Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I'm very happy to talk to you today for my first presentation of results as CEO of Sopra Steria.

I took up office on the 2nd of February. The first weeks have been very intense.

They've enabled me to start talking in depth with management teams, to meet employees in several different entities, and to talk to various different customers and strategic partners. What I can observe confirms the conviction or the strong belief that led me to join the group.

Sopra Steria has got solid fundamentals, recognized technological foundations, and a unique European positioning in a sector which is undergoing reconfiguration. I've spent over 30 years in technology, consulting, and large-scale transformation in Europe, in Asia, and in the Americas.

I have experience in rapid growth environments, in demanding competitive landscapes, and within organizations which are experiencing in-depth transformation. This experience taught me that lasting growth is based on strategic coherence, strict execution, and the capacity to rally talents in the long term.

It's exactly this potential that I see at Sopra Steria. The group has got a strong European presence, an exposition to strategic sectors like defense, aeronautics, space, public sector, and financial services.

Against a backdrop which has been marked by technological sovereignty matters, security of critical systems and industrialization, and artificial intelligence, I'd say this positioning is a genuine competitive advantage. Sopra Steria has also got differentiating factors in consulting, platform, engineering for complex systems, and the combination of this expertise is essential to support our customers' in-depth transformations.

The coming weeks will be spent deepening my understanding of the group, broadly listening and refining our strategic priorities. My goals are clear: boost the group's development trajectory, boost its operational performance, and consolidate its role as a European stakeholder in technology and digital services.

Now I'll hand the floor to Etienne du Vignaux for the detailed presentation of the 2025 results, and I'll be back for the conclusion.

Thank you Rajesh. Good morning ladies and gentlemen.

Let's start with the highlights of 2025. Firstly, we're satisfied that we achieved all the targets at the start of the year.

Organic growth in revenue at -2.2% within the guidance that we set between -2.5% and +5%. Operating margin on business activity was at 9.5%, in the middle of the range between 9.3% and 9.8%, and free cash flow was at 6% of revenue, also in the middle of the range announced at the start of the year of between 5% and 7% of revenue and above the indication that we gave at the bottom of the range in the first half, but I'll come back to that point.

Against this backdrop of performance aligned with our objectives, the net profit attributable to the group was up significantly, up 18.3% when compared with 2024 to hit €296.8 million, net margin of 5.3%, an increase of one point. Basic earnings per share were up 22.2% to hit 15.23.

Another highlight of the end of the year was the return to growth. Since the fourth quarter 2024, revenue was contracting, but the last quarter in 2025 saw a return to growth.

Revenue was up organically by 1.8% in Q4 2025. Now if we look at the geographies, we've seen positive momentum in the south of Europe, in Italy, in Spain, and in Switzerland.

France and the UK returned to growth with +1.6% in France in Q4 compared with -2.5% over nine months, and then +8.8% in the UK versus -8.3% over the first nine months. In terms of the sectors now, financial services grew throughout the fourth quarter, and we saw a return to growth in aeronautics, [pincée?]

in defense, space, and security, and then public sector, especially in France and the UK. I want to highlight a rebound in consulting, +5.1%, driven by acceleration in aeronautics.

We saw growth in Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany, and a stabilization in France. We've also won new references.

Synergies with Ordina have got off to a good start as well. In total, the group's operating performance was solid notwithstanding an adverse environment.

Operating profit on business activity contracted slightly but remained close to 10%. Free cash flow was at the group's normative level, and then return on capital employed before tax was above 20%, which is our mid-term goal.

Thanks to good cash performance in the second half of the year, conversion rate of operating profit on business activity was 63.8% with €340.9 million of free cash flow, so that gives us a free cash flow yield above 10%, 10.7%. The dividend proposed for 2025 is €5.30 per share.

As a reminder, it was 4.65 in 2024. This increase shows an improvement in net result, and then it also comes following a buyback program for €150 million to increase the number of treasury shares, and that was concluded in January 2025.

We've also had some good commercial momentum accelerating since the first half of 2025. I'll give you a few key commercial wins which illustrate the group's positioning.

The contract with NATO, which shows our capacity to expand into new high-growth potential customers in the defense domain. We've also won a first pilot, building a secure, interoperable, and sovereign ecosystem for data sharing between European countries.

