Thank you, Judith, and welcome to Publicis Groupe first half 2026 earnings call. I am Arthur Sadoun, and I'm here in Paris with our CFO, Loris Nold.

Jean-Michel Bonamy is also here and will be available to take all of your questions offline after this call. I will start this presentation by sharing the main highlights of our Q2 and H1 performance, showing an acceleration on all fronts.

Loris will walk you through the full details of our numbers. I will come back with outlook and the reason for our confidence in raising our guidance and sustaining our strong momentum in H2 and beyond.

As usual, we will take all of your questions together after the presentation. Before we start, please take the time to read the disclaimer, which is an important legal matter.

Let's dive into the presentation with four key highlights. In a nutshell, in the first half of the year, we have been accelerating on all fronts.

First, on net organic growth, with Q2 at +4.8%, despite a tougher comparable and a still challenging microenvironment. Second, on new business, with a very strong first part of the year, which allow us to raise our guidance.

Third, on our financial KPIs, starting with our headline margin increasing to 17.5%, while investing further on our talent in AI and in ramping up our new business wins. Fourth, on our differentiation and addressable market expansion through strategic acquisitions, leveraging the strength of our balance sheets.

Let's start with the detail of our top-line performance. In Q2, we once again reaffirmed our ability to deliver even in challenging macroeconomic conditions.

Organic growth came in at +4.8% on a net revenue basis. As expected, this represents a sequential acceleration versus our Q1 at +4.5%, and despite a 100 basis point higher comparable base in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical context.

This acceleration was driven by our marketing transformation activities, representing 87% of our net revenue, where we continued to capture a disproportionate share of our client demand for AI-powered services and products. They grew at +6.5% organically in Q2, compared to +5.6% in Q1, ahead of our six-year CAGR at +5.3%.

This contributed to further widening the gap with our peers to 610 basis points in Q2, according to consensus. In detail, Connected Media, representing 62% of our net revenue, delivered a very strong performance again this quarter at high single-digit growth accelerating versus Q1.

This performance was driven by double-digit growth in Europe and high single-digit growth in the U.S. It reflects our continued ability to accelerate market share gains thanks to our scaled AI-powered media offering.

Intelligent Creativity, which is 25% of net revenue, posted solid low double-digit growth in line with the expected long-term growth profile of this segment. The only part of our business that was seriously impacted by the macroeconomic uncertainty, and particularly the Middle East conflict, is technology, as experienced by other IT consulting firms, including the market leader.

We continue to see delays in large transformation programs, of course, in the Gulf, but with a direct effect on many other geographies and companies. This led to mid-single-digit decline in Publicis Sapient, representing 13% of group net revenue.

I will make just two remarks on Sapient performance. First, comparing Q2 with Q1, I would highlight that Sapient faced a significant bit of a comp in Q2 of 600 basis points versus Q1, and therefore, we saw a sequential stabilization in terms of net revenue.

Second, our ability to accelerate in Q2 and raise our guidance at group level despite those macroeconomic challenges makes our performance and resilience even more remarkable. Turning to our geographies, we had another strong demonstration of the consistency and resilience of our country model globally.

In particular, our two largest regions, totaling 86% of our net revenue, both grew organically at 5% or above. The U.S.

was up 5.5%, accelerating versus Q1, driven by high single-digit growth in Connected Media, with major wins from last year ramping up. Europe delivered a very strong +5% growth, broad-based across markets, accelerating strongly versus Q1, despite a much higher comp of close to 200 basis points.

Asia-Pac recorded a +2.6% growth, with strong performance in Greater China at +7.5%, while we experienced localized softness in Southeast Asia. LATAM continues its excellent trajectory at +11%.

EMEA was down -8.3% as expected, directly impacted by geopolitical tension in the region. Moving to our second highlight.

Our very strong new business performance in the last 18 months make us confident in delivering the same momentum in H2 as in H1. In the last 18 months, we have seen a dramatic reduction of the competitive landscape due particularly to consolidation.

After a very strong finish to 2025, we have had a couple of very sizable wins in the first half of the year with a real material financial impact that will start to progressively ramp up through the back end of the year, but also some local wins with more immediate impact on our numbers. That makes us very confident in raising our guidance range from 4%-5% to 4.5%-5%.

Third, we accelerated on all our financial KPIs. We improved our H1 headline operating margin again this year to 17.5%.

We were able to unlock 50 basis points of margin improvement as we continued to extract operating leverage, allowing us to reinvest more than 30 basis points in our new business, AI plan, and our talent pool upgrade, and deliver the remaining 17 basis points in margin increase. Headline EPS came at EUR 3.52 in H1 2026, up 5.7% at constant currency.

Headline free cash flow reached EUR 957 million in H1, up 20.8% at constant currency. Getting to our fourth and final highlight.

In H1, we are accelerating on our differentiation with two important strategic acquisitions. We finalized the acquisition of 160over90 in sport marketing in Q2.

By putting Epsilon data at its core and connecting it to our end-to-end media ecosystem, we will be uniquely positioned to make sports the fastest growing media segment of our industry addressable and measurable at scale. We announced the acquisition of LiveRamp in May, which once closed, will enable us to enter a totally new addressable market, data co-creation.

With LiveRamp, as part of our strong interconnected ecosystem of Publicis Sapient, Epsilon, and Marcel, we will go even further and faster in delivering agentic transformation for our clients safely and transparently in their own environments. Thanks to their successful integration into our Power of One model and their ability to open up new addressable markets, our bolt-on acquisitions of the last two years have delivered close to 20% annual organic growth on a standalone basis, EPS growth acceleration at group level, and a strong contribution to our new business wins.

Our ability to continue expanding our capabilities and addressable markets has been made possible thanks to the strength of our balance sheets. Actually, there is one last highlight for H1.

After the Cannes Lions named Publicis Conseil Agency of the Year for the past two years, and their client, AXA, as Brand of the Year in 2025, the festival has now recognized Le Pub Milan as its 2026 Agency of the Year. It's an incredible accomplishment that is only made better by the fact that Heineken, our global client since 2014, has been named Creative Brand of the Year.

This latest achievement from Le Pub Milan is everything we love at Publicis. Breakthrough work for iconic brands that demonstrate the power of creative idea to transform our client businesses.

I will now hand over to Loris to take you through the Q2 and H1 financials in detail before I return with our outlook and strategic updates.

