WORLDLINE (WLN) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks a lot. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Worldline's H1 2026 Result School. I'm joined by Srikant Seshadri, our group CFO, and I will take you first through the key business highlights and strategic progress before Srikant presents the financials in more detail. So I will start with the slide five. However, H1 marks an important step forward, forward lines, turnaround, and transformation. Everything is not done yet, far from it, but we delivered what we committed for the first half, and this period shows clear momentum across the organization. First, as you know, we have significantly strengthened the balance sheet, together with a successful capital increase and the closing of most of the M&A transactions. including the super important METS and call, we have significantly reduced our net debt with a leverage which is now down to less than two times the EBDA. Second, merchant services has regained traction with a second consecutive quarter of growth and even acceleration during Q2. Financial services remain impacted by contract termination as planned, but also by a longer sales cycle than we would have liked. Still, the quality of recent important wins reinforces our confidence in our positioning and mid-term trajectory on this segment. Third, Northstar is working and delivering tangible progress on the priority we laid out at the capital market day across simplification, platform convergence, integration and commercial execution. And finally, our profitability is starting to improve, especially on merchant services supported by disciplined cost management and the first benefit of our transformation program with reduction of headcount in Western Europe ahead of our 2030 trajectory. Turning to slide 6 and the key figures for H1. As you can see, our payment volume continues to grow steadily, probably in line with the market trends, with acquiring volumes more than 4% in the semester. For the full semester, external revenue were broadly stable year-on-year and flat in the second quarter. Net-net revenue remains negative as anticipated at the Capital Market Day, reflecting the mix and the dynamics across our geographies and segments. Adjusted EBDA reached 294 million of euros, with EBDA margin improving at net-net revenue level for the first time since H1 2023. Free cash flow remains negative, but it is better than anticipated, reflecting disciplined cost management and better capital allocation. On slide 7, you can see that Q2 showed encouraging improvements across all businesses. Merchant services, which represent 80% of our external revenue, continue to gain momentum, supported by stronger customer focus and improving satisfaction. We are seeing encouraging performance with high single-digit growth across several geographies and segments, including Greece, the Nordics, Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, mobility and self-service within enterprise, and in our global collect entity. Switzerland and Benelux are also moving in the right direction, with Switzerland close to flat in Q2 and Benelux still negative, though. Financial services, which represents 20% of our external revenue, is recovering more gradually. While performance continues to reflect anticipated contract termination as planned, it also reflects longer sales cycle due to our own context. Nevertheless, we managed to secure several important signings that reinforce our confidence in the positioning and the medium-term trajectory of this business. To highlight this, I would like to comment on two important commercial milestones for financial services. The first one is the signing of an outsourcing agreement with ICS, which is the ABN AMRO entity managing the credit card issuing portfolio of the group. This selection is a confirmation of the attractiveness of our modern card-issuing platform that does cover the full lifecycle of the card. It demonstrates the confidence of a leading European bank for a long-term partnership at scale with Worldline. It reinforces our position as a trusted infrastructure partner from the financial sector. And as a reminder, we serve as Worldline around 80% of the 20 top European banks. The second milestone I would like to comment is the selection of Worldline for the digital Europilot. We will operate in this case on both sides of the value chain, the bank of the consumer and the merchants, which is one of our differentiating strengths. This decision of the ECB confirms that our line is legitimate and well positioned on the payment rails of tomorrow. The slide 9 shows that since CMD, we made tremendous progress in multiple areas, showing the breadth and depth of our action. On the corporate and M&A side, we are reaching the final stage of the disposal program, with most transactions now closed, and Australia and India coming soon. On the business side, we have signed and implemented several partnerships to enrich our offering, either to go beyond pure acquiring with Klarna and ULAND, or to position one line on the next generation rails, including EURO, stablecoins, and the digital EURO. In parallel, we gain traction in deploying meaningful and innovative product features, click-to-pay for recurring payment, where we are the first one in Europe, and the Spanish BZoom wallet in-store, where, again, we are the first one in Europe. On slide 10, we show that Northstar is clearly in motion and delivering. To pick up some particular highlights in this slide, platform convergence continues to advance. With the Italian acquiring