Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the conference call for CIE Automotive for the second quarter. Today we have Jesús María Herrera , CEO and Lorea Aristizabal, Director for Corporate Development. At the end of the presentation there'll be a Q&A and questions can only be asked in writing through the tool available on the webcast. I'll hand over now to Lorea. Go ahead please.
Good afternoon everyone and welcome once again to the results conference call for CIE . Juan said, we have Jesús María Herrera , our CEO, with us today who will answer questions at the end of the presentation.
If you like, we can start by reviewing what happened in the main markets during the second quarter, a period during which we again saw an enormous spread between geographies and a quarter that has been marked by the commercial and geopolitical tensions as a result of the Trump administration agenda. Starting with Europe, production has shrunk by 2% during the second quarter, accumulating a drop close to 4% in the half. A second quarter that has confirmed the dynamics that we saw in previous quarters, which have had an especially negative impact on production activity. On the one hand, we have the growing pressure from Chinese manufacturers that continue to take over market share from the traditional European manufacturers and some figures. In April, the registration of Chinese vehicles reached 50,000 units, 80% year-on-year, driven by brands like BYD, Chery, and MG.
In May, the sales of Chinese cars exceeded for the first time 5% of total sales in Europe. However, growth of Chinese automobiles in Europe is showing nuances. It's advancing much more strongly in the hybrid segment, both plug-in and conventional, but is giving up ground in pure electric vehicles and in combustion engine vehicles. On the other hand, in Europe we have the U.S. tariffs on European vehicles and components. 25% is currently being applied universally, although it's under negotiation. This has penalized exports to one of the main foreign markets for Europe. The United States represent over 10% of total European vehicle exports. On a regulatory level, we positively highlight the flexibilization of the European Emission Reduction goals, which have been extended from 2025 to 2027, approved by the European Parliament in May, which gives manufacturers more room to adapt their vehicle ranges.
What's also positive is the opening up in July of a public consultation to review the emission goals for 2035, a very critical issue for the sector and where a verdict is planned to be issued by the second quarter of 2026. Meanwhile, the electric vehicle continues to gain weight in Europe in the commercial mix. In the second quarter, the sales of electrified vehicles, pure electric and hybrids, now represents 25% versus 23% in Q1 and 19% in Q2 2024, so a significant increase. In the short term, the demand for electric vehicles in Europe could be pushed by new incentives established by governments, such as those announced in July by the British government.
With all this, for 2025, we anticipate a drop in production of 3% in Europe in an environment of capacity utilization of approximately 60% on average, which reinforces the need for Europe to move forward in the structural adjustments of the sector, including manufacturer phasing out of capacity and a greater consolidation of the ecosystem in the medium and long term. The forecast points at a drop of 1% next year in 2026, although afterwards there'll be a certain recovery of the market, with an estimated growth of 2% for the following years, 2027, 2028, and 2029. Going to North America, we have a market marked by the Trump trade policy, where the universal tariffs of 25% on cars and their components have had an impact on production and have brought in a major component of caution, of prudence, in the decisions made by the manufacturers.
In Mexico, we've seen how production in the second quarter has dropped 2% with an accumulated figure for the half year, which is practically flat. What stands out is the change in the trend. In Mexico in 2024, it was very positive with a growth of plus 5%. The first quarter also was with a growth of 4%. It's now in the second quarter where we've seen this change in the trend, which certainly can be attributed to the announcement of the tariffs by Trump. In some cases, the manufacturers have decided to limit or temporarily delay certain production activity while waiting for greater clarity. In the United States, the situation is very similar. Production also dropped 2% in the quarter, with an accumulated figure for the half year of 5%.
What's happening in the United States, the more expensive imported components increases final cost of the vehicles, reduces competitiveness, and forces manufacturers to be more prudent, more cautious in their production plans, in view of the risk of a weaker demand if the consumer doesn't take on higher prices. On the other hand, we have the recent elimination by Trump of the support measures for electric vehicles that had been implemented during the Biden administration. This could act as a positive catalyst to reactivate some volumes of combustion engine vehicles. In the short term, we'll see. Unlike production, which have been negative, the demand for vehicles in North America has showed a positive behavior in the second quarter, with a growth of 2% to 4% in the half year.
