Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Buongiorno. It's my pleasure to welcome you all to Prysmian Capital Markets Day. For those of you who are here in the room with us in this special venue, thank you so much for making the effort of joining us in person. But of course, thank you very much also to those who are following online. Before we get started, a quick safety briefing for us in the room. There are no planned fire tests for today, so if you hear an alarm, please do make your way to the nearest exit. Naples is a very important location for Prysmian, and as some of you may know, the San Carlo Theatre, this theater, was the first opera theater still active in the world. W hat better place to host our first ever Capital Markets Day?
We know we made you wait for it, and we trust it will be worth it. The entire theme of the presentation today will be around connecting our world to tomorrow, connecting our past and our future, market trends and segmentation, opportunities and solutions. In a very few minutes, I'll have the pleasure to welcome to the stage our Group CEO, Valerio Battista, who will walk us through our journey and the main strategic decisions that brought Prysmian to be the company it is today. Our CEO-designate, Massimo Battaini, will then explore new frontiers and unveil the strategy which will allow Prysmian to capture market trends and to sustain our leading position. I will bring you behind the scenes of sustainability, to share with you why sustainability is important for Prysmian, how it is integrated in our business, and why we see it as a catalyst for value creation.
To complement on value creation, our Group CFO, Pier Francesco Facchini, will present our midterm outlook and main financial KPIs. Last but not least, Massimo Battaini will conclude the presentation and bring us into the future. Soon after the presentation, there will be plenty of time for your Q&A. To those who are following online, please feel free to submit your questions through the chat box, and we will be pleased to answer your questions as well. There will be a very nice lunch, and soon after lunch, we look forward to showcasing you one of our jewel assets, our installation vessel, Leonardo da Vinci. Now, let's have a look back at when everything began. Now, welcome to the stage, Valerio Battista.
Good morning, and welcome, ladies and gentlemen, all, to our first Capital Markets Day. It's a pleasure to be here and to see all of you. Most of you I know since years, because, fortunately or unfortunately, I'm in charge of this company since 2002, 1st of February . A lot of years . It was not the same company, but it was the division of Pirelli Cable. Okay, now we are here, and we are here to introduce to you what we think to do in the next years. It will be the role of my designated successor, Massimo Battaini, but I can tell you what it is today, Prysmian. I'm gonna remind you, because you know for sure.
The journey that drove us where we are is a very long journey that started 28 July 2005, at the time of the spin-off of the company from Pirelli S.p.A. I was in London, signing many tables of documents in order to transfer as a guarantee all the assets or the major assets of the group to the banks in order to get EUR 1.056 billion credit lines. It is not an easy task, but our strength has been always to be able to transform the results of the company into cash. My motto is: No cash, no party. Then once you have the cash, you have the opportunity to choose how to employ it. If you don't have, you have a problem. 2007, 2007, we moved public in the IPO.
It was Goldman Sachs still keeping the largest chunk of the shares of the company, and we moved public. Everything has been very quick. 2005 July, the spin-off. 2006 September, the refinancing. 2007 May, the IPO. Listed at EUR 2.7 billion market cap. Let me remember that the company has been acquired by Goldman and the others, including myself, at a value of EUR 1.3 billion. Not equity, EUR 1.3 billion enterprise value. We have been able to become fully public in 2010. You remember, 2008 has been a year of crisis because of the subprime crisis, and in 2010, we went totally public. Goldman exited, and we started to work around the world alone. 2011, we acquired Draka. It has not been an easy deal, but we did it. 2018, we acquired General Cable.
I was with Fabio Romeo in New York, and we put $3 billion on the table to take over General Cable. It has been a really successful move that changed the face of the company, being now, since then, a company with two big markets, of course, Europe and U.S. That more or less it is what it is today. Last but not least, 2022, the improvement of the performance of the company, thanks to what we did, what we are still doing, and a market that is electrifying. Okay. The company has been transformed over the last ten years. The plans are a lot, but the group revenues, remember that the revenues is vanity. T he number of employees have been multiplied by four and respectively by three.
30,000 people, 30,000 families around the world that counts on what we decide to do. That's the biggest responsibility we all have. As you can see, the plants are everywhere, largely in U.S. and Europe, but also South America and Asia. Next, please. We created a little bit of value for the shareholders, for all the stakeholders. From the EUR 2.7 billion market cap at the time of IPO, today, the company has reached over EUR 10 billion market cap. W hat I can say? W e did our job. Not me, we. We did our job reasonably well, or at least acceptable, and now it's time to look at the future, because once you run, you have never to stop. That's what I think. We have never to stop. Now, what's the problem? I'm not young anymore. I've been running the company in the last 20 years.
My duty is the duty of all of us: to create the successors. Massimo has been working with me since 2002 summer, joining, even him, from Pirelli Tires. N ow, I'm not young anymore. The company need of someone younger. Younger, n ot very much, but younger. Younger, but experienced. Let me put in that way. It's my duty, it has been my duty, to prepare him for the succession. The board has nominated, designated Massimo as my successor, and I'm confident, I'm a little shareholder of the company. I'm confident that he will able to continue to drive the show of the next, I wish him 20 years, but the age is the age. Okay? T hank you very much.
Thank you, Valerio, and thank you for the digression about my age. I think the achievement of this company in the last decade has been extraordinary, thanks to your leadership. T ogether with the rest of the team, which actually is in this room today, we set this company up to be able to capitalize on the growing opportunity of this changing market. Please join me with a big round of applause for Valerio for his 21 years of tenure as CEO of this industry. As most of you know, we are just a few minutes away from our Italian submarine plant here in Arco Felice, and this place means a lot to me.
I remember when, more than ten years ago, I left the role of CEO of the U.K. and moved back to Milan, and Valerio offered me the position of Head of Projects. B ack then, I wasn't really excited about the role because I wasn't sure how my experience would contribute to this technological business. But, you know, Valerio's offer wasn't actually an offer. He told me something like, "Massimo, you have to take the Head of Project division. I need you there, finito." I will pay the copyrights at the end of this.
It's not an option in this company, I know. I took on the position a bit reluctantly, but just after a few weeks, I became very excited about the complexity of the technology in the submarine system and the marine operations. I came to this place, Arco Felice, many times. Yeah, I spent long days, long weeks, to review the project activity with the team. All the time, you know, what has impressed me the most was the passion and the commitment of the local teams. T hey put all they could, all the effort they had in this business. And this is what I consider a key driver for our success in the market. T hat's why today, we are gathered here in Naples, and that's why this place means a lot to me.
B y the way, we couldn't find a more convenient place where to display our Leonardo da Vinci vessel today. I 'd like to start, taking a look at what is going on out there in the market. The energy transition and the digital transformation are deeply reshaping this market and, generating new secular trends as the world moves towards decarbonization and sustainability. We are in the middle of these two megatrends. Over the last 15 years, we've been building a leading position. We've been growing capabilities, to leverage this opportunity. Today, time has come for us to reap the benefit of what we sought. Today, we consider us, the cable player best suited to leverage the market growth. On the back of this, change in the market, we set out our new strategy. We set ambitious targets for our future.
I'm looking forward to sharing this strategy with you today. Connect to Lead, this is the name of our strategy. We want to lead the market while we're connecting the world, while we are enabling the energy transition and digital transformation. We also want to transform ourselves from a cable player into a cabling solution provider. More system than just cables, more integrated and combined energy and telecom solutions. How are we gonna achieve this? We capitalize on our strong leadership in spaces like submarine interconnectors, power distribution, optical cables, which are pivotal to the energy and digital transformation. We also have to enhance our right to win in new attractive spaces, like data center, IoT, grid monitoring, connectivity, electrical vehicle charging.
W hile our previous strategy was based on inorganic growth and, large M&As, the current one is centered on the organic growth, but it heavily capitalizes on the strength that we built through the past M&As. S omehow, the two strategy will be different, they are very much linked. We will also pursue M&As opportunity, aimed at, complementing our product portfolio, our geographical reach, our customer base, our market share. They are not included in the five-year trajectory simply because they are not fully in our control. Y ou might wonder, what am I going to bring to this? What will I contribute to this strategy? I will guarantee continuity with the past, through our usual discipline, our strong stand for value and for culture. But I will also bring, a new focus.
A new focus to lead the company towards a growth opportunity, towards a new pathways of growth. As seen, it is clear that the world is on one-way trajectory. Can you please send the video?
We have all seen the headlines. Climate change is here. It's impacting our daily lives and causing irreparable harm to the planet. To mitigate the impact, we need to limit CO2 emissions to keep global warming to a 1.5-degree increase. Yet, even the best estimate predicts with the current pledges, we are currently on track for at least a two-degree increase. A central reason behind this is the 75% of greenhouse gas emissions produced by the energy sector. Over the last 25 years, since the internet was born, we've seen an increase on energy demands from the growth of connectivity infrastructures and population penetration in cities around the world. This will only continue to increase exponentially. We have a responsibility to lead the transformation. The fourth wave of the digital revolution has created a world of AI and generative AI, clean tech and robotics.
With this technology, Prysmian is leading the industry to limit CO2 emissions and ensure a greener future for the planet, driven by a more efficient, cleaner, faster, and greener energy supply.
The world is truly on a one-way trajectory. The decarbonization, the resulting structural market trends are driving this change. We recognize four new drivers in this market: renewable energy generation, electrical application growth, power grid enhancement, and digital transformation. T hey represent a unique opportunity for us because they are fully overlapped with our portfolio, with our geographical reach, with our customer base. I know that many of you know already a lot about this stuff, so I don't wanna bother you today with more. Just want to share with you some of the distinctive drivers behind each of the market trends, so that you can appreciate their relevance for our company. L et's talk about renewable generation. Today, fossil fuel account for 70% of the electricity generation, while renewable sources only contribute for 30%.
Tomorrow, this is gonna flip: 30% fossil and 70% renewable. This will lead to a 4x increase of the transmission capacity of renewable sources. Longer and powerful transmission lines are gonna be laid to connect generation to application. Because, you know, you know the story, the renewable generation is located in places far from where the consumption is. In our German corridor project is a light example of this market dynamics. We are laying cables as long as 1,000 km, high power, to connect the North Sea of the country, Germany, where the wind farm shores are, to the southern area of the country. Here, Prysmian has an important role to play in this space. Not only do we want to enable the transmission of renewable energy—we want to enhance the cost effectiveness and sustainability of these cabling solutions.
The 525 kV P-Laser is a great example of this approach. It's the first cable in the world, fully recyclable. C ost per megawatt hour and sustainability are becoming key requirements for our customer moving forward. Lowering the cost, increasing the power, enhancing the low carbon footprint, reducing the carbon footprint of our products, is essential to making this energy transition more affordable, so more sustainable. The second, second trend related to the electrical application: increase in demand. W hy the total energy demand is expected to remain stable over the next 30 years? Because the additional demand of energy will be offset by energy efficiency. The electrical demand, the electricity demand, will double from 20% of the total energy mix to 40% of the total energy mix. For the engineers in the room, from 25,000 TWh to 55,000 TWh.
What is the reason for the surge in electricity demand? It's twofold. There are fossil fuel-based application, like gas heating and ICE cars, that are shifting to electricity, and there are electricity-based application that are expanding. You see in the chart some examples. The conversion and the shift of buildings, residential and industrial, to electricity is pretty evident. Heat pumps, induction hobs, are driving the complete elimination of gas connection to new building and to existing buildings. A few months ago, we met with a customer of ours in United States, the New York State Utility. Their asset manager was, desperate, because they could not find, they could not source all the cable they needed to connect or satisfy the growing demand of electricity for their customers. You know what is going on? There is a new law in, you know, New York State.
This is called Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which bans new fossil fuel connection for buildings under seven stories from 2024, and for buildings greater than seven stories from 2027. These buildings are gonna be electrified, meaning that cables are gonna be laid as opposed to gas pipes. This change is prompting a significant demand increase in the space. Data center also expanding their needs and of electricity. 5G mobile rollout is also a significant example of a relevant increase in electricity demand for the electrification of the digital infrastructure. All these changes are prompting a wider spectrum of cables and more specialized cabling solution to meet all the differentiated applications that this world is gonna need. You will see soon why this is very relevant to our space. Let's now talk to the power grid enhancement.
