Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Signify's 2026 Capital Markets Day. Welcome to everyone here in Eindhoven and to everyone joining us online. Before we get started, I have a couple of housekeeping items. I will walk you through the agenda for the day. Our press release, which contains the key elements of the Capital Markets Day, was published this morning at 7:00 o'clock, and the presentation is now available online for download from our investor relations website. A replay of the webcast will be made available as soon as possible after the event. We have an exciting agenda for you today. We will kick off with a presentation of our CEO, As Tempelman, who will walk you through the strategy and portfolio review. This will be followed by a presentation by Michael Kuhne, who will provide a deep dive on the consumer business.
We will then have a break, and after the break, we will start with the professional block. As will return to present the professional business, then invite Kraig Kasler, the President of Cooper Lighting, to the stage to present a deep dive on his business. Sumit Joshi, the CEO of India, will provide a presentation or a deep dive on our Indian market. After that, Željko, our CFO, will come on stage to show how all the numbers, how it all comes together. That's it then for the presentations. We will then move on to a Q&A session where all the presenters will be present. We expect that the Q&A will start maybe around noon. After the Q&A, you're all invited to a lunch, which will take place in our lighting application center behind you.
We have two very exciting immersive sessions planned this afternoon, which you're all invited to. There's a tour of our lighting application center where we showcase our professional products and the Philips Hue Experience center, where we showcase our Hue products. You may see that on your badges, there are green dots on some of them. If you have a green dot, then you're in one group, and the other group will start with the other tour first. Both groups will do both tours. Finally, after the tours, we will have a networking reception. Enjoy the day. Very excited to have a Capital Markets Day and to present our strategy, and I'm very happy to now welcome As Tempelman to the stage.
Thank you, Thelke. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us here in Eindhoven on this very warm day, beautiful day. For all of you online, thank you for dialing in. It has been five and a half year since our last Capital Markets Day, that's a long time. Maybe some would say too long. It's great to be with you today here to engage about where Signify stands and what we are planning for the future. A lot has happened in the last five years. Technology has evolved in many sectors, and lighting industry is no exception. What we've also seen over the last five years, you remember five years back, we were at the tail end of the pandemic of COVID, that was actually the last year we saw our revenues going up.
Markets have been very challenging. Challenging for the lighting sector and challenging for Signify too. We faced sustained revenue decline over the recent years, and too often have we missed expectations. For me, the case for change for Signify is crystal clear. We need to stop that decline and do better. That's why today we set out our new strategy to become a more focused, better-performing lighting company. I'm super excited about the plans that we have put in place. I feel fully confident we can deliver these plans with lots of self-help. With that opening, let me share some of the key messages I have for you this morning. We expect the markets to be flattish in the next three years with growth in connected and intelligent lighting systems.
Signify has many strength that has brought us where we are today and that will continue to serve us going forwards. One of these strengths is the resilience of our gross margin. That will remain unchanged. We have a strategy with two legs. The first leg of the strategy is portfolio focus. After a comprehensive portfolio review, we have defined our portfolio at a more granular level around build and harvest businesses. The second leg of the strategy is a performance step-up. For each performance area, we have defined specific strategies with three playbooks to increase profitability. We have already delayered our top team, we are fully aligned at the top, not only about the strategy we want to pursue, but also how we are going to successfully execute that strategy. We are planning to stop the decline in revenue, increase and grow profitability, and deliver competitive shareholder returns.
Before I talk about our plans in a lot more detail, let me first share my view on the lighting market. I mentioned that technology has evolved. In our definition of the lighting market, we estimate the lighting market to be around EUR 53 billion per annum. With population growth and wealth growth per capita, we think the number of light points will continue to go up. Yet there is still a transition going on from conventional to LED lamps and from LED lamps to integrated luminaires. With a longer product lifetime of LED, we still see some erosion. On the one hand, more light points, on the other hand, longer product lifetimes. That results in a more or less flat growth for the next three years.
That technology, you see it here on the chart, that technology evolution started with conventional lighting, which is now still 12% of the installed base in the world, but it is only a fraction of the annual sales. You see it here, less than half a billion. That conventional market is declining with around 35% per annum, it's rapidly diminishing. We also see the LED lamps declining. Let me talk a little bit more about LED lamps. There is a false belief with many that the continuous decline in LED lamp will continue till we hit that horizontal axis and it will go to zero. We don't believe that will be the case. We think actually LED lamps demand will flatten out, will plateau at around 60% of current value, 70% of current volumes. Why is that?
We think there will always be a demand for non-integrated socket-based applications. We will see a pickup of LED for LED lamps replacements. This is an important insight. LED lamps have been consistently declining with the decline of conventional lamps and LED lamps replacing conventional lamps, yet we think that it will plateau out and we will have a stable market. That is important because it will come back into our strategic choices later on. This is where the excitement is, connected, intelligent, connected lighting systems. Connected lighting systems are much behind LED when it comes or ahead, whatever the way you look at it on the S-curves, right? Less mature and approaching inflection points. We expect volumes to continue going up and we also expect some price erosion there.
About volume up 8%, price erosion about 4%. On average, revenue growth opportunity in the market around 4%. This is a business, connected lighting, where you need good hardware, good software, and access to markets. It's an important part that there's a large degree. This is also a software and intelligent business where operating leverage is really playing a role. As you grow the business, you grow the profitability. What is underpinning our view on this growth of connected? The use cases are super strong. In professional, energy efficiency and operational efficiencies are key themes and are themes to stay. On the consumer side, we'll talk about it more later, there's an increasing demand for ambience and lighting experience in homes. The installed base of connected lighting is still very low.
In the professional market, it's as low as 10%-15%, depending on your definition, very low. Consumer, even lower. Only 3% of houses actually have connected lighting installed. If you want to succeed in this connected lighting market, you need strong brand and reputation because security of data, system longevity do matter. This is not a simple purchase. In Europe and the U.S., we increasingly see fencing with regulation and some trade barriers as well. Beyond lighting. With the demand of lighting to be expected to be flat, we are actively exploring opportunities to make a bigger move into new value pools beyond lighting. None of this is in the numbers yet. It's too immature to put any of that in our financial planning. We are looking at it. What are we looking at?
We are looking at sizable, large, growing value pools where we have a right to play. What does that mean, a right to play? Is that we have a certain capability or we have a product linkage, or we have a route to market that we can leverage, or a customer relationship that we can utilize to get into these next door opportunities. Increasingly, data will play a key role. We already capture large amounts of data with our intelligent lighting systems. We feed this data into adjacent systems. AI applications will unlock new use cases and make this space even more exciting. To give you an example, we have a collaboration with an HVAC manufacturer, so heating and cooling, where our lighting system capture the data and we use that data to operate and steer the temperature settings in each room.
We capture data with our outdoor street lighting that we feed into intelligent traffic systems, not only to do the dimming, but to actually also have in smart city solutions, optimize the use of energy and lighting elsewhere in the city. We get more and more use cases in different spaces. Again, this is something that we will continue to pursue. It's not in our numbers. Our primary focus is now on becoming a more focused, better performing lighting company. I do want to be very transparent about it, that in the long term, we should not be just a lighting company. We can become much more than that and also create a lot more value with the capabilities that we have. A bit about Signify, and it's important to demystify a bit what our portfolio looks like. You see here the breakdown by technologies.
Conventional and LED lamps represent 16% of our sales. These are last year's number. That's a bit more than market. Market, that's around 9%. Connected and specialty lightings already make up 36% of our sales. Geography-wise, we currently operate with full presence, direct presence in 55 countries, and North America is our largest market. 22% of our business last year was business to consumer, and 78%, the remainder, was more business to business of nature. I want to highlight here the small blue part of the donut chart on conventional, which is now 6% of our business. Of course, that's where the history of the company, this is what we grew big at, is two-third of that is general lighting, so that's about EUR 200 million revenue or 4% of Signify, and then one-third is specialty lightings. That is niche applications.
It's important to understand that the conventional lighting business, one is general lighting, where the conventional application is still used for lighting applications, and then there's the specialty lightings for purification or other niche applications. Our mission to unlock the extraordinary potential of light for Brighter Lives, Better World remains very relevant in the future. Going forward, our ambition is to lead the industry, not just by skill, but in performance, innovation and the value we deliver for shareholders. I've been now nine months into this role, and I have not had a single moment where I regret my move. What a great company, what a great industry. I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with partners, with customers and a lot of colleagues working at all parts of the business, including the frontline. We conducted a comprehensive strategy review.
After nine months, what is my diagnosis of Signify? Signify has lots of strength, and that also made us the company that we are today. The same strength will serve us well going forward. That alone is not enough. We need to change and do some things differently. Let me talk you a few areas. Despite the revenue decline, we have kept gross margin at a very resilient level, our performance across the portfolio is not consistent. There's an opportunity. We have technology and innovation power second to none. We have a very strong portfolio of patents. We really are very strong when it comes to R&D, we need to up the returns on our R&D investments, and we will. We have got great skill, real sourcing power, and real flexibility when it comes to the supply chain.
I'm very impressed with how we have dealt with real shocks in the supply chain due to COVID or more recently due to tariffs. If I look at the value chain, Signify is still too exposed to the manufacturing of commoditized products, and I'll come back to that. To succeed in our business, you cannot do it alone. You need a very strong ecosystem of partners, and you need to be deeply connected with these ecosystems in many different markets. We are. We have been for many, many decades. We need to invest more, and we will invest more in distributor partners, in certified system integrators and in specifiers going forward. Part of who we are is our sustainability program, Brighter Lives, Better World. It is really differentiating us. We are really deeply motivated to be a force for good for the world as well.
With our recent updates of the program, we have fully aligned our sustainability goals with our business objectives. That's important because I personally believe you can only make really meaningful impact if there's also an economic incentive to change. That's my diagnostic. One strength I mentioned, and you see it here illustrated by the chart, is this ability to keep margins at a resilient level. You see here the green light that since COVID, we've seen revenue decline, but we've kept EBITA margin at a very stable level. What is behind that? It's our real brand strength and therefore the pricing power that comes with it. It's also our sourcing power, our ability to keep our Bill of Material low. Mind you, 40% of our R&D goes into value engineering. We often think innovation is only about the next cool stuff.
A lot is actually going into value engineering. All that together gave us this possibility to keep margins at a strong level. We feel confident that we can continue doing that because they're really underpinned by these factors. That brings me to our go-forward strategy. In 4 words: more focused, better performing Signify. More focused, better performing lighting company. First leg of the portfolio, we have taken a comprehensive review of our portfolio. We have applied different lenses. We looked at the portfolio through geographies, segments, products, value chain, and we have really done that at a more granular level. We have defined the portfolio by those performance areas that we consider build, the build part of the portfolio, and those that we consider for harvesting, the harvest part of the portfolio. We have made 6 explicit portfolio choices.
When it comes to the performance step up, we have 3 playbooks to increase profitability. Each performance area, we apply one of these 3 playbooks, and each performance area has a very distinct own strategy, also bases their own market dynamics. There are a few common elements that we will pursue to raise the bar on operational excellence. I'm going to talk you through all this in the next few minutes. The granularity of the portfolio. What does it mean and why do we do it? To give you a few examples, if you are in consumer and you manufacture LED lamps in China, you are in a very different business from selling Philips Hue connected online through Amazon in the U.S. They are 2 different worlds.
Equally, if you are in a made to stock business in Europe, you're in a very different world from doing a stadium specification project elsewhere in the world. Our Horti business on agriculture is a whole business on its own, in its own niche. You really need to go 1 level deeper than the business unit structure to have a meaningful conversation around portfolio and performance. We have identified about 20-plus performance areas, each with their own market dynamics, each with their own strategy and their own P&L. We are not changing the company or reorganizing the companies, just how we look at business. When I have a conversation with Michael about consumer, it's much more meaningful to talk about Hue connected separately from how we are doing on lamp sales or on luminaire sales. Yeah.
It just makes the conversation much clearer, the performance review much sharper. I don't want to build the impression that we are now a portfolio of 20 different businesses. We are far from it. The strength is in the collective portfolio, and each performance area benefits from being part of Signify, leveraging strong company reputation and brand investments. We have shared R&D platforms. We have our patents that apply across the board. Of course, we all benefit from our scale and our sourcing power. In the go to market, there's a lot of overlap. There's a lot of overlap in our route to markets. Of course, we all benefit from sharing the corporate infrastructure as well. One strength of the portfolio, while recognizing that you need to really go 1 level deeper when it comes to portfolio choices and performance management.
If we then show a bit more clarity about what does that look like if you split that portfolio into build and harvest businesses, then this is what it looks like. The build businesses are the businesses that we see as really important for our future. That's where we want to invest our time and our energy and our money. We want to build those businesses. If we look back, some of these build businesses have been growing, but some has been declining as well. On average, last years, we saw about flat. That's not where the decline comes from. That is still 72% of today's business, right, EUR 4.2 billion of revenue. We expect to deliver growth from our build businesses. This is a 2029 horizon, by 2029, that should be around 2% growth, maybe more. Harvesting.
Those existing businesses that play a key role but are seen as less important for the long term. We will make most of these businesses, and for some, we will consider portfolio options, and I'm going to talk about that. Looking back, no surprise, these are the businesses that are exposed to continued market decline, lamps being one example. We think that that revenue decline will flatten out, and I talked about that on the lamps side. That is a good example. You see the numbers here. We expect the -11. That was really underpinning a lot of the decline we have seen to that easing out a bit. Not just because of the queue, the volume in the market, also, we expect less price pressure in some parts of these portfolios.
Obviously, as we built the build part of the portfolio, that will become a larger part of Signify and harvesting will become smaller. As we see that shifting, by 2029, we think it will be 80/20. Beyond that should continue we see the growth coming up. I mentioned we make six explicit portfolio choices, three relates to our build portfolio three relates to our harvest portfolio. First, we are excited, very excited about the growth strategy for consumer. On the professional side, we will make much more targeted investment. We will be much more selective in where we want to play where we get the highest returns. We will streamline our footprint with direct presence. I mentioned we currently have direct presence in 55 countries. We'll bring that down to about 35 countries. A more focused, simplified portfolio of countries.
We reduce our manufacturing exposure for the more commoditized products and components. That's the first harvest choice. We keep and extract the max volume from LED lamps over the life cycle. I'll talk to that as well. We continue to manage the decline of conventional with all endgame options open. Let me elaborate on what these choices actually mean. On the consumer side, consumer, we basically distinct two build businesses, two harvest businesses. The build business are integrated luminaires connected lighting, the harvest businesses are lamps manufacturing lamps sales. On the luminaires market, this is where you don't have a lamp, but you have a luminaire with an integrated light source. Our market share is ridiculously low. We don't really play there. With a very targeted approach, we want to grow new revenues from this performance area.
It's a multi-billion market, Michael Kuhne will talk more about that later. On the connected lighting, you see it here on the charts, we expect to continue to see market growth, a CAGR of around 4% in value terms. We have a very strong position, we are confident that we can continue to deliver growth from this performance area. India, that is an opportunity on its own. We are the largest, fastest-growing, most profitable lighting company in India, we have very exciting plans to build that business, grow that business in lighting beyond. That's also why it's on the agenda for a deep dive today. Sumit will talk more about that later on. First choice, growing consumer. Second choice, I mentioned it, targeted investment in professionals. We don't want to put equal amount of energy into every part of the market.
We are often up against competition that is very focused on one particular segment. We will sharpen our focus on selected segments, country combinations going forward. For example, in the U.S., we will focus on the healthcare segments or data centers. In Europe, we will focus on outdoor lighting, outdoor street lighting. Segment focus does matter. You see it here on the chart. From our granular analysis, we see that wherever we have more than 10% share in a segment, we realize much higher profitability. Leadership in a segment does matter. Secondly, I mentioned it, we want to invest in our distribution power our distribution partners. We need to leverage our distribution partners more better, we will invest in enabling them with training also with digital solutions.
This is one of the areas where AI and digital can really help us, making it easier to do business with Signify. For those large distributors that have built their own platforms, we want to build EDI and API interfaces and be part of their platforms and feed into it. For the smaller ones, we will have new tooling, AI-enabled agents as well for product recommendations and quotations and configurations. Really making the next step in terms of how we serve the channel. We will continue to invest in connected lighting. I mentioned that before, and we'll come back to it later as well. Very targeted investment in our biggest business Professional. This is the chart that shows the country breakdown. Basically, we want to reduce direct presence from 55 to 35 countries.
