have contributed positively in Q3 versus the first half.

The next question is from the line of Nicole Manion from UBS.

Just 2 for me, please. Firstly, on the net new, can you give us any insight in the nature of the delays and some of the contract starts, anything sort of common you're seeing across customers or nothing really to sort of call out there? And are there any much smaller contracts in there that are still churning off more than expected or not? I assume not from your comments, but I just wanted to check in on that.

And then secondly, just on your comments on return to office. It looks like you think this can still be a tailwind into next year. I just wanted to pick up on this a bit. Some of your peers have maybe suggested that this theme has paid out a little bit, but it seems as though you think it has further to run, just wanted to get your thoughts there, really what you're seeing and perhaps in what markets beyond sort of general trend of kind of higher office investments.

Yes. So on the net new, it's a combination really of the above DKK 100 million that we have announced, but also contract wins lower than DKK 100 million that we have won and that have started up and is supposed to start up in the fourth quarter. And then from a retention point of view, as I said in the presentation, we have improved that from 93% to 94% here in in Q3. So yes, we do have some losses that are below DKK 100 million. Otherwise, that number would be 100%. But we are strengthening the focus on retention with additional resources that have -- it's that day job to make sure that we are working on that particular thing. And we're not there yet. We can still become better at it. But I think we are moving into a better territory. And that is also what is coming through in the 94% improvement versus 93%.

And then on return-to-office. The -- I mean my major point around that is that it's more the -- how can I say, the emotional part of it. And what I mean with that is that we seek in conversations more and more with customers that they they want their staff to have this feeling around that they're not being forced into the office, because then it's a matter of time before they will start to to seek employment with the competition. Nobody wants to be forced for anything. They want to have the desire to get back in, and they want their people in the office, and they want to push that to a greater extent than what they have done before, and that's where we are coming in.

We don't expect a swing factor in more people being in the office from now on compared to what we've seen in the first 9 months of this year in terms of the growth for next year. There will be some small moves but I don't see that as a swing factor. The other part is massive. This thing around notion and the belief in people and decision-makers to make the office space something that is appealing and inspiring. Because that means that you're willing to invest in it. And that's exactly where we're coming in and we have a great opportunity.

And the last question is a from the line of Lars Heindorff from Nordea.

Two from my side, a follow-on on the U.S. on Kristian's earlier questions. So how much of the negative growth in the Americas, you write about the deliberate closures, how much does that affect the negative growth? And given the positive comments that you made on the U.S. but still with flattish growth. I mean, when do you expect to see that U.S. will actually turn into positive organic growth? That's the first part.

And then the second is on the net new and the trends which obviously will be up in the fourth quarter given the DWP contract and some of the late start on some of the contracts that you mentioned earlier on. Would it be fair to assume that net new -- the run rate will be positive as we enter into '26?

Yes. So first, on your second question, Lars, and also good morning to you. Yes, the exit position of net new will be positive going into next year. You're right about that, and I can confirm that. And on your first question in terms of the U.S. I don't want to give any specific time line and say within x number of quarters, then we're cracking the code to how we can accelerate growth in the U.S. That will not be credible to do that. What I will continue to communicate is exactly where we are on the journey, and I will continue to push our team in the U.S. to do the right things, and that is to build a pipeline that is not filled with all sorts of [indiscernible] prospects, but real prospects with strong substance. And it's getting there. It's better. It's not where it needs to be in the end, but it's improving.

And then it takes time. Hopefully, we are moving fast, but I can't give any guarantee around that. We have destroyed good trends in the past in ISS, I've been here in 17 years by losing [indiscernible] Too fast. And it's nothing to do with them having a free ride or anything. Our U.S. management team are absolutely feeling accountable for working on the right things. And then I know and we know that when we do the right things, then it's also a matter of time before it starts to pay off in the numbers.

And I think the last point you mentioned there was around -- well, if U.S. is flattish, how can the region then be negative. And that has to do with contract exits in Chile and Mexico in the beginning of this year. So it's the analyzation of that, that we're seeing here in the third quarter. And that's not structural in terms of that, that we have lost additional contracts in the third quarter. I just -- it's the annualization from what the losses that we incurred in the beginning of the year.

The next question is from the line of Johan Eliason from SB1 Markets.

Just a question on your capital allocation priorities. You have the ambition to spend around DKK 1.5 billion on buying back your shares. And and then DDK 7 million on M&A. And that has made sense obviously, since your own valuation has been quite low. But we have seen your valuation improving over the year from around PE 9x to around 12x today. It's still below where you were before the pandemic, but that was also in another interest rate scenario, obviously. But looking into next year, how will your priorities, I guess, on a relative valuation basis, M&A might look a little bit more attractive going forward? Or is this sort of the balance you sort of foresee for some time now?

Thank you very much for the question. I mean, we have a very firm capital allocation policy, and we keep that. We still believe that, first of all, we pay out 20% to 40% of our solid dividend. And of course, we look into other alternatives. And among them, bolt-on M&A is definitely on the list, but of course, also capital allocation in form of share buybacks. And I think what you have seen within -- I would say the last 2 years is that we have utilized share buyback in conjunction with, of course, also doing this bolt-on acquisition where they make sense from a financial perspective. And I alluded to it how we also see it as a multiple play for ISS.

That capital allocation policy will stick also in the next year. So nothing too much other than we will be extremely committed to the policy that we have established because we actually believe, it's a strong policy and it's well understood by the market. And that's how we will look at it. From an M&A perspective, remember, there's a few countries that would do M&A because we want to do it where we think we have a strong management team who are able to do this in the right way with low risk. So aligned with the capital policy also in '26 is the key here.

Excellent. And then just a housekeeping. Can you remind me of the remaining duration of the DTAG contract?

So the DTAG contract ends at the end of 2029.

Okay. Thank you very much, everyone, for joining our call. It's a busy day here in Denmark with a lot of Danish companies announcing the results this morning. Thanks for prioritizing ISS. Thanks for your interest in the company. Our IR team will remain available to take questions over the course of today, but of course, also the coming days. And then Mads and I are just very much looking forward to meet a lot of you. in the upcoming roadshow. And with that, thank you very much. Have a fantastic rest of your day.