This comeback can be explained partly by the anticipation effect of consumers and distributors that have been bringing forward purchases to make use of the available inventory before the impact of the new tariffs. For 2025, a shrinkage of the North American market is envisaged of 3%, although the prospects have improved compared to what we discussed in the first quarter. If you remember, for the year was expected of 9% in the medium and long term. An additional drop of 4% next year, in line with Europe falling too, followed by a gradual market recovery in 2027, 2028, and 2029. Also in line with what's happening in Europe. China has maintained a specially positive evolution, tremendously positive in the second quarter, with a growth of 9% in vehicle production, which gives us an accumulated total for the first half of 12%.
They are certainly consolidated as the main driver for global growth in the quarter. A dynamism that has been backed on the one hand by the good performance of the domestic market, benefited by the car stock renovation policy and the incentive campaigns implemented by OEMs. On the other hand, exports have also showed a strong recovery in this second quarter after the first few months of the year, where they were weaker and were dropping. In spite of this major growth, the context in China is competitive. There is a very demanding competitive context, an environment marked by the intensification in the price war between manufacturers with very tight margins and payment periods of over 200 days in some cases for suppliers, and affected by fresh capacity utilization routes below 60%.
Yesterday we read that it's estimated that in 2024 barely 50% of the capacity of China will be used, the lowest figure in history. A context where Western OEMs continue to record relevant drops in production, with drops of almost 20% in the case of some European manufacturers like Mercedes, or 17% for Tesla. A loss of market share where globally it's already below 25% for the second half. A certain stability in volume is foreseen in China, perhaps a risk of it dropping, because the Chinese government is considering the gradual withdrawal of incentives. They've already done it in some regions after finding extensive cases of fraud behind the incentives. We'll see what happens. We'll have to monitor the situation. Medium and long term, the Chinese market maintains a growth trend of approximately 1% a year for the coming years.
In the second quarter in Brazil. Brazil is considered to be one of the markets with the biggest growth in our geographies. 8% in the quarter, 8% in the accumulated figure for the first half too. On the one hand, a performance based on the solid domestic demand with sales that stand at high levels. In May, for example, 214,000 vehicles were sold, which is the highest monthly volume for the year 2025. On the other hand, exports have also been a major driver, with the growth of 60% compared to the same period last year. In June alone, over 50,000 vehicles were exported, 75% year-on-year, with Argentina as the main destination, thanks to the improvement in the economic context and the new bilateral trade agreements between Brazil and Argentina.
All this has been accompanied by a commercial mix with a clear protagonism of SUVs and pickups in Brazil, intense promotion activity by OEMs, and a higher sales penetration for fleet renovation, which in some months have exceeded 50% of the total registrations. For the second half, it's expected that production will accelerate, with around 1.4 million units planned, versus 1.1 million in the first half. In the medium and long term, the growth forecasts are between 3% and 6% per year until 2030. A tremendously interesting market. We move to India that has reinforced its position as one of the most solid markets in growth during this period. In the second quarter, vehicle production grew 3%, increasing the accumulated figure for the half up to 4%, driven by the launching of new models.
A contained inflation 2.1% in June and by the recent cutback in interest rates by the central bank, which has reduced the rate by 100 basis points down to 5.5. In a market where vehicle financing is important, a second quarter where India has launched a new state strategy. A new policy for electric vehicles. Now OEMs are allowed to import up to 8,000 electric vehicles a year with a reduced tariff of 15% versus the usual tariff of between 70% and 100% for imports, in exchange for a minimum investment of $500 million in local production capacity in a period of three years. This is a strategy that is designed, a policy that is designed to attract manufacturers like Tesla.
This reinforces the goal of the country of positioning itself as a key center for manufacturing and exports on a world scale, helped by the current geopolitical context and also the transfer of certain projects from China. The second half of the year is expected to speed up the rate of production. Yesterday you heard the CEO of our subsidiary CIE India talking about this acceleration in India with an estimated growth of 6% with the backing of more product availability and a solid demand in all segments and not just in passenger vehicles. With this, the forecast for 2025 points to a growth of 5%. In the medium term, we can expect to average growth rates of 4% up to 2030. We've reviewed all the markets.
