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Good morning business, the big interview. 7:45 on BFM Business and on RMC Life. Our guest this morning is Laurent Guillot. Hello, you are the CEO of Emeis, formerly Orpea. We'll look together at how the group is doing. Three years after the book that shook the company, you recently announced at the beginning of this month the sale of your network of independent senior residences for 159 million euros. That's part of the deleveraging strategy. We see that the occupancy rate is rising in your facilities. Today, how would you say the group is doing?
Hello. The group is doing better. The balance sheet, as you said, has been strengthened. So, there was the latest operation announced at the beginning of the week, which is this sale of senior residences for 160, 159 million euros. But before that, over the past two and a half years, we have made 2.1 billion euros in real estate sales and a very small amount of operational sales, which have allowed us to considerably strengthen the group's balance sheet. That's on the balance sheet side, which was important and which we need to continue working on. And also, we have started the operational turnaround, with, as you said, occupancy rates, especially in France, rising, but across all Europe, they are rising. Prices are also rising, and therefore operating results are improving. We have committed this year to a progression of our EBITDA between 15 and 18%, and we have confirmed our target for the year.
Would you say that what is the group's model tomorrow? Is it no longer owning the walls at all? It's a bit like Accor where you have the brand and the walls belong to property companies.
So it's not completely that model. Today, historically, and when I took over the group in 2022, we owned 40 to 42% of our walls. The goal is to come down rather to a target of 20 to 25% ownership of the walls. We need to keep some walls too. The interaction between operations and the quality of the property is very important. I think it's like a hotel, so we want to keep our expertise in building facilities, but after that, we can... Your business is not real estate. Our business is not real estate, our business is care. Nevertheless, the efficiency of our care business also depends on the organization of work inside a building. So having this ability to optimize the building to deliver the best possible care is really very important for us. Moreover, you know, we are here so that people feel at home, and for them to feel at home, the home must be pleasant, so we must design the best possible homes for our residents.
So, I read that the occupancy rate is rising. So that's obviously good news. What are the discussions? Still today, three years after the book 'The Gravediggers' with the clients. How do they talk about this affair? Is it behind you? Do you still have to justify yourself?
No, no, I think it's behind us now. A lot of things have been done, both for our teams, because it's important to take care of those who care, for our patients and residents. We have considerably strengthened quality controls. We changed the name of the company, and moving to Emeis was also an important step for our teams and for our residents. Today, all that is behind us.
8 more exchanges in this transcript
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Guillot, L. (2025, November 4). DIRECT VIDEO - Laurent Guillot, directeur général d'Emeis [Interview transcript]. BFM Business. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1108990/
MLA
Laurent Guillot. "DIRECT VIDEO - Laurent Guillot, directeur général d'Emeis." BFM Business, 4 Nov. 2025. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1108990/.
BibTeX
@misc{guillot2025_1108990,
author = {Laurent Guillot},
title = {DIRECT VIDEO - Laurent Guillot, directeur général d'Emeis},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, BFM Business. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2025},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1108990/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