We've also rolled out our sovereign data security solution, Datasphere. We've rolled that out, during joint analysis training and education, that's been set up.

We've also won a significant reference in AI for the Caisse des Dépôts. There'll be an ad hoc press release on the matter this morning.

That's probably one of the biggest contracts of this type in France, a value estimated at tens of millions of euros, this is a major AI contract. In the UK, another domain now, we've won another contract of over £10 million, for financing, accounting on the platform that would launch in October for NHS SBS.

Then we've also won another contract with the CNES, the National Space Studies Center, so that's critical space surveillance, and this is operation of a new traffic monitoring system based on a catalog of over 40,000 space objects and anti-collision technology. Our customers are calling on us more and more for new-gen technologies in order to operate their transformations.

For two years now, we've considerably ramped up our efforts in this domain in order to increase the share of this business out of our total business. The number of certifications that we have in data, AI, cloud, ServiceNow, SAP, this has increased by 50% over two years and 18% just in 2025.

At the end of 2025, we think the weight of next-gen tech is about 60% of our business, and AI obviously, we've made this a priority, and we're convinced of its potential and positive impact that it can have for digital services. So 2025 saw a clear acceleration.

AI, so as a production tool, we've multiplied by two the number of active licenses that we have with GitHub Copilot, Claude, Gemini. We've also established the architecture so that we can make available to all of our employees, analysts, all the AI, all the agents that we use within software engineering.

We made that available, and we've increased by 50% the number of consultants that we have in the AI for Business practice. We've also seen an increase in the number of projects for our customers throughout 2025.

Most of the group's priority accounts launched AI projects. In France, the number of customers who launched AI projects was up 44%, and one of the most significant supplier listings that we have in this country was won by Sopra Steria.

We don't believe in the theory that AI is going to kill off digital services companies. We see it as an accelerator for Sopra Steria, and because AI will enable a progressive overhaul of our customers' business processes, we think we're in a good position to support them in the long term.

Now for some more highlights for 2025, we've also had geopolitical events, sovereignty, defense, and security stakes. Against this backdrop, Sopra Steria has got a favorable positioning.

Our business is focused on Europe. Our strategic sectors are the public sector, defense, space, security, and aeronautics, and then financial services, and these verticals represent 70% of the group's revenue.

Sopra Steria is positioned as a legitimate partner to address sovereignty matters for European customers, for European countries. We're talking about defense.

The group's revenue in 2025, armies, defense industries, was about €1 billion, 20% of the group's revenue. I'd also like to spend a couple of minutes talking about sovereignty and defense.

We've mentioned the geopolitical situation. We've also seen extraterritoriality issues.

The stakes have raised, but we are not limiting ourselves to data security. We're focused on resilience, technological mastery, and ethics.

We're ensuring continuity in businesses and models. Obviously, you have to take into account cybersecurity risk and data protection, but then you have to think about technological dependency and the choice of algorithms that we're making.

For our customers, understanding their technological dependency issues and helping them orient themselves to alternatives is becoming quite critical, this is a priority as part of their strategic plan. Sopra Steria is extremely legitimate when it comes to these matters.

We are a European group, we're independent, our strategy is exclusively built in Europe for Europe, and we're one of the two exclusive partners for SAP in Europe. The group has also, given its exposition to sensitive sectors like defense and public sector, we've developed specific solutions which address sovereignty matters, hosting sensitive data, for example SecNumCloud, sovereign solutions developed by the group, maintenance, MCO solutions, data security, I've mentioned Datasphere, and then also secure platforms like Bluejay.

More specifically, you've understand that the group has got big ambitions in defense, space, and security. We're a key stakeholder for over 40 years in the domain.

We're one of the top 10 leaders in the industrial and technological defense base in France, and we're also a member of the ITDB in Europe. Our positioning is an industrial player in France specialized in critical systems.

Our customers are the armed forces, government agencies, I've mentioned NATO, industrial players in defense, Thales, Airbus Defence and Space. We can aim for roughly 10% growth over the coming years, and we also intend to invest in this domain with targeted acquisitions.

Just as a reminder, in December we announced that we'd started exclusive negotiations to welcome Starion and Nexeya, two specialists in space and security, and their revenue is around €100 million. Now let's look at the operating performance by reporting unit.