Thank you, Arthur and good morning, everyone. Let me begin with the key highlights of our H1 2026 results.

Revenue was EUR 8,734,000,000 up 3% versus 2025 and up 5.3% on an organic basis. Net revenue was EUR 7,229,000,000 up 1.1% versus 2025 and up 4.7% on an organic basis.

Operating margin was EUR 1,261,000,000 up 1.5% versus 2025 and up 7.4% at constant currency, while the operating margin rate reached 17.4%. When excluding the LiveRamp transaction costs, headline operating margin was EUR 1,268,000,000 with a record headline operating margin rate of 17.5%, up 17 basis points versus 2025.

Headline net income was EUR 885 million, down 0.5% on a reported basis, but up 5.3% at constant currency. Last, free cash flow before change in working capital was EUR 950 million.

When excluding the LiveRamp transaction costs, headline free cash flow was up 20.8% at constant currency. I will now get into the details of the P&L free cash flow and balance sheet, starting with Q2 revenue and net revenue.

Q2 2026 revenue was EUR 4,543,000,000, up 4.2% on an organic basis. Net revenue was EUR 3,769,000,000.

Organic growth was +4.8%, which comes on top of +5.9% in Q2 2025. There was a negative impact of currency of 170 basis points due to the depreciation of the U.S.

dollar, the pound sterling, and several LATAM and APAC currencies versus the euro. Acquisitions, net of disposals, contributed +110 basis points, reflecting the impact of our 2025 and 2026 acquisitions, namely Captiv8, p-value, HEPMIL, RGI, and 160over90.

When factoring in those items, net revenue was up 4.2% on a reported basis. Let's move to the next slide and our Q2 net revenue by region.

North America was up 5.4% on an organic basis, on top of +5.8% in Q2 2025. There was a negative impact of the U.S.

dollar versus euro, partly offset by the contribution from acquisitions, and reported revenue was up 4.4% in Q2. Europe delivered +5% in organic growth.

There was a negative impact of the pound sterling versus euro, leading to reported growth of +4.2% for the region. Asia-Pacific posted +2.6% organic growth.

There, too, there was a negative impact of currency depreciation versus euro, offset by the contribution from acquisitions, leading to a reported growth of +2.8% in Q2. Latin America continued to perform very strongly and reported +11% organic growth.

When adding the negative impact of currencies and the contribution of acquisitions, reported growth was at +13.5%. Finally, Middle East and Africa was impacted by the geopolitical situation, leading to an organic decline of -8.3%.

Let's get into more details for each region, starting with North America. In the U.S., the group's largest geography, which represents 58% of our net revenues, organic growth was +5.5% after +5.3% in Q2 last year.

Connected Media was up high single digit, and Intelligent Creativity was up mid-single digit, benefiting from new business wins and scope expansions. Technology was down mid-single digit in Q2.

Let's now turn to the performance in Europe on the next slide. The U.K., which represents 9% of our net revenue, posted a +2.8% organic growth.

When excluding technology, organic growth was +8.1%, driven by very strong growth in Connected Media. Technology was down as Publicis Sapient in U.K.

is servicing some clients based in the Middle East. France, which represents 5% of our net revenue, was close to flat.

Lastly, our operations in Central and Eastern Europe were up double digits, driven by strong growth in all segments, with Poland, Romania, and Czech Republic performing very well. Turning to the next slide for our performance in the rest of the world.

Asia-Pacific, which represents 9% of our net revenues, was up 2.6% organically. China continues to be very solid at +7.5% organic growth in Q2, partly mitigated by softer performance in Southeast Asia, largely due to the impact of the Middle East conflict.

Latin America posted a +11% organic growth in Q2, driven by double-digit growth in Connected Media and Intelligent Creativity, in particular in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. As mentioned earlier, Middle East and Africa posted a 8.3% organic decline in Q2, with U.A.E.

and Lebanon being the most impacted countries as expected. In Q2, we estimated that the conflict in the Middle East had a negative impact of 30 basis points on our net organic growth.

For your reference, you'll find on the next slide our H1 2026 performance by region. As you can see, all regions posted a strong organic performance, leading to +4.7% in total for the group on top of +5.4% in H1 2025.

Last, net revenue was up 1.1% on a reported basis. Moving to the next slide and our simplified P&L down to the operating margin.

Personnel expenses, excluding restructuring charges, were down 0.6% year-on-year, generating 110 basis points in margin improvement. Restructuring charges increased by 21% due to the continued investment in talent upgrades, with a 17 basis points impact on margin.

Other operating expenses, excluding the LiveRamp acquisition costs, were up 7.1%, representing 70 basis points of incremental costs as a percentage of net revenue. Depreciation was up 2.7%, mainly due to increased IT investments.

Headline operating margin was EUR 1,268,000,000, up +2.1% versus last year. At constant currency, the increase was +7.4%.

Headline operating margin rate was 17.5%, up 17 basis points against the record level of 2025. When including the LiveRamp transaction costs, operating margin was EUR 1,261,000,000.

Moving to our next slide and our operating margin bridge. Our headline margin was up by 17 basis points, which includes, first, an improvement of 110 basis points of personnel costs, excluding restructuring charges, driven by three main factors.

Some scalability benefits on our 2025 recruitments, combined with some early impact from our agentification initiatives on task optimization. Some rebalancing between our personnel cost and G&A when it comes to our AI investments, as we rolled out our AI productivity tools to our talents.

Some adjustments, including at Publicis Sapient, and our continued cost management discipline, notably when it comes to recruitment in H1 and second, this improvement was mitigated by two factors. A 17 basis points increase in our restructuring charge as we continue to upgrade our talent pool, and a 76 basis points increase in our other costs, reflecting in part higher spending on AI product and tools and some additional depreciation linked to our IT investments.

Moving now to our headline income statement below operating margin and focusing on the main items. Headline net financial expenses were a charge of EUR 62 million versus EUR 44 million in 2025, mostly attributable to lower interest income for our U.S.

dollar cash balance. Headline income tax was EUR 312 million, with an effective tax rate of 25.9%.

The increase versus 2025 is due to positive non-recurring impact of some tax audits in 2025 and lower deductible LTIP expenses in 2026. Headline net income was EUR 885 million, down 0.5% versus 2025.

Again, the increase was 5.3% at constant currency. Next slide, our headline EPS, fully diluted, grew by 5.7% at constant currency to reach EUR 3.52.