The focus will be simplify the company, focus on those markets that have the biggest sales and the biggest upsides. You see them here listed in green. Yet on the tail end, we sell already our products in 100 other countries. We have direct presence in 55. We want to reduce that to 35. It doesn't mean our products and our brands will no longer be available in the countries that are marked white on the slides. In those markets, we will choose to exclusively play with channel partners, deeply engaged in those local markets. I'm convinced actually, that these partners, with their proximity to their markets, can actually grow the business better than we could with direct presence. We don't call it an exit. We call it localizing the growth engine. It's actually a build business.
Building by focusing on the green, but also building partner capability in the white-marked countries. This will reduce complexity. We will reduce our invested capital that can then redeploy it, of course, in the growth countries. This will be a multi-year transition. This is not something we're going to do overnight. It's not a large reorg. It's not about old job cuts. We will engage country by country, find the best solution, find our way into it. By three years, we should be there, but it will be a journey that we take country by country, and we'll do that very carefully. That brings me to the harvest choices. I said we had three choices on the harvest portfolio. The first is do we reduce our exposure to commoditized manufacturing? That is a bit of a negative. I could put it positive as well.
We want to focus our manufacturing efforts on made-to-order, made-to-engineering. This is the specification projects business where you do a project, you have a specific solution for customers in specific markets. That's what we want to be super strong at. Projects is what matters most. When it comes to the more commoditized or the larger batches of production standard products, so panels, lamps, and so on, that's where we want to reduce our exposure. Why is that? First of all, we see huge overcapacity in the market. China in particular, you see the lighting manufacturing lines being utilized 50%, 60% is what these companies tell me. Yet they build more capacity outside of China also in response to tariffs. You see new capacity being built in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and so on. I expect that that surplus of capacity will continue to be there for quite some years.
Yeah. We see some consolidation, but we expect underutilization of lines. That also means that the returns on that part of the value chain are low. Way below our expectations. It's not an attractive part of the value chain for us to play in. We are very strong when it comes to sourcing. We got the scale, we got the supply chain experience. I think when it comes to sourcing, we really lead the markets. With a market that is oversupplied, where we've got lots of choice of strategic supplier relationships, and we have some very strong ones, why not build that strategic supplier relationship, get less exposure ourselves? That's the strategy going forward. We focus our own efforts, all about focus, on make to order, make to engineering for a specific project for specific customers.
Now, therefore, also all options are open for our OEM business units, where we, of course, manufacture components, and also the commodity manufacturing, for example, of lamps in China. Then you might say, "Well, what does it mean, all options open?" We are carefully investigating, how do we get the most out of these businesses? Should we keep them and just optimize them? That fits in the harvest part of the portfolio. Should we partner or seek some consolidation in markets? Should we divest? Is there a better owner for it who is willing to give us fair value? We will explore all these options. Actually, we have started that already. Now, that brings me to conventional. I mentioned that conventional is really two different businesses, general lighting, declining 35% per annum, and then the specialty conventional lighting, which is more or less flat.
As we continue, the general lighting will rapidly decline 35%, We'll be left with just a niche application, a specialty lightings business of around EUR 75 million-EUR 85 million, and then a very small general lighting business. We are very good at managing that decline of general lighting. The team has done a fantastic job on that, I think we are really best positioned to make the most of that product life cycle. Yet, the business that will end up with this subscale, and again, we will consider all options. Should we just keep it as a small part of the portfolio? Should we seek consolidation in the industry? There are a few other players. Should we try to divest it? We'll look at that.
Then there is in the harvest business, a business that we don't consider all options because we have firmly chosen to keep it. That's the extracting the max from lamps sales, not lamps manufacturing. That goes into the top line of this slide. This is lamps sales. This is where we have a very strong brand. You see everywhere in retail around the world, in all those small retail shops with all those distributors, the Philips branded lamps are everywhere. It's a good business for us. We will continue to harvest it and manage it for cash. Strong brand, strong distribution reach. Those are the three harvest choices. That brings me to the second leg of the strategy, which is the performance.
Now, again, I mentioned we have 3 playbooks and each performance area that we have defined at granular level, the same definition as we use for the portfolio splits, we also use for the performance part of the strategy. There are businesses that we like in terms of profitability, and we like the growth prospect as well. Typically, the project businesses and the software businesses, where as you grow in volume and scale and you use your scale and size, profitability also grows. Operating leverage. It's playbook 1, maximize operating leverage, grow volume, grow profitability. There are a few performance areas that do not meet our expectations, and they need target interventions. Those are the turnaround playbook. We got to fix those businesses. They're currently dilutive, and that needs to be turned around. Playbook 2.
Then 3 are the businesses that are exposed to no or low growth, but where we do like the profitability. They contribute positively to the portfolio of Signify. Those are the business like LED lamps and conventional lighting, where we need to maintain that profitability going forward. Those are the 3 playbooks. Portfolio build and harvest, playbooks, maximize operating leverage, turnaround or maintain profitability. Across the company, we have a few common themes fully owned by the leadership around how we want to raise the bar on operational excellence, because performance is really at the heart of our strategy going forward. These are the 4 performance areas. I will not talk you through all the bullets, but we will become less of a technology and product-led company. We'll become more of a market customer-led company. We will bring the voice of the customer in everything we do.
You need to be good at that if you want to succeed in projects. Together with a complex, rich ecosystem of partners. We will start enabling our partners. Digital and AI are going to help us on that, and we will very targeted invest in our own capabilities, and we are doing that already, whether it's around e-commerce, marketing, or sales. Supply chain. Supply chain is really critically important if you want to succeed in the specification project business as well. We need to make sure we end up with the right portfolio, and we are planning to reduce our SKUs, our stock keeping units, quite significantly, 40%-50%. We simplify our processes, and we automate. We are now starting to use AI tooling in our demand forecast, and immediately you see inventory and working capital free up. There's costs.
We will drive a very strong cost culture at a really granular level of performance area. We have too often reacted on costs in a very agile and very efficient and effective manner, yet too late. It required a company-wide restructuring program to get our costs back to a competitive level, which we believe will be 30% of sales when you talk non-manufacturing costs. Each time we went above that, we needed that big program to bring it down. Going forward, we want to manage costs as business as usual. Each performance area not only has its own P&L, but also its own benchmarked P&L and its benchmarked cost base. We want to make sure we manage it on a day-by-day basis and make sure we keep our costs at a competitive level in each single part of the business.
If we do that well, we should not need any more large-scale company-wide restructuring. Within the choices we make on the portfolio, we'll be much sharper on allocating of funds. On digital, I got the question this morning from one of the media: how excited are you about the opportunity of digital and AI for Signify? I'm very excited about it. In three areas, it can make a real change. First of all, in our products. New use cases in intelligent lighting will be unlocked with AI applications. We can talk about that more later. Serving our channel better, I mentioned that before. Thirdly, to drive our own productivity up. Demand forecasting and supply chain is a good example.
For that, we are already building our data structures, an intelligence foundation. We also have full ownership of managing the business towards a simplified and standardized landscape, owned not just by the tech guys, but by the entire leadership. That brings me to the team. We have already de-layered the top team. The board of management works directly with the key leaders. You see here on the slide the key P&L leaders, so we have quite a flat organization. This strategy was not pieced together by just the board of management. This strategy was created by the entire team. It has full ownership, not only of the strategy, but also how we are going to execute it. We already have put in place a transformation office.
We have 40-50 really game-changing initiatives to deliver the strategy that we now have execution in place. We monitor progress. We really want to have that empowerment pushed down at those performance level, making sure they manage their P&L and their performance to very competitive levels. You also see that we have a vacancy in the board of management, and that is a vacancy of Chief Growth Officer. That's a new role that we want to create. That Chief Growth Officer, apart from being part of the co-leading the company, will also be really tasked with building the next generation of platforms. We need to become much more of a software business in combination with a hardware business as we move into the intelligence spaces to make sure we get a higher return on our R&D and make the right choices there.
We invest our R&D in what we can monetize and what customers want and are willing to pay for. We'll still do some research as well, we will focus more on what we can actually monetize. This is also, of course, the person who will lead the team looking at adjacent value spaces. This is really exploring, I mentioned it early in the presentation, what are the next door opportunities where we can create good shareholder value? That's the team. What does the team set out to deliver? I come to a few numbers. First and foremost, we want to stop the decline. This is a 2029 objective, we want to return to stable, albeit low growth of the top line. This is reflective of, A, a market that has been shrinking, so we need to outperform.
Going forward, we think it will be around zero, we are planning to outperform. Of course, it is a function of our portfolio, which is built and harvesting. I also want to highlight that in these numbers, we assume that all the harvesting businesses stay with us. All the options are open in terms of seeking partnership consolidation and divestments are not yet accounted for in these numbers. That's our kind of stop the decline is our key objective, and I am confident that we can bring the company back to stable revenues. Is it ambitious enough? I don't like to present all sorts of leadership fantasism and come up with all sorts of hockey stick charts. I think we can deliver this. This is credible. We want to increase profitability.
We are confident we can deliver around 10% adjusted EBITDA through improvement across all those businesses with our three playbooks as well as the portfolio choices we make. Sustaining gross margin, achieving that right level of costs. Finally, we want to deliver 7%-8% free cash flow, 7%-8% of revenue. All this with the shareholder in mind. Competitive shareholder creation is what we are fully committed to. With this strategy, we want to set up the company for future success. Stabilize the revenue, improve profitability, clear portfolio choices, performance step-up, three playbooks. We'll have a balanced capital allocation. Željko will talk to you about it in a lot more detail. Strong balance sheet is our number one priority.
We are committed to pay attractive and competitive dividends and will be very selective on M&A, not only selective in terms of what fits strategically, but also strict criteria before we make an investment in terms of the returns we expect on such an acquisition. With that, I'm going to hand it over to our CEO of the consumer business, Michael Kuhne. Michael?
[Presentation]
Good morning. Still awake? Yeah. My name is Michael Kuhne. I am the CEO of the consumer division, and I'm going to take you on a journey into the world called consumer. Being a little bit less than two years in the role, I also want to share my personal journey, the things I learned coming new to this industry, the things I changed, and the things, of course, what we're going to do. First thing I learned coming into this industry, if you look at the consumer business, it's not really just one business. It's actually three performance areas. LED lamps, luminaires, and of course, the connected business. All three are slightly different. They have slightly different dynamics, and they need a different strategy to get the max out of them. They have one thing in common.
They all three have a very sound and good foundation and a strong position in the market. That makes that I am super excited as leading this business because I believe we have a real exciting growth opportunity here within consumer. Now, let's get into it. I already said there are three performance areas. You see them here on the slide, LED lamps, luminaires, and connected. When you start with LED lamps, this is a big market, very profitable for us, where we have strong market share positions. Actually, the strong market share positions are growing every year, so we're increasing our market share. We're operating here in a declining operation, right? The volumes are going down, and as already talked about it, you see the slides.
We believe that the volumes in this market will stabilize roughly 2035 at 70% of the current volumes, but it will stabilize. Going to the luminaires part, on contrary to the LED lamps, this is a moderately growing business, and it's very diversified, so it's very fragmented. There's no big A player, no dominant A brand in that market. The interesting part of this market is, it's the size. We're talking about a €15 billion plus market worldwide, and we're just relatively modest in this market yet. If I look at my current portfolio, I'm very much in a functional area, which is downlight spots, and it's just a small area compared to the total opportunity we have. I believe that with our distribution power and our brand strength, there is something to grab for us here.
Connected, last but not least, we entered that market in 2012, with the Philips Hue brand. The growth here is the penetration in the households. We believe that if you do the math and read the reports, that this market still is in the early phases, and it could still grow, on average, globally, I think five times the current value. That is, for me, a great opportunity where we have a strong position already. All right. Before we really go into what we're going to do, I just want to take you on a journey, then zoom out a little bit, because when it comes to the consumer demand model, it's slightly different than the professional one. First of all, the big difference is, of course, the one obvious one, we're serving consumers. Consumers move houses every eight years.
That means that 12% of our potential customers are on the move and open for business, an opportunity for us to serve. That's a big difference every year. There's more than that. There's also changing in behavior of consumers. What we see is that they're basically moving from, particularly after COVID, from basic illumination, functional light, into more ambience, convenience, even connected or entertainment. What you see more and more is that consumers are making what I always call as a marketer, their houses, they're turning it into their homes. That means they're investing time and money and effort in getting that warm, cozy atmosphere, that pleasant environment where you really feel at ease because it's your home, right?
You see that in the lighting part of accent lighting, dimmers, I mean, different shades of white, more warm or cozy, and potentially even people jump into connected lighting with all its benefits, but I'll come back to that later. The interesting part here is that's really, for me, a big insight, is that these ambience lights, convenience lights, creating that atmosphere are not necessarily fighting with the existing light sockets. These are lights which are additional. These are lights you want, not necessarily need, right? It's true, it's not for everyone. I'm going to be very honest. There is a group who says, "Functional lighting is good enough for me." There is a large group, we call them accomplished cosmopolitans, who's really into this. It was amazing to see. That group is growing, and that's what you see in the market.
Third thing when it comes to consumer demand model is our marketing power, as already talked about it, the Philips brand within consumer is just second to none. Me being a marketer, having brand awareness levels of 80-plus % is just a dream to work on. Basically, it says that wherever you are in the world, you mention the Philips brand, people will know us. That's a big thing. Then you have, of course, our marketing activities. We constantly engage, I'll come back to that more, on a daily basis via CRM, via social media, with our consumers. By doing that, we basically inspire them and show them the possibilities, what their home could be like. By doing that, we create additional demand. We have much more levers to pull when it comes to the demand model.
To summarize, Signify is the global leader in consumer lighting worldwide. Being an integral part of Signify gives us so much benefits. To give you some examples. Connected capabilities, we obviously have Philips Hue. My prof colleagues also have a connected business. We contribute significantly to these capabilities within Signify, but we also benefit from it. When it comes to innovation, many insight and propositions from the prof part, we can take, consumerize them, make it accessible in the cheaper technology, and bring it to consumer. There's a great example there at the corner. It's called Philips Skylight. If you haven't seen it yet, it's basically what we took the insight and proposition of NatureConnect, for those of you who know it. It basically mimics the sky and the sun in a meeting room. We consumerized it, we just launched it, this week, actually.
Also when it comes to sourcing power, obviously, by combining the volumes of the prof and the consumer business, we get better prices. Last but not least, when it comes to real distribution power, we have strong synergies there, particularly in the emerging markets, where you look at the stock and flow business of prof in emerging markets, that is very much synergetic, what we have in our, let's say, traditional trade retail. Strong leading market positions, available in more than 150 countries. I already talked about our strong brand portfolios. Distribution power, basically, we are everywhere. Being at the grocery, ERT, e-commerce channels, do-it-yourselfs. I think most importantly, we know what we are doing, and we have been able to turn this business after months of decline, and we put it back to growth in 2025. All right.
That is what I learned. Coming from a different industry background, I am coming from the consumer electronics industry, more than 20 years' experience. The three areas I really wanted to change quick were capabilities, structure, and people. Let me tell you a little bit what we did there. When it comes to capabilities, the first thing I really wanted to do is put the consumer in the center of everything, and I literally mean everything. That means the packaging, claims. Claims need to be in normal language. If I cannot explain to my mother what this is about, we are doing something wrong.
We should not talk about so many luxes or watts or E27 fittings, et cetera. Consumer does not tick like that. When it comes to marketing and social step-up, here, we made big changes. We hired external marketing and social media teams who really know what they are doing.
To give you an example, when I came, we had one person doing social media. We had per month, I think, 10,000 views. Now, we do not have 10,000 views per month. We have two to three million views per week, and that is really world-class leading. Two to three million engagements per week with consumers, inspiring them what they could do with their homes. Big step up there. AI. As already talked about it. We put AI in the heart of everything. Supply chain is already moving it. We are buying media with AI, obviously generating visuals with it. We are really exploring what more and more. Coding in our connected business speeds up with AI, and we believe there can be much more. Let's move to the structure, and that is very simple. If you look at the structure, wherever the consumer goes, we go.
Very simple. If consumer goes to Amazon, we go to Amazon. If consumer goes to TikTok, and believe me, a lot of consumers are going to TikTok at this moment, we go to TikTok. If consumers go to do-it-yourself, we go to do-it-yourself, et cetera. It's very simple. Wherever they go, we go. As a result, we also needed to change the structure because going digital, going social shopping, et cetera, needs a different skill, needs a different dedicated team. We set up a new e-commerce organization. We did that last year, and you see immediately the results. Give you some numbers. Black Friday, big thing. Big thing for consumer, Black Friday. Last year, the e-commerce team grew in the U.S. 36% versus last year. Europe, even better, 76% growth last year on Black Friday.
