Thank you and just on time. Welcome everyone to this first quarter 2026 report from Coface.

You will have seen the numbers. We are reporting net income close to €54 million, down from last year, but I would call this a good quarter in economic environment which is obviously not easy.

The turnover of €465 million is stable at constant FX and perimeter, and then there's a few moving parts inside that. You see that insurance revenue is down 1.3%.

That's really driven by, I would say, slow economy and client activity being positive, but low and lower than historic average. The operating metrics of the business, as you will see later, remain really strong with retention close to our record, pricing still negative, but improving, and I think that's also linked to the environment.

At the same time, we see services growing close to 20% with business information on a consolidated basis growing 12% organically and almost 18% on a reported basis with the acquisition that we made last year. Debt collection strong at almost 32%, factoring positive after a few quarters of actually flat or negative.

When you look at the total perimeter growth, including those businesses that are not consolidated, you see 15% organic for BI and 40% for debt collection, strong revenue growth on services. I think the strong point I think of the quarter is the net loss ratio standing at 37.6%, bringing the net combined ratio to 70%.

You'll see really a very flat and benign story on the loss side. The net cost ratio is up 3 points to 32.5%.

We are continuing our investments, I've been saying this now for a couple years, in line with our Power the Core plan. We continue to move and to move forward.

We've appointed a new COO for strategic partnerships. This is Kasia Kompowska who was running Northern Europe.

She's being replaced by the head of sales for that region, Christian Stoffel, who has been with us for a number of years and has been leading both our factoring business and then been the sales leader for that region. Then we have a succession of further changes down the chain, all internal, and I think it shows that we continue to move and we have strong talent.

Net income close to €54 million. Return on average tangible equity stands at 11%, which is the range that we had set ourselves through the cycle.

Clearly the economy is, as I said, and it's pretty obvious, not very supportive. We added a page, as we very often do on page 5 to talk about Power the Core.

We are really halfway through the plan. We issued the plan two years ago.

If you remember, this is all about data, connectivity, and technology. This is about building an ecosystem that really links clients, partners, distributors, building solutions around the credit space, and investing in digital tools, automation, and artificial intelligence-driven solutions, which are now enabled by the incredible surge in AI that we're seeing.

We are executing on that plan, and it requires investment, and we're making significant progress and significant investments. I think it's given us a very unique and differentiated platform at a limited cost because as I've explained through the last couple of years, we're doing this at pretty much a zero impact on the P&L.

The external revenues we generate from this activity are actually allowing us to fund the services growth and also some of these benefits percolate into the insurance business. What's different I would say from what we planned when we launched the plan is that the economy's tougher.

Clearly there's been tariffs, there's been deglobalization, there's the events in the Gulf, and the war in the Middle East, shock in energy. I think you're starting to see some of the impacts of that.

The level of insolvencies stands at a record for the last 13 years or so, and continues to grow in advanced economies. Geopolitical headwinds, I don't think I need to explain the details.

That's one side, the economy is not very supportive. The other thing that's happening I think is the advance of AI and the huge changes we're seeing in the technology space, with AI now starting to impact all of the different areas of frankly a wide array of businesses.

As I step back and look, two years back, I think we had the right orientation. I think we have the right strategy.

It's just the environment is on one hand a little bit tougher on the economy and also accelerating on the digital space, which certainly reinforces our view that we should continue to invest and differentiate. To me it's pretty clear.

I've laid on the right-hand side of the chart here the revenues we generate from services, which is business information and debt collection, and you see that it's been growing about 20% a year for the last two years and is still growing about 20% this quarter. When you look at it on an annualized basis, we're over €100 million now of revenues, which is starting to be meaningful for us.

The other thing I would say is that the total FTEs allocated to these businesses now is over 1,000 people. For Coface, it's really material.

It gives us technical capabilities, intelligence, and knowledge that we didn't have. Again, I think it explains part of the performance that you're seeing here today.

