JCDecaux SE (DEC) Earnings Call Transcript

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the JCDecaux 2026 Half Year Results Presentation. I will now hand the call over to Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2026 half year results conference call. The speaker on this call today will be Jean-Francois Decaux Co-Chief Executive Officer; David Bourg, Chief Financial, IT and Operations Officer; and I. Remi Grisard, Head of Investor Relations, is also attending today's conference call. We delivered a strong performance driven by digital in the first half of 2026. Our revenue reached EUR 1.9539 billion with a continued solid revenue momentum as organic revenue growth reached 5.7% despite an uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical environment. Organic digital revenue grew double digit by 14.5% and now represented 42.8% of total group revenue. Within digital, programmatic organic revenue was up 30.9% and accounted for 12.3% of our digital revenue. This confirms once again that digital and especially programmatic is a powerful growth engine and a key growth driver for our group. Leveraging our revenue growth and focused and disciplined execution, we achieved double-digit growth across all our key operational indicators, demonstrating our strong operating leverage. Our operating margin was up 16.8%, reaching EUR 359 million. Our recurring EBIT was up 53.5% at EUR 136.2 million. Our net income group share was up 84.7% at EUR 140.1 million, and our operating cash flows were up 41.8% at EUR 218 million. Finally, and importantly, we delivered a EUR 91.1 million year-on-year increase in free cash flow, reaching EUR 26.2 million in the first half, which is a positive free cash flow despite the usual seasonality of our business. David, obviously, will comment on this strong financial performance in more details later in the presentation. H1, our strong profitable growth trajectory with digital as a key driver. Moving now on to the Slide #5 and looking at our top line dynamics for H1 and Q2. For H1, we delivered 5.5% organic revenue growth, confirming a solid start to the year as Q1 grew also by 5.7% organically. This performance reflects growth across, again, all segments and geographies with digital as the main driver of this great momentum. Turning to Q2. Organic growth was also 5.7%, which is well above our guidance of around plus 3% despite the conflict in the Middle East. This strong Q2 was driven by digital and by the 2026 FIFA World Cup beyond our initial expectation, which supported advertising demand in several key markets. By segments, on the next slide, Street Furniture maintained a very strong momentum with reported growth of 5.3% and organic growth of 7.3%. This confirms the robustness of our core business, supported by both analog and digital in a context where urban audiences remain highly attractive for advertisers. Transport continued its rebound with reported growth of 4.8% and organic growth of 5.3%. Billboard returned to growth with reported growth of 1.2% and organic growth of 0.8%. This reflects a more disciplined and selective approach to our inventory, particularly in France, while still capturing opportunities in the most premium location and in the most digitized markets. Slide #7, you can see that growth in H1 2026 was well balanced across geographies. North America at 19.6% organic growth, supported by the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United Kingdom at 12.8% were the fastest-growing geographies, both driven by digital. Rest of Europe grew 7.8%, confirming solid momentum across our European footprint, including in the southern part of Europe. Rest of the world grew by 3%, 18.3%, excluding the Middle East. Asia Pacific grew by 2.3%, including low single-digit growth in China. France declined by 1.9%, impacted by the high non-advertising revenue comparison base, while advertising revenue grew by 1%. This again demonstrates the strength of our geographically diversified model, especially relevant in the current environment, marked by geopolitical and macroeconomic tension in some geographies. As you can see on the next slide, we are not only well diversified geographically, but also by activities. Street Furniture remains our largest segment, accounting for 51.3% of total revenue. Transport represents now 35.3%, still below its pre-COVID share, but continuing to recover, while billboard is at 13.4%, in line with our focus on premium and increasingly digital assets. On the right-hand side, you can see our geographical footprint. Europe represents 47.7% of total revenue with France at 16.5% and the U.K. at 10.8%, making them our 2 largest countries. Asia Pacific accounts for 20.3%, including less than 10% in China, the rest of the world 13.1%, and North America 8.1%. This, again, confirms our unique balanced and truly global OOH media footprint. Turning to the next slide. Our client portfolio remains, as you can see, highly and well diversified with our top 10 clients accounting for less than 12% of our group revenue. We continue to see, obviously, a healthy rotation between categories. Telecom and technology, up 19%, was particularly dynamic, driven by campaigns from tech companies, including generative AI brands as pictured here in the Metro de Sao Paulo, which accounted for up to 30% of sales in the tech capital of the world that we covered such as San Francisco in the U.S. and Shenzhen in China. We see a comeback of branding for consumer goods as shown in the 13% growth of food and beverage and the 9% growth