Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Nexans first quarter 2026 financial information call. As usual, a short disclaimer, noting that this presentation contains forward-looking statements and subject to the usual risk and uncertainties.

Let me now walk through the key highlights of our Q1 2026 performance. We started 2026 with a solid performance in our electrification core businesses, delivering a robust +4.9% organic growth in Q1, fully in line with our roadmap and supported by strong underlying demand.

At Group level, standard sales reached €1.5 billion, corresponding to 0.1% organic growth, as the good performance in electrification was offset by the contraction in our metallurgy activities, as expected, following last year exceptional copper ordering level in the US ahead of tariff implementation. At the same time, we are very pleased to announce a strategic acquisition in the US low-voltage segment, Republic Wire.

This is a sizable platform with around €520 million of current sales, which will significantly strengthen and diversify our Power Connect activities and our overall electrification footprint in the Americas. This acquisition is in line with what I have mentioned a few times over the last six months: M&A in the US is one of the key focus area for Nexans.

Just to give you a number, in North America, our sales is moving from €350 million in 2025 to now more than a €1 billion of sales thanks to the acquisition in Electro Cables we done in last December and today Republic Wire. Republic Wire transaction is expected to close early third quarter of 2026, subject to, of course, customary regulatory approval.

Vincent will provide just after more information about the Republic Wire. Now moving to slide 5, turning now to the performance by segment, you can see all three electrification segments delivered a solid start of the year, driven by organic growth of Power Transmission at a +8.8%, Power Grid at a +5.7% organic growth, and Power Connect at 2.5%, confirming the healthy underlying demand and the disciplined execution of our strategy across the electrification perimeter.

The other activities, mainly comprising of metallurgy, have declined by 24% organically. This reflect last year unusual pattern in copper orders in the US, with a strong pull forward ahead of tariff in H1, followed by a marked correction in H2, combined with our strategy to reduce external copper sales in favor to internal usage.

As a result, organic growth in other activities expected to mechanically turn positive again in the second half of 2026. Let me now go segment by segment, starting with Power Transmission in slide 6.

In the first quarter of 2026, standard sales reached €342 million compared to €308 million in Q1 last year 2025, representing an 11.1% growth, driven by 8.8% organic growth and a favorable foreign exchange fixed impact. This marks a return to more normalized growth after two years of exceptionally high performance, fully in line with our expectations.

Once again, transmission is about long cycle of tenders and activities on which we should see another cycle of growth in the next couple of years considering the amount of potential project to be launched. Energy sovereignty in the current geopolitical context becomes more and more mandatory, especially in Europe.

Our Q1 performance reflect strong execution on our project and continued commercial expansion in smaller-sized project. At the same time, we are implementing targeted cost actions and demonstrating operational agility.

Looking ahead and as expected, it's important to bear in mind that our Q2 2026 organic growth will be a single-digit negative territories due to the expected project phasing effects. The trajectory should recover in positive territory in H2.

Turning to the backlog, our adjusted Power Transmission backlog stood at €7.9 billion at March end 2026 compared to €7.7 billion of end of December 2025, it's a +2.6% increase over the quarter. Our backlog provides strong visibility through 2028, supported by its high quality, a robust pipeline of project, particularly in Europe, driven by energy sovereignty needs, and the upcoming commissioning of our third cable-laying vessel, Nexans Electra, expected to be operational by mid-year 2026.

Let's now move to slide 7, to Power Grid. Standard sales in Power Grid reached €322 million in Q1 2026 compared to €313 million in Q1 2025.

That's an increase of 2.9%, driven by a solid 5.7% organic growth, and the foreign exchange accounted for -2.8%. This strong organic performance was particularly supported by call-offs under long-term framework agreements, as we explained last February, and a very good momentum in data center activity.

Renewable activities also remain well oriented. This high growth level was achieved despite the usual seasonality, where Q1 is usually a low quarter in terms of organic growth.

At the same time, our Accessories subsegment continued to deliver double-digit organic growth, illustrating sustained demand for high-value-added solutions driven by ongoing grid modernization and smart grid requirements. Overall, Power Grid is benefiting from excellent market trends and a high level of visibility, with a solid pipeline across utilities, data centers, and grid accessories, fully aligned with our mid-term growth ambitions.

We continue to see the increase in the average duration of framework agreements, translating the growing and urgent needs from DSOs for the coming years. Let's now turn to slide 8 regarding Power Connect.

