Very welcome to the 2024 full-year results presentation of Fugro. Very welcome to everyone here in the room, but also online. Thank you for dialing in. We'll take you through a presentation today as normal, and after that we open up for questions for the people here available in the room. Let me start first by giving you a few highlights of the financials for 2024. We improved our margins significantly in the year, and Barbara will dive into some of the details showing you the regional split. I can already say that we're very pleased that three out of the four regions actually produced double-digit margins. This is good to see. Also good to mention that both land and marine have improved actually the margins compared to last year. Operating cash flow increased by 20%, also very good.
Obviously, as a result of a good net result and cash generation, we are very pleased to announce the increase in the dividends to EUR 0.75 per share, compared to obviously EUR 0.40 last year. The strong EBIT improvement also was developed with actually some headwinds in the Americas and the Middle East markets. In the Americas, obviously we were confronted with lower activity in the United States, specifically due to the uncertainties around the elections. In the Middle East, we have spoken about that. The revenue was impacted by cautious spending from several oil companies, but also due to the conflicts in the region. Overall, we achieved a growth rate, currency comparable, of 3.6%. Some key highlights for 2024. We delivered in our or against our midterm targets.
That is important because those targets were set for 2027, and we already delivered the EBIT margin, free cash flow, and also the ROCE, the return on capital employed, well within those targets. The strong bottom line performance is a direct consequence of our resilient and well-diversified business. I will show you later on how we now split in the different market segments and geographies. Over the past few years, we have significantly improved our performance and financial position. We are well on track with implementing our new strategy, Path to Profitable Growth. No, so no, obviously Towards the Full Potential, Path to Profitable G rowth was our former strategy, still really embedded in my brain. Towards the Full Potential is our new strategy, and we are well on track in the first year delivering on that. We are having a good plan, and we will stick to that plan.
We're also well equipped to deliver on capturing emerging opportunities that we see across our markets. I will also say a few more words about that a little bit later because we have also new market segments where we see opportunities. That is done all under the, yeah, probably we could say uncertain geopolitical environment. For instance, also in the light of the setbacks that we see now, for instance, in the offshore wind in the United States. The market fundamentals in general for Fugro are strong for the mid and longer term. With the world population growing by 25% to 10 billion, there's a lot of need for food, energy, water, and specifically the demand for energy in the upcoming years will continue to grow. That's for Fugro very important.
I will talk a bit more about how versatile we are to deliver services in the various energy markets. Also, substantial infrastructure developments and addressing the climate change by adapting the environment is an important growth area for Fugro. Therefore, going forward, we're very confident that we can continue to deliver against our midterm targets. If we go beyond the financial targets here, a sheet that we have produced for you already in the past, also in the Capital Markets Day with non-financial targets. On the left side, the people, the more social related topics. It's obviously very good to see that we managed to increase our employee engagement to 36. The eNPS, the Net Promoter Score, moved up from, yeah, from a lower to 36 now. We have actually a target of above 30. We already reached that quite early in this whole period.
Also, the turnover rate came down. It's good to see that we have really made progress on the people side. People are obviously at the heart of Fugro. It's very important that we make progress there. On the net zero roadmap, we have a clear roadmap in place to further develop reduction of emissions. You can see here the results of our renewable target, EUR 860 million in renewables for the whole of Fugro. Also on the reduction of CO2, we make progress, although there will be fluctuation year in, year out. Especially now we have added a number of additional vessels. You see a bit of a response in that specific reduction number right now. Over time, we will catch up again towards that midterm.
It's also good that on the top right side, you see the client engagement and the Net Promoter Score for delivering high-quality services at a very nice range of 61. Those are the targets that we have for non-financials for the midterm. We will continue to follow these and present to you how this is progressing over time. If I then come back on the strategy towards full potential, we have three pillars in the strategy. I want to dive into one of these pillars one by one. We have made very clear that the first pillar, growing and transforming with the current business, is going to generate in the midterm most of the value. The second pillar, expanding into development segments, there are lots of opportunities there. We see that coming in. That will start to generate returns in the next three to five years.
We'll see that being more on the board and more visible. Also, in the upcoming period, we'll already see projects obviously coming in. To become more substantial, it will take a little bit longer. Last but not least, the third pillar there, building recurring revenue, I will give you a few examples there. That's really in the longer term, five to 10 years to be significant generating returns for Fugro in the longer term. First, the first pillar, grow and transform with our current business. First and foremost, on the right side, you see some data points, things that we have done over the last period of time. We have said that we want to expand our capacity. Specifically, you have seen the announcements around the geotechnical fleet.
We have added, since the Capital Markets Day, end of 2023, three additional owned vessels, geotechnical vessels. That program of expanding our owned capacity, so to say, on the geotechnical side is coming to an end. We're still modifying some of the vessels that we have bought. They will come to the market during the course of this year. We have basically coming to the end of this program. We've hired more than 2,000 people and trained those people, which is very important, as I said, because the knowledge of Fugro is really in the heart of our professionals that we have working for us. If you talk about transforming the capabilities, then this is very much related to also the remote solutions that we're bringing in.
We're bringing in these uncrewed surface vessels to do things from a distance with no people out there in the hazardous environment. It is better for the CO2 emissions. It is better for, yeah, the safety side for the people. We're more efficient. We can have the data quicker to the customer. There are a lot of things that we're doing there remotely. This is not only the uncrewed surface platforms. It is also the positioning work that we do, the navigation work, the construction support work that we do more and more remotely out of our control centers. Another good one to mention is the opportunity that we have with a new technology that we're developing, which is called Ground IQ. That is on the land business side.
This is a geophysical non-intrusive system where we can actually measure also geotechnical parameters in the subsurface combined with drilling and cone penetration. We can provide similar parameters as we would normally do for site investigation and site screening purposes. This is quite revolutionary. We have some patents on it as well. If we really are successful and we're running a number of projects now and we see the successes coming in, if we can expand further on this, we really will make a difference also on the land side, changing the way the data is collected for larger and complex projects, speeding up the answers for our customers, also making it more efficient and more cost-effective. We are doing all sorts of things for the, yeah, the optimization, digitalization of processes, but also our laboratories are becoming more sophisticated, more automated.
In general, we're really driving that operational efficiency up. If we move to the second pillar, the developing segments, these are in our existing markets, but they offer us opportunities. We have a few listed here on the board. I want to quickly mention them. First and foremost, you have seen the announcement on the acquisition that we have done, earth observation capabilities in EOMAP that we have recently acquired. This is really adding capacity as we announced in our strategy to add specific, yeah, complementing our services with, yeah, expertise and technologies that we do not have in-house. This is a company that we were using already as a supplier for multiple projects. It's really strengthening our portfolio of services right now. A bit adjacent in the Ocean Health business, we are actually doing already a lot of environmental baseline studies.
