Publicis Groupe S.A. (PUB) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Publicis Groupe Third Quarter 2026 Revenue Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Arthur Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of the Publicis Groupe. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Sherry. [Foreign Language], and welcome to Publicis Groupe's Third Quarter 2026 Revenue Call. I am Arthur Sadoun, and I am in Paris with our CFO, Loris Nold. Jean-Michel Bonamy is also with us and will be available to answer your questions off-line after this call. I will start with the 3 highlights of this quarter and explain why we are confident for the rest of 2026, but also 2027. Loris will then take you through our numbers before we take your questions together. But first, please take the time to read this disclaimer, which is an important legal matter. Let's start with our performance. In Q3, we delivered plus 5% organic growth accelerating from the first half despite a higher comparable. We are bringing our 9-month performance to plus 4.8%. These results are fully in line with the upgraded guidance we gave you in July. We are, therefore, confirming all of our objectives for 2026. Organic growth between 4.5% and 5%, with another strong Q4 within this range, a slight improvement of record 2025 operating margin rate of 18.2% and free cash flow of circa EUR 2.2 billion. Three highlights stand out this quarter. First, we continue to accelerate our market share gain and widen growth gap with our competitors. Second, our new business momentum is only getting stronger in a reshaped competitive landscape, giving us already strong visibility into 2027. And third, thanks to AI, our investments in data and technology are setting us apart, expanding our growth opportunities and improving our productivity and capacity to invest. Let me take you through the details of those highlights. First, our market share gains acceleration. Connected Media representing 62% of our net revenue, delivered high single-digit organic growth, driven by market share gains, increased demand for AI-powered products and services and new addressable markets. Intelligence activity, representing 25% of net revenue had a solid quarter at low single-digit organic growth fueled by new business wins and scope expansions. At the same time, technology improved sequentially, while the situation in the Middle East kept global organic growth slightly negative. The U.S. our largest country, returned to positive growth in Q3. We expect this positive momentum to accelerate in Q4 with the entire business returning to positive performance. To understand these dynamics, it is important to recognize that AI adoption is moving at two different speeds. In Marketing Services, consumers are using AI dailies and are already changing how they search, discover brands and decide what to buy. As we turn to AI assistance for recommendation and comparisons, our clients need to adapt how they reach and engage with them. The imperative to adapt is immediate. Clients are ready to commit budgets faster because moving too slowly could mean losing market share. Enterprise transformation follows a longer cycle. It requires changes to core systems, processes and ways of working, where adoption is progressing more solid. With implementation taking longer and macroeconomic uncertainty remaining high, clients are more cautious about committing significant capital expenditures as expressed by all IT consulting firms, including the market leader again recently. This creates two distinct investment dynamics; urgency to spend on marketing to protect and grow revenue and more measured commitments to enterprise transformation. Sapient is essential to the growth of both pillars. Today, its contribution is strongest in marketing services, making its performance increasingly inseparable from the growth of our Media and Creative operations. Our geographic performance also demonstrates the consistency and resilience of our country model. The U.S., representing close to 60% of net revenue grew plus 4.5% in Q3 against a demanding comparable of plus 7.1% last year, sustaining a strong 4.9% growth year-to-date. This performance was driven by Connected Media and Intelligent Creativity, both up mid-single digits, supported by major client wins. Europe delivered plus 4.7%, accelerating H1 and leading to plus 4.5% year-to-date, with strong committed media results and continued market share gains. Asia-Pac accelerated to plus 5.4% in Q3 from 4.1% in H1 with a 4.6% growth year-to-date. China, but also India, remained key contributors, both up double digits. As a result this quarter, we are further widening the gap with our peers on net organic growth. We are growing more than 3x faster than our peers on average in Q3 2026 on a multiyear tax, while we were growing just above over 2.5x higher last year. That sustained outperformance for 25 consecutive quarters demonstrates the strength of our model, its ability to deliver through different market conditions across capabilities and geographies. Our second highlight is new business, where our very strong performance in the newly consolidated landscape is giving us greater visibility into 2027. Omnicom acquisition of IPG has reduced the competitive field by 25%, fundamentally reshaping our industry and opening up two major opportunities for Publicis. Actually, the first benefits to all of the three global