On a reported basis, it grew at +0.3%. Moving to the next slide, free cash flow.

Our free cash flow before change in working capital reached EUR 950 million, up 14.7% versus 2025 and up 19.9% at constant currency. Headline free cash flow before change in working capital was up 20.8% at constant currency.

Increase in EBITDA of EUR 26 million contributed to the year-on-year growth. There was also a tailwind in tax paid, mostly resulting from non-recurring payments in 2025 and some benefits following the change in tax regulation in the U.S.

in H2 2025. This was partly mitigated by higher financial interest charge, resulting from lower cash balances in U.S dollars.

Moving to the next slide, use of cash. In H1 2026, change in working capital represented an outflow of EUR 2,089,000,000 fully in line with our expectation and reflecting the usual seasonality.

The year-on-year deterioration of EUR 344 million in H1 cash outflow is largely explained by the reversal of the EUR 234 million positive effect recorded at year-end 2025. Acquisitions, including paid earn-out, amounted to EUR 672 million.

It includes the upfront cash payments for Adge.AI and 160over90, and the payment of earn-outs related to Influential. On share buybacks, we spent EUR 181 million in H1 2026 to cover our LTIP plans.

Other non-cash items represented a EUR +235 million versus a EUR -274 million in H1 2025. There are two main reasons for the EUR 509 million swing.

2025 was impacted by currency translation deterioration, with the depreciation of currencies versus the euro. Change in earn-outs improved by EUR 214 million versus H1 2025 as H1 2026 included the elimination of the earn-out debt related to Influential.

When you consider payment for acquisitions and new earn-outs, we invested EUR 517 million in H1 2026. Overall, net cash decreased by EUR 1,763,000,000.

Moving to my last slide, net financial debt. The average net debt on the last 12 months was EUR 1,131,000,000, representing an increase of EUR 295 million compared to last year, due to the acquisitions completed over the last 12 months.

We closed H1 2026 with a net debt of EUR 1,215,000,000 and the financial leverage remained roughly stable at one time as expected. This concludes my financial presentation, and I now give the floor back to you, Arthur.

Thank you, Loris. As you just saw, in Q2, we have been accelerating on all fronts, organic goals, new business, financial KPIs, and the differentiation of our model.

This makes us very confident in sustaining our strong momentum for the rest of the year and raising our guidance despite persistent macroeconomic uncertainties. We now expect an organic growth range of +4.5%-5%, which represent an acceleration in H2 versus H1 when adjusted for the 40 basis point tougher comparable.

We are confirming our guidance on an operating margin rate slightly above 18.2% in 2026, and we now expect our free cash flow to reach circa EUR 2.2 billion up from circa EUR 2.1 billion previously. There are actually three major reasons that make us confident in sustaining our momentum in this challenging time, both for the end of the year and as we enter 2027.

First, we continue to win market shares thanks to our differentiating model. To cut the long story short, not only are we winning more than our competition, but we are also losing less.

As evident in our guidance upgrade, we have sustained our very strong new business track record in the first part of the year. With several large wins, some that were made public and some that were not.

As you know, we don't disclose our new business wins as we are not chasing for headlines. Just to give you an idea, the six major wins of the last six months alone will secure close to 200 basis points of growth on a full year basis when they fully ramp up.

What I believe is more remarkable is that being at the heart of our client transformation allows us to have a very high retention rate of close to 100%. In fact, we haven't had any losses in the last 12 months that could materially impact in the next 12 months.

Second reason for our confidence is that we are growing with our client thanks to AI. AI has first and foremost been a structural tailwind for us for several years now.

Since the rise of GenAI 3 years ago, we have actually grown by circa 20%, allowing us to continue increasing the gap with our peers. Actually, over the last three years, we have grown four times faster than our competition on average.

AI allows us to connect our unmatched capabilities in data, media production, and technology, and link client investments to business outcomes. It has contributed significantly in accelerating the performance of our marketing activities, which represent 87% of our revenue.

This was visible once again in Q2 when those capabilities grew organically by 6.5% versus 5.6% in Q1. Those of you who came to our presentation in Cannes heard directly from two of our largest clients that we won in the last year, how we are able, thanks to AI data and technology, to transform their marketing model and deliver high growth at a lower cost in a unique way.

This is the main reason why we are growing our client base by 200-300 basis points every year. AI also continued to be a productivity boost with significant gains from automation and task optimization.

Actually, since the launch of our AI platform, Marcel, in 2017, we have almost doubled our EBITDA, and our margin has increased by 270 basis points over the last eight years. Last but not least, the third reason for our confidence is our continued investment in talent and capabilities.

Our strategy in the last 18 months has been the polar opposite of our competitors. Not only have we been acquiring new capabilities from commerce to influencer and now sports and data co-creation, but we have also been investing in talent by recruiting and retaining the best profiles, training everyone for this new world, and reinventing how our team operates with AI tools.

This is highly valued by our clients who are looking for partners who can invest on their behalf in the capabilities they need to win, and the people who can get them there. From that perspective, our strong financial structure is clearly a competitive advantage, as it positions us as a trusted partner of our client all along their transformation journey.

Our only focus will remain execution as we deleverage our balance sheet over the next 18 months. Voilà.

As you have seen in H1, not only have we demonstrated once again the consistency and the reliability of our business performance, but we have actually accelerated on every front. This allows us to upgrade our organic growth guidance and improve every financial KPI for the rest of the year, despite ongoing macroeconomic difficulties.

Our net new business, the growth we deliver with our clients, thanks to AI, and our continued investment in our talent and capabilities, make us confident in maintaining our momentum beyond 2026. In reaffirming our 2027 and 2028 objectives of delivering at least 7%-8% net revenue growth on average, and 8%-10% annual headline EPS growth at constant currencies.

Let me finish by thanking our team for their incredible work and our clients for their trust. Thank you all for listening, and now with Loris, we'll take all of your questions.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking it.

Three questions, if I could. The first question is around 2027 organic growth.

We've obviously got good trends in Media and Creative, and uncertainty about what's going to happen with Sapient. Is there any reason why we wouldn't see this momentum in Media and Creative continuing into 2027, as we put together forecasts for next year?

That's the first question. The second question is, we had a short ceasefire in the Middle East for a few weeks.