You've got the summary here, and I'll go straight to France. Revenue stood at €2.409 billion, down organically of 1.5%.

Fourth quarter posted growth of 1.6% following nine months with a contraction of 2.5%. This return to growth is explained by a clear improvement in aeronautics, good momentum in the public sector, rebound in growth in defense, space, and security and transport, and also a clear improvement in consulting when compared with the start of the year.

Q4 was stable. Operating profit on business activity was at 9%, at the same level as 2024 despite an increase in social charges which impacted the results in 2025.

In the UK, revenue stood at €909.9 million, down organically by 4.3%. After negative growth of 8.3% over the first nine months, we saw growth in Q4 at 8.8% when compared with 2024 thanks to solid growth in the SSCL and NHS SBS platforms and then a less challenging base for comparison.

Operating margin on business activity stood at 9.6% compared with 12.1% 2024. For an external observer, the changes in business in the UK is not easy to understand given the variations from one quarter to another, let's take a step back and look at the different components that make up the UK business.

We're investing for several years now in BPS, next-gen BPS activity and various growth drivers which will compensate for transformation of the previous generation BPO activities. This is mainly driven by SSCL, which we've got visibility up to 2028, but will we see a progressive erosion obviously generated by agentic AI.

At the same time as this, we've developed other platforms. We expect significant growth.

That applies to NHS SBS. That one went live in October 2025, a new platform which has been commissioned which will enable us to win market share.

For financial services, debt management, we've seen initial success with NS&I. In defense, a domain where we've launched a new secure platform as part of the Decap program, and then or digital services as well, where we've got new generation services based on AI, cloud, ServiceNow, etc.

In total, we're targeting over €1 billion in revenue in the UK based on a lot more in the past this platform logic with a vertical approach for health, financial services, and defense. Now let's move on to Europe.

Revenue was down 2.8% on an organic basis, -3.2% over nine months of the year to hit €1,990.6 million. Spain, Italy, and Switzerland continue to grow, whereas Germany, Scandinavia, and Benelux saw different momentum over the first nine months of the year.

The SFT program generated €162.9 million in 2025 compared with €170.8 million in 2024, the impact of its planned conclusion was 0.2 points on the reporting unit in 2025. For 2026, we're anticipating €45 million in revenue, around €30 million in Q1 and then €5 million per quarter over the remaining three quarters.

To finish, operating profit on business activity was 8.7% compared with 9.1% in 2024. Now let's finish with solutions, which posted revenue of €337.6 million, organic growth of 2.6%.

Human resources solutions was up over 3.2%, property management contracted slightly with a contraction of 1.7%, specialized lending solutions were up over 10%. Operating margin was at 16.7%, so that's up 4.2 points when compared with 2024.

All business units, human resources, property management, and specialized lending contributed to an improvement in profit. We will start immediately, we'll have a look at the income statement.

Revenues at €5,648 million, therefore down 2.2% in terms of total change and organic change. Thus, the operating profit on business activity fared well at €534 million with a margin rate of 9.5%.

Let me tell you that this includes a dilutive aspect of three basis points due to social charges that increased in France and in the UK beginning of 2025. Share-based payment expenses reached €20.5 million, therefore up €3.2 million, due mainly to social charges again that went up.

The amortization of allocated intangible assets decreased significantly to reach €22.8 million due to the fact that we came to the end of the amortization of customer relations after the amalgamation with Sopra Steria. I will go through the other operating income and expenses in a minute.

They represent a bit less than 0.9% of the revenue for the year. Operating profit totaled €441.2 million, therefore a margin rate of 7.8% to be compared with 8% in 2024.

Financial result is made up of the cost of financial debt and other financial income and expenses, was similar to the one we had in 2024. The tax expense is something I'll be discussing in a minute, reached €96.7 million.

Therefore, the consolidated net profit was up 17% to reach €304.2 million, which included in 2024 the net loss of discontinued activities for a total of -€58.3 million. After including the interest that didn't confer any control, €7.4 million, the net attributable profit reached €296 million, therefore a margin rate net which is 5.3% to be compared with 4.3% in 2024.