portfolio migrating to our target platform, we have 5,000 merchants migrated as we speak, and things move smoothly. and the Ogon and SIPs portfolios are moving to GoPay as planned and we reached in June 80% of the SME portfolio on GoPay. At the same time, we continue to simplify and modernize our technical infrastructure and network moving from 49 to 47 sites and closing our Madrid data center. In terms of integration, Launchpad has now entered in a pilot mode in line with plan. This is, again, an important milestone in our recovery journey. As you certainly remember from our presentation at CMD, Launchpad is the backbone of a dramatic modernization in our SMB customer journey. We targeted onboarding in one day for low-risk merchants with full automation of the process. This version is the first step, available on the first segment of the market, but the foundations are now in place for a step deployment every quarter going forward. All those initiatives have enabled good progress on active workforce management, leveraging internal mobility to reduce headcount in Europe, while preserving critical skills and capabilities. But I would like to highlight three visible examples of North Star executions during the On simplify, the Credit Agricole partnership evolution is a good example of simplification. Here, we have demonstrated our ability to make tough and bold decisions to simplify and be more efficient. Together with Credit Agricole, we have agreed on a simpler and more efficient operative model that is better aligned with the future development of our partnership. No need to say that we are extremely proud of the successes of this partnership, which works extremely well on acceptance and brings innovation to the French market. Second illustration on Integrate, the Global Collect case. Global Collect is one of the hidden jewels of Warline, making two-thirds of external revenue of the Global Commerce Division. As a reminder, the rest of the division consists of pure acquiring activities for a portfolio of travel and digital customers. Over the last few months, we have successfully integrated Global Collect with Warline acquiring platform, developed shared agentic commerce capability, while repositioning Global Collect within the group with a dedicated setup and operating model to focus on two attractive verticals, travel and digital, with complex cross-border requirements. Combining high-performance reinvested technology stack and deep integration into customers' ecosystems, Global collect benefits of a differentiated value proposition. The revised operating model and the leverage of on-one-line shared capability is already translating into improved commercial traction and return to high single-digit growth in the last quarter. I clearly count on Global Collect to be one of the faster growth engines of Worldline going forward, leveraging on faster dynamics of cross-border payments. Finally, on the growth pillar of Northstar, I would like to comment on the progress of Worldline in agentic commerce. As you have seen from our recent announcement, Worldline is positioning itself at the forefront of agent e-commerce for the European market. First, we have built the technical foundation, what we call the MCP server, to expose Worldline payment capability to AI agents and large language models platforms. Second, we have built the technical foundation and the infrastructure, which is protocol agnostic to support the various Visa Intelligent Commerce, Mastercard Agent Pay, or Google-specific protocols. Third, we leverage on our unique positioning on the issuing and acquiring side to ease trust and adoption across the ecosystem. This was the objective of the real end-to-end transactions that we executed in the three geographies with two banks, ING and Crédit Agricole. At Worldline, we believe Atlantic Commerce has the potential to reshape how consumers and businesses interact with payments. This is why it is important for Worldline to provide the banks and the merchants the infrastructure layer required to support this evolution with trust. On the following slide, we show how we are accelerating Gen AI through a trusted AI operating We have seen over the last six months a significant acceleration of adoption of Gen AI across the organization. Given the critical role Worldline plays in the economy, we have built all the foundations to deploy generative AI securely and at scale. Infrastructure, governance, financial impact measurements, risk management, and security. Those foundations are now in place. We are rolling out Gen AI through a multi-model approach to avoid dependency on a single model. And as you can see here, the deployment is now becoming meaningful with 83% of our developers using AI assisted coding and testing tools and 9,000 monthly active users of LibreChat, our internal agentic AI chat platform based on open source. More importantly, we are already seeing a ramp-up in impact, higher development velocity when using cloud code in software development, concrete business impact through use cases such as smart routing on e-commerce, and progressive agentification across several functions in the organization. At Weirline, we clearly consider generative and agentic AI as a vehicle of transformation and customer satisfaction. What is new at Weirline is not Gen AI itself. What is new is our ability to deploy it securely and at scale through a trusted operating model at the forefront of the European financial industry. With that, let me hand over to Srikanth. We'll take you through the financial performance in more detail.