On page 7, the usual pages, and I'm going to go relatively quickly through these pages because, and these numbers, first of all, they're always presented in the same way, and then a lot of these I've already discussed. You see insurance revenue down 1.3, other revenues, which includes factoring and services, up 9.2, and I've already mentioned that double-digit growth in both business information and third-party debt collection.

The one thing I want to point out on this page 7 is the performance on insurance fees, which are the fees we charge our clients. You see that we're at 13.9%, which I think is our record so far.

Of course, part of this is because the premiums are lower, but also I think the fees are up 2.1%, and these are services that we charge to our clients inside our insurance contracts. To me, what it means is that the services that we are proposing and we are offering are being taken up by clients and we're able to price them, and I think that's a recognition of the service side of this business that we've been driving both on the insurance side and on selling services independently.

On next page 8, you're very accustomed to these charts. Nothing really new here except a couple things.

Western Europe, Northern Europe, Central Europe, I think are showing very low growth. This is really driven by a slow economy and a slowing economy I would say, even further than we had in 2025.

Obviously energy shock and tariffs and all of the change in globalization is impacting Europe clearly. The new thing here is that Med and Africa, which used to grow historically at a 4% to 5% range, is now not growing anymore.

Obviously, that contains the Gulf area and the Middle East, which is impacted, but also Southern Europe, and we're seeing slower growth there. The other thing news on this page from the prior quarters is the slowdown in emerging markets.

Latin America and Asia-Pacific had higher growth, Latin America came from double-digit growth place to as you see flat or slightly negative. This is client activity, which is slowing down, and clearly emerging markets are impacted by what's happening in the economy and in geopolitics, more probably or quicker because a lot of these countries are buying products that are now more expensive or in less supply.

If you go to page 9, I think that's an important page because it highlights the operational performance of the business, and there's some good news here actually. The new production is at a record level in the last 5 years.

You can see that the investments we're making in distribution, etc., are actually bearing fruit and continuing to drive some growth. The retention rate at the first quarter, 94.8, is very close to the records we've ever had in this business.

The pricing is still negative, the competition in the market continues to be very high, there's a lot of capital that's looking for a home and a place to be invested, but at the same time, you see that pricing, while being negative, is not as negative as it was in the prior years. There is demand in the market, and I think the execution on that front from Coface is actually good.

Then the volume effect remains very, very subdued. You can see that the Q1 at 0.7 is, of course, positive, but one of the slowest years that we've had historically.

Good operational performance from the business. I will then go to page 10 to talk about losses, and you see here we had a good quarter with loss ratio before reinsurance, including claims handling expenses, at 36.3%, comparing favorably to the first quarter of 2025 and most of the quarters in the prior year.

A few comments here. Claims are rising in number, and that's consistent with what I say about insolvencies, which are reaching a very high level across the majority of the economies around the world.

At the same time, we're not seeing severity rise at the same level, and that's good news. It's also a tribute to the work that the teams in Coface are doing to monitor the events and remain very close to the risk.

You see at the bottom that we haven't changed our reserving methodology, we still open the new vintage at a high level, 80%, and then we still see some very nice reserve throwbacks from the prior vintages, which continue to perform. I would say really a benign for Coface risk story here.

I will skip page 11, which compares entire years '23, '24, '25 with just the first quarter of 2026 to go to page 12, which describes the last five quarters. I think that's probably an easier way to look at the same numbers.

You see here that I really don't have much to report. Because things are extremely stable, whether it is the large, more stable markets at the bottom, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Central Europe, and Med and Africa, or even the, I would say the more volatile smaller places, North America, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific.

Really not much to say. The risk is continuing to be well under control.

I will spend some time now on page 13, which talks about costs, and we've had this discussion now for several quarters, that post the COVID shock, we have embarked inflation in our cost structure, and at the same time, we are seeing no more inflation in client activity, and that's creating headwind for us. You see that again this quarter, but at a lesser level, I would say, than prior.