Now back to the other operating income and expenses. They include mainly a number of acquisition expenses, restructuring costs, and reorganization costs totaling €51.8 million, similar order of magnitude versus 2024, and proceeds of €4.5 million, which include proceeds due to a modification of the pension schemes in the UK.

I wanted to say this not because of the amount, which is rather low, but because it illustrates the fact that the group is actively managing its pension funds in the UK. The other operating income and expenses represent less than 0.9% of consolidated revenue in 2025.

The tax charge totaled €96.7 million, therefore an effective tax rate of 24%. The normative rate excluding exceptional contributions of France is assessed at 25% more or less in France for 2025, and for 2026, we expect a 27% rate that includes the exceptional level in France that will be continued occasionally.

Now back to the cash generation. The free cash flow was solid and higher than the bracket and numbers given at the end of the first half of 2025 thanks to a good cash performance during the second half of the year.

It reached €340.9 million, therefore 6% of our revenue. EBITDA contracted by more or less €70 million.

The difference with the decrease of €30 million of operating profit on business activity is due to a change in the net reversals of provisions, and almost all of those are offset by the recognition of operating expenses during the year. As we expected at the beginning of the year, the WCR change led to a cash consumption in 2025 with the progressive stop of the SFT program that we announced.

This being said, the end of the year was rather good, better than we thought at the end of summer. Excluding SFT, the DSO at the end of December is to be compared to the one we had at 2024, that is 45 days, which is a very good performance.

What we expect is a comparable level for 2026. As to non-recurring items, we have to factor them in in 2026 as there are disbursements due to taxes and occasional taxes that were up in France and Norway and restructuring costs that will be higher in 2026 because we're going to stop the SFT program.

These one-off impacts will be impacting the free cash flow for the first half, and therefore, it'll be more seasonally marked. Therefore, that's why we expect for 2026 a free cash flow that'll be 5% of our revenue.

The net financial debt was at €246.7 million, therefore down more than 35% compared to the end of December 2024. This sharp reduction in the debt is to be explained thanks to the robustness of free cash flow, which is more than offset the amount allocated to the change in scope, dividends, and share buyback.

I must say that the share buyback totaled, as you can see, €63.7 million, and they include €43.5 million of disbursements which was due to the fact that at the end of January 2025, we bought €150 million of shares announced in October 2024. The balance sheet is even more solid in 2025.

The net financial debt at the end of the year represented 11.5% of equity and 0.4 times EBITDA pro forma numbers for 2025 before IFRS 16 impact. Then we had questions on the balance sheet once we reported for the first half.

I must say two things right now. First, the group has not had in 2025 or the previous years to consider non-deconsolidating receivables assignments.

As you can see in the simplified balance sheet which is an annex to this presentation is that the line called receivables and linked lines including the bills to be made reached €1,290 million, therefore an amount which is not changed more or less since 2024, which represents 22.8% of our total revenue, which means the average level that we had seen over the past seven years. Now, as far as financing is concerned, the group still has comfortable financing with lines that we can use for a total amount of €2 billion, more or less two-thirds were available as of the 31st of December 2025.

Maturity will go from July 2026 to 2029. That's for the numbers for 2025.

Now I'll hand over again to Rajesh, who is going to be talking us through the annual objectives.

Thank you Etienne. The 2025 results and particular return to the growth in Q4 constitute solid foundations to attack 2026 with confidence.

The group has been managed between October 2025 and February 2026 with an approach based on continuity and a high-quality transition team. The budget process was conducted seriously, thoroughly, with a bottom-up approach involving all countries and all business lines.

The goals or the objectives, the result of this are coherent, they're realistic, and they've been approved by the Board of Directors. For 2026, we are targeting organic growth in revenue between 1% and 2%.

This objective includes a non-recurring negative impact of around 2% arising from the planned conclusion of the SFT program, this is a one-off limited to 2026. Without SFT, the organic growth target would be between +3% and +4%.

This momentum is based on a return to growth in nearly all of our geographies, and we've got the solid outlook in financial services, defense, space, aeronautics, and public sector, in particular in France. Operating margin on business activity at least 9.5%, a slight improvement when compared with 2025.

Free cash flow of around 5% of revenue. These objectives reflect a progressive recovery trajectory with discipline and under control.