players. The consolidated competitive landscape gives Publicis and its two major competitors, a greater chance of winning. We are already seeing this reflected in our respective new business momentum. As the latest convergence data shows, more than 90% of the algo wins in H1 2026 landed with one of those global players. They represented less than 75% of the wins a year ago. It is even more important to note that these reduced competitive landscape creates more room to compete on capabilities and business outcomes rather than on price alone. That means better condition for profitable growth and value creation across the industry. The second opportunity, however, is highly specific to Publicis. While our competitors are reducing headcount and scaling back investments, we are pursuing a polar opposite strategy. We are strengthening our teams, doubling down on data and technology and extending our identify first model. Our intention to acquire LiveRamp is the latest step building on our investment in Sapient and Epsilon and the position we have established in commerce, influencer and sports. Clients increasingly value this difference. As they transform for the IRR, they want partners with the talent, technology and financial strengths to invest alongside them. These continued investment in talent and capabilities are the #1 reason why we have a retention rate close to 100% and the best new business track record. This is particularly visible in our Q3 new business performance where JPMorgan looks at net new business, which is wins minus the losses. Looking year-to-date, we have been on a record run when it comes to net new business, and our performance so far will contribute approximately to 200 basis points to organic growth in 2027. And with a dynamic [indiscernible] element and 7 months is still ahead, we have further opportunities to build on that contribution. These are assignments already on with revenues still to come they give us a solid foundation for another year of industry outperformance. Our third highlight is the way AI is amplifying the value of our investment in data and technology already setting us apart. Four years after the rise of GenAI, its contribution to our growth, depreciation and operating performance is clear. Since 2022, we have increased our net revenue by close to 20%, which is more than 4x that of our peers on average. At the same time, we are widening our margin gap from 270 basis points in 2022 to close to 400 basis points in 2025. Looking ahead, AI strengthened our model in two major ways. It connects our capabilities, strengthening our category of one, and it improves our productivity, sustaining our capacity to invest. First, it connects our capabilities into an offering that clients increasingly need and that we can uniquely deliver. Clients are looking for a partner that can transform how they operate and how they grow. They want an AI-powered marketing engine built inside their own environment with control over their data and technology, an engine that they can plug, play, own and control. That is what Publicis delivers for our clients end-to-end in a unique way. Sapient modernize their technology and build the data architecture for AI to operate at enterprise scale. Epsilon enables them to identify and engage each customer and prospects. Marcel provides the intelligence and orchestration connecting data, technology, agents and workflows. And our Media Creative production and commerce operations activate this engine across every touch points against measurable business outcome. It means clients can know their customer individually, personalized interactions produce content faster and optimize media in real time, all safely and transparently within their own environment. This is why we are able to increase our addressable market and expand and deepen our client relationships. That is reflected in our new business leadership for the seventh year in a row and our ability to win three material AI-led transformation assignments, this year outside of traditional pitch processes. Beyond this commercial momentum, our connected AI-powered capabilities, enable to drive measurable business outcomes for our clients. Using our data and advanced analytics and predictive modeling, we have been able to significantly improve commercial effectiveness and marketing efficiency. Second, AI improves productivity, contributes to margin improvement and generates additional capacity to invest. We have focused our efforts on two priorities: making our talent AI-affluent equipping and training more than 90% of our 114,000 employees with AI productivity tools, more recently, thanks to our partnership with Microsoft. Deploying agents to automate manual and repetitive tasks, we have an objective of reducing them by an estimated 25% to deliver efficiencies and allow our people to focus on higher value work. These efforts have had a visible impact. On our financial KPIs, as reflected in the improvement of our people costs as a percentage of net revenue in H1 and in our increasing revenue per head, on our ability to drive further margin improvement while reinvesting more each year in technology, talent and capabilities that will drive future growth. AI therefore creates more operating leverage that allows us to invest in talent, do more for clients and deliver EPS goals for our shareholders. Now let me hand over to Loris to take you through the details of our numbers.

