Véronique Bédague-Hamilius
CEO & Chairwoman

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this webcast to discuss our 2026 half year results. I am joined this evening by Pierre-Henry Pouchelon, whom you know very well. I will begin by taking you through the key highlights from today’s release, after which Pierre-Henry will provide a more detailed review of our commercial performance and financial results. And as always, you will, of course, have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation.

Let’s begin with the 3 key messages from the first half. Firstly, our first half performance is fully in line with the group’s trajectory. In a market that remains at the bottom of the cycle, as you well know, we continue to improve current operating profit, which doubled compared with the first half of ’25, while maintaining strict financial discipline. We are also reaffirming our 2026 guidance despite a more challenging market environment. I would like to emphasize one important point. Our trajectory does not depend on a market rebound. It is underpinned by the transformation measures we have implemented and by levers that are within our control and that we’ve been actively deploying since 2024. Pierre-Henry will return to this in greater detail.

Secondly, New Nexity continues to gain momentum quarter after quarter with several strong indicators during the first half that I will now discuss. First, our lead in the regeneration of commercial sites has been confirmed. Our offering is high quality and fully aligned with market demand. And finally, we recently announced that we had entered into exclusive negotiations with Groupe

Saturday’s edition of the New York Times’ Connections puzzle sent players on a tour spanning family vocabulary, African geography and a wordplay category that tripped up even some experienced solvers, blending straightforward category knowledge with a trickier structural twist by the time players reached the puzzle’s toughest tier.

Connections, the Times’ daily word-association game, challenges players to sort 16 words into four hidden groups of four, each color-coded by difficulty from yellow, generally the most straightforward, through green and blue to purple, typically the most conceptually demanding. Players are allowed up to four mistakes before the puzzle locks them out.

Here are the four categories for July 25

The yellow group, puzzle number 1,140’s easiest tier, centered on Spanish words for family relatives, grouping ABUELA, HIJO, MADRE and PRIMO. In Spanish, abuela means grandmother, hijo means son, madre means mother, and primo means cousin, giving the category a straightforward theme for players with even basic familiarity with the language.

The green group carried the theme “Start to Cry, With ‘Up,’” bringing together CHOKE, MIST, TEAR and WELL. Each of these words can be paired with “up” to form a phrase describing someone becoming emotional or beginning to cry, as in choke up, mist up, tear up or well up. Several solvers noted that WELL in particular was harder to place in this category than the other three words, since its more common associations, water sources or general wellness, made its connection to crying less immediately obvious.

The blue group asked players to identify African currencies, linking KWANZA, LEONE, NAIRA and RAND. The kwanza is the official currency of Angola, notably distinct from Kwanzaa, the unrelated annual cultural celebration observed in the United States. The leone serves as the official monetary unit of Sierra Leone, the naira is the legal tender of Nigeria, and the rand is the currency used in South Africa and several neighboring countries within the Common Monetary Area. Multiple solvers described this category as one of the toughest of the day, with several noting they recognized some of the underlying countries but hadn’t realized the specific words functioned as currency names.

The purple group, traditionally the puzzle’s most difficult, followed the pattern “Strip ___,” connecting CLUB, MALL, POKER and STEAK. Each word completes a common two-word phrase when paired with “strip”: strip club, strip mall, strip poker and strip steak. Notably, several solvers found this category more approachable than the currency-based blue group, despite its purple ranking, since the wordplay pattern became apparent relatively quickly once a couple of the pairings clicked into place.

A puzzle that flipped the usual difficulty curve

Several puzzle commentators noted that Saturday’s edition subverted the typical expectation that purple categories are always the hardest to solve. One reviewer described completing the puzzle without any mistakes but noted that the blue African currencies category proved more challenging in practice than the purple strip-word category, despite blue traditionally ranking as the second-most difficult tier. That reviewer specifically credited recognizing Sierra Leone and South Africa as countries with helping crack the currency group, while acknowledging limited prior familiarity with kwanza and naira specifically as currency names.