of retail. Meanwhile, finance is getting very competitive with the rise of online platforms, and we benefit from higher marketing budget as this category grew by 15%. Fashion, personal care and luxury, our largest category at 17% of revenue, was stable year-on-year. On Slide #10, as you can see, DOOH remains a key growth driver, with organic digital revenue up 14.5% in H1 2026. Digital revenue penetration continued to increase. It reached 42.8% of total group revenue in H1 and 43.7% in Q2 2026. Our digital revenue mix also closely mirrors our overall business mix with Street Furniture representing 49.1% of digital revenue, Transport 39.6% and Billboard 11.2%, as shown on this slide. Over 10 years, our digital CAGR reaches 16%. Digital penetration increased again across all 3 business segments in H1 2026. In Street Furniture, digital revenue reached 41% of segment revenue, up from 37.5% a year earlier. In Transport, our most digitized segment digital grew from 44.5% to 48.1%. And in billboard, digital penetration edged up from 35.4% to 36.1%. This confirms the steady rollout and success of our digital assets across the portfolio. Let's move now on to the programmatic advertising, which remains our fastest-growing revenue stream. In H1 2026, programmatic revenue reached EUR 102.8 million, up 30.9% organically versus H1 2025 and now represents 12.3% of our digital revenue compared with 10.1% a year ago. This growth is supported by our enhanced capabilities. We are now connected to 50 DSPs and over 350,000 screens, including more than 35,000 JCDecaux screens in 48 countries across 5 continents as well as 48 third-party media owners on VIOOH and 8 third-party SSP on Displayce. As you can see, programmatic revenue remains largely incremental, especially from smaller advertisers and highly targeted campaigns such as the campaign picture here, which shows only during the marathon of Stockholm on key locations for the runners. We anticipate also continued strong growth for programmatic revenue, and this is illustrated by the important gap today between countries, where Germany at 42.7% and the Netherlands at 30.8% are well above the group average of 12.3%, while some major digital markets like the U.K. and the U.S. have not yet fully embraced programmatic. The pDOOH campaign you see on the right in Oslo is a good illustration of this momentum in our most advanced market. We expect programmatic penetration to continue to rise in the medium term to represent more than 20% of our digital revenue. While the contract activity has been quite limited in this half year, on this slide, we wanted to zoom in on one flagship example of our commercial momentum. The renewal of our long-standing partnership with Heathrow, where we have secured a new 8-year advertising contract, which means we will continue to operate the media in what is both the U.K. main international gateway and the world's most connected airports with more than 80 countries served and close to 85 million passengers last year. This, again, renewal is a good illustration of our ability to not only retain key strategic contracts, but also to further strengthen our leadership in the airport growing segment. On this Slide #15, we highlight the strong potential of DOOH Retail Media for JCDecaux. Our new exclusive partnership with Carmila Carrefour now being deployed with Unlimitail is a key milestone. It will create a new data-driven OOH/DOOH network across shopping centers on retail access points in France and Spain over the next few years, as illustrated by the example you see here in the Carrefour Carmila Mall in Toulouse. Retail media is already, as you know, a dynamic and mostly digital activity for JCDecaux with around 90% of revenue coming from digital across 44 countries, leveraging our partners' data to deliver highly targeted, contextual and programmatic DOOH campaigns. Globally, retail media represents a $174 billion U.S. market, including online and remains underpinned by the fact that around 84% of retail sales still happen in stores. DOOH Retail Media is expected to grow at around 11.6% CAGR between 2025 and 2031. Combined with our broad portfolio of leading retail partners, this positions JCDecaux very well to capture the acceleration of DOOH retail physical media. On Slide 16, we have once again confirmed our excellent ESG performance. Our extra financial ratings remain best-in-class with JCDecaux included on the CDP A list 2026 on 80/100 Gold, which up 5%, ranking from EcoVadis, the highest AAA rating from MSCI and an 11.1 low-risk score from Sustainalytics, all significantly above the media sector averages. More broadly, I would like to emphasize that OOH continues at JCDecaux to be one of the least carbon-intensive media for advertisers. On the Slide 17, this slide illustrates the strength of our corporate culture through a selection of awards won by our teams across the world. You can see that our subsidiaries are being recognized on multiple fronts for innovation and technology, for example, in AI-driven tools, media tech or digital experiences for creativity and campaign effectiveness, including international creative awards, all or for commercial excellence with several Sales House of the Year type distinctions. This recognition from Europe to Asia Pacific and the Americas demonstrate the high level of engagement and expertise of our teams and support our positioning as a premium innovative partners for cities, transport authorities and advertisers. I will now hand over to David to comment on our financial highlights.