We talk about the generation, and we talk about the electricity demand increase. Now, we need something to connect generation to application, and this is the role of the power grid. The role of power grid is becoming even more crucial, because not only has the grid to connect, application to generation, transmit and distribute more electricity and satisfy growing demand from the consumption, it has also to deal with intermittent electricity. This is what you get with renewable sources, not a stable flow of electricity. It has also to allow bidirectional flow, so in the grid, the energy has to flow from the generation to consumption, from the consumption to the grid. Because, you know, the solar panels on top of buildings are gonna feed some excess electricity into the grid from the consumption side.
T he annual investment in power grid are bound to double by 2030, and to triple by 2050. The grid is today made of 80 million kilometers. It's gonna go beyond 160 million kilometers by 2050. Y ou know, you might not remember. You know when the first electricity has been generated? Don't worry, I didn't remember myself. I had to look it up. It was in 1831, when the first electricity was generated. I t has taken almost 200 years to lay 80 million kilometers worth of cables. Now, we're gonna do the same amount of activity in less than 30. T his massive expansion of the grid require safer cable, more resilient cable, but more sustainable cables.
Because you might probably don't know this, but the vast majority of the CO2 emissions associated with cables in operations belong to the power grid space due to the larger size of the grid and due to the fact that not all the energy flowing in this grid is renewable. I n this space is where primarily customer needs sustainable solution. Finally, the digital transformation. Data boom is fueling a significant investment in network, in optical networks, and in digital infrastructure, which in turn creates more demand for electricity. The optical cable demand will increase by a factor of two as premises move to fibers, data center and 5G are deployed. We also see an emerging trend in this telecom space. W e see how innovation and sustainability also becoming relevant for telecom.
Low carbon footprint emission, avoided emission, and all the rest. Y ou've seen how solid the drivers are behind each one of the market trends and how much these four market trends are intertwined. Renewable energy puts additional load on the power grid, increased demand on electricity creates more need of electricity distribution, and requires more greener generation. Optical transformation requires more optical cables and power cables. This is why we consider ourself the company best positioned to leverage these market trends, because we are the sole player. We're the sole player with a leading role across all the four market trends. I have one more thing to tell you about the four market trends. This is the energy convergence, the energy and telecom convergence.
I told you before that cables have to be smarter to deal with the complexity of the new grid, so cable has to have something they haven't had before. They need to have a digitalized solution. They need to have systems whereby the power cable is coupled with the fiber, used as sensor to monitor the power flow, to enhance the cable performances. T his is what we mean by convergence. Why is it relevant to us? Because we are the only one with a strong position in both sector, energy and telecom. W e often receive, from you guys, the question as to: what is the role of telecom in our portfolio? Why do we keep it? I think now you can see why we keep it. You also might wonder why have we decided today to disclose our strategy?
You've seen that the market is dramatically changing, and thanks to our leading position, our unparalleled portfolio, and our unique customer reach that we gained through the past M&As, we are now more prepared than ever to seize the market opportunity. We are now leading the energy and digital transformation more effectively than anyone else. But however, we haven't got here by chance. I cannot exactly say that that we've known from the very beginning of our journey back in 2005, that one day we would face such a market dynamics. But what I can tell you that from the start, we had clear visions. We had clear ideas. We wanted to grow this company. We want to expand our footprint. We want to grow our portfolio and our customer base and become the market leader.
We knew from the start that one day we would capitalize on the strengths. This day has now arrived. Connect to Lead, the name of our strategy, sets the end of the first part of our successful journey, but marks the start of new pathways to greater growth. What does our strategy consist of? Connect to Lead is based on four pillars, which are key to addressing the market dynamics and seizing the growth opportunity. First of all, strong cash flow generation, a balanced and innovative product portfolio, unique capabilities of people and knowledge, and the new business segmentation. I look forward to sharing more with you on each one of these pillars of the strategy. Strong cash flow generation, it is key to providing value to our shareholders and is key to supporting our organic growth, our plan.
W e continue, we are expanding our capacity, we're expanding our capabilities to continue serving our customer in the best possible way and to keep pace with the market growth. We are moving from EUR 300 million CapEx over the last 5 years, to almost doubling this value to EUR 540 million over the next five years. You might wonder whether have we, have we taken all precautions to guarantee that there are positive and reliable investment return for this large program? I think so. I think so because we select carefully where to invest our money based on solid business cases. A solid business case for us means two things: that there are reliable drivers for growth in each of the segment where we want to expand capacity, and more importantly, that there are tangible customer commitment. B y tangible, we mean money.
We mean advanced payment or capacity booking fee that give us the confidence the customer will buy the volume, that our capacity will provide to them at one point. Secondly, because we are executing this larger program of investment with the usual discipline and cost rigor that has distinguished this company over the last 20 years. This to avoid the cost overrun, and to guarantee the proper time to market. You heard me speaking about the market trends. You see in this slide how beautifully our product range overlaps with all the four market trends. In each of the markets, we have a product or a solution, a system suited to capture—to best capture the market growth of that market.
I t has taken many years of concerted effort to build this unique and broader and unparalleled portfolio, but it was worth it, as the benefit are clear. Our portfolio also reflects the strong focus for innovation. I should be calling it obsession for innovation. This is not the normal innovation, what we're talking about here, not the ones only aimed at enhancing the electrical cable performance. It's a new innovation. It is working on the enhancement, improvement of cable performance while we move towards sustainable solution. Because we want to help our customer to decarbonize the grid. We want to help them achieve their sustainability goals. We want to lead sustainability throughout the whole value chain of this industry. We prepared four clips for you to see some of the distinct innovation in each one of these market trends.
I think you appreciated how truly breakthrough these innovations are. Let me now move to the key pillar of our strategy, the people value. I know that many companies talk about the strategic value of people in their organization, but we walk the talk. We really consider people central to our strategy, and I give you an example. When, in 2018, I moved to the role of CEO, North America, to lead the post-merger integration after the General Cable closing, my primary goal there was to preserve the values of General Cable, the asset, the knowledge, and the people. T o this end, we haven't simply conducted a normal integration by imposing Prysmian procedures, processes, capabilities, and people to the General Cable organization.
We effectively created a third entity, a third company, where we merged the best capabilities, the best asset, the best values, the best people of the two legacy companies. With this inclusive approach, not only did we retain key professional, key engineers, key people of the General Cable organization, we also protected our revenue of the combined entity. We also preserved our customer base. Soon after, leveraging on the strength, we quickly gained momentum in the market, and we became the leader that we are now in North America. This is what an inclusive M&A means to us. That's why today, we are proud to say that two-thirds of our people came through the past M&As. Not just the people, the people, the asset, the knowledge, the capabilities, and this is where the value of this company lies.
W e continue to invest in our people with new programs to make them feel, engaged and included, in the company. O ur special focus on people safety at work is a great and tangible example of how much we care for people. Let me now move to the fourth pillar of the strategy: the segmentation, the new segmentation. Our structure will move from three segments of business to four segments of business, which are exactly mirroring the market trends. Renewable transmission, power grid, electrification, and digital solutions. We are very excited about this strategy, about this segmentation, because it drives more focus of this organization towards the market, towards the market trends. It help us enhance the effectiveness of our go-to-market. It also provide you-- It provides you more visibility of how we play in each one of these segment of business.
This is what the new segmentation consists of. Renewable transmission is made of submarine power and land HVDC. Power grid consists of HVAC and power distribution with overhead lines. Electrification is made of industrial and construction business unit, previously named T&I, and also specialties business unit, formerly reported into an industrial and network component space. Digital solution is fully overlapped with the current telecom segment. We presented the fourth segment as separate entities, but we recognize sizable synergies, remarkable synergies across the four segments. The most obvious one is the one-stop shop. Customers like buying the whole range of product they need from one supplier. In North America, you see, we serve large distributors with all spectrum of products, from telecom solution, industrial and construction, and specialty products.
While in Europe, for example, we serve utilities and transmission system operator with both high voltage and transmission line and power grid solutions. We also benefiting from the solution provider opportunity, so combined solution, energy, and telecom, as I mentioned to you before, from operational efficiency, which help us enhance the profitability to individual segment by sharing a common cost structure. But more importantly, it provides us the market edging opportunity. The four segments, coupled with a differentiated geographical base, provides us with a great setup. A great setup to help us temper the cyclicality of the individual segment. Y ou heard me talking about the market trends, you heard me talking about the strategy. Now we move on to the individual strategy of each segment of business, so that you can see how all come together. Let me start with renewable transmission.
Here we serve the wind offshore submarine market, the submarine interconnectors market, and the land interconnectors market. These markets are exploding. They used to average EUR 2 billion worth of order award per year. Now, this level has surged to more than EUR 15 billion per year. On top of the ordinary market, the one represented by individual standalone project, in the chart at the bottom, I reported the frame agreements. I know that you heard a lot about the frame agreements. What are they? They are bundle of project awarded at once. I have reported them according to the years of production, not to the years of award, so when the production is going to take place for these projects in frame agreement contract, to provide you with a more accurate and balanced representation of the market evolution.
You see that the market is edging towards EUR 20 billion, which is 10 times what it used to be. Our strategy here is, pretty simple and straightforward. We are the market leader. We own 35%- 40% of this market. We are determined to remain market leader. Finito. What are we going to leverage, to achieve this strategy? The technological leadership, because the technological leadership is a key when combined with a consistent track record, to remain market leader, to remain a market leader. Then we leverage our large portfolio of projects in hand. It is now as large as EUR 20 billion. With this, we gain, great visibility of the revenues of this company over the next five years. In fact, 90% of the revenue of the our five-year plan are covered by projects in hand.
It also help us be much more selective in chasing new order intake. We can chase a reliable customer. We prefer TSOs, as you know, we tend to stay away from developers. We can also chase a higher contribution margin profit, contribution margin project, sorry. What is EUR 20 billion is, is made of? There are EUR 9.7 billion of the usual backlogs, so projects with a notice to proceed in hand, and there are EUR 10.3 billion of projects that are awaiting the notice to proceed, but they, they are supported by what I called before, tangible customer commitments. A dvanced payment and capacity booking fees. I know that you had recently growing concern about the offshore space because the cost inflations, the cost of capital are postponing, kind of postponing or delaying some of the projects, but this concern only belongs to the developers.
If you see from the pie in the center of the slide, we are hardly depending on developers. Only EUR 2.4 billion, so our EUR 20 billion project portfolio is with developers, and only EUR 400 million is for offshore projects with developers. Y ou should consider, as we do, this portfolio very solid. We also had to leverage on our operational excellence. You know that we failed once with Western Link, but we failed only once. Because we at Prysmian learn from our mistakes, and through this experience, we learn how to become more effective, how to preempt this problem through more robust and sizable production trials when it comes to launching a brand-new technology into the market. T hanks to this experience, we came out stronger than before, and we actually strengthened our reputation in the market because ultimately we delivered the project.
We also doubled down on capacity. We are investing in manufacturing capacity and in installation capacity, and I'm sure that you don't know this, but you already own six units, six vessels, and this is unique in the cable industry. I n few years, two years, these six units will grow to nine—no, no nine, eight . Don't exaggerate. Eight units. We're also doubling down on the organization. We are increasing the size of the business, we are increasing the number of people, tackling the challenging, the scale, and the complexity of this growing business. T he orders are in hand, the capacity expansion is undergoing, the organization is strengthening as we speak. Now, we have to execute.
The people commitment and passion that I mentioned to you at the beginning of my speech is what makes me comfortable or confident that we are going to achieve the EUR 600 million target for this business by 2027, coming from EUR 220 million last year. Power Grid. The segment is composed by two business unit, high voltage, terrestrial, AC, and power distribution with overhead lines. Also, here, the market is growing fast, and customer are rushing to secure cable availability. Customer are also becoming more sensitive to sustainable solution because of what I told you, I told you before, this is the space where most of the CO2 emission are generated. We are leading this transition.
When a few months ago, a European utilities issued a new tender for volume of 23- 27, with stringent sustainability requirements, whereby 90% of the volume of the tender was supposed to be coming from products with low carbon footprint and high recycled material, we had already the products available. This was not the case for some others. Our strategy consists in growing our market share, which is already averaging between 40% to 50%, depending on the different geographies, and to position us as solution provider. To achieve this, we leverage our innovation capabilities, not only on the electrical side, but on the sustainability performance. P-Laser, E3X, Alesea are great examples of how we lead sustainability through the value chain. E3X, I look at Serena. E3X is a fantastic product. We inherited it from General Cable, thanks to our inclusive approach.