Immediate impact at the bottom line because just doing the things right. Of course, we had a different marketing setup. I already talked about that. People, we brought in professionals where we needed it to really get that impact fast, and I showed the results on it. Also internal talent, we identified quickly and put them on the right places so they could thrive and learn and be at their best. We did quite some things there. When it comes to my own management team, let me just say one thing. I think 60%, roughly 60% is new. I think we're ready now for the big jump. We talked about what I learned. We talked about what I changed. Let's talk about what we're going to do, right? Three business performance areas. Let's start with the LED lamps.
Remember, large business, profitable, strong market positions, but declining market. Having seen these dynamics, the best strategy here is a harvest strategy, which means that we're going to defend our value share, our strong value share, and maximize profit by actively managing price and cost. Of course, leveraging also the strong brand and distribution power we have. When it comes to luminaires, different story, right? This market is growing. EUR 15 billion, relatively small portfolio, we believe there's more to gain for us here with our brand. What we're going to do is twofold. First of all, we're going to keep the functional lights what we have now and grow further. The functional lights, which is mainly spots, downlights.
On top of that, we really believe, and I really believe, it gets me really excited because we're going to build a new portfolio, which is design-led and family-based. That sounds very complex, but it's actually very simple because how do consumers shop? Consumers do not walk into the shop and say, "I want an E27 400 lumens wall lamp." No, they walk into the shop say, "That's a beautiful design. What is that?" We need to beef up our design capabilities. We want to make products beautiful, and we have one of the best design agencies in-house. Making beautiful things captures the attention of consumers. Once we've got that attention, my family approach comes in. You like this design? I have this not only on the wall, I have it also on the floor, table, and ceiling.
You got them because you want consistency, right? Making their houses their homes. We're going to just help them. That's what I mean with design-led, family-based portfolio. Last but not least, of course, the connected. As I talked about it, growing markets, we have a very strong position here, we just want to outgrow this market. We want to gain market share. How? Twofold. First of all, grow faster. That means getting more households into your ecosystem. Increase the penetration. Once you're in those households, I want to sell more products. We're talking about depth and width because in the end, that's a big thing I think we should take out of this presentation, Philips Hue and the connected is about an ecosystem. We're not just selling a connected lamp. I'll come back to that more and explain why.
Here you have it, our strategy going forward. As Al showed it already, we have a strong portfolio focus. We made clear choices what we want to do. LED lamps, harvest, and reduce our exposure to manufacturing. Luminaires built, connected, built. Right. We need to also step up when it comes to our performance. I'm really not happy yet when it comes to the complexity of my business. I have too many SKUs. That creates hidden costs. We need to get 40, 50% out. We already started that, and making good progress. When it comes for lamps, we're going to defend our value share and basically use the playbook, as As talked about, in this case, to maintain profitability. For the luminaires and connected, we have the other playbook, which is maximize operating leverage.
With this, I'm really excited to get this whole business growing.
Reimagine.
All right. That was too quick. Let me go back. For those of you who do not know the Hue business that well, we made a little clip, we can talk a little bit about Hue. Here we go.
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Does anybody have Hue? Very good. It's amazing, right? As I said, it's not for everybody, but the group really into this is really rapidly growing. The skepticism say, "Yeah, okay, but what's the big deal, Michael? It's a connected bulb. It can change color, and you can turn it on and off with an app." Right? It's so much more than that. It's not just a connected color bulb. We're talking about indoor luminaires. We're talking about outdoor luminaires. We're talking about track systems, remote controls, dimmers, security cameras, sensors, TV entertainment stuff, light strips, other modules. It's a whole suite of products. It's an ecosystem. It's not the width of the portfolio which makes it really special. It's the way all those modules work with each other and give the seamlessly personalized experience. Philips Hue basically follows you. It adapts to you.
It adapts to your routines, to your preferences. Once you've set it up like you want it, you'll be so happy to do it, and you'll be so enthusiastic because, yes, you can interact with an app, but once it's done, to give you an example, 15% of our consumers, once it's set up perfectly, they don't touch the app anymore. This is a big difference because I talked about increased lifetime value because we're an ecosystem. Because of the seamlessness and the width of the portfolio, people start buying more products. That's the big difference with my Chinese competitors, who sell a connected proposition, like a connected lamp, et cetera. They typically sell one or two products to a household. On average, worldwide, Philips Hue users have more than 10 appliances of Hue, and that number is increasing every year.
I'll give you a good example in the slide below this. That's the big difference. We have an ecosystem. We're not just selling a connected lamp. All right. Now, how are we going to further grow to this? I'm going to speed up a little bit. Now we're going to, first of all, continue to deliver first-to-the-world innovations. What do I mean with here? We just launched recently MotionAware, which is super cool. It basically turns every Hue luminaire or light bulb into a motion sensor. Now you could say, "Okay, what is that?" I'll give you an example. My kids, 17, 14, I get crazy when they just leave on the lamps in the hallway or in their room. I threatened with everything, doesn't work.
With the Motion Aware, I could adjust the Hue ecosystem in such a way that when somebody enters the hallway, the lamp goes on. When there's nobody in the hallway, lamps goes out. Same for their bedroom. Right? It adjusts to you. You could also use it for security purposes. You can just imagine the endless possibilities it has. You can do everything what it wants because every lamp is a motion sensor. What we also had is Spatial Aware. This is a bit more difficult to explain, but once you're into the ecosystem, you have your scene set, the system builds a 3D map of the room. It knows which lamp is where, and based on that, it can optimize the ambience atmosphere.
For some of you here, I would really advise you to go to the breakout rooms at the end of the day, where you can see the demo of Spatial Aware, because it's really next level when it comes to experience. We talked about design and luminaires. Of course, that goes also here. We have that design family and product-led design. We're going to do that also in Hue. I talked about the lifetime. We're going to increase that further by having more beautiful products, but also have additional services which people are willing to pay for. We're already doing that for security. We have subscriptions, but it could also be in-app upgrades, et cetera. Last but not least, what we're going to do with Philips Hue is we're going to really create a wow entertainment experience. What is that?
More and more consumers are consuming content. Content being music, Spotify or what else, or video, HBO, Netflix, et cetera. They're all into content. Light can play a real immersing role in getting that level of experience from here to there. Let me show you a movie what I mean.
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What it does, it syncs the light with the content, being a music or a video, and it gives a real cool experience, something consumers are super enthusiastic about. That segment within the connected business is really booming. More and more people are getting into that. It's something you just talk about to show to your friends, right? Yeah. Good. We talked about that. This is my second to last slide. Let me give you a real example, because what gets me really excited is I want to make sure you understand the business drivers behind Philips Hue. It's actually very simple. The business is three pillars, household penetration. Within the households, you have the number of devices, and then you have that times the average price of the device. What we have here, I just brought a real-life example of the Netherlands.
I have to say you, Netherlands is, of course, our home country, so we have a stronger market position here, and we're a bit further on the journey here, which is also great because it shows you, if you do everything right, the true potential of this system. If you look at the Netherlands, 8 million households, roughly. We have a penetration of 8%. In 8% of the households, we have a Philips Hue bridge. We believe that the market in the Netherlands, where globally we believe can be five times still what it is right now over time, penetration is a little bit higher, so we believe that it can be roughly three times. We believe that 8% could grow to potentially 25% over time. If you look at the household devices of Hue, I just put the numbers here, right?
It started in 2022 with 11 devices, and every year it goes up and up. That's very now. At this moment, we're on average, globally, we're at 10.5. The Netherlands has 17 devices per household. Then you talk about the price per device. You see here, be careful, this is what we call net sales price. This is prices which we sell to the retailer after rebates and discounts. This is the money we get on the back on average, so after all the negotiations. This is the drivers. You're all smart cookies, of course. I can see you already start calculating. If you would increase the penetration in the Netherlands just with 1%, we go from 8% to 9%, and you keep all that the same, 17 devices, EUR 30 per device.
With my marketing power, my brand power, that will be, for the Netherlands only, EUR 40 million sales. This is just the Netherlands, relatively small country. There's so much more growth potential. That gets me really excited to get there. Before we get overly excited, this is hard work. It's not easy to get just from 8% to 9%. I do believe that with the transition we've made the last two years, being in marketing, e-commerce, et cetera, we've never been in a better position ever to capture that future growth. Let me close off. We talked about my personal journey, what I learned, what we changed. We talked about what we're going to do. We have clear strategies in three business areas. We know what to do. We have proven that we can bring the business back to growth.
I hope that I could convince you about the exciting growth opportunity in consumer. Thank you all, and I believe we now have a break until 10:30, so we can all grab a coffee. Thank you so much.
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Welcome back, everyone. Let's now talk about our professional business, which is 65% of Signify as it is today, and a very important core part of who we are. Our professional business across the world have their own characteristics and really their own regional dynamics. What goes for all regions is that you really need to distinguish the stock and flow business, which is the more trade commoditized part of the business, versus projects, which are much more customer-led, made-to-order, specification business, often involving connected lighting propositions. Signify has a very strong position in both of these segments, and that was a position that was built over many decades. Across all the regions, there are a few common elements in our professional strategy going forward. First of all, we are going to have a much more disciplined focus on the segments where we have leading positions.
Don't play everywhere. Play where we can truly win and differentiate and choose your segments on a country level and a regional level carefully. Secondly, we are going to fully leverage our partners and reinvest in our distribution. That's not just distributors, wholesalers. That's also agents in the U.S., that's specifiers, that's architects, and so on. What is also true for all parts of the prof business across the world, we will continue to invest in our leading position in connected lighting. That is our largest growth opportunity. Those are the three key messages. Stock and flow is different from projects. We have strength in both segments, and going forward, we want to focus where we have leading positions, we want to win with partners, and we want to invest in connected lighting. That's prof strategy on a page.
To again create a bit more clarity around our portfolio mix, you see it here. About 70% of last year's sales was actually around projects versus 30% in the trade-oriented stock and flow. When it comes to geography splits, North America is about half the prof business. Europe represents 30%, and rest of world, the remainder. I talked about the importance of this rich And somehow a complex ecosystem that is really important in the projects business, but also in stock and flow. We have multiple routes to market with many actors involved, and there's complex decision-making and demand creation through specification is really key. It's a real key to success. You've got to be specified on a project. Equally important is the mindshare of installers. You want to make sure you have good mindshare and preference, yeah, choice of preference with installers.
We know how this ecosystem works. We have been doing this for many, many years. We have got the deep roots in the markets. We've got the relationship. We are deeply involved. Going forward, like I said, we want to leverage our partners even more and make them successful. If our partners win with their sellout and they are successful in the market, we will benefit from that as well. First key message, the ecosystem, our deep connectivity in that ecosystem is a real differentiator, and it's actually very hard for newcomers to play into this space, in this project space. This is what I call our pride slide. There we do amazing projects around so many segments in so many countries, and you see some of them here on the slide.
We have been selected as the preferred supplier on floodlights by FIFA, and of course, that gives us a real strong position to be the recommended provider for the football industry. Now you see also here on the hotel side, the famous hotel, the iconic Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, where we have deployed our Interact platform together with our Dynalite platform. These are huge hotel facilities and entertainment facilities, more than 100,000 light points, HVAC systems and drapery around 2,500 rooms. We go much further than just lighting. We actually control drapery and HVAC systems in those hotel rooms. Hospitals. I mentioned that health care is a key sector also for us in the U.S., and Cooper Lighting has worked here with the Massachusetts General Hospital to create a safe place that support high-risk patients' recovery and their wellbeing.
I could talk about this slide for a long time, I won't. What all these projects have in common is that they make use of our leading connected lighting platforms. Our position today is strong in this business, and it's a key area for growth going forward. Like I mentioned earlier this morning, the installed base in professional when it comes to connected and intelligent lighting systems is still low. It's 10%-15%. There's way to go. We have a leading position. It's already 40% of our prop sales is actually connected. This is last year's number. Over on previous years, last few years, we have seen double-digit growth in connected lighting. We have a very strong patent portfolio, not just on hardware, but also on software. Increasingly, you see that our patent portfolio is shifting to much more software.
Above all, we are trusted for our quality, for reliability, for the data security that we provide, but also for the longevity of the relationships that we built. Going forward, connected lighting will continue to be important. We keep growing it across many applications. Operating leverage is really key. As we grow the business, we also improve its profitability. We invest in new use cases, leveraging AI functionality, and we will also address this ease of installation. That's important because particularly in Europe, but you see it in other markets as well, the capacity of technicians is a real crunch point. There is just not enough technician capacity available. Therefore, time of technicians are scarce, and if we make the commissioning of these systems easier and the installation of the hardware easier, that is a real competitive advantage.
A bit quick around the three different regions. In Europe, we have a very long history. Of course, from the Philips days. We have a very strong brand. We have been here for decades. We have the number one position. We are very strong in outdoor. We have got three manufacturing sites in Poland, in Hungary and in Spain. Europe is a more fragmented market with quite a few different suppliers. We also see a growing importance of e-commerce, that is particularly also in the environment of distributors. You see distributors do not just sell over the counter, but they also start to put more on their website. This is an opportunity to enable them and help them doing that in a successful manner.
Going forward, we will have that segment prioritization in Europe, very strong focus on the outdoor side. We will make better use and invest in our partners, our specifiers. We want to grow the number of relationships we have with specifiers. We will focus our innovation on connected lighting, no surprise, and the specification projects business. When it comes to performance for the European business, all three playbooks do apply. Outdoor, strong position. We want to scale that business, keep growing it, keep leveraging our strong starting position, and really have operating leverage to grow profitability. The stock and flow, that is where it is more competitive, more commoditization. There we need to maintain profitability. It is part of the business that serves us well, but that is also where you really need to have a very strong marketing mix, and that is what we are pursuing.
Of course, on the indoor side, although we are probably outperforming when it comes to revenue, the profitability of our indoor business needs improvement. That is really a turnaround playbook and we have actions lined up to deliver on that. That is Europe. The rest of the world. The rest of the world is a big place because we define the world as North America, Europe, and Rest of World. By definition, therefore, it is a very fragmented landscape with many countries. What is consistent, though, is that in many of those markets, we are facing local competition. We are the only true global player. That gives us a real advantage. We have a portfolio of very high growth countries delivering profitable, accretive growth.
The largest markets are Middle East, Turkey, Africa, China, India, Southeast Asia. We also have a strong position in the Pacific. Made to order manufacturing, we do in 10 locations. We have manufacturing sites. You see it here on the slide. Our major plants are in China, Egypt, Saudi, Brazil, and also in Indonesia. It is also more fragmented space and very much a partner-led business. 75% of our sales through these emerging markets go through distributor channels. Going forward, we again, like Europe, actually, we prioritize and focus on the specification business. What you see is once we get specified on the project, we are in very strong position. We win one out of two. Getting specified on the project is really important, hence our investment that we make also in specification. We focus on segments where we are strong.
For the rest of world, that is quite broad, with road and street lighting, sport lighting, facade lighting, bridges, landmarks, very important to us, as well as hospitality. I just shared the example of Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. I talked about localizing the growth engine, focusing our footprint. That also is relevant for the rest of world region, where we will fully leverage partners in a number of markets in terms of our go-to-market strategy. That brings me to North America, where we have two businesses. We have Genlyte Solutions and we have Cooper Lighting Solutions. Together, the two businesses have about 20% market share. Cooper, very strong number 2, and then Genlyte, number 4 position in markets. They have separate front ends, meaning we've got two faces to the market. We've got two product offerings, two agent networks.
Both business have their own agent networks. They compete in a way on stock, on connected lighting, indoor and outdoor. Together, the complementary of these agent networks, because the agents are either working primarily related to Cooper or Genlyte, there's no overlap there, collected, it gives us really good coverage and customer relevance. It works well for us. What we basically want to do is keep those two fronts ends going while we leverage the full scale of Signify and on the back ends, shared functions, procurement and so on. That is really the strategy going forward. Kraig will talk a lot more about Cooper. Let me say a few things about Genlyte. Genlyte was acquired by Philips in 2008, and it was very strong on project specification business. This was in the days where conventional was still very big.
As the technology transformation happened from conventional to LED lighting, we saw that Genlyte has been broadened out. They got involved in stock and flow. They grew their indoor business. They got a bit diffused on the outdoor as well. What we now want to do is we want to bring Genlyte back to its core strength, specification, big focus on outdoor, where we have a really competitive product portfolio and a very strong brand portfolio as well. Simplify the business, focus it again. Not only outdoor, we will still also focus on indoor projects because you've got to stay relevant for your agents as well. That's really the strategy going forward, a focused Genlyte, and that is also with a turnaround playbook. We want to make sure that we bring the profitability up while we continue to serve the markets well.