The increase in costs from Q1 '25 to Q1 '26 is 5%. We had seen higher numbers I think in the prior quarters, and you see the cost ratio going up, driven by this difference in inflation between costs and premiums, that's 1.6 points, and continued investments that we make deliberately both in insurance and in services that drives another 1.8% cost ratio up.

At the same time, we're getting some of this back through the increase in sales and services, and that's 1.2 points, which drives the cost ratio for the quarter at 35.2%. I would say continuation of the story, no surprise, deliberate investments, and I think made even more critical by the change in the environment that I described before, i.e., more risk, we need to stay closer and make sure we invest the money that's going to allow us to keep the risk under control, and on the other side, developing new solutions, new ecosystems, and investing in the services side of the business, which so far has been a bottom-up story that is now €100 million annualized.

With that, I'm going to pass it on to Phalla, who's going to take us through the rest of the presentation.

Good evening, all. We are now on page 14 on the reinsurance page.

I will start with the reinsurance results. You can see that we are passing on €25 million before tax to our reinsurers.

This is plus 24% compared to last year, driven by the fact that the premium cession rate has slightly increased, and the reinsurers, following the fortune, are benefiting from the decrease on the claims ratio as the claims cession rate has decreased from 26% to 25%. This leads us to a net combined ratio at 70% on page 15.

You can see that we're moving up 1.4 with the net loss ratio decreasing and the net cost ratio increasing, following what Xavier has described in terms of investment that we have made in our business. If we move to page 16, which is the financial portfolio, the mark-to-market value is at €3 billion 260 million.

You can see that in terms of asset allocation, 15% is now holding on cash and liquid assets as we are going to pay almost €190 million of dividend by the end of the month. Otherwise, I think that asset allocation has not changed much.

If we move to the right-hand side, which is the investment income, the P&L side of the revenue of our investment portfolio, in terms of recurring revenue, the accounting yield is pretty much stabilized. Of course, we're not seeing anymore interest rate increase, and it's stable at 0.8, moving from €24.9 million to €25.7 million.

I would have the same comment on the FX. I think you can see the FX line on the investment income at 0.3 in Q1 '26.

This is made of a loss which is -€4.6 million related to hyperinflation booking on Turkey, and this is compensated, and more than compensated, with the FX gains that we have on investment portfolio, 4.9, and as usual on the liability side, which is what you see on the line insurance finance expenses, -15.8, this FX gain is compensated, or it has been offset on the liability side as in the 15.8 of IFE, it includes €5.3 million of FX loss. Net investment income net of IFE from one quarter to another, we have increased the amount by €300k.

This leads us to net income, page 17. The way that you look at that, of course, the net earned premium is down 4.4%.

This is for them one of the key drivers on the revenues decrease, and this leads us to a net income decreased by 13%. Net book value €15.1, tangible book value €13.3.

I think we are trading today around €16, still slightly below €16. We're now moving on page 18, return on average tangible equity.

IFRS equity is moving from €2.2 billion to almost stable as we accounted for the income of the period, and then we have the mark-to-market on our investment portfolio that goes to equity. Slight increase at the end of the day, and then return on average tangible equity moving from 11.4 to 11, of course, we have increased slightly the equity and we have the net return that has decreased compared to last year.

Xavier?

Just to wrap it up and then we will have the usual Q&A session. I think it's a good quarter in what I would describe as a soft economy.

Clearly, you're starting to see some of the geopolitics percolate into the economy. Companies are hesitant to invest.

There's obviously a lot of increase in commodity prices, but also much less volume, etc., etc. I would say the whole credit insurance market or industry is affected by this, and we are too.

Our services strategy is paying off. We're seeing almost 20% growth in that.