We are also there further developing the capabilities on the biodiversity side. We can do more for any project out there at sea to do these environmental baseline studies and to actually monitor what is happening with the underwater environment and basically the flora and fauna in those areas. If we then move to CCS, carbon capture usage and storage projects, we see those popping up almost everywhere in the world now. We have already done projects in the Gulf of Mexico, in Indonesia, India, Norway, U.K., Netherlands, many places we have been involved in CCS projects. It is coming up now in discussions almost everywhere. Two weeks ago, I was in Brazil. Also, Petrobras is now doing pilot projects with CCS. Everywhere where you have normal developments of oil and gas, they will probably combine it with some carbon capture and storage work.
Also, certain energy companies are specifically looking at, for instance, direct air capture or other ways to store CO2, buy it from the market, store it. It's actually a new service and new business area that they see developing. If you then look on the right side, we haven't heard too much about that yet, but maybe you picked up from the news that we have been doing some pilot projects with defense here in the Netherlands to do some work on our USV to see how we can do inspections of existing infrastructure on the seabed, critical infrastructure on the seabed. We see some more opportunities out there. Obviously, we all understand what is happening. We read the newspapers. There is a lot required there in the North Sea, but also in other areas of the world.
Fugro is doing inspection and monitoring work for decades already everywhere in the world. This is our core expertise. We see opportunities to work together with the governments to supply these services as well. I would advise you to follow Fugro carefully in the upcoming period because we'll have some more news to share with you. If we then go to the third pillar of our strategy, also to give you some progress and details on that, this is really based on changing the portfolio of Fugro. We are a 90%+ project-based company. We have set in our strategy rollout that we want to become a different type of business where we probably will go to 70% projects and maybe 30% recurring revenue based on Geo-data, on software and hardware solutions. We see some examples here on the board.
I will name a few. For instance, GeODin, which was a golden nugget that we developed already years ago in Fugro in Germany. We have now repackaged, rewritten the software package GeoDin, combined it also with the services that Autodesk is delivering. This really allows us to, yeah, to expand the skill and scale it up and have more clients that really work on the infrastructure side, development of infrastructure to really look properly at the geotechnical data, geophysical or the borehole data because that's better stored and they can use that in a better manner. This is a great example of what we're doing in this field. It will take a little bit longer, but it's really progressing. On the other side, you see some hardware-related and data solutions. TotaLite is a great example.
We developed also a patented solution, very revolutionary to change traditional land survey technologies to do monitoring, millimeter, submillimeter monitoring for tunnels, bridges, roads, all these kinds of things, movements, settlements we can measure. This is now going through several pilot projects. We expect in the upcoming years that we can further scale this up and expand the production of these systems. SEAWATCH early warning systems, those solutions are based on our existing buoys that we have. We spoke about wind LiDAR buoys where we do wind measurements. We can use those buoys also with different sensors, with different technology on the buoys. Maybe we can even use them to do some monitoring at sea, what is happening on the surface or even on the subsurface. We are investigating and working on some programs there as well. Those are the three pillars of our strategy.
We're really progressing very well with that strategy towards full potential. Talking about the diversity of our business and our markets that we serve, this is one of my favorite slides, you know. We have a very nicely diversified portfolio of markets that we serve now, 37% oil and gas, 38% renewables, and the rest infrastructure and water, close to 25%. You see on the right side a very nice spread of different clients that we serve. This is also very important because we can move between the clients, we can move between the markets. It's the same expertise that we deliver. One of the things we'll talk about a little bit later around the Americas, okay, if it's shifting from offshore wind to oil and gas or LNG or maybe some other work, we can shift our assets and people to different markets.
This is very important because this makes Fugro now a very resilient company. It's actually shown also in the fourth quarter in 2024 results where we show that we can make money even if the markets actually change and move. It is very important to see how this is developing further. Some showcase projects maybe to mention, also always good to have some tangible examples. I'm not going to dive into all of them. You see, I was in Brazil. We have now launched the first USV uncrewed surface vessel in Brazil. We are doing the first projects with Petrobras right now. We launched or we opened up a remote control center there as well. This is just the start of where this business is going because there's a lot required there. Brazil is a growing country with the services that are required there.
I think this is a great example of how we are further developing our expertise in different markets and different segments. Also in the middle there on the right side, you see the wind development in Japan. We'll talk a little bit more about winds, but definitely in Japan, you see that progressing as well. It's still on the board and it will continue to develop. They have a high ambition for renewable, yeah, energy development there. On the right side, even an example on CCS carbon capture project. Okay, I would like to dive into the markets a little bit more in detail. This is a very full slide. On the left side, maybe some generic information on the global trends. I don't have to necessarily dive into those in detail because I think we all read the newspaper.
We obviously see a lot of things happening on the macroeconomic side with changes in inflation, inflation coming down, still high in some countries, but also concerns around the economic slowdown in China that might affect actually the global growth. If we look at energy transition, you see obviously changes in the world. We just spoke about Americas, so we'll come back on that. You also see that there's maybe some shifts. Now we see the European Green D eal in Europe, basically an answer from Europe on a conference that was held two years ago, the North Sea Summit, where companies, I was there myself as well, where companies and governments came together to say, what do we need to do to further enhance the development of offshore wind in Europe? There were a lot of recommendations given by companies there.
Basically, this is the answer to it. We see this as a positive development where now this is also really stimulated to further pick up again in Europe, which is needed because some of the operators are obviously looking very carefully at what project is economically viable to develop and whatnot. Be careful, we also said for the last couple of years, some of these projects or these ambitions are so high, there is actually no capacity to deliver on that. It is actually also not bad that that market is maturing and actually deciding, okay, what is economically viable and what is not. I think it is a great answer from Europe to what is happening now in the Americas, and investments that maybe are not done by operators in the Americas might now move to Europe, creating a better environment.
Let me dive into some of these markets, starting with offshore wind. Offshore wind globally. First and foremost, it's important to understand how much Fugro does in offshore wind. We just saw it, EUR 863 million is in the renewables business, which is the majority is offshore wind. How is that spread around the world? You see that on the left side of this picture. 20% of the EUR 863 million is in the Americas, in the Americas, not in the U.S., but in the Americas. If you talk about how much is that of the total revenue of Fugro, 7% of the total revenue of Fugro is offshore wind business in the Americas. Now 65%, this is the majority of our renewables business, is in Europe. The rest is in Asia-Pacific and a little bit happening in Middle East, India.
If I talk about Middle East, India, specifically India that is developing all these opportunities because they have a very large project on the board of 37 GW by 2030. That is very ambitious. That is really starting right now because they are already several years working on it. Now we see that this is progressing. In the Americas, I will come back with another slide to dive into a bit more detail and say a few more things about it. I already mentioned for Europe, the Wind Power Package or the European Green Deal that is now launched. We see that this market will continue to develop with the comment that obviously the market is maturing and that operators are also more critical in where you develop and what is economically viable and whatnot.