They reflect both the current market context and our willingness to progressively improve our operational performance. I would like to highlight that 2026 will also be a year of strategic works, more in-depth strategic works.

We will carry on reinforcing our positioning in positive domains like next-gen technology, AI, sovereignty, and defense while continuing our efforts to improve operational excellence. Now let's open the Q&A session, and Etienne will be your main speaker for any financial items, but for me, I'll be delighted to start meeting you in the coming weeks and share our vision and the group's ambitions.

If you'd like to ask a question, please dial #5 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please dial #6.

The first question comes from Nicolas David from Oddo. Your line is open, over to you.

Good morning Rajesh, good morning Etienne, and congratulations from me. I've got three questions.

The first, could you give us a little bit more color on Q1, compare the growth that you had with Q4? What's changing, what are the variables here?

We're seeing strong momentum in public sector in Q4 in France. Was this exceptional, or has this been built into the budget, or will we see this in Q1?

Then with SFT in Q1, that shouldn't decline, but how does that stand when compared with Q4, which generated growth? Could we have a little bit more information so that we can understand organic growth?

Second question on the guidance for margin. At the bottom of the range, 9.5%, what would drive you towards the bottom of the range?

Obviously, you've had a return to growth, reduction of the bench, and then we've got the SFT that wasn't necessarily very profitable, these are positive things when it comes to margin. Then the UK had a lower margin in 2025, will we see an improvement in margin in the UK?

Then the last question on the UK as well. Thank you very much for the details on strategy.

Should we understand that there's a risk of phasing or erosion of BPS? Is that going to come before the growth drivers kick in, or will that be at the same time?

Are we going to have a bit of a dip in growth in the UK at the start of the phase for 2026 to 2029? Thank you for your questions Nicolas.

I'll start with the first one on Q1 2026. How is this reflected when we compare with how we end the year and how we're starting the year?

We've closed the month of January. I'm not going to give you the figures, but we've got them, we obviously refined our forecast, and this confirms the budget approach.

The start of the year is aligned with our forecast. Then in terms of the guidance in Q1, we've got similar figures to the annual guidance.

The pace in Q1 is comparable with what we've indicated for the full-year guidance. Now for the public sector in France, yes, it got off to a difficult start or a slow start.

It finished the year better than what it started, the end of 2025 was more dynamic. I think that even if this year the budget came a little bit late, administrations are kind of used to this way of working, if I may say.

This year in 2026, the budget was voted late, but that was kind of expected, and it's going to be managed. We're less concerned than what we were at the start of last year when it comes to the start given the fact that the budget wasn't voted on the 31st of December.

Now for the next question on margin. The guidance isn't 9.5%, it's at least 9.5%, it's not quite the same thing.

Rajesh just said it, we're expecting a slight improvement in margin. We're at the start of the year now.

The environment around us is quite unstable, public sector, there's a lot going on around us, and we're comfortable with this guidance for the time being. For the UK, the question is on the outlook, the three to four-year outlook.

I said it earlier with regards to traditional BPO activity, we've got visibility up until 2028. These are long-term contracts.

If they were to transition, then that transition would take several years. We're not going to have a sudden stop or sudden loss in revenue.

We've got quite a good level of visibility through to 2028. Thanks.

Just on margin, 9.5%, that's to be taken into account, but so if there's any bad surprises or anything that impacts the top line, how is that taken into account? Is there any pressure on margins which could compensate for the positive factors like the bench that's going down or a favorable calendar effect?

There's a slight impact from social charges, 30 basis points. It's not nothing.

On the operating margin on business profit, the impact was over six, it's a marginal impact, but it is known. That has been integrated into the guidance.

Then for BPS, good visibility, but does this integrate deflation or We need to look at the broad situation in the UK. There's things impacting BPO.

Obviously, this is not new to us. We've been doing this for over 10 years.

We're seeking productivity gains, but we are obviously want to win market share and ramp up the volumes. I indicated growth for NHS.

We'll have growth here. We've got this new platform which we've already announced in Q3 for NHS SBS.

That went live in October. It was successful, and we're expecting growth, new hospitals, new trusts who will be joining the business.

Then for the rest, former SSCL activity, we've got the transformation to conduct. We want to make gains, that is our goal, integrate new technologies, and then obviously the question is how we share these gains with the customers, but we deliver outputs.