Thank you, Jean-Charles. Hello, everyone. On this first slide, you can see the main financial KPIs for the first half of 2026. As you can see, we delivered a strong set of results with a strong growth across all our key indicators. Revenue reached almost EUR 2 billion, up 4.6% on a reported basis with organic growth of 5.7%, which has been already largely commented by Jean-Charles. FX had a negative impact of circa 100 basis points, around EUR 21 million, but with no significant impact on margins due to our natural hedging. At the same time, our operating margin, EBIT before impairment and net income grew much faster than revenue at plus 16.8%, plus 56.1% and plus 84.7%, respectively. Cash flow also improved significantly in the first half, turning positive despite the usual seasonality of our business and leading to lower net debt year-on-year. In summary, this clearly shows the strong operating leverage of our business model. Let's now have a look at each item in more detail, starting with the operating margin on Page 20. On this slide, you can see the evolution of our operating margin. It increased 16.8% from EUR 307.4 million to EUR 359 million. This is a strong result, especially when compared with revenue growth of 4.6% and shows once again the strength of our operating leverage. There are 2 main reasons for this improvement. First, our rent and fees increased at a lower pace than revenue at plus 3.4% despite new contracts such as Barcelona and Stockholm, which are still in their startup phase and also some pressure on prices due to the macro and geopolitical situation. Second, we kept a tight control of other operating costs with an increase limited to 0.9% year-on-year. As a result, our operating margin rate improved by 190 basis points from 16.5% to 18.4%. And as you can see from the chart on the right-hand side, this improvement was visible across all segments, mainly driven by top line growth in Street Furniture and Transport and for Billboard by the rationalization of our inventory portfolio in France and our most digitized market. Let's now move to EBIT. On this slide, you have the EBIT bridge. Starting from an operating margin of EUR 359 million, we deduct net amortization and depreciation as well as spare part maintenance, both increased year-on-year by EUR 4.8 million and EUR 0.8 million, respectively, or plus 2.4% and 3.2%, which is again slower than revenue growth. This brings us to recurring EBIT of EUR 136.2 million compared with EUR 88.7 million last year, an increase of EUR 47.5 million or plus 53.5% year-on-year with a margin expansion of 220 basis points, from 4.7% to 7%. Below, recurring EBIT, we have a positive nonrecurring items for EUR 60 million, including EUR 47.5 million capital gain from the sale of a stake in APG SGA. The year-on-year increase in nonrecurring item was nevertheless limited to EUR 23 million as H1 2025 also included some one-off asset sales and reversals of dismantling provision linked to contract expiries. After nonrecurring items and impairment, EBIT reached EUR 192.5 million, up 52.4% compared to last year. In summary, a strong operating leverage, not only on operating margin, but on EBIT as well. Let's now move to net income, Page 22. On this slide, you can see the bridge from EBIT to net income. Here again, the message is clear. The strong operating improvement also led to a strong increase in net income. Between EBIT and net income, there are 2 main points to mention. First, the financial results improved by EUR 8.9 million, mainly due to lower interest expense, thanks to lower IFRS 16 lease liability and financial debt. Second, we had a higher tax charge, reflecting our improved results with an effective tax rate of around 16% compared with 16.4% in H1 2025. As a reminder, H1 2026 benefited from the nontaxable capital gain on APG SGA. Excluding that effect, the 2026 H1 effective rate would have been around 22.4%, an increase from last year, reflecting the geographic mix of profit generation. So at the bottom of the table, reporting net income group share reached EUR 140.1 million, up 84.7% year-on-year and up 23.3%, excluding the APG capital gain. So overall, a solid underlying earnings. On the next slide, we move to cash generation. As you can see at the bottom of this slide, free cash flow improved strongly in the first half by EUR 91.1 million. The first reason is that higher operating margin led to higher operating cash flow, which improved by EUR 64.2 million year-on-year. The operating cash flow also benefited from favorable impact in the line other items compared with last year, mainly due to higher dividend received from affiliates, one-off bank fees paid in H1 2025 and lower restructuring costs. The second reason is better working capital management than last year. This is a good result, especially because in June, we had a higher level of revenue linked to the FIFA World Cup and also a higher level of inventory linked to new contract rollout, mainly Carmila in France. Last but not least, net CapEx came to EUR 115.6 million, below the same period last year, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of revenue at 5.9% versus 6.4% in H1 2025. This partly reflects lower sales of assets than in H1 2025 that I have mentioned before and also some delays in the rollout of new contracts, which also explains the increase in inventory that I have just commented. So our free cash flow turned positive in H1 2026 at EUR 26.2 million, which is quite positive at this period of the year and confirms our ability to generate strong free cash flow through strong profitability combined with a strict discipline on CapEx and working capital. It is also worth noting that the cash flow before changes in working capital requirement almost tripled, rising from EUR 35 million in H1 2025 to more than EUR 100 million in H1 2026. Finally, on this last slide, Page 24, you can see our strong financial structure. First, net debt decreased by EUR 284.1 million compared with June 2025 and by more than EUR 200 million after the -- excluding the EUR 79 million proceeds from the sale of APG. Compared with the end of 2025, December 2025, net debt increased by EUR 41 million, but this is quite normal at this period of the year given the dividend payment in May for EUR 150 million and the seasonality of the activity. Second, our liquidity remains very solid with EUR 1.28 billion in cash, a fully unused EUR 825 million revolving credit facility. Our debt profile is also solid with an average maturity of 2.6 years and 92% of the debt at fixed rate. Finally, both rating agencies improved their outlook from stable to positive, which is a good sign of the strength of our financial profile. So to conclude, we delivered a strong first half with a very good combination of strong revenue growth, strong profitability, strong cash generation and strong balance sheet. That's all from my side on the financial, and I will now hand to Jean-Francois Decaux.