We develop it together. We turn it into an industrial product that now generates sizable revenues. And by the way, this year it has won the Oscars of innovation in the United States, the Gold Edison Award. We also capitalize on our stronger leadership, stronger leadership in terms of customer relationship. We build this valuable customer relationship, thanks to our technological leadership, but more importantly, thanks to our consistent service level. What does customer matters the most? Short lead time and security of supply. With our global footprint, we often provide a product to our customer, thanks to our double plant, dual plant setup. In case one plant fails, the other backs it up. We also continue our journey towards a sustainable grid monitoring provider, a solution provider, leveraging the PRY-CAM products offering, and we are gaining traction in this space also.
In North America, for example, we launched a few years ago, a package made of cable, plus monitoring devices, plus extended warranty. We call it advanced plus whatever cables, and this is gaining traction in the market, as we speak. By expanding capacity selectively, looking also always at tangible customer commitment, here we're gonna grow the company EBITDA in this segment from EUR 200 million last year to EUR 410 million by 2027. Electrification. Here we serve two markets: the industrial, construction, and data center space with our industrial and construction business unit. The renewable and OEMs space with our specialties business unit. The surge in electrification demand, by a factor of two by 2050, prompt this market towards a more radical and faster transformation, as you see from the KPIs at the bottom of the slide.
Here, the distinctive value of our market leadership lies in the broad, unique, and comprehensive product portfolio that we have. We play in all sectors, defense, aerospace, railway, crane, and mining, and industrial building, commercial buildings. We are a fully fledged player here, and that's why we hate it when someone underplays our capability by calling us a generalist. You know who we are referring to. W e also want to provide you some more insight into the industrial and construction space. We are limitedly or marginally exposed to residential space, as you see from the chart. In EMEA, our exposure to residential is of 35% of our revenue, while the rest is not residential. In North America, we are hardly present in the residential space with only 5% of our revenues.
All the rest enjoy the great drivers of growth that this industrial space consists of: data centers, industrial and reshoring activity, investment in infrastructure, in renewable, in commercial institutional buildings. T hat's why we consider solid the prospect of future for this business unit. O ur strategy consists in remaining leader in this market space and leveraging market growth. In order to achieve this strategy, we want to continue leveraging our global footprint and provide customer with a fast and efficient service level. Because in this space, the service level is the only drivers for profitability, for profitability improvement. You know this very well because you remember what happened to our T&I business last year in North America, when the result surged to an unprecedented level.
The supply chain was disrupted by shortage of material, lack of labor, all sorts of manufacturing constraints. We could leverage, we leverage our global footprint, our global sourcing capability, and provided customer with a, not an impeccable service level, but with a service level shorter than that of our competitors. W e outstripped the competitors. We drove the price up in the market, and we enjoyed and leveraged a profitability improvement. We also continue deploying our Eco Cable brand for sustainable product across all geographies, and customer becoming more and more available to consider price improvement, to recognize, their need for low-carbon footprint products. Here, we target EUR 700 million EBITDA, which we recognize is a slightly lower number than what we reported last year, close to EUR 800 million, but simply because we have, factor in some price normalization of the T&I space in North America.
Let's have a look at the digital solution. It consists of two businesses, optical cables and multimedia cables, and we serve four markets: fixed networks, with fiber to the home and long-haul, mobile networks, data center, and IoT. Across all these four markets, what are we noticing? We're noticing a continuous growth in demand for high-quality cables, for high-performing cables, because the challenging, represented by the data boom, are really significant in this space. Our strategy implies that we remain market leader in the optical space, and we enhance our right to win in the data center and IoT space. To support the strategy, we leverage our unique fibers portfolio in our innovative cable solution. The Sirocco cable I mentioned to you in the clip, and FlexRibbon are the most fiber compact cables in the world.
We provide a customer in data center, hyperscale space, with a FlexRibbon with 6,912 fiber. And the cable is not that large, it's that small. Because can you imagine how many data we can transfer with the 6,912 fibers in one cable? We're also leveraging the one-stop-shop opportunity and the convergence between energy and telecom, and also we are strengthening relationship with new alternative network operators and the new entrants, the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft. Here we are moving from EUR 270 million in 2022 to EUR 290 million by 2027, after suffering some significant slowdown of the market in 2023, for sure, and possibly for few months, couple of quarters in 2024.
Y ou have heard now how we forged our business to best capture the market opportunity, a nd what the key drivers are for profit enhancement in each one of the individual segments. B y executing our strategy by segment, and by leveraging on the pillars of our strategy, so the stronger cash flow generation, the balanced and unique portfolio, the people value, and the segmentation, we will drive the company EBITDA from EUR 1.5 billion last year to EUR 2 billion by 2027. I can assure you, we will pursue, we will chase this goal with the usual commitment and determination that we always displayed in the last 20 years. Y ou heard throughout my presentation how sustainability is also key, essential to supporting our strategy. L et me invite now Cristina on stage. She will tell you more about our approach to impactful sustainability.
Thank you.
We are Prysmian Group. At the forefront of the world's cable industry, we support the development of greener and smarter power grids and digital infrastructures, creating sustainable growth and value for our shareholders and stakeholders. We are committed to promoting the development of our employees to create a more equal and inclusive working environment. Making a positive impact on local communities across the world. Developing the best cable technology to bring energy and communications to every community.
Thank you very much, Massimo, and hello again, everyone. As anticipated, I'd like to share with you why sustainability is important for Prysmian, and why we see it as a driver for value creation. Sustainability has always been integrated in Prysmian's strategy since the beginning of our journey, at times when I'm sure many of you will remember, there was nowhere close the focus, the interest, or the scrutiny compared to what we see today. Do you know when Prysmian installed the first fully recyclable medium voltage cable? Would you believe it was 2006, a year before our IPO, and it was our patented technology, P-Laser Medium Voltage. Or did you know that by 2010, a year before the acquisition of Draka, before becoming a full public company, Prysmian had produced 3,000 kilometers of fully recyclable medium voltage cables to serve the Italian grid?
As a proof point that sustainability has always been integrated in our business, and the very end of life of our products, a key priority for us. Over the last almost 20 years, we have worked hard to apply a 360 approach to sustainability, mixing the business perspective with the corporate, the organization, the culture, the compliance, always making sure we were robust, reliable, measurable, and humble. Always making sure we were Prysmian. As leader in our sector, we always felt, and we feel, the responsibility to promote initiatives and to drive improvement across the value chain, and now also beyond the value chain. We have been among the very first company to issue a standalone sustainability report. In 2013, we launched our employee equity program, YES. ESG KPIs have been integrated into the remuneration since 2018.
In 2020, sustainability has been introduced in the board skill matrix as a key competence for a Prysmian board member. The same year, we established the Board Sustainability Committee. In 2021, we received the Science Based Targets initiative validation for our climate change ambition, and we launched our social ambition 2030. In 2022, we launched our BE IN program to allow shop floor workers to be shareholders of the company. In 2023, we published our first integrated report. In the meantime, we kept innovating our products: P-Laser, medium voltage and high voltage, Eco Cable, E3X Robot, PID, Alesea, [LSPDS], and I could continue. It's important to know that throughout this process, we have not been alone. We embarked on this journey together with our customers, investors, colleagues, and we want to thank you all for that.
Because engaging with our stakeholders has allowed Prysmian to meet customer needs, to align with investors, with your expectations, and to attract and retain talent. We are not stopping here. The journey continues. We have worked hard to guarantee a diverse shareholding structure. As Valerio mentioned, unlike all other Italian companies, we are fully public, with no reference or controlling shareholders. All investors have the same value and the same right in Prysmian, being them institutional investors or employees of the company. Prysmian share capital is in the hands of hundreds, almost 400 institutional investors. 10,000 Prysmian employees are shareholders of the company. The top management are shareholders of the company. This is, of course, a strong guarantee of interest alignment, but also of the highest level of transparency, accountability, and focus on best practice.
Also, in terms of geographical composition, we are pretty diverse, with over 40 countries represented in our share capital. Last but not least, we are proud that our investor base strongly supports our drive towards sustainability. Nearly 50% of our shareholders prioritize or integrate ESG KPIs in their investment decision, and they see Prysmian as a company that can play an impactful role in the energy transition. To be impactful, sustainability is essential. We think sustainability is essential to keep our leader position and also to allow our customers to be leaders in their own space. This is the reason why at Prysmian, we believe in sustain to lead. To sustain to lead in Prysmian, sustainability is not only environmental, social, and governance, but rather environmental, social, innovation, with governance overseeing all the other dimensions to guarantee transparency and rigor.
Coming to the environmental dimension, you know very well how serious we are about climate change, and that we have been the first cable maker to receive the Science Based Targets initiative validation for our climate change ambition in 2021, and we also upgraded our target this year. We are committed to decarbonize 90% of our Scope 1 and Scope 2, so 108 plants and 26 R&D centers by 2035, being aligned with the 1.5 degree trajectory. We will be net zero, so decarbonizing 90% of Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 by 2050, being aligned with the well below two- degree trajectory. At the end of 2022, we already decarbonized 28% of our Scope 1 and Scope 2 versus our baseline, which is 2019.
We are pretty ahead of schedule, if you think that we should be - 47% by 2030. One of the main reason of our result is our innovation approach. As Massimo was saying, we are obsessed with innovation, to the point that we bring it also to our decarbonization journey. We are the only company in our space to have removed SF6 gas from our own operations. For those of you who are less familiar with SF6 gas, this is a very bad gas which is producing during the testing of the underground voltage cables. Thanks to the support of the board of directors, who is with us today in the room, we are devoting up to EUR 100 million CapEx by 2030 to decarbonize our own operations, and of course, to support the overall circular economy framework.
Our responsibility goes beyond our footprint, beyond Scope 1 and Scope 2, and we want to make sure that we help our customers to decarbonize their operations. Scope 3, which are, of course, Scope 2 emissions for our customers. Also, to support our customers to decarbonize their own operations, we launched our Design for Sustainability framework, according to which we want to introduce new thinner, faster, lighter, greener products with enhanced sustainability performance. The Design for Sustainability neatly complements the Design for Performance to make sure that we serve our customers with the best performing and the most sustainable solutions. P-Laser Medium Voltage and High Voltage is a technology which came out from the Design for Sustainability, or Eco Cable.
Eco Cable is the first green label in our space that we put on products that fulfills six very strict and environmental-friendly criteria, like the recyclability of the cable, the recycled content, the transmission efficiency. We are proud to share with you that very recently, a couple of weeks ago, the Eco Cable label received the Bureau Veritas certification as a further confirmation of our rigorous approach and willingness to set standards. We want to go beyond. We want to go beyond Scope 3 and to tackle Scope 4, the avoided emission. As of today, 30% of Prysmian revenues come from products with enhanced sustainability performance, which is a confirmation that not only is it the right things to do, but also there is strong demand of these products from our customers.
This is possible thanks to our open innovation approach, our obsession with innovation. Thanks to our open innovation approach, we collaborate with our customers, with world-leading universities, industrial players, think tank, to develop innovations that can pave the way to the industry decarbonization through Scope 3 reduction and, more broadly, Scope 4. For those of you who are new to the topic, while Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 are emissions connected to your footprint and your products, so the focus is on reducing them. Scope 4 emissions are emissions that you can, in principle, avoid through your innovation, but whose impact goes beyond the value chain and beyond the life cycle of your products. Few example: E3X Robot. E3X Robot, it increases the voltage of the cables, so it reduces the need for additional lines to be installed.
Actually, it serves both Scope 3 reduction and Scope 4. Sirocco Extreme. Sirocco Extreme, it reduces the overall environmental footprint of the optical network, and it reduces the emissions connected to the excavation work, to the installation. Alesea. Alesea is a very nice device that you put on the drums of the cable, and it detects in real time the location of the drums and the cables remaining on the drums, so it reduces at minimum scrap and waste. Our Airguard solution, which is an insulation technology we inherited from General Cable, which allows cables to be buried in trenches that are less wide and less deep. I t avoids, it reduces the emissions coming from the transportation of sands or other special materials.