We're not working on a time and materials basis. We deliver services that will benefit our customer, we're working to improve our productivity.

Agentic AI is a way of making productivity gains, and it's up to us to be good and demonstrate this, sell more value to our customers.

Crystal clear. Thank you.

Now back to SFT for Q4. I had the impression that their contribution was positive for Q4 2025.

Could you confirm this please, and then I'm done. Yes, certainly.

We've given you the exact numbers for SFT. There's a table on that with the exact contribution during 2025, and I even gave you the breakdown per quarter in 2026.

Now back to 2025. At the end of the year, that is Q4, slight growth even though there's a degrowth if you look at the whole year, and then there's going to be a marked decrease during Q1 and mainly starting as of Q2 2026, that is.

Next question from Michael Briest, UBS. Your line's open, please go ahead.

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Thank you for these questions. Now as far as restructuring is concerned, if it's for 2025, I gave you the numbers before.

That is the level is €50 million, more or less what we had in 2024. Now for 2026, now you probably remember that the SFT business will have to go through major restructuring during the first half, and therefore, we think that the total expenses for restructuring will be going up in 2026 in a way in terms of the charges, but there's no massive plan.

I was thinking about what other players said in the same industry. Now the thing for us is to go back to growth and hiring people, recruitment that is.

Back to growth and recruitment, and by the way in France, we talked about our recruitment objective not long ago, a number of weeks ago, that's quite ambitious for 2026. Now the second question, that's the mid-term objectives.

Again, we'd like to repeat the mid-term objectives. There's no reason to change them.

Rajesh talked you through these objectives. These are the ones that we mentioned two years ago during the CMD.

The third question had to do with capital allocation, more specifically the share buybacks. That's true, at the beginning of last year, we continued with the €150 million target that we announced in October 2024, and I'm certain that the Board of Directors is always asking themselves this question.

This, from the technical point of view, is something that we can use. We have all the authorizations to do that.

That's all I can say about the share buyback program. The next question, Derric Marcon from Bernstein.

Your line's open, please go ahead. Good morning gentlemen.

I have several questions to ask. Number one, your guidance range, there's a one-point difference between the lower part and the upper part of the bracket, quite unusual.

In the past, you had more safety buffers, if I can say, a bigger margin. Does that mean that at the beginning of 2026, your visibility is better than it was the case before?

I suppose yes if you look at 2025, but what about the years before 2025? Could you give us more color about the reasons why you would reach the upper part of the bracket?

What are the main assumptions that explain the difference between the lowest part and the upper part of the bracket? Now the second question, the UK, back to what Nicolas said, that is your objective is €1 billion for 2029.

Now I'd like to know more about the underlying assumptions that you have. Have you factored in, for instance, the renewal of SSCL?

If yes, what's the scope? What's the size that we're looking at?

Could we know more about your mix, that is the €1 billion for 2029 between the new platform, the traditional BPO, the different business lines? To make comparisons with the private sector so that we'll better understand the setup of this business in the UK in 2029 versus this snapshot that we had for 2025?

Thirdly, the €1 billion target in the UK, could we perhaps have an idea of the profit level that you expect by that time in the UK? Now there's a decrease in 2025 compared to 2024.

Could it be possible to go back to the 12% that we had by that time because you're making investments? Will these investments continue, or will the margin be capped?

Thank you very much for these questions. Now the first question is the guidance for our revenue.

That's true, it's between 1% and 2%, and it takes into account, as Rajesh said, that there's a negative impact, which is two points negative impact because we have come to the end of SFT. If you calculate the normative guidance, it would be between 3% and 4%.

As we speak, well, the year's just started, and Nicolas David asked the question before, we have confidence in our guidance. It's different from the previous years when we had uncertainties about the markets and how they would evolve.

The market players were looking for a tipping point, a turnaround. There we are, we have it.

We're back to growth during the fourth quarter, we have better visibility on our growth. Now the SFT topic is something that we fully comprehend.

We had some uncertainties in the past on that, we trust that the guidance now could be between 1% and 2%. Now the second question has to do with the UK.

We're not going to give you the mix breakdown for 2029. Things can happen.