Standard sales in Power Connect reached €647 million in Q1 2026 compared to €603 million in Q1 2025. That represents 7.2% total growth, including an 8% contribution from acquisitions, 2.5% organic growth, and the foreign exchange accounting for -3.2%.

We continue to see a progressive recovery in Power Connect in some countries, although it remains uneven across geographies. The positive signals we observed in Q4 2025 have further materialized in Q1 in several European countries such as France, Spain, and Italy, while Nordic countries remains more challenging, as we have explained in the last communication in February.

In Asia-Pacific, activities started to stabilize, supported by recent management change. The growth in the quarter was strongly supported by M&A, which is a key pillar of our strategy, and the recent acquisition of Cables RCT in Spain and Electro Cables in Canada contributed significantly to growth, and their integration is progressing very well, fully in line with our roadmap, particularly in strategic segments such as data center and fire safety.

Overall, Power Connect shows solid market fundamentals, and we pursue the deployment of our high-value-added solutions and focus on premium customers, which support selective and profitable growth, and provide the group with agility and resilience. I will now hand over to Vincent for the highlights of our Q1 2026 and the presentation of Republic Wire.

Thank you, Julien. Good morning, everyone.

Let's start with our standard sales bridge. We moved from the €1.478 billion of standard sales in Q1 2025 to €1.497 billion in Q1 2026, an increase of €19 million, corresponding to 1.3% total growth.

The first block on the graph is organic growth, which contributed to +0.1% at Group level. This reflects a very solid 4.9% organic growth in our electrification activities, fully in line with our roadmap, which was offset by a -24.1% organic decline in other activities, mainly linked to metallurgy, as explained previously by Julien.

We had a -2% foreign exchange impact, primarily related to movements in the US dollar and the Canadian dollar, which temporarily weighed on reported Group growth. The remaining block is linked to scope contribution, adding +3.3%, driven by the consolidation of Electro Cables in Canada and Cables RCT in Spain with our Power Connect segment, and which are both performing in line with our integration roadmap.

Talking about acquisitions, let me now present the acquisition we've just announced in the US. I'm very pleased to present you this acquisition, which is a very important step in Nexans' journey.

We have signed an agreement to acquire 100% of Republic Wire, an established American manufacturer of low-voltage wire products headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, that will form part of our Power Connect segment. Let me walk you through what we're acquiring, why it is a strong fit, and what it means financially.

Republic Wire was founded in 1982 and is a family-owned business that has built an excellent reputation and as a high-quality actor in low-voltage wiring products. The company serves electrical wholesale distributors, utilities, and municipalities across the United States and Canada.

This is a platform with a nationwide commercial footprint. On the numbers, Republic Wire generated approximately €520 million of current sales over 12 months to February 2026.

This is a business of meaningful presence with a profitability profile that reflects the quality of the asset. From an industrial perspective, this is a fully invested platform.

The company operates a single manufacturing facility and a newly completed warehouse and distributor center. Importantly, Republic Wire has recently completed a significant expansion program that will be fully online by the end of 2026, increasing its production capacity by approximately 30%, which will be reflected in its 2027 results.

We're acquiring a platform that has already been pre-funded for growth by the existing owners. The business is operated by more than 200 highly skilled employees and led by the founders, Ron and Jeremy Rosenbeck, who will remain in place post-closing.

We've known Ron and Jeremy for many years, and there is a genuine cultural alignment between the two organizations. Turning to the financial terms of the transaction, we're acquiring 100% of Republic Wire for total enterprise value of approximately €680 million, converted at the current dollar-euro exchange rate.

There is also an earnout designed to align interests of up to €43 million, potentially payable in 2028 based on performance through year-end 2027. We're referencing a 2027 multiple in order to reflect the earnings power of the recent capacity expansion.

The entry multiple represents 7.6 times 2027 estimated adjusted EBITDA after run-rate synergies and before earnout. We believe 7.6 times is a very attractive entry point for an asset of this quality in a market of this size.

Before synergies, the multiple is 10.3 times, which compares favorably to recent transactions in the market. There is also the potential for the transaction structure to provide tax benefits for Nexans over time.

The transaction will be financed through a combination of debt and existing cash on our balance sheet, consistent with our disciplined financial strategy. Pro forma net leverage is expected to rise to approximately 1.2 times net debt to 2025 adjusted EBITDA, and then delever to comfortably below 1 time by the end of 2028.

