Good morning, welcome to our Growth Planning Plan and to our 2026 R&D. First of all, thank you all for having flown all the way to Berlin to be here with us today. It is our pleasure to host you here. Before proceeding, let me refer you to the disclaimer that you'll find at the presentation, that you should be able to download through the QR code that you should find at your tables. Now, we will walk through a series of presentations that will walk us through our past, but mainly our future. We will start by a review of Gestamp, explaining who we are, and how do we do things. Our Chair, Executive Chairman will go through a strategic review of our future.
Then we will have a series of presentations on technology and innovation, ESG, operational excellence, and lastly, financials. At the end, we will open our Q&A session. Now let's begin by understanding our fundamentals, explained by some of the people that make it possible. Thank you again for being here today.
Gestamp is a multinational specialized in the design, development, and manufacture of highly engineered metal components for the automotive industry. 115 production plants, 13 R&D centers, and a workforce of more than 42,000 employees worldwide in 24 countries. More than 25 years of history has made us one of the key players in the automotive industry. A safe, trustworthy, solid journey. Welcome to Gestamp. Through technology and innovation, Gestamp anticipates cutting-edge solutions for its clients' needs.
Over the years, Gestamp has become a technology partner to its customers. Having R&D capabilities have allowed us to reinforce our client relationship, mainly by being closer to them, understanding their needs, and improving our strategic positioning with them. We can define ourselves as a technological organization focused on the development of high, complex engineered product solutions for all OEMs. One of our R&D pillars is co-development, a model in which we are working hand by hand with our customers well before a project is started. This give us the opportunity to introduce our innovative products in the right timing. At the same time, we take care to secure protection of our technologies through patents. By doing this, we have established and maintained a highly competitive market position. Nowadays, our R&D strategy is focused on the development of a mass market electric vehicle.
We are developing a wide range of new EV Extreme Size Parts that are receiving good feedback from our clients, thus enhancing even more the relationship with them. R&D is a key lever to reach our client positioning and to push the development forward for new technologies that drive the transition to electric vehicles.
Proven long-standing strategy that has allowed us to gain the reliability and trustworthiness of our clients.
Gestamp is a customer-oriented company. This means that we have global visibility, experience, and client knowledge based on proximity and high integration through our local commercial teams. To do so, Gestamp commercial team is composed by corporate global key accounts, responsible to take care of each OEM, and strongly supported by regional teams. Together with them, our technology and innovation team works from a very early stage with the engineering departments of our main OEMs on the search of optimal product and process solution. Of course, on top of the commercial and R&D contribution, the strong reliability of both our plans and project teams is key to consolidate the trust of our OEMs. Launching the most complex projects all around the world in time and quality takes us to the next level, to the point of becoming their partners rather than only suppliers.
When launching the majority of our projects, Gestamp closes agreements for a minimum of six years, which provide us long-term visibility and a consolidated position in our clients. We are currently in an inflection point within the sector, where OEMs are evolving towards electrification, with new requirements on the traditional parts. To maximize the autonomy of the vehicles and keep or even increase their safety, there is a trend toward global platforms, with volumes over one million vehicles per year worldwide, with a clear goal to share synergies and minimize vehicle manufacturing costs. For Gestamp, global platform means executing a higher number of more complex projects that require involving industrial footprint in different countries with high capacity to coordinate all necessary activities worldwide, but also to have the required machinery and specific tooling on time and quality, and to assure the plant readiness.
In few words, we need to involve long, experienced team and relevant investments, which is why we aim at having a partnership relationship with our customers in the search of long-term contracts that secures both delivery and volume, as well as exclusivity on the nominated business. Thanks to the combination of our innovation activities and our demonstrated industrial reliability, Gestamp is winning an increasing volume of new business. For this reason, we have created the Gestamp Strategic Project Office, so that we focus a high specialized team on the most relevant strategic opportunities, and we implement a quotation follow-up and validation mechanism, aiming to maximize both profitability and competitiveness. We are a dynamic and customer-oriented company, knowing well our client and market needs, with a clear strategy of being the partner supplier to our customers.