There's the renewal of contracts. I gave you the main trends per business line, and our ambition is to grow our revenue in the UK in 2029.

The UK margin, now the margin is accretive for the group today. It'll continue to be accretive, and it'll be more than 10% in any case.

Okay Etienne, but you said €1 billion in 2029, and I suppose that the working assumption is that SSCL will be continued. Maybe there's going to be deflation not really totally offset by the volumes, but you're not going to lose €300, €400 million connected to SSCL by 2029.

No, of course. We're not going to lose €300, €400 million regardless of the contracts we have in 2029 to meet the objective.

Now some contracts will end, others will start. We're not making those detailed forecasts.

It's a general guidance by business domain or by business. Thank you very much.

Next question, Thomas Courtieux, BNP Paribas. Your line's open, please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

I have a couple of questions to ask. I'll start with aeronautics and defense.

You've said that there's a two-digit growth for aeronautics in Q4. That's good news, and I was wondering could we extrapolate on these numbers for aeronautics and for the defense business in 2026?

Is that something that you've included in your guidance, and what you have in your guidance for the year? Second question, Belgium.

Beginning of February, you talked about this contract, the e-police contract, with press articles that were released because the contract was to come to an end at the end of 2025 with probably the Belgian public sector because they're quite reluctant to pay, I'd say. Therefore, did you have to set aside provisions in 2025 for that?

Have you thought about any provisions in your guidance for 2026 on that contract? Since you're saying back to growth, now we're talking about Belgium in 2026, aren't we?

Third question about the UK. Now what you're saying is that during Q1, we enjoyed growth that was more or less in line with the annual guidance even though the comparison basis is simple in the UK.

Does that mean that if we have 9% organic growth in Q4, we can't extrapolate this in Q1 2026, therefore that would mean a slowdown to be expected? My question is why would there be such a slowdown?

My final question is about specialized credit. You've said specialized credits were up 10% for Q4.

I was wondering why. Is it a license with a client that was signed in Q4, or is there an underlying trend that is improving for that business line?

Thank you very much. Aeronautics and defense, that's true.

We're back to a positive year, very positive year for aeronautics. For 2026, we expect 5% or 10% growth, in between 5% and 10%.

Second question, Belgium. Our subsidiary Sopra Steria Belgium communicated, reported on the 5th of February.

There's a press release that's really crystal clear on that, and we have no danger as far as the balance sheet is concerned, no amounts were unpaid. We were paid by the police for the projects that we've delivered on that project for which there was not much in terms of production in 2025.

No problem with the balance sheet, and no need to set aside provisions on the balance sheet. Now 2026 in Belgium.

That's true, we're going to be back to growth at the end of the year. This is a region or country where the market was complicated in 2025, and the main managers have changed in Belgium, there's a different momentum, and therefore, we're going to grow again in Belgium during the second half of 2026.

The third question was about the UK, and could you repeat your question? Certainly.

I was thinking Q4 was really good in the UK. Extrapolating from the Q4 to Q1.

No, no, no. My answer is no.

We're not going to have 8.8%, no, no. If that's what you were thinking about, but perhaps some type of growth.

We can't extrapolate from the Q4 number. As I said before, if you look quarter-by-quarter revenues, it's difficult to understand this in the UK, don't take this number.

You shouldn't have done that by the way for Q3 either. Then the specialized credits.

I agree with you, that's a business that's rather small, rather minimal. It doesn't really weigh much in terms of the solutions reporting unit.

We sell licenses mainly at the end of the year, that's the reason, but the business is growing. It wasn't the case over the past years, and therefore the margins are restored, which is good news.

my third question just to if we take a step back, think about where you stand with regards to the two major acquisitions, CS Group and Ordina. Think about the margin compared with the initial targets.

Thank you Laurent. SFT, we've given a precise phasing for 2026: €30 million in the first quarter and then €5 million per quarter for Q2, Q3, Q4.

Normally you've got all of the information you need to be able to restate the figures excluding SFT so you can establish normative growth. For the second question on EBITDA, yes, obviously there's a difference of €40 million between the drop in operating profit on business activity and the drop.

We've got net provisions. Obviously, we recover provisions every year, and these are consumed.

