Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. (DIM) Earnings Call Transcript

[Foreign Language] Welcome to the 2025, sorry, Extraordinary and Ordinary Annual Shareholders Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A. My name is Joachim Kreuzburg and as Chairman of the Board, I will chair the meeting. With me are today, Mr. René Fáber, member of the Board and CEO of the company; Mrs. Pascale Boissel, member of the Board and Chairwoman of the Audit and Sustainability Committee; and Mr. Olivier Guitard, Head of Controlling of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group and Secretary of the Board. I would like to thank all shareholders who are either personally attending here today or are participating in our webcast as well as all shareholders who casted their vote remotely ahead of the shareholders meeting. As in previous years, we are providing a live webcast covering the entire meeting. I now need to appoint the officers of the assembly. Is there any shareholder who would like to volunteer as a scrutineer of the meeting? If so, please remind that -- be reminded that scrutineers will have to stay after the closing of the meeting to sign the minutes of the shareholders' meeting. As we do not have any volunteers, I would like to appoint Mrs. Pascale Boissel and Mr. René Fáber to act as scrutineers, which they accepted and Olivier Guitard as Secretary of the shareholders' meeting. French and English interpreters are also present. I will now continue with the formalities of the shareholders' meeting, the quorum that allows us to hold this combined shareholders' meeting is 94.94%. The final percentage of the quorum will be available after the final counting by the bank. With regards to the convening of the annual combined shareholders' meeting, the agenda and the resolutions are available here at the desk. They have also been published in the Bulletin #21 of the BALO of February 17 of this year in the Bulletin #28 of the BALO of March 5 of this year and in the legal newspaper [indiscernible] also on March 5 of this year. No draft resolutions or new items on the agenda were requested and all documents required by law, which you may have received from Uptevia or your financial intermediary are available here during the meeting and on our website. Please also refer to the universal registration document for further information. The attendance list has been signed at the beginning of the meeting. It includes the number of shares and number of rights of the shareholders present as well as the number of shares and rights represented by proxies, which we received before the meeting. After reading the agenda, we will proceed to vote and I will present the preliminary results of the votes for the shareholders' meeting. This year, the agenda of the annual combined shareholders' meeting is divided into 3 parts. We will start with the first extraordinary part in which we will amend the company's Articles of Association in order to allow a smooth staggering of mandates. This will be followed by the ordinary part during which, in particular, we will be able to appoint or renew directors for different durations of office in accordance with the revised Article 15.3. We will then continue and conclude with our usual financial delegations to the Board through a second part of the extraordinary general meeting. Before I go through the agenda in detail, I would like to introduce the Board members which are proposed for reelection or first-time appointment. We propose to renew the mandates of Pascale Boissel. You see here the table with all the members that are either for reappointment or for new appointment. You see this also clearly indicated. So we propose the renewal of the mandates of Pascale Boissel, René Fáber, Lothar Kappich and myself. And additionally, we proposed 2 new members to be elected to the Board of Directors. And maybe just a brief word. You see these different proposed term of the office and the second line from the bottom on this table and that indicates to you how we receive -- how to achieve the staggered Board terms going forward. So -- and as both proposed new members are present here today, I would like to ask them both to briefly introduce themselves personally, starting with Cécile, please.

Okay. So good morning, good afternoon. So I am Cécile Dussart. By education, I am pharmacist and hold Diploma in Marketing. I've been working more than 35 years for pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Aventis at that time, [indiscernible] Roche, Bayer and finally, Galderma, who is a more middle-sized company dedicated to dermatology. So I worked more than 10 years in marketing and then 10 years in human resources and more than 15 years as the Head of Operation and ESG for Galderma. So I am French living in Switzerland. So sitting in another Board in a company so-called EuroAPI, specialized in the active principal ingredient. This is it. Thank you. And I'm very excited to be part now of the Board of Sartorius Stedim.

Thank you very much, Cécile. Now we've got Chris.