Thank you, Pierre-Antoine, and good evening, everyone. Before I go into the numbers, the financial section again reiterates the four messages that have been mentioned on our execution. H1 results were in line with our expectation on a fully proven basis. Merchant services is showing improving momentum sequentially while financial services remain impacted by the known contract terminations and timing effects of commercial rebound. Third, the inorganic balance sheet strengthening is complete. And fourth, our 2026 outlook confirms the adjusted ABDA and the leverage targets with an improved free cash flow trajectory and the leverage target has been achieved six months in advance than what we had said during the Capital Markets Day. And you also recall what we anticipated at the Capital Markets Day back in November on three points. The FS loss of contracts, the business mix which we said would be adverse with more cross-border and within merchant services that will impact the net net revenue and that the North Star will start providing early returns in our ABDA and we already see that. Now, on those messages, if you go down to the next slide, PRN1 has already taken you through the post-prone numbers and what you have also here is the published numbers and I will detail that in the coming slides with an elaboration in scope so that we are all clear on what each number means for what scope. Additionally, normalized net income was 65 million euro and a normalized diluted EPS at 2.04. The key point is that after pruning actions, the underlying business is stabilizing, while profitability and balance sheet discipline is improving. Moving on to the next slide regarding the divestment update. The pruning program is complete substantially. Two deals still to close, Australia and India, and we expect that in Q3. We guided you that between 590 and 640 million euro of net proceeds will be received. We have already received 580 million euro, with 40 to 50 million euro additionally to come from India and Australia. And that puts us in the high range of, on the upper end of the range that was communicated earlier. This, of course, excludes the cash held in diverse state entities, which is addressed now in the liquidity section. Now moving on to scope. You recall that we provided quite a bit of pedagogy on the scope for the end of the year. this year is a step more in complexity. We said 2026 will be a year of transition and it is of course with a transitory scope. At the bottom part is the green block which is our fully pruned scope. It is the constant. It is the future perimeter of well line after this year of closing those transactions will be finished. Now looking at the published scope, you all know now that the IFRS 5 governs the rules for discontinued operations as well as assets held for sale. METS being the discontinued operations has not been in our scope from day one. However, the assets held for sale, all of the other divestments that you see below, the P&L and cash flow are in our published numbers until closing. Hence, North America and payment IQ, we closed in end of February. So January and February is in our numbers. Citrel we closed end of April so Jan to April is in our numbers and so on and obviously India and Australia still not closed is still in our published scope. So that's the purple part which is the published scope and then the green one is the fully pruned and we've even color coordinated that in the rest of the presentation. Now moving to the next one so applying the scope to the present numbers I wouldn't go into the detail but this slide has been presented just specifically to bring clarity and the full impact of scope changes for all of us to be on the same page. In white is the FY25 H1 published scope so it's only without METS and then in the purple H126 is with the progressive closing of the transactions that I have just explained and we have done a pro forma for 2025 so that you have a like for light comparison and then in the green is the post prune scope that we are all on the same page on. So no need to go step by step but we've addressed the impact on revenue, adjusted ABDA and free cash flow but we'll of course deal with each one of these in the future slides. Now moving on to the next one please now on the post prune scope we see for q2 on what line level we are a flat at 904 with merchant services showing a plus 2% so sequentially better in external revenue compared to q1 with acceleration across segments that that I will explain in a second. Financial services is the drag on house like Q1 with the minus 6.9%. So at the end, we are flat in terms of our post-prune revenue. On a net net revenue basis, merchant services is at minus 2% for Q2 and financial services at minus 6.8. If you move to the next slide, now drilling down into the specifics per segment. SMB is growing single digit, low single digit, continued momentum in the Nordics, Germany, Italy, Greece, Central and Eastern Europe. Switzerland is further stabilizing, Benelux showing gradual recovery. Commercial traction is improving with partner and independent software vendors. Enterprise is also growing low single digit with continued strength in mobility and self-service, including petrol and transportation. One Commerce is gaining traction in Germany, the UK and Poland. In Global Commerce travel remains strong and Global Collect is back to growth while the digital vertical is still affected by expected jump. Moving on to financial services, H1 remains the drag as we have been mentioning so far. The underlying commercial dynamic however is positive. In issuing an account payment, the decline reflects the legacy terminations, while the ABN AMRO deal that Pierre-Antoine mentions gives us a strong future growth platform as other items in our pipeline that we continue to follow, and also harvest the digital and value-added features. Acquiring, growing across GEOs, and we're also supporting Vero. Digital services seeing early positioning benefits of new products, which was also explained by Pierre Antla. Now moving on to the H1 per financial performance fully pruned, group delivered broadly stable revenue, minus 0.2% on external revenue, and then in terms of merchant services at plus 1.8% offsetting the minus 7.1% decline in financial services. Adjusted EBITDA was at plus 294 million euro merchant services improved its EBITDA margin by 70 bps on external revenue and 170 bps on net net revenue. Financial services margin declined as expected due to the run contracts loss. Moving on to slide 24 on published P&M. While the fully pruned scope is the most relevant view for management, guidance, investor assessment, and published scope is necessary for statutory reporting. This table shows H1 2025, excluding METS, and H1 published scope as presented earlier. The scope column aims to make the like-for-like, so that's making the white bar purple, right, for like-for-like comparison and for each line item with the pruning program and effects. Key takeaways in two sections. First, operating expenses. Personal expenses decreased year-on-year, reflecting the reduced headcount in Western Europe, and strict cost control helped to protect our adjusted ABDA despite higher scheme fees. ABDA is better year-on-year with a like-for-like scope by 40 million euro, and you see that is the reduced rationalization and integration cost due to the end of spend on Power24. Second block is on the non-operating expense. Net financial expenses in 2026 absorb higher interest cost, but unlike 2025, there are no more exceptional items. Moving on to published free cash flow. Free cash flow remains a key area of focus and to improve the quality of the free cash flow. Three key pillars, the restructuring and integration costs declined sharply, as we just saw. Taxes are lower. We've done some fiscal consolidations, and it helps partly offset higher financial costs. Working capital. with the quality of cash flows generated, we are reinforcing working capital here with a reduced level of payables and also reflecting the smaller perimeter going forward. Now to net debt leverage and liquidity. We have halved the level of net debt in the first six months. We've gone from 2.2 billion to 1.1 billion. Result, leverage target is less than 2x. And that's been achieved six months earlier than announced and that's good on the right we show the liquidity has been strengthened as a result as well of the pruning and equity infusion and this is sufficient in order to face the 2026 2027 bonds as well as the puts and also we have obtained the 80 million euro which is the cash and divested entities you you'll recall we had the 186 million euro of cash and divested entities in December 25 we have received 80 million we have another 90 to go so the 90 is in India and Australia and with the 40 to 50 we should have this crystallized as well in Q3. Finally, the second extension of the RCF has been obtained to go from July 30 to 31 for 900 million euro and until 2030, we are at 1.125 billion euro. So 80% of that has been extended on the same terms until 2030. Now, I'll conclude with the outlook. We have already achieved our leverage targets as I mentioned. We confirm our adjusted ABDA of 630 to 650 million euros supported by cost discipline. Improve free cash flow guidance. We upgrade our free cash flow guidance with better capital allocation and we are marginally revising the revenue as mentioned due to the timing effects on the commercial rebound on financial services but with recent pipeline wins, contract wins and pipeline, we are confident this will recover, merchant services growing as planned. So with that, I will hand you back to Pierre-Antoine to conclude. Thank you very much.