Industrialization is a complex and critical phase to ensure the success of the production stage with the required standards and features that Gestamp needs.
Being able to develop highly complex production processes has been one of the biggest challenges for Gestamp. Doing it right is key to become a reliable partner. We are just-in-time producer, therefore, highly integrated with customer, so we need to have our products on time, at the forecast cost, with the agreed quality. Given our type of products and technologies, our processes are complex. In fact, complexity increases when we talk about safety, parts, or skin panels, where Gestamp is a leading company. Three main necessary resources to start any industrialization process that are: industrial investment plan, supply chain planning, human resource planning. For any project, we have a business plan through which we cover all steps from project kickoff, through the start, until end of production. Every project requires special equipment for manufacturing, which includes processes, assembly systems, among others. We have different equipment sources, in-house and outsourcing.
With this combination, in-house, outsourcing global and local basis, we can achieve the competitiveness required in each region. During quotation phase, we ensure that supply chain will fulfill quality, cost, and timing according customer requirements. First, we look at the internal resources with available capacity, and any available equipment can be reused to minimize the new investments. Second, we ensure our suppliers have capacity to deliver on time. Finally, we proceed with a sourcing strategy. All this needs to happen by the time we get customer new project award. At Gestamp, we have many upskills and reskills programs to be assured that our people are at the vanguard of all technologies and processes. There are some markets, like the U.S., where this part of the process is really challenging for the company.
Therefore, work-based learning programs are set up by Gestamp in partnership with local high schools to provide local students with a dual education. Standard projects take around two years to go from the kickoff to the start of production. The electric vehicles is also changing the vehicle development, as new players are shortening the project launch time, which is making this phase even more important. As we run different type of projects, products, and technologies, the industrialization phase varies from one to another. Using, for example, a new hot stamping press line, it requires a construction pit. Once it's ready, we continue with the hot stamping press, installation, and debug. Next step is the die tools development, which are customer's property and a specific assets for each project.
Once the equipment tooling and the team is ready, we will run quality loops to assure the parts in production will be according to the client requirements and Gestamp standards. During this phase, the plant team starts to take over. Last phase before start of production is the approval from the customer, so we need to be sure that everything is ready.
Best-in-class production and industrial capabilities that allows Gestamp to be a reliable industrial partner.
Our production teams work hand-in-hand with the project teams to ensure a smooth handover and successful project integration. Best practices in safety, quality, and productivity are established to safeguard each new launch we have, while also ensuring we achieve the expected returns on the project. Our ability to deliver on time with the required levels of quality is crucial to the successful launch of the customer's projects, as our product portfolio is strategic to the vehicle structure and performance. Having a good track record on this is essential for our relationships with our customers. As the time allocated to launch projects are continuously getting shorter, it is important to have a solid foundation of systems to be able to react quickly, make changes as required, yet still hold the highest level of performance each and every time.
Our teams are continually focused on improvement and the stability of our process to ensure that we get the highest return from every project. After start of production, we utilize a key set of KPIs to track the performance of the product and processes. Overall equipment effectiveness and related KPIs, such as availability and efficiency, are automatically collected using our Industry 4.0 platform and SAP systems. This real-time data is used by our teams to focus on the most important factors in order to continuously improve and be the most efficient in our operations. Quality testing at regular intervals is fundamental to ensure we have a stable process that meets our customers' technical requirements.
Physical testing, such as part joining strength, KTL, paint quality, and other process-related checks, are done in our plants by certified teams, who can feed back quickly to engineering and operations teams, avoiding any risk of defects escaping the process. The last few years have been difficult for us, with the supply chain interruptions and other obstacles that were affecting us and our customers. This has made our objective of launching projects flawlessly even more relevant and essential to achieve. We have been able to overcome these challenges with the collective efforts of our teams, in combination with our strong manufacturing systems. Gestamp is a key player in the automotive value chain, and our operational excellence has positioned us as leaders in our industry, transforming our role from a supplier to a partner with our clients.