If we talk about Americas, I will dive into that, but specifically, it's not only the U.S.A. that has opportunities there. There's also Latin America. We see big opportunities there in Colombia, for instance, but also in Brazil, specifically Brazil, where they're really starting to develop the offshore wind capabilities now. Asia-Pacific is continuing. I already mentioned Japan, but also Korea is still very buoyant, Taiwan as well. Australia is happening. Several licenses are out there. How much will we build? We'll have to see in the future, but at least the investigations, the ground investigations are done in several fields there as we speak. We also see Philippines, Vietnam coming in probably in a few years from now. That will take a little bit longer. I already spoke about India. If we then go to the Americas and specifically the U.S.A., what is happening there?
Obviously, we get a lot of questions. Once again, 7% of the total revenue of Fugro is in offshore wind in the Americas, not specifically in the U.S. We see basically three categories. You have projects that have licenses and that have a power purchase agreement, so they are already going. Those projects will very likely continue, and they are continuing as we speak. You have projects that have licenses but do not have a power purchase agreement, so you have nobody that wants to take the power for a certain price from the operator. That is obviously still a problem, and those will be probably affected to some extent right now. They are put on pause, as they say.
We have many projects, 28 projects here on the board that are no licenses or they have no licenses and that have no power purchase agreements. Those are obviously now at stake and will influence the amount of marine site characterization work that needs to be done in the upcoming period. This business is reliant on a lot of blue-collar workers and a whole industry in the U.S. as well. It is still a bit of a question mark how this further develops because in the upcoming period, policies need to be written. There is a lot of narrative from the new president out there, but this needs to be translated into policies. Those policies will be all written in the reconciliation bill that comes out mid-year. There we will see how these policies exactly pan out to be.
You can say, okay, which projects will continue or will not continue, et cetera, et cetera. We do see already that the bottom part of this picture will impact certainly the beginning of this year or the starting. We do see that this will be paused for longer. We already saw cancellation also of a project in the fourth quarter, which has also affected directly our numbers in the fourth quarter in the U.S. If we then zoom out again a little bit, not the United States only, but Americas, we see lots of opportunities in the United States and in the Americas. We have categorized this for you. I will not step through everything, but you can see how much opportunities these markets have, markets. Obviously, we grow with the markets.
We see more opportunities if the markets grow faster. Oil and gas is coming back for sure. We see deep water coming back in Latin America, but also in the United States is being discussed. In the last couple of years under the Biden administration, we only saw three licenses issued in the Gulf of Mexico. Now compared to maybe Trump's first period, there were more than 40 licenses in a similar period issued. There is a big difference. We can clearly see that oil and gas will be unleashed, if you want to call it like that. Gas also, natural gas, liquid natural gas, LNG will continue to go back on the board.
We had the Biden ban over the last couple of years that is now lifted, but still also these markets are waiting for policies and for clear descriptions how these will further develop. That is applicable also for certain areas of the infrastructure where we see lots of opportunities on critical minerals, very high on the agenda for the United States and for the world, Europe as well, to really not be dependent on China or Russia in that field. Another I want to mention, and I already did, is the carbon capture storage. We do see that the administration there in the U.S. is also stimulating these policies because they see opportunities for the large energy companies. Water, climate, and nature, we still feel in the Americas, there are lots of opportunities that we can further develop.
If I zoom out again and talk about the markets in general, these are market pictures that are generated from the standard data-based 4C Offshore, Rystad, and those kind of things. This is a snapshot of what it is today. If you wait a quarter, then you will have slightly different numbers again. I think it's important to say that in the mid to longer term, the market fundamentals for Fugro are positive. We also see that in our developments in the business. We have said we are affected, obviously, certainly in the beginning of this year in 2025 or in the first period of this year by what is happening in the United States at the moment and also maybe settling in some of these new markets further developing.
In overall, we gave the guidance and we will come back on that that we will grow in 2025. Important for this picture is, and I want to emphasize that again, the world needs energy. Energy means development. For Fugro, it does not matter if it is oil and gas, traditional energy, LNG, or offshore wind. We always say the world should stop with coal, should reduce oil, accept gas, and accelerate renewables. With that, I would like to close out this session and hand over to Barbara for more details on the financials.
Thanks, Mark, and welcome all. Thanks for joining us in the room and also on the webcast. As usual, I would like to start with a quick glance of the highlights of our results, only making a couple of brief observations and elaborate further when presenting the following slides. We realized strong bottom line results in a year in which our top line growth was slightly lower than anticipated. We realized a strong improvement in our EBITDA and EBIT, and in three out of four regions, we posted double-digit EBIT margins, both in marine and land activities. The increase in EBITDA has translated to a EUR 66 million higher operating cash flow, a 20% improvement. We raised our dividend to EUR 0.75 per share.
As Mark pointed out earlier, we delivered well against our midterm targets, an EBIT margin of 13.8%, free cash flow of 7.1%, and a ROCE of 18.1%. Let's look at a trajectory. This is a slide which shows the last 12 months. Here you can clearly see the structural year-on-year improvements in our margins and that we delivered these in the last couple of years. In combination with the top line expansion during the last years, we have a solid base going forward. If we look at the same time period on a quarter-by-quarter basis, we've also been able to improve significantly. On a quarterly basis for Q4 2024, we have been able to show a year-on-year top line growth of 1.8%, currency comparable growth, and an EBIT margin expansion in Q4 from 12.2% in 2024, which was 11.5% in 2023.
Now let's look at the underlying regional performance. Let's first look at marine. Marine revenue growth amounted to 5.5%, enabled by the expansion of the geotechnical fleet. Overall, our vessel utilization was 70%, and the margin expanded to 15.9%. In Europe/Africa, we saw strong growth in site characterizations, mainly in offshore wind and the construction and support business. This has translated into a further margin improvement, as you can see in the bridge, also as a result of favorable terms and conditions and strong operational performance. If we look at the Americas, you can see that revenues were significantly impacted last year. This was caused by the election year and a pausing of, in particular, offshore wind projects caused by the uncertainty in change of administration. Due to strong and strict cost control, the region was able to maintain its margin, as you can see.
In Asia-Pacific, the third region, we saw a strong growth in both the geotechnical site investigation for both oil and gas and offshore wind clients and more inspection and monitoring campaigns for oil and gas infrastructure. The latter drove the margin improvement. Finally, in the Middle East, revenue and margin were strongly impacted by ongoing regional conflicts and cautious client spending compared to a very busy 2023 with the Lower Zakum project. We move into land. Land revenue decreased slightly by 2.2%, but it is encouraging to see that the margin improved to 7%. This is what we have been working on and focusing on. We have communicated before about this. We are not happy with the land margins, and we are working to improve those. In Europe/Africa, the revenue and margin expansion was mostly driven by nearshore projects.