Pierre-Antoine- Thanks a lot, Pierre-Antoine. So four messages to conclude this presentation. First one, by demonstrating progress, Worldline H1 performance are data points that strengthen We often conviction in our vision and in the success of our turnaround. Second message, we made the right choice in refocusing on Europe. The organization is clearly gaining momentum and discipline across the board, and this is visible in those results. Third, while executing, we align position itself with success on the future industry drivers while managing its capital allocation. Finally, we are demonstrating our ability to control our cash costs with discipline, which can help navigate the volatile macro context in which we operate. Thank you, and happy to get your questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star, one, and one again. We will now take our first question. From the line of Frédéric Boulin from Bank of America, please go ahead.

Hi, good evening, Pierre-Antoine and Shrikant. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe, I mean, three questions. Maybe one, standing with Pierre-Antoine, if you can give us an update on the kind of competitive and microdynamics. MSV growth seems to be stronger in the second quarter, so it would be good to have a bit of an update there. Secondly, if you can come back on what happened with the JV with Credit Agricole, who initiated the end of the structure, what does it mean for you in particular? I understand the acceptance business from Worldline was supposed to be bought in the JV. So what happens to this? I mean, is it staying with you? And then question for Shrekant. If you can spend some time on the free cash flow moving parts in H2 and 27. I understood from your commentary that, you know, the commentary on the working cap was positive. But if I look at the slide 25, I can see about $100 million worsening in working capital. So I'm not really sure what's going on there. That seems to be offsetting most of the reversal and restructuring costs. So any commentary around moving part in H2 and next year would be great.