A long-standing strategy to contribute to a safer and cleaner mobility. We believe in a sustainable present and future, in which our parts continue to contribute to save lives. Gestamp has a commitment to society to build a more sustainable mobility for everyone. Gestamp, already prepared for the long run.
Good morning, and thanks for attending our Capital Market Day that today we are hosting here nearby Berlin in our new plant at Grossbeeren. I hope that you have enjoyed and you have learned a lot in the visit to this plant, which is still starting, and our older plant in Ludwigsfelde. Last year, Gestamp celebrated our 25th anniversary. 25 years of hard work, some success, that had lead us to become the partner supplier. Today, we are bringing you here not just to understand what we have done, but basically to focus in what Gestamp is gonna do moving forward in the future. From our last Capital Market Day we held two years ago, I think we have changed many things.
This Capital Market Day, two years ago, we held it under many uncertainties and also in a kind of digital format. Since then, I think in Gestamp we have been able to prove that we are very good in execution in 2021 and 2022. Also, even if today, still, the level of uncertainty is quite high, we are facing a kind of weaker economic scenario, today, we will be presenting a set of ambitious targets and commitments for the future, which I think is a clear expression of how positive we feel about the future of our company moving forward. Today, in 2023, Gestamp is the leader Tier 1 auto supplier for metal components related to body in white chassis and mechanisms. We are running 115 plants, some of them are still under construction.
We are also doing that in 24 countries. We are running 13 research and development centers, and we have 42,000 people that are working day-by-day to support our customers' needs. Even if we have already more than 25 years, Gestamp is still a young company in the financial market, as we went listed only six years ago. How we have been able to become leader? Basically, because we had a clear and a defined strategy since the beginning that we have been fulfilling. It's in the strategy, which means that we are always very close to our big customers, trying to identify their needs and trying to find solutions for these needs.
That in the case of our range of products, are more related to find the right products, the right technologies, in order to help our customers to design and to produce lighter and safer cars, and also to build our plants close to where they are gonna be assembling their vehicles. Of course, we are doing that, but delivering to all our commitments with operational excellence. That means every day, best quality, best cost, and good delivery rate. Thanks always to a very good team of skilled and motivated people. We have done that, and we have been able to build a very solid status of partnership with our customers in the long run. Since listed back in 2017, we have not been able to show to you the best of our company.
Even if we should not have excuses, what is true is that since 2017, the environment that we have faced has not been easy at all. We have severe declines of manufacturing volumes, and still in 2022, volume is still below 13% from the volumes of 2017. Since 2020, high inflation, with impacting our the prices of the steel and moving these prices through the roof, energy and other materials. All of this on top of the COVID, on top of the crisis of semiconductors, and also with the war in Ukraine. I think it's been difficult, but I think we have been able to work hard, not just to survive, but to become stronger and reinforce our strategic positioning. In fact, in 2022, we have obtained record results.
Revenues for the first time, more than EUR 10 billion, exactly EUR 10.7 billion, with less manufacturing vehicles than in 2017. In terms of profitability, with an EBITDA margin of 12.7%, and at all-time high net profit. Very solid set of results, a strong financial position at the end of 2022. How we have made it during last years? Clearly, with our continuous push for growth, supported, like always, with our good diversification in terms of customers and geographies, with a strong product mix and industrial capabilities, and also with technologies and innovations, which were clearly different from most of our competitors, and especially focused in the development of electric vehicles.
As a result, since 2017, we have always outperformed the growth of the market by close to 10 percentage points. We have increased our revenues per manufactured vehicle in the world by 36% compared with 2017. Of course, of growth, but also we have been able to generate these results, thanks to our financial discipline in a very complex scenario. Since COVID, we have been able to increase our profitability by reducing significantly our fixed structure cost and reducing our break-even point. Also, we have been able to reinforce our balance sheet using our generation of free cash flow, close to EUR 800 million between 2020 and 2022, to reduce the leverage from 2.5x in 2019 to 1.8x at the end of 2022.