Thank you, Arthur, and good morning, everyone. Let me begin with the key highlights of our Q3 2026 revenue. Revenue reached EUR 4.614 billion, up 6.9% on an organic basis. Net revenue was EUR 3.808 billion. Organic growth was plus 5%, coming on top of plus 5.7% in Q3 2025. There was a net positive impact of currency of 150 basis points due to the appreciation of the USD and some Asian currencies versus the euro. And acquisitions, net of disposals contributed a positive [ 140 basis points ] reflecting the impact of our 2025 and 2026 acquisitions, namely 160over90, P-value, Hepmil and Fabric. When factoring in those items, net revenue was up 7.9% on a reported basis. Let's move to the next slide and our Q3 net revenue by region. North America was up 4.4% on an organic basis. This comes on top of a very high comparable of plus 7.1% in Q3 2025. Organic growth for the first 9 months was in line with group's total at plus 4.8%. There was a positive impact of the USD versus euro on top of the contribution from acquisitions and reported revenue was up 7.6% in Q3. Europe delivered plus 4.7% in organic growth. And it is worth noting that when excluding the impact of technology, organic growth was up 7.7%. There was a positive impact of the pound sterling versus the euro leading to a reported growth of plus 5.3% for the region. Asia Pacific posted plus 5.4% organic growth. There too, there was a net positive impact of currency appreciation versus the euro on top of the contribution from acquisitions, leading to a reported growth of plus 10.1% in Q3. Latin America continued to perform very strongly and was up 23.8% in organic growth. When having the positive contribution of currencies and acquisitions, reported growth was plus 31.4%. And finally, Middle East and Africa was down minus 1.4% as it continues to be impacted by the conflict. Reported revenue were up 5%, thanks to the positive impact of currency changes. Let's get into more details for each region, starting with North America. The U.S., the Group's largest geography representing 59% of our net revenues, posted organic growth of plus 4.5% after plus 7.1% for the same period last year. This brings the year-to-date performance slightly ahead of total group at plus 4.9%. Connected Media and Intelligent Creativity were both up mid-single digits in Q3, benefiting from new business wins and scope expansions. And technology turned positive, growing low single digits this quarter. Let's turn to the performance in Europe on the next slide. The region posted plus 4.7% organic growth and when excluding technology grew at a very strong plus 7.7%. The U.K., which represents 9% of net revenue was broadly flat on an organic basis in Q3 due to the conflict in the Middle East, which continues to impact Publicis statement U.K. hub. When excluding technology, organic growth was plus 7.1%, driven by very strong growth in Connected Media. France, which represents 5% of our net revenue was up 4.5%, with Connected Media and Technology performing well. Lastly, our operations in Germany and in Central and Eastern Europe were up 7.7% and 7.2%, respectively, driven by strong growth in Connected Media. 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 5.4% organically. China continued to be very strong at plus 10.6% organic growth in Q3. India was also up double digits. Southeast Asia continued to be softer, still bearing the impact of the Middle East conflict. Latin America posted plus 23.8% organic growth in Q3, driven by connected media and intelligent creativity, in particular, in Brazil and Mexico. As mentioned earlier, Middle East and Africa posted a minus 1.4% organic decline in Q3. For your reference, you will find on next slide, our performance year-to-date by region. As you can see, all of our regions posted a strong organic performance leading to plus 4.8% in total for the group year-to-date after plus 5.5% for the same period last year. Last, net revenue was up 3.3% over the period and on a reported basis. Moving to my last slide, net financial debt. The average net debt over the last 12 months was EUR 1.196 billion, in line with our expectations. This represents an increase of EUR 239 million compared to last year due to the acquisitions completed as well as the impact of the lower USD versus the euro in the last 12 months. We closed Q3 2026 with a net debt of EUR 1.598 billion. This concludes my financial presentation, and I now give the floor back to you, Arthur.