Thanks a lot for those questions. So on the competitive and micro dynamics, you're right. I mean, we have a very sound growth in merchant acquiring volumes in H1 and, more importantly, in Q2. Let's say that the verticals on which we've been exposed have been behaving well, especially travel, especially large retail, especially mobility and self-service. Obviously, there is some contrast, depending on the segments, with specialty retail, which is behaving not that good, especially in some geographies like Germany, as you may have heard already but globally we have these good dynamics and since many of our geographies are now behaving well with a significant growth as i mentioned high single digit growth in in various geographies but also in mobility service and global collect in the in the last period that feeds this good dynamic in terms of MEZ. Regarding the JV with the credit record, so it's super simple. I mean I have assessed what was the potential of a model where there was no contribution of acquiring portfolio by the bank to the contrary of the other JVs that we that we have had. So it was massively, I would say, acceptance, partnership in acceptance. And having a regulated entity in a bank context was clearly heavy as compared to the potential that we had. So today we are focusing on acceptance services. We are providing two calls that remains an entity written by the Crédit Ecole that itself serves the case, I mean, the regional banks of the Crédit Ecole. We are providing them acceptance solutions, and it's working well. And besides that, we are partnering between our own acceptance that has not been contributed and their own acquiring for enterprise merchants on which we have, as you know, strong positions.

So it's a joint decision.

We came to a similar diagnosis between the priori Ecole and ourselves, that's one line, so it has been quite natural to come to that decision, which is from the outside a bit surprising, probably, but which makes a lot of sense, and that's the way we want to drive our business. On the cash flow, Srikanth.

Yeah, thank you, and hello, Fred. Yeah, what I was mentioning is indeed the end of spend of Power24 and also better progression on the RI for the current year. We do expect to have a lower spend and we had also some phasing effect in H1. So you see the two impacts. But in terms of working cap, essentially what, taking a step back, you know, this year we've said it's been a reset, we have strengthened the balance sheet with all the inorganic measures, and we're also taking a good look at the organic measures to ensure that we are able to have the right measures going forward. So we've reduced the level of payables and also with a smaller perimeter to have a level that's manageable from the seasonality as well as the ups and downs of the business until we stabilize. So hence this creates again from H1 last year to H1 this year, but in terms of a working cap outflow this year is $60 million, as you see. So it's primarily reduced of payables as well as some reduction in advances.

Sorry, just to clarify, you expect $60 million also for this year, so same as H1?

Yeah, and we'll expect this to normalize in H2 indeed. But again, we'll need to have some effects for H2, but it will be more normal in H2 as compared to what we had in H1. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now take our next question from the line of Justine Forsyth from UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, good evening, Pierre-Antoine and Srikant. Thank you so much. A couple of questions from my end. Srikant, I wonder if you could just walk us a little bit through the moving pieces and the revenue guide. So I think we had a bit of an actual, as you flagged very clearly, a stronger merchant solutions result in 2Q. but yet we take down the full-year revenue guide. You're saying that's attributable to financial services if I understood you. So if I have that correct, I mean, we should be basically taking that, call it one point down at the midpoint out of the FS line. So you could be talking about something like a 10% to 15% decline for the full year in FS if I have that correct. and does that mean the q2 result in ms you say no changes um should we be expecting off of that call it accelerated base in 2q26 how do we think about it um and then just a question on the strength that you called out the high single digit growth pierre antoine that's obviously quite promising in some of the geos that you laid out. Germany was the one that seemed out of place in a way in my head because you've clearly had challenges there in the past and one of your peers just flagged pretty severe weakness in that same geography. So maybe you could outline a little bit there. And one just clean up question, perhaps to Kranz on the credit agricole deal, following on from Fred's question, is there, could you be a little bit more clear on the price paid. So, you know, you both have contributed expenses into this JV. There is, I presume, some sort of, I believe, if I remember correctly, some revenue sharing model that was at place. So now it's more of a commercial referral relationship. How much is being paid by Credit Agricole for that? And maybe you could just be clear as well on what acceptance solutions you are providing.