The global automotive market has recorded a growth in the second quarter of 2.6%, especially driven, I already said it, but I'll repeat it, by the major growth and the major volumes in China. A market that carries little weight in our sales mix, barely 7%. This means that the CIE market, the CIE exposure market, has grown less, 0.5%. This same dynamic is reflected in the accumulated figure for this first half, with a growth of more than 3% for the global market, but a drop of 0.3% in the CIE market. Usually there aren't significant differences between developments in the global market and developments in the CIE market.
When the Chinese market, with its gigantic volumes, deviates a lot from the average, as occurred this quarter, there are differences that mean that the CIE market growth is a much more representative comparison for us. Regarding the forecast, global forecasts, the second half of the year expects a shrinking of more than 2%. This would mean closing the year 2025 practically a flat 0.4%, a flat performance, which, as in the past, hides the facts. It hides the major regional differences. It hides the fact that while China, India, or Brazil continue gaining traction, Europe and North America continue to show a much weaker evolution for the future. Between 2026 and 2030, we can talk about an average growth close to 1%. We'll now review the P&L.
If we start with sales during this first half of the year, the negative exchange rate impact has been strong, especially in the second quarter, and it's been strong. All our currencies have had a negative impact. This has meant a drop in sales of around 2.5 points in the quarter and a half year where we have been, as I said earlier, in line with the market. The exchange rate impact has been much stronger in the second quarter than in the first. As I said, with a drop in sales in the quarter of 4.5 points because of the exchange rate, and at a constant exchange rate, our sales in the second quarter have grown almost 1%. This means a slight outperformance compared to the growth of 0.5% of our market.
To properly understand the figures for the second quarter, and some of you have asked about this, we have to explain that the market figures for the first quarter have been finally better than those that were initially published. Production in the first quarter improved by more than half a million vehicles, which in practice implied a CIE first quarter slightly below the market. In terms of EBITDA margin, the second quarter has been very much in line with the developments we already saw in the first quarter. We have achieved a tremendous expansion of almost 500 basis points in margins, and for the second quarter running we have reached a level of 19% in EBITDA margin over sales. An expansion in the EBITDA margin is consolidated and high quality.
This is to be highlighted, high quality, with all geographies maintaining or increasing their margin and most of them exceeding 19%, all of them with a great deal of merit. We shouldn't take merit away from anyone, but perhaps especially in Europe, where with all the difficulties it is going through, it has exceeded 8% EBITDA margin in this second quarter and EBITDA, which in absolute value has slightly dropped compared to the second quarter last year, with the negative impact of the depreciation of the currencies. The over EUR 117 million reported would be EUR 195 million at a constant exchange rate and would represent a growth of 3% compared to the previous year.
With all geographies increasing their EBITDA in absolute value at constant exchange rates, the EBITDA margin trend is the same as EBITDA, again exceeding 14% consolidated in the second quarter, is accompanied by a net profit of EUR 92 million, more than 9% over sales, which has contributed to having reported the best half year result in our history in the first half. Talking about the balance sheet and cash flow, we have to highlight an operating cash flow generation of more than 70% in the second quarter of the year, the highest ratio we've had in the current perimeter, and have again exceeded EUR 125 million, totally aligned. This is important with our commitment to generate approximately EUR 500 million a year, a dividend to minority shareholders of over EUR 9 million, 10% more than last year, showing once again our firm commitment to remuneration for the shareholder.
A total CapEx of 4% in the second quarter, which is more normalized after we've overcome most of the greenfield investment in Mexico. As a reminder, in 2024 the CapEx percentage was slightly higher than the usual 5% because of this reason, because of the Mexico greenfield, but adjusting the effect, the percentage would have been at normalized levels of around 5%. In this first half, 2025, the normalized CapEx without that Mexico greenfield is even slightly below 4%. Even so, we're capable of continuing to deleverage and have reached a minimum historic level in terms of deleveraging, with 1.2 times at the closing of June from the 1.5 times months ago. Our net financial debt continues to move away from the EUR 1 billion and is at EUR 925 million.
With a robust operating cash flow and a minimum debt, we continue to strengthen our financial position to tackle any future challenge with confidence. Two subjects for the second quarter, although their impact hasn't been felt on the cash flow yet. First of all, the signing of the purchase of the Brazilian company Techniplas. The closing of the operation is pending approval by the competition authorities. We estimate that this will happen in the third quarter, which is when the payout related to this purchase would be made and where it would be included in the CIE perimeter. The other relevant factor this second quarter has been the voluntary auto takeover for 9.675% of our shares at a price of EUR 24 per share.