Gestamp is now stronger and ready for the new phase of development. What is next now? I think, what is next is that we are heading to a world where individual mobility will remain being a basic need and an ambition for many people, but that mobility is going to be completely different to the one we have had in the past. Mobility has been and will be essential for all of us. Today, there are around 1,500 million vehicles in the world, and this figure probably is going to be growing in the next years to come, because the world population keeps growing, and in the developing countries, clearly, all of them, they are looking for increase their economic status, and in many cases, what they are looking is to have an access to mobility.
Even if mobility is a basic need for all of us, we now know that current mobility model has a negative impact to the sustainability of our planet, as cars and vans are today responsible of 8% of total CO₂ emissions. Now, the most relevant challenge of the auto industry is to make mobility sustainable, not just for today, but also for our future generations. Now we are living a kind of auto industry revolution. Everybody now is working hard to tackle the sustainability challenge. First, looking for zero emissions in the mobility, basically focused around the development of the electrical vehicles, but in a longer term, we target of going to the Net Zero Car, including CO₂ emissions, also in the manufacturing, in the materials, and also in the end of life. Starting with the short term, clearly, we are moving into electric.
Most government has right now regulation, which is very, very strict, Europe, but also U.S. and China, and they are forcing to move very, very aggressively from internal combustion engine to electric vehicles. For instance, in Europe, just due to the approval of the Fit for 55 regulation, all cars and vans registered after 2035 needs to be zero emissions. Most of them, most of the customers, most of the OEMs, are already setting aggressive targets aligned with this regulation, and even in some cases, going farther than the regulation. Now, as a result of this effort, already electric vehicle is a reality. That was not the case three, four, five years ago.
In 2022, already 11.5 million electrical vehicles were manufactured, and by 2027, this amount is expected to grow up to 38 million, which means around 40% of the total manufacturing of vehicles by that time. Figures that probably could grow even faster, because in the last years, all the forecast that we have done has been always rather conservative. In the long run, the mobility revolution will go one step beyond to the Net Zero Car. Net Zero means that we need to reduce and to eliminate all emissions linked to the full life cycle of the vehicles, including materials, manufacturing, transporting, end of life.
This ambitious target, which is also common to other kind of industries, should be only be a reality if we are able to have a good cooperation between all the participants in the supply chain. Of course, circular economy is key to achieve the net zero challenge. Circular economy, based on principles of reusing and recycling, is moving away from the traditional linear economy, and of course, is going to have a very important growth in the next years to come. Ernesto will comment on this later, but for us, for Gestamp, steel is key to our circularity strategy. As far as we are using a lot of steel in the manufacturing for our components, but the steel also is 100% recyclable, and we have an opportunity there.
How Gestamp is going to face the next five years until 2027? I think we have a clear statement, and the statement is that basically, as the world dives into a new mobility revolution, Gestamp will continue to be in the partner supplier of our customers, preserving our long-standing strategy and working along with the society towards a more sustainable mobility. Our value proposition in order to work in the next five years is basically, as mentioned, to preserve the strategy that we have been always following, but reinforcing our partner supplier, adapting our this strategy to the new sustainability challenges.
Specifically improving our strategic positioning, offering best innovation for electrical vehicles, use operational excellence in order to make our plants more efficient, but also more resilient, and preserving always our financial strength and also the trust of our customers. The strategy that we are going to follow in the next five years has some basic seven pillars. These pillars are, of course, the growth ambition that we always had, to remain being a trusted partner supplier, keep on moving in the area of offering the market more technology and more innovation, moving ahead in operational excellence, to remain being profitable and to be also disciplined regarding our balance sheet, and last but not least, pioneering the circular economy through the acquisition of the scrap.