Like, what is it exactly that you're enabling for the go for a commercial partnership thanks so you think yeah you want me to start with the critical and and the q2 so on critical so today what what's working well is the e-commerce solution so we we've been distributing go base or a new e-commerce solution for europe um to the critical since 12 months now and um and it's working well at the speed of the obviously of the bank distribution and besides that we are partnering commercially on the acceptance solution so you know the axis uh platform which is extremely successful for large enterprise merchants and here we are combining when it makes sense our proposal on acceptance and the critical comes with its acquiring capability going down the road the idea is to provide pos also for the pos solutions for the smb but But that's, I would say, a second stage as compared to what we are providing today. Okay. And so for all that, the revenue generation is based on the shared revenue on the acceptance between the critical group and ourselves. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Hello, Justin. On the revenue, so on PFI, as essentially we said, we'll have a 60 million impact coming from contract terminations, and we've seen exactly half of that. We had 15 million in Q1, we have a 30 million in Q2, and we expect that to be the effect of the run contract loss, but then we'll offset that partly in H2. So we'll be somewhere between 6% to 7% as compared to last year, of lower 6% to 7% as compared to last year.

Okay, got it. Could you just then clarify what you mean on MS then, or what changed? So if that was already in your expectations, if I understand you correctly, then like maybe help us understand why the guide moved down at the midpoint. Is that like something tied to MS then? Because it sounded like you were saying MS is going to be stable. And is there any macro conservatism layered in there given the environment's a bit shaky right now?

Yeah. So maybe – so three comments on that. But as you noticed, we have, and Shikhand commented on that, between the growth in volumes and the growth in external revenue, there is a gap which is linked to the geo and merchant mix that we have witnessed in Q2 and Q1. and that is a bit dragging us behind in terms of growth of external revenue. The second element is that in Q2, we've been benefiting from delayed in some merchant migration outside our scope and that will push down a bit the growth in enterprise as compared to what we've been witnessing in Q2. I would say that's the second element, and I think that most of the elements obviously we are a bit conservative about the macro context because up to now, and that's a surprise for the whole industry consumption has remained quite strong in Q2 but we may anticipate that things evolve second half of the year so yes there might be some some elements of conservatism that that that we're taking into account but I think the the very important point is in the commercial traction across the board, the fact that the NPS has improved on each of our segments and the churn has reduced also in each of our segments. So I would say really the fundamentals of our business has improved. And again, the signing of ABN AMRO is very, very promising for us because it shows that we have turned the page of the scrutiny that we've been going through in 2025.

Awesome. Thank you so much for that one. And Pierre-Antoine, if you had anything just on that last point on Germany to add, that would be helpful. I really appreciate the time both.

Yeah, sorry. So Germany has been behaving well in Q2, but remember that we had been struggling the previous year, so to some extent we have an easier comparison than maybe some others. But yeah, we have good traction, we have had good traction in Germany in H2 especially on the SMB front but also in some verticals in enterprise with lower margin because of the segments but with strong traction so we are better exposed probably in what we call SMCG which is all the discontors in Germany.

Thank you.

We will now take our next question from the line of Hans Leitner from Jefferies please go ahead yes thanks maybe I can add a couple of more from after Justin maybe you can talk about net net net net net revenue basis of especially for the merchant services when do you expect basically to break even and and move to a growth and to sustainable growth there and maybe that's how you can square that in the guidance then just like maybe you gave in previous presentations always a nice overview on the smb segments per geographies how did the turnaround and the stabilization perform maybe you can help there what is the visibility because i believe that this is the big moving part which can then sustainable push merchant services in the growth territory and then maybe just like in terms of your capital raise and the big shareholders who joined your cap table should we when can we expect some financial services wins in France in your home region thank you thanks thanks a lot for the for the question maybe I

will start on the NNR and the three count will complete if you remember well at the CMD we said that we would still have negative contribution margin evolution in 26 as compared to 25 that we've modelized that and this is linked basically to the anticipation we are making of the order of recovery depending on geographies and for historical reasons who have stronger margins in Switzerland and Belgium which are the latest to recover as planned to some extent. And the fastest growing segment, it's the Nordics, where we are mostly distributing or massively distributing through partners and aisies, so there the margin is lower. Central and Eastern Europe, it's also lower margins. And obviously, travel is also lower margin, and it has behaving well thanks to the global collect a new new dynamic so it was it was planned to be like that and the more we will be able to recover in the two historical core geographies the more we'll be in a position to to to reverse this trend the more smb will grow the more we will reverse the trend the more acceptance will grow and you remember that we we have been suffering of churn in e-commerce because of the migration of portfolio this is now behind us behind us in 20