Can you just talk about what you saw in terms of demand for services? Did they kind of quickly bounce back and then get subdued again when the ceasefire stopped or was there not really much change during that brief period, just to get a sense of what might happen when, hopefully, the war finally ends.

And then the third question is, for Loris, you talked about 7% growth in underlying other operating costs, and you mentioned AI. Is that essentially tokens?

So are we seeing the higher cost of tokens come into your business? Is that something we should expect to continue?

Do you have a plan to manage those costs, as you continue to use AI more in your client work? Any thoughts on how that might develop would be very helpful.

Thank you, Adam. I'm going to take one and two, and I guess I will leave you three.

Look, it's a bit early to talk about 2027, I guess. What I can tell you is a couple of things, is you have seen over the year the strengths of our Media and Creative business.

Not only in winning new business, but in increasing our revenue with existing clients and not losing big clients. So far I'm touching wood because it could happen anytime, but again when we look at 2027, it's definitely too early to give you an indication, but there is good sign of confidence.

The first is the new business we have won recently allow us today to be very confident that we will deliver again 200 basis points next year. The second, but for me, the most important one because it's the one that could keep me away from sleeping, is we haven't lost any big clients in the last six months that could have an impact, at least for the beginning of next year so that means that we are entering 2027 with a good dynamic.

And maybe the most important one, Adam, for next year and in general is we have a conjunction at Publicis of two incredibly strong factors that, again, makes us very confident for the future, and this is why we are reiterating our guidance for 2027 and 2028, is that on one side, you have seen a drastic reduction of the competitive landscape. Five years ago, we had the double of player at global level that we have today.

Let's be clear, it doesn't mean that the smaller player are not dangerous locally. When it comes to big marquee companies with huge spend, let's say above EUR 800 million, the competitive landscape has been reduced from four to three players, so that is helping us.

What is on the top of that is that not only the competitive landscape is reducing, but on the other hand, our addressable market is just increasing. This is why we have insisted on the 20% growth of our bolt-on acquisition.

We are, thanks to our balance sheet and the strength of our balance sheet, investing in new sectors that will allow us to grow. So again, don't expect any number from us, but expect already us outperforming the industry again in 2027.

It's a bit early to say, but we feel confident about that when you look at new business and addressable market, and entering into H1 2027 with a lot of confidence. The Middle East question is a very big question.

So the impact of the Middle East as a business is basically not really material because it's 3% of our revenue. Yes, it has been declining, but nothing significant that would change anything.

A bit on the margin, by the way. It's interesting to see that not only are we accelerating, but sustaining our momentum despite these kind of things that are having an impact.

Now, your question is more interesting on the fact that the Middle East is having or not an impact on the demand and the service. Again, if I take a step back, you need to look at those challenging time that our clients are having a very different attitude when it comes to OpEx and CapEx investments.

On the one hand, they know that if they cut their marketing spend, they will lose market share. That actually will be very difficult to win back.

They have experienced that many times, they are very aware and honestly, this is why despite the conflict in the Middle East, we continue to capture a disproportionate share of our client demand when it comes to AI-powered marketing services and product. Again, it's 87% of our business, and it has been growing in Q2 by 6.5%.

We are seeing, thanks to that, every effort we have made, how we have implemented AI, allowing us to increase the gap by more than 600 basis points based on consensus with our peers. Where there is a difficulty is that on the other hand, the lack of visibility that is due to these geopolitical events are actually now coming back on the top, and it's true that it led all of our clients in the IT services to delay further their large discretionary expenditure that are more about CapEx in this case.

And this wait and see attitude, honestly, has been very well drafted by the competitors of Sapient and particularly the leader, I won't insist on that. Again, when you compare like for like, the kind of slowdown in CapEx investments is also our case with Sapient.

Again, I'm going to insist a lot on that, I'm sure there will be a question about Sapient later, but what is very important for us, and hopefully you see this in our performance, is that despite these challenging environments, will it be the Middle East, will it be what is happening in the IT sector, we are able to raise our guidance, and actually, we are expecting an acceleration in H2 versus H1 on an underlying basis, and this is thanks to the strength of our overall model. I'm going to stop here.

I'm sure there will be a question on Sapient, we'll come back. Loris, I will pass on you.

Sure. Hi, Adam.

When you're looking at AI run cost, I would make three or four comments. First is those are typically for licenses and usage, and as such, they are very much a normal operating cost.

The second is we have good visibility on real-time consumption, including at the user level, and we track them on a daily basis with limits and alerts that we put in place to monitor and control the usage. The third point is, as you saw from H1, there's definitely a rebalancing between the people cost and tech cost, and we said that before, but we're expecting it to stabilize now.

What we are observing, if anything, is that the productivity benefits that those tools can generate do offset the cost, and it's been clearly evidenced in our margin improvement. So if anything, it's been having a positive impact on our margin, and we anticipate this to continue.

Yeah, we can't go into the detail of what we are doing there, so it's incredible to see how we are able not only to accelerate on our top line but accelerate on our bottom line, all of this while investing massively into our future.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, for taking the questions so I've got a few, please.

Arthur, on the six accounts you mentioned, are these new clients or is that scope of work expansion with existing ones? Secondly, on your Connected Media performance, in particular in the U.S., is that a function of clients increasing their marketing budgets, or is that more a function of Publicis increasing its wallet share, I'd say, with those clients?

And then lastly, Arthur, I'm just trying to reconcile the comments you made recently about the fact that clients are willing to pay more for people than technology. At the same time, we see that indeed you're spending more on technology than on people perhaps in the first half.

I mean, in terms of percentage growth, not in absolute terms if we could just reconcile those comments. Thank you.

Yes. I'm going to go the other way around.

I'm going to start by the third. To be clear, and this is a discussion we had, is that we believe that we need to have the right balance between people and technology.

I like, and I know it's a bit provocative in the AI world, but I like to say that we are still a service business. We are a service business with the best capabilities of our industry and beyond in data technology, and of course, AI.

The truth is, the reason why we have been performing so well today is that we have the right balance between the best people of the industries and unique capabilities, all of this working through the Power of One. By the way, if you look outside of the holding company world, even in the LLM world or in the tech world, the companies that are thriving today are the ones that have this good balance between service and product.

Because again, maybe the question will come back later, AI is very difficult to implement at an enterprise level. It is difficult to scale, it is very expensive, it does not deliver business outcome immediately.