We expect our BB+ credit rating from S&P to be preserved, and we remain fully committed to maintaining a disciplined financial policy. We have identified approximately €23 million of run-rate synergies to be captured within three years.

The phasing is front-loaded, with approximately 50% being achieved in year one. I will come back to these in the next slide.

Finally, the transaction is expected to be immediately EPS accretive before synergies and before amortization of intangibles and implementation costs. Closing is expected early in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary regulatory approvals.

We're well prepared to hit the ground running on integration from day one. Let me now present the strategic rationale and why we're confident in the synergies we see in this combination and strong value-creation potential.

The US low-voltage market segment is estimated at approximately €12 billion, driven by sustained demand across the residential, commercial, and data center channels. This is one of the largest growth opportunities in low- and medium-voltage cable globally.

Building a diversified presence in the United States has been a clear strategic priority for Nexans, and Republic Wire gives us exactly the platform to achieve that goal. The industrial rationale is built on three pillars.

First, on platform, Republic Wire will allow Nexans to establish an expanded manufacturing and distribution platform within the US geography, complementing the recent acquisition of Electro Cables in Canada. This creates a real platform for future organic and inorganic growth across the region.

Second, on channel, we establish immediate direct access to residential and commercial channels through Republic's strong network of sales agents and distributors, complementing our existing global distributor relationships. There is also an opportunity to sell Nexans' broader product suite, including medium-voltage, in additional high-growth verticals including data centers.

On product, Republic Wire brings an efficient and recently expanded manufacturing footprint, and a highly skilled workforce. Nexans brings an extensive global product portfolio and advanced proprietary manufacturing technologies, the value creation goes in both directions.

On synergies, we've identified approximately €23 million run-rate synergies across three clearly identified streams focused on revenue growth and margin enhancement. First, on cross-selling, where we can offer Nexans' comprehensive product offering, particularly in medium-voltage and grid solutions, through both Republic Wire's distribution network and our own existing global distributor relationships.

Second, on technology, where we expect to deploy our proprietary manufacturing IP inside Republic Wire's facilities to reduce material consumption and improve product performance. Third, industrial synergies through investments and vertical integration enabled by increased scale.

If you take a step back and look at our footprint, on slide 14, you can see that the acquisition of Republic Wire diversifies and expands our footprint in North America. It is a particularly attractive geography given its mid-term growth opportunities, partly driven by the momentum in data centers, which is significantly increasing power infrastructure needs across the US.

We already have strong relationships with global distributors in the region, which will be used to commercialize this additional capacity. It will also enable us to further optimize our industrial footprint and mutualize our capabilities to compete more effectively for larger-scale projects, including data centers.

The US is a healthy, competitive landscape with meaningful profitability levels. In summary, we believe that this transaction offers a very strong strategic rationale.

It will accelerate our growth prospects by expanding our access to a high-growth geography. It is financially compelling and value-creating for Nexans shareholders.

We have already devised our integration plan, and the whole Nexans team is totally mobilized to make this deal a success and a foundation for further growth. With that, I now hand it over to Julien for the outlook.

Thank you, Vincent. Before we move to our 2026 guidance, while remaining mindful of the current geopolitical tension on the international stage, we would like to remind you the key levers we have in place to protect and improve our margin in this environment of inflation.

First, our main drivers of margin are pricing selectivity supported by strong underlying trends in electrification across our segments, as well as sustained demand for high-value-added solutions. Also we have the second part, which is the operation excellence, meaning a margin-over-volume approach, strict pricing discipline, and the deployment and the discipline on our SHIFT methodology.

Second, Nexans has developed increasing agility in our inflationary context to protect its margin thanks to a strong and long-lasting relationship with our key customers, what we call Platinum customers. Also, we have indexation clause embedded in our contracts to basically go for a pass-through.

Third, we are managing with real-time pricing tools the price in the markets. All of which ensure that our pricing gently reflect our cost structures and our projects.

Last but not least, on the supply side, let me take this opportunity to highlight that despite current geopolitical tension, we do not expect impact on our aluminum sourcing. We source, as primarily from Europe rather than the Middle East, in line with Nexans deliberate choice to secure low-carbon aluminum, and hence we do not see any risk on the sourcing of aluminum.