Other players reported similar struggles working through the Spanish relatives category if they lacked language familiarity, with abuela and madre proving more recognizable to English-speaking solvers than hijo and primo, which some players initially considered for other possible groupings before settling on the correct category.

How Connections works

Connections has grown into one of the Times’ most popular daily offerings since its official 2023 launch, building on the success of Wordle, which the Times acquired the previous year. Unlike Wordle’s single daily answer, Connections rewards players who can identify conceptual overlaps between words that initially appear unrelated, a format that has helped make it a fixture of daily routines and group chats since its debut.

Puzzle strategy generally favors locking in the category a solver feels most confident about first, since an incorrect guess counts against the four-mistake limit regardless of which category it targets. Solvers who scan the full 16-word grid for potential overlaps between categories, rather than committing to an early hunch, tend to navigate trickier puzzles like Saturday’s more successfully, particularly when a word could plausibly fit more than one theme.

Part of a broader puzzle lineup

Connections is one of several word and logic games the Times publishes daily, alongside Wordle, Strands, the Mini Crossword, Pips and Sudoku, some of which remain free to play while others require a Games subscription. The Times also produces a Sports Edition of Connections, built around athletics-themed vocabulary, which runs as a separate daily puzzle from the main edition.

A new Connections puzzle publishes at midnight local time in each time zone, meaning players in different parts of the world are often solving different day’s puzzles depending on when they check in, a structural quirk that has become a familiar feature of how the game is discussed and shared across social media each day.

A new Connections puzzle will publish at midnight Sunday, continuing the daily format that has made the game one of the Times’ most consistently engaging offerings since its debut. Players hoping to keep a personal win streak alive, or looking to avoid the kind of stumble that Saturday’s African currency category caused for several solvers, can expect a fresh set of 16 words and four new categories waiting with tomorrow’s reset, part of a format that continues to reward both broad general knowledge and careful, structural pattern recognition in equal measure.

The stock is down 16% this year and Dolly Khanna’s stake in the company declined from 1.7% to below 1% this quarter.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

A single beach photo from Meghan Markle’s family vacation in Portugal has reignited a familiar debate on social media, with some users accusing the Duchess of Sussex of deliberately styling herself after her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana, while others dismissed the comparison as overblown.

Meghan shared a photo carousel to Instagram on Wednesday, July 23, captioned “Summer Holiday,” documenting a family trip to Melides, a coastal town in Portugal’s Alentejo region that the Sussexes have visited regularly in recent years. Among the images was one showing Meghan in a black backless, high-cut one-piece swimsuit, walking along the beach as Prince Harry and their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, ran ahead toward the water.

Where the comparison came from

The photo quickly drew comparisons to a similar look Princess Diana wore during a 1993 vacation to Nevis, taken just months after her separation from then-Prince Charles was announced. Diana had traveled on that trip with her sons, Princes William and Harry. Diana was also photographed wearing similarly styled, brightly colored and animal-print open-back swimsuits during a 1997 trip to Saint-Tropez, images that remain among the most widely circulated of her later public life.

On X, the account British Royaltea posted a side-by-side comparison of the two images, with a caption asserting that Meghan seemed “obsessed with cosplaying Diana.” Another user shared a larger photo collage making the same comparison and wrote simply, “Sadly yes she does.”

Not everyone agreed

The reaction on social media was far from unanimous. Some users pushed back directly on the comparison, arguing that a simple black swimsuit does not constitute deliberate imitation. One user wrote, “So she can never wear anything that is similar to Diana?” adding that “Diana wore some pretty basic clothes” and noting plainly, “It’s a black one piece swimsuit.” Those responses framed much of the criticism as overreach rather than legitimate evidence of intentional styling.

Still, critical commentary continued alongside the pushback. One user wrote, “I really dislike Meghan for this curated cosplay,” while another asked more pointedly, “Does she want to be her or just have the popularity she had.”