Or we developed a sensorized network component called LSPDS, which detects the voltage and the partial discharge of the cables, so it avoids, it reduces the emissions coming from the manual interventions for maintenance. Or we are developing the megawatt charger solution, the fast-charging solutions for electric vehicles, which of course reduces the overall usage of the fossil fuels. These are few examples of Design for Sustainability in practice. A s Massimo anticipated, we do believe that innovation and sustainability are equal. Working environment is essential for the success of the company. A lso for this reason, in 2021, we launched our social ambition, setting a broad range of KPIs in these areas to be achieved by 2030.
Thanks to our strong focus on execution and strong commitment, we are now in a position to bring forward some of these KPIs originally set for 2030 to 2027. At the end of 2022, 10,000 of Prysmian employees were shareholders of the company, thanks to program like YES, which celebrates the 10th anniversary this year, or BE IN, which allows shop floor workers to be shareholders of the company. Thanks to the strong willingness to participate to this program, we are now proud that we can bring forward our goal, our ambition to have 50% of Prysmian employees shareholder of the company by 2027. We know we are pretty unique also from this perspective, and we want to thank all our colleagues for their strong motivation and willingness to contribute to Prysmian value creation.
In 2021, we set the target of hiring, promoting, developing 500 women in STEM position by 2030, with the overall aim, of course, of creating and nurturing the pipeline of the future leaders of our company. A lso on this target, we are ahead of schedule, and we feel confident to be able to achieve this target by 2027. We believe very much also investing in our people, and for this reason, we are increasing the targets of the training hours per year per employee to 37 from the current 29. This will be possible thanks to our Prysmian Academy, which has already provided 800,000 hours of training to all the employees of the group, all levels.
It will be possible also thanks to the Sustainability Academy that we launched last year, with the overall aim of providing know-how, awareness, competence to all people of our group. We think you cannot be a leader of Prysmian without a strong know-how in sustainability, to the point that we are making some of these courses mandatory, and then, of course, not to mention the non-mandatory training on safety. Also in the social dimension, we want to go beyond. We want to go beyond our business, beyond our value chain, and we want, w e feel the responsibility to return back to the communities where we do operate, while expecting no benefit in return. We feel the responsibility of promoting and nurturing the talent of talented people coming from underprivileged communities, with a special focus on STEM areas.
By 2027, Prysmian will support the education of over 400 women and young girls, and over 1,400 children coming from underprivileged communities, with a focus in, on STEM areas. These projects are already underway: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Oman, the Netherlands. Many of my colleagues are mentoring these students, with the overall aim of giving them opportunities, life-changing opportunities, that most likely they would not have had otherwise. Of course, it's important to share what you do, the spirit of what you do, but we also think it's important to set targets and to track your performance against these targets. At Prysmian, we believe in the relevance of measuring what you do. If it's not measured, if it's not a number, it's not really done. You know Prysmian.
At the same time, it's always very easy to set long-term targets where very few of us will be around to answer for it. F or this reason, we apply to ESG KPIs the same discipline, the same rigor that we apply to the business and to the financial KPIs, and we are setting short and midterm targets: 2023, 2025, 2027. I will not go through the full list of the KPIs you see in the scorecard. You will have plenty of time to go through them offline, and then, of course, I will be more than available to discuss with you them at your best convenience. My main message here is, the list you see here are the KPIs associated with action that we are putting in place to make sure that we can generate impact inside and outside our organization.
I appreciate we have been covering a lot of territory so far, and I do hope I've been able to share with you why we are so passionate about sustainability and why we see it as a driver of value creation. As promised, allow me now to welcome to the stage our Group CFO, Pier Francesco Facchini, who will present our midterm strategy and main financial KPIs. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Cristina, and also from my side, a warm welcome to you all. I'm very happy to be here with you today, and I'm really very proud of the incredible journey that Prysmian made over the last decade. A journey which deeply changed our company. As you see here, not only multiplying our sales by almost four, but even more importantly, deeply impacting our geographical footprint, as Valerio anticipated. Y ou see the kind of growth we had, in particular in North America, by a factor of 13 times in revenue, mainly as a result of General Cable acquisition. This much more global geographic footprint entails two very important advantages.
The first one, it exposes us to the multiple macroeconomic drivers and cycles of the different region, and this, in the end, means more earning stability and more resiliency of our earnings, and a lower operational risk in the end. But even more importantly now, it positions us to take advantage much better of the opportunities coming from the four large market drivers that Massimo has described, which play a very important part, both in Europe and in North America. Think, for instance, of the massive growth expected in power grid investments in North America, other than Europe, of course. Let's move from our past journey to the future, to the business reshape, to the business resegmentation. Massimo said this is a key element in our strategy.
First of all, with it, we will adopt a reporting granularity, which is much better connected with the four large market drivers, and this, of course, will allow us to explain our equity story in a much more clearer way. Even more importantly, the new business segmentation will perfectly mirror the four large end markets and market drivers, and as such, will even sharpen our focus to capture the opportunities out of these market drivers, out of these strong market trends. In numbers, taking 2022 sales as a baseline: Renewable transmission, EUR 1.6 billion, 2022 sales. Power grid, EUR 3.6 billion sales.
Electrification, the largest one, close to EUR 9 billion sales, made of two very important parts: the industrial and construction business, formerly T&I, with a total sales of EUR 5.3 billion, and secondly, specialties, formerly in industrial and network components, with total sales of EUR 3.7 billion, composing the electrification for EUR 9 billion. Last but not least, digital solution, overlapping with the current telecom business, with a sales of EUR 1.9 billion. This is only the 2022 baseline, which we necessarily restated to provide a baseline for our five-year plan. Let's keep in mind that the new segmentation will become effective since January 2024.
W e close 2023 with the current old segments, and since 2024, we will adopt this new segmentation, providing, of course, all the restatements of the prior years. T his is how it looks in terms of EBITDA breakdown, always on a 2022 baseline. Renewable transmission, EUR 220 million EBITDA, 13.5% margin. Power grid, EUR 200 million EBITDA, 5.6% EBITDA margin. Electrification, close to EUR 800 million EBITDA, 8.9% margin. F inally, digital solutions, EUR 271 million, 14.5% EBITDA margin. Let me highlight here that these new segments, versus the old ones, are much more homogeneous in terms of the margins of the individual businesses included in each of them.
This is very important because will hopefully allow you, allow you to model and project our financials more easily. Let's now finally move to our financial targets. You see in this slide our adjusted EBITDA targets on the left and our sales organic growth target on the right. Adjusted EBITDA ambition is set at EUR 2 billion in 2027, as Massimo anticipated, with an intermediate target in 2025 at EUR 1,775 million ± 75 million. I n a nutshell, we expect to grow our EBITDA from 2022 by over EUR 500 million, with the first important step change by 2025, EUR 300 million, basically, and a further step over EUR 200 million in years 2026 and 2027.
It's very important to stress here that these EBITDA targets are purely organic. There is no acquisition contribution included in this, and are also based on a substantially stable assumption in terms of U.S. dollar to euro exchange rate at 1.08. On the right part of the chart, sales organic growth. You see quite clearly that our organic growth is expected to be very much differentiated segment by segment. We will certainly pursue a high double-digit growth in renewable transition, and this on the back of the EUR 20 billion orders in hand that Massimo mentioned, and that we will execute over the coming years. We expect to reach a mid-single-digit growth in power grid, responding to the opportunities coming from grid enhancement in U.S. and in Europe. We target a low single-digit growth in electrification as a result of two opposite effects.
On one side, the price, the ongoing price normalization in industrial and construction North America, we assume to continue to the end of 2024. On the positive side, the strong sales growth in the strong market applications of industrial and construction, namely solar, data centers, and industrial construction, and also from the specialties space, in particular, renewable and OEM. Finally, digital solutions. We expect a low single-digit growth, but let's be careful here. If we move the base year from 2022 to 2023, this growth actually becomes at least a mid-single digit growth. Because, as you know, this year, 2023, we are suffering from some drop in the telecom space, mainly related with the weakness of the American market. T his is how our EBITDA growth looks in terms of segment breakdown.
The largest contributor to our EBITDA growth is definitely renewable transmission, with an EBITDA almost tripling from EUR 220 million in 2022 to EUR 600 million in 2027, and EBITDA margin reaching 16.5% in 2027, with already a very significant leap in 2025, up to 16%. The name of the game here is execution. Twofold. First of all, a flawless execution of the EUR 20 billion orders in hand. Secondly, an effective and timely execution of our capacity expansion, both manufacturing capacity and installation capacity. The second-largest contributor to our EBITDA growth is certainly power grid, more than doubling EBITDA from EUR 200 million to EUR 410 million.
With a very significant step change and progress already in 2023, and margins rising already this year to a level of 10% on sales, from the much lower level of 2022. In the remaining years of the plan, starting from 2024 on, we will further leverage on volume growth coming from the strong market outlook, both in the U.S. and Europe, and progressively go to the EUR 410 million level of EBITDA. Electrification is the only segment where we may anticipate a drop of our EBITDA. As you see here, a net decrease of EUR 100 million, roughly. As I said, for sales, this is the result of two opposite trends.
On one side, the ongoing price normalization that we are seeing in North America industrial and construction, and that we assume to continue to the end of 2024, and which is having an impact from 2022 to 2025 of approximately EUR 200 million. On the positive side, the EBITDA growth coming from the volume increase in the strong market applications of I&C, of industrial and construction, as I said, solar, data centers, and industrial, and also from the specialty space. Digital solution. Ambition here is to recover a level of EBITDA at EUR 290 million, higher than the already strong 2022. This, if we move again the baseline to 2023, certainly means a very significant level of improvement.
I would say certainly close to a very high single-digit growth of our EBITDA based on 2023. Let's see now how our investment plan is supporting and will support our organic growth. We are indeed growing our investments, which are anticipated to amount for the five years from 2023 to 2027 to EUR 2.7 billion, increasing by 1.7 times compared to the prior five years. Let me say, first of all, that we are confident to stay within this number, within the EUR 2.7 billion, and we even included here a little safety cushion, which may allow us to potentially deal with higher than expected, potentially inflation. The lion's share of this investment pie is certainly taken by renewable transmission, close to EUR 1.8 billion. We have two very important parts here.
First of all, the manufacturing capacity expansion, both in our existing European plants and also in the U.S. greenfield. The second part, the expansion of our installation capacity. Of course, including the second installation vessel, the well-known and already announced, the Monna Lisa, but we also included here a third installation vessel to be able to perfectly align our installation capacity with the manufacturing capacity. L et me highlight, going back a second to the manufacturing capacity expansion, that both the expansion in the European existing plants and in the U.S. greenfield, are very important strategically.
But in terms of driving our financial results and our financial targets, let me clearly say that the expansion of the capacity in Europe definitely plays a much more significant role, for the simple reason that the ramp up of the U.S. capacity, of the greenfield U.S. capacity, is expected to come in the very final year of the plan, 2027. Let me finally come to the last very important chapter of our financial targets: free cash flow and return on capital employed. I hope that at this time of my presentation, I managed to pass you our confidence to be able to reach the EUR 2 billion EBITDA. For the same reason, we are also confident to be able to reach this new scale of free cash flow and return on capital employed.
As you see, free cash flow projected for 2027, up to EUR 1 billion, with a very significant increase in terms of EBITDA conversion into cash flow. From the current level of 35%-39% in 2023, up to close to 50% cash conversion. What is driving this cash flow projection? Obviously, the improvement in the EBITDA net of the related tax effect. We even included here a normalization of our CapEx level in 2027. You see here, EUR 430 million. Our investments will actually peak in 2024, and will also remain pretty high in 2025. The main reason is the execution of the investments in the two installation vessels that I was mentioning, which is a quite unprecedented fact, and that will remain also unprecedented for the, for the future.
This explains why the assumption to slightly decrease the level of CapEx in 2027 is an absolutely realistic assumption. Also, working capital is contributing quite positively to our cash generation. The main reason is the very strong renewable transmission market, meaning very large down payments from our customers, and of course, throughout the entire timeline. These large down payments are partly offset, partly balanced, by the acceleration of the execution of our orders in hand, particularly in the very, very final years of the plan. You see that working capital will flatten out pretty much in the final year of the plan. Also very important, return on capital employed. We set a target here, up to 28% pre-tax return on capital employed.