Thank you very much, everybody. My name is Chris Nowers. Please excuse my casual appearance, my suit is still being held hostage by Air France. I'm also more than 3 decades in the biopharma industry. I've worked at companies like Amgen, Bristol-Myers Squibb and I've had the luxury to work on innovations throughout my career, whether it be growth factors in Amgen, checkpoint inhibitors at Bristol-Myers Squibb. And then my most recent experience is in cell therapy, where I've worked at 3 different companies. Firstly, Kite, as Head of Europe when they launched the first CAR T; Secondly, Cell Medica, which was a company in the U.K. developing iNKT cell therapies. And then most recently at the company where I'm CEO, currently is ONK Therapeutics, which is a company that's exploring gene-edited NK cells. So like Cécile, I'm delighted to join the Board. It's really my experience and in advanced therapies that I hope to bring to Sartorius and really be part of the team that's going to help drive the company forward. So good to meet you all.

Thank you very much, Chris. And I invite everybody to consult our shareholders' guide for more details, if need be. The setup of the new Board to be elected, I think, will clearly continue to show a high level of competence in the first place but then also a high level of diversity, also regarding the complementary experience and expertise in the biopharmaceutical industry and other adjacent industries that are relevant to us. Myself and the entire Board would also like to thank Henri Riey at this point who has been a member of the Board since 2007. So pretty much since the combination of Sartorius and Stedim has been created as Sartorius Stedim Biotech for his very valuable contributions and expertise that he brought to the company during his many years of service. Mr. Riey will no longer be available for a further term and he will retire from the Board at the end of this Annual Shareholders Meeting. Now let us come back to today's agenda. Under the competence of the first part of the extraordinary shareholders meeting. We have on the topic 1, the reading of the Board of Directors' report on the proposed resolutions on first extraordinary part of the shareholder meeting. Topic 2 are 2 resolutions concerning the amendment to the Articles of Association, which is first amendment to Article 15.3 and that is then covered by the resolution #1. And the second is the amendment to Article 17.5, which will be covered by resolution #2. And then under the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting, we have topic 3 which is the reading of the 3 reports of the Board of Directors, namely reading of the Board of Directors' management report on the financial statements, including the group management report, then we have the reading of the Board of Directors' report on the proposed resolutions of the shareholders' meeting and reading of the Board of Directors' corporate governance report. Topic 4 is then the reading of the 3 reports of the statutory auditors, respectively, the one on the company's financial statements for the year ended -- end of December 2024. Then the one on the consolidated financial statements for that very year and then the third is the report on the regulated agreements covered by Article L.225-38 and following of the French Commercial Code. Topic 5 is the approval of the financial statements for the financial year 2024 and the discharge of -- to all directors. The sixth topic is the approval of the consolidated financial statements for that very financial year. Seventh is the allocation of the financial result for that financial year. This will be resolution #5. And then the sixth -- 6 resolutions concerning the remuneration of the members of the Board will follow in full compliance with the say on pay doctrine which also is described in our URD for 2024 and these are the 6 resolutions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Then we have another 6 resolutions concerning the director's mandates and here, we are talking about those resolutions, 12 through to 17. And then topic #10 covered by resolution #18, is the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in own shares. So -- and then after the ordinary shareholder meeting, we have then a second extraordinary meeting, which starts with Topic #11, which is reading of the report of the Board on the proposed resolutions. Topic #12, then is the reading of the 4 special reports of the statutory auditors, which is one and that is covered by the resolutions 19 through 24 on the general delegation report. And then we have one on the issuance of shares reserved for members of the company and employees savings plan, that is resolution 26. Then the report by our auditors concerning the authorization to award free shares, resolution #27 and then the reading of the report on the reduction of capital, resolution #28. So -- and then we finally have another 10 delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors in relation with shares and capital of the company. And these are the resolutions 19 to 28. And I won't read all those delegations now because it's a bit repetitive. It's related to the topics that I already have mentioned before and all you find in the respective documents here on the desk and in the Internet. So before proceeding with the voting process of the combined shareholders meeting, I would like to ask our Chief Executive Officer, René Fáber, to present the 2024 annual financial statements as well as the development of the company, including information about sustainability. René?