If we start with ambition in terms of growth, I think growth has been always part of the DNA of Gestamp. In the next years, we are also going to be growing, and we believe that we can take a very good advantage out of the recovery of market volumes in different geographies. We can take advantage of an increasing outsourcing level from our customers, and the increasing penetration of electrical vehicle is something that is supporting the Gestamp story. In terms of volumes, I would say that auto manufacturing is one of the few industries in the world that has not recovered pre-pandemic levels.
From now to 2027, we are forecasting a solid growth, around 2.7% CAGR growth. Still the volumes that we are expecting for 2027 are going to be below the ones we had in 2017. Growth, because it's going to have more impact, more support for the growth of the population, especially in developing countries. Growth also related to the speed of change of how we are going to move our park of vehicles from internal combustion engine to electric vehicle, and also an increasingly aging park fleet, especially in areas like in U.S. and Europe, because in the last five years, it's been a very important aging of all the park fleet. There is a lot of possibilities to replace, and all of that should support that increase of the volumes in the market.
In the case of Gestamp, I think we have a very good position to take advantage of this recovery in the market in each of the single markets. If we focus in the mature market, such as in Europe and North America, we have an opportunity to grow. In the case of Europe has been the most impacted area in terms of losing vehicle manufacturers in 2019, and we are, and everybody is now expecting, and we have already in 2023, a very important recovery in terms of volumes. Gestamp, we have many opportunities to grow with this recovery in Europe because it's our natural market, and we have, of course, quite important industrial capabilities.
Of course, there is an opportunity in everything which is related to replacing the ICE vehicles to EVs, and of course, also the focus in the premium cars and electric vehicles. In the case of North America, we have also a very important opportunity because now U.S. is clearly moving very fast with regulation like the IRA to EVs, and Gestamp is an expert supplier for EVs, more than other suppliers in U.S. We have been, in fact, awarded important nominations for best-selling pickups and SUVs, which are now moving to electrification. In Mexico, we have also many opportunities as a very interesting place to do nearshoring to U.S. If we go to China, clearly, the market in China is booming, especially the one in EVs.
Just in 2022, more than 60% of all the EV manufacturing in the world has been done in China. It's not just traditional OEMs moving to electrical vehicles, but the important growth of pure EV players that are growing and gaining market share very, very quickly in China. This market, which is booming, especially in EVs, is an opportunity for Gestamp. We intend to grow more in China. Already, our Chinese sales represent around 12% of our sales, and we want to grow, even though from the moment of the IPO, we have been able to grow our sales in China by 80%. Gestamp, we have a quite attractive set of proprietary solutions for products and technologies that are very, very suitable for EV, so that it means that we are attractive for Chinese OEMs.
Of course, we already have a quite important position regarding the pure EV players, not just with some one American, but also with many Chinese new companies like NIO or Li Auto, or the big development of BYD. In India, in India, we see also a relevant opportunity for Gestamp in the next five years. Of course, the market should grow. It's the most populated country in the world, but it's one of the, of the countries with lowest rate of motorization, and we are expecting this motorization rate to double in the next five years, and that should be a very important opportunity to increase manufacturing in India. Of course, there are also important changes in the legislation in India in order to be able to improve the safety requirements, in order to reduce all fatalities, and also to reduce CO₂.
For us, big opportunity. We are already present in India since 20 years. Now, the new vehicles are demanding more and more our range of technologies. For instance, in the beginning, it was difficult for us to launch hot stamping, but nowadays we are launching our fourth hot stamping line, and all of them are absolutely full. We are working, of course, for global players, but more and more with domestic players, very efficient companies like Tata or Mahindra. If recovery of the auto market in some geographies is an opportunity for us to grow, there is also an opportunity for us to take advantage of the increase of the outsourcing rate by our customers to our range of products. From 2022-2027, the outsourcing rate for our products will grow from 56%- 64%.
The main reasons behind this increase of the rate of outsourcing is linked to the increase of the investment effort that our customers need to do in order to move very quickly to the EVs. Also in the case of the pure EV players, they have no internal capabilities, and they have no willing to invest in iron. They prefer to invest in batteries and connectivity, so it's an opportunity for us. Together with the recovery of the market and the increase of the outsourcing, we should have an addressable market for Gestamp that is gonna move from EUR 76 billion this year to EUR 109 billion by 2027. This increase of the addressable market is gonna happen even much more in the case of the electrical vehicles.