And so yes, you need the best capabilities, but you also need the right people to take the client by the hand and bring him to this. This is why, by the way, we continue to invest in our talent, and the least we can say is that we also invest in our capabilities.

Connected Media in the U.S. Now, the truth is, we are winning market share, and I will come back to that on new business.

Clients are spending more with us. I am not even talking about new business because your question was more on our clients.

The reason why we can go 200-300 basis points with our clients, and actually it is way more when you look at Connected Media, is exactly for the reason I explained earlier about the addressable markets. When you take leadership in the influencer world, you see your revenue go.

You win in new business, but you see your revenue go. When you invest heavily in agentic commerce, you see your revenue go.

Tomorrow, when we are going to invest, or actually when we are going to scale sports and make it addressable and measurable, we are going to see our revenue go. So we are continuing to nourish with new capabilities our Connected Media system and, of course, our clients, and we are growing from there, basically.

Now coming back to your question on new business, let me take a second on that and try to wrap up a lot of things that has been said, because I know there have been a lot of question in the recent weeks and again, this morning, we already received a few. I mean, first of all, and you would remember that, we had a very good finish of 2025.

Very high finish. And the truth is, we also had a very strong first half of the year when it comes to overall new business, basically, and honestly, thanks to the differentiation of our model, but also because, as I said before, the competitive landscape has been dramatically reduced and some players has been a bit distracted recently.

What we wanted to give you, again, as in everything we are doing today, is give you clarity, visibility, okay? And so we basically had six major wins, which are, to answer your question, new accounts.

It's new client. If it's an existing client, it goes into our client goals.

If it's a new business, that it's a new client. And this has allow us, those new clients, those six new clients, has allow us to roughly deliver.

We will deliver, thanks to those win, 200 basis points of contribution on a full-year basis. I mean, we are talking here about EUR 300 million of net new revenue for the group.

I think it's important to understand the magnitude of what you're talking to. Okay?

To give you a bit more of color, because I think it's important, this is going to ramp up, but out of the 200 basis points, there will be only 50 basis points this year. This is why, by the way, we are upgrading our guidance, because now we feel confident that with those 50 basis points, we can upgrade our guidance and the other 150 is going to be for 2027, though the question I had before, which again, makes us confident for next year.

Now, I know it's a bit complicated, and I'm sorry, because as you know, we don't comment on new business wins. We don't give you names.

We don't talk to the price. Because we don't talk to the trade price about what we win, there are some things that you can see and other that you can't.

We have a big question about that that has come many time, which is, okay, some of your competitors have been claiming basically for the last three quarter, through actually media lines, that they have done even better than us. Okay?

Let's be clear. If it's not only headlines, it should translate after what is nine months into their numbers and their performance starting now and honestly, this would be great for the industry because we need our peers to do well.

So if they are doing even better, great. I think what is important for you to take out of that is what matters is not the press headline, is how what we win translate into growth and margin.

I guess when you look at the last seven years, we have been number one in new business. We have made a good case out of that.

Again, I'm sorry we are not disclosing more than this, but for many reason, we have decided to stop a couple of years ago. As you can see in our performance, it has pretty helped us.

I'm going to stop there. I know I'm talking too much.

Now I'm going to make shorter answer, because I'm very frustrated about the Tuesday game. I'm trying to recover.

Let's go. The game, the soccer.

Next question.

Yes. Good morning, all.

Three questions on my side. The first one, just to follow up on the Middle East question.

Can you just precise what the assumption in your guidance? You said a drag of 30 basis points in Q2, is that the assumption for H2?

Same question for Sapient. Is the assumption a decline of mid-single digit?

That's my first question. The second one is on Sapient.

You have not said much so far about the Microsoft partnership, I don't know if that's the right timing, but I would be curious to have a bit more color on how the relationship is evolving and in particular on the go-to market and revenue generation. Staying on Sapient, you said when you announced the acquisition that LiveRamp will be integrated within Sapient.

Could you just help us to understand the rationale behind this move? Is it mainly an organization question, to make sure that LiveRamp will be seen as independent from Epsilon or is it also commercial decision to leverage the Sapient client relationship and Salesforce?

Thank you.

Thank you very much. I'm going to start very quickly on the LiveRamp question.

It won't be part of Sapient, it will be part of technology, to be very clear, because it's a tech company and it's a product company by essence. Again, I will be very, very pleased to answer your question once we close, but there is very little I can say for the moment, more than what I said during the call, so again, it's going to be in technology but not part of Sapient.

By the way, as we are on that, we talked the day of the acquisition. Since then, honestly, the reaction from our clients has been extremely positive.

To come back to one point that has to do with tech, as you might have read here and there, our competition have raised an issue about neutrality. The truth is that for our clients, this is a non-event, all of them.

The reason why it's a non-event, which come back to your question, is that you need to understand that LiveRamp technology is neutral by design. LiveRamp is a technology, is a platform of data collaboration and so it will live within our technology.

It will work particularly with Sapient to build agentification for sure. More than that, at the moment, it's very difficult for me to tell you.

We need to go through the process and then I promise we'll have a lot of time to answer all of your questions. On Microsoft, again, we don't talk about any particular client, so I won't be able to give you much more detail, although the relationship is very strong.

Maybe I use this opportunity and then I pass on to you on the Middle East. We will start by Sapient, I guess and then go on to the guidance.

To tell you a couple of things about Sapient that hopefully will start to answer your question. First, as we say, like the rest of the IT consulting industry that you know well, we are experiencing a slowdown that is only amplified by the Middle East crisis.

We talked about that, okay? I think what is very important there, and Loris mentioned it and I did, is that actually Sapient was facing a significant pick of a comp in Q2 versus Q1 of 600 basis points.

Actually, those guys have managed to stabilize their net revenue sequentially, which is when you look at all the headwinds in the industry is important to note. Second, and that's definitely for your question so far, I don't know about you, but it's not like we see the world getting any better soon.

We saw a couple of news this morning. I say how the market is going to react to that but things so far are not going to get better.

To be clear, we are not including any major improvements in our guidance for H2 for Sapient. Actually, we expect it to be in line with the industry.

What is important there is that Sapient only represents 13% of our revenue. I think this is something that we need to insist on.

When you look at their performance in isolation, actually this is not reflecting the full value it creates for the group. Sometimes I'm asking myself, are we right to put Sapient apart because again, it doesn't show what it brings to our group, okay?