The main drivers are indeed the growth of return on capital employed in two segments: renewable transmission and power grid. That's important because once again, witness to the very high returns of the new investments that we are putting in renewable transmission. Let me also stress that this 28% really benchmarks us to the quite top class within the European capital goods. You saw that the strong cash generation is a key element of our five-year plan, totaling for the five years, EUR 3.2 billion, and consistently with the cash flow target that I have just presented. Exactly for this reason, we thought it was important to share with you our ideas in terms of capital allocation, where we plan to allocate this cash. Acquisitions will certainly play a role and will certainly be a focus of us.
Mainly bolt-on acquisitions, strengthening our position and improving our product portfolio in the high-growth businesses and high-growth geographies. At the same time, we plan to start a share buyback program, and the allocation taken by both acquisitions and share buyback program out of the EUR 3.2 billion generated cash, as you see here, will be in between 55%-60%. The split between acquisitions on one side and share buyback, will actually depend on the real and concrete opportunities that we will have in terms of acquisitions. V ery simply, the higher the acquisitions, the lower the share buyback, and vice versa. Keep in mind one thing, that the total number of treasury shares coming from the buyback will never exceed 10% of the total outstanding shares, for a simple matter of our articles of association.
This represents a cap in our share buyback. The second important part of this capital allocation is dividend. We expect, and we plan to progressively increase our total dividend by approximately 10% year-on-year, starting from 2024. This means an even higher increase in terms of dividend per share as a result of the share buyback. D ividend per share will certainly grow a little bit higher than 10% year-on-year. Last but not least, we plan to deleverage further 10% of the EUR 3.2 billion cash flow. Targeting a ratio in terms of net debt on EBITDA at 0.5x, and always willing to stay within a corridor between 0.5x and 1x for the entire timeline of the plan.
This is because we are very keen on the investment-grade rating that we recently acquired last March, and that we regard as a key strength, particularly now, particularly now in these certainly more difficult than before financial markets. Let me highlight two additional points. These financial targets, EBITDA, the related targets in terms of net income and of course, the capital allocation, and mainly the share buyback, means a expected growth of our earnings per share higher than 10% for the period from 2022 to 2027, CAGR, higher than 10% annual growth. A second very important point is that this capital allocation will be released progressively and in strict accordance with the real achievement of our plan. T here is no way that this capital allocation may end up unbalancing our financial structure. We will release it step by step.
Summing up our financial commitment to you. Adjusted EBITDA, up to EUR 2 billion. Free cash flow, up to EUR 1 billion. ROCE, up to 28%. Ambitious targets? Certainly ambitious, but also, in our view, very realistic target, because they are based, first of all, on a very strong and long visibility in the renewable transmission segment. They are also based on an assumption of the price normalization in North America, the ongoing one, to further continue to the end of 2024. L ast but not least, they are also based on quite reasonable assumptions that we have done in terms of volume growth versus particularly strong markets. I thank you very much for your attention, and I invite Massimo back to the stage.
Y ou've seen that we set a challenging ambition for our future, and we are firmly determined to meet our financial goals and our commitments, as we always do. This industry is definitely living a new time, a new life that we never had, this industry confronted with such a strong market growth in the last 20 years. You see, most of players are investing and expanding their capacity. We believe, we are convinced that we are the cable player best equipped to leverage the market growth. I tell you why: because everyone can invest and buy new equipment to expand their capacity and expand and seize the market opportunity.
But what they cannot, what they cannot buy, and what they cannot match, is our technological leadership that we earn through many years of, strong focus innovation. What they cannot match is our valuable customer partnerships that we've been nurturing over consistent track record over many years. What they cannot match is our unparalleled footprint and unique product breadth that we gained through the last, M&As. But more importantly, what they cannot match is the capabilities, the knowledge, and the values of our people. This is what set us apart, and I'm proud of this team. They all played a key role in making Prysmian the success it is today, and they're going to be crucial to the success of the future. I hope today we have been able to make you understand, make you appreciate, how unique this company is.
There is nobody like us in the market. We, as market leader, feel the challenge and the responsibility of the role. We have no one to follow. We're those who must drive the industry forward, and I'm passionate about leading this team along the new pathways of the future towards the new successes. Today, we set out our new strategy, which is meant to enable us to lead the energy transition and digital transformation. I'm very excited today to unveil the new logo, which we created to match this ambition, to reflect this ambition. Please, Valerio, if you want to join me on stage. Thank you, Valerio.
After many years, we are going to change the logo once more.
It's again the story of the age.
Yeah.
After a while, you need to replace something.
At Prysmian, we want to lead the energy transition and digital transformation, and we are evolving our brand to reflect this ambition. Through our knowledge, innovation, and reach, we connect people and businesses with the energy and information they need, pushing the boundaries of electrification and digitalization. Our cables are powering the circular economy, focusing on what matters most. Wherever you are, driving new energy and intelligence everywhere. Together, we can lead the shift to a more sustainable way of living. Together, we can navigate the way forward. Prysmian: the planet's pathway.
We hope that you enjoyed.
Thank you, all. We invite now Cristina and Francesco on stage, so we get ready for the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you. T hank you very much. You have been patiently listening to us so far. Now, it's the time for your questions and hopefully our answers. We will start taking questions from the room. If you want to ask questions, please do raise your hand, as Sean is doing, and patiently wait for the mic to come. From time to time, I will also be taking questions coming from the line. A s Valerio always says, "Who wants to shoot first?" T hen it's Sean.
Thank you so much for today. It's been tremendously helpful. I like the.. Well, there's this new split now, renewable transmission split between HVDC and HVAC, and I think it's clear that the backlog looks highly de-risked because of the very clear exposure to the transmission operators. I guess you're putting that risk now into the power grids. M aybe just talk through the overall, you know, how you see the risk exposure around this kind of more focused developer segment, if you like, and how we might think about potential delays around offshore wind, because the market seems to be worried about that.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sean.
I believe that, Massimo, the question is for you.
Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Sean. No, I think, as said, I think this trend to renewable energy is really relentless. We cannot think that because of some hiccups in the cost inflation or in the cost of capital, the whole journey, that I said is a long journey, driving us from where we are today to the whole electrification through renewable sources by 2050, is gonna be hindered by these hiccups. Of course, we had this inflation, sir, but as I said, that those inflation, the relevant cost of capital increase, is only affected, let me call it 10% of the markets. It's a tiny share of the market, the one that is gonna suffer from the inability to transfer the cost inflations and the resulting increased costs of this project into the market.
All the rest of the players, TSOs, utilities, are naturally, according to the existing, rules, transfer this to the end user. This poses, again, anyway, another question of: Who is gonna bear the cost of this sustainability journey? It's all of us. I think we have to accept that this is the needed cost for making the world more sustainable.
If I can, just a second question. Thank you also for the color around the residential versus non-residential exposure. What are you assuming, in fact, for European construction normalization?
We tell you a few numbers, even if you don't want, to be more specific. This surge in numbers, in price increase, started at the beginning of 2022, went through the end of 2022, and let's call it quarter one, 2023. We gain, through this inflationary market, and to the capability to best service our customer, some EUR 300 million worth of EBITDA in the industrial and construction space. What we are gonna see now that, for what has already happened in 2023, in terms of normalization, what we foresee will happen, we foresee, we don't have certainty. It could be going different direction. What we will see to happen in 2024, that we will probably consider some EUR 200 million of this overall price improvement.
This will not bring you, to give you another element or reference, the level of margin in the former T&I space in North America to what it used to be before all those inflation started. We will still be quite ahead of the previous level of margin.
I see Daniela and then Gigi. Th en after Gigi, we'll take Max Yates, which is connected online. Please, Daniela.
Thank you very much for hosting us again. I have two questions. One, you showed us how the divisional structure is gonna change. It's very clear how that maps to how you wanna, you know, spell your equity story. Can you talk about operationally, within the business, is there much change to do to go through this? Or are you effectively, this is how you were operating? That's my first question, and then I have a follow-up.
Thank you. Thank you.
I think the latter is the right answer. T his is not gonna change massively. Actually, well, it's not gonna change at all our organization in terms of how we operate on the field. Because we are just assembling the different pieces of individual business segment, the one underneath, the micro segment, in different cluster. PD was already run with a dedicated focus. High voltage AC was already run by a dedicated team. We're just reassigning some of these businesses to different segment. But this assignment is important because the leader of the fourth segment of business will drive a definitely a more structural and effective focus of the whole organization towards the market trends.
Very clear. Thank you. Very clear that you don't have a lot of exposure to developers, but obviously others might have bigger exposure, and they're adding capacity, as you've mentioned. Can you talk about sort of how do you de-r isk for those potential one or two years, if there are delays in, in wind? What's the flexibility on your CapEx program, or is it all set in stone, you've made commitments to spend the cash?
We have flexibility, although we don't plan, we don't envisage to change our expansion projects. We are expanding capacity in many plants in Finland, some are in Arco Felice here, in France for HVDC, in Abbeville, in North America. We are building a new factory in North America. This is probably the most sensitive element of expansion. Are we gonna continue with our expansion in North America? The answer is yes. It's yes, because we are not exposed to it. We think that the market is large enough that even if we were to suffer from some offshore business delays, which, by the way, we barely have in our portfolio, we will have other replacing opportunity to justify the investment in North America. The market in North America is still be growing. It's still not a market yet.
It's account for 15% of the total market, and it's probably more unstable than European market, which is much more mature, but I think they will get there. They will get it because the sustainability, we notice a sensitiveness and a lot of tension, a lot of focus on sustainability in the power grid space in North America. I nevitably, this is the strong focus of the country. T he renewable sources, the offshore winds or solar park, are happening, will be happening. N o changes to our plan, even if we have flexibility to change it.
Thank you.
I think there is Luigi de Bellis from Equita.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. I have some question on the transmission business. First of all, if you can elaborate on the order intake assumption on market share during the period. What is your view on pricing and saturation of the plants, both for the industry and Prysmian up to 2027? And if there are new technologies that can impact the pricing during the period. Thank you.
Thank you. The saturation of the plants of us, our competitors, or direct competitors, so namely Nexans and NKT, and I will also add some of the newcomers, like LS, is more or less overall booked through 2027. We have no spare capacity, and leveraging this large backlog, we can cover all the revenues up to 2027. Similar is happening, similar situation happening for other competitors. Probably more NKT in terms of saturation than Nexans, but more or less the order intake of 2024, which will happen next year, will be for project whose execution will be beyond the 2027. W e already have seen this, this year. Now, most of the frame agreements have a reserve capacity for execution that will happen in 2028, 2029, 2030.
Despite the large efforts of all of us in expanding our assets, our capacity, this saturation or this additional capacity is already pretty full. New technology, we don't envision new technology because we are still executing a technological shift. We were on the 320 kV technology until a few years ago, I should say two years ago. The last project on the 525 has been awarded early in 2022, so it will take at least six, seven, eight years for this technology to consolidate and to move forward. Also, we see that our proprietary technology on paper insulation technology, despite our expectation that one day this technology will be fading out, this is still resistant, it's still resilient, and many customers like this technology for the expansion of their networks, especially in the south of Mediterranean Sea.
I take a question from Max Yates, who is online. Ciao, Max. The EUR 600 million target for EBITDA for renewable transmission implies a meaningful step up in margins. Help us understand the step in from 13.5% to high teens here. Is this just pricing on new projects or something else?
That is the beauty of a market where there is a great imbalance between the capacity and supply. T he market now is in the end of the supplier. T he customer are desperate to secure capacity, and everyone is pricing projects at higher margin than before. We are now in a different situation than we used to be three, four years ago. We are executing our old backlog, the one that we landed before the inflation crept in. W e still have a couple of EUR billion of projects with old margin. But all the rest of these EUR 20 billion orders ended, namely EUR 18 billion, is with higher margin.
The answer is that the 16%+ EBITDA margin this business, coming from 13.5 today, is purely driven by high contribution margin projects and better mix of projects.
Massimo, let me add one comment.
Of course.
De facto, the market till 2030 is already blocked. Because the capacity of the players as of today, but cannot be changed in 2-3 years, is already booked. It's already booked with prices and expected margins. W hatever we are gonna think about the future, we have to think after 2030.
Right.
Okay, Monica. Here, Monica Bosio from Intesa Sanpaolo, a nd then I have another question online.