The combined ratio is holding up very well in a world where insolvencies are, I would say, at a record in the last 13 or more years. The RoATE at 11% is in line with the through-the-cycle targets, even though we're I think in the slowest-growth economy we've seen in very, very long time.

Clearly, we don't like the environment, but business continues to perform. We are investing despite this uncertainty, we're investing along the lines we've described for Power the Core.

We know that I think it's the right strategy. We are building technology and skills and an ecosystem and solutions that are valued by clients.

We know that the data and AI revolution supports the choices we've made. We didn't think it would go as fast as it does, quite frankly, and so it only reinforces our conviction that we need to continue to invest, because I think slowing down in this world would be actually probably more dangerous than taking the risk of investing and not getting everything right.

I think for me, this is important, and we're right in line with things we said and the business continues to perform. With that, I think we will open it up for questions.

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

I just had two. The one is what are insurance services?

You've got all the different, your business information, the debt collection, but I just wondered what is insurance service, which is different from that? Then the other question is, if commodity prices are increasing, if US CPI is kind of edging up a little bit, when do you think we'll see the benefit in your revenues?

Thank you.

All right. The insured services are things we do on behalf of our client inside the insurance contract.

Like if they ask us for a new limit, or if they ask us for help on collections or stuff like this, we will do that inside the insurance contract, right? It's a different source of revenues from the contracts we have which do not include insurance, but only services, right, standalone.

The debt collection appears as both, right?

Yes, it appears on both sides. Clearly.

I would say the bulk of this pertains to management of credit lines probably. The monitoring of portfolios and stuff like this.

Your second question was about inflation. We're entering a world, I think it's pretty clear that we're entering a world with lower growth, lower, I would say, effective growth, and then we have more inflation, and we're starting to see it.

You saw the numbers just released in the US. It's not clear that one's going to compensate for the other.

We're getting closer to a stagflation situation where the combination is the combination of actual growth of the economy plus the inflation. I think right now the combination is not favorable.

I think that's basically what you're seeing. It's hard to say where it goes because I think you have a first effect on commodity prices, you have a second effect on businesses that produce from these commodities that are going to be seeing increasing costs, and they're going to try to pass on those increased costs to businesses.

Then the question is how is that going to affect demand? Then you have central banks that are going to say, "Wait, inflation's coming back, what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to raise interest rates?" which is going to further, potentially, if that happens, and it might, reduce the demand further.

This is a process that's going to take some months, depends how long the Gulf crisis lasts, but I think elevated commodity prices, that's going to last a while. It's not going to return to normal anytime soon.

If it lasts for several more months, the bulk of the impact will be '27. That's really the issue here.

Brilliant. Thank you.

Yes. Hi.

Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question.

I have three questions if I may. The first one is regarding to this appointment of a new COO strategic partnerships.

Can you please elaborate a little bit what you are targeting in terms of or what is behind, I would say, strategic partnerships and the potential of growth coming from those partnerships? I have a second question.

You mentioned that you still need to invest into data, AI, and so on. Does it mean that you plan maybe to revisit the profitability target you had for your BI business in 2027 in order to capture opportunity and to continue to invest on technology?

Or is it maybe too early for you to have a view on next year contribution from this business unit? I have a third question if I may, regarding loss ratio per geographical area.

You have a negative loss ratio in LatAm in Q1. I know that LatAm is small part of your business, and you also had a negative loss ratio by the way in Q3 last year, but it's a bit unusual.

Is there anything special which explains this negative loss ratio in Q1? Thank you.

I'll start with that one. This is 4% of our business divided by 1 quarter.

It's very small number. A lot of the business we write in Latin America are actually linked to international contracts, and we take risk in Latin America that are disproportionate to the premiums we get in Latin America because these are global contracts, right?

Whenever you have one file that moves up or down, it throws off either a high loss ratio or it can even become negative when we recover and we release the reserve. There's really not that much more to say.