In a couple of words, Sapient is actually supporting our top line of the marketing activities. The reason why we are growing so fast at the marketing level is because on what represents 87% of our revenue, we have Sapient technology, we have Sapient engineers, more than 20,000 people that can help us in production.

That has truly become a tech thing. We are growing double digits in production.

It's helping us on media that is growing close to double digits and it's definitely helping to win some pitches through the enterprise-grade AI solution they've got and that is making a real difference. What you don't see there is that it also contributes to our operating margin outperformance versus our peers, as we can leverage all of their technology internally.

Maybe the thing I want to leave you with on Sapient is that, of course, they are part of their business that remains very exposed to the software IT spending that all of their peers are experiencing but the true value extends far beyond its own P&L. Again, maybe in a couple of months, we will spend more time explaining to you this because the reason why we are performing as we do as a group has also to do with how we use the agentic and AI expertise of Sapient for what is 87% of our business that is growing 6.5% with a good margin, as you have seen in Q2.

Jérôme, a couple of points maybe on the Middle East. First, as we said before, the region represents less than 3% of our revenues, and as Arthur was talking about Sapient, where we see a larger impact from the region, is on Publicis Sapient, including, by the way, in the U.K., as it's a hub that manages a number of clients based in the Middle East.

When you look at the overall impact in Q2 of the Middle East region, it's approximately 30 basis points on the top line, as I said earlier in my presentation. Now, looking at the rest of the year, obviously we can't predict when the conflict is going to be resolved, but we included in our upgraded guidance the fact that the situation more or less remains the same.

Again, the resilience of our model is maybe what we are the proudest of. Being able to accelerate in H2 despite all the headwinds we've been just talking, hopefully is reassuring.

You know the story. If everything was doing well, imagine what we can deliver when we are delivering 4.8% on such a difficult quarter in terms of headwinds.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, hello. Good morning, everyone.

I've got three questions. First one on the full-year guidance.

What has to go right to land at the top end of your organic sales change guidance? Do you need a better macro or potentially the underlying momentum on Connected Media could be sufficient to reach the client?

Second question on the pitch environment. How would you characterize the current pipeline, and would you say you see more offensive opportunities for the group in H2 compared to H1?

Finally, on personal costs. They were down 90 basis points in H1.

Loris, you mentioned the rebalancing and the adjustment at Sapient. What would have been the decline on the underlying basis.

Looking ahead, should we expect the gap between net revenue and personnel cost growth to widen from here or to stay roughly at the current level? Thank you.

Thank you, Nicolas. For those that just joined, so I'm going to start with the guidance.

As you know, we are now expecting our net organic growth to reach roughly between 4.5%-5%, which is an upgrade. More importantly, this means that we're going to outperform by far our industry for the seven years in a row.

To come back to your question, I will make a couple of comments. First, again, we told you we want to give you visibility.

I think it's important to see that we are expecting Q3 and Q4 to be within this new guidance. Okay?

Again, sustained momentum, to come back to your question about what we have been doing. Second, and we have been insisting on that, but we see the same dynamic between the H1 and H2.

Actually we see an acceleration when you look at the underlying basis as the comp is tougher. To come back to your point, honestly, what will make us able to reach the high end of the guidance is that the macro condition needs to improve.

They need to improve a bit. We see the lever to get there.

Don't get me wrong. We are making sure that we are anticipating a world that doesn't change that much now.

If it were to improve for any reason, yes, we should be able to reach the high end of our guidance. On the pitch activity, it's a busy time and I think that there is some good news, and less good news, I would say.

The first good news is that clients every day understand more that with the rise of AI, they have to choose their partner, and we talked about that, primary on capabilities and talent and that's the reason why we're winning. By the way, the pitch are shorter, they are more on capabilities, and client understand this need.

Much so that in some cases, actually, we are not pitching anymore and winning without a pitch, just about the client kicking the tires. We have a couple of example on that but some of them, by the way, are not public.

The second good news, I already talked about it, is that the competitive landscape is reducing so this, of course, improve the chance of the leaders to win. As we are one of them, it's improving our chance to win.

I would say the only less good news is that the financial pressure of some of our other player in our industry, has led to some pricing behavior sometime that are not right. The truth, you know how we behave on that, we are trying not to participate when we anticipate that the client is going to be really price-driven, which we understand perfectly, but we are not interested by that.

We have actually passed in H1 roughly six pitches around that because we thought it would be only price driven. Let's be clear, this is not the norm.

I want to insist on that. That's something that actually is very encouraging, is that client now understand the value of what we bring.

Although, of course, believe me, they ask for very competitive offer, most of them know that the outcome should be a win-win relationship. You really need to get that.

By the way, it's pretty funny because some, many by the way, were saying that AI will be a headwind for us. Not only it is a tailwind when you look at our number, I talked about that, we grew by 20%, we doubled our EBITDA.

It even more importantly, AI creates a more complex world. It means that our client, more than ever, need the right capabilities and the right people.

This helped us also in terms of new business. You want to take the last one?

Nicolas, on personal cost, it's a bit too early to guide on the full year when it comes to personal cost, as depending on the balance with reinvestment in H2 around talent upgrades and obviously, where we need to invest in new business win ramp-ups. You should assume that personal cost go down as a percentage of revenue this year.

As I said earlier, it's a combination of a few factors, and maybe it's worth repeating some of them. One, we had some scalability benefits in some of our recruitments of 2025.

To which you need to add the early impact of the initiative we've launched when it comes to processes and task optimization through agentic AI. Definitely the rebalancing that I spoke about on people cost, and G&A, when it comes to AI investment as we rolled out those productivity tools.

That again should stabilize, given the investments were already made. The adjustment that we see here and there, including at Publicis Sapient.

Again, what's important is that we confirm the slight improvement in our margin for the full year.

Understood.

Thank you.

Merci.

Thanks. Thanks for the presentation.

Most of the questions have been asked, but I've just got a couple left. Arthur, actually, one was on the point you just alluded to in terms of increasing complexity.

Something we heard at Cannes quite consistently was the shift from traditional search to generative searches leading to this increasing complexity, which is making them rely on their agency partners more. Actually, one of the other things we heard across the board was that it's leading to marketers moving up the funnel in terms of their approach to remaining visible in generative search.

Can you just comment on whether you have seen that come through and whether this is going to be a positive tailwind for not just this year, but obviously next few years? Then just on your comment around AI productivity, I'm just interested in terms of any internal KPIs you're looking at to try and quantify that, and if you can help us understand that.