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. Out-of-home media is more than ever a growth story, supported by increasing urbanization and mobility, rising audiences and the premium nature of our assets and the fast digitalization. As shown on this Slide 26, WPP Media, the world's largest media buyer, forecast in its latest June update, digital out-of-home to grow by 7.2% CAGR over 2025, 2030, with total out-of-home expected to grow by plus 5.2% CAGR over the same period. This robust growth trajectory clearly sets out-of-home apart from other traditional media, many of which are facing structural stagnation or decline. Moving to Slide 27, which highlights the strong runway for digital growth across our major markets. By combining ongoing screen deployments, programmatic capabilities, data and now AI, we continue to expand our digital footprint even in our most mature markets. As you can see on the left, top performers like Brazil 83%, the U.K. 77%, and the U.S. 76%, are leading the way with digital penetration well above our group average of 43%. What makes this picture particularly compelling is a substantial upside that lies ahead. Key markets like China at 41%, Spain 39%, Italy and Austria 28%, as well as France at 9%, remain below the group average. In France, our largest market, digital penetration stands at just 9%, largely due to the historical regulatory frameworks. Slide 28 illustrates our end-to-end ad tech ecosystem. On the far left, we captured demand from global agency groups, independent players and digital native buyers. In the middle, our platform strategy spans both sides of the ecosystem. On the demand side, Displayce acts as a leading DSP for out-of-home. On the supply side, VIOOH serves as an open SSP, leveraging both JCDecaux and third-party media owners to global demand with the highest number of DSPs connected in the market. In addition, the number of third-party media owners on VIOOH has doubled from 20 to 49 today, including OUTFRONT, demonstrating its strong market appeal. Moving up the value chain through VIOOH and Displayce was a deliberate strategic choice to capture value at every transaction step rather than leaving margins on the table. Today, this open full stack infrastructure remains a unique competitive advantage, perfectly positioning us to capture the long-term structural growth of programmatic out-of-home. It is worth noting that JCDecaux is ahead of the game with 12% of its digital revenues being traded programmatically versus 7% for the sector as a whole. On Slide 29, our conviction remains that AI is, first and foremost, an enabler for us. Our assets are physical in cities, transport networks and billboards. AI will transform the way we work by automating processes and improving the productivity of our media, but it will not replace premium real assets such as bus shelters, metro networks, airports screens and large billboards. The large format digital screen you see here in Melbourne are a good example of these high value assets in which we continue to invest. On this slide, we highlight a few concrete use cases. In campaign planning and trading, our tools can now optimize the whole process from planning to booking and delivery to a simple prompt. In dynamic content creation, AI allows the generation of tailor-made visuals customized for each location for both print and digital campaigns. And for content moderation, AI automatically screens creatives to preapproved visuals and speed up validation. Our physical assets are therefore structurally resilient, and AI enhances their value by improving productivity, targeting and measurement. Moving to Slide 30. Airports remain a structural growth driver despite episodic crisis. Over the long-term, air traffic has been growing by around 3% to 5% per year and forecast remains very solid with passenger expected to reach 12 billion in 2030 and over 20 billion in 2050. On July 23, global air traffic reached a record high with 153,359 aircraft simultaneously in the sky. We are uniquely positioned to capture this growth as we operate advertising concessions in 154 airports worldwide with 14 of the top of the world's 25 largest airports, including Denver, which will start next week, meaning nearly a 6-month delay, as mentioned by David. Moving to Slide 31, which outlines our main upcoming tender pipeline across our 3 business lines. In Street Furniture, key upcoming opportunities include the Paris CIP, meaning freestanding structures and columns, the Unlimitail in-store retail network in France, Transport for Greater Manchester in the U.K., Hamburg and Dusseldorf in Germany, the Hague in the Netherlands as well as Wiener Linien and Vienna freestanding advertising structures in Austria. In Transport, major tenders coming up include Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, AENA Spanish Airport currently suspended, Hong Kong Airport and several key U.S. airports such as Chicago, San Francisco and Phoenix, where we are competing as nonincumbents. Finally, in Billboard, notable opportunities includes the private land contract for the city of Paris as well as transport for New South Wales and Australia. Moving to Slide 32, on our ESG leadership. We are a sustainable media company. First, 46.7% of our revenue is EU taxonomy aligned and our SBTi approved net zero trajectory targets a 68% drop in Scopes 1 and 2 emissions by 2025. Second, we drive urban ecological transition through concrete innovations such as biodiversity bus shelters in Paris. Finally, we measure our broader environmental and social impact with JCDecaux 360 Footprint already active in major markets and expanding globally through 2026. Moving to Slide 33, which highlights the ongoing fragmentation of the global out-of-home media landscape. As you can see, JCDecaux stands out as the global market leader and the only truly worldwide out-of-home media company. While some major U.S. peers have retrenched to their home market, some local companies emerge, yet the overall market remains highly fragmented beyond the top players. These structures gives us significant strategic runway, positioning JCDecaux to drive future growth, both organically and through targeted value-accretive consolidation. Moving to Slide 34, which puts our global positioning into perspective within the broader advertising landscape. As you know, the global media market is heavily concentrated. The top 5 tech giants account for 58% of total ad spend and the top 25 represents 75% with 14 players from the U.S. and 9 from China. In this highly concentrated environment, JCDecaux ranks #23 globally, making us 1 of only 2 European companies in the world's top 25 media companies. More importantly, while digital platforms dominate online inventory, JCDecaux stands out as the only true global out-of-home media company. We offer global brands a unique high-reach, truly international platform. To wrap up, our key takeaways for H1 2026 reflect a strong performance across the board. First, we delivered solid top line growth alongside significant improvements in profitability and cash generation. Second, our growth momentum remains robust, fueled by digital expansion and a rapid acceleration in programmatic. Third, our geographic and business diversification continues to drive growth while strengthening our resilience in the context of geopolitical and macroeconomic tensions. Fourth, as our digital platforms scale, we are further increasing our competitive edge. And finally, all of this is driven by continuous operational and financial discipline across our teams. To conclude, on the next slide, as far as Q3 is concerned, with a continued solid revenue momentum, we now expect organic growth around plus 5% despite macroeconomic and geopolitical tensions, uncertainties. Thank you for your attention. Jean-Charles, David and I are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first call comes from the line of Marcus Diebel at JPMorgan.

