EuroBusiness Media (EBM): Wendel, one of Europe's leading listed investment firms, reports results for 2013. Frédéric Lemoine, welcome. You are the Chairman of the Executive Board of Wendel. Before we talk about portfolio rotation, what are some of your key takeaways from your results for 2013?
Frédéric Lemoine: 2013 has been a very good year. Our net results increased by more than 50% because of non recurring items, like the sale of our stake in Legrand, but also because of the good performance of our operational companies. The second half of the year more than compensated for the first half in terms of contribution to net income. So it’s been a pretty good year and pretty promising for 2014.
EBM: What are some of the news flow that we should focus on regarding the portfolio rotation in the recent period?
Frédéric Lemoine: There have been some divestment operations, notably the sale of our 5% remaining stake in Legrand, for €570 million. There have also been other divestments in the building materials area, notably because we reduced the perimeter of Materis, selling its aluminates division to Astorg and also selling the Parex division specialised in mortars and other building materials. So, it reduces our exposure and increases our financial flexibility. At the same time, we have launched our large investments programme, investing twice in two very exciting companies in Africa: IHS in the tower telecom business and the Saham Group, mostly exposed to the insurance business in Morocco and Sub-Saharan Africa. We also made a marginal investment in Japan in a very interesting company.
EBM: Focusing now on some of the financial aspects, in particular your debt level, what is your update today on debt?
Frédéric Lemoine: Our debt has been very significantly reduced since 2009 and I’m very proud today to announce that the debt that we had with banks, related to the acquisition of our stake in Saint Gobain, has been completely repaid. So it’s €5.5 billion of debt that we had in 2009 that has been repaid through a number of operations. Now it is done, we don’t have any bank debt any more. We have undrawn credit lines that we may use for our investments, and that’s a very good result. We are mostly using the bond market, which is very good, we have €3.8 billion euros of bond debt, and our last operation in January 2014 was an issuance of a €400 million bond maturing in 2021 at a very good coupon.
EBM: A year ago, you presented an ambitious development plan focusing essentially on diversifying your holdings internationally. What is your outlook for investment now?
Frédéric Lemoine: As I said, 2013 was mostly focused on Africa, and with Saham and IHS we have platforms on which we may make some additional investments. So I think that a third of our investment programme, which was dedicated to Africa, is virtually done. The €1.2 billion, which is left unused as yet, will be mostly focused on Europe – Germany, Benelux, France – and North America where we have just opened an investment office.
EBM: And finally, to conclude, is there a message that you would like to address to shareholders listening today, especially concerning your policy of return to shareholders?
Frédéric Lemoine: The message is very simple: we care for our shareholders. We are professional shareholders ourselves. We have a lot of different shareholders: the Wendel family, individual shareholders, institutional shareholders. For them, we want to increase the value of the company. The market cap has increased by €4 billion since 2009, and we have a dividend policy that consists in increasing the dividend every year. This year we propose a dividend of €1.85 to the general meeting of shareholders, increasing by 5.7%. And, last but not least, we carry on buying back our shares. We have done more than €300 million of buy-backs since 2009. We will continue and we regularly cancel some of these shares to give the money back to our shareholders.
EBM: Frédéric Lemoine, Chairman of the Executive Board of Wendel, thank you very much.
Frédéric Lemoine: Thank you very much.