Thank you very much, and hello, everyone, and welcome to this year's Annual Shareholder Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech also from my side. Today, I will walk you through the 2024 results. We'll talk about the market, the market situation, the position of Sartorius Stedim in the market, how we are and serve -- how we serve our customers, how we differentiate and will also finish with the outlook for the year 2025. So starting with the 2024 last year results. We have finished the year 2024 with close to EUR 2.8 billion sales revenues, representing a slight increase of 1% compared to previous year. You see on the chart on the right side, looking at the 5 years horizon, it represents a strong growth of 93% and kind of a continued track record of doubling our business every 5 years. On the order intake, development was even more positive. We have seen that the normalization after the pandemic continued. The very much -- the destocking, which very much impacted the development of our business post pandemic is progressing well. The most of our customers are reached their target inventory levels. And we've seen that recovery, especially of consumables, again, reflected here in the double-digit order intake growth. Our underlying EBITDA margin came at 28%, close to prior year level. Looking at the market and the customer after, again, the exceptionally volatile pandemic demand peak and the postpandemic normalization, we now see the industry returning back to its underlying growth trend. The consumables, as I said, developed well and strong. Also, our business in Advanced Therapy solutions developed and grew over proportionally double digit, yet the equipment, the CapEx side, the spend of our customers for instrument systems, however, still remained muted in 2024. Looking into sector-specific and macro trends, China stabilized rather on low level. On the positive side, we seen the funding beginning to increase again, an indicator that the industry is returning back to the underlying growth trend. However, the geopolitical environment continued to contribute to uncertainties with ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Middle East, as well as potential legislative changes like BIOSECURE Act in the U.S., forcing some of our customers to reconsider their CDMO outsourcing strategies. While navigating through these volatilities, we and our team was able to deliver well on the EUR 85 million efficiency programs focused mostly on reduction, again, of the inventories back to the prepandemic levels at cost savings, especially in purchasing of direct and indirect materials and the readjusting the resources as well as stretching the capacity expansions time lines, again, back to reflect the current customer demand needs. In the last 5 years, we have significantly increased and expanded our team and added 3,700 new jobs and an increase of roughly 60%. I'm very proud of our ambitious, highly skilled team who is recognized in the industry as the top team in helping customers develop their manufacturing processes faster and manufacture the biologic drugs in most efficient way. Sartorius Stedim is a highly attractive place to work. We are happy to be able to fill more than 3/4 of the management positions with the internal talents. More than 1/3 of such leadership positions are run by women and ratio, which we are looking to further increase moving forward. We are continuing to invest in our global infrastructure but on the -- expanding the manufacturing capacities, investing in new automation technologies in manufacturing and also in our customer-facing facilities. I would like to highlight first here the new center of bioprocessing innovation we opened in November last year, close to Boston in a biotech hub in the United States. In that center, we're working closely with our customers to develop new generation of manufacturing processes. The center is co-located with our corporate research activities, a team who is looking into future next-generation technologies for biomanufacturing. So we are very happy to having that center now open and active, which brings us another step closer to our customers in the -- especially in the United States. On the expansions, we are running a few major expansions in Germany for filters manufacturing, [indiscernible] for single-use technologies. In Germany, in Freiburg, we are investing in a facility to make critical cell culture components for use in cell therapy manufacturing. And in Asia, we are building a greenfield facility in Songdo, South Korea, where we will manufacture all major consumables like filters, single-use bags and cell culture media. We spent EUR 340 million in these expansions in 2024. That expansions and that investments bring us into a strong, resilient position when it comes to our presence globally, being close to our customers. The second largest facility in our network is in Yauco in Puerto Rico, serving U.S. market. And as I mentioned, with the investment in Asia, in South Korea, we are, yes, investing in a significant footprint in Asia as well and particularly in South Korea, which is a strongly growing manufacturing hub of biologics, today, already the largest single location in terms of volume of manufacturing of biologics in South Korea. On the -- to finish that part with -- of the 2024 review, after the temporary decrease of underlying earnings per share in 2024, we are proposing a EUR 0.69 dividend per share, which corresponds to the same level as 2023 and shows our overall positive outlook for the future business development. Let's take a step back now and take a few minutes and talk about the bigger picture. What is actually the purpose of Sartorius Stedim, what we are doing and how we contribute to better health for more people. With our focus on biology -- biologics and biopharma industry, we support customers who are making the most complex but very effective and efficient drugs for the patients. During the last more than 20 years, we have seen an enormous progress in the science and how our customers brought a really life-changing medicines to the patients. Yet -- and Sartorius has been always an -- is an integral part of that amazing journey in the industry. With -- when we look, however, at where this novel treatment are used and what was the accessibility to the patients for such new treatments, we see that by far, the majority are used in Western countries, U.S., Canada and Europe and only 20% are used in the rest of the world where the majority, 85% of the population sits. This is a problem of affordability, accessibility but also shows the growth potential and expansion potential of these biologics when they reach the broad global population. The issue of that accessibility is related to costs and price of these therapies. You see here that some of them like cell or gene therapies can go up to several millions per treatment, this onetime treatment but still very high cost. And this is, again, related to the complexity of these biologics. It takes our customers more than 10 years to develop these drugs, only 10% make it to the market, which succeeded the Phase I. And the costs associated with such drug development are, on average, above $2 billion. And here, this is where Sartorius contributes and help our customers to speed up, to accelerate development of these drugs and make the manufacturing of these drugs much more efficient. Coming now to how Sartorius Stedim is supporting and working with our customers. We are, when it comes to innovation, focusing on certain specific areas which make the most and the biggest impact, a positive impact on how our customers bring these medicines to market and manufacture them. Single-use technologies, Sartorius being with Stedim the pioneer and recognized market leader in single-use manufacturing. We now enable the industry and our clients to intensify these processes, make them even more efficient, increase the output. We put lot of effort into automation of the workflows, taking manual steps out of the work of our clients. And last but not least, help our clients to use and analyze the data in a way which help them to make the manufacturing process