payable of 3,117 million euro, the Benefits & Rewards Services activity asset to liability coverage is at 108%.
At year end, having increased the Group’s lines of credit in May by 250 million euro, the yearend total unused lines reached 1.9 billion euro, of which 250 million euro is maturing by May 2021.
As a result, despite the significant decline in revenues and profits in the second half, Group liquidity was solid at nearly 5.1 billion euro at year end.
(in millions of euro)
Liquidity* at H1 end: 4,377
Commercial paper reimbursement : - 725
Bond issue in April : + 1,500
Increase in unused credit facilities : + 250
Bond issue in July : + 1,000
USPP Reimbursement: - 1,403
FCF : + 315
Other, mainly currencies: - 244
Liquidity * at Year end : 5,070
*Liquidity includes Cash and unused credit facilities: of 1,754 million euro in H1 and of 1,946 million euro in H2 of which 250 million euro will mature within FY 2021
2.1.3.4 Subsequent events
Significantly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, Sodexo France announced on October 27, 2020 an Employment Protection Plan which would involve the reduction of 7% of its workforce, i.e. 2,083 positions mostly in the Corporate Services segment.
Discussions with employee representatives are just starting. Sodexo intends to propose all possible measures to maintain employment for its employees and thus limit the impact of these reorganizations, in particular through a project to support the transfer of its employees, on a voluntary basis, to other activities of the Group in France.
2.1.3.5 Outlook
In the next few quarters, given the high level of uncertainty which we are currently experiencing the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic will continue to be significant for the Group.
The Government & Agencies and Energy & Resources segments will continue to be resilient. Healthcare & Seniors are progressively returning to pre-Covid level. Clearly, some segments, such as Sports & Leisure will not recover until the pandemic is over. Others, such as Corporate Services and Education will see activity improving progressively.
Benefits & Rewards employee benefi ts issue volumes will return progressively to growth as digitalization and penetration continue to progress, strengthened by working from home trends. This progression could be impacted somewhat by the rising level of unemployment. On the revenue side, the progression is linked to reimbursement patterns and impacted negatively by extremely low interest rates.
At this stage, we see an improvement in first half Fiscal 2021 relative to the second half Fiscal 2020, with an organic decline between -20% and -25%.
- The slow ramp up in S&L we experienced from July to September, mostly in France, is slowing down.
- Education is trending well in Europe but remains volatile in the U.S. with activities varying a lot from one week to another.
- Corporate Services was on a very encouraging trend from July to September in Europe but there are signs that it will be more difficult in the next few months. North America remains very impacted in food services with very slow improvement.
- Energy & Resources, Government & Agencies, Healthcare & Seniors are progressively stabilizing and bring us resilience.
Until activity levels return to more normal levels, the Group is still using all available furlough programs. Strong restructuring measures have and continue to be taken to protect margins going forward, as government support falls away. Detailed work is being conducted across the Board in all segments and activities to reduce SG&A.
Our hypothesis for the first half Fiscal 2021 Group underlying operating margin is between 2 and 2.5%.
The free cash fl ow for the first half Fiscal 2021 will be impacted by the expensing of restructuring costs, cash outflows linked to some payment delays obtained in second half Fiscal 2020 and the reimbursement of the 2020 Olympic Games hospitality packages. We estimate the sum of those three factors to weigh for -250 million euro on our free cash flow. On top of this, the recurrent free cash fl ow is usually weaker in the first half than the second and we are working with a recurrent free cash fl ow hypothesis of about -100 million euro for first half Fiscal 2021