Thank you, Loris. Just to wrap up before we take your questions. As you have seen in Q3, [indiscernible] continues to deliver market share gains and increase the growth gap with our peers. In a competitive landscape that has been totally reshaped, our new business wins already provides strong visibility into 2027. And last but not least, AI is only expanding both our growth potential and our capacity to invest. With 5% organic growth in Q3, we are confirming all our objectives for 2026 and are in position to deliver another strong year of outperformance in 2027. We just completed our 25th quarter of outperformance. And with our unique ability to connect data, technology and talent through the power of one, we are confident to continue on the same dynamic for the years to come. But let me thank our clients for their trust and our people for their outstanding work. Thank you for listening. And now with Loris, we are happy to take all of the questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Nicolas Langlet of BNP Paribas.

So I've got two topics I would like to discuss, please. First, on the top client spending since July has any of your top clients has cut or deferred its Q4 budget relative to plan. And as your top clients at their '27 budgets, is that better or worse at this point last year? And secondly, on Sapient, so great to see you expect a return to growth in Q4. What is driving the expected improvement in Q4 relative to Q3? This is delayed projects restarting or more new AI-led transformation work? And based on today's pipeline, should we expect Sapient to be positive in '27?

[Foreign Language], Nicolas. I'm going to start with the client sentiment. I'll give you an overall feedback and then Loris, if you want to add something. But basically -- and this is what I tried to explain in the first part is that, on the one hand, clients continue to invest in AI-powered marketing products and services because they know that this is the way to gain and retain market share. And as I said in my presentation, the AI adoption by consumer is so high that you don't have time to lose. And what is great here is that we see our clients just investing more in transforming their marketing model. This is why we are growing so fast with Connected Media. But by the way, and I'll come back to that. This is also why we are growing in Sapient. On the other hand, I think we need to be clear that they are still slower in investing in large discretionary project. This is due to macro uncertainty, and this is what you have heard from any IT consulting firms, including the market leader. But if I may come back to us here, this is an advantage for us, because don't get me wrong Sapient is very important for us, and I'll come back in a second. But technology is 13% of our revenue. We roughly have 19% of our revenue that is in marketing transformation. And actually, we have the right revenue mix to help our client today and prepare tomorrow. You want to add something on the client? What I can tell you is that tone is not better or worse. The tone is committed to transformation because they know they have to do it, but still in a wait-and-see attitude when it comes to CapEx spend, but definitely accelerating when it comes to OpEx and gaining market share on the consumer that has changed this behavior.

The only thing that I would add, Nicolas is remember, when we upgraded our guidance in H1, we did for two reasons. One is because of the strong business wins we had in the first part of the year. And the second is because of the confidence that we had in our existing client base where we lose very little business, as you know. And so that gives us a lot of visibility and that visibility and that confidence has not changed into H2.

Let me spend a moment on Sapient because it's definitely a news in our results. I would basically say three things. First, just to recap, we have seen a sequential improvement in Q3 versus Q2. and it's basically thanks to the U.S. that are turning positive. And as we said, we expect these dynamics [indiscernible] to answer your question, to accelerate for the entire business and to be back to positive overall on technology in the fourth quarter, which I think is a good and reassuring for us. Now as I said, and I have to insist on that is like all of the industry experts and peers today, we believe it's too early to see -- to expect an inflection on what we call large enterprise AI transformation. So we still have to be cautious on this part. But third and maybe more importantly, I'm happy to come back on that later, and I think it will deserve more time than a call to do that, but what set us apart is that this kind of renewed momentum that you see in Sapient today is mainly coming from our ability to boost our marketing transformation capabilities. And every day more Sapient is working hand in hand with our Media and Creative operation. And together, they position us to capture what is an increasing demand from client, as I said, to urgently need to adapt in AI when it comes to talking to consumer. And this is why -- and we are trying to do our job as best as we can here, but this is why it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate Sapient revenue for our Media and Creative operation. Actually, Sapient should not only be viewed as a reporting line, which it is, of course, but also as a key AI platform that transforms the outperformance of the entire group. I mean, if I give you just two quick examples to make that very concrete to you. Thanks to our enterprise-grade agented platform, Sapient is actually allowing us to act not as a simple Creative or Media agency, but as a true transformation for our client in the edge of AI. And to put it simply, and you know we don't like to talk too much about the business, but Sapient has been instrumental in doing the two biggest accounts of the year without a pitch. A second example, and I know there has been a big topic for you guys recently is in production. As you know, this represents roughly EUR 1 billion of revenue in net revenue for us. And Sapient delivered for us a really competitive advantage. This is why we are growing so fast in production because at the end of the day, we have great studios and we have great studios for years. But the big question now is the tech platform that really allow you to connect the data with the production to deliver intelligent creativity. So, all in all, Sapient is improving as a reporting line, and that's a great news, but even more importantly, it is really contributing to our overall growth. I knew you would have the question for '27. I would say, as for everything, by the way, it's too early to tell you more about '27, particularly in the macro context we are in today. But there is one thing that I can tell you is that we expect Sapient to continue benefiting from an increasing demand for a AI transformation project including from clients on the Media and the Creativity front. So yes, we are confident and optimistic for what is coming. Sorry, Nicolas, I've been a bit long, but hopefully, I have covered most of the Sapient questions through your question.

The next question is from Jerome Bodin of ODHO.