even more efficient. Let me spend a few words on the selected innovations. First, intensified processes, which is a move of the industry from so-called batch manufacturing into ultimately continuous manufacturing. We at Sartorius Stedim are very much working closely with clients like Sanofi in developing these next-generation tools, systems and consumables for clients to run a manufacturing of biologics in a continuous way. And you see the benefits one can achieve with that decrease the costs by half or increase the productivity by -- significantly by factor 3 and also CO2 emissions and footprint of a facility, these are a very attractive value proposition to clients to work with Sartorius on that innovation. A second example is a area of advanced therapies. These are new drug modalities becoming more and more relevant in our industry. We have built a strong portfolio through acquisitions during the last 5 years of critical materials, reagents, cell culture media, which when properly mixed and working together, as you can see on the right side, can make enormous improvement in process yields for our clients for this novel modalities. Here, the manufacturing processes are very immature and the need for innovation is prominent, especially here for such new therapeutics. Third example is a bit different. It's about material -- material science is one of the core competencies of Sartorius, the selection of the right material, which often are in contact with drugs and drug substance in terms of quality, reproducibility, change management of the materials is critical. We looking into sustainability topics. Sartorius is bringing a first so-called PFAS free. PFAS is a -- are chemicals which have a negative impact on environment. There's a potential ban of these chemicals coming and we are bringing an alternative filter which is not using these chemicals for our clients to make them ready to switch when it's needed. And on the right side, you see 3 examples of how we are bringing a nonfossil-sourced plastics into our products. And by that, increasing the share of this renewable materials in our products portfolio. That brings me to the sustainability topics in line with the EU regulation. We evaluate which impacts Sartorius business has on -- and business activities have on environment people and which risk and opportunities arise from sustainability topics. For each such a material sustainability impact, risk and opportunity, we develop a management approach, sets targets, defined programs and actions to execute and achieve these targets. Let me give you an example on the climate change as a material sustainability topic. We have set ourselves a target to reduce emissions and achieve net zero CO2 emission by 2045. We defined programs and have programs in place and then respective actions like using new sustainable input materials, the examples I brought on the previous chart, miniaturizing the products, working closely with suppliers on -- together to reduce the CO2 footprint as well. So a -- yes, well-structured approach to achieve these targets. Looking at some numbers. Sartorius Stedim Biotech, representing about 80% of Sartorius AG Group is significantly contributing to emissions, of course, of the group but also to the implementation of the climate strategy of the AG. And in compliance with the current regulation, we are presenting numbers here reflecting the Sartorius AG numbers. As we are a strongly growing company, we decided to set our targets based on CO2 emission intensity, which means gram CO2 per euro revenue, a target of reducing per year on average 10% of that intensity. You see since 2019, we are trending to that target being now at minus 8% almost. And you also see when it comes to the avoidable Scope 1 and 2 emissions, which we want to get to zero by 2030. You see on the right side, also the development of that performance indicators with slight increase but under proportionally to the revenue growth, which I showed you in the beginning of my presentation, almost doubling in 5 years and we are seeing around 10% increase only of that emissions. That brings me now to the outlook for the 2025. Starting first with the underlying market fundamentals. And we've been repeatedly saying that we see these market fundamentals being very strong, intact, robust. The -- on one side, the demographics are positive. The global population is growing. It's aging that drives more and more need for medicines. More and more of the medicines are the biologics. The type of modalities and type of medicines where Sartorius Stedim is focusing. You see a significant increase last 10 years. The proportion of this type of medicines in the pharma industry, which drives then a very healthy double-digit growth of the industry. When we have a closer look at what our customers are doing, the pipelines of the drugs they are developing, we see a very healthy development. We have seen 2024 being the record year of approvals of new biologics and a record year of approvals of cell and gene therapies as well which today represent already a 30% of our customers' drug pipelines That all translates in attractive underlying growth rates. You see that pharma market alone already provides a nice growth potential. Biopharma significantly above that and within the biopharma market, there are pockets of growth pillars like biosimilars, like the cell and gene therapies, which I mentioned, where we have built a strong portfolio and the position to serve that. But also an ongoing and still strong trend towards adoption of single-use technologies, mostly now for commercial scale manufacturing of these biologics. So that's all a very positive development of the industry. We see a rapid pace on innovation reflected in that multi-modality landscape now. So -- and which, again, it's an attractive growth potential for Sartorius Stedim Biotech moving forward. So the key message is that these growth drivers are now taking over. And after the pandemic and the normalization, they are increasingly being visible as a growth driver for our business. How does that translate to our outlook for 2025? First, looking at the market, we expect life science tools market to grow but yet below what is the midterm average. I mentioned that we see the destocking being approaching the end, yet we still see the muted investment willingness of customers in instruments and systems. And within that environment, we at Sartorius Stedim Biotech, we expect to perform above the market. And yes, we would describe that as a moderate profitable growth that we want to achieve in 2025. We expect to grow -- that growth to be driven mostly by consumables and regarding the underlying EBITDA margin based on this moderate growth, we expect a slight increase in the profitability compared to 2024. We will continue to organically reduce our debt leverage and expect the CapEx ratio to be approximately around the prior year level. To finish my presentation today, I would like to highlight again the Sartorius Stedim's strong position, a company with clear strategy, with clear focus on biopharma customer, with clear understanding is what is the -- what are the winning ingredients for us and strong and consistent implementation of that strategy, a business model with high share of revenues coming from consumables, recurring business, a sticky use of consumables in validated processes of manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals, a company with a highly competitive and differentiated product portfolio perceived by our customers as a market leader, innovator, high-quality premier -- premium partner. I talked about the strong growth fundamentals of our market. I talked about the robust, resilient and flexible infrastructure we have in place for manufacturing, being close to customer in all major regions. And last but not least, a market-winning ambitious team. We have been recognized as the top-notch team in -- by our customers, helping them develop the manufacturing processes faster and making these very promising medicines, much more affordable and accessible to patients worldwide. Thank you very much for your attention and happy to take questions.