Let me now move to next slide, slide 17, regarding the guidance. For 2026, we reiterate our full-year objectives with adjusted EBITDA between €730 million to €810 million, and a free cash flow between €210 million to €310 million, unchanged versus what we've shared with you during the last full-year 2025 results.

As a reminder, this assume a softer first-half 2026 compared to second-half 2026, and it does not assume execution of the Great Sea Interconnector project in 2026, as we have already discussed. This guidance is also given on our current perimeter and does not yet include any contribution from the Republic Wire acquisition, which is not closed at this stage.

Finally, regarding the situation in the Middle East, we continue to monitor the situation closely. Overall, Nexans is in great shape with a robust business model evolving into attractive markets.

Our business are performing well, the structural trends driving electrification remains very strong, and our mid-term trajectory is unchanged. The acquisition of Republic Wire that we have announced today reinforce our positioning as a pure player of electrification.

It significantly strengthen our geographic positioning in a highly dynamic market and expand our platform for profitable growth. All of this give us a high level of confidence in the future and in our ability to continue creating value for our stakeholders.

With that, thank you all for your attention, and with Vincent, we will now be happy to take your questions.

Yes, hi. Good morning.

I have a question on Republic Wire. In the last 12 months to February this year, Republic did €520 million in revenues.

Can you give us a bit more indication, how does that compare to revenues in recent years? Has there been any impact on their margins from copper tariffs, which seems like giving some advantage to companies that have vertical integration in US rod mills, which is not the case for Republic Wire?

That's the first one.

Republic Wire is growing year after year. They are in very dynamic markets.

They are expanding their capacity. They did strong investment in their plants in 2023.

The quality of the assets, the quality of machine are at a very good, high level, and hence it helped them to grow their sales in 2023, in 2024, and of course in 2025, and will continue to do so as you've seen in the press release. We will have an opportunity to grow 30% capacity additional, so that will continue in the years to come.

They managed very well their transition of the tariff because there has been no negative impact on their margin over the past years despite the tariff implementation.

Thank you. My follow-up question is also on Republic Wire.

I think you mentioned there will be €23 million cost to drive synergies. Again, this company employs only 200, around 200 employees and doesn't look like there is a big cost-out opportunity.

I'm wondering if you can provide where this €23 million cost will be, how this €23 million cost will be used for driving synergies. Thank you.

Yes, for sure, Akash. In terms of synergies, it's more or less 50/50 topline and industrial efficiencies.

There are some quick gain that we have identified on the industrial part, namely the compounding aspects, because they do not have any compounding lines internally. We have spare capacity in our operations in Canada, so that will be very quick fix to improve the efficiency on that part.

We have a program called Optimum, where we are also optimizing costing, redesign to cost of our products. We have identified that this is an area of improvements.

There are purchasing synergies as well. All this would be driven on the, I would say, industrial aspect.

Regarding the topline, you know that we have some excellent relationship with what we call Platinum distributors worldwide. We are in close relationship with these Platinum distributors.

They are very well represented in the US, and today they are not yet customers of Republic. The aim is to quickly move to grow business with these distributors, aiming for differentiation, aiming for innovations, and this is what we will scale to Republic.

This is one. Second, also, Republic, as you've seen, is very much focused to resi and industrial applications.

We do have close relationship with the Big Four of the data centers, and combining Nexans Canadian and South America medium-voltage plus low-voltage from Republic, we will drive some data center business, which is a big focus for me and for the team to drive business in data centers using the US footprint of Republic.

Maybe just a final one. I think you said in earlier sell-side call that this synergy takes into account the current tariff structure, and if we haven't had tariffs, then there could be upside.

Can you quantify, let's say, if tomorrow tariffs goes away, then what sort of upside we might see on synergies? Thank you.

No, it's a good point, Akash. Indeed, and the reason why we also are very confident with Republic is that we know this company very well.

We used to supply copper rod from our Montreal metallurgy business to Republic for many years. We know them, we know the team, we know the quality of the team.

As since the tariff last August started, we stopped delivering to them for obvious reason. As soon as the tariff will be dropped, hopefully—of course, here we have no certainty—but as soon as it will drop, we will restart this.

We have not quantified this yet, I cannot give you a number yet, but for sure it will increase the synergies for years to come as long as the tariff for copper will be removed.

Thank you.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions.

I've got a couple. First, on Transmission, do you have any updates you can give us on the MI project pipeline and the progress being made on saturating MI capacity with short-term repair work and smaller projects?