Is it revenue per head or how are you guys trying to quantify the ROI benefit from the AI investment you've made?

Thank you very much. I'm realizing that I'm talking too much and that the hour has already passed.

I'm going to make a shorter answer on that. You're raising, of course, very important question about how new search, particularly GEO, will rise.

I would make just one comment that hopefully tell you how bullish and ambitious we are about what is happening is that three years from now, 50% of the content that we are producing today won't be for human, but for machine. We will continue to produce as much content for human, but we will have to produce double of content for machine.

That means that, again, talking about addressable markets, if you have the data, if you have the technology, in this case, if you have the production backbone, you should be able to see some growth from the fact that not only we need to talk to human, but also to machine. This is what I put into the new addressable market.

These are areas where we have a lot of opportunities and I will close by that because we have the capabilities because let's be clear, there is no way you're going to be able to talk to machine properly and transform that into sales if you don't have identity because at the end of the day, you need an anchor that will allow you to see a person. I'm sorry to be a bit technical, when the LLMs go onto the web to look for something, there is no digital trace of a consumer.

If you don't have an identity to make sure that you can link your investment to business outcome, you're basically blind and that's where we have a big advantage.

On the topic of AI productivity gains, I think there's probably three things that are important to say. The first is, Arthur said it earlier, it's early days, and so we need to remain very cautious.

I don't need to go back on all the recent studies, including the MIT one, that shows that what, 95% of AI pilot return no or negligible ROI, and it's largely due to what we said earlier, which is the complexity and the cost. More specifically, when it comes to us, I think it's safe to say that we have not lost a minute, we've been executing what is largely a two-step plan.

The first, I mentioned this earlier, we've been looking at certain tasks and manual processes, and we are aiming to cut volume of those tasks by an average of 25%, and then scaling it across the operation, that is well underway. The second point is, as it was mentioned earlier through our partnership with Microsoft, we've essentially equipped and trained the vast majority of our 110,000 or so talents with AI productivity tools, and it's really helping them work faster, better, and most importantly, focus on higher value work.

The third point that I would make is, probably the best KPI you can look at, is that our AI plan is delivering a margin improvement. Again, we generated 17 basis points of margin improvement in H1 after reinvesting what was around 30 basis points, again, of our efficiency gains into talent upgrade and overall our AI plan.

If you look at what's in front of us, I would say that this plan should allow us to sustain our margin improvement commitment while continuing to invest in transforming our talent pool.

Thank you. Hello?

Yes, thank you. Three quick questions from my side as well.

Just to come back on the tailwind from new wins secured in the first half that will benefit the second half and 2027. Arthur, you mentioned 200 basis points.

From memory, I think in previous quarters after a very strong 25, it was closer to 250 basis points if I remember right. Is that suggesting at the moment it's slightly weaker in terms of the contribution, although still very good with a lot of new business in play, or am I reading too much into that?

A couple of quick questions maybe for Loris. In terms of the U.K.

business, can you give us a sense of what proportion of the U.K. business is the tech activity?

The final question in terms of the French business, just to understand why the out of home or the drugstore business was dragging down growth, as significantly as it was in the Q2 if you could just give us a little bit of color on that. Thank you.

First of all, don't read too much into what we said. It's actually a very, very good new business track record for this year.

We're going to reach 250 basis points this year. This is why we are upgrading our margin.

Our guidance, sorry, not our margin. We feel very strong about the dynamic.

Finishing H1 with 250 basis points of new business for 2026 and already feeling good for 2027 is the best position we can be in at the moment on this. Only good news on that front.

You want to talk briefly about U.K. and France?

Yeah. On the U.K., when you look at the overall performance, as I said earlier, excluding the tech business, we're at 8.1% in the quarter.

We continue delivering very strong performance, so primarily driven by actually both Connected Media and Intelligent Creativity and a lot of new business and market share wins. Sapient is a little bit difficult to explain in U.K., as I said earlier, because it's partly a domestic business and partly international operations of Sapient.

This is why I said there was an impact of the Middle East and so it's servicing a number of markets from the U.K. base.

If you look at the revenue that it generates, it's probably close to 30% of the total group revenue in the U.K., but not all of it is U.K.-specific, so it's hard to isolate the performance in U.K. On France, the difference between the 4% and what I said in my earlier remark, which is France was flat, is the impact of the outdoor business, which is Mediatransports.

It's largely a phasing and a comparable effect. The retail business, which is the drugstore, which is fairly small on our operations.

Conor, thank you for raising the question because we talk a lot about the U.S., and you have seen how our media and creative operations are performing actually beyond 6% or 7%. What is very encouraging is that we see the same kind of trend in our number two country, which is the U.K., and Loris just told you.

4% for France, when you extract this media activity, shows you that it is a good performance in a market that is very difficult. I will never insist enough on our Chinese performance.

The 7.5% in a market that is declining for most of our peers, and as in many cases, the second market for many of our clients, sometimes the first market, is a huge competitive advantage, and you should expect more good news from China in the coming weeks, actually.

Okay. Thanks.

Very clear. Thank you.

Yes, hello. Thank you very much for all the answers already provided.

Three questions from my side, first of all on the LiveRamp, because you highlight again how independence of LiveRamp is important. What were your discussions with the clients so far?

I saw that LiveRamp is now also doing the advertisement or that they will stay independent in the governance. How important it is, and what is the feedback from the clients since you announced that position?

The second question is on the net new win business. You are showing in your presentation the 2025 plus H1 2026.

If we take only H1 2026, what would that number stand for you and for the competitors? The last question, you are talking about 200 basis points coming from net new business win.

What should be the underlying growth that we should add those numbers to? What should be your growth of the existing clients underlying without those net new business?

Thank you.

I don't think we're in a position to answer number two. I did not understand very well, you were asking us to compare with peers, which we don't do so this we can't answer.

The 200 basis points that we are talking about is pure new business. As we said, let's say we grow between 4% and 5%, okay?

There is between 200% and 300% of these goals that comes from existing clients that we are growing and this includes the fact that we don't lose any clients. On the other hand, you have between, again, 250%-200% that comes from new business, which are new clients that we can add.

As I told you, it takes between three months to nine months to ramp up a business. This is why the new 200 basis points that we won in H1 is slowly starting to ramp up in H2 and will accelerate into H1 of 2027.