Could you talk a little bit more about the trends in addition to what you said as a broad comment? I'm very interested in developments in the Middle East. It looks like that the sort of like development was not as bad as feared, and also France. If you can maybe give a little bit more on the development there, that would be quite helpful. And then the second question was, clearly, programmatic is very, very strong and a key driver of the business and it's really coming through. You mentioned that you feel still there are a lot of incremental revenues coming through. Could you explain a bit more in particular how the smaller clients, you mentioned the smaller clients are actually starting to come to JCDecaux as well. That would be maybe as a sort of like broader comment very helpful. Thank you.

So regarding the Middle East, I must say that, as you know, it's always on such an unexpected basically event such as basically the conflict that is going through at the moment. It was very hard to assess and calibrate the right basically top line revenues decline in this environment. So yes, we did slightly better than anticipated because I think also the traffic in most of our airports, especially in Dubai, but also in Abu Dhabi was a bit better than expected. I think also the authority in the region has stated business as usual, which is helping also to basically keep the demand at a good level. I think it's a good, I would say, way of striving through this very difficult situation for some countries in the region. So -- and I think the team at JCDecaux has done a terrific job to navigate in the best interest of our clients as well as our JCDecaux ecosystem to tackle this difficult situation. So a bit better than expected in Q2. Hopefully, this conflict will end soon, but who knows? It's impossible to predict. So we remain, as you know, optimistic for the future, but also cautious because of the current situation. Moving into -- obviously, moving into France, yes, I think the advertising business has grown in France in the first half of the year despite a quite good comparison the year before, has grown by 1%. The reason why France is minus 1.9% is due to a one-off sale of our automatic public toilet, state-of-the-art product in the Paris municipality a year before. But on the advertising side, the business has been resilient. And Q3 also is looking in that direction. So yes, France, the business is doing, I think, better than the expectations in the market, growing slowly, but growing. And this is obviously a good news for our largest market so far at JCDecaux. Moving on to the -- your last question, Mark, on programmatic, Jean-Francois?