An offer which, as you know, had the goal of providing all company shareholders the possibility of having a one-off liquidity related to the stock market operations in a complex macroeconomic situation. It was approved on June 13th by the CNMB. The acceptance period ended on July 2nd and the settlement was made on July 11th with a payment of EUR 27 million, which will be reflected in the cash flow in the third quarter, EUR 27 million, which correspond to an acceptance level which has barely reached 10% of the total shares. It was aimed at less than 1% of the share capital. We believe that this represents a vote of confidence from the market in the potential and the value of the company, as indicated by the analyst reports.
Your reports recommended in fact, in most cases not going to the offer at EUR 24, when the average target price for the CIE share is at EUR 33, almost 40% higher. I'll end by reconfirming that with the excellent results reached until June and trusting in the forecast for the rest of the year. With caution because of the context, but with confidence, we reaffirm our commitments for 2025. With this we move on to the questions for which I'd like to remind you that we have Jesús María , our CEO, awaiting. Thank you all very much. We have a lot of questions. There's a lot of interest this quarter. We'll do what we can to order them and to be efficient, starting with sales. A specific question about NAFTA. The performance has got worse compared to the market in the second quarter.
Reasons and what do we expect for the future? Good afternoon everyone. I'm Jesús María Herrera . I think that it's not relevant in the first quarter. It's practically been in line with the North American market with a difference of practically 0.6 percentage points in six months. We believe this is part of the normal variation margins. Interpreting the data of one quarter can lead us to erroneous interpretations. The thing is that we have solid margins and operations in the region. We continue to be very selective in the programs we participate in. We always look at profitability more than volume. Two questions on the outperformance of India. First of all, we're growing lesser than our comparisons. Is this because we're being very conservative? I would say that we need to know who the comparison is with.
Yes, because in India we've grown over 3% more than the market. It's a difficult question. Having said this, I would give the same answer I gave for NAFTA. Our focus continues to be profitability. Our focus continues to be to provide a return for all the investments and not so much the volume. We've grown in India and Brazil more than the market, substantially more in this first half. Regarding this question, I think it's difficult to compare. Compare with what? The company in India has a specific distribution by segment: passenger vehicles, two wheelers, tractors, trucks. I'm not really sure that those comparisons that are being used by the person asking the question have the same segment distribution. If we're being compared with a company that's 100% focused on two wheelers or tractors, I think it's more complex. I'll refer to what Jesús María said.
We have to be careful what we compare with. We should compare apples with apples. The second part of the question was related to the outperformance. What do we think about what our position is regarding the new products that are being demanded by the market? ABS, a more premium vehicle in India, how are we positioned there? We're in a good position. That's our focus, and we're picking up significant orders that are going to give us growth and stability, without a doubt. A very specific question on roofs in general. Do you see a better competitive environment in prices because of the restructuring efforts that are being made by some important competitors? It's true that all our competitors are suffering a great deal. CIE is the only roof company that has very positive results and a very healthy balance sheet, without a doubt.
I think we have a competitive advantage compared to the others, and our customers, when it comes to taking on new projects, will trust more in a healthy company than in a company in trouble that could shut down launching projects because of their financial problems. We move on to another subject related to capacity utilization. Yesterday in the CIE India call, it was said that you're at 40-50% in Europe, 80% in India. The question is how are you in NAFTA, Brazil, and China with regards to utilization? I think that yesterday's answer by Ander was not properly understood by the analysts and investors that were at the conference call. Ander was only referring to a specific plant we have in Italy. He wasn't referring to all of Europe. In Europe, we're close to 80% utilization.
It's true that in markets like Mexico or Brazil we're closer to 90, 90 some percent capacity. The capacity figures for our investments are very high because you know that we're very cautious when we take on new investments. This is shown by the profitability we have obtained at the closing of the second half or the second quarter. You've seen the stock market report, the return on investment, the Verorona. For all of CIE has once again exceeded 20%. It's at 20.5%. This can only be achieved if the utilization level of resources is very high. Questions now related to margins. The first question. There has been a sequential improvement in markets like China and Europe, where in sales perhaps we have a better performance. Is there any one-off behind the margins that explains some of these sequential changes? None. None.