It's a huge opportunity for Gestamp because the all the EV architectures are more suitable for our range of products and technologies, with lightweighting and safety being key factors. Because in these EVs, there is much more outsourcing, especially in pure EV players, but also because the EVs has more content per vehicle, including some new parts, like battery box that we have in here, or Extreme Size Parts, like the Door Rings that you have seen in our plant of Ludwigsfelde. Altogether, the EV addressable market for Gestamp will multiply by four times from EUR 12.8 billion in 2022 to EUR 52 billion by 2027. The EV opportunity is huge, and Gestamp is very well prepared in order to tackle this opportunity.
That's why we have set a very aggressive target for us regarding EV sales, as we expect to grow five times our EV-related sales in five years. By 2027, our EV-related sales should be more than 50% of our total revenues. It's a first-time commitment, and I think it's a clear proof that we have a good growth ambition, and that we are perfect positioning for the growth on the electrical vehicles. The second pillar of our strategy for the next five years is, of course, to preserve and to enlarge the partnership we have with all our customers, and not only with our traditional OEMs, but also with the new players, especially around the EVs.
One of Gestamp key values is that we have been able to build a very solid partnership with our traditional OEMs for years. In fact, for instance, we are working for them in more than 1,200 models all across the world. Of course, we are doing that with European OEMs, but also with American and Asian ones, and always being very close to them, supporting with our technologies and our, and also with their geographical needs, and building this kind of trust relationship, because we have always fulfilled all our commitments. If we talk about the pure EV commerce, I think clearly, Gestamp is increasingly gaining market share with these pure EV players, and we are start to build with them quite solid partnership for the long run.
Pure EV players like Tesla or Rivian or Lucid in U.S., or many Chinese firms like BYD or NIO, Li Auto or Great Wall, that are expected to double their market share in global manufacturing in the next five years. To these new players, we are usually a very attractive supplier, because to grow fast, they need our existing technologies and our existing capabilities everywhere in the world. Also, there is a possibility that they can work with us in co-development projects. They are still young, and they need to work with expert suppliers like we are in our field of products. Third pillar is our capability to develop technologies and innovations to support our customers' needs.
These relevant capabilities that we have been able to build throughout the years, I think, they are the best way why Gestamp has been able to differentiate from other competitors. Afterwards, Ignacio will explain in more detail what we are doing, but in any case, I think I can clearly state that innovation is a competitive advantage for Gestamp because we have full engineering capabilities. It's not just that we have capability to do product development, we can also we invest in different kind of process and technologies, and also we do process definition, and even sometimes we do in-house the manufacturing of tools or presses. Our technology and innovation department is a really global one.
We have 1,500 people working in 13 research and development centers all over the world, trying to find, in every geography, the best, the best solutions for the clients' needs. One key advantage that we offer to our customers, thanks to the recognition by them of our proprietary solutions, is the co-development in new projects and new vehicles. We are growing a lot in co-development. For instance, just in 2010, we were only working with OEMs in 10 co-development projects. Last year, we have done it in more than 450 co-development projects. Working together with our customers over time, I think they help us to anticipate all the needs, while transitioning to the electric vehicles, and create some specific EV solutions for them.
New solutions that, again, increase the safety, reduce the weight, and reduce the CO₂ emissions. Always trying to find the right balance between cost and also performance for these new EV architectures. Of course, always developing new ideas and new proprietary solutions for EVs. Operational excellence. I think operational excellence has been, and will be, always one of the most important pillars of Gestamp's strategy, because without operational excellence, there is not any single future in a very competitive world like the auto market. Through operational excellence, we always want to offer our customers the best price, the best quality, and a very good service rate. We are able also to launch new greenfield facilities in time and quality, and build trusted relationship with our customers.