On programmatic, we had a very strong first half and Q2 as well, obviously, 30% growth on programmatic. Well, what we can say in addition to what was already mentioned in the introduction is that the fact that we have our own ad tech system is a plus. We see now more and more third-party media owners joining in the platform VIOOH. In terms of SME contribution, it's still very small, but we are starting to get new clients and new SMEs, but it's still a small percentage. So we are working hard on that. And I think AI will help by simplifying the planning and trading for the small clients as well. So all in all, it's pretty good news. Also the platform VIOOH is now breakeven cash on cash. And in the first 6 months, we generated positive free cash flow for the first time ever. So that's good news as well. Our investment is paying off in this -- I just want to remind you, Marcus, that we are the only out-of-home media company having its own SSP and DSP, which obviously is attractive for third-party media owners, and then we continue to gain momentum on attracting more third-party media owners on the supply side. And it's hard to predict future growth on programmatic, but the bottom line is that we believe that we can now start attracting more and more companies, i.e., non out-of-home media clients through our portfolio and the programmatic is a very helpful tool to get those. For example, during the World Cup, we had some campaigns that triggered by the results of the different football teams, and this was mostly a programmatic trade. So all in all, we are very bullish on programmatic. It represents now 12% of our digital revenues, well ahead of the sector because at the WOO conference last month, it was mentioned that 7% of out-of-home digital revenues are coming from programmatic and Decaux is at 12%. So all in all, we are -- I think we are in a good spot.

Yes, perfect thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Julien Roch with Barclays.

As Marcus only asked 2 questions, I'm going to go for 4. On Page 20 -- for David.

We can't hear you very well. Sorry.

Is that better now?

It's a bit better, but not very clear. But let's try.

Okay. Is that better now.

Yes, much better, much better.

So on Page 20, rent and fees up 3.4% in the first half. Other operating costs up 0.9%. Is there seasonality? Or can we expect both to be up broadly the same for full year 2026? Then North America was up 19.6% in the first half. How much in Q1 and in Q2? Or can you isolate the impact of World Cup on Q2 results contribution to Q2 organic? Then on Heathrow renewal, no Clear Channel to bid against you. So what can you tell us in terms of rent and fees? Same, lower or higher versus before? And then lastly, on Page 31, outside of the U.S. where is Clear Channel an incumbent in all those renewals?