Secondly, on Grid, could you maybe talk about what's been driving the performance here? Has activity in the data center and renewables space been higher than previously expected?

If so, do you expect that to continue to be the case? Also, if you could also talk about the growth in the accessories side, perhaps to further quantify the double-digit growth that you mentioned there, and what the margins look like, that'd be great.

Okay.

Regarding MI, we have said that in Q1 we were finishing GSI last part of orders, we have done that according to our plan. We also said that just after, we will produce and win some EMR, repair orders, short-term orders.

We also win this order. The line of MI is still producing today this small repair activities.

For the rest of the MI, let's say, looking forward, because I'm sure that's what you have also in mind, we are also in the tender of other MI projects. Far, I cannot say because we're in a tender phase, but this is ongoing as per our plan and as per what we have communicated last February.

Regarding the Grid, we are very confident about the growth, very resilient business. As you remember, we have win long-term frame agreement with our customers.

On top of this, we also have in Q1 win some very large orders of data centers, by the way, in the US, but not only, as well as in Europe. That is also reinforcing this growth looking forward.

Some of these large orders will come in in H2, because that's basically we are currently producing and delivering that in second half of 2026. Completely in line with our expectations.

A very good, resilient business in Grid. On accessories, while the Q1 was very dynamic, accessories remains double digits.

It's even higher in terms of double digit than what we have experienced in last year 2025. Here what we always said regarding the accessories business is above 20% EBITDA margin.

Extremely positive on the Grid and accessories part.

Got it. Thanks, Julien.

Hi, guys. Maybe one from me on the Transmission business.

You spoke about being booked out into 2028, and obviously we've all seen momentum recently on offshore wind. Could you maybe speak to the outlook for projects here for you guys and what you're seeing on pricing at the moment?

Then a second question, you just mentioned there on Power Grid, and in terms of winning new orders into data centers, can you maybe comment on how big of an exposure North America is currently for the Power Grid business, or in 2025, and where you see that going in terms of a geographic exposure by sort of 2028? Thank you.

Transmission,

regarding the pipeline of projects, I think in this large project, long cycle, they are not moving like one after the other one. We are on the same trend as what we've explained last February.

We do see large project to come mostly end of 2026, and big part will be in 2027, both in XLPE, HVDC or HVAC, as well as MI. You see the geopolitical change with Iran reinforce the willingness from the European countries to build autonomous energy sovereignty.

That reinforce the message of building their own power generation of wind offshore. We do see that strengthening the years to come in terms of pipeline of projects.

Short term, it's more end of the year and mostly 2027 that we'll see this large project to come. Difficult to talk about the margin, because we are of course preparing these tenders, we cannot communicate on the margin pricing whatsoever, but we do see there is a regain of, let's say, attractiveness for the wind offshore.

Power Grid, we have Power Grid in the US. This is ramping up.

We have established sales organizations in 2025, mainly focus in data centers, mainly focus in medium-voltage. This is growing very fast.

Difficult to give you a number because this is still the early stage, but what I can tell you is that the order we are winning in data centers are, let's say, large-scale orders, and we are rerouting our capacity in medium-voltage we have in South America and Canada to this market in the US because it's an attractive business for us.

Just to complement, that's where a deal like Republic Wire makes a lot of sense and will increase our exposure since we'll be able to have channels to sell more Grid products into the US.

That's great. Thank you.

Yes, thank you. Good morning.

Three questions from my side. First one, after the acquisition of Republic Wire, could you give us your exposure to the US market in percentage of your sales, and for the North America, the same question, the percentage of your sales expected?

The second question, in the press release for the Transmission business, you mentioned some cost-cutting measures to adapt to the structure. Could you give us some more color about what you mean when you mentioned the cost cutting or cost reduction, for sure?

The last question, for the Connect business, you mentioned an organic growth for the first quarter. You mentioned some growth for South Europe, but more difficult for the Nordics.

Could you give us the growth in percentage for the South European country, France, Italy, Spain, etc., and the percentage of decrease for the Nordics area? Thank you.

Okay. I will start by your first question regarding the exposure of Nexans to the North America market.

As I quite too quickly explained at the beginning of this session, we used to have €350 million sales in North America, mainly focused in Canada. Since we acquired Electro last December and today we are aiming to close Republic in some weeks, we will be above €1 billion.