We are also able to increase the efficiency and flexibility for all operations everywhere, and also we are able to promote the best practices, and also promote the standardization of the process. It's not enough. Now, things are getting complex, and we need to raise the bar. As you see more complexity in the market, whenever we are moving and transitioning to the EVs, with shorter lead times, and even with more volatility in the market, especially in the volumes. In order to move forward, to raise this bar, we have built a new department led by Patricia Riberas as Chief Operational Excellence Officer. The idea here is that we need to boost all of our efforts in this field.
Afterwards, Patricia will talk a little bit more of how we are transforming our operations in order to be able to increase this efficiency and this flexibility. Profitable growth is another key pillar of our strategy. Excuse me. As far as we have plenty of opportunities all over the world to grow, I think it's absolutely key to keep improving our profitability and to obtain the best return out of every investment we do. During last difficult years, from 2019 - 2022, in Gestamp, we have made a huge effort to improve our profitability level.
Even if declining volumes are more volatility of the manufacturing of our customers and these high inflationary pressures, we have been able to increase our EBITDA margin, as mentioned before, from 11.8%- 12.7%, but we have been also able to increase the return of our capital employed from 12.2%- 14%. The focus in profitability has helped us to resize our fixed cost structure, to stabilize most of our industrial operations, and also to restructure, in some extent, some capacity. For the future, profitable growth is a key priority for Gestamp, and that's why we have selected the return on capital employed as a core business KPI.
We have set a quite ambitious target to increase this return by 350 basis points, reaching a 17.5% ratio in 2027. We are going to reach this target using main levers like continuous operational improvements and improving of the project execution, but mainly with a very selective CapEx strategy, and of course, with a clear focus in the turnaround of our operations in North America. North America, I think, already for some years, our operations in North America have not generated the expected return. For the next five years, we believe that we have a relevant opportunity to improve the overall profitability of the group by increasing the efficiency of these North American plants. In fact, the current low profitability level that we had in North America has not happened during many years.
It's true that since the incorporation of our first plant in Mexico, in Aguascalientes, back in 2001, until 2015, the growth rate and the profitability level of our North American plants was even better than the average of the Gestamp plants at that time. It's true, in fact, that all the problems really started when we decided in 2015 to look for a very aggressive growth mode in order to increase our market share, especially in U.S. At that time, the American team, which has leaded the growth during previous years, collapsed, and we faced some problems, big problems, during launches of new vehicles and new greenfields.
Even if in 2018 and 2019, we were able to improve the efficiency of all these operations with new U.S. talent, supported by group experts from all over the world, since COVID, we had a lot of problems. We had high inflation. We have a very tight labor market and difficulties to move non-U.S. talent to U.S., so the profitability in last two years has not improved yet. We want to be in North America, and we are looking to have in North America a quite profitable and relevant position. We have built a plan to consolidate and to improve the efficiency of our North American plants, based, of course, in supporting the local leadership with a clear talent strategy, moving talent locally, but also from rest of the group, and looking for labor stability.
We are moving in the idea to increase our cooperation with the American OEMs, using our advantage in EV projects linked to our proprietary solutions and also our industrial expertise better than many of the local suppliers in U.S. Of course, focus in project executions and efficiency improvement, supported by Operational Excellence corporate area. With this plan, we are committed to increase our EBITDA margin from 8.4% in 2022 to a double- digit in or before 2026. Clear focus for all our organization in the next five years. As already mentioned, a disciplined CapEx approach is also very important in order to be able to improve the return on capital employed. We will select CapEx opportunities that are strategic for Gestamp, and especially around electrical vehicles.
We will also secure the existing future business for our existing plants, and we will have, of course, a defined and a controlled IRR target, with a clear focus on ROCE improvement. In order to increase the pressure on this disciplined CapEx approach, we have also created the Strategic Projects Office, a team made out of resources from all the corporate departments and also some of the industrial divisions involved, in order to be able to control all the quotations of the most relevant projects all over the world, and also to ensure competitiveness, quality, time, and return. A very key tool in order to be able to avoid any mistake in the future.