Yes. So just a few questions. Just first of all, to follow up on Sapient in the U.S. So two questions. Is it mostly back-end loaded in Q3? Or is it balanced all over the quarter? Have you seen an improvement mostly in September? That's the first question. Second one is what type of contract is it exactly? Is it more short term, one shot? Or is it more long-term contract that should help the business for the next 1, 2 or 3 years? That's my first question. Second one on the net new business for next year, so for 2027, so at Q2, you said 100 basis points for 2027. Now you're saying 200 basis points but you had PepsiCo, you had gearing, which are quite big. So just to trying to understand, have you included -- I know you don't want to be specific on advertiser, but have you included the loss or the possible loss of Coca-Cola. And if that's the case, would it be mostly 2027 or Q4? And lastly, on Agent. So we -- so platform like Open AI, you are now developing their own advertising agent. So just to understand, where do you want is to be in that model. I know it's a bit early stage because it's linked to LiveRamp, but do you want to build and run your own agent? Or do you also want to provide data to this external agent like Open AI or [indiscernible]?

I can actually start with the third question, and then I'll come back on the rest is our mode as the consultants are saying comes basically from two things today, the quality of our data and our people. These are things that will not be disrupted by AI. So to come back to your question, we will definitely connect our data with any new platform that will exist in the environment. And by the way, the more platform, the more complexity, the better for us because at the end of the day, and you know that AI is nothing without the data. And by the way, the more complex is the marketing model, the more our clients will need the service that goes with that. So we feel confident that we're going to be able to be agnostic when it comes to platform. And by the way, making sure that we build models that are living in our client environment that they can own and control. On Sapient, I would say, it has been pretty balanced over the quarter. It's long-term contract we are talking about. And again, let me insist on that. If I give you a concrete example, which I tried to do a bit earlier on, when you go to a client and you explain him that he has to put identity at the core of this model that he has to connect this identity with a full marketing ecosystem. And through that, it's going to be able to fuel it with intelligent content and measure in terms of business outcome, they can't do this if they don't modernize their take framework. And that's where Sapient gets into play, is that they come with us to the client and not only they explain what we can deliver, but how they're going to get organized operationally to make it happen. And that's the beauty of the well we are building is Sapient easier to set the foundation of the marketing transformation model that our clients need. So it's, of course, long-term contract. Same thing for production. You build the tech stack and then you operate it, okay? And then on New Business, as you know, we don't make any comments. We believe that this PRS for wins doesn't make sense, so we don't mention any win in time. But what is certain is that in the 200 basis points, everything is included, the plus and the minus.

The next question, sir, is from Ciaran Donnelly of Citi.

A few from me. I think, firstly, since we last spoke, Meta released news. So can you give us insight into three things? I guess, one, what is the shift to increase the advertising for agents and not people mean for the agencies with respect to opportunities and threats? Two, could you just give us a sense of how clients are prepared for the shift to agentic advertising at the moment? And three, how basis our position relative to peers to help clients navigate this shift? And then just finally, just on the comps around the return to growth for Sapient in Q4, should we expect to see that in Europe/Middle East? Is it going to be that recovery? And could you just give us a sense of the comps Q3 to Q4 for Sapient?

Again, maybe we can start on Sapient. We are expecting the overall business to turn positive in Q4. We are not planning for the Middle East to do better so far. And when you look at the news in the coming days, I don't think we should -- so you know how we do with this, we bake all the risk into the guidance we are giving you, knowing that, by the way, Q4 is an adjustment quarter. So you should not anticipate Middle East to come back to growth for Sapient in the coming months, you should expect Sapient for the reason I just mentioned to come back to growth overall in Q4. Do you want to add something on that, Loris?

No. The situation in the Middle East -- and Sapient is a bit more exposed to the Middle East and then the rest of our operation, a, because of its presence there, but also because of the impact it's been having on the U.K. hub that is servicing from London, some Middle Eastern-based clients. So when we look at Q4, we're not expecting this to change dramatically. Also, there is a very high comparable when you're looking at the Middle East into Q4 that you have to take into account.