It's just the mechanics of running a very small business inside a larger group. On the COO partnerships strategy, this is a recognition that for a firm like us, which is now developing services on top of credit insurance and other things, these services can become solution and TCI, by the way, can become solutions for a broader set of partners out there.

We have had longstanding partnerships in Europe, or in other parts of the world, with large institutions, could be financial institutions, could be technology, could be anything. I think it's a way for us to make our offering relevant to a broader set of clients that we will never be able to reach ourselves directly, because we just don't have the manpower or the reach or the brand or whatever it is.

There's only 5,000 people in Coface covering the world. If you compare that to the FTEs of the services industry, it's miniscule, right?

That's the idea here. We're making that a group position because I think it is something that matters and that we should pay attention to.

In terms of data and AI, I've basically described what we've done over the last few years, right? We have been investing from scratch basically to create the whole data and services area, which I just described during the prior discussion.

It's been growing nicely, and it requires investments, obviously, and these investments are benefiting, obviously, the services business, but also directly and indirectly the insurance business, because every time we develop a new score, we have a data lab, we have new solutions, we have more connectivity, it's increased service, increased predictability for the insurance business, etc., etc. I think the way things are evolving, I see the need to continue to invest.

It's very clear. I think AI was probably on the charts, but the rhythm at which it is coming at us is a surprise, I think, for most businesses around the world, including for us.

It's working. We need to continue to invest.

We've ran it so far very close to the neutral line. We make a little bit of money or we lose a little bit of money, and that's been what I've been saying now for several years, it's not changing.

There's a natural rhythm at which we can invest efficiently or smartly, and there's a natural rhythm at which the business can grow efficiently and smartly. Some of this will be probably impacted by what's happening in the Gulf, because none of this is completely immune to the geopolitics either, it's a bit hard, as you say, to know exactly where this is going.

The only thing I can tell you is the business has been, overall, if you take the overall Coface performance, it's been, I would say, above our targets for the last few years. I know that we need to continue to invest.

I think this is a question that we'll have to look at. From a business need standpoint, I think there's potential for growth and there's need for investment.

Okay. Thank you very much.

On

I think that's I think that we're there that were These were your three questions, right?

Yes. Thank you.

Yes, good evening. Two questions from my side.

I would like you to come back on slide 7 because I did not really understood why you were so happy regarding insurance-related fees because, when we look at figures, it's 51 and 51, it's very slight increase. If you could come back on the fact that you're happy with these figures, it was not very clear for me.

Second question, a more structural one, it's about your combined ratio, which is obviously very good this quarter, and particularly if you compare quarter-on-quarter and not year-on-year. Of course, I guess that kind of seasonality and also effect in cost ratio, but I would like to know if you feel that your performance is going to be structurally better that what you previously anticipated in your previous comments in terms of cautious stance, or if you think that we are going to have an increase in the combined ratio as we have seen last year in Q2, Q3, and Q4 compared to Q1 in 2025.

Thank you very much.

That's a tough one. Let me first address the fees, the insurance-related fees to the insurance premiums ratio, right?

It's 51 to 51, we're saying in the document that the fees grew 2%. At the same time, we're saying that the premiums shrank by 4%.

That's what I'm happy about. It means that within the insurance contract, the premiums are driven by the activity of our clients.

Once you sign the deal, we bill them a percentage of their turnover. If their turnover grows, our premiums grow.

If their turnover doesn't grow or shrinks, our premiums shrink, right? That's one thing, that's just mechanics about this.

On the other hand, the fees we charge are relative to the management of their portfolios, and they're accessing some of the services we provide within these contracts, and I think that's holding up. I don't know if that clarifies for you.

Yes. Okay.

I understand. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. The second thing on the quarterly results, there's always some seasonality here, obviously, because all the billings and the costs and expenses and the reserving and all that, it doesn't happen completely in a linear manner through the year.

There is some seasonality. Your question is also what's going to happen in next few quarters.

We never make forward-looking statements, but you understand that the environment is what it is, right? It can go either way.