The onshore site investigation restructuring in the U.K., which we did around last summer, had a negative revenue impact of EUR 17 million and a positive impact of EUR 2 million. You see a decrease on the top line, but an increase on the profitability. In the Americas, revenues and EBIT on land were lower as a consequence of the continued slow nearshore LNG market in the U.S. We've been talking quite a lot about it when the Biden ban was lifted. That return of that market has been slower than anticipated. In Asia-Pacific, we executed a major offshore wind project, which was nearshore in Japan. That was partly offset, that good result, by the slow infrastructure market in Hong Kong. In the Middle East, we saw a scale back of some very large projects in Saudi Arabia.
Still, as you can see, we have been able to improve the margin due to better project delivery. Now briefly, some highlights of the 2024 bottom of the P&L. You can see that net finance cost decreased by EUR 47 million due to foreign exchange gains. This was primarily related to the appreciation of the US dollar compared to the devaluation in 2023. If we look at the tax line, just like last year, we have been able to recognize previously unrecognized tax losses due to the improved business outlook. We have also recognized an additional liquidation loss related to Seabed and a positive impact related to the tonnage tax regime. This adds up to EUR 43 million compared to what was EUR 39 million in 2023, where we activated a lot of the deferred tax assets, mainly in Singapore and the U.S., and the liquidation loss in Seabed.
Quite a big move. Bottom line, we report the highest net result in more than 10 years in 2024. Cash flow, free cash flow as a percentage of revenue, 7.1%, which is well within our midterm target range of 6%-9%. Operating cash flow before working capital increased by EUR 66 million. This increase was offset by higher CapEx. I will get back on CapEx on the next slide. On the right side, you can see our working capital development. Thanks to an enhanced cash billing and cash collection, we realized a significant reduction. I am quite pleased about that. We are managing the working capital in the range, as mentioned before, between 10%-15%, lowest always being the end of the year, highest always at mid-year. We are very pleased with the 7.6%. This does include some one-offs.
Without those, we would be closer to 9%. In any event, a very excellent performance. If we look at CapEx, CapEx was EUR 242 million, and that excludes the EUR 23 million for the new head office that we're building. It is just below our guidance of EUR 250 million for the full year of 2024. A significant part of the transformation and expansion CapEx is related to the expansion and conversion of our geotechnical fleet in 2024. We had the delivery and the conversion of the Sapphire, formerly known as the Sea Goldc rest, the finalization of the conversion of both the Fugro Resilience and Resolve. This expansion has already in 2024, as mentioned by Mark, contributed significantly to the bottom line and the cash generation, which is an important enabler of the success for our geotechnical business.
In 2025, we anticipate capital expenditure of around EUR 100 million for maintenance and sustaining CapEx and around EUR 150 million, again, for ongoing expansion and transformation. The speed of transformation, and I've said this before, is really also dependent on the pace of the development of the opportunities that we see in the market. Mark just highlighted some new segments. We all, as mentioned, read the newspaper, and there's an opportunity we see in that. That transformation, that path, we will continue on. Of course, all CapEx is subject to strict capital return guidelines. As communicated on the Capital Markets Day, we have a very clear capital allocation policy on how we allocate CapEx to certain buckets. We dusted off some slides from the Capital Markets Day to show our progress regarding our asset portfolio strategy and capital allocation.
As you know, we are investing in a gradual shift of our asset base towards asset-light and low-carbon solutions such as uncrewed surface vessels. Around 40% of our revenue, including our land business, has a relatively low asset intensity. We target a further decrease over time by increased utilization of remote and non-invasive technologies. Around 60% on the right-hand side of the slide is relatively asset intensive. In that, we target a healthy balance between owned and chartered vessels. This provides us with the security of supply on the one hand and flexibility towards the future on the other hand, with chartered vessels acting as a flexible layer to remain agile when market conditions change. We are on track with the asset-light strategy. The marine geotechnical activities are the most capital-intensive part of our business. That is the top layer.
The offshore wind market, in particular, has a sizable need for mapping and soil composition via the extraction and testing of soil samples. Today and in the medium term, these activities cannot be executed with smaller and/or uncrewed platforms and will therefore remain asset-intensive in the near term. In order to ensure capacity to cater for the future demand, we have invested in the expansion. This has already, as I just mentioned, contributed significantly to the results in 2024. Hence also the green checkmark as communicated in the CMD. If we look at the bottom two rows for our marine geophysical and the inspection and monitoring business, we're gradually moving towards uncrewed and remote operations. Today, we have 10 USVs, uncrewed surface vessels, and we're working on a further fleet expansion through the development of larger USVs with longer endurance and deep water capability.
We believe this is where the future lies. That is why we are investing in that. On the asset integrity side, we target 5-10 additional USVs, including the 18-meter Blue Eclipse. For the site characterization, the geophysical work, we target also 5-10 additional USVs, including the 16-meter Blue Prism. We continue to invest in the next generation with the asset-light strategy. Now, let's look at the balance sheet, which is strong by any measure, I would say, driven by solid cash generation. Our balance sheet continued to strengthen further. Our leverage at year-end is 0.2 times. Our strong financial position enables us to execute on our strategy by investing in sustainable growth to provide attractive return to shareholders. It also gives us the agility to make decisions for the future of Fugro. Towards year-end, we arranged a new financing package.
This is now unsecured, which is good. We got better terms and conditions, which is also good. The debt maturities are now in 2029. Again, that gives us flexibility. Just to reiterate the capital allocation framework that we have, we will remain and stick to it. We will invest for sustainable growth, make balanced and considered investment decisions for the current business and the future business to achieve our strategic objectives. We are selective regarding M&A, which we've said before. For both categories, we continue to look at how we can accelerate our strategy. We also want to maintain a strong balance sheet. That means leverage below one and a half times and keep sufficient liquidity in the business. As I mentioned, we have working capital swings throughout the year.
We need at all times to keep sufficient liquidity in the business to keep it funded and also to cater for further growth. Lastly, we target attractive returns for shareholders with dividend payout of EUR 0.75 at 30%, which is well within our range of the payout policy. The outlook, that's also important in an uncertain world. First of all, I want to reiterate that we are fully focused on achieving our strategy towards full potential. The key fundamentals in our key core markets remain strong: offshore wind, oil and gas, and infrastructure. We also see emerging market segments, coastal resilience, carbon capture and storage, critical minerals, and surveillance of critical infrastructure. This offers really great growth potential for Fugro. For 2025, what does that mean?
We expect to deliver EBIT margins within the range of 11%-15%, free cash flow between 6%-9%, and a ROCE above 15%. As a market leader in our markets, we anticipate growing with our markets, resulting in revenue growth for the full year, however limited by the current dynamics in the U.S., specifically impacting the first part of the year. Overall, as you can expect from us, we will continue to be proactive and adapt and take actions as required in a very fast-changing political, economical, and social landscape. With that, I would like to thank you and open the floor for questions.