The Cooper Lighting Solutions is a real asset, very successful acquisition of Signify done back in 2020. We see it as an important part of Signify as it is today, but also a key platform for growth going forward. Therefore, I'm very happy to welcome Kraig Kasler, the CEO of Cooper, to talk you a lot more about what Cooper is and what we set out to do. Kraig.
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Welcome, and thank you again for being here today in person and online. As As mentioned, I'm Kraig Kasler. I have the privilege of leading our North American business called Cooper Lighting Solutions. I've been with the business for 18 years and of course, part of Signify since 2020, the acquisition, for the last 6 years. As you'll see today, we occupy the number 2 market share position in the U.S. Since joining the company here, we've extended and increased market share over the last 6 years, and we have a solid plan in place to go ahead and continue doing that over the next several years. That includes gaining share both on our number 1 competitor and then further distancing ourselves from the significantly smaller players that are behind us in the marketplace.
I'll walk you through how we're going to go ahead and do that. First, let me start with the market. The North American market is large. It's the most concentrated in the world and very profitable. As I mentioned, we hold a very strong number 2 position, and our plan is to amplify this number 2 position out there in the marketplace by adding to a very broad and rich and deep product offering and leveraging that through our very, very strong agent network that allows us to reach the most customers out there in the North American market. We have a clear winning strategy. We're going to grow our connected lighting business, have been and will continue to grow it, as well as our specification lighting portfolio.
I'll walk you through how we're going to leverage some of the investments Signify's making in digital and artificial intelligence to help us on the front and the back end of our business. Let's start with the market. As I mentioned, a large market, EUR 10.5 billion. It has contracted. Since COVID, the market is still down since before COVID. The good news is we look forward, we see the market growing in the low double digits space, that gives us even more opportunity here to amplify our growth and outperform the market. As we mentioned, it is consolidated. You can see here the top four players in the market represent more than 60% of the market. There's a high degree of specification in this market. Quality matters, particularly on the project side of the business.
Individual codes and regulations in North America will favor large luminaire manufacturers, I'll walk you through why that is coming up in a little bit here. We have a very unique go-to-market with our lighting agents that are out there, serves a very fragmented customer base. You see the customers listed here on the page. I thought maybe I'd pause here for a second and just talk a little bit about agents that may not be as familiar with them or manufacturers' reps. At their core, they're really an extension of our sales team. They don't take title to the product. You saw As's chart on how decisions get made here. We don't ship them product, they reship it to customers. Instead, they're out doing pre-sale service support, post-sale service support, and of course, selling on our behalf.
As we ship products, they get commissions. They are very, very highly motivated as 100% commissioned agents, this is the only way they make money is if they sell, to be partnered with the very best manufacturers in the marketplace because that gives them the best chance in that local marketplace to win projects. In any given project, there's not enough, even from the largest lighting companies like Cooper, not enough product breadth to serve every single product need that would happen on a given project. Agents also represent many other manufacturers, but Cooper Lighting is by far the largest share of wallet for them, representing 50%-60% of the total sales of that agent. The last thing I guess I would mention about agents that's important is they've been a very effective barrier to importers.
On the stock and flow side of the business, that's a bit harder because those folks can get directly to some contractors and distributors and sell product. Project side, that's very, very difficult to do. If you don't have relationships with strong agents that know the local decision-makers in the market, it's very, very hard to go ahead and compete there. That's another piece of value on why we like our agents so much. Now let me introduce Cooper Lighting. It's a very, very strong platform for us for profitable growth. We are fully invested here, have an end-to-end position in the marketplace. We have 6 plants, 3 in the U.S., 3 in Mexico, that primarily serve the project part of our business.
We, as As mentioned, leverage the Signify scale on procurement, innovation, digital, and some of the back-office functions that we talked about. Our leading agent network, 125 agents strong, each with their own teams being successful in the local market. We have 10 different channels to market, and these relationships are deeply important to us and our agents, many of them spanning, on average, over 20 years, and many of them much longer than that. As you can see in the middle, a little bit of a cut of our business, different views as a % of sales. U.S. is the predominant part of our sales, of course. Project is larger than stock. Indoor is larger than outdoor. However, outdoor, we also have the number 2 market share position there.
Most importantly, connected, which is a growing part of our business, now up to roughly a third of our total sales. As you can see on the right side of the chart here, we have a strong trajectory in the business. This has been a successful acquisition since being acquired in 2020, despite the economic environment, which threw COVID at us and then a lot of supply chain and global transportation disruptions. A couple of global conflicts around the way, and then just for fun in the U.S., we threw in tariffs and inflation to deal with as well. Despite all that, we outgrew the market, and we increased our profitability. I think it shows our resilience.
Along the way, we made a couple small but very strategic acquisitions, one in specification lighting and one in connected lighting to further enhance our offering and help us continue to be positioned well as we go forward. As As mentioned, two parts of the strategy here. One on portfolio, one on performance. What you're going to hear today, and I'll walk you through in the next 15 minutes or so, one slide on each of these five bubbles at the bottom. We have a five-pronged strategy to winning in North America and really continue to extend our winning performance here. On the top and the bottom of the page, customer experience and operational excellence.
We're going to leverage some of the investments Signify's making here to improve, and we'll of course customize that for North America, that will improve the performance for all of our customers and all of our shareholders. We're going to take a deeper dive here on the stock and flow part of our business, where again, the Signify scale, particularly in procurement, helps us. We're really going to go deeper on the project side of our business in specification lighting and connected lighting. Because in any given project, one or the other or both combined are really the key to the project coming to Cooper Lighting as opposed to one of our competitors. The other point that I would make in this, because we talked about agents on the front of this is also how our agents are organized and go to market.
They generally have a stock and flow team focused on contractors and distributors. They have a specification lighting team that are calling on the lighting designers and architects, then a connected lighting team that's focused on engineers and contractors in terms of deploying the connected lighting solutions. That's why we draw this distinction on the project side of the business. As we get into each one of these five, it's always a good idea to start with the customer. This is our customer experience and really how customers deal with, and agents by the way, deal with Cooper Lighting every single day along the buying journey. You see the five steps across the top. Prior to becoming part of Signify, the front end of our business was old and out of date.
It was a set of systems that we had built in the 1990s. We were not easy to do business with. People loved our products, loved our people, loved our agents, but we were difficult to do business with. As one of the first investments we made since we came to Signify the last four years, we've spent time re-engineering and rebuilding tools in each one of these. If you can imagine yourself, let's say, in a hospital, and you're in the discover phase, really learning about the project. We now have a tool called Light ARchitect. You can download a Google Maps view of the hospital. You can imagine the parking lot. You drag in a Cooper Lighting parking lot fixture. This tool will lay out the parking lot, how many poles, how many light fixtures, what lumen levels, what mounting heights.
Then you can sort of zoom in and see the total lighting design of that. It's also see the product in application to make sure it's, from an aesthetic standpoint, what you were hoping to achieve. If you came inside, you could download the building layouts of this and lay out all your indoor fixtures and lighting controls to manage the indoor connected lighting system. Once you have that done, you'd pass it off to another tool that would allow you to configure the product. You get specific model numbers so that we know exactly what we need to build for the customer. You need to price and sort of quote the customer, so a configure price quote set of tools.
Now it's come time to order, we've built a whole customer portal that allows the customer then, of course, to go in, place the order online in conjunction with our agents, then track whether it's coming from our distribution or our manufacturing plants all the way to the customer site. Lastly, support the customer using AI tools that we've built on the back end from a post-sale service and support side. That's really just the beginning of the story, sort of this big leap forward we've made since part of joining Signify.
The good news now is we can also add an agentic AI layer to this to make each one of these steps more efficient along the way, but more importantly, in an automated fashion, sort of move customers across this journey in an automated way to deliver faster and better service at a lower cost. Next, the stock and flow part of the business, as As mentioned, by far the most competitive segment that we're in. We have leading brands here, thousands of SKUs, nine distribution centers. This is really playbook three, as As talked about. It isn't the fastest-growing part of our business, but it is a very profitable part of our business, and we've done this successfully for decades, the stock and flow part of our business, including through COVID. We've dealt with importers all along the way, pre-LED and post-LED.
What we're doing here differently going forward, instead of thinking of Cooper Lighting as one broad P&L or business, we're breaking apart the stock and flow and project part of the business so we can make conscious choices on how to serve our customers, then also how to manage our P&L for shareholders. If you think of the P&L, the top part of the P&L here, super important to be making the right price, volume, and margin trade-offs to maximize our position in the marketplace and our profitability. On the bottom part of the P&L, having a very lean SG&A model to serve what is a very transactional segment. What matters to customers here? Speed, service, and cost.
If you think of ease of doing business in this segment, orders in this segment are thousands of EUR or tens of thousands of EUR, sometimes hundreds of thousands of EUR. It's many transactions that add up to a big EUR number. If you are not easy to do business with, sort of a frictionless model here, people will go and choose others. Next on commercial excellence. Well, why is this important? We spend an inordinate amount of time in this segment. There are labor shortages from a contractor standpoint all over the U.S., to have our products be the absolute quickest to install is a huge part of the value we deliver into this marketplace. Making sure from a sales and agent standpoint, they understand our products and can articulate that to distributors and contractors is super important.
Lastly, needless to say, a relentless focus on cost. Bill of Material here is super important. All the tariff and moving things all over the world to make sure we're in the best cost manufacturing place that we can be at all times, super important. This is where Signify's scale helps us immensely here with access to these various contract manufacturers around the world, make sure we're getting the best value there. Also, as I mentioned, making sure we have a very lean SG&A. Now let's leave the stock and flow world. We'll go into the project world. This story here is really about rebuilding our portfolio. Let me take you back in time, pre-LED, think 2008, 2010. We have thousands of different product families, hundreds of thousands of different SKUs we ship every year.
What you need to figure out is which stuff you're going to convert to LED first, second, third, fourth, so forth. Obviously a big driver of that is where is the best customer and value proposition. Closely behind this, of course, you're going to try to change the highest volume, lowest mix stuff first to LED. That is not the specification lighting space. It is actually the exact opposite. This is a lower volume, higher mix part of the portfolio. Smaller niche competitors, maybe a EUR 10 million, EUR 20 million, EUR 30 million company, more focused on converting that. The larger players in the lighting industry took a step backwards during the LED transition.
The good news here is now with some of the investments winding down on the front end that we've been making in connected lighting, we're going to be attacking this space and rebuilding our leadership portfolio here, both organically and targeted from an inorganic standpoint, from an M&As. This is clearly playbook number one. This is about driving operating leverage in a margin-accretive segment that is highly differentiated. As we do this, we're going to focus, as As's mentioned, on the highest growth segments in the marketplace. Both from a product development standpoint and a commercialization standpoint. Things like healthcare, education, data centers, just to name a few.
A good example of this is this company you see here that we acquired in the middle about seven months ago, Nemalux, a very small, harsh and hazardous business, primarily operating in Canada, serving markets like oil and gas and mining and wastewater treatment and complex manufacturing environments. These are places where a spark from a lighting fixture causes big unsafe events in the marketplace, so customers very much value safety, brand, and reputation. This is very important. What we brought to this acquisition was access to this small company's access to North America, particularly the U.S. and Mexico here, because they have great products, they have great know-how. They just didn't have a way to commercialize this. By the way, we didn't have access to this portfolio. Seven months in, super excited about the early results and where this is taking us.
Now from a connected, I would argue this is the most exciting part of the story. First of all, it is the fastest growing part of the lighting market. Second, we're outgrowing that. Third, we're very well positioned to really add some sales and marketing gas on top of a winning portfolio. Really the opposite story of what we just heard on specification, where we want to rebuild the portfolio because we have great sales and marketing. This is the exact opposite of that story. What I'd want to impress on everybody here today is on the left-hand side of this chart. This is a hard journey. This is a 10 to 15 year journey to build this connected lighting system designed for North America and North American codes.
If you think about the range of applications that you have to build for here, it's very significant. Everything, let's say, from a small doctor's office up to a very complicated hospital or maybe a hospital complex that spans many states throughout the U.S. Both wired applications, wireless applications, many different customer requirements and different customer segments. This is hard. It takes a lot of money, it takes a lot of time, and quite frankly, there's only a few in the industry that have the ability to sustain the level of investment it takes to build these systems and commercialize them. The great news for Cooper Lighting is this work is largely done. Of course, the journey never ends, but the big build is behind us.
We now have a leadership connected lighting system here. I mentioned I'd come back to this, individual codes and standards in the U.S. They basically require individual-level luminaire control. Why is that important? Why does that favor large manufacturers? The answer to that's really twofold. First of all, the most efficient way to deploy a sensor network in a building is to integrate them into fixtures. If you have a broader lighting fixture portfolio, you have more ways to deploy the sensor network. The second part of the story is the most cost-effective way to deploy the sensor technology is to do this in a luminaire in a factory.
Those that just are sending control devices to a job and luminaire devices in a job and relying on a labor-constrained contractor to put these pieces together, wire them, make them operational, and connect them to a software system is absolutely the wrong way to deploy the technology. We're well-positioned here. The solution stack's built. The codes and standards are helping us. The market's growing. What do we need to do? This again, here is playbook number one about driving operating leverage. What we need to do is pour some sales and marketing on this story. This is around upskilling our agents to make sure they understand the value proposition and how to deploy this in the marketplace.
Attacking again, going where the growth is in terms of the market segments where we can win, increasing our sales and marketing spend so we become the basis of specification in the marketplace, where historically, sometimes we had been chasing our competitors. We have sort of crossed that bridge. I talked about this being the most exciting part of the story. Why is that? Well, as you think about how projects develop, most often, the lighting control system is specified before a project than the lighting is. If you have a winning lighting control system and connected lighting system, and you are the basis of specification, you're not only going to win the connected lighting, but all the other lighting that comes with it.
It sort of has a multiplying effect of being great here also makes you great on the specification lighting side. The last of the five things that I was going to talk about, but certainly not the least, is operational excellence. We've done a lot here, but there is a lot more that we can do yet going forward. Pre-LED, we had 14 factories in Cooper Lighting. Coming into the company, we had seven. Today we have six, despite all the supply chain chaos that's happened there. When we came into the company, if you overlaid Cooper Lighting's distribution center network with what Signify had in North America, they were virtually identical. Same number of DCs, in most cases, the same cities that we were in, we've rationalized that down from 15 to nine.
You can see about two-thirds of the sales here that we have today come from our manufacturing sites that are working, as As mentioned, primarily on our projects business, while we're leveraging our global purchasing power to be successful on the stock and flow side. Again, here, I'd say our strategy is clear. There's more we can do. We have more North America infrastructure opportunities, both on the plant and DC side, driving fixed and variable cost productivity, a very important continuous improvement every day on that. Of course, then to reduce inventory and lead times. This is really the oxygen of our business. It's why it's so important to have an end-to-end business structure so that we can really drive this every day.
This fuels all the other investments we want to make in the product and the commercial side of the business, to fund the investments that we want to make there. On the supply chain side, we talked about leveraging the AI investments that the company's making here. This is both how we digitally connect to our customers to have a better view of the demand coming in. On the backside, passing that exact same forecasting information to our suppliers and being able to track those materials into our factory, as well as digitizing and automating some of the processes that sit between the front and back end of that supply chain. We think there's a lot of gas left in the tank here in terms of what we can do from an operational excellence standpoint.
As I close here today, I hope you can see we have a very clear strategy and execution roadmap to amplify our number 2 position. I've been in this business for 18 years, in this industry for longer than that. I believe with every fiber of my being, this is the right strategy for us and for the company here. I'm quite confident that we're going to create operating leverage, driving sort of an accretive specification lighting portfolio out into the marketplace, a growing and accretive connected lighting business, while enabling many of the processes that we've talked about here today with the digital investments and the AI investments we have to drive success both for our customers as well as our shareholders.
I'm going to go ahead and pass it over to Sumit, who's got an equally exciting story to tell you about India. Thank you for your time.
Good morning. My name is Sumit Joshi. I've been working with this company for the last 14 years, and it's a great privilege to lead India market for last eight years. I said I've been with this company, 15 years back is when I joined. In 2011, when I joined in marketing team in India. At that point in time, we launched the first LED bulb in India. The price of that bulb was EUR 25. 15 years down the line, the price of that bulb, it's EUR 0.005. It's EUR 0.50. In that EUR 0.50, we make money, we have selling expenses, cost. In these 15 years, inflation has gone up, the price has come down dramatically. EUR 0.50 can only go down so much from here on.