A pattern that predates this trip

This is not the first time Meghan’s public appearance has drawn direct comparisons to Diana. In November 2025, Meghan appeared on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar’s December 2025/January 2026 Art Issue, a shoot photographed by Malick Bodian and styled by Carlos Nazario, which drew similarly pointed reactions online. One widely circulated image from that shoot showed Meghan sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the floor, a pose closely echoing a 1991 photograph of Diana taken by Patrick Demarchelier for Vogue. A separate black-and-white image from the same shoot, showing Meghan lounging on an oversized chair with her head resting on her hand, drew comparisons to a 1997 Mario Testino photograph of Diana taken for Vanity Fair.

That earlier round of criticism included commentary from political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, who posted the images side by side on X and described Meghan in sharply personal terms as, in his words, “the creepiest, most sinister, most wretched person on the face of the earth.” Newsweek reported that the broader online response to the Harper’s Bazaar shoot included accusations characterizing Meghan’s styling as a “sinister” imitation of Diana. It remains unclear how much creative input Meghan herself had over the specific poses and styling choices used in that shoot, since those decisions would typically involve the magazine’s photographer and stylist as well.

Beyond the two magazine and vacation moments, commentators have also pointed to a February 2025 Instagram Story in which Meghan was shown watering the garden at her Montecito, California, home while wearing a purple Northwestern University crewneck sweatshirt, a look some noted closely resembled a sweatshirt Diana was photographed wearing during a gym visit in the final year of her life.

A separate controversy in the same photo set

Meghan’s Portugal swimsuit photo wasn’t the only image from Wednesday’s carousel to draw scrutiny. A separate photo in the same post, showing Harry, Archie and Lilibet walking down a tree-lined path believed to be at Althorp, the Spencer family estate where Diana grew up, generated its own wave of criticism. Harry and Archie appeared to be carrying large bouquets of flowers in that image, fueling speculation that the family had visited Diana’s grave, located on a small island within Althorp’s Oval Lake. Neither Meghan nor Harry has confirmed whether the photo was taken during a visit to the burial site specifically. One X account, @unreMARKLEble, described that particular post as “disrespectful, exploitative, and gross.”

Context around the trip itself

According to reporting from Town & Country, the family’s stay in Melides continues a pattern of visits the Sussexes have made to the area for several years. People magazine reported in 2024 that the couple had purchased a home in Portugal, though the exact location has never been publicly disclosed. The Portugal leg of the trip preceded the family’s higher-profile return to the United Kingdom, marking their first visit to Britain together in several years.

No official response from the Sussexes

As of this week, representatives for Meghan and Harry have not issued any statement addressing the swimsuit comparison specifically. The couple has previously responded to related criticism concerning their children’s privacy in social media posts, but neither has commented publicly on the recurring comparisons drawn between Meghan’s styling choices and those of Diana.

Given how quickly and repeatedly similar comparisons have surfaced following Meghan’s public appearances over the past year, from the Harper’s Bazaar cover shoot to this week’s vacation photos, further scrutiny of her styling choices against Diana’s is likely whenever new images are shared. For now, the swimsuit photo has become the latest flashpoint in an online debate that shows little sign of settling, split between those who see intentional imitation and those who view the comparisons as reading too much into an ordinary vacation photo.

Philadelphia’s improbable pursuit of LeBron James paid off Friday, and betting markets responded almost instantly, catapulting the 76ers from afterthought status into the thick of the 2027 NBA championship conversation in a matter of hours.

James agreed to a two-year, $8 million contract with Philadelphia, joining a core that already includes Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and newly acquired Jaylen Brown. The move triggered one of the sharpest single-day shifts in championship odds seen across major sportsbooks and prediction markets this offseason.

How dramatically the odds moved

At bet365, the Sixers jumped from +2700 to +1100 to win the title following the announcement. FanDuel Sportsbook placed Philadelphia at +1000, ranking the team as the fourth favorite behind the Oklahoma City Thunder (+260), San Antonio Spurs (+270) and New York Knicks (+900). ESPN reported the Sixers moved to +900, tying them for third with the reigning champion Knicks, after starting the day at 20-1 and having already shortened from 60-1 following the Jaylen Brown trade earlier this month.