Everything we presented are the operating results, the results of our day-to-day management, our industrial efficiency, our cost control, and our focus on profitability. That's all. Obviously these are recurrent results. I don't know whether they're referring to something else Ander mentioned yesterday. Ander yesterday referred to a small one-off, the restructuring expense at Meta lcastello. Yes, but it's a small amount. No, they were referring to that because it came up in yesterday's conference calls. On a CIE level there's no impact. We're talking about $2 million in a bit of over $700 million. Obviously it's not significant and that's why I didn't mention it, but that's what they were referring to. We're also asked about the sustainability of the high margins in Brazil and India. When we have margins that we're managing to maintain. I s it possible that those high margins will start to turn around?
I don't think so. All the margins are the result of the work done, the significant management effort, and they are absolutely recurring margins. It's obvious that we're not going to set the goal to continue to improve over 19%, but there's a greater opportunity being improved than of dropping. In the market of Brazil, we're still going to have organic growth much more than the market. In markets like India, where we also have growth bigger than the market, I would say that especially in India, the figures are going to be even higher. We move on to the forecast for the second half of the year. First of all, sales. What absolute sales level makes sense for the second half of the year, especially bearing in mind the exchange rates?
I think that the second half is going to be in line with what the second half usually is. We have the effect of the third quarter, the effect of December, but taking away these effects, it's going to be very similar to what it usually means. We shouldn't expect anything different to the normal market estimated developments. You will have the estimates for production for the market and CIE will be at the same pace of growth or volume as the market. Regarding the exchange rate, just to share, in the first half, more or less with this exchange rate level, obviously we hope it will improve, but if it's constant, as we said earlier, we've lost more or less EUR 46 million in sales and EUR 9 million in EBITDA. As everybody knows, the P&L adapts to the average rate accumulated over the months.
Therefore, at the end of the year we will be around EUR 100 million in sales losses and EUR 19-20 million. The good thing about CIE Automotive, in summary, is that that loss of EUR 20 million in EBITDA because of the exchange rate factor will be offset by an improvement in margins of half a point. An improvement of EUR 20 million exactly out of EUR 4 billion. Once again, a negative variable. The significant devaluation of 13% in the dollar, a devaluation of 11% in the rupee, almost 11% too. If we turn all that around with the operating improvements and improvements in margins, in order to not have a drop of one single euro in EBITDA. This has already answered the question in a way.
We were also asked about the second half of the year, how to match the fact that seasonally the volume is lower and reaching that 19% margin for the year, which is the guidance for 2025, what are the drivers, let's say? The driver is that the improvement is continuous. These are improvements day by day. In the first two quarters, in the first quarter, sales were higher. We obtained 19%. In the second quarter, the improvements are still progressive and with fewer sales, we've obtained the same figure of 19%. In the third quarter, it will be less with the holiday effect, but since we're continuing to improve, we're convinced that we will obtain that 19% both in the third and the fourth quarters. A question on the first half, on the significant reduction in financial expenses compared to last year.
The question is what is our estimate for the whole year and financial expenses? Without being able to give a figure, it's obvious that financial expenses are tending to go down much more significantly in the second quarter than in the first because there's been a gradual reduction in rates. This is going to help, as I said earlier, to offset a bit with efficiency. The bottom line is going to grow substantially at CIE because of the reduction in financial expenses. A couple of questions on cash flow. The first is what are the other movements? We can see in the second quarter around EUR 50 million negative. What's their nature? It's what we were discussing.
Our cash positions in the various countries with a strong revaluation of the euro and the devaluation of the rest of the currencies means that, for example, in China we've had a variation of EUR 26 million, a variation of EUR 15 million because of the rupee in India, and more or less EUR 10 million in North America. In Brazil there hasn't been an effect because the exchange rate has been more or less the same as in the first half last year and these EUR 50 million have been reflected. Until we have the official exchange rate, it's not as a loss as such, it's an accounting item and related to cash flow too. Two very specific questions. Why is CapEx significantly lower? What do we expect for the second half of the year and for the future? Is it going to be similar?