I firmly believe that we are now in the stage where I think the stage 2 for the lighting industry is going to start. I firmly believe that. The company which I joined in 2011 versus what it is today is completely different. It's very different. There was no connected, now it's much more connected. Brands which were number 2 and number 3 are not there. Conventional is gone. One thing has not changed in these 15 years, and my friends, that thing is we are still the second biggest light source for the world. Who's the first one? The sun. That thing has not changed. What that tells us is that we have what it takes to go through this transformation. Today I'm going to use this opportunity to give you a flavor of India.
Not in the weather you have seen in last two, three days, the temperature of India, but really bring to you what India can play a role, a significant role, in Signify's next journey. Quickly, I'm going to start and at the onset, I have just one simple takeaway for you. That takeaway is India is already a very high performing business for Signify. We spoke about build and harvest. Clearly, India is a part of build. When I say India being part of build, both our consumer business as well as professional business is part of build. It makes us more money, we are growing, we are better than the competition there, and the playbook which we are going to apply of course for India is to leverage this growth. More we grow, it is very, very accretive to Signify.
The calling card, the marching order for India very clearly is how fast and how much can we grow? Today I'm quickly going to take you through why do we believe that the market is there, which is structural growth, and how do we participate in that? I'll share some bit on our position in Indian market. How is Signify positioned? We are, of course, the lighting leader, best in terms of the industry of financials and all of that, but I will share that much more in detail. I'll share with you what is going to be our simple five-point strategy to take it to the next level. Let's begin. Let's look at the market. It's a compelling growth market. On the left-hand side, you see that as far as the macroeconomic backdrop is concerned, it's a highest-growing market.
What is interesting to note is that if the world is going to grow, a large portion of that growth is contributed by India, 17%. What it also means is that for us as a company, if we have to grow, the percentage contribution from India in terms of growth also has to be of a certain level. This growth is coming both from consumption, consumers are spending a lot more money, they are upgrading, but it is also a big amount of capital expenditure, which is happening all across in India. In the middle, you see that LED market per se is very mature. It's already 100% penetrated. Almost conventional is gone because government played a big role in terms of that transformation from conventional to LED. What is going to drive the market in coming time? It's not going to be from conventional to LED.
I think that is done, dusted. It's going to be from new points. I can tell you the speed at which the new points in lighting are coming up is huge. There are more homes. India used to be a country which there used to be a lot of joint families. There are many more nuclear families. What does that mean? That means that there are more homes which are coming up. There are more rooms, there are more industries, there are more airports, there are more railway stations, there are more everything, hotels and restaurants. All of that is basically about new points. If one has to win in the new point, the ecosystem one needs to play is very different than a replacement cycle where the distribution was good enough, brand was good enough.
If you need to influence or make our customers B2B or B2C buy when they are constructing, we need to have a fantastic ecosystem to play with. It involves interior designers, architects, contractors. It's a complex ecosystem and that makes it difficult for any player to just come and go and win. We have been there in India for the last 90 years and we have that ecosystem like nobody else has. What is also interesting for you to see is that if you look at the market, the market is 55% consumer and 45% prof. This is a bit different than what we saw globally because there is so much also happening in consumer side. It's 55%, 45%, in a way, equally divided. What that also brings is the synergy which we have in consumer and prof part of our business.
The synergy is in products. The synergy is in go-to market. If consumer is using Philips at the home and he is going to be a procurement person, there needs to be a familiarity with the brand to buy it for the offices. I think it's so critical that these synergies play in our favor. The last slide is about the market where you see lighting is just 5% of what we call as addressable market for adjacencies. We have what it takes. We have the brand, we have the team, we have the technical know-how, we have the distribution for us to have a natural way into adjacencies which are not only lighting. That portion is very, very big. I'm going to share with you some of the things which we have done around that. The market in summary is compelling.
It is not going to be a market for one year or two year. It's the market which is going to be there for next few generations. If one has to win in this market, this market is very unique in terms of the characteristics. It is not a concentrated market. Kraig shared in lighting in U.S., he said it's a concentrated market. It's more a big few distributors here. It's a very, very distributed market and brand plays a big role. The first thing is brand. 50% of the market today is controlled by five brands while there are 500 brands in that market. What that means is that even when there are so many brands, the quality, the reliability, innovation, brand familiarity matters. Brand matters and it's a big differentiator.
Even the new brands which are trying to come in, they have to spend money on building the brand. If you don't have a brand, the chances of your success in Indian market is very, very less. Distribution, more than 300,000 mom and pop stores, 40% of that is in rural India. While e-commerce is growing, of course it's growing, modern retail is growing, but it is still less than 10% of the market. That means that the relationships reach which one needs to have, the access, the supply chain to reach to these places is extremely critical and that's a big moat which one has. Also when it comes to professional business, professional business is not only about big projects. These are the small projects. These are the projects which are maybe EUR 2,000 projects, EUR 5,000 projects.
They come from various parts of the country and that again is a large base. If one needs to win there, you need to reach, you need to have access, you need to have relationships to win in that place. India definitely rewards local depth. You cannot sell in India whatever is just by importing from China, for example. If you need to have speed, if you need to have cost, if you need to have innovation and the application which is very India specific, you need to be in India. Also compliance is becoming much higher, right? Therefore, local for local design capabilities, local for local manufacturing is absolutely important. Last few years we have also seen that India has really started growing in terms of exporting out, right? Now Apple exports most of their mobiles out of India.
Samsung, a lot of mobile phone manufacturers are putting money because there is arbitrage as far as the labor is concerned, and therefore that is also boosting the export. Local for local, very critical. What I said, infrastructure is the tailwind. What you see there is a bridge which was lit by us. It's a bridge in Bombay, in Mumbai. It's a bridge on which municipality uses that bridge to start advertising. Now they are making money by advertising on the bridge which is lit by our intelligent bridge lighting. But this is just the one bridge. India is a continent, so there are going to be many more bridges which are going to come in. There are many more tunnels which are going to come in. The infrastructure tailwind India has is very significant.
I shared with you market is compelling, but if one needs to win in this market, only the companies who have the brand, who have the distribution, who have the relationships, have a chance to win in this market. Let's look at therefore, if this is the market, how are we placed in this market? Let's make no mistake about it. Signify is the number one lighting company in India, much higher than the second brand which is there. It is also the most profitable lighting company in India. It is also growing faster than the industry in India. We really are in a good space and good place as far as India business is concerned. There are a few elements why we are able to do this consistently. The first element is brand. Philips in India is considered to be an Indian brand.
It's been there for so many years, it is also a premium brand. People are ready to pay 10, 15% premium for buying Philips brand. The market is laddered. It's not one brand which can go and tackle all the segments. A few years back, we launched a brand called EcoLink. This EcoLink brand is again a brand which is in lighting, but it's also getting into adjacencies. It's becoming a more of electrical brand, electrical goods brand, but it is able to straddle across the price points, right? Philips at the top and EcoLink at the bottom. Both these brands are strong. Philips, amazing brand preference. It's something which we have, which definitely just gives us the premium which we want. The talent is high quality talent in India we have. We are the employer of choice in India.
If we have to have those relationships, technical know-how. If you look at any other lighting company, you would have people who have had some experience in Signify. It is the place, not only for lighting, but also overall to have the talent. We also have a significant amount of our global functions operating out of India. It helps because India per se, it's a big market as well as there are a lot of global technical R&D, our finance service center, all of that gets operated, but we get best of the best people there. Distribution power, as we discussed, of course, we have more than 100,000 reach directly and indirectly, even more. What we did in last few years is also create a channel, which is called as Philips Smart Light Hubs. What does it do?
If the market is moving to new points, the way consumers or small businesses make decisions is different. They want to go and feel the product. They want to go and see what all is available. They're not going to be buying just one product. They are going to buy a suite of products. Smart products need to get explained. Therefore, we started something which is our franchisee operation, which is called Philips Smart Light Hubs. We already have around 350 of them, and we'll push them up to even maybe 500 in the next couple of years. This is very, very differentiated. Nobody else has it. It's a clear moat for us to premiumize.
The reason why we are one of the most profitable companies in lighting in India is because our mix of products is much better, because we are able to premiumize the offering whenever whosoever is coming to that Smart Light Hub. We are also number one in e-commerce. While it's less than 10%, we have a position of leadership in e-commerce, in general trade, and our own distribution, which is Smart Light Hubs. Fantastic distribution power, which is extremely difficult for anybody else to just get overnight. As I told you, that local innovation matters in India, whether it is hardware, whether it is software, all of that is to be made for India. I think we have a fantastic team and innovations which are only applicable in some parts of India. India is about wall lights.
We created a lot of these innovations which will sell based on the consumer insights which we have from India. Very, very strong base of innovation. We are also the highest connected lighting base, whether it's professional or consumer. While in consumer is just 3% of our business, it's growing rapidly, 30% plus growth, but I think there is a path to that which is going to be even higher and nobody else is as big in connected versus us. Manufacturing scale, I think it's a very, very important moat we have. This is not our own manufacturing. We wanted whatever As was saying that we want to have a manufacturing footprint where you're not the owners of it, but you play a big role of it. Already in India, we have a JV with the biggest EMS player in India by name Dixon. It's a electronic behemoth.
It's a 50/50% JV. Already, we are the biggest lighting manufacturer for India. What that means is that big brands, small brands are buying lighting products from this JV called Lightanium Technologies. That makes us also very, very good when it comes to the cost base which we have from our manufacturing. All of this actually helps us to outperform the market, and not once. We have been outperforming the market for many, many years when it comes to financial metric. We are the best when it comes to the profitability, when it comes to market share, and we are much, much above the Signify average. As I said, our playbook is leverage and grow. More India grows, I think it's going to be significant benefit for Signify globally.
If this is the position, I think there are just 5 things which we are going to be looking at, and we are focused in choosing these 5, on the performance side and on the portfolio side. On the portfolio side, we entered in a category called fans 2 years back. It's a big market in India. With the temperatures which are happening now in Europe, I don't know whether it will become a market in Europe as well. It is as big a market as lighting. It goes through the same ecosystem of the retailers which we have. It requires a technical know-how. We entered that market because that market was also shifting when it came to technology. There is an introduction of what is called as BLDC motor-based fan, which is basically brushless direct current motor-based fans. It's like what happened with LED to lighting.
That gave us a wedge to enter into the market where there was a technical change which was happening. We had what it took for us to get there. 18 months back, we launched these fans under the brand name EcoLink. In 18 months, I think we will be able to close already in top 5 of that BLDC segment. Of course not fan, BLDC is a part of the bigger fan segment, but it has given us millions of EUR in revenue. We will scale this up. Not only are we going to scale the fans business, we will also enter into adjacent categories which require brand, which requires access, and which also requires the technical know-how. That's what we will do, that is one big play as far as portfolio is concerned. How do we leverage the go-to-market synergies and brand synergies?
There are inorganic options available, we are exploring. India is not a story of 1 year or 2 years. If we need to, we are in a great position. I think we are in a position which a lot of people will be jealous of, to be very honest. We need to use that, look at some of the opportunities which might have, which are inorganic in nature. Of course, all those will be looked at from a financial sense, what makes sense. That is one more serious attempt which we are going to be doing in terms of really scaling up India to the next level. On performance, I think our performance is good, we are not happy. We are saying, how can we accelerate it further? Acceleration in performance for us is premiumization.
As I said, branded retail, premiumize it, how do we take smart lighting to the next level? We are the biggest, how do we scale that up even further? As far as professional is concerned, there is a focused approach which we have. We are verticalized our go-to market. We have vertical segments through which we go to market, and there are segments which we have identified where we will focus, whether it's global capability centers, 2,000+ GCCs are coming in India, whether it is education, healthcare. These are the big segments where there is a lot of capital expenditure which is happening. Semiconductor is another place where there are a lot of industries which are going to be set up there, of course, infrastructure. These are selected focus segments on which we'll go.
We will only succeed if we continue to be best in cost. When I say best in cost, both in terms of our select, which is an MC, but also in terms of our COGS, which is our BOM. Not whole of the portfolio is Lightanium right now. Progressively, we will look at taking more and more of that into our JV, which will also help us to ensure that we remain cost competitive. I'm pretty convinced about being cost competitive on lighting for sure, but I think we are also bringing all that knowledge and say, how can we also be cost competitive from the beginning when we are getting into adjacencies as well? This is it. Just to get you back to the 3 points which I wanted to establish.
It is a strong market with macro growth based on a lot of new light point creations. Premiumization is happening. We are extremely well-positioned here. Our position is distinct, so we need to just put the fuel and take it to the next level. We have a very clear strategy on how are we going to do it. I personally believe that not only we continue to be the second biggest light source, but I think India is going to play a significant role in Signify's future journey. That future journey will have a lot of numbers. With this, I will also have Željko to come on to stage for him to share what does it translate to. Over to you, Željko. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Sumit, for sharing such a really genuinely exciting opportunity and speaking very well and very concretely to the potential of profitable growth that we can unlock in our build portfolio. That's a very good example of that. It's been quite dense for all of you, I'm sure. In the last 2 hours or so, you've heard many perspectives on our market, our position, and most importantly, on our plan forward coming from As, from Michael, from Kraig, and just now from Sumit. What I will do now is to bring it all together, to wrap it all together into what does that mean for the value creation roadmap of Signify in the next years. I've been with Signify for 9 years, of which 2 years in my current role as a CFO.
This time has given me a clear-eyed view on where we stand. It has also given me a lot of opportunities to engage with many of you present in the room and also connected online. Those conversations have been extremely valuable, very insightful to also help us sharpen and make sure that our thinking, our choices, and our decisions are holistic, grounded, but also meaningful to what matters to you. As mentioned, I think the last few months have been very energizing, very intense. We've really been able to build together with the leadership team.
This is very important, I really want to emphasize that we are strongly aligned across the leadership team in shaping the path to success for the company forward, very aligned on first identifying the opportunities, clarifying the choices, but also very aligned in making the changes we need to make to be a better performing company. Now let me start first. That grounded clarity, I want to say, is very important. It's foundational for me on what we're going to share. It's really grounded. The clarity we want to give on the way forward is at the core of what I'm going to share in the next 30 minutes or so. Starting with the overall picture, a few key messages, I will develop further each of them. First, looking back, the past four years have been very challenging.
Significant pressure on the top line, driven by market condition, but also structural changes in the industry, have put our business to the test. Now, how did we pass the test or reacted? I think first we demonstrated real agility in gross margin protection and in cash generation. There, I'm really genuinely proud of what our teams have achieved, knowing firsthand what it took to be able to drive that agility and resilience. On indirect costs, we did take a lot of meaningful measures. However, we do recognize that those measures, those actions, were more reacting to the events and not as proactive as it should have been. I think this is a very important learning that we are feeding forward in our plan to enhance our performance.
Now, looking forward, we have a clear, grounded roadmap to achieve our 2029 objectives, this is built both on the strength that we recognize. As said, building on the strength is not sufficient, it's also addressing directly the areas that we need to improve. Three priorities, three axes in this roadmap. First, stabilizing the top line. This is really the combination, recognizing the different dynamics across our portfolio, the contribution of the build portfolio, managing in a value-preserving way the harvest portfolio. Second, improving profitability structurally. Here, very importantly, we drive a step change in implementing specific playbooks. You heard a lot about the playbooks, I will come back to that again because it's very central, it's really all about discipline execution and the differentiation of how we drive discipline execution across the different performance area.
Third, unlocking a structurally stronger cash generation profile. In this roadmap, there are two foundational commitment that remain extremely important, will be maintained. First, robust balance sheet. Second, a balanced capital allocation. These are very important foundation that are sustained. I will try to put more numbers and a bit more insight into this resilient story I was just outlining. Here you have a visualization of our revenue and operating margin and the different building bricks. Of course, as you can see, if we start from the peak of 2022, where our revenue was EUR 7.5 billion, it's a 23% decline of our nominal revenue, of which one-third is foreign exchange translation and two-third is intrinsic decline of our revenue. What is important here is how we have preserved profitability in this context. Let's look at the different building bricks.
First, on gross margin. It held and it actually improved. When you look at the cost of goods sold, and the cost of goods sold are two-thirds of the total cost of the company, they've actually been adapted faster than the revenue decline. At the same time, our indirect costs or non-manufacturing costs, have been decreased net by 12%. We've taken a lot of measures, and we've also taken advantage of our new operating model that was implemented in 2024. Here it's fair to recognize that we did a lot of downsizing. We did downsize a lot. However, we have not fully right-sized, and I will come back to that, which is an important element on the path forward.