Coming back to your two first questions. First, definitely clients are preparing for an agent world. Everyone knows that this is coming and it's going to change a lot of things. Everyone also knows that it's complex. It's longer than expected, and it could be very expensive without direct business outcome at the beginning, but everyone is preparing for this one. As I said, this is a 2-speed boat. When it comes to Agentic for marketing, clients are moving very fast because, again, their own clients and prospects are moving very fast. So they need to adapt. When it comes to enterprise, they realize that it's longer processed that it's a lot of change management that is very costly. At the moment where there is a lot of macro uncertainty. So by definition, it is slower. How Publicis position versus their peers. I should let Loris answer this question because I'm going to get competitive. So I've got to be careful on that. But more seriously, I mean, I think that if you look at our track record over the last 7 years, and you can expect next year to be the same, we are showing not only the resilience not only the strength but also the differentiated model that we have built over the year. Let's be clear, we did not come there by coincidence. This is something that started 13, 14 years ago now when we acquired Sapient and that [indiscernible] the vision that the future was not consolidation, which we could have done at the time, but really to invest in data and technology to build the model of the future. As you know, for those that have been with us for a while, we had a couple of very rough year where we had to change our operating model where we had to make those acquisitions where we have to start to embrace AI in 2017. But to come back to your question now, I see that the number repeatedly for 25 quarters are showing our level of outperformance. And it's basically due to three pillars, we have a different model from our competitors. We don't believe that you should be organized by expertise like media, creative and technology. We believe you have to be organized by countries because you need to break down the P&L among the different capabilities. This is why by bringing media closer to creative. We are still growing creative when no one is. This is why by bringing now Sapient closer to Media and Creative. We are returning the Sapient growth, which is not the case of all of the system integrator. So we have a very different model. We have very different capabilities. I mean, some have made the choice to divest their data assets when we have decided to invest and that has been a big thing with Epsilon. Some have decided to externalize now their IT professional, meaning all their data analysts and engineer where actually, we have more than 30% of our population that now are part of that. And that makes a big difference. And last but not least, what I think is not a small thing is that, as I said in my presentation is it's all about investments. We are a market of three. We continue to invest in talent. We continue to invest in capabilities and what you need to understand, which I think is critical. This is what clients expect. They don't expect us to reorganize, to let people go to stop making some acquisition. They are expecting us to invest on their behalf. And the fact that we are investing in the best talent and the best capabilities give us the kind of results that you can see in Q2 when you look at the business, which is, again, not in minus versus Sorry, I was too long, I know.

The next question is from Adam Berlin of Goldman Sachs.

I got two questions, please. The first one is, can you just explain the Q4 guidance? So you've guided that it will still be in that 4.5% to 5% range, but Sapient will be positive in Q4 versus negative in Q3. So, is there another part of the business that's going to slow down in Q4? Or is this just caution given, as you said, it's an adjustment quarter and you're just being conservative, but it is possible that we could see further acceleration in Q4? That's the first question. The second question is, there was news in a couple of weeks that Apple has changed the web kit on iOS 27, which is blocking some some advertising that's possible on Safari and potentially other parts of Apple. I just wondered if you have any comments on what you think the impact of that could be on the ad ecosystem, especially in the context of you buying LiveRamp?

I'll start with the second one. First, as you can imagine, we see. We can't come on LiveRamp. But what I can tell you is we are not worried at all about the update we have from Apple. We are used to this kind of thing. And actually, in this case, particularly, we are not exposed. So there is no risk here. On your guidance question, sorry if there are people from Sapient listening, but as I said, they are very important for us, but honestly, technology is only 13%. So again, when we have an acceleration as we have in Q3, this represents basically 20 basis points, an improvement of our growth for the quarter. And so if we turn from slightly negative to positive or slightly positive this is not going to have a major impact on our total growth. So I think you guys should be very careful with this. It is a very important asset because it's a differentiating asset that makes a lot for our business in general and an area where we have engineers within the company that makes a big difference. But when it comes to revenue, the variation of Sapient, doesn't change that much. If I want to be a bit provocative, we didn't have a good Q2 with Sapient, and we still have a great Q2 for the group. So I think you need to be careful there. Now if I come back to the guidance, I can give you a couple of points more, which is, again, we are confirming our growth of 4.5% to 5%. And we are confident that we're going to be able to outperform the industry for the 7 years in a row, again here by far. And if you look at the growth, First, the new business won in H1 give us the visibility in Q4. The reason why we feel so confident about Q4. And by the way, confident that it will be within the guidance range in Q4, which is important when you note an adjustment quarter is because we have won a lot in H1, and it's having an impact here. Second, we're going to an acceleration versus H1 on the underlying business. Again, when you look at the compounding effect of everything we've been winning over time, I think that showed the strong dynamic and the strong underlying business we're having. And finally, being an adjustment quarter, we could be close to 5% for the future -- for the full year, sorry, if the macro economy gets better. So that's what we are expecting. We can't tell you much more, but honestly, we are very, very precise in our answer.