Half Year 2022 Sopra Steria Group SA Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Nicolas David - ODDO BHF Corporate & Markets, Research Division - Analyst : Congratulations for these excellent results. I have 3 questions to ask as far as I'm concerned. First, about the mindset for recruitment in the second half. Will you actively pursue your hiring policy? Or will you be more conservative? Or will you use more subcontractors? Could you perhaps give us more information on this? Question number two, I'd like to talk about the U.K. Your Q2 performance is going to be strong. Your results were really good as well. We understand that the joint venture is doing well. Could you tell us more about these revenues in the U.K.? Do you think you can continue during H2? Is it this revenue that leads to this very high profitability that was historically high? And is this something that can continue during H2 as well, this level of profitability? And finally, a question about CS Group. Could you perhaps tell us more about the decision-making process and your strategy after the acquisition? For instance, when you take a stake, what are you going to do? Have you changed your rationale to some extent recently? And have you decided to act more recently given what we've seen in the field of defense and cybersecurity?

Question: Nicolas David - ODDO BHF Corporate & Markets, Research Division - Analyst : Crystal clear. Now something about CS Group, you are seeing alignment of operational performance. What about the cost synergies? And what about efficiency gains, please?

Question: Nicolas David - ODDO BHF Corporate & Markets, Research Division - Analyst : I have another question I wanted to ask. Back to the German contract, in terms of accounting, does that mean that the decrease in the margin is due to direct operational losses? Or have you set aside provisions already so that you could possibly anticipate an impact? And second question, with the acquisition of CS Group, and given the fact that with Airbus, you're now referenced for PLM and engineering, I'd like to know how exposed you are to industry in a general way. Could you perhaps be more ambitious? Could this modify your sectorial focus?

Question: Gregory K. Ramirez - Bryan Garnier & Co Ltd, Research Division - Analyst : I have two questions about the integration of CS. Could you clarify something? You've said EUR 13 million is what you expect in synergies. Does that include a tax deficit that will be carried over? And could we use this tax deficit as early as 2023? You said EUR 13 million. Okay, what's the breakdown between commercial synergies and operational synergies and the tax synergies? And back to the previous CS margins, if we look at what they did in the past, it's lower than what we see usually in IT and other services. Isn't it due to the nature of their contracts? Given the decision-makers at the time they had more complicated contracts, there was quite a lot of lump sum contracts. And I don't know CS very much, but I had the impression that there were structural reasons why we could think that the integration would be a bit more tricky than we think or that you would need to radically change their modus operandi or radically revisit the former CS contracts. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. JULY 28, 2022 / 7:00AM, SOPR.PA - Half Year 2022 Sopra Steria Group SA Earnings Call