Thank you for the presentation, very helpful. I was wondering if, if we can discuss, the power grids. Do you see different speeds between U.S.A and Europe, and maybe different margins, if we can elaborate a little bit more on this side across the business plan? M y second question is on the M&A. You have been clear, both on acquisition, on the high growth segments, high growth regions. But are you planning any potential rationalizations in some areas, maybe in the industrial one? Sorry for the question.
No, a pleasure.
P ower distribution, give you more color about the profitability or the distinction between the two markets. All markets are growing in demand. Of course, North America remains unique in terms of profitability, in terms of discipline in the market, in terms of solidity of the drivers behind the market growth. First of all, because the grid is very obsolete in North America, as you see from the multiple outages that the grid has suffered in the last 20 years. Also, the overhead lines system is pretty old and aged, and there is a lot of pressure of the government towards utility to upgrade and enhance the performance of the overhead lines. In that sense, E3X is a great answer to this need. T his strong driver of demand in North America also generates a higher profitability in North America.
I cannot deny that in the North America space, the market has been driving significant demand. And when it drives significant demand, and the capacity are short, we have benefited from this pricing capability. Also in Europe, there are pockets of opportunities. In some customer, with some geographies, we have a nice profit. Overall, the profitability of European market is a few points lower than that of North America. Your second question was about the M&A, and of course, we. Our primary focus is on bolt-on M&A, which I think is difficult to distinguish what we mean by bolt-on M&A. We mean not large M&As. M&As whose goal is to strengthen our position somewhere, in the portfolio, in a geography or with in a specific market.
Then, of course, we will not discard opportunities to consolidate without running the risk of distracting us from the main goal of the strategy. The main goal of the strategy is organic growth. W e will never see a consolidation opportunity in the next five years of the size of the two that we conducted in the last ten years. First of all, because we don't think that there are sizable opportunity of M&A, and second, because, given the current scale and market share of this company in all geographies, we will immediately run into antitrust consideration here. T ransformational deal may be smaller size for sure. Focus is on organic growth and specific bolt-on acquisitions. No, rationalization?
No.
No, as I said, it could be, but at much smaller scale than what we conducted in the past.
I think there is, Akash Gupta. Before Akash, can I just take the question in queue online, which is about our copper strategy? What is your strategy regarding copper supply, since we expect to face a copper shortage in the coming year? T hen soon after, there will be Akash.
But this is a recurring theme in the analyst calls. With you guys and also with other companies, I don't think the market will suffer from any metal, aluminum, copper constraints. Because as we are expanding our capacity to meet the market opportunity, rod producers and miners, rod producers most of the time are vertically integrated in mines. They are also expanding their capacity to leverage the market growth. We cannot influence their decision. What we can do to protect ourselves and to possibly stem the risk coming from the shortage is to differentiate our supplier base. We have strong contracts, long-term supply agreement, with a dozen of rod, metal rod, copper rod suppliers.
All of them are vertically integrated, and so we think that with this wide supplier base, we can definitely withstand the possible risk coming from a shortage, which by the way, I would discount.
Now it's the turn of Akash Gupta from J.P. Morgan.
Yes. Hi, thank you. I have three, but maybe a clarification on what you said before. O n this North America, were you saying it's $300 million, maybe positive pricing one-off, and you expect $200 million of normalization in 2024? Is that right?
Yeah, we expect EUR 200 million normalization in prices in terms of EBITDA impact to the T&I or Industrial & Construction business in North America.
Thank you. T hen coming back to my questions, the first one I have is on portfolio. Again, I mean, we have seen some of your competitors have, not just acquired, but also looking to sell non-core. I f you look at your current scope, are there any businesses at maybe smaller or bigger in size, where you think that maybe someone else could be a better owner than what you have? Like, do we have any scope of divestments?
We mentioned before that we consider the electrification happening in the market as an additional driver for having a diversified portfolio to cover all the segments, because all segments are gonna benefit from this additional electrification and growing demand of cables. W hen we look at our electrification portfolio, we don't see products or segment which we might divest, because we don't recognize the value of this segment or project, this portion of the project in our portfolio. We are considering only one space, which I would like not to mention now, where we might consider to divest. It's a little portion of our portfolio, more because we believe that we don't have the focus to drive it, to drive the growth, than anything else.
We will assess in the next 2-3 months, and then we'll make a decision.
Then my second one is on your medium voltage growth, where you guided mid-single digit. I was a bit surprised because I thought this medium voltage market in the next five years could be growing more like high single digit or perhaps low double digit, because we not only have the replacement driver in the West, that the existing distribution grid can't cope with the new infrastructure, but then we also have new drivers like these small, mid-sized data centers that are popping up everywhere, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, et cetera. Maybe if you can say what you have embedded in that mid-single digit growth for medium voltage, and how much of that is price versus volume?
By the medium voltage, as I said, is the connection between renewable and the applications. We tend to underestimate the importance of the grid. We only focus on projects because everybody's attention is on submarine interconnectors and land HVDC. Once you have a high voltage electricity brought to a country or in a place to a country, we have to distribute it. That's why the size of the power grid is so huge, 80 million kilometers, I mentioned before. Looking ahead, the main driver for our EBITDA growth is the recovery of the profitability that we suffered in the last two years, in 2022, because this space is regulated by frame agreements. In contrast to what happened in T&I space, where we managed to price it up as inflation crept in.
In power distribution, we had to open negotiation on existing contracts, and those negotiations have been kind of.. not painful, but not easy to achieve because we were not entitled to price improvement. T his year, you will see the positive return, the positive outcome of this negotiation, with a significant growth in terms of EBITDA in the power distribution space. Then also, as I said, our ambition is to grow our market share. F rom now onwards, the growth that is not EUR 210 million, from EUR 200 million last year to EUR 410 million, but is lower, is basically reliant on pricing stability, because we have renegotiated everything we needed to renegotiate, because the level of price in this segment is already consistent with the cost.
The draw, the growth in this space is actually coming from the expansion of capacity that, luckily we launched two years ago, when all this was not yet known. Then we reinvigorated this capacity expansion recently with another wave of capacity expansion, which will come on stream in 2025. This second wave is backed by customer down payment, also in the power grid space. This is unique. Never have we seen down payment in the power grid space. Just to tell you, our customer are adamant at pursuing cable availability to support their electrification needs. You're right, data center is a data center. Electrical vehicle, think of a power station for electrical vehicles.
You don't need just the tower, you need a network underneath it to bring the power for the existing grid to the power station.
Thank you, and the final one is for Francesco. When I look at the cash flow bridge and assumption for working capital, you are getting significant this capacity reservation fee, and I expect this trend to probably sustain for next few years. W hen I look at the size of those capacity reservation fee, and then the size of positive working capital inflow that you have assumed in your calculation, which is more like EUR 50-70 million, compared to maybe we have triple-digit million of these capacity reservation fee. C an you maybe tell us about, are you going to keep this all fee, or does it trickle down to sub-suppliers as well, so they may also need to block or hedge something?
Yeah, I mean, how do you feel about working capital assumptions overall, in terms of, historically being conservative on that?
Yeah. Thank you, Akash. Now, the main driver of working capital, as I was showing it, is certainly the renewable transmission business, as you said. We assumed the strong market to remain strong for the entire period of time. W e are having now very large down payments. We are assuming these large down payments maybe to decrease a little bit, because, of course, now the down payments include also the down payments in these very years, for instance, from the frame contracts, which are coming these years. W e are assuming some slight decrease. But you have also to appreciate the working capital increase in terms of construction contracts increase, which will come from the acceleration in the execution.
These will mainly kick in when also the additional manufacturing and installation capacity will kick in, in principle, from 2024, and even faster, from 2025. These two more or less balance each other. I would say, a certain prevalence of the down payments versus the increase of the construction contracts. Then, there is also the other elements of working capital related to the rest of the business, eh? Where we are assuming not such high organic growth like in renewable transmission, but certainly a good level of growth, like, for instance, in power distribution, and this is, of course, meaning an absorption in terms of working capital.
In general, I would say that we anticipate working capital to be very positive, as in terms of contribution, in the very first year of the plans, thanks to the down payments, and then to progressively flatten out in the final part of the plan, as it is written in the numbers that I was projecting.
I think we have questions there, then a question there, and then we will be back. P lease.
Thank you for your presentation. Obviously, on the supply side, it's very constrained, right? Takes several years to build capacity. Some of our competitors are even more booked out than us, so very supply constrained. Then on the demand side, and I'm talking about renewable transmission business. On this demand side, obviously, high visibility. I guess my question is, you know, we're assuming pretty healthy margin improvement in EBITDA for the renewable transmission business, but w hat's preventing us from asking for a little bit more, right? This is kind of unprecedented in the last 10 years in terms of supply-demand mismatch. You know, asking 3% more, 5% more, that's a huge. That probably doesn't make too much of a difference for the transmission customers, but makes a huge difference for us.
O bviously, we're experiencing an upcycle, but I'm just curious, in this unprecedented supply-demand mismatch, what's preventing us from asking just a little bit more?
I'll give you a simple answer. Cable players are always shy to ask for price increase. I think you're right, there is such an imbalance between capacity and demand, why not to ask for a 5% higher price? Because there is always someone that doesn't feel comfortable with this price upside. E ven if there is not enough capacity, when you combine as NKT, Nexans, LS, Sumitomo, and [Lenec] to satisfy the demand of customer, there is always someone that tends to say, "Okay, I need some volume saturation. My factory in 2027, I want to chase this project, to either price down, another price down.
I don't go very high on the price." W hat we gain, in reality, is a much more robust position on the supplier side to stem the tough T's and C's the customer used to impose us in the past. And there, there is a big trade-off between risk and price. We normally price it up when the risk associated to T's and C's is high. Now, we are still pricing up, even the risk associated to T's and C's is lower. A t least this we gained, and this is across the industry. Customer are less strong at imposing tough T's and C's, which means that we can theoretically relax on our prices, but we are not. T here is an inherent and margin improvement, thanks to this lower level of risk embedded in the project, and some price benefit.
Then maybe one day, if this surge in demand continue to remain as strong as today, we will have another wave of pricing up in the market.
If I may?
Of course.
There is always a limit, the limit represented by the effectiveness of the investment, for our customers. If we, the industry, rise the cost of the investments too high, the real risk is that the TSO or the customers will stop, at least the project we are talking about.
There is another important point I try to consider. The current price also reflects the cost inflations. We have increased prices by 20% to embed inflation that has been happening in this space. On top of this price improvement to reflect the inflation, we had price it up. When you look at the project cost today—project price today versus the same project two years ago, you don't simply see the price upside of our margin improvement. There is a significant portion of price improvement associated to cost inflation. That is what makes crucial the point that Valerio said. The cost of the project can go too high, and the end customer might say...
Yes, the TSOs or developer might say, "The project is not viable any longer." We are on a fine line between Ts and Cs, pricing, inflations, and we have to remain in a balanced position here.
Within renewable transmissions, do we get more pushback, usually, on the submarine side or on the land-based HVDC?
More pushback, from what?
Do we see more pushback-
Oh, right
-when... on the submarine or the--
We don't think we can distinguish. It's the pushback comes from the customer attitude, is not associated to this segment we are talking about here. There is a growing demand in both segment, interconnectors and submarine. Maybe there is more resistance in the offshore space, but I will not-
Thank you
- call it a distinguishing factor.
Thank you.
Thank you. To respect the queue, we need to come here.
Thank you. Good morning. Nick Green from Bernstein. As a point of clarity first, then, please, can you confirm, is your existing capacity enough to deliver your EUR 20 billion order book as it is, or is some of the expansion to deliver the EUR 20 billion order book?
Yes, it is. Everything we planned for the next seven years, six years of capacity expansion, versus including, is consistent with a EUR 20 billion backlog.
Okay, then, as a second question, can you help us understand how you've come to the conclusion that a capacity expansion is the right strategy? Clearly, one option is to deliver the EUR 20 billion order book and have a much higher cash flow than normal and not invest in additional capacity. Y ou presumably come to the conclusion that the market's gonna keep on growing very fast after 2027. You'd maybe lose market share. Just talk us through why this isn't an arms race of expanding capacity, and you think it's the right thing to do.
You know, I didn't capture the reason why you think there is another option to serve our backlog than invest in capacity? What did you mean?
You said that you could deliver the EUR 20 billion order book without investing in additional capacity.