27 the more acceptance is growing financial services growing the more nnr is growing as compared to the external revenue the nose can't if you want to add something on that No, I think we could also say it depends exactly on the channel to market, as you were saying, and also in Italy, we go through banking partners and Italy has also shown a large growth and therefore we have had a specific impact on this which goes exactly between external revenue and net net revenue. And on your question, Hannes, and hello, regarding when do we start forecasting the net-net revenue and when can we see sustainable growth, it's exactly that. I think when we start, SMB obviously was a key vector that we mentioned along with financial services. SMB is accretive and will have a much lesser gap between external revenue and net-net revenue. and once we start running around the larger markets we should be able to see more sustainable growth.

But the good news that you don't see in the numbers is that we have implemented some repricing initiatives as part of North Star in Q2 that start to generate so that will help also in H2 and that that have helped us to stabilize the tech rate in many segments, which is obviously good news. So it's not because of commercial campaigns that we are losing tech rate and net net revenue. I think it's an important message. So back to your question on SMB. So as I said, I mean, taking the various geographies, so Central and Eastern Europe are doing very well and more dynamic, I would say, in Q2 than in Q1. In Southern Europe, Greece is doing extremely well, double digits, if I remember correctly, on acquiring. And Italy is benefiting still of the migration of new portfolios, anticipate more stable Italy in H2 once this migration has been done. The other side of Europe, Nordics, is now sustainably very high single-digit growth with a very strong performance of this geography. Germany, as we already said, has been behaving well in Q2, and remains Switzerland, which is close to stable in Q2, and Belgium and the Benelux, more globally speaking, which is still in the negative territory. So we still have progress to be done there. the launchpad once it will be spread on the market for new merchants on the whole scope will help so this is where we are we are today we will now take the next question from the line of yummy but from Barclays please go ahead thank you for taking my questions I have two questions.

Firstly, you've lowered the revenue outlook but maintained EBITDA. Why is the top-line downgrade not impacting EBITDA and how much of a buffer do you still have there?

And secondly, what drove the improvement in merchant services on an organic basis in Q2 specifically versus the deceleration on a net net basis yeah yeah so on the thanks for the question we were on a low single digit in terms of in terms of revenue guide what we have seen as well as in the first half the strong cost control we've got We expect that to be more than achieved for the second half and therefore giving us the ability to still meet the adjusted EBDA target, both on cash and cost, we've seen actions being implemented. So I feel the revenue impact that we've got will be offset by, and we have actions in in place now in order that we've delivered in H1 and we need to continue into H2 in order to protect our AVD margin. Hence, we've kept our guidance at 630 to 650. And on the Q2 acceleration, the spread of the NNR in the year, that was exactly what we had just said earlier. I would really break it into two aspects. One, like we were saying, the MSV is growing at 4.4%, our level of acquiring revenue grew at 4%, so hence Pirantuan's point that there's no take rate issue on external revenue. It's more on the channel to market that impacts us on the net revenue because of the partner fees and the scheme fees, and if there are more cross-border, you have higher scheme So that's one aspect. Secondly, we have also seen that we have gone from Ogon to GoPay in the SMB market on acceptance platform. We are at 80%. So we've gone from a 50% to a 80%. That has created a lot of churn in the SMB market on acceptance. And when the acquiring proportion of your total revenue is higher, the scheme fee is also higher. that has also resulted in reducing the net net revenue. And the geographies we mentioned, either the business mix within Germany or the geo mix such as more in Italy and less in Switzerland creating the third board. I would say this is what creates the spread between external revenue and net net revenue and the cost actions regarding the adjusted EBTA is what I addressed before. I hope that was clear.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Emmanuel Mato from Odor BHF, please go ahead.

Hello Pierre Antoine, hello Sricant. Quick questions for you please. First, what explains the positive surprise in Q2 were there was an improvement compared to Q1 contrary to your expectations at the end of April? Is that coming from a specific geography, a better term than expected, product mix. Can you clarify that point? Second, how advanced is your plan to consolidate the platforms dedicated to merchant services? Did you close some of them in the first half of this year? And my last question is about financial services.