Thank you very much, Barbara. Yeah, I see you firsthand.
Yes. Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yeah.
Maybe first of all, congratulations on the very strong results. First question maybe on the EBIT margin guidance.
I would like maybe to better understand what's the path towards 15% and on the other end, what headwinds could lead you towards more the bottom end of the range. If you could maybe speak a bit to that, that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, I can start. On the margin target, we're very early in the year. The 11%-15% is also a reason to be on the board. As I mentioned in the U.S. and also mentioned by Mark, still a lot of things have to be filled in. That plays a role. What also plays a role is our operational excellence in moving up. This was definitely part of our EBIT margin expansion in 2024.
What you can also see is, especially in the U.S., if you see the EBIT margin despite the top line decrease on the strict, very strict cost control. We will have to there be more agile in a fast-changing environment. If we do that well and the top line is there and we continue to focus on execution, we could end up at the higher stage. I would like to reiterate these are margin targets for 2027. We have delivered on them today and actually also last year. The challenge and our task is to continue to deliver these margins and to grow them over time as we move into priority two and three, whereby the recurring revenue from subscription will increase over time, which will impact margins positively as well, as well expected for the new segments.
I don't know if you want to add something, Mark.
No, I think it's always a combination of the mix of services that you're going to supply. We see obviously new services, Barbara spoke about, the pillar-free type of services with Geo-data as a service, hardware-software solutions. They might have higher margins. At the same time, you might get certain markets becoming a bit more under pressure on pricing. That is a balance. That mix is very difficult, obviously, now to say exactly for what does that mean for 2025 or 2026 as a whole. In general, we're obviously moving in a direction where, as Barbara said, do a lot on operational excellence, commercial excellence. Those are the key elements, enablers for our strategy development. Also, in our strategy, we have really good programs in place for further digitalization, for further remote solutions.
Those kind of things should, in principle, drive margins up. At the same time, you see that other effect potentially being more headwind. There could be a certain region like the Americas now, as we see, or that could be a specific market being a bit more under pressure. That is very difficult to say upfront where that is going. Obviously, if we go down from where we are in 2024, that would be disappointment for us. You can see that moving around a little bit. It is very difficult to pinpoint that more exactly right now. We go to our next question.
Thank you. Thijs Berkelder, ABN AMRO, ODDO BHF. Congrats with the strong Q4 results. Can you maybe explain what you booked in Japan, what you did in Japan? Was it for Mitsubishi?
Okay.
In Japan, actually, we already have a local presence, a company for many years, I think probably more than 25 years. Initially, that entity was there for helping Japanese clients outside of Japan. However, over the last couple of years, we see the developments in Japan coming up where they really need external support to develop the wind business now. This is a complex environment, a very long coastline, very often remote as well what they're doing. We have been involved from the first few pilot projects, the first licenses for Mitsubishi as well, and others involved. You see now that more licenses come to play. We work for multiple clients there. Actually, the whole industry asks for our services. Sometimes it's weather services like the buoys, as you are familiar with, to do wind measurements for a period of time.
We're also getting involved in the site characterization work there and also in the installation work where they now have installation barges already first installing the first monopiles.
Okay. Good to hear. Just checking whether it was a settlement or so. Mark, the investors probably want to get more grip on your guidance 2025. In this last slide, you specifically warned for the first half of the year. Does it mean that you're not expecting growth in the first half or not in Q1? How should we see that?
Yeah. I fully appreciate that everybody wants to know what is happening in the world and where this is going. If I knew exactly, I would tell you more exactly where this is going. Obviously, on purpose, we have chosen the wording that are on the sheet because certain things will move and change over time.
We just spoke about the Americas and the U.S. in particular, where certain policies still need to come in play, so to say. It is very difficult to very exactly or more exactly say how much impact, when is it exactly stopping. Therefore, we chose those words very carefully. We see growth, and we wanted to give that confirmation. We see growth for 2025. We also see that obviously the effect of what is happening right now and the unclarity that there is available at the moment in certain areas, specific areas. It is not like the whole world is on fire, not at all. We see very specifically in the Americas, and we have named that specifically, some unclarity and uncertainty what is happening and how fast that is going, that development, like oil and gas coming back or LNG coming back or critical minerals.
There are lots of opportunities we spoke about. How fast is that coming to play? Nobody knows. That is also what we have said before. Obviously, we are all waiting to see every day what the new president has brought to the market again to see how we should respond to it. The key thing is whatever happens, and we saw that also in 2024, we will respond to it because in the latter part of last year, the Americas region did extremely well in managing their cost properly and coming out with a double-digit EBIT margin, even under a lot of pressure with the revenues coming down. Maybe good to mention because Barbara, and I wanted to add that this spoke about the geotechnical fleet. One of the things that we do, we can continuously adapt ourselves as well.
We have added our own capacity to our own capacity with vessels that we bought over the last couple of years. We have added actually seven vessels to our own capacity. Some of them were on lease. Yeah, the Scout and the Voyager were lease assets. We brought them back in our own portfolio. It is not necessarily additional capacity. We also hired some lease or we leased some assets. Now in the Americas, because of what is happening, we just let go at the end of the period of the HOS Browning. We let go of that contract. We are now demobilizing the HOS Browning because we see in the upcoming period, we do not need her. This is also how we can respond and how we can stay flexible and adapting ourselves. We spoke about that in the past.
We keep that flexibility to respond quite rapidly to the market dynamics.
Clear? I see a small mistake in your press release, page five. You still talk about Gulf of Mexico, but
we have the feeling that that's not a mistake, but it's all up to you how you want to interpret it. We will continue to talk about the Gulf of Mexico.
Follow-on question on your order intake. I'm making the calculations. I conclude your marine order intake in Q4 was down 28% year- over- year. U.S., or sorry, Americas, minus 76% and Europe - 8%. Our clients or majors, we all see the announcement, the news. They're all puzzling. They're back to the drawing table. Are they, in your view, delaying their contracts, waiting, or are they renegotiating their contracts with you on better terms? How should we see that? Yeah.
There are a couple of facts, obviously, in the previous years where we came out of a period of post-COVID and then an enormous ramp-up of activity in offshore wind specifically, especially in Europe, obviously, particularly renewable business growing after the conflict in Ukraine. This had an enormous boost. It is still on a high level. Therefore, I think we need to be careful that we say, "Okay, we expect every year a certain growth or panic when the growth is not as large as it was before." This is an important element. Secondly, what we see is that for sure there are key operators, energy companies, and you have seen the news. Obviously, BP just made an announcement going back out of renewables. Shell has done this before. Equinor made a statement. We are obviously following the news very carefully as well.