Overall, if we look back in the context of a sharp decline of our sharp compression on our top line, the profitability resilience model has worked reasonably well. However, that additional pressure, especially in our indirect costs, that moved, as you can see on the chart, from below 28% in 2022 to close to 32%. That additional pressure is the main driver for the pressure that we face on our operating margin, especially in 2025 and also in 2026. Now, looking at cash has been consistently strong. The cash generation remains strong through the cycle. This is very important because it allowed, first, financial stability, which was extremely important in that kind of environment. Also it gave us still the strategic flexibility that we could apply despite of those significantly deteriorated market environments.
In a nutshell, when tested, the Signify financial engine has held, margin protected, cost actively managed, cash strong, this is a very important foundation that we will be building on. Now, you've seen this slide earlier, this slide is really summarizing the heart of our 2029 ambition, I would like to give more clarity on what it is built on. It is anchored on the strategic framework that, as I shared earlier, portfolio focus and performance step-up with strong discipline and execution behind both, this is what is behind our objectives, our financial objective. Now, looking at the numbers, comparable sales growth, 0%-1%. Adjusted EBITA margin around 10%, free cash flow 7%-8%. These are not aspirational ambitions.
These are very, very grounded objectives that are built on a very clearly articulated roadmap and trajectory that we have built at a very, very granular level, I will come back to that. Let me give a little bit more texture on the bottom part of this page, which is more about the levers. On the top line, first, that's the combination, this is really effect of the portfolio focus you heard about. With the growth of our build portfolio and how we manage the evolution in our harvest portfolio with all in all leads to a stronger growth profile that will get stronger, of course, leading to the 0-1, of course, structurally stronger, beyond. That's the first element.
The price pressure easing dynamically and sequentially as we go is also an important element that will also give support to the improvement of our top line and our ability to get to stability and back to growth. On profitability, again, very important lever is the execution of those three distinct performance playbooks that we talked about applied across the different performance areas. Across the board, gross margin discipline being actively sustained, this is an important element, and driving competitive costs throughout the portfolio at a much more granular level, and I will come back to that element as well. On free cash flow, simply put, there are two main levers, which are really at the core of unlocking the stronger cash generation.
Of course, profitability expansion, getting our structural profit up and the optimized inventory, which is the most significant driver in our overall working capital efficiency improvement. Now I will go in each of the different parameters, starting first with the top line. You heard before the different dynamics between build and harvest portfolio. We of course looked very, very thoroughly at each and every performance area, each and every portfolio on the dynamics of both volume and price. As you can see here, it's a mixed bag. It's a very contrasted dynamic. Let me maybe go through each of the four businesses. If you look at professional, you heard, I think, a very, very clear and concrete example earlier from what Kraig presented for the Cooper Lighting Solutions business.
In the project and especially in the connected projects, we do see and we drive a positive dynamic both in volume and price, and there are very clear levers behind that. In the stock and flow, it's a bit different because here we are in the much more competitive, much more fragmented space in our professional business, and there we do see stabilization in volume and still continued price erosion, albeit at a more moderate pace than what we've experienced in the last few years. In consumer, connected and luminaires, you heard it from Michael earlier, it's both volume and price going into a positive direction. At the same time in lamps, of course, the volumes will follow the technology replacement cycle while we will be able to continue to exercise strong price power on the back of a very strong brand.
In OEM, here we do expect continued challenging market conditions with stabilization, right? Especially when we look at the price pressure, which is expected to ease compared to what we've experienced. Conventional, very predictable in the volumes following the dynamic of the market. In pricing, we are able, as the market leader in that segment, to continue to exercise price power as we have been doing over the past few years. In a nutshell, contrasted dynamics across the different parts and the different portfolio, but altogether, there is a really clear and a visible and tangible path that gives us confidence on our ability and the roadmap that goes with that to stabilize the top line of the company and to bring it back to positive territory. Now it's about the profitability, and I will zoom in on the key areas. Again, you've seen that.
I really want to come back to that because it is absolutely central to how we are structurally in a consistent and disciplined fashion, bringing our profitability up, and improving and looking at the different portfolio. I think clearly we do not run one uniform profitability improvement program across the company. It's really about. We have taken a lot of effort to really design and craft those three playbooks and what they really mean in the detail to make sure that they are implemented in a way that is specifically adapted to the performance areas, to the reality of the space we are operating, but also to the reality of our current profitability today. Playbook one is the operating leverage one. You have heard many examples today of where this applies.
Playbook two is really very simply put, where you need to bring back the profitability to the entitlement where it belongs, whether it is in build portfolio or harvest portfolio. It is more about the execution part. The playbook three, which is very important because this is how you manage effectively and maximize the value in those portfolio that have low or no growth, but where the profitability today is accretive and strongly contributing to the overall profitability of the company. What ties all those three playbooks together is one single performance management system that we are driving and supporting, and also powered by this transformation office that we are putting in place. The most important is the granular P&L accountability and ownership that is driven through the organization.
Here it's very important because this is where we are leveraging the most our operating model. We have a new operating model that has been in place for two years now. That's absolutely where we can really extract more value out of that operating model in stepping up and enhancing structural performance. This differentiated approach in the profitability management is what makes me really confident in our ability to achieve this 10% objective by 2029, because we have the clarity, and we know exactly what lever applies where. Here what this slide does is to bring together the different angles to our profitability improvement path. Our adjusted EBITA in 2025 was 8.9%, our outlook for 2026 in the range of 7.5%-8.5%. We have initiated a reset.
We are in a transition year. Now we have from here a very clear trajectory and roadmap to restore and gradually improve our profitability towards the 10% objective by 2029. What you see on the left-hand side, the left chart, is a kind of a simplified overview of the contribution of the build portfolio and the harvest portfolio to that profitability improvement. The build portfolio represent roughly two-thirds of the improvement. This is roughly two-thirds, and one-third still contributed by the harvest portfolio. On the right-hand side, what you see is more the contribution of impact of the three playbooks. Here, the first one, which is the operating leverage playbook. It contributes roughly one-third of the overall Signify profitability improvement. The turnaround playbook contributes two-thirds.
Importantly, the third playbook, which is about maintaining profitability in our low and our growth portfolio, is neutral. What neutral means is that the outcome is to contain the drag effect on the overall profitability of Signify moving forward. Each of the playbook play a very important role. Very important here, if you look back, the point was made by As earlier, the fact that you have so much that is dependent on the discipline execution of the playbook 2, the turnaround, mean that is a lot of self-help. The dependency on the growth, which is typically what will be more in the operating leverage, is actually not the biggest part. That's also very important because that's also because we know in the details what does it take to drive that. This is also why we are so confident.
Again, this is a simplified overview, looking at the two lenses, the portfolio lens, the playbook lens. Behind this, there's again, a lot of very granular accountability. We've done a lot of work on P&L archetypes design to really be catered in a much more specific way. This is again, what is behind the confidence we have on our ability to deliver on our commitment to deliver to this profitability target. Again, it is very solid, it's grounded, and it is based on very tangible foundation with a strong ownership behind. Zooming in on one important element of gross margin strength, of course, is a foundational element of our profitability story, has been and will continue to be. This is really to show why we are confident on our ability to actively drive and sustain it.
Here is just another angle to look at the gross margin development of the last two years, which we believe is important, because when you look at, the gross margin from 39.7% in 2023 to 40.1%, an improvement already. But within that, if you look first at what was the impact of the price and mix erosion compounded, it's a 210 basis point headwind. It's very substantial. At the same time, we've been able to more than offset that through bill of material efficiency and also all the actions we've taken on cost of goods sold efficiency in general. These are two very different elements that have been at play. The message here is that the gross margin discipline is proven. Now, looking forward, how we make it proven, what is proven sustainable, well, there is no automatic pilot button, very clearly.
There are four concrete levers that will really allow us to sustain and build on that strength of gross margin resilience. First, price discipline, systematic and proactive. Here with our commercial excellence step-up, we have identified opportunities to do better. It's also, by the way, an area where AI use cases are extremely helpful to drive at a very granular level. We have a lot of SKUs, the pricing discipline power we can apply can be enhanced, we have very clear opportunities defined. Second, the structural mix improvement, that's a very direct outcome of our portfolio focus. The portfolio focus leads structurally to a stronger and a more favorable mix on the gross margin. Third, procurement.
It's about procurement scale, but it's also about the R&D-driven efficiency assessment that I comment earlier. This is an important element when you look at how we yield the return of our R&D investment, it's a big component. Here we are yielding very attractive return that flow into our gross margin strength. It's a very important element, it's a substantial part of our overall R&D investment, the value engineering feeding into our ability to extract the most competitive and the cost leadership in our Bill of Material and the Cost of Goods Sold. Fourth, manufacturing and supply chain gains, productivity gains. Here again, the step-up on supply chain excellence is offering clear opportunities to strengthen. Together, these are four drivers that are giving us, again, a structural path. It's not just an assumption of an extrapolation at a high level, top-down.
It is really with a very granular path being defined across each and every portfolio for the whole of Signify. Moving from gross margin to indirect cost. I said it earlier, if we look back, we did take a lot of measures to downsize, we have clearly not fully right-sized. The goal, the objective is very clear. We will resize overall for Signify our indirect cost to 30% or below by 2029. What I want to share is a bit more clarity on how we will do that, also what it means contrasting with the execution and disciplined execution of our strategy how we feed for the investment. This is extremely important because this is really an anchor point between the portfolio focus and the performance step-up. First of all, it's permanent universal cost efficiency across the board, across all portfolios.
Each and every performance area is held to the same standards of cost discipline and cost competitiveness, or as I use the word, business as usual in the DNA. This is very important, this is the baseline. How we define competitive cost, there in our very, very granular P&L archetypes design, we also identify, you heard earlier, what it means to be benchmarkable cost competitive in a stock and flow business in the U.S. is very, very different than what it means for a consumer-connected portfolio or performance area. This is really the differentiation is also on the definition of what competitive means. We've been doing a lot of external benchmark to make sure that how we define what good looks like in terms of cost competitiveness is really, really sharp and adapted to each of those performance area.
What is also differentiated is what do we do with that efficiency? It's efficiency across the board. We do have opportunities in all the portfolios, whether they are build or harvest. How do we apply the generation of efficiency and the liquidity that we extract out of those focused efficiency action? Depending on the portfolio you are in or depending on the playbook you are executing, simply put, either all that efficiency flows to the bottom line improvement, to the operating margin improvement, or is partially redirected to focused investment with a very, very sharp definition of where we will apply those investments. Again, here, the very simple, basic logic, which is extremely important, is that efficiency funds growth.
I just want, because this is also the question we get a lot from many of you, is how much more can you cut? Here, I think the distinction in the path to get from the 32% to 30%, as you can see in the chart, in the proportion, it really means that we go after all the opportunities for cost efficiency, which allow us to fund and to create the liquidity to fund the adequate level of investment that we'll keep doing in order to successfully execute our build strategy. This is very important to keep that in mind, that in that equation of cost efficiency, it's part of it. We have four concrete levers to make it happen. First, granular and differentiated resource allocation. By portfolio, by playbook, sharper and more tailored investment decision within each of the performance area.
Second, P&L accountability embedded at each and every level of the organization. Cost ownership where it belongs and not delegated upwards. Third, AI-powered cost efficiency. I think it was mentioned in one of the key areas. I am very excited and not only based on the hype, but having also the proof points and many of the use cases that are running as we speak that are really showing us we have a tremendous potential through AI-enabled capabilities to help us improve the intrinsic and structural cost efficiency. We have a lot in our back-end processes in each of our function or each of our processes, which we can further optimize, and we have very, very concrete use cases that are running as we speak. Fourth, growth investment with rigor. Each and every incremental OpEx or CapEx really needs to earn its place.
It's the right portfolio, the right return, and the right timing. Very, very important. In summary, overall for Signify, a lower indirect cost efficiency driven across the board, which allows us to fund the required level of investment that are being applied with a very, very sharp and very tailored approach and a very focused approach. Moving to cash. Strong cash generation has been a feature and a consistent feature of Signify through the cycle. This slide is to explain how we will make sure that it is sustained and structurally strengthened by 2029. Our 2026 guidance on free cash flow is in the range of 6.5%-7.5% of sales. Our target for 2029 is 7%-8% of sales .
This range may not look dramatically different from our historical level, what changes fundamentally is the quality and the structural nature of the drivers behind it, there are two main drivers. First, margin expansion. The path to structurally improve our profitability towards circa 10%. The cash conversion that comes with it obviously flows directly into our free cash flow improvement and this is, of course, clearly the single biggest driver. Second, working capital improvement and more specifically, inventory optimization. This is really one of the very concrete outcome of our step-up focus on supply chain excellence. There we do have opportunity. Our level of inventory is clearly too high, and we know what is the path to bring it structurally, not just as a one-off, but structurally to a more optimized level, again, with a lot of granularity behind.
An element which I also wanted to highlight, which is part of the equation, is the restructuring cash-out component. Of course, in order to implement that consistent cost efficiency that I was just talking about, we need to be able to keep the level of restructuring that help us to do so, and the yield and the return on those investment or cash investment that we put into restructuring are obviously very strong. If you look at the trajectory, I think this year in 2026, of course, we have a higher cash-out linked to restructuring due to the cost resizing program that we announced at the beginning of the year. From there forward, we will see that impact to lower year-over-year and from 2029 to be structurally much lower.
As a conclusion, an objective of free cash flow of 7%-8% by 2029, which is built on structurally better earnings, leaner working capital, and a restructuring burden that will gradually fade. Again, there's a lot of granularity. It's a very grounded roadmap that we have developed to ensure that our cash generation engine continues to be structurally strong through the cycle. Let me close now with our capital allocation policy. It's updated, balanced, and designed to support value creation through 2029 and beyond. Our first priority remains to maintain our investment-grade credit rating. We have recently secured EUR 300 million in committed financing through the European Investment Bank to address our upcoming debt maturities. This proactive step reflects our commitment to a robust capital structure, and we will also reduce our gross debt by EUR 100 million.
Going forward, we'll continue to manage the gross debt levels in accordance and the appropriate level of scale to our earnings. With this, the balance sheet is in good shape and will remain so. That's first. On dividend, we are moving back to an earning-based measure. With a payout ratio of 40%-50% of the continuing net income. Continuing net income, as a reminder, is the net income adjusted of non-recurring elements such as restructuring. This is an other non-recurring material element. Just for reference, the payout ratio of the dividends of 2025 paid in 2026 is at 61%. That payout ratio in the previous two years was 52%, 53%, and in all the years before, it was between 40%-50%, right?
We are back to a range that is also consistent with the underlying payout ratio we had over the past few years. Of course, let's be clear, that means a reset in the near term when we look at it from the dividend per share. We strongly believe this is absolutely the right and the more sustainable approach, one that balances consistent shareholders' return with the financial flexibility to invest in growth and execute our strategy. A dividend that will grow with our earning is more durable than one that is not synchronized or that doesn't reflect the underlying business. On investment, we will remain extremely disciplined, both organically. I talked a lot about how we apply investment, sharp focus in our OpEx part. The same applies, of course, in our CapEx.
Inorganically on M&A, you heard it from As earlier, our M&A approach is really focused on strategic fits, really contributing to growth and clear growth potential, and of course, value creation with very stringent metrics to assess any M&A opportunity that would be assessed, which would be bolt-on in nature and not transformational bets. Finally, on buybacks. We do not intend to resume the share repurchase program that we had started in 2025 and that we have paused, but we will reinitiate share buyback programs when the right conditions are met within this balanced capital allocation framework and principles. Again, I really want to be clear here. Residual cash will be returned to shareholders, that commitment stands. Taken together, this is a policy which is built on financial discipline and continued and genuine consistent commitment to shareholder value creation today and through 2029 and beyond.
On that, I will close the presentation, and I think now we have a five minutes well-deserved refreshment break, after which we will come back to start the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
[Break]
All right. I hope you enjoyed the presentation this morning. I would now like to open the Q&A. If you have any questions, please raise your hand and Judit will be there with a microphone. Please wait until she has the microphone. Would be great if you could only ask one question at a time. We also have a possibility for the online viewers to ask questions, please do. We will first have a few questions here from the audience, and we will then also answer questions from our online viewers. Okay.
Thank you. I will keep to one question. It is Daniela from Goldman Sachs. You talked us through the end points in 2029. Can you talk us a little bit through how you see the cadence toward these targets? Should we expect maybe some of the headwinds from the actions you have to do to get there first, or is it sort of a linear pace? Maybe for both margins and cash, particularly focused on that.