Yes. Thank you very much, René. Thank you very much to all attendees here for your attention, indeed, questions will be possible to be asked at the end of the meeting, not now. So we first have to follow through the agenda and then we will have the time for questions. So we are now continuing with today's agenda. We'll start with topic #1 of the extraordinary shareholders meeting, which is related to the reading of the Board of Directors' report on the proposed resolutions 1 and 2, of the first part of this extraordinary shareholder meeting. I won't read out this report as it is fully published on our website and the resolutions as announced before, related to the amendment of the Articles of Association. So we are now continuing with the different topics now. Topic #3 of the ordinary part of the combined shareholder meeting. That's the next meeting now. We have the extraordinary #1, now the ordinary. And here, we start with topic #3, which relates to the 3 reports of the Board of Directors. Again, I won't reach them out because they are available. And we are talking here about the management report regarding -- of the Board of Directors and the group company report, the Board of Directors report on the resolutions and the corporate governance report. Topic #4 of our agenda relates to the 3 reports of the statutory auditors, which are published on our website. As said before, there are 3 of these reports, and I would like now to invite [indiscernible] our auditors from PwC and KPMG to read and comment on these reports. Please.

Thank you, Mrs. and Mr. Board members. So my name is [indiscernible] with -- and I'm an audit partner with KPMG. With me today is [ Cédric Minarro ] one of the two audit partners with PricewaterhouseCoopers audit. Both KPMG and PwC are the joint statutory auditors of Sartorius Stedim Biotech and I'm now going to give you a summary of our joint audit report on the individual financial statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2024 and of the special joint report on related party agreements. And Cédric will be giving you a summary of the joint audit report on the consolidated financial statements of SSB and its subsidiaries for the year ended December 31, 2024. Before going into the summary of our audit reports, I want to emphasize that we were independent in compliance with the French Commercial Code and the French Code of Ethics for Statutory Auditors. As it relates to the audit report on the individual financial statements of SSB for the year ended December 31, 2024, it is dated February 11, 2025. In our opinion, the financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities of the financial position of SSB as at December 31, 2024, and of the results of its operations for the year then ended in accordance with French accounting principles. We performed our audit under French audit standards of the financial statements prepared by SSB under French accounting standards. In our professional judgment, we determine that there was no key audit matters and we performed specific verifications required by laws and regulations. We also had no matters to report as to the fair presentation and the consistency of the financial statements of the information given in the management report of the Board of Directors and in the other documents with respect to the financial position and the financial statements provided to the shareholders. We also attested the fair presentation and the consistency with the financial statements of the information relating to payment deadlines. As it relates to the special audit report on related party agreements, our report is dated February 11, 2025. We were not advised of any agreements authorized and concluded during the previous accounting period to be submitted to the general meeting of shareholders for their approval. In addition, we have also not been advised of any agreements already approved by the General Meeting of Shareholders and which continued during the previous financial year. Now I'll let Cédric introduce you to our report on consolidated financials.