That does not mean that this business is not progressing. People are very much more critical in where do they invest and where they not invest because they need to make sure that they have an economically viable project. We have seen also some licenses brought to the market by countries that nobody actually subscribed to. This is also a maturing market phenomenon. This is one thing. Secondly, I think with the backlog, you always need to be a little bit careful because there will be fluctuations. It is a momentum where you say, "Okay, now at the end of the year, we want to see what the backlog exactly is." It is very much influenced by particular projects.
If there's a project that we're bidding for and we didn't get the award yet, then it has quite a bit of an effect on the backlog. I want to also caution people not to draw all the time very specific conclusions to one moment in time backlog. We'll see that fluctuating, and we're obviously keeping a close eye on that. We see still, as we said, in Europe, a lot of interest. Certainly also with the European Green Deal, we do expect that people will benefit from that. The renewables business also in Europe will continue to flourish. There might be sometimes pauses in certain countries, for sure. That is absolutely true. We have seen that in the past as well.
In the past, you reported a percentage of your order backlog being fixed contracts versus, let's say, flexible or framework agreements. What is the percentage right now, roughly?
I don't have that number exactly, so I cannot say it to you. What we see is that we have also contracts, and we'll try to become more clear on it because also the market wants to see, okay, what is multi-year? What is maybe a subscription that comes back? We are very much aware of that, that this is important information to get comfort around backlog. At the same time, I would say, and that is particular to Fugro, is that if you understand the business well and you follow us for a long time, you understand how the dynamics work because, yeah, we don't have a very long backlog.
That has also benefits, certainly if the market comes down, because you can renew your contracts quickly or, yeah, on the pricing side. We do not have, similar to construction companies, a very long backlog where they know already for the next one or two years how it is going. It can fill up fairly quickly. In some areas, even for the geotech, we have a longer backlog than for geophysics. It is shorter. You need to understand those market dynamics. For land businesses, it can be even shorter in some ways. We will have a look at that because we will continue to report and give certainty to the market around, okay, what is possible there on the recurring longer-term framework agreements, for instance. Thank you. Barbara.
Yeah.
Catrien, you wanted to make a comment.
If you're in first, we have received a couple of questions via the webcast.
Oh, perfect. Okay.
I would like to ask a couple of questions on behalf of David Kerstens from Jefferies. Four questions. About the U.S., have you encountered any project cancellations? Do you foresee a return to normal activity levels in the second half? The second question is about offshore wind CapEx. You show a CapEx CAGR of 18%, whereas it was 24% when you presented Q3. David's question is, is that fully explained by the pause in U.S. activity or are other regions slowing down as well? With regards to the third question, to the Middle East, order backlog increased by 36%. Do you indeed anticipate a strong recovery this year in that region?
Finally, about the margin outlook, what will drive a further improvement in profitability from the current record high levels in combination with a more cautious revenue outlook in the near term?
Thank you very much, David, for your questions. I will step through, and Barbara will jump in probably halfway as well. Maybe first around the U.S. Did we see cancellations? Yes, we saw one specific cancellation in the fourth quarter, a project that we had in our books and that we were not executing on anymore. That is one thing. Secondly, as I explained already in the sheet, and I think I gave quite a lot of information there, projects that were maybe coming in for site characterization work, everything is put on pause. Some of these projects are probably paused for multiple years for new administration to come back.
Let me be clear about that. That's maybe not a cancellation in total, but it's certainly a cancellation for one or two years or maybe even longer. They're not talking about cancellations there. Secondly, we also do expect that certain things will continue after the clarification that will come in with the policies as well. We don't think that this business will completely come to a grinding halt. However, we do expect certainly impact. Does that mean that it goes back in the second half to normal? No, it does not go back to normal. It will move to different industries for our Fugro business to deliver different market solutions or different solutions to different markets, oil and gas, CCS, critical minerals, infrastructure, all these kinds of things we mentioned before. We then talk about the CAGR of offshore wind. We present a CAGR.
Once again, this is data-based, what you see. This is data-based from 4C Offshore. It is not Fugro that anticipates a growth of a particular percentage. This is a data-based, a CAGR on average for the upcoming years. In Q3, it was 24%. Now it is 18%. You tell me what 4C Offshore is going to do after the first quarter. I do not know, but I can tell you they change all the time. I said in the past, and I was not allowed to say that anymore, the only certainty you have, it will be wrong. On the third side, the revenue growth or the backlog growth on the Middle East, 36%, correct. Do we expect a recovery? For sure, we expect the region to do better in 2025, also on the basis of the projects that are in the backlog.
The last question, I think, is maybe more for you.
I think I already answered that when answering Paul, but let me, of course, you need top line to make even margins, especially from also an operational leverage perspective. That is the case. Overall, we are expecting revenue growth, but it's not the only lever that we can pull. There, I really want to kind of go back again to the example of the Americas, whereby with a large revenue growth, they still achieved an even margin of more than 10%. Will that be anywhere then between 13.8%-15%? We really believe it's too early in the year. There are too many moving panels to be more precise. Hence, we have given now that guidance.
Yeah, good morning. Quirijn from ING. Three questions.
First of all, can you give me an idea about, let me say, in the order book, what is renewables as percentage of the total to give an idea about what the opportunities are there? The second question is with regard to the Middle East. You gave the answer to David that the market is looking better. Can you give me an idea about the impact last year on the sailing around Africa because of the troubles there? Do you see any slowdown, the impact of the slowdown of the war there that you have a positive impact there? Those are opportunities. My final question is with regard to your order intake in Americas. On balance, it's very weak, but can you quantify a little bit the size of the cancellations and the projects on pause in total and the impact on the total order book?
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Quirijn. I will try to answer as best as I can. Potentially you do not get all the answers you want. First and foremost, the order book and how the backlog is split. I do not have those exact numbers. Do you have them, Barbara? What we normally saw in the last period of time is that the order book is actually following our revenue profile quite well. I do not know for the last.
It is a little bit lower in renewables because of what has happened in the past. That is a shift that we have seen. Some are paused, so still in the backlog, but some are paused for longer, as Mark said, and they have gone out of the backlog there. We see a slight change more in favor of oil and gas.
Yeah. Okay.
If you talk about the Middle East in particular, there are a couple of things that happened, Quirijn, and that is first and foremost, we had just before that conflict really exploded, so to say, we moved the vessel to the Gulf area there in the Arabian Gulf. That was unfortunate because thereafter we saw quite a subdued market in that area, and we did not need the capacity for an additional geophysical vessel. We had a lot of idle time on that vessel in the period thereafter, and we could not bring the vessel back to the Mediterranean because of the problem of the Red Sea there. Eventually, we decided, okay, we want to bring it back anyway, so we are going to sail around Africa. There is a different period coming up.
The period there was that we actually picked up some work along the way in Africa, and she still is in Africa, basically doing some work in the West African area, Namibia, and a few other places. We picked up some work, and that obviously mitigates having only cost and being idle. That was a positive thing. Now, for the upcoming period, we need to see if we will continue to sail her to the Mediterranean back to Egypt, or that we'll keep her a bit longer in Africa. That is still to be decided. The impact in the beginning of the year till the time that we decided to start sailing was quite significant.