I'm happy to answer it, and maybe Željko, you can also comment on how we see the numbers. Like I said, we have a transformation office set up with about 40 to 50 kind of transformative actions. Some have a very clear timeline and deliver a lot more linear. Some are a bit more one-off. One of the, of course, I said for some of the performance areas, we keep all our options open and we are exploring what is the right answer in terms of portfolio. Now, those could be things that come very sudden and could have an immediate impact. It's a bit uncertain exactly on the timing of some of these action. In terms of the numbers we assume, Željko, you want to talk about our path towards 2029?
On the trajectory that I mentioned, I think clearly, I'll start first on profitability, it's
Gradual progressive improvement from where we are on the base of 2026, improving to 2027, 2028, 2029. On cash, it's going to be more stable in the first year. What I mentioned earlier, that structural stronger cash generation really to fire up as we see the structural benefits, in particular, related to supply chain inventory and the easing of the restructuring cash out to be more visible towards 2028, 2029. It is a trajectory of improvement on the profitability, and there are paths to stabilize the top line. There, of course, this is where you have more external market sensitivity, but still there is a trajectory of sequential improvements. It's a sequential improvement roadmap with stability on the cash generation.
It was first Martin. We're here.
Thank you. Morning. It's Martin from Citi. In terms of how we can measure your progress over the next several years, obviously, some of the crown jewels are embedded in other divisions that are offset by some of the harvest portfolio. If we think of something like connected lighting, will you give us stage points in terms of how that's growing, how that's profitable, so that it's not sort of diluted at the group level when we externally measure your performance? It's very difficult, I think, from the outside to differentiate from the build portfolio and the harvest when we see your numbers, just because of the way that you report. Perhaps there's some idea as to what stage points you'll give us over the coming years to see how these different parts of the portfolio are working.
Yeah. Thanks for the question, Martin. That is very much recognized. I also feel we should create a bit more transparency about who we are, how our portfolio buildup is, and how we are progressing on the execution of this strategy. What we are not planning to do is to have a complete overhaul of the way we report. We'll stick with that structure, We will create real clarity around how we progress on this strategy. How that exactly looks like, that is still work in progress.
The next question was over there in the front row.
Thank you. Danny van Nieuwenhuizen, APG. Many questions, I stick to one as well. For Kraig, I was interested by the remark from As Tempelman about benchmarking business unit managers to peers. My question to you would be, if I benchmark you against your peer, how far are you off from your benchmark?
There is a gap in terms of the profitability between us and the number one player. It's primarily driven by three reasons. First of all, from a North American perspective, the P&L perspective, there's a scale advantage with the number one player. We have a lot of opportunities, which I talked us through, as it relates to the mix of our business in terms of specification and connected. That's already closing that gap and will continue to close it. The third reason is really around the operations and supply chain piece I talked about. I think our competitor got an earlier start on some of that than we did with some of the ownership changes that we had and what's happened in the last 6 years with COVID and supply chain.
We think we have a long runway ahead there and are already closing that gap and will continue to.
Yes. Hi, it's Akash here from JPMorgan. I have a question on connected consumer luminaires or consumer luminaires. I think this is a category where 8 to 10 years ago, Signify was there and making losses, then it kind of disappeared within Signify. Now today, you talk about it's a very large market and there is a need for Signify to reenter in this to able to grow. I want to understand what has changed in those last 8 to 10 years. Why do you think this is now a good market category? And then maybe perhaps you can also elaborate how much of these consumer luminaires is within Hue, where I think probably the growth aspects may be stronger given the brand value and synergies, and how much of that is outside Hue. Thank you.
It's true. They tried long time ago to make luminaires work, but they had a whole portfolio from low-end to high-end, from chandeliers to. It was basically a very wide portfolio, and it was a global approach. What's different is, first of all, consumer journey has changed. Consumer journeys are not necessarily everybody goes offline to see the shop, it's also going online. This is where we have strengths. Second is we're not going as broad as in the past. We are not going into the chandeliers, et cetera. We are going specifically in a few family ranges, and I'm talking about 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ranges with beautiful designs, which we did test it, and the design will be adapted to a regional taste. What you do sell in the U.S. as a luminaire will not necessarily sell in Belgium because it's just a different taste.
We will specifically, on the product designs, have tailor-made solutions, and the go-to-market will be different. I think those are the two main differences. On your question between Hue and Philips or the non-connected part, they will be on both. Equally, both areas are a big opportunity.
Michael, to add to it also in terms of geography footprint, you don't want to go worldwide. You want to focus on.
Good point. We want to focus on Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, U.K., Nordics, and U.S. We have a really focused approach. Thanks, As.
Over there.
Hi, it's Marc, ING. I have a question. You did a strategic review, and I think you mentioned a few times, you're the only real global lighting company in the world. I think it's quite clear what the benefits are on the back side of it, given the technology. But on the front side, given that you have so many different shops on the front side, is it possible to really start benefiting from being a global company with all these different front sides? Or do you need to change stuff there also over the medium term to maybe reignite that growth even faster, taking the benefit of being a global company?
Yeah. For me, the answer to your question, and thanks for raising it, is you need to be the best of both worlds. The portfolio focus is not just about this is the business I want to be in, it is also the choices we make within the business. Like Michael just said, it's not around are we doing consumer luminaires or not? No, we play with distinct families in distinct market, in distinct segments, through distinct channels. That's where we win. Equally for Prof, we look at which are the segments we really want to focus on. Really empowerment with clear choices within those businesses to go after where we are well-positioned to grow. That is really very choiceful. A lot less broad than we used to be playing in most segments across 55 beyond markets and in a very broad segment coverage.
That's one part of the answer. Yet there is part of being Signify is really advantageous, and Michael, you mentioned a few of these things, and I think I mentioned it myself as well, is when it comes to sharing R&D or sharing corporate infrastructure or benefiting from sourcing power, we really use the strength of Signify in the portfolio to be very competitive in those businesses where we choose to play. That for me is really the answer. It's a lot more concentrated in where we want to compete, but fully leveraging the skill we have.
We now have a question from our online viewers. I would like to read that out, for you all to hear it. Hi. Is the 0-1% growth target the organic growth you expect in 2029 over 2028? Or is it the average growth between 2026 and 2029? If it's the former, does it mean you expect a decline in each of the years between 2026 and 2028?
Do you have the exact trajectory in mind?
First of all, on clarification on what that 0%-1%, this is the 2029 comparable sales growth. In the trajectory from this year, it is a continuous improvement. It is a sequential improvement towards the 0-1 combined contribution of the different portfolio.
Let me say a few things about the growth, because I think it is a topic of real interest. First of all, we are confident and committed to outperforming market when it comes to growing the portfolio. We do that despite the fact that we are more exposed to still of the conventional part of the business. That is an important comment on growth. It is hard to predict the market. The best prediction we came up with was a flat market. That is where I started with this morning. If market does better, we should do better. That is the commitment is to outperform market. That is first. Secondly, the 0%-1% you saw is an outcome if you have a weighted average between a build portfolio, which is 70%-80% of Signify and a harvest portfolio. That build portfolio should show growth.
Let us be honest, we have seen decline, we are not just turning it to 0 and stabilize revenue, we are growing that build portfolio. 2% is our best guess, it is what we feel very confident we can deliver on, we do not want to make false promises. That 2%, however, is offset by continuous decline in our harvest portfolio. That harvest portfolio is currently at -11, we predict it will be around -5. If you do 20% minus 5 and 80% times 2, you get to 0%-1% CAGR. That harvest portfolio then assumes that all these businesses stay with us. I have also made very clear that some of these businesses that belong to the harvest portfolio, we consider all options, including consolidation through partnership and divestment.
If any of these business would go out of the portfolio, that would also change the equation. The 0.1%-1% growth needs to be really looked at and considered with those different perspectives in mind.
Question over there.
Hello, this is Chase from Kempen. I have a question for Michael on the consumer space. You had the nice videos showing some of the competitive sort of new features you have. Could you speak a little bit about sort of where you see your main competitors in terms of their technology? Are they several years behind or less? How do you think that sort of plays into your premium pricing that you have today? Should that see some pressure over the years, or how are you looking at that?
Yeah. It's a good question. Thank you. I think the main difference between, let's say our mainly Chinese competitors, is that they don't play the ecosystem game. They sell very good, very nicely, but a connected point-to-point solution, which you can change, and they're good at that. We're in a different game. The ecosystem, what I tried to explain this morning, makes a big difference, and that's also why you see-
In RNRs, et cetera, the attachment rate of our ecosystem is much higher, at 10.5, and Netherlands example was 17, and going up and up and up. That is just because once you are into the system, you are so happy with it that you just want to expand. That effect, if you look at their Chinese competitors, they do not have because they are not geared to do that. The average attachment rate would be there between one, two, maybe three at best over lifetime, but we are, in the Netherlands, 17. Most importantly, in the end, the consumer decides, right? You see it on our loyalty, on our RNR ratings. They leave the word of mouth with their friends and family. They make the ratings on Amazon, et cetera. There is a big difference between selling just a connected lamp, with all respect, or having an ecosystem.
Having an ecosystem is really, really difficult, which goes back 10 years once you bought the first Hue lamp, and it still works with the latest features.
It was one of the things when I came into my role that I was a bit surprised how fanatic some of our customers are when it comes to Philips Hue. It is amazing. Actually, one of the constraints we had, we want to get all these bridges out, and we want to cross-sell devices on those bridges, like the ecosystem Mike was talking about. Our bridge was limited in terms of how many devices could actually operate on the bridge. You upgraded the bridge, and within weeks, we were sold out completely.
Wow.
It is a very powerful system that once you get these bridges out in this household, and you can start adding the device. The other thing, Michael, I think you are underplaying it, we have a really cool roadmap going forward.
True.
That is continuous. You saw some of the example we have our SpatialAware, there's a lot more coming. For those Hue lovers, there's a lot more coming in terms of features.
Particularly if you see the demo, you will get a taste of it. Particularly SpatialAware, MotionAware. There's more to come.
Michael, versus Chinese, we also have a legislation, data privacy, all of that, which is so very different for us versus.
Becomes more and more important. Where do you store the data?
Yeah.
I will first read another online question before we move back to the audience. Please could you provide some further color on your M&A criteria? How much capital will you be allocating to acquisitions? What will be the sweet spot in terms of deal size, and what ROIC will you be targeting?
Maybe I will come back to what I mentioned on when we look at the lighting space, as I mentioned earlier, first of all, when we look at M&A opportunity, it is more bolt-on by nature. We have few very recent example that were also mentioned by Kraig in his presentation for the U.S. Small size, very, very suited and absolutely fitting very, very well in our strategic fit. On the criteria, the strategic fit is one. It has to contribute to growth, this is also very important. It has to be as a priority, strengthening the momentum and how it powers our built portfolios and in line with what we have shared today.
On the return on invested capital, well, there are many criteria that we look at from, of course, the return, and it has to be accretive from a value creation perspective compared to our cost of capital, obviously. We also look at other parameters at the payback, and how it is also contributing and how accretive it is to our operating model. There are different criteria. We have always a very detailed screen test for assessing each and every M&A opportunity. In a nutshell, contributes to growth, creates value accretive to the value creation and the return on capital employed, and fits absolutely clearly with our portfolio focus.
Question over there.
Thank you. Rajesh Patki from Barclays. I think one of the slides you presented today mentioned data centers. I'm just keen to understand what part of the business is currently exposed to that end market currently, are you looking at that as an opportunity to invest for growth?
Kraig, I think you're best positioned, Kraig, to answer this.
Yeah. Data centers has been a very fast-growing segment for us. That's the good news about data centers. One of the challenges with data centers is lighting as a % of that total bill of material isn't as big as some other segments, let's say hospitals or education or office spaces, for example. Given the rapid pace of growth here, our data center business is probably up between 30%-40% year-over-year. It tends to use more, I'll say, general lighting there, but there's also a high degree of specification around that because speed is so important here, to have a standard bill of material from a lighting and control standpoint that you can roll through projects very rapidly. We're very well-positioned here, especially given in the U.S. where we came from out of Eaton, who has a big focus in this area.
We have some folks that are still with us from Eaton that they used to call on that area that have really amplified our growth in this space, and it's a very significant number for us this year.
May I just add, this is a good example of how we also leverage global portfolio, because equally in Europe, we expect a lot more data center capacity to be built, and we can also take what we learn in the U.S. into Europe, where we are working on a specific lighting offer for data centers, as well as, for example, a specific lighting offer for defense. We're really agile in terms of where the music is we want to be. Obviously, you know that the defense spend in Europe has gone up significantly. That's one of our focus segments as well.
Over there in the second row.
Wim Gielen, ABN AMRO. In the capital allocation policy, you rightfully moved up the investments in growth, both organic as well as inorganic. However, if I look at the cash flow bridge, the other component, you expect it to be stable. How should I read into this? Is the ability to invest in growth a function of the P&L that you have available, or are you making deliberate choices to invest and to drive top line? What is driving that, let's say, marriage between these two elements? The follow-up question would be on the growth side, the 0%-1% growth. That's purely looking at the current portfolio, if you will. You also gave quite a number of examples of adjacencies where you intend to move the fan business in India, but also quite a lot of other opportunities there.
Is that embedded into the 0%-1%, or is that the cherry on the cake that you can actually use to outperform the expectations that you've set out today?
Željko, maybe you answer the first and then I'll take the second.
I will take the first question, and thank you for the question. It's an important clarification. When we look at our capital allocation, when we look at supporting organic growth, I think we have to remember that we have a very CapEx-light model. All the efficiency and the focus on our investment to support organic growth is a lot to do with that OpEx and structural efficiency and how we redeploy our investment. You see that already built in the free cash flow. The CapEx element, which was not mentioned on the slide, relatively stable, it's low. Last in 2025 was EUR 140 million, half of it being tangible, half of it intangible, so more software related.
The CapEx part, I think, is very limited as part of the equation, it's very much fundamentally how we are ensuring, and there we are back to the playbooks. I think the answer to your question is fundamentally sitting in how we are applying our different playbooks to the different portfolio to make sure that the level of investment required is applied in the right portfolio with the right timing and with very clear ROI returns associated to it. This is really well built into our choices to support organic investments, mostly OpEx, while we keep, of course, the discipline on the CapEx part of our investments to support growth.
On the second question, when it comes to adjacencies, I would like to separate the strategic play from opportunistic play. What I mean with that is if it is strategic play, it's really around we have unique capability or we have technology, or we have a product linkage where we say, "This is adjacent space we want to move into." That should be a strategic choice, how we want to position the company. That could be in energy efficiency. I showed some examples in security, intelligent traffic. We as a leadership team, we have asked a small team to investigate all these different value spaces, and we are now bringing that down to a few set of opportunities that we believe are very promising.
It's too early to conclude any of that while we keep the rest of the company focused on the lighting, becoming a better performance-focused lighting company. That's on the strategic play. There is the opportunistic, which is a bit more the cross-sell in channels. India is a good example. We have an enormous distribution power, Sumit, that we have all this retail presence. If you start to put fans through that, yeah, you talk millions, but it's actually tens of millions of fans that we will generate revenue from. We can play that on a broader set of products within those markets where we have that strength, and we could also play it more widely. I see that as more opportunistic. To your question, none of that is in these numbers.
I would not say it's the cherry of the cake, but it's probably the cream on the cake, right? This could be very significant. Again, I don't want to make any false promises or create false expectations. It is definitely an area that we will continue to explore.
I would like to ask another question from the live, from the webcast. After that, I've seen that here. With a new dividend policy, do you see the 2026 dividend being cut? Do you still commit to a growing dividend going forward?
To be very clear, do we commit to a growing dividend going forward? Absolutely. We commit to an attractive dividend policy. What we do, and that's the reset that we apply in updating our capital allocation policy now, is to come back to an earnings base or a payout based on earnings. As I said earlier, if we look at the trajectory of the dividends payout over the last few years, it has been historically always in the 40%-50% of continuing net income. Over the last three years, it increased. 52% payout in three years ago to 53%. Last year, 2025 dividends distributed in 2026, we moved to 61% payout.
Of course, what we've seen is that you saw the chart earlier, significant compression of the top line, significant, of course, compression on the earnings in that cycle while the continued dividend was increased on a dividend per share. What we are applying here is the reset to have the balance. We spent considerable amount of time, and we've also included a lot of the inputs and feedbacks from many of you here in the room and also many online to make sure we really cater for that balance. Again, it's fundamental, and that's the commitment to ensure consistent shareholder return. While we support the execution of our strategy and support our growth. I think this is where, yes, the reset is needed now, and we strongly believe this is the right timing, and this is absolutely the most sustainable approach that we need to have.