On the prediction market Kalshi, Philadelphia’s implied championship probability roughly doubled from 6 cents to 12 cents, equivalent to +733 American odds, placing the Sixers third behind only Oklahoma City and San Antonio. Polymarket showed a similar jump, with Philadelphia’s odds climbing to between 12% and 13%, also good for third place in that market. BetMGM’s Halvor Egeland, the sportsbook’s trading strategy manager, described the wagering activity following the announcement bluntly: “It’s been nothing but 76ers.”

How the Eastern Conference picture shifted

Philadelphia’s rise has been especially dramatic within its own conference. At Kalshi, the Sixers actually passed the defending champion Knicks to become the outright favorite to win the East, priced at +684 as of Friday afternoon, ahead of New York’s +1240. Other books showed a closer but similarly favorable gap, with FanDuel pricing Philadelphia at +390 to New York’s +330, and bet365 having the Sixers at +350 behind the Knicks’ +330.

A dramatic turnaround in a matter of weeks

The scale of Philadelphia’s odds movement this offseason has been striking even by NBA standards. According to Sports Betting Dime, BetMGM had the Sixers at +6000 to win the title back in mid-June, ranking 12th in the league and nowhere near contender status. That number dropped to +2000 after Philadelphia acquired Jaylen Brown from Boston in exchange for Paul George and draft compensation. James’ signing then pushed Philadelphia’s odds under 10-1, a shift Sports Betting Dime described as making the Sixers the team that gained the most of any roster in the league this summer.

Why some analysts remain cautious

Despite the surge in championship odds, several analysts have flagged real questions about whether Philadelphia’s roster can translate raw talent into a title. Bleacher Report noted that James could plausibly function as just the third offensive option in a lineup featuring Embiid, Brown, Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, a level of depth that could prove either a strength or a liability depending on how quickly the pieces mesh together on the court.

Health remains perhaps the single largest variable hanging over Philadelphia’s championship hopes. Embiid has a well-documented history of injury-shortened seasons, and James, who will turn 42 in December, missed 22 games during the 2025-26 season with the Lakers. Bleacher Report noted that pairing a player with Embiid’s injury record alongside a 41-year-old James “presents some risk,” even as the talent on paper ranks among the league’s best.

A market caught off guard

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Friday’s odds movement was how unexpected it was right up until the moment it happened. According to Yahoo Sports, more than $226 million had been traded on Kalshi’s market tracking James’ free agency decision, with the Miami Heat holding a commanding lead at nearly 45% as recently as Friday morning. As late as 11:29 a.m. Eastern time Friday, Philadelphia still ranked just fourth among suitors on that market, trailing Miami, Cleveland and Golden State, with only an 8.9% implied probability of landing James. The Sixers had briefly touched a high-water mark of 18% in early July before fading well behind the field in the days that followed.

Historical context for Philadelphia’s odds

Whether Philadelphia’s improved title odds translate into an actual championship remains an open question, particularly given the league’s recent parity. Covers.com noted that the NBA has crowned eight different champions in eight seasons since the Golden State Warriors repeated in 2018, the longest such streak of unique champions since the late 1970s. That same analysis found that 23 of the last 26 champions ranked in the top 10 in defensive rating during the regular season, and 24 of the last 26 ranked in the top five in either offensive or defensive efficiency, benchmarks Philadelphia’s roster will need to hit consistently if it hopes to build on Friday’s improved odds.

With training camp still roughly two months away, Philadelphia’s coaching staff faces the challenge of integrating four accomplished, ball-dominant scorers, Embiid, Brown, Maxey and James, into a cohesive lineup capable of contending with the league’s top defensive teams come playoff time. Betting markets have made clear that oddsmakers now view the Sixers as a legitimate top-five title contender heading into the 2026-27 season, a remarkable shift from a team that, as Bleacher Report put it, “looked completely stuck” after being swept in the second round of last season’s playoffs. Whether that improved standing on the betting board translates into an actual run to the NBA Finals will depend heavily on health, chemistry and how quickly Philadelphia’s new-look roster can find its footing together on the floor.