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
I said that the planned capacity, the expansion capacity that we already planned, that will materialize in the next 4-5 years, is consistent with the backlog we have to deliver. If you decide to stop our investment, we will not be able to honor the customer commitments or our commitment on--
The EUR 2.7 billion CapEx that we showed.
Can you split it? Can you give us a sense of how much of it is additional growth capacity, and what you're anticipating over the 2027 numbers?
Yes, yes. We a re doubling the submarine capacity. C all it a 2,000 kilometer per year is our submarine capacity as of today. This is gonna grow to 4,000 kilometers, and on top of this submarine capacity, we are expanding the land HVDC capacity, adding some 1,500 kilometers of capacity.
Okay, thank you. Ju st one for Cristina, please. You've shown a rapid acceleration on your Scope 1 and 2 targets, 47% by 2030, to then 90% by 2035. T hat's a fantastic target, but maybe the 47%'s not ambitious enough if you can get to-
We should.
-90% by 2035. I s there an opportunity to put a more ambitious target down?
Sure. Sure, Nick. Of course, the -47% is in line with 1.5-degree trajectory, and as we were showing, we are pretty ahead of schedule. W e are probably... y ou know us, we like to underpromise and overdeliver, and so there can be an opportunity to further overdeliver also on the Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2030. Thank you, Nick. Then there is Patrick, but then I don't know if there's still there was a previous question. Yes.
Thank you very much, Cristina. Michael Pye from, from Baillie Gifford. You've talked about the supportive pricing environment that you have at the moment due to the mismatch between supply and demand. How do you think about the potential for competition from Asia, in particular from China? What is your strategy for guarding against that, I guess? Thank you.
We don't have a particular strategy. The market is so large that customers are bound to resort to some other competitors to satisfy their demand. Of course, those competitors are starting from very far—not because they are Asian or Chinese or Koreans, but because they don't have any sort of track record in delivering projects in Europe. They don't have any sort of own installation vessels to install their cables in Europe. C ustomers are definitely taking a chance at awarding a project, as happened with a TenneT frame agreement to some Korean player, because they still have to prove what we have been proving over the last 20 years. T rack record is essential, and cables are only one single element of the project. Probably the easiest to prepare.
Then you have to transport it, to, install it, to bury under the sea level in the ground and make it work. I'm not suggesting that they, they will fail, but I think, we feel comfortable with our capabilities. I would not be feel that comfortable with the capabilities of Chinese or Koreans.
I f I may, in the meantime, the technology is not dead. The technology evolvement is what we leverage for the future. In the meantime, the Asians, let's say, are gonna reach the same or a similar level to the ones of Europeans on these projects. We are already thinking to the next level. That's what we have to do.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
There was Patrick, and then Vivek, and then we will move back to respect the order of the queue.
Thanks. I want to come back to the renewable backlog and the margins that you are saying improving. I assume a lot of those projects were taking a few years ago when you still were at least having the Western Link in the back of your mind. C an you confirm or comment on whether the contingency, which one always needs in a project, whether that was a bit larger based on issues in the Western Link? T hen, Massimo, you said you learned a lot, so are you more... do you feel better about those contingencies today than at the point of time when you signed the order? If you see what I mean.
Patrick, I think I have to correct, first of all, on the assumption that a sizable portion of our backlog belongs to the past. Only 10% of the backlog that we have been in today is related to past years, let's say 2020, 2021, and 2022. The vast majority is what we landed in from 2022 onwards, and 2023 is a great year in terms of order intake, as you've seen from the press release in this market. Now, what happened in 2022, that those inflation kicked in, and we were unprepared because we had that time large projects awarded before inflations, and we were in the middle of execution with no entitlement whatsoever to negotiate anything with our customer.
But again, this is where the relationship with customer comes into play, because we told them, "Listen, we have this energy cost increase." The fuel cost increase went through the roof, so we have been able to obtain, even if you're not qualified, price recognition for those inflations. Then for the new order intake, we set a cost assumption, not even talking about contingency, cost assumption for fuel, energy, raw material, in line with the peak of the inflation that we had in 2022.
We also factor in some inflation increase over the next few years, because we are aware that what is gonna be awarded and what has been awarded last year, or is gonna be or what has been awarded this year, is for execution, not coming tomorrow morning, but in three or four or five years because of this imbalance with the capacity and demand. We have set the cost very high in line with the current previous level of inflation. We factor in some increases, and then we have the normal level of contingencies that since Western Link happened, was almost 10 years ago, by the way, we are factoring in our projects. We feel safe from a margin perspective because the inflation has been factored in also, too, with some contingency.
Contingency, a provision for possible risk, have been maintained in line with what we set was needed after Western Link. By the way, what is much more important to say is what I told you before. We are now taking a more robust production trials before launching the technology. B efore launching the 525 kV technology in the market, this was in 2022, when we've been awarded the Ijmuiden project with the 525 kV technology in Europe, we had invested in 10 kilometers of production trials. Because with Western Link, we didn't fail with the technology, we failed with the production. We could not assure the proper quality during production. I feel very safe in this regard.
Thank you. Can you just help us understand, how much of the cost is really possible to hedge or somehow secure? Because it's very—some things you can't really hedge. And just to get a sense for how much you can lock as a % of the total, broad numbers.
We can only hedge metal. The metal is what we hedge. The copper, the aluminums, is what we can hedge. All the rest of raw material is not financially liquid, so we cannot hedge fuel, we cannot hedge other things. But we protect ourselves with this natural hedging by setting the cost high and assuming additional cost inflations. We don't want also to hedge everything. Otherwise, we'll be remaining with the margin associated to our transformation capabilities. While in the past, of course, sometimes we suffer from the cost inflation, most of the time we gained, because we could spare some margin out of the real efficiency, the how the real costs, those raw material being caught for raw material during the execution. W e will never transform this market into a fully hedged business.
Thank you. There is Vivek, and then we will get back there.
Thank you very much, everyone, for the presentation. Very helpful. I have one question on the capital returns. You discussed how the magnitude of the buyback will depend on M&A opportunities. W hat is the timeline for your decision-making process, when you will decide how much of the buyback to do? I s it fair to assume that the buyback will be relatively back-end loaded as you determine the scale of those opportunities? Thank you.
Yeah. The timeline will be rather flex, flexible. Of course, we will try first of all to understand the real acquisitions opportunity. Then little by little and progressively, we will release the share buyback. Then, of course, there may be a piece of share buyback released before having crystallized the acquisitions opportunities, but in the end it will be a piece of it, because the buyback will be spread over the four years, the remaining four years of the plan. E verything will be done very progressively.
Understood. Thank you.
Welcome.
Thank you very much. Now we are here, and we have Brett online, who will take--
One at a time for each side of the room.
Absolutely. Apologies, we are asking our colleagues to run from one side of the room to the other.
Physically.
You can spare the gym tonight.
Hi, thanks very much for taking the question. It's George Featherstone from Bank of America. A couple for you. F irstly, on Power Grid's margin, I think you said it's at 10% currently. Could you just clarify that? I f that's the case, that's quite a step up versus the prior year. Where can we go from here? Should we expect more gradual change in the coming years?
You mean 10% exposure to the--
The margin for the power grid business.
Yeah. All right. Good. Okay. You want to take it?
The 10% improvement, the to 10% improvement in Power Grid has already happened in 2023. We don't assume any other improvement in, in, Power Grid in terms of margin. We assume this to stabilize at this level. It may even be a bit better than this assumption, of course, hopefully, but this is our assumption. What we assume is a volume growth kicking in since 2024 to the end of the plan, which is the famous mid-single digit growth. Higher in U.S., a bit lower in Europe. Why do we assume this from 2024, and it didn't materialize before? Simply because before, as we speak, we didn't have the capacity.
T he new capacity, both in, first of all, in U.S., and as a second step in Europe, will come available in 2024 and then 2025, and this will support the volume growth. But there is no assumption of further margin progression in Power Grid from 2024 on.
Actually, we are already having this month, the first upgrade of capacity in North America. T hose projects were launched two years ago. In the month of October, we will see the first step change in our capacity increase in North America, giving more room for customer to be served with a shortly time and secure supply for the current waves of demand in the United States.
Okay.
Consider also one thing, that the 2022 level was a really very low level. I was showing this, the 5.6% Power Grid margin. Actually, this business was the one who much, most of all, suffered from the inflationary effects in 2022 because, as Massimo said before, this is based on frame contracts, and it was impossible to renegotiate and change these contracts at that time, what we were able to do in 2023.
Okay, thank you very much for that. Thanks for, also for the color you've given on the normalization you expect in the construction business in the U.S. next year. Does that mean for your plan for 2024 then, that we should expect the group EBITDA maybe to be flat versus this year, and then a re-acceleration back in 2025 as that headwind abates?
Thank you for a difficult question.
George is always challenging.
If you want to have a preview of 2024,-
Sorry.
-we have to wait a little bit because normally we issue the guidance in few months. What I can tell you that T&I is only one of the business, Industrial Construction is only one of the business. We've proven in the past, even if one goes down, we might have upside in the others. Namely, in this case, we always told everyone that T&I will normalize, PD will go up. PD will continue to go up in 2024, as we said, thanks to the capacity increases. Telecom, we expect to see a rebound of Telecom next year, because this year we're suffering a lot. We cannot tell yet what 2024 will look like.
We will guarantee stability of these results. Last year, we all, you all have been taken by surprise because we reached the EUR 1.5 billion level, EBITDA, coming from EUR 1 billion, and the challenge was how long are you going to be able to stabilize this result? We've proven this year that we have been successful at stabilizing this result. If anything, we have actually improved it a little bit with our last guidance. We will do the same this year.
Okay, thank you. Then the final one, just I guess, more of a kind of broader question on your own vessel fleet. Is there a conversation you ever have internally about outsourcing some of that? Or what's the kind of debate you have in terms of investing in your own capacity here?
No, we have eight. Sorry. We will have eight, we have six vessels, because they are fully needed and booked for executing our CapEx. Then we don't want to give other competitors the beauty of enjoying the high technological capability of these vessels. Because no one will tell you ever what is going on this vessel. But our vessels are more advanced than any other vessels in the market in terms of loading capacity or in terms of installing cables to greater sea depth. We can install cables with our vessels up to 3,000-meter depth, so we are not planning to invest in vessels to outsource this capacity.
Sorry, but my question was more, can you outsource the installation?
No, even less in this case, because it costs a lot to outsource the vessels. But besides the cost, there is, again, the technological capabilities. The external vessels are not as capable as ours to perform this installation. Y ou give up a lot in terms of margin on the project, and you underperform. In the end, customers, once we launched the Leonardo da Vinci that you see today in the market, customers said, "Okay, this is your standard. Now, I want to stick with you with this type of vessels." W e were not going to use or resort to external capacity, if not margining for smaller projects, for smaller installation activities.
As Massimo, if I may. Do not forget that the risk to have third parties installing the system is the trap that we have seen materializing in U.S. recently. With the-
The offshore projects.
- offshore-
Yes
-wind farm projects.
Okay, thank you very much.
Okay, there's Alessandro. Alessandro Tortella from Mediobanca, and then Akash again, and then I have a question online from Brett. We will come to Brett.
Yes, hi. Good morning. Just one question left, is related to product innovation. When you see basically cable solution for floating offshore becoming a reality also for, let's say, large scale project, and do you believe that your time to market is competitive or maybe, let's say, faster than the other competitors? Thanks.
Floating offshore, you mentioned, right?
Yes, floating.
For the floating.
We're still in the development phase. We are developing new solution for higher voltage for the offshore floating farms. We don't expect this market to be becoming a real market until 2026, 2027 onwards. Because beside the cables, which has to be dynamic because of the floating profile features of the platform, there are other challenges that the developers of this floating farm technology have to address before this technology becomes solid. T his will be a good portion of the market, I think, but from 2027, beyond 2027.
Just to be a little bit more detailed. By 2024, by end of 2024, w e expect to have in our labs the test for the first 220 kV floating HV cable.
There was a second part of the question?
No, it was only one, right?
Yeah. Yeah, it was just a sort of quick follow-up for Francesco, if I may. Why don't you improve, let's say, this year-end free cash flow assumption, considering that you cashed in a significant amount of capacity reservation fees? Thanks.