Again, the commitment on growing dividends forward is absolutely there, in line with our commitment to structurally improve our profitability.
Second row.
Yes. Hi, Frank Claassen of Degroof Petercam. A question on your inventories. Do you have some kind of targets where you think you can reduce your inventories as % of revenues? What are the main drivers why you think you can reduce inventories?
We have, of course, there you need to obviously, because as you've seen, the composition of our portfolios is diverse, but yes, I think we have clearly and very thoroughly defined what optimum should look like. That's very clearly defined compared to the base today. I think we have clearly a few percentage points of improvement as we know absolutely how to go after. On the levers, I think there are many elements coming into play there. I think there's a lot to do, of course, with our planning accuracy. I think our ability to predict, and when you think about the granularity of SKUs to sell, that's a big area. We have also a lot of structural actions in improving, and this is also linking to how we deliver better to our customers.
There's a lot of action that are on hardcore supply chain efficiency. I think there are a few key levers. I think the step up in supply chain very clearly is one of the very powerful levers of structural value creation that we have. Again, it takes time, because when you want to do that structural, I think you really need to go deep. I think it's really fundamental about the planning upstream, being better at forecasting, and improving our cycle in delivering value to customers while eliminating somehow the waste that we generate fundamentally more linked to that profile. I think we have been extremely granular, and I'm very confident, of course, going in all those details on the ability, and this is really a big element of our self-help contribution to improve and develop a leaner working capital.
To add to your answer is, we have looked back as well about what does good look like when you look at our own history on inventory management. Of course, the current levels of inventory are slightly higher also because we have seen so much disruption. We had COVID, we had the tariffs, we had other blockages. It has been also tough to manage supply chain.
Right.
If we get in a bit more stable context, I think we should be able to bring it down. The other thing I want to say about this is this is a good example of how we manage performance. We now have a chief supply officer who works with a small team and the business units on what is best practice and what is expected in terms of norming on supply chain when it comes to demand forecasting, new product introductions, and so on, portfolio health. We will systematically, across all performance areas, start implementing that best practice. Teams empowered to do it themselves, but with very clear benchmarking and very clear norming of what good looks like. That's the way forward.
Yeah.
Mark Verbeek, DLA Piper. You mentioned that your free cash flow ratio improves from what you targeted this year, 6.5-7.5 to 7-8. You can also argue it deteriorates because the gap between your adjusted EBITA and free cash flow will increase sharply. It is 1% for this year, and if I look at the past seven years, it's 1.7%. Now the gap increases to 2%-3%. Will you say inventories will go down, so your working capital, you don't have to spend that much more on provisions for reorganizations or whatever. I'm a bit puzzled about this gap of between 2%-3% between adjusted EBITA and free cash flow. As follow-up on free cash flow, at what leverage ratio do you consider share buybacks?
I'll try to address the different components. First of all, on the building bricks of what I mentioned earlier, which is how we develop structurally stronger. Of course, the adjusted EBITA, which is what matters in the end on the free cash flow. That's the biggest component.
Right.
Part of what we need to invest to ensure structurally this cost efficiency step up, that is going to come from also partially, not entirely, but partially from restructuring cash out that we need to invest. This is an element that has to be balanced with the structural improvement of our profitability driver. That's one. Second, on the working capital, yes, it's inventory. You do have an improvement in inventory, but then also you have part of it which is offset because we have payables. That are in the short term feeding to the inventory. Net-net, I think that's going to be the second element, and third will be that easing of the restructuring effort while we get the return on also. Yes, I think it's kind of logical in a way that that gap should change.
Also remembering that in the past, a big part of our restructuring was linked to our conventional decline. It was the most substantial element. As we go forward, it's very much linked and centered on our intrinsic operational excellence effort. That's also changing a little bit the shape how you should look at from profits to free cash flow. On the second question on the leverage, I think we still, and this is consistent with what we've indicated, 1.2-1.3 times is what we believe is the right healthy level of leverage consistent with our overall capital allocation policy. With regard to share buyback, as I said earlier, it will be determined looking at all the right conditions, right?
To make sure that once we are very clearly securing, and that's important, our balance sheet strength, making sure, of course, and this is back to the previous question, that we can go back to an attractive and growing dividend in line with the adjusted approach, making sure that investments that are needed are funded. Then, of course, any excess cash will be returned. I think on the share buyback, I can't give you a straight answer to your question on the when and the three, but at least, securing the foundation of our balance sheet strength is absolutely fundamental, and that we are absolutely committed to. We are committed to grow dividends, and we are committed to implement and reinitiate share buyback programs while the conditions are met. That's the principles in our framework.
Question here in the front row.
Thank you. Pieter Zandee from Antaurus Capital Management. Mr. Tempelman, earlier in your presentation said that you want to provide a bit more transparency on the various subcomponents of your large portfolio. Please let me have a shot at it. If we talk about one of your largest businesses, the U.S. professional business, on the one hand, we heard a very strong story from Cooper ever since it was acquired. Then on the other hand, we heard a story about the incumbent Philips business, Genlyte, where you even mentioned the word turnaround. I'm just curious for the U.S. professional business as a whole, what is roughly the profitability difference between, on the one hand, Cooper and on the other hand, the Genlyte business?
Well, in terms of size, first of all, Kraig, I think I'm right when Genlyte is about one third, right? It's about right, yeah?
Yeah.
It's a much smaller business. I think it serves the market really well. The business model as it currently has evolved into doesn't work for us. We are too spread out, with too many brands, too many SKUs, and too small in the areas where we play. We really want to refocus, and that's actually also where the company originates from, with having very strong specification brands for very specific segments, particularly on outdoor and within the outdoor segment, also very strong on the decorative outdoor. When you see all these beautiful streetlights in all these different places in the U.S., that could well be the Genlyte solution. We want to really refocus the company, rationalize the brand portfolio, rationalize the product portfolio, but in a way that we are still meaningful and very relevant, right?
For the agents that we work with. That's the strategy going forward, and that then also means that we can be a leaner organization, much more focused on our R&D investments, much more focused also on rationalizing our supply chain on the back of some of these choices that we make. That's clearly the strategy. We have new leadership in Genlyte that has fully embraced this way forward, and I believe we already see early signs of improvement. In terms of profitability delta, the profitability EBITA percentage on Genlyte now is a very low single-digit level, that needs to be brought up. It can be done. We know the way out.
Okay. A question over here.
Thanks. Thanks for all the info on India. Maybe another big market, which I think you were not really addressing today, was China. You've, I think in the past, talked about a lot about increased competition. Do we need to see China as in the harvest bucket or in the build bucket or partially, or?
It's a very good question. Actually, I apologize, I should have mentioned China probably much more proactive. There's two stories to China. One is a manufacturing story in China. If you say China for the world, where clearly we see overcapacity in that market, we see production lines being underutilized, and we think we would benefit from building very strong relationships with top-notch manufacturers in China or Chinese manufacturers positioned outside of China. We will do that, and that is part of our strategic choice to be less exposed to the manufacturing of the more commoditized products. We will engage with suppliers around the world, but also a big part of that will be with Chinese manufacturers. We will not try to beat the Chinese suppliers in their manufacturing game. That's not part of our strategy.
We will focus on manufacturing efforts close to customers, make to order specification projects. Within China is a very fragmented market where even the big players have 3%, 4% market share. A lot of players active. We are very strongly positioned in the professional business. It's a business that is working well for us in terms of profitability, where we have a very strong partner network. It's a business we like. It's a business that is stable and is working really well for us. The consumer business really has two dimensions, the online and the offline. Online trade channels, we have a strong representation. Deep reads also works for us. The online is really where the difficulties are. It's very competitive, online China. It has its whole own ecosystem in terms of Tmall, JD.com, the big platforms in China.
We currently have a team on it to find our way how we best leverage those platforms. The jury is out on whether we can succeed on that or whether we need to take a more fundamental choice about how we play in consumer in China. That's where we stand. China works for us. It contributes positively to the overall performance of the portfolio. Clearly, the online consumer business in China is a red ocean, and we'll need to find a way there that is sustainable. Yeah.
Thank you. A follow-up question from my side on, first, congratulations with your anniversary. It's almost 10 years now that Signify since IPO. I remember from that moment that you had this brand license deal with Philips. We know it was about 0.8% of sales, I think, at the time. Let's say if you take it from free cash flow as percentage of paying license fee, it could be 15%, even if you take the 6%-7% of sales today of guidance. Can you give us an update? Because I think it was a 10-year license fee deal you made with Philips at the time. How is it still continued? That's the background of the question.
Yep. We have strong brands across the portfolio. Some of that was also because of our history and heritage. We just talked about Genlyte has a very broad portfolio of brands. Some people say, "Well, don't you have far too many brands?" I'm always surprised around how specific brands are in certain segments. Some brands have a great reputation in indoor, some on outdoor. It's quite specific in terms of its applications. Philips brand is, for us, is very important and very valuable. Particularly in our consumer business, we exclusively use Philips. On the B2B side, selective use of Philips. In India, very much Philips brand.
The Philips brand will continue to play an important part of our portfolio, and we also have a clarity with Philips, in terms of how we deal with the current license agreement and how we want to take that forward. That said, we also have invested in building the Signify brand, and we truly believe that the brands can really coexist. There are other segments where brand matters a lot less. It's about the company that provides the solutions and the services, and that could well be Signify. We are trying to optimize and not make choice for one or the other.
We have one more question here in the second row, and then we'll take one last online question and a last question in the audience after that. First, over here.
Yes. Hi, it's Akash from JPMorgan again. I have a follow-up on this growth in adjacencies because I think one of the most interesting aspect of today's capital markets day is this growth in adjacencies. Here, one of the interesting presentation was presentation on India because I am from India, and when I go there, I see that many of the competitors you have in lighting are coming from these adjacencies. Again, here you have a brand, Philips, very well known in India. The question I have is that when it comes to these opportunities, and I think Sumit talked about some inorganic possibilities as well, how you are going to address it? Because India, when we look at valuation, it's very high valuation market.
One thing that we see in India is that many multinational companies are coming and raising money in India because they can benefit from these high valuation. I want to ask, are you bold enough to do that kind of strategy where, let's say, if you want to grow rapidly in India in adjacencies, then maybe one way out could be to list in India to get a market value and multiple that allow you to make a platform in India? On that point, also, when it comes to Philips brand and what you can achieve, is there any red line on which brand or which type of products you can put Philips brand name and which type of products you can't? At least we know what is possible in this growth in adjacency and what is not. Thank you.
Maybe, Sumit, I can leave it to you to talk a little bit around how you deal with some of the branding. When it comes to our strategy for India, and please complement me, Sumit, later, but we look really at all options. There's the organic growth option, there's the kind of bolt-on option, and then there's making a bigger move option. Whatever option we pursue, of course, we look at value creation. You are right that the multiples in India are very high. That value creation needs to work, right? Whatever way you choose to go. I would say in that sense, the strategy is very clear. We want to grow in lighting and beyond lighting. How we do it? We are really exploring all options. Now then, on the brand question, Sumit.
I would just want to add, I think one big difference, if you see over last few years, is that what we have gone ahead and looked at these P&Ls in a different way. It is very clear that we need to do, he always says that we have a Mercedes, but you are driving it in a small lane because we have all those advantages with us where we really can expand. Now, of course, your point is valid, that valuation there is very, very high. As I said, that we are looking at all the options to make sure that it is something which we could look at. That itself is a big change. On brands, I think Philips is very clearly a lighting brand.
One of the reasons we are able to manage the profitability in India is because we are able to make sure that Philips is up there.
We introduced a brand in EcoLink. I think it's an opportunity for us to really make EcoLink into multiple categories easily. Of course, if there are categories where Philips fits in, I think we have to go back to wherever, if these are there. Right now, we are looking at Philips far more in lighting to be sure that we are able to extract value from that.
We have one last question from our online viewers. The OEM segment has not been discussed much today. Where do you see the role in both the open OEM market and as a key component supplier to Signify's luminaires?
Let me put that again in the context of our manufacturing focus, where just to repeat is that we want to focus on project specification, made to order, made to engineering, anything that you don't produce in large batches. Components don't belong in that category. The OEM business that is primarily focused on components business is something that, in terms of our manufacturing strategy, is not in the build category. It's one where we want to consider all options. The business has gone through really tough times. We have seen a really tough market. It has shrunk. The team has done extremely well managing the profitability to the best possible level. Personally, I don't think the OEM business offers the returns longer term that we like.
We are really looking at either optimization or seek some sort of consolidation in the market through a partnership or divest the business at good value. Then there's the question about, well, don't you need that components like in-house to serve your prof businesses? We want to make sure that we fully leverage our strategic partner relationships, not to make sure we get best cost of goods sold and that we get components at a competitive level, but also that we have supply chain resilience and security of supplies. We will not go out with auctions on components. We will seek strategic relationships with suppliers if we choose not to keep the OEM business with us. That is clearly one of the areas, together with the lamps manufacturing businesses, that we really consider for portfolio moves. I hope that clarifies.
Now one last question here from the audience.
Hi, thank you very much. It's Adam Parr from Rothschild & Co Redburn . Just a question on connected, please. Mostly on the pricing side. I think on the market slide it said, minus 4% price erosion from 2025-2029. Then in the growth directional slide with the arrows for connected and projects, then connected and luminaires in consumer, I think it was positive. I just wanted to see, is this really an impact from the other two businesses that are there? The projects and the luminaires or is it just Signify can outprice the market? And if so, what is your confidence in doing so?
Yeah. Well, maybe I ask first the business, the P&L leaders to comment on your pricing.
Yeah. There's no question we have more pricing power. I talked today about how hard it is to build these systems and sort of the relative pricing power when you have fewer competitors and more differentiation compared to specification, where there are a few more competitors, but still differentiation in stock and flow where it's least differentiated, sort of the pricing power that you have sort of goes up, along with your ability to differentiate how many competitors and how responsible the players are in that space. In connected, just fundamentally, given the investments that it takes to be successful, either in consumer or professional, given the investments made, people tend to be more responsible in terms of their pricing discipline in this segment than we see in others.
Yeah. For consumers, pretty similar. Having an ecosystem is really, really difficult because it's not just about now connecting the current products, but if you bought one 10 years ago, you need to make sure that also works, right? That gives us a technology advantage. Then you've got the brand. Philips brand in consumer, most powerful brand in lighting in the world. Philips Hue, the same when it comes to connected. Then you have the other one, that is consumer desire. Do you want to have that product? Right? There we're going to really stimulate the demand with the product design, et cetera, we talked about. At this moment, we are already the most premium, let's say one of the premium brands there, and that's going to remain, and with the design we're going to explore that even further to creep up and get more value extraction.
Yeah. I think what I learned is that on this connected lighting, you need the hardware and the software and the route to market. So it's complex, so you're quite protected in terms of pricing power. That said, what we predict and we shared this morning is we see that inflection point coming on connected lighting where volumes will go up much more and, yeah, that's operating leverage for us, but we're not the only ones. We have been maybe too conservative, but we predict there will be some price erosion as a consequence.
All right. This closes the Q&A for today. I'm going to hand back to us now for some closing remarks, and then I will come back with some logistics about the remainder of the day.
Great. Well, thank you to all my colleagues. I basically want to go back to where we started this morning. We recognize that we have an opportunity to do better, and that's why performance step-up is so integrated part of our strategy. We also clear that we want to be more granular on where we choose to play. We've really taken that portfolio choice away, what to build and what to harvest. The portfolio outlook was for 29 numbers. That is 24 to 36 months away from where we are. We come from a past where we have seen year-on-year decline. We are going to stop that decline and return back to growth.
I really want to leave that as a key message, that is subject to portfolio choices and a performance step-up in a market that is unpredictable, our best outlook is that it will be flattish. We do that with a team that is fully engaged. This is not something that I need to sell in the company. We have co-created this strategy. We have all committed, and we are convicted that this is the right thing to do, and we are truly committed to deliver that. The numbers are what they are. We think it's credible. We think it's doable. We are committed to delivering it. If we outperform even better with our commitment to keep that balance sheet strong, to allocate the cash back to shareholders and to be very wise if we choose to make significant investments.
Those are the key messages for today. I would like to thank you so much for coming to Eindhoven on what is a very hot day. For all of you online, thank you for dialing in, staying with us, and we look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you very much for coming