Indian equities head into next week with a critical support level under siege after five straight sessions of selling erased 2,092 points from the Sensex and dragged the Nifty to its lowest close since June 12. With the Nifty at 23,767, a breach of 23,600 could trigger a severe correction, while any rebound may struggle near 24,000-24,200.

The Nifty lost another 102 points on Friday, extending its decline for a fifth consecutive session. Investor sentiment remained subdued as Brent crude surged above $100 a barrel following a fresh escalation in the Middle East, reviving concerns over inflation and the domestic economy.

Disappointing quarterly earnings from select large-cap companies and continued weakness in the rupee also weighed on sentiment. The dollar-rupee exchange rate held near 96.55, while surging energy costs and persistent supply-chain concerns added to market volatility.

The charts now point to a sharp deterioration in the short-term setup. Rupak De, senior technical analyst at LKP Securities, said the Nifty slipped out of its consolidation on Thursday before follow-up selling took it to 23,600 on Friday. The index has also fallen below its 50-day exponential moving average, confirming a new short-term downtrend.

“The weekly chart looks more scary,” De told ET Markets. Over the past four weeks, the Nifty has repeatedly failed to move above its 50-week exponential moving average as selling remained strong at higher levels and buying support stayed fragmented.

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For traders, 23,600 has emerged as the most consequential level for next week. “A fall below 23600 might trigger a severe correction, as investors would be running away, putting the Nifty at greater downside risk,” De said.On the upside, 24,000 has become the line of polarity. The broader trend is likely to remain weak unless the index reclaims that level, according to De.

Friday’s sharp recovery from the intraday lows, however, offers a limited counterpoint to the bearish weekly structure. Nagaraj Shetti, senior technical research analyst at HDFC Securities, said the Nifty formed a sizable green candle at the lows, signalling the emergence of some buying interest.

The index is positioned at the crucial 23,600 support, which coincides with the opening upside gap of June 15 and an ascending trend line. That creates the possibility of a near-term relief rally even though the short-term trend has weakened sharply.

Shetti expects the Nifty could bounce toward the immediate resistance at 24,200 next week before coming under pressure again. While the short-term trend has turned bearish, he said the medium- to long-term uptrend remains intact.

The technical roadmap for next week is therefore narrow. The Nifty must first defend 23,600, reclaim 24,000 and then attempt a move toward 24,200. Failure to hold the lower end could open the door to a much sharper decline.

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The macroeconomic backdrop offers little immediate comfort. Vinod Nair, head of research at Geojit Investments, said market sentiment is likely to remain under pressure if oil prices stay elevated, potentially hurting key economic indicators and growth dynamics.

“The US 10-year yield has climbed to a 52-week high despite crude oil trading well below its crisis-era peak, reflecting the bond market’s concerns over energy-led inflation risks, resilient labour market conditions, and a persistently hawkish Fed,” Nair said.

Those factors have raised the implied probability of a US rate increase in September. New US tariffs on imports have added another headwind for export-oriented economies, while higher interest rates have weighed particularly heavily on technology-focused markets.

India’s dependence on imported oil is also returning as a central market risk. VK Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Investments, said the Houthi attack on Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea had aggravated the West Asia crisis and pushed crude prices higher.

“When Brent crude trades above $95, which is the price now, it is bound to have sentimental impact on the Indian market. India’s vulnerability to high oil price is once again becoming a macro concern,” Vijayakumar said.

He expects negative sentiment to keep stock prices largely subdued, but said the correction could create opportunities for long-term investors to gradually accumulate high-quality companies in growth segments. Banking stocks appear attractively valued in the context of strong credit growth and very low non-performing assets, he said.

Markets will now track upcoming corporate earnings, crude oil prices and defensive allocation strategies. Domestic retail liquidity remains robust, but the charts suggest buyers will need to defend 23,600 before any credible recovery can begin.

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