Thank you, [ Francois ]. I'm [ Cédric Minarro ], an audit partner at PwC. I'm going to present our report on the consolidated financial information. So what is our opinion? We have audited the consolidated financial statements of Sartorius Stedim Biotech for the year ended at the end of December 2024. In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and the financial position and of the results of the operation for the year ended at the end of December 2024 in accordance with IFRS as adopted by the European Union. What is the audit framework used by PwC and KPMG? We have conducted our audit in accordance with professional standards applicable in France. And as mentioned by [ Francois ], we also confirm that we are independent of the group and we comply with the French code of ethics. What are the key audit matters? Regarding the key audit matter, we have reported on the impairment testing of goodwill. We considered the determination of the recoverable value of the goodwill to be a key audit matter given its significance in the group's consolidated financial statements and given the use of significant estimates from the management. And we have described in our report how our audit addressed this matter with the list of all audit procedures we have implemented. In terms of specific verifications, we have also reported on the consistency of the management report with the consolidated financial statements and we have no matters to report. And for the presentation of the financial information in compliance with European electronic format, we have no matters to report. In our report, we have described the respective responsibilities between the statutory auditors and the management. And to conclude, in our report, we have also reminded that we have submitted to the Audit Committee, the description of the scope of the audit and the audit program implemented by the statutory editors as well as the results of our audit. To finish, in addition to our report on the consolidated financial information, we draw your attention to the fact that the management report includes the sustainability statement prepared for the first time by management and the group in compliance with the CSRD and based on the European taxonomy regulation. And PWC, as one of the statutory auditor has also issued an unqualified limited assurance opinion on this sustainability statement included in the management report of the group. Thank you for your attention.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. [indiscernible] and thank you, Mr. [indiscernible], for your reports. We will now continue with the vote of the shareholders present in this room for each resolution starting with the first extraordinary part of the meeting. I can now also inform you about the final quorum, which is 94.96%. Concerning the voting procedure, I ask the shareholders present to write your vote for each resolution on the certified paper form handed over to you at the time of signing in, either by taking for, against or abstain. The paper form will be considered as proof. You do not need to raise your hand to express your vote. The voting form will be collected after the voting session. We will share the results for each resolution at the end of the shareholders' meeting. I will now go through the resolutions one by one. After each resolution, I will make a little pause and you will have to fill in the certified voting form in accordance with the explanations received at the entrance of the meeting. So tick the box, for, against or abstain as just explained. So we will proceed with topic #2 of the first part of the extraordinary shareholders meeting and go through the vote of the first and second solution, both relating to the amendment of the Articles of Association. So first voting, first resolution and second voting, second resolution. The first resolution is the amendments to Article 15.3 of the company's Article of Association. So first voting, please. [Voting]

