JCDecaux SE (JCDXF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the GCE Decaux 2024 Half-Year Results presentation. I will now hand over to Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-CEO. Sir, please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our 2024 Half-Year Results conference call. The speakers today on this call will be Jean-François Decaux, Co-Chief Executive Officer, David Boulle, Chief Financial IT and Administrative Officer, and I. Remy Grisard, Head of Investor Relations, is also attending today's conference call. We are overall pleased with our H1 results, as all key metrics have significantly improved year on year, despite a challenging environment. We have enjoyed a strong momentum. Our revenue grew beyond expectation, increasing by 13.4% organically. This performance was mainly driven by the continued strength of digital, which grew by 27.8% and now makes up 36.8% of our total revenue. Programmatic advertising grew by 61.8% year-on-year, reaching 9% of digital revenue. We have also strengthened our portfolio of contracts with, for example, the wind of Shenzhen Airport and the renewal of the metro and buses of Rome during the period. We have also made progress in our best-in-class ESG initiatives with our carbon reduction trajectory being approved by the ESBTI. Profitability improved significantly. We have enjoyed a satisfactory level of operating leverage with our operating margin increasing by 28.7%, more than double our revenue growth. Operating cash flows increased by 21.5%, reflecting the improved profitability. CapEx were contained with a CapEx-to-SET ratio of 7.8%. Our free cash flow generation improved significantly, reaching a level that we consider satisfactory, given the seasonality of our activity. David, in fact, will further elaborate on these fina...