These €40 million has got two blocks. We've got €40 million in operating expenses, these are operating provisions, and then 19 for tax expenses disbursed over the year.

That's what the difference is. We're talking about previous litigation or things that have been recovered last year.

Then M&A, past M&A. Ordina for Sopra CS Group, and we've got a positive commercial momentum.

I reminded you of our positioning, which is highly relevant today in various sector domains, C2, command and control, anti-drone, security in Europe. From a commercial point of view, I think we've got an advantageous positioning today, and then in terms of profitability, we're on the trajectory that we established.

We've made progress this year. It's not quite at normative levels, but not far off.

Now for Ordina, and then all the acquisitions we made in the Benelux, we had Ordina, which was present in the Netherlands and then in Belgium. We've also acquired Tobania in Belgium, we tripled the size of our footprint in Belgium.

The two markets, because obviously Belgium on one side and then the rest on the other. In terms of growth, we're anticipating for these two markets in 2026, we're expecting to see progress.

Progress in terms of growth, we've seen that the situation is progressively improving in Belgium. The Netherlands, which was a little bit tougher last year because that's a smaller entity for us, the number one priority is commercial momentum.

We've got new management which is now in place since Q3 in the two geographies, the Belux and the Netherlands. We've planned to simplify the organization by getting rid of the Benelux layer that was inherited from Ordina, and that came on top of the two geographies.

I think we are in marching order now. We've got motivated teams.

We're ready to move forward, and we'll see growth whether it be in terms of growth or margin as of 2026. So 2 and 3 very clear.

Question 1, you didn't really answer my question because €25 million less over half year, that's a 1.5 point impact on organic growth. We just want to be sure that we're not going to have a deceleration of growth because of SFT.

That we don't give growth guidance quarter by quarter. We gave the details of SFT because there was a significant impact from one quarter to another, but I will say that Q1 is getting off to a start which is aligned with our forecasts.

We're going to take one last question now.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

First one for Rajesh, could you talk about, since you've joined the company, some of your key observations you've made, and maybe what are your main priorities as you go through the next few months in terms of strategy or structure? Second question on AI, you mentioned some good momentum in terms of clients who are using or signing up for AI projects.

Can you just talk about what percentage of bookings or revenues is linked to Gen AI right now, and on those, how are you seeing pricing evolving as well as is there any change related to that? Finally on the UK, could you just clarify when you talk about the legacy BPS erosion, is that driven by just regular price and changes, or is it anything more specific to AI on that?

For me, the priority in the first weeks is obviously to carry on deepening my understanding of the group. It's a group with a lot of history, a strong culture, lots of practices which are deep-rooted in its history, firstly, I want to understand how the group works operationally, meet the teams, meet the customers, meet the partners.

The works that I've started to look at above all is how can we supplement integration procedures for acquisitions that we've already announced, we've spoken about CS, but also the activity in Belgium. How can we simplify the organization to be more present and more effective to leverage the growth expected in the domains that we've mentioned: defense, security, airline, etc.?

For me, those are the two priorities. Then talking about AI today, we've published the figures that we track, wins of new customers, but we can't structurally quantify all projects linked to AI.

This is something we're going to work on. It's important for us obviously with the momentum that we're seeing today, but today we can't currently communicate on the bookings linked to AI, but what we do observe is that most contracts do integrate in a AI component.

AI, obviously there's two dimensions here. We've got use of AI internally, AI improving productivity, tests, documentation, support functions, etc., and this is something that we're industrializing at group level.

Then part of the gains will come from the fact that we boost our competitiveness. We've got AI for our customers.

AI doesn't reduce complexity, it increases it, it creates additional demand. We have to secure everything, data governance.

We can be a systems integrator, stakeholder for critical systems, and this is our playing field, and this is where we see opportunities. Then for the third point, I'll hand that back to Etienne perhaps.

For the UK, linked to the question on AI, yeah, BPO, BPS services must be integrated into the future for us, for our customers. We have to integrate AI possibilities, agentic AI as well.

We're working on that to bring value to our customers, and BPS services are their outputs. We're not selling AI, we're not selling technology, we're selling services and results.

We want to try and increase this value. It's up to us to provide new services, and we think that's an opportunity for us providing that we can master this technology and provide the right solutions for our customers.

Understood, thank you.