The Gulf thing could disappear tomorrow, in which case things will get better probably over a period of time, or it could go on for another six months, and then I think we're going to have some pretty interesting impacts across all sorts of industries, across all sorts of geographies, and that's going to go well into '27. Very hard to predict what the environment looks like.

You want to say something, Phalla?

Yeah. I think what is important to say is that we kept exactly the same reserving methodology.

Here, I think as Xavier said, we have opened the quarter pretty high at 80 at 80% for new vintage. I think that's probably what you have to look at.

I think it's probably more in the consistency of the way that we're reserving, and, of course, we're not doing forward-looking.

That's something that We're not changing our methods, it's just we adjust our risk management to the environment,

and that's that. Very interesting.

Thank you.

Fantastic. Thanks for this second opportunity.

I had three, reinsurance pricing and how it benefits you, the growth in business information, it feels like we've got an inflection point, but maybe I'm wrong, and then, finally, business information relative to the US. I always feel that the US is the bit where there's not, and I just wondered whether something's changed there.

On reinsurance pricing, I was hoping to see numbers which showed that you're a beneficiary of lower reinsurance costs, but I can't see them, maybe you could point me in the right direction. On the growth of business information, clearly, the total growth, 19.5% or 20% or whatever, is really lovely, and it feels like it's accelerating.

Am I right? Have we reached a kind of inflection point?

Then, finally, on the US, where I think it's a market which is almost acts like a closed shop, and I just wondered do you have a strategy where you think you will be able to break into it? Thank you.

All right, a few things on reinsurance. These are long-negotiated contracts that span two years, you're not going to see change in reinsurance dramatic over a quarter.

In the course of the year. I think you hear that it's annual negotiations.

What we can say is that we have negotiated pretty, I think, probably one of the highest commissions rate that we have received. The conditions has been pretty good for us, and, of course, if we perform the same way we are performing so far, the discussion will happen again at renewal.

That's all I can say. It is true that today what you see on the market is that the reinsurance price is a soft market.

This is something that we will take into account at the next negotiation discussion.

On BI, I've said this either way because we had quarters where, if you recall in the past, growth was less, and then we have sometimes quarters where growth is better, whatever. I wouldn't derive any big conclusion from a quarter.

I think you need to look at this not on a quarterly basis, but you need to look at this on a multi-year basis. This is an endeavor we started probably 6, 7 years ago from nothing, and that's also linked to the prior discussion we had.

We're looking at building something over a number of years, not what's going to happen over the next quarter, I would really caution around that. Then, in terms of US market, I'm not going to comment that much here, because, honestly, there's only a certain level of information I'm willing to share, but it's a big market.

All I can say, it's a big market with probably the most sophisticated players in the world, but that's fine. It's an important market for us too.

Just on the business information, I may have just one more, you did highlight a couple of times or three times that the €100 million kind of a benchmark you're now above that on an annualized basis. How significant is that, and at what level do you kind of say, "Yeah, we really have achieved what we aimed to do," or, yeah, just to kind of get a feel for where we are in that

path? Michael, I really don't know the answer to your question.

What I can say is, for us, it's meaningful in the sense that we have 1,000 people, €100 million, which is $120 million of a business. If you look at it and say how many startups have I seen that get to 1,000 people and $120 million of turnover and cost zero

It's telling.

That in itself I think deserves notice. On the other hand, we are nowhere close to being done, because this is a huge market, there's formidable competition, there's, it's evolving daily, etc., etc.

That's all I can say, but at least we got to this point, which was not a given from the get-go, I would say.

Brilliant. Thank you.

All right. It seems like, for once, we're ahead of schedule here.

I don't have much more to say. Coface is focused.

The environment is what it is. We will know more in a quarter, and we will see you in July.

The business is focused on execution and that's where we are. Thank you very much for your participation.

Looking forward to the next call in July.