The final year, 2027. In 2027, as I said, compared to the first years of the plan, we decreased a bit the assumptions in terms of down payments. The main reason is the frame contracts, because the frame contracts are coming in these years, so we are not assuming frame contracts to come and, and bring down payments in 2007, for instance. T his is, in that year, totally balanced by the working capital increase, because execution is dramatically accelerating since 2025. Of course, that's the key assumption.
There's a follow-up from Akash, and then we have Brett online.
Yes. Hi, thanks for the follow-ups. I have two, please, and the first one is on projects. I f I just did some back-of-envelope calculation, and basically by 2027, you will be around roughly EUR 3.5 billion, maybe a little bit over that, revenues. W hen I look at your slide on the market, we see market going to somewhere between EUR 18 billion and EUR 20 billion by end of this decade, and if I apply your historical market share of 35%-40%, then at some stage, this business should be more like EUR 7-8 billion euro revenues, or basically doubling from what you will have in 2027.
T he question I have is that when we look at, let's say, beyond five years and more like 10 years horizon, how do you see prospects for further capacity investments, given there is just too much of demand? Is there a—I mean, this is, you can say it's both risk and opportunities, but is there a scenario where you may end up with more CapEx and, in response, it basically accelerates the growth prospects beyond 2027?
Thank you, Akash. We--
You are flying too high. Okay? Akash, we have launched a lot of growth. Let's materialize it. Once it's materialized, meaning 2026, 2027, we are gonna see maybe a next round of demand and investments. Obviously, that will be if the system is gonna be happy with the execution and the results from the financial point of view, and from the cost point of view of the electricity generated.
We are closely monitor this market share, and we are already foreseen, based on the backlog, based on the market projection on the next five years, what we expect to be able to land as projects of this new markets. We foresee a stable 35-40% in the coming years because despite this imbalance between the revenues and the 30% share of the market, the next year projects are gonna be awarded with even longer date for execution. As Valerio said, we take it a step at a step, closely monitor it. Next year, we'll assess the market share. By the way, this year we exceeded our ambition because we are gonna end up with more than 45% share of this market.
P robably next year we will ease off a little bit the pressure. We might enter in another phase of expansion, with decision that will be taken late 2025, 2026, or 2028, 2029, 2030.
Yeah. T hen the second follow-up is, I mean, people are in general positive about electrification and demand for cable, and one of the questions we often get is that: how long does it take to bring capacity online? Everyone knows in high voltage, it could be 3-4 years, depending on whether it's greenfield to brownfield. But can you tell us is, apart from high voltage, if you go in other businesses, whether it's telecom, whether it's industrial and network component, or whether it's PD or T&I, how long does it take you to bring the capacity? What sort of flexibility do you have? Any comment on that would be great.
Yeah, thank you, Akash. In the voltage space, as you know, there is the long process of qualification, which makes the time to market 4-5 years for new capacity. Then in the other segment of business, it is much more relevant to understand whether we are building a new plant or expanding an existing plant, or relying on a portion of the asset already available for the expansion, or where to bring the entire line of capacity. But on average, you certainly don't have longer than 15 months of qualification. You have a type test or even less than this, so 3-4 months for the qualification, and normally, we say an average of 1.5-2 years for expanding power distribution or industrial and construction capacity, also telecom capacity.
We have Brett online asking how we are coupling the new segmentations with the organization in terms of leadership.
We are gonna-- Why you smile? We are gonna announce the new organization in a few weeks. On January 1st, we will report the financial data of the company according to the fourth segment, and on January 1st, there will be an organization in place, with the fourth segment business leader heading the organization. By the end of October, we will make this known to all of you.
It was an unexpected question. That's the reason why I was laughing.
It was an unexpected question.
T hen we have Tyler.
Thanks very much for doing this. I guess my question is more on the digital solutions business. I think your presentation made very clear the structural growth drivers in high voltage and power, power grids. But in terms of the old telecom digital solutions business, how should we think about the structural growth drivers there, and the push-pull between that and some of the softness in the cyclical side of things that you mentioned this year? Thanks.
The drivers of the growth, they are the one that I described before, the digitalization of structure like data center. The 5G mobile rollout is another example of additional demand for optical cable, also for electrical cable. T he drivers are clear, but unfortunately, telecom space is the one where you have short and fast cycles. O ne year ago, we didn't expect at all that the telecom market would slow down in 2023. There was no sign whatsoever of this slowdown. Slowdown has happened because they built or they bought a lot of cables in 2022, because they were in a kind of a panic mode. "I need cables, because I need to install all these projects." In the end, they ended up with a lot of cables, and now they enter into the destocking stage.
Then there was another factor that has hindered the market in 2023, which is the cost inflation of projects. Some of the projects would not make sense any longer. T he subsidy, the government subsidy to subsidize the rural broadband, had only been released later at the end of the start. A ll the operators, developers, had to redesign, define the new projects to benefit from the subsidy. T hose three elements were unknown just a few months ago. But as they were unknown, in terms of expectation market downturn, we also believe that this downturn, looking at the history, will not last too long. The stocking will end at some point. The funds has been released. W e do expect, with good confidence, that by mid-2024, the whole market will rebound.
Thank you. We have online, Brett, who was just asking about the organization, coming back with a very nice message. Thank you, Brett. Saying, "In my state of Tasmania, Australia, Prysmian produced and installed the longest interconnector in the world. I t's great that Prysmian will be coming back to Tasmania to install Marinus Link. T hank you for your interest in our little island at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere." T hank you, Brett.
Thank you very much.
This again marks the beauty of this company.
Absolutely.
We have a wide customer base and geographical footprint, and we like to electrify the world. We said before, we are connecting the world, not just Europe, and not just Italy, and not just France, and not just Germany, and not just the United States. We are present everywhere.
Absolutely.
The Marinus Link is an example. It's connecting Tasmania to Australia.
Ciao, Brett. We have Gabriele Gambarova from Banca Akros here in the room.
Thank you, for the presentation. I will just, a couple of questions. The first one is on the, new cable laying vessel. I was wondering if it's, let's say, a copycat of the Monna Lisa and, Leonardo da Vinci, or there is a further enhancement, on this vessel?
Monna Lisa is a copy-paste of Leonardo da Vinci. The third one is not a copy-paste of Monna Lisa. It's a new vessel which will be specifically designed to suit the frame agreement projects. Not because they are a frame agreement, because the technology there requires laying cables made of bundles of four cables. W e need more rotating platform on the third vessel than we had in Monna Lisa and Leonardo da Vinci, to specifically benefit the frame agreement project.
Okay. I guess it will cost more than EUR 240 million?
Yeah. Monna Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci cost EUR 200 million. Monna Lisa will cost EUR 240 million. The new one will be EUR 250 million, but there will be another small vessel for the shallow water installation, because I told you that we are gonna add two vessels to our fleet. In that, we're adding three vessels: Monna Lisa, the third one, and this, a smaller vessel for shallow water. But in the meantime, we will retire Giulio Verne. T he addition is three minus one makes plus two.
Another question, sorry, follow-up on this. Basically, all your cable laying is done by Prysmian, 100%, or you resort to third parties?
Laying cable, the submarine laying of cables is not 100% done by us. In many situation, for shallow water, where nearshore installation, we resort or might resort to outsourcing capabilities because we don't want to make our fleet completely capable of doing everything. Otherwise, we'll run the risk of idle fixed cost at a certain point. W hile we don't envisage a full saturation of an asset, we don't go there. We resort to the third-party capability. But this is only related to the simple shallow water installations.
Okay, thank you.
There is Enrico Coco from Intermonte.
Yes, thanks. I will ask one. I understand that telecoms has never been so strategic. There is a lot of cross-selling between telecoms and energy. T he question is: How much did you put in the budget to decarbonize the telecom? I f not in this plan, is this something that is gonna be expensive or not? Thank you.
We are not decarbonizing the telecom space. We're offering our customer solution which help them
Sorry. I know that the production of fiber,-
Fiber
-the optical technology,-
Ah, okay
-is really-
More energy
-energy intensive.
Okay.
This is the business where you need to invest money if you want to decarbonize.
Yes. Yes.
M y question is: If in this plan, in the CapEx budget-
Yeah
-there is also something for the decarbonize the telecom production?
Right. I agree. W e are talking about the Scope 1 and 2 CO2 emission. We are decarbonizing also the fiber plants and the optical cable plants, along with the others, with the usual activity of LED replacement, changing motors, and so on. L et me say that out of the EUR 100 million that we devote to this initiative, EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million are for the fiber/optical cable business.
Thanks.
Okay. Matteo Bonizzoni from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Thank you. Two questions. The first one is on capital allocation. Now, you start from EUR 1.4 billion of debt, 2022. You say EUR 3.2 billion of free cash flow, some dividends. Doing the calculation, because you going to go to EUR 1-2 billion net debt in 2027, you have EUR 2-2.5 billion of cash out in the plan from M&A and buyback, more or less. M y question is, provided that it's early to say how much M&A you will do, are you really able, in case M&A is very small, to do a EUR 2 billion buyback, which is 20% of your market cap? I n that case, it would imply or not a share cancellation? That's the first question. T he second question is on your greenfield investment in, in Massachusetts, Brayton Point.
W e have said that the picture in the U.S. now is fluid, no? It seems that there is also the presidential election issue next year. L et's say, my question is, if I remember correctly, you were pointing to finalize this greenfield investment by 2026. What is your attitude to this plan? M y question is, it's confirmed, or is your mood sort of wait and see? M aybe you are seeing how the situation evolves, and you are ready to fine-tune the completion of this plan according to what is happening. Thanks.
You or me?
Maybe first the capital allocation, while we think through the answer to Massachusetts.
Oh, starting from the debt, first of all. With that capital allocation, that I remind include three pieces: the acquisitions, then the share buyback, but also the dividends, of course. We plan to deleverage from 2022, which was EUR 1.4 billion, to around EUR 1.1 billion. And this deleverage is actually taking place mainly in 2023, for the simple reason that the net cash flow after dividend in this capital allocation is actually distributed or used either for acquisitions or for buyback. Going to the, more specifically to your question on the buyback. You remind of the pie chart. You remember the pie chart? The allocation of the EUR 3.2 billion on acquisitions and buyback is a total of 55%-60%.
This is actually EUR 1.9 billion, if you—one point nine, if you translate it in numbers. You shouldn't assume, you shouldn't assume that if there is an extreme case, no acquisition, and I don't think that this will be the case, all these EUR 1.9 billion will be replaced, will be made with buybacks. Because, as I mentioned during my presentation, there is a limitation, and the limitation is the 10% treasury shares on the total outstanding shares.
Unless you cancel.
No. Okay. That's this we are not necessarily ready to do that. R ealistically, you may ask, where is the limitation of the buyback? It's realistically around EUR 1 billion, EUR 1.1 billion. Then, of course, it depends on the share price, so you would need a crystal ball to put the exact cap on the buyback.
Valerio, you want to take Massachusetts? Or I go myself?
Massachusetts, because we were just in case debating internally about the Brayton Point. Our view is that we have to progress. What does it mean? In the meantime, we buy the land. Later on, at the proper time, we will launch the construction of the site. I personally do not intend to step back, even if, of course, the market in U.S. is still to be evaluated. There are projects, some projects are coming, some projects are going to be disregarded, but that's a trend. We have not to be scared of the short-term fluctuation of the market. If we, as we have seen, the trend is clear, we have to go for the trend we have seen. T hat's what is my opinio-n. Then, of course-
No, no, I confirm it. I would be even more aggressive in the sense we buy the land in the coming months, because the permits have been finally made available. We continue with the acquiring and the purchasing of the equipment next year and the erection of the building, also because this plant build-up will take 3.5 years, plus the qualification. This plant is not reliant on the Park City Wind project that you heard about in terms of PPAs cancellation, which, by the way, is a contract still in hand, and is a contract that we were supposed to produce in Europe, not even in North America. I f other projects, or the project is the first project to be loaded on this plant, Commonwealth will not continue, which we consider unlikely.
There are other projects that will saturate this plant from day one, and the day one, as you said, is second half 2026. W e don't intend to slow down nor to stop this decision. We will continue according to the original plan, the original pace.
Thank you. Finito.
Finito. Finito. The timeline is finito, and the--
I don't see other questions coming from online as well, so thank you very much.
Thank you very much to all of you.
Thank you very much for your patience.