Fiscal 2021 Universal Registration Document

Sodexo's strategy incorporates some external factors: major long term global trends such as aging populations, increasing urbanization, the development of the middle classes or even trends more specific to its sector of activity, such as the increasing outsourcing of services, new patterns of consumption, and the rise of hybrid working habits. It also relies on the analysis of the dynamics in place in its competitive environment.

The strategic exercise that integrates these various elements allows Sodexo to optimize its value proposition and the positioning of each of its activities in their market as well as its value chain. It also helps align the allocation of resources and required skills with strategic priorities. Thus, three main axes have been defined.

STREAMLINING THE ORGANIZATION AND THE SERVICE PORTFOLIO TO INCREASE EFFICIENCY

To strengthen its competitiveness and increase its agility, Sodexo is continuing and accelerating the momentum started in 2018. The Group, which has already reduced its international presence from 80 coutries in 2018 to 56 countries at the end of Fiscal 2021, is continuing to optimize its geographical locations by focusing on regions for which the growth potential is the greatest. Because they represent essential drivers of innovation for the future, the Group intends to strengthen its efforts in the United States to gain leading, sustainable and profitable market shares.

Sodexo is also embarking on a program to optimize and simplify its central structures, including transitioning from 12 to 7 regions and pooling support functions.

Coming out of the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, in its portfolio review the Group  takes care to ensure that each of its activities benefits from an optimal positioning in its market. Thus, in July 2021, Sodexo announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiations to combine its childcare activities, including Liveli in France, with those of the Grandir group, to become a global early education leader with broad geographic coverage. The Group also ceded control of Rydoo, its mobility and professional expense management solution, to an international investment company to enable the development of its business model.

The GET efficiency program, announced in November 2020, aims to enable Sodexo to be more agile and efficient, closer to the needs of the field. Designed to protect the gross margin by adapting the on-site cost structure to new post-pandemic activity volumes, at the same time this program also aims to structurally reduce SG&A over the long term by simplifying the Group's structures to free up capacity for investment in growth and to improve margins. At the end of Fiscal 2021, the exceptional costs of this program amount to 312 million euro  with a cumulative target of 330 million euro for Fiscal 2022. The savings totaled 218 million euro  and should reach 394 million euro  cumulatively by the end of Fiscal 2022, beyond the initial target of 350 million euro.