Thank you, Julien. Much better. Now so David will take the first question, Jean-Francois second and third, and I will take the fourth. So David?

Yes, regarding the pace of [indiscernible] OpEx in the second half of the year, we have to keep in mind that we will have the new contract in start-up phase, which, as you know, the phase has always dilutive on our margin first. So the pace of the growth in the second part of the year, we should be cautious and should be, let's say, evolving a bit different from the first half, not significantly, but it won't be exactly at the same pace.

Regarding the U.S. First of all, Julien, well tried, but we don't break down revenues geographically on a quarterly basis, but only every 6 months. It was worth trying from you. Second, Q2 was obviously very strong in the U.S. What we can tell you is that overall World Cup incremental revenues was above EUR 30 million. When we announced our Q2 guidance, we gave you a breakdown between Q2 and Q3 of this plus EUR 30 million of 50-50. What we can tell you now, it was more than 60-40, i.e., 60% for Q2 and 40% for Q3, i.e., less revenue uplift in Q3 than in Q2. And this extra 30 million was mostly in the U.S., but also in Mexico as well as in countries like the U.K., which did pretty well in the World Cup. And then there, back to the answer I gave to Marcus in the previous question, that was some programmatic campaigns in the U.K. given that the U.K. team did pretty well.

On Clear Channel, can you repeat your question, Julien? Where Clear Channel was bidding? Clear Channel was basically, we don't see Clear Channel now outside of the U.S. So basically, now they are back in the U.S. as a U.S. operator, so. We don't -- your question is where do you -- do we see them? We don't see them outside of the U.S.

No. My question was, on Page 31, I understand they've gone back to the U.S. But in Page 31, it's renewal or it's renewal of a lot of contracts, right? And some of them must be Clear Channel outside of the U.S. before they left. So, I just want to identify the opportunity where you could gain contract because Clear Channel is no longer bidding, on Page 31. That was one question. And then the other one was on Heathrow renewal. As it's the first time you're bidding without Clear Channel. I was wondering whether you can give us some color on what happened to the rent and fees. Are they higher? Are they lower? Are they the same as before? So it's kind of 2 questions.

Yes. Jean-Francois will take the Heathrow one, I will take the Clear Channel one. So on Clear Channel, basically in Europe, even if Clear Channel now, as you know, is gone from Europe, you have now local operators. So certainly, the local operators will pick up some of those bids to compete. But it will be obviously -- and it will certainly be a different approach. Every company has a different approach to the way they bid, and we will see that in the coming future. In France now, it's the local players in basically other markets in Europe, in Northern part of Europe it's Bauer Media. So it depends on the market, but it's not any more global competitors as it used to be with Clear Channel, Julien. So as we said at the last conference call because I think we had the questions, it's a bit too early to draw a conclusion. But what we can say is more rationality in the bidding process across -- basically across the board with sometimes some few exceptions, but it's certainly more rational than it used to be prior to COVID.

Regarding Heathrow, Heathrow did a market consultation, Julien, in order to assess whether or not they wanted to do a bidding process. And the result of this market consultation is that they decided to extend, renew our contracts for 8 years without going out to tender. There was no obligation on Heathrow's part to go out to tender, and they basically came to the conclusion that given our footprint and our track record over the last 30 years operating the advertising business in Heathrow that it wasn't necessary for them to go out to tender. And the terms and conditions are pretty much the same as they were in the previous 10 years.

Our next question comes from the line of Davide Amorim with Berenberg.

Three questions for me, please. Firstly, you delivered a very strong H1 on profitability. Congratulations. As you mentioned, some of your contracts will start in Q3. Could you please help us understand the expected direction of operating margin in H2 and for fiscal year 2026? Secondly, in the press release, you mentioned a low single-digit organic growth in China in H1. We have recently heard a more positive comment on China from several media companies. What trend are you seeing in the market at the start of the Q3? And lastly, more broadly speaking, out-of-home advertising seems to be becoming increasingly attractive to advertisers. Are you seeing stronger demand showing up in more volume? Or are you able to push for higher yield, especially in digital screens?

Thank you for your questions. David the first one, I will take the second one, and Jean-Francois will take the third one.