Are you still confident of returning to goals in 2027 despite the longer commercial cycle? thank you very much okay so there is no magic in Q2 versus Q1 it's just the momentum of and the discipline of the organization that has that has significantly improved across the Q2 and and and to be honest we are performing better across the board as compared to what we had you know in our anticipations at the beginning of the quarter, so it's really structural, hopefully, good news in terms of discipline and momentum across the board. On your second question, so yes, remember that we have closed one platform in Q1, that was the Wopar platform, Latin American platform that has finally migrated to Global Collect. As I said, the main topic visible that we will have at the end of the year, the turn of the year, will be hopefully the Italian re-insourcing from Fiserv. So what we are working on with these 5,000 merchants already. Another visible thing will be the termination of Ogon legacy that will be completely shut down and some I think we have two other platforms that we are not communicating on but that will be also closed at the end of the year so the program is is really well progressing well executing which is which is reassuring And we keep the focus like that. We do not exclude, but I don't want to overpromise, but we do not exclude to be able to accelerate on the back of the use of GNI typically in this case to be quicker in the assessment of the gaps to cover and then to make them happen. We'll see that in Q3. Your last question.

On FS returning back to growth.

So what we said last year at the CMD is that the back to growth of FS will not be before the second half of 27. and obviously we do not have any reason to accelerate that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will now take our last question from the line of Alexandre Four from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hi, good evening. Thank you very much for squeezing me in. A couple of questions if I may. First one is on SMB churn. I think Shrikant you mentioned a minute ago, but sort of moving or consolidating platforms and away from legacy over and had resulted in some churn as I think we probably all anticipated. Should we expect more of the same as you consolidate further platforms or are coming efforts are quite different more back-end related and and sort of uh invisible to the merchant and and the vsmb merchant in particular so that's that's my first question second question is is more of a clarification um definitely for frequent if we go back to slide uh 26 i'm interested in your uh liquidity position i'm going to need some holding just trying to understand uh where you stand uh at the end of June, and we're sort of ins and outs. We should expect for the second half, thinking of put options. I think you had one of them, I think that's the second one, proceeds from divestments net of cash in subsidiaries, the debt pay down, all of that. If you could go back on those different in and outs, Shrikant, that would be super helpful.

Yeah, sure, Alex. Maybe a second after your- Yeah, you wanna go ahead?

Okay. So I think your analysis is right. When we are speaking about acquiring, that's basically behind the scenes for the merchants who are more exposed to the need to reintegrate on when we're speaking about acceptance, so the front end of the value chain. and here we do not expect if the service is good, which is the case, any impact in terms of churn coming from convergence on the acquiring platform. So it's really on the acceptance front. So we are not fully down on acceptance. So we've been working hard and now we need to finish the SIPs, you know, which was the Worldline e-commerce platform. So the SMB is almost down also. So now we are on the enterprise part of things where we have good, I would say, adoption of the new platform after RFI by the enterprise merchants who select our GoPay solution. But there is also some churn there. and when we will migrate some other more secondary platforms to to go pay we may also experience some some churn but I think it's why we were much more exposed in in in your good scope and the French scope then in the end of the platform that are in more operating in Central Europe where we are very strong strong position and maybe that just to close off on Alexis gives and takes for H2

obviously the big one is the is the is the 414 million euro of convertible that is getting retired we then have as you rightly said we have we already paid out the Greek PUT, now is the Italian PUT with acceptor that's still pending, that's going to be in Q3, I think we have a liability of 150 million recorded, but it still requires to be valued before the PUT, a call or PUT is exercised. And then we have, so that's in terms of the outflows, with another 10 to 30 million in terms of organic cash going out in H2. Those are the cash outs. INS is really the divestment of Australia and India to come. The 40 to 50 million as I was mentioning that needs to come in and then of course we've already integrated the 90 million within our liquidity that we were presenting in that chart and that would just come out of divested entity into continuing operations.

Super clear, thank you so much. Perfect, welcome.

Thank you.

There are no further questions at this time I will now like to turn the conference back to Pierre-Antoine Vacheron for closing remarks thanks a lot I will not make too many remarks because it's quite late for all of you this almost last day of July as you see we are we have a good momentum the turnaround is moving clearly well the transformation is is on track we are well positioned so need to continue the discipline execution and and I'm absolutely convinced of on the perspectives of this of this company so thanks a lot and looking forward to meet with you after the summer break have a good evening sure good evening thank you