The big interview, we talk about care at Emeis, you know the company because it is former Orpea. Laurent Guillot, hello, hello, thank you for being with us. You took over the reins in 2022, the restructuring followed its course, we'll talk about it, but you have also just published 2024 results. So objective achieved? And we see in the presentation of these results that there is one thing that is close to your heart: resident satisfaction, because it is the first indicator you put in the fundamentals, and it is rather good, it is a clear improvement compared to two years ago in 2022: plus 3 points on customer satisfaction and plus 13 points on NPS, the net promoter score. We hold a lot to customer satisfaction, we hold a lot to the well-being of our employees as well, occupational health and safety, it has been reduced, the number of accidents in our facilities has been reduced, then also staff turnover, you know it's a sector where teams move a lot and quality also depends on their stability, their loyalty, so we have made enormous progress in reducing the turnover of our teams, minus 14 points, that is from 35% two years ago to 21% today, it's still too much, we continue to work on it, but it is an improvement. These indicators are really the heart of the machine, obviously it translates into improvements on the financial side which are also important. So what good recipe have you found and implemented? It goes through the working conditions of your employees, I understood correctly.
It goes through the working conditions of our employees, employees who are happy to come to work, who obviously work better and are more available for our patients and residents. We are not at the end, we still have enormous work ahead of us, it's a very difficult sector, people move a lot, we have to retain them because imagine your parent, your mother, your father in one of our facilities with a person who comes to wash them every morning, who is a different person, it's very difficult for the person, so it must be a trusted person, the same every day if possible, it is an extremely important issue for the quality and well-being of our patients and residents.
Already one year since the brand change, has the desired renewal been felt? Because the restructuring is still ongoing, even if we have already advanced well, but what has changed in no longer being called Orpea? The brand change was a need for all the teams.
Essentially, obviously in commercial terms it is also beneficial, the feeling of shame a bit in the teams, it was very difficult for the teams, you know, at the time of the book release and well, despite those people who were working, we had people who got stones thrown at them, they were not responsible. They are at the bedside of patients and residents, they are still close to us, and it is they who saved the company during this difficult period. So yes, it was difficult to continue carrying this name for the teams, but above all, Emeis, the name Emeis means 'we' in ancient Greek, it is also the company project that we carry in the service of our teams, our patients, our residents, and obviously all our stakeholders, including shareholders.
And so, did this repositioning, this renewal also happen financially through a price increase for residents? Because how have you restructured the company? The costs I imagine were already quite compressed, so it necessarily goes through more air and perhaps price increases.
We increased prices, that's clear. If you look over the year 2024, we increased our prices on average in Europe by 4.8%. It was also to recover the inflation that occurred in 2022 and 2023 following the war in Ukraine, this wave of inflation that hit us, which was not recovered those years and had not been recovered in 2022 notably, where prices were frozen. No, that's not exactly it, our prices are quite logically regulated by the state, and regulated prices are set at the beginning of the year, and when inflation occurs in the middle of the year, we cannot pass it on immediately, so it is also this catch-up effect that is important because we try to find the right balance between high quality of service and the ability to welcome as many people as possible in our facilities. So we are ambitious on prices while trying to find this balance because as you can see, we increased our prices but at the same time our occupancy rate increased, it increased by 2.7 points in Europe overall, and it also increased in France. Yes, because activity in France in 2024 was growing. France is not your only market, but France is still a good signal. France is a better signal, we are still lagging compared to other countries, we have growth of 7, 8, 9% in all European countries and rather around 4% in France, so we can see that we still have progress and room for improvement that is extremely important in France. But what we also see over 2024 is an acceleration in the progression of our occupancy rate, we were rather at the beginning of the year around zero and at the end of the year we have a one point improvement in occupancy, so that is positive for 2025. Does that happen through prospecting or is it demand that drives the occupancy rate? Well, that involved a lot of work on our marketing policy, which notably became much more digitalized than in the past. I would say that if we go back to the years 2019, customers came to us because there weren't enough places in nursing homes. Today we have to have a more proactive approach, to identify ourselves, to show the quality of what we do on social media, but also in person with doctors in our regions, so it goes through that obviously. But it's true that when we look at the underlying trend, the underlying trend for nursing homes as for our psychiatric clinics or aftercare clinics is positive because the needs of the French and Europeans in terms of aging or mental health are gigantic.
Yeah, it's true we'll talk about this market, but to come back to your year 2024, still in loss, that remains. For how many more years should we expect years in the red, even if you communicate on the operational results which are nevertheless improving.
Yes, the results are improving, we are still in loss at the same time, it is not structural. We have a lot of work to do to catch up on all aspects, but especially on the financial aspects, and we can see that our results are improving. We announce for next year an improvement of 15 to 18% of our EBITDAR, our main financial indicator, and that will allow us to fill part of the gap in the result. We still have financial charges that are heavy, and it will be gradually that we will return to balance.
Moreover, the group that was put in place at the time of the restructuring, if we can recall who is inside, the Caisse des Dépôts in particular, and how does it function with you on a daily basis in the interactions for management?
We operate like a normal company with a shareholder who has a group of three or four shareholders: Caisse des Dépôts and CNP which are one group, which have 28% and 22% for Maif and MASF, so three poles of shareholders I would say, or four shareholders, who together have 50.2%. They brought us a year and a half ago now 1.5 billion euros, it's more than a breathing space, it's the means of an ambitious project in terms of quality for our patients and our teams, and it's the means to have time to turn around the economic results, and the time we have ahead of us is there. The turnaround also goes through real estate sales which have continued throughout 2024 and will continue in 2025. So the financial restructuring is not completely finished, it is still ongoing. That is, the commitments we made in the context of the financial restructuring we must now keep. These commitments are of two natures: operational turnaround, I told you about it, it is underway, and the other nature is operational sales. We initially had a program of 1.25 billion euros of real estate sales to do, we have done 916 million to date, so you see we have barely 300 million left to do. We said that we should increase this commitment, so we announced to the market that we would do 1.5 billion, so we have 600 million left to do. We have projects under discussion for 2 billion, so you see we have very much covered our commitments, and depending on the quality of the offers we receive on our real estate assets or our operational assets, we will choose the best ones, those that will be most interesting for us financially, that is, for our shareholders.
It's also a new model that you are going to implement for the future?
Yes, absolutely. The company before 2022 was a bit transformed into a real estate company, we had 10 billion euros of real estate assets on the balance sheet, almost 50% of our assets were real estate assets, almost 50% of our homes were owned, so that's enormous. Today we are refocusing the company on care and support for people, our patients and residents, that is, our clinics and nursing homes, and so we will reduce our real estate commitment, lower our ownership rate to between 20% and 25% roughly, and that will allow us to reduce our debt and lighten our balance sheet.
Yeah, it's not the same business actually, care for seniors. So the last capital increase was a year ago in February 2024, what did it allow, and was it the last, or are there more planned?