You're talking about, yeah, easily more than EUR 10 million, EUR 15 million impact for that idle period at that moment in time for the first period, a bit longer, definitely the first half and even into the third quarter when we decided, I think, in the third quarter to sail her over. Your question is specifically on the Americas, how big the cancellation was. The cancellation in Americas itself, that was in the backlog for EUR 20 million. That was out, and they had to manage that. I said there was only one specific cancellation. Other things are more like, okay, potential to bid on certain we were bidding on projects.
I do not have an exact number to mention there for how much is in the backlog and not in the backlog anymore, albeit, yeah, you know that 7% of our total business, I said, is related to renewables in the U.S. Yeah, we do not expect everything to be on a grinding halt. Some things will continue. However, having said that, we will primarily have to look for business elsewhere. That can be in Latin America, for instance, where we see a real uptake in activity and request for business in Brazil, but also in the northern part where we see Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, Tobago, but even also in other countries on the land side, Chile, and other places where we further expand.
While the U.S. is settling down, we will see and chase opportunities also elsewhere and tap into the opportunities that are offered in Latin America, for instance, or in Canada. In the meantime, we see the U.S. clarifying a number of things. Also, these markets where we see lots of opportunities, as shown on the slide, we will continue to tap into those.
I have another question via the webcast from Thomas Martin, BNP. He said, in the face of acknowledged uncertainty, you still have EUR 150 million CapEx earmarked for expansion transformation dependent on the pace of the development opportunities. What could this be targeted at? To understand, USVs are a significant portion. Is U.S. market visibility a key driver of the decision to invest this EUR 150 million, or is that not directly relevant to this decision?
I would say no, not really.
We believe that the USVs are the future, so we will continue to invest. We are also investing in deep-sea capabilities, the Blue Dragon, for example. We see an increased need for deep-sea solutions, so we will be investing in that. That is a fundamentally different technology that we're using there, deep-sea than that we have currently. That's really the next generation technology we're applying there. Of course, if the top line would be disappointing, we are and remain very focused on achieving and delivering on the midterm targets. That means that if we need to stop doing certain things on transformation or slow it down, we can phase it to continue to deliver on the targets. If it looks the way it looks now, we're not doing that. It's also transformation and expansion. Expansion is also often related to the top line growth.
There are certain things we will not do or we will do later. There is that flexibility. The point is we have a certain point we have a choice. Of course, it always takes a while to spend the CapEx. It's not on and off. It's not fully EUR 150 million flexible, but we can make choices, and we are making choices depending on the developments that we see in the market. I would also like to add to that that, for example, if we want to accelerate the strategy and we are looking at, for example, surveillance of critical infrastructure, that would mean that we would even speed it up. That is not now on the table, but that is something that we're looking into.
We would only do so, of course, when there is a solid business case and we can really accelerate on our strategy and make use of the market opportunities that are out there.
Maybe if I can add one thing, maybe I think, Thomas, it is good to realize that we're not investing at the moment in something that we have to change our opinion on because the market is maybe different than it was before. We have a very solid plan in our strategy. We're continued with that strategy. The fact that in the Americas is maybe creating some uncertainty for the upcoming period or in the offshore wind changing the environment does not influence directly what we're doing today. Those were the questions online. Thank you very much. Are there any additional questions from the room here? First, Thijs?
Thank you, Catrien.
Yeah.
Thijs Berkelder again, ABN AMRO, ODDO BHF. On your growth segments, do you maybe have a number on your unmanned fleet? What kind of revenues are you currently already generating with the unmanned fleet and where should it go to in, let's say, three years' time? Roughly some dynamics there. Then critical minerals/mining. How large is that segment for you right now? And your ambitions there on the slide, I only see, let's say, onshore mining mentioned. Is deep-sea mining also back in play?
Yeah. Okay. Thijs.
Another one, sorry. Also space. Intuitive Machines launched the second vehicle. Are you again involved?
Yeah. Okay. First and foremost, you're asking for a different split of our reporting parameters, the number of revenue on USVs. We're not going to provide that to you. In actual fact, I don't have the number top of my head.
I can look it up and then still don't give it to you. Why is that? Because we feel that this is also going into some details that are competitively also quite sensitive. What we can say, we have now 10 USVs in the water. We're doing this already multiple years in some areas, for instance, Australia, where we have also expanded the capability. Over the last year in 2024, which is very exciting, nobody else has done this. A lot of people are very far from this. We have done touchdown monitoring for pipelay with a USV, with an ROV in the water. By the way, there's nobody else that has an ROV in the water. We already have an ROV in the water for more than two years operating this from a remote platform, uncrewed platform. We're further developing this.
We're moving more in the deeper water, as Barbara said, because we want to develop these capabilities. There's a lot of learnings attached to it. It is also a growing area. Obviously, you have to pilot a lot and invest a lot to get it right. We're continuing on this path. If we talk about critical minerals and mining, it's still relatively small. We do critical minerals in Brazil and in Chile at the moment. There are some opportunities in other places, certainly in, for instance, Canada and also in Southern America. We see more opportunities. We're really going to work with experts there, and we're hiring experts from this industry as well to further expand into this.
We also see opportunities, obviously, in Europe where they have issued a bill or a law to actually get at least 10% by a certain date from all the minerals that are required gathered in Europe, which is not going to be easy. Certainly, Europe has also an ambition to move in this direction. We see opportunities in the Middle East that we're chasing, and we also, for instance, see it in Australia. We are definitely looking at this globally as well with experts from this industry. A percentage is not really valuable to give to you. I think it is so small that we're not going to report on it separately. It is part of our infrastructure development, and it will be also in that area.
You specifically ask for deep-sea, and we have issued internally a very specific memo that we're not getting involved in commercial projects on deep-sea critical mineral developments at the moment till the subsea or the seabed authorization authority has issued a clear statement on that, that this is acceptable to continue with. We fully appreciate that the U.S.A. is not recognizing this body, the seabed authorization there, and they might have a different perspective on moving forward. We will obviously take this on and look at this if this is really applicable. At the moment, we're only involved in doing maybe investigations to see what the impact studies basically involved in impact studies. This is our current statement on this. Space. Space. Space. Yeah, I didn't write it down. Space. Yeah, that's a pie in the sky.
Now, space, we're not involved directly with the second vehicle as far as I know, but we have still a team very involved in these developments. This is obviously something that we do because we see that certain developments in space really ask for technology that we can then reapply in our existing businesses. That could be remote solutions. That could be an autonomy solution like what we do on the space vehicles, so to say, they got involved in. They develop some sort of autonomy, and those routines can also be used on USVs. We see benefits in getting involved in these high-technology businesses, and we'll continue to do that. We're not going to become a party that is building moon rovers in the future.