We always try to have the same CapEx as the amortization, more or less. We assign 2% for maintenance CapEx. This year it's been less. We analyze the growth CapEx for all projects with maximum rigor and to carry out that CapEx we need to have a significant return on investment over 20%. We have less CapEx than last year, as Lorea explained, because last year there was a very specific project with an extremely big investment with a multi-technology plant. There's still a certain CapEx to be carried out, but most of it has already been realized. The complete CapEx at CIE for a growth of 2.3% is a CapEx of 5% over sales and that's where we are more or less this year. Connected to this, what do we think about the 2025 Bloomberg consensus?
They gave me a shock this morning when they showed me the consensus. I said this is wrong, it's wrong. The Bloomberg figures were wrong. I saw very good figures for the results in general and I was happy to see the confidence in this group in CIE Automotive, but in debt, there was a very major error, but that's been corrected. It was an error in Bloomberg's data extraction. Go to the current figures. Okay, I'm just explaining what happened. With the current figures, it's absolutely reasonable in line with our guidance and reflects what's happening month after month. Solid margins, high cash flow, and balance sheet to control. There's no disconnection between what the market expects and what we're delivering and going to deliver. We're going to change the subject. China in the world, is there anything relevant, anything new with these international expansions?
What we already mentioned at previous meetings, we're making progress with various Chinese OEMs. In Brazil, we always talk about BYD and in other regions. The process follows a certain pattern. When they set up outside China, they start with a CKD format, they import everything and only do local assembly. Years later, they start to develop a local supply chain. In this context, we're having discussions with them that will take place over the midterms, anticipating that second localization phase. We believe it's not a sprint, it's a matter of strategic position. We believe that we are where we should be to supplement. Jesús María's answer. There was a news item this morning about BYD, which I think is the benchmark Chinese player with regard to going out into the world.
This morning, officially, BYD announced that they were delaying the startup of the Hungary plant and when it starts, which is expected to start in 2026, they aren't going to start with the initial volume of 150,000 cars to move it up to 300,000. They're saying that they're going to start now with a few tens of thousands and it will take several years, they say several years until they reach the volume they'd initially planned of 150,000. On the other hand, they say they bring forward the operation of their plant in Turkey where there's a capacity of 150,000 vehicles and they expect to make it grow immediately. What the analysts say is that behind this announcement we all see a lot of ads saying that the Chinese are going out into the world. As Jesús María says, things are more complicated.
It seems that in Hungary they are finding labor cost issues, labor legislation, energy cost issues, a lack of executives, a lack of know-how, etc. They are finding it harder than they thought. Yet in Turkey, they have an advantage, and that is Turkey has no tariffs to export to Europe. That seems to be the market context, and that's the BYD context. I'll take the opportunity to say that not everything that glitters is gold. We've been talking about only the Chinese for years, about how much the Chinese grow in China and in the rest of the world. We're starting to see the first figures that indicate that things aren't what they seem.
BYD has been losing market share in China for several months, and it's the first time in the history of BYD that their annual goal of 5.5 million vehicles produced in the year is being questioned. Yes, China is growing, but as Khashmani said, let's be cautious, stay calm. Things take time. Let's be calm. Since you mentioned BYD, there's still also the subject of Brazil. They went into Brazil in Bahia. They went in with an agreement with the government, and they went in with a commitment to hire local people. What they've done is to take 3,000 Chinese people that live in the plant in infra human conditions. They're getting into a lot of trouble because they're not meeting any of the commitments they'd made to the government and to the trade unions.
It's very difficult for an implementation to be successful outside China if they don't meet the local conditions. If they don't do that, they'll never be successful. Another thing they're asking about, because there's been news on the Trump administration tariffs. Is there anything relevant we can highlight or which has had an impact on us? Looking at our crystal ball, I would start by saying that for the time being, it's just news, but nobody knows exactly what will end up happening and when. It's still early to identify specific impacts. There's a great deal of uncertainty both regarding the schedule and the actual scope of the measures that have been announced. As of today, we haven't seen a relevant impact on our forecast, but obviously we're following it very closely. Everybody should understand what our business model is.