And the second voting is the second resolution, which is about the amendments to Article 17.5 of the company's Articles of Association. [Voting]

And with that, we have finished on topic #2 and we will then move forward to the ordinary shareholder meeting that means we are at the end of the voting process of the first extraordinary shareholders meeting. So we will now continue with the, again, with the votes by all shareholders here in the room and go through the different resolutions for the ordinary part of the meeting, same procedure as explained. Third voting on the third resolution, which relates to the topic #5 and the third resolution is about the approval of the financial statements for the financial year ended on December 31, 2024 and the discharge to all directors, third voting. [Voting]

Fourth voting regarding the fourth resolution, which is the approval of the consolidated financial statements for the financial year ended on the 31st of December 2024. Fourth voting please. [Voting]

We moved to the fifth resolution and the respective voting, which is related to topic #7 and it's about the allocation of the financial result for the financial year ended on December 31, '24. Fifth voting, please. [Voting]

Now we will continue with topic #8 which is covering 6 resolutions. They are clearly linked. Therefore, we are doing that now together. They are about the 6 through to the 11th resolutions. The sixth one is the approval of the remuneration policy and determination of the amount of the total annual remuneration to be allocated to the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year. Seven is then approval of the information mentioned in Article L22-109 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration paid or awarded to the corporate offices for the 2024 financial year. Eighth, approval of the fixed variable and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2024 financial year. And then the ninth resolution is the approval of the fixed, variable and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds paid or awarded to the Chief Executive Officer for the 2024 financial year. And then #10, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chairman of the Board of Directors for the 2025 financial year and 11, approval of the remuneration policy of the Chief Executive Officer for the 2025 financial year. So I hope that was good enough for the voting on 6 through to 11. [Voting]