We have no ambition to become the next moon rover builder and work with people there like Elon Musk that might want to dive into moon rovers in the future, electric probably.
Yeah. Maybe if I can add to that specifically on space, this is very much a government-grant business where we have a very brilliant team as a cross-sell also within our own business. I may want to add that we operate this at the highest level of redundancies, which is because we're working with Defense, with NASA, with these agencies. That really also positions us very well for all the emerging segments that we just talked about and everything what is happening in Europe at the moment.
I think Catrien on that side.
Michael Roeg, Degroof Petercam. I have a question about the slide on CapEx, that slide 23.
There I see the split between maintenance CapEx and the expansion and transformation. I did a quick calculation, and I come to maintenance CapEx being about 5% of cost. On that basis, I calculate that by 2027, you have about EUR 120 million-EUR 125 million in maintenance CapEx. Is that the right calculation?
I'm sure you've done the right calculation. What we've said in the capital markets today was it is a range. This is not only maintenance for me. This is sustaining. That's why I made the point. If you want to sustain your asset base, there's also components of replacement in there. It is not only maintaining the assets that you have, but also replacing certain assets if you want to keep the same service levels to the customers to really generate similar cash flows, if you like. That changes from year to year.
That is also mainly driven by the characteristics of our asset base in terms of one year we have a vessel that needs a special survey, which is in general more expensive than a regular dry docking, which you do annually. Yes, there may be changes in there, and you see the fluctua
tions. Okay. The reason I ask is because I see maintenance CapEx going up through the years. In the future, I see total CapEx coming down a little bit. With maintenance CapEx going up, it means that your expansion CapEx is coming down. The reason I ask for it is because on slide 17, I see a very nice trajectory of earnings growth driven by top line growth and margin expansion.
Now that your margins are already so very healthy, I think your future earnings growth will probably be more driven by top line growth than by margin improvement. If the expansion CapEx is coming down, that indirectly suggests that your top line growth will level off.
I can respond to that.
Yeah, I can respond to that as well. I think that is a little bit if you would, if all things would be equal, you could draw that conclusion. I do not really agree with that conclusion because there are many more things that go in the top line. There is, of course, as a company, it's a bit of a theoretical discussion we could also have offline at some point. If you have a certain asset base, of course, there's limits to how many cash flows depending also on the pricing.
It's P times Q when you look at the asset base, also how you work with your customers and the utilization that is coming in. I wouldn't really draw that conclusion that we're now more exposed on the top line side.
No.
I would like to add there, I think your conclusion is actually wrong. The reason for that is very simple. We have invested in very large assets over the last couple of years. We bought seven vessels. We have just said that we complete this program. These vessels are very expensive, and they are in the expansion CapEx. These vessels are still partly in modification mode. They are not operational yet. They're not even generating revenue at the moment. They're not part of the revenue line that you see on the slide number 17.
There you go wrong, I think, in the first one. The high CapEx is related to high and very capital-intensive assets. We're completing that profile, and the CapEx investment comes down because we go to smaller assets, USVs , and therefore a different mix of CapEx in the expansion. There are multiple areas where I think this does not really apply. Secondly, I think we just mentioned that we have multiple programs with digitalization, optimization, and also new services that can generate higher margins. In this sense, we're not the same company moving forward in the future because we'll have a different mix of services that we supply.
That's very clear. I was actually expecting that you would move a bit more to leases to drive the top line. These answers are also very clear and encouraging. Thank you.
Yeah, Quirijn Mulder from ING again. I have three remaining questions. First of all, Barbara, can you update us on the fleet maintenance? Because we had a lot of discussions last year about the fleet and the adjustment of the vessels. Have you finished the program, or is there still a lot of work to be done in the first quarter? That is the first one. Secondly, on the wind offshore Europe, can you give an idea about the price volume? Is there, given that the clients have more difficulties with accepting all the projects, that the pricing is somewhat under pressure in the market and that you see that? Or is there a name that you can still expect something like price increases adjusted to inflation and volumes? My final question is about the geophysical market.
We haven't discussed that yet, but how do you look at that market? Is there more competition than before? If you speak with TGS, then of course they say, yeah, we are gaining market share from Fugro and Gardline and other players. Can you maybe update us on that market maybe as well?
Yeah, on the fleet maintenance, Quirijn, thanks for your question, but I'm not going to detail all the dry dockings of all the vessels that we have at the moment. As you know, Q1 is typically low season. We try to do as much work as we can. We already had quite some dry dockings last Q4, as you're aware. We're still working on some big conversions, also getting the Sapphire ready and getting the Voyager out. I'm not going to be exact on timings there, but these are the things that we're doing.
Prices.
P times Q, wind offshore. I thought you were going to answer this.
Okay, no problem. Yeah, that's no problem. Prices, Quirijn, what is, I think, important is that you see different mechanisms in different market segments. If you talk about our marine asset integrity business, it's very different than what is happening, for instance, in the marine site characterization business. If you dive into the marine site characterization business, it's very different if you are in geotech or in geophysics. That is also referring to your third question, which I will dive into as well. What you see is there that pricing has been moving up over the last couple of years to a normal level again because we came out also a low level.
Finally, we see these margins coming up and to a normal level where it's more equally divided in that everybody can make a bit of money in this industry. This is more healthy, I would say. We see obviously that flattening off, and we have already announced that earlier that we said that pricing will be less of an element in the top line than volume. That is also for the upcoming period, there's more volume growth than pricing, so to say, because prices have stabilized and in some areas maybe are under pressure as well where there's more capacity. You see in the, and I will make the jump to geophysical, you see also in the utilization, we presented that 70% utilization of 2024 primarily because the geophysical fleet has less activity. That is because there is more capacity available. Why?
Because there are more companies doing geophysical work for sure. Is there more competition in that sense? Over the last couple of years, you have seen geophysical companies moving also in the offshore wind market where they maybe were traditionally only in oil and gas. They have made that step while the market was further developing. We were expecting this, so this is not a surprise because we also had probably an unheard of very high market share in some of these areas in offshore wind if you pedal back a few years. We knew that this would change over time, and this obviously has taken place. If you talk about TGS in particular, of course, I would say the same if I was them. I do not know exactly what they are doing that is very equal to what Fugro is doing.
It's nice to say, but we're still cooperating with each other as well. They do not have the similar type of vessels or equipment that we use at the moment in time. They might do similar work with some subcontractors that provide similar services that Fugro does as well. Now, geophysical work in general is a market that has lower barriers of entry, so you can more easily step in. Everybody knows that, and that also means that everybody sees that pressure. If we maybe see pressure, I know that also the competition sees that same pressure on that market, so to say. That is basically what I can say about the geophysics. I think we come to an end of the presentation and question period. I would like to thank everyone here in the room, but also online, also for the questions online.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for attending, and I wish you a good rest of the day. Thank you.