On LiveRamp, I don't know if you were there when I raised the point, actually this neutrality thing is a non-event for our clients, to be very clear, for a single reason that I already laid out, which is LiveRamp technology is neutral by essence. It's not like it's a problem for any one of them.

Now, I know it's a bit frustrating, we can't say anymore anything further at this stage until we are closing the operation, which hopefully will be before the end of the year. Next question because we're very late.

Thank you very much.

Yes. Good morning, Arthur.

Good morning, Loris, Jean-Michel, and Carla. A quick one and two strategic one.

First one is how much was production in the first half as a percentage of total, and how much was production organic in Q2? And then IT consulting growth has slowed from 6%-7% before COVID to 2%-3% now.

Looking at share prices, the market believes that AI will take that growth even lower. Why is the market wrong?

Why is employing 20,000 IT consultant a good thing as a standalone contribution? Lastly, can you help us measure progress in moving from time and material model, which I believe is 85% of your net sales, to a new model based on either output, outcome, subscription, et cetera.

Thank you.

We're going to take it the other way around. Loris, you start with the first one, and then I'll go to the second one.

Yeah. Just on production, it's doing really well.

I mean, in Q2, we are very high single digit in terms of organic growth. The share of Intelligent Creativity is slightly above 25%, obviously, as it grew in the last year.

It was double digit last year and the year before. We remain in the same territory, give or take 1 percentage point.

I love your second question, and I wish I had more time. We are not an IT consulting firm.

We have nothing to do with IT consulting firm. The only thing that is in common with IT consulting firm is 13% of our revenue with Sapient.

As I said, as for the other IT consulting firm, Sapient is suffering from a slowdown that is coming from our client, just waiting and see in term of CapEx spend. Now, I don't want to give you any hope, but this is going to come back.

I don't know when, but it's going to come back. If you think that those clients won't have to invest CapEx in their technology, in their data, in order to transform, you're wrong.

It will happen. Now, when?

I don't know. The good news for us is that it's only 13% of our business.

To come back on your question, when I'm saying that we are not an IT company, is that the core of our business is marketing transformation. It's about media, creative, data, and technology getting together to transform the marketing model of our clients.

The reason why we are growing so fast at the moment and distancing ourselves from our peers is that AI has totally revolutionized the way we do marketing. Because we have been investing in first-party data, in tech infrastructure, with Sapient in this case, and the best media and creative capabilities, we are able to go to our clients and tell them, yes, the world is very complex.

Yes, AI is difficult to scale. Yes, you have a lot of pressure because you have to increase your bottom line and your top line together.

Today, by putting identity at the core with Epsilon, by modernizing your mainframe with Epsilon, by activating this highly complex media ecosystem with our media activities from commerce to paid media, to influencer, to CRM, and by producing content that will work for human and for machine, we are able to actually increase your sales and reduce your cost. I think you were there in Cannes.

We had two of the biggest CMO in the world that we won last year that came on stage in front of 350 clients and 100 of you guys and showed up what it means. To be very clear, Sapient is a competitor of those IT consulting firms.

It is suffering as they do at the moment, but what they bring within Publicis for us to really win in marketing transformation is what is making the difference and actually allowing us, despite all the tailwinds, to deliver 6.5% of growth on what is 87% of our business on a margin that is only improving.

Julien, a few comments on remuneration models and what we are observing. First is on the so-called full outcome based model.

It remains fairly limited, and we have not seen any significant evolution recently. The second is, I think you asked the question sometime before on SaaS, also remains fairly marginal, and at less than 1% of our group net revenue, and it's primarily sitting at Epsilon.

The third part is, as you described, the overwhelming majority of our range from headcount base to time and materials, more specifically at Publicis Sapient. All of them include some variable elements, usually under the form of bonuses and maluses.

That's for a limited portion of the total remuneration. If you look at this variable portion, based on those predetermined KPI, they represent roughly 10% on average of our total remuneration for our existing contracts.

All right. Quick last one before we wrap up, I guess, because we're late.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my very last question, which is on cost.

I don't think I have any recollection of personal cost improving by 110 basis points. Was there any benefit from your India platform?

I'm asking the question because some India-based company have mentioned FX tailwind, bearing in mind that the local currency has collapsed.

I wouldn't qualify this as offshoring sort of benefits. For the most part, I think we've driven offshoring quite a lot in the past few years already.

I go back to what I said earlier, which is definitely a scalability benefit of the recruitment that we had in 2025. The AI productivity initiative that are starting to scale up, there's obviously investment attached to it.

That's where you see the rebalancing from personal cost into tech cost and G&A increase. Then we've had some normal adjustment on the business, including at Publicis Sapient, given the top line performance that has been softer.

That's normal course of business, if you will. We're definitely planning on a lower personal cost number for the landing this year.

I wish we had actually more question on that. Thank you, Christophe, because what we delivered on the margin and on the cash flow, by the way, is pretty exceptional because, of course, the headwinds we are seeing on the geopolitical level didn't help, but we are able to overperform also on that.

Sorry, we have been a bit long. Just a few words in conclusion.

Hopefully you see that our H1 performance confirm what we have consistently demonstrate over the last several years in consistency matter. We are delivering faster growth than the industry.

We are winning market share, which shows the strength of our model, and we are actually widening the gap with competition. We are expanding margin, we talked briefly about that, and generating strong cash flow while we continue to invest ahead of our peers in AI data and people.

That's very important for us. We talked a lot about that in Q1, but our ability to continue to invest in people and in capabilities, thanks actually to our organization for people and to our balance sheet for capabilities, make a big difference.

It's a tough contest out there, and we are confident not only to raise our guidance for 2026, but more importantly, we are confident in our abilities to sustain a superior growth rate and create value on the long term. That was your question about 2027.

If I were to sum up, I would say that beyond a strong quarter, we are making the demonstration that AI is accelerating the competitive advantages that we have been building for nearly 10 years now. I will actually say more because it started with Maurice vision.

Again, thank you for joining. I have to say it, sorry for all the English and French football fan on the call.

It has been a rough week. I love to go to bed early before the earnings, but I've been suffering with many of you.

I guess we will see you on the pitch on Saturday. Hopefully, you can have a bit of time with you and your family to rest in the coming months, but I'm sure we'll meet soon.

Have a good day. Thank you very much.