That's represent more than 20% of Nexans exposure to North America. This does not include the metallurgy in Montreal and does not include the Charleston plants, it's pure Grid and Connect exposure.

Regarding the Transmission, maybe Vincent?

No, on cost-cutting overall, we've launched a bunch of self-help measures since the beginning of the year. We know we have work to do on this.

The end of the divestment programs allow us to basically refocus and recentralize a number of things. The big focus are the traditional SG&A focus, and kind of the pure cost actions, we've launched specific things on that aspect.

Then we're also looking at a lot of purchasing, where we're trying to drive more efficiency and better productivity in our purchasing activities. Those are the two biggest levers that we've been pushing, and they're starting to deliver with specific program with very clear ambitions for this year and maintain the run rate after that.

That's the two big focus points.

Regarding your third question, Jean-François, we do not share normally the sales per country, but what I can tell you in ballpark is that France, Italy, and Spain, we are in the average of the Connect business. We do see some slight recovery there, which basically confirm what we have seen in Q4 last year.

Unfortunately, Nordics remains negative territories. We do not see any recovery of this market, specifically Sweden, which is still in a negative part.

That's for us is that's the case today. No sign yet of recovery.

We will see our plans and discussions with our customers tell us that maybe in H2, but so far in Q2, we don't see any big recovery.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

I got three, if I may. The first one on the project in Transmission you mentioned.

You mentioned some project at the end of 2026. Regarding the project for which you are currently doing some quoting for the MI line related project, could we expect some announcement before the end of 2026?

I got a second question on Republic deal. You mentioned some value creation on slide, but when should we expect that the return on this deal to be above the WACC of Nexans?

When do you expect to create value with this deal? The last question, still on this acquisition, could you share maybe with us if there is any specific reason why the family decided to sell today to Nexans?

Thank you.

I will start by your first question on MI. Yes, we are in the tender phase.

We follow this very closely, as you can imagine, and we do expect an answer by mid-year, so, of course, will not be end of the year, hopefully will be much earlier. Target today is to have an answer by mid-year the result of this tender.

Regarding Republic, I will start your question regarding the family, why they tend to sell the company. The owner, Ron, is above 78 years old, and his willingness was to continue developing his business, joining force with a large group, that was basically his wish, but he's ready to work with us the next two years to end of 2027 at least.

We have also his son, which also has an active role, that is also willing to continue to work. Ron was a person that wanted to basically manage the transition to a large group to continue the journey of Republic, that was his main motivation.

On your second question regarding the return on investment, essentially this deal improves our ROCE profile as soon as 2027 and puts us above our current estimates for 2028. It's an improvement on current profile coming very soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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Alessandro, we cannot hear you.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Hello?

No, we cannot hear. Maybe let's move to another question, and then we come back to Alessandro just after.

Can you hear me?

We still cannot hear anything.

Hi. Thanks for the question.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Yep.

Perfect. First one from me just on capex, actually.

At the November '24 Capital Markets Day, you guided to the sort of €1.2 billion of cumulative capex '25 to '28, about €300 million per year. When we think about the sort of 70% of that, sort of €200 million, and kind of where that's going outside of the medium-voltage plant in Morocco and the recycling facility in France, should we expect that quite a significant chunk of this will now be redirected towards the US following this acquisition?

Or if you could help us understand the sort of the composition of that remaining capex, that would be helpful.

Sure. The overall plan of €1.2 billion is correct, and we're on track for that.

We expect our capex levels to, once the wave of strategic investments is completed in Transmission and the two projects you mentioned, will decrease significantly in 2027. Then we're buying an asset in the US that is significantly invested.

Part of the reason we're using 2027 as a reference year for multiples and valuations is because that's when the fully grown, let's say, plant and warehouse will be completed and running. We don't expect to have to put a lot more capex on the site.

We're acquiring something that is already finishing its wave of investment from a capex standpoint to expand its capacity.

Okay. That makes sense.

Thank you. A second question on Transmission and the growth outlook for this year.

You talked about Transmission returning to positive organic growth in the second half. I think the consensus that you'd compiled coming into the quarter had about -2% organic growth in H2 and for the full year.

You've talked a little bit about the MI production capacity and that topic. You've also got the new cable-laying vessel coming online.

How should we think about what a more normal level of growth in Transmission looks like in the full year given these factors?