We produce locally for local customers, so we considerably mitigate the risk of a changing environment. It requires constant monitoring. You've also been able to see how at the beginning of the tariff negotiations, they started with tariffs of 50%, 25% and ended up like Japan today with 15%. They started with the U.K. at 25% and everything has come to nothing. We are all aware that it's impossible to have those tariffs because obviously it would go against the world economy, but obviously it would go against the American economy. It's Trump's way of doing things. In the end, the impact will be very, very small, especially for those that are local and that produce in the United States and other countries and don't export. As you know, we have several questions on M&A and on capital allocation.
Do you expect any relevant acquisitions before the end of the year? I would say, in summary, you'll all remember that in 2019 we carried out a number of very relevant acquisitions, not just in TEBA, that you'll all remember, but also significant growth in India. During this five year strategic plan, we focused on obtaining a maximum return from the investments. The results are plain to see. The results obtained before I said we were back to 20.5% profitability. The debt is at a historic minimum, as we've said. I do agree that with this goal achieved now, we have to redirect this discipline and focus towards new inorganic growth projects to reinforce our sustainable and profitable growth model.
In reply to the question, yes, we're going to look much more fondly at inorganic growth and we continue to believe, and we're convinced that we'll continue to be the market consolidators. This morning at the board, we were analyzing developments in car production in the last 10 years. You know, it's been flat. We have the same 88 or 89 million cars in the last 10 years. The turnover has doubled during those 10 years. I think that something similar will happen in the next 10 years. The increase in production volume is important, but for CIE as a consolidator, it's not that important. Now we've met all the gold in the guidance for 2025, now that we have that high profitability, over 20%. Now that debt is around EUR 925 million.
At the closing of the half year and without exchange rate effect, we would be at EUR 875 million. In other words, we are getting close to a ratio of one to one in the coming months. It's time to continue to consolidate the market and focus all management efforts on the integration of new companies. Specifically, we're asked about the acquisition of Techniplas, a company with high margins. The rationale or some more color on the reason for the acquisition? First of all, because it's a great company. It's a great company that gives us a very significant product diversification. It also gives us entrance to very important customers, especially Asian customers. It's a complement to the Brazilian plastics division, which is very successful. I'm sure that we'll also see additional plastic operations with the help of Techniplas in the coming quarters.
It's been a strategic acquisition with an outstanding team that is going to be a complement to our team. Any plans to increase the stake in CIE India versus the Indian peers. You know that the best investment is to invest in CIE, which is the cheapest thing there is in CIE Automotive. Even if we have discounts in India, it has multiples much higher than CIE. No, we're not currently thinking of increasing our stake in India. We believe that the available resources, which are many, we want to dedicate them more to the inorganic growth I mentioned. We are also asked about the low acceptance of the self-takeover bid, whether we consider a buyback or an extraordinary dividend, and what are we going to do with the shares. A share buyback and what are we going to do with the shares we bought?
To talk about the takeover bid, when we decided to launch the bid, we knew that any scenario was positive for us. We reached that almost 10% acceptance. We considered that to be a success because it allows us to provide shares with liquidity and stabilize market performance if nobody subscribed to it. It's also a clear message. Shareholders trust in the value of CIE. They know that it's much more valuable. Today's analyst consensus target price is around EUR 33 per share, much higher than the price offered. The reading is simple. The market believes in the potential of our company. We haven't thought about paying out a dividend in the short term. As I said earlier, we have very significant capacity for inorganic growth and for market consolidation. Our availability, our economic and financial resources are going to be used for that inorganic growth more than for other things at this point.
A question has come in from a shareholder. Some companies are talking about being listed in the U.S. again to improve the price of the share, to increase the multiple. Is that something CIE could consider? The fact is we have discussed it at various board meetings and we've discussed leaving Spain and going to England, for example, or going to the United States like others have done. We haven't taken it seriously as yet. We think that we need to continue to work on our project. We need to meet all our commitments month to month. In the Spanish market, the value of our company may be 33 or 43, depending on how you want to evaluate this major cash generation that absolutely no one has in this sector. We hope that the Spanish stock exchange will value it.
We've had it, we've considered it, but we haven't taken it anywhere. This would be the last question. Thank you all very much for your questions, all of them very interesting. You can be sure that you're in the best company with the best human team, the best management that guarantees the today and tomorrow. Thank you all very much and have a good summer.