You're right that compared to the explosive growth that the business experienced in the last two years, clearly 2026 will be more normative and normal. We have a strong Q1.

We expect H1 to be flattish, single-digit type of growth. Then things will start to get a bit more positive in the second half, but on a more run-rate basis.

The expansion of the boat capacity, essentially, the new boat coming in doesn't expand the capacity significantly because it's replacing a boat that we're currently leasing. We're basically going to replace capacity that we rent for capacity that we own, with improvements in terms of synergies and efficiency, but it won't be a massive expansion.

For this year, really it's about execution and using the capacity we have and getting the business to deliver on the backlog we have.

Thanks. If I just ask a very quick follow-up on the cable-laying vessel side.

Is there anything, any additional color you can give us? I know that previously we've heard from yourself or peers that the market for chartering cable-laying vessels from third parties, I think one of the data points was that you could pay about three times as much to charter a vessel as it would cost to use your own.

Has that sort of dynamic continued, or what are you seeing in terms of I guess the advantage that you're gaining from having that in-house installation capacity?

I will ask this question to be answered by Vincent, because he is expert on this part.

Vincent Dessale speaking. Hello.

Indeed, we still see a gap, of course, between the vessel that we can charter on the market. The multiple that you have indicated by three could be this one, but to be honest, it depends really of the size of the vessel.

If you are looking for a vessel with large capacity, it will be in this range. If you are looking for a vessel with a smaller capacity, typically a 5,000-ton, it could be smaller.

Again, for us, the key topic is to have EPC project with our own vessels in order to de-risk the project and to limit the interface towards our customer. This is really what they are looking for.

That's great. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a question just generally on the low-voltage US market.

I guess in terms you said on a call earlier this morning that you'd like more US M&A. Just thinking of how fragmented the low-voltage market is, are there a number of similar-sized players that are potential M&A targets?

Would you go smaller, more focused? Just a little bit of the lay of the land, and again, what kind of market share ambitions you have in the medium term in the US?

Thank you.

Okay. Basically in the US low-voltage, you have mainly two players, that I will not mention them, but I'm sure you know them, that represent a big chunk of the business, maybe two-thirds of the business.

Then you have a series of several companies the size of Republic that are usually family-owned businesses that we know quite well because, as I said this morning, we do supply them in copper rod from Montreal for many years, we have a good connection with them. Ambition is continue to grow in the US low-voltage and medium-voltage, by the way, both activities in the US.

We like this market. It's dynamic, profitable market, high-growth market with very interesting verticals such as data centers and others.

I will not give a specific numbers of share of wallet that we are aiming for because, of course, that depends on the conditions, depends on many elements. We want to be selective in the M&As.

We want to make sure that what we pay makes a lot of sense. There are still a lot of opportunities in this business to grow our share of wallet in this market.

We have been active in this in terms of pipeline. We are discussing with some of them, and that's an opportunity to grow, but we don't want to make stupid decision in terms of purchasing price.

Understood. That's very clear.

In terms of, I guess, overall capacity in the market, this company, for example, is growing 30%. We're hearing of other capacity increases.

Is your overall view that the US market remains undersupplied, that there's more capacity required for this market? Would you think of potentially increasing capacity within Republic to meet future demand, or is this more inorganic expansion?

In general, the growth run rate of the cable low-voltage and medium-voltage in US is growing fast, partly driven by data center, but not only. We do see that, and you're right, there is some ongoing capacity extension with some of our colleagues.

For us, really is to remain very selective in the type of customers, selective in the product portfolio. Our strategy remains the same, even if it's in the US.

We will be looking at both options, organic and inorganic in the US. Remember that we also have a strong positioning in Americas, South America and Canada.

It could be a combination of all this. Typically, the data center that we won recently, the large deal in data center, is coming from a series of plants.

We'll do a combination of all this. We are not only in one direction.

We'll be looking at all opportunities in front of us.

Super. Thank you.

Thank you all for your questions and discussion today. Q1 once again confirmed that Nexans fundamentals remain solid and resilient.

Through our transformation into a pure player of electrification, we have built a robust model of value creation, which position Nexans as a key enabler of energy transition and a critical contributor to Europe energy sovereignty. On the external growth, we are very happy we could announce the deal today with our Q1 publication, demonstrating once again our commitment towards our strategy.

I would like to thank you again for your attending this call, and we'll hand over now to the operator for closing remarks.