Another pillar of our strategy in this next five years is to have and to preserve a disciplined balancing profile. As it's the only way we can really assure a sustainable growth in the long run. Later today, Ignacio will explain our financial strategy in much more detail. Basically, well, our business approach means that we will go investing in nominated projects which are attractive for our long-term strategy. All these CapEx projects will help us to have a good return on the capital that we are using. We should be able to generate a sound level of free cash flow throughout the years. In terms of leverage, what we have decided is to decide to reduce it in order to be in a much more conservative position for the future.
In this sense, in 2022, we have been able to reduce our leverage to less than two times, first time after the IPO. Now we want to further reduce our leverage from 1.8x in 2022, to be in the range of one to 1.5 x EBITDA during the next five years. Finally, our seventh pillar is that we want to be a pioneer in circular economy in our industrial segment through the recent, in the recent integration of Gescrap in our group, Gestamp. The acquisition of a relevant stake in Gescrap at the end of last year was a, or has been a very good opportunity for us because it allow us to be the first mover in our sector in order to build a solid strategy to offer our customers components made out of low-carbon steel.
Because being a high-quality scrap, a key element in the manufacturing of CO₂ steels, I think the integration of Gescrap, with industrial presence in 18 countries and managing more than two million tons of high-quality scrap a year, is offering to Gestamp, a very good position to take advantage of all this decarbonization process of the steel. Gescrap is a leading supplier of high-quality scrap. It's very well positioned in order to get good access to high-quality scrap. We have in Gescrap, in very important industrial capabilities to be able to manage all these high volumes. We are one of the largest players in this sector, which is a sector quite fragmented. And we have a strong position also around the auto industry. So say there is already 30 years of history of scrap, always profitable.
I think, clearly for the future, the demand of high-quality scrap is gonna be booming, while it's gonna be a limited offer of capacity of scrap. We are absolutely convinced that scrap is gonna be a good asset for Gestamp in our strategy, and also a quite profitable one. As mentioned, scrap provides also a good opportunity for Gestamp to enter and to offer to our customers components made out of secondary steel grades. In this sense, Gestamp has already signed relevant agreements with very relevant steel mills in order to use our scrap, through scrap, as a raw material to produce the steel, that later on, we transform into some of our components. A perfect example of circular economy.
By doing that, by integrating scrap, I think Gestamp is moving forward to help our customers to cope with the future challenge of the Net Zero Car. After visiting all these pillars of our plan for 2027, I am convinced that we have a clear path in order to continue building on Gestamp foundations, but introducing some new commitments. That should allow us to generate a good and a clear value to all our stakeholders, our clients, our people, and also our shareholders or investors. Value to our clients, because we are reinforcing our long-term partnership. We are preserving all what has helped us in order to build these partnerships throughout the years, finding solutions for them, and then clearly, these new solutions, very much oriented for this new industrial revolution around EVs.
Of course, we are gonna do that, supporting them in different topics, like developing new proprietary solutions or innovations, and helping them in their way for this Net Zero Car. More value to our people, as main foundations of what we do in Gestamp. In Gestamp, we have an extraordinary team of highly qualified and motivated professionals, which are absolutely the key to the Gestamp success, because that's the only base in order to be able to reach the operational excellence levels that we have in order to keep and to preserve our long-term partnership with our customers. For our employees in Gestamp, we offer, I think, a quite good value proposition.
A proposition to work in a group which is a long-term project, to be part also of a company with solid values and principles, to contribute to the change to a more sustainable mobility, and also many opportunities to develop and to grow, because we are always continuously growing, and we always need the best talent in the most difficult areas. Also, and in parallel to the value we create for clients and our team, we are also very much committed to generate value to all our shareholders. Preserving a clear strategy to keep on leading our sector, focusing in a disciplined growth, with a clear remuneration policy of 30% payout over net profit, and of course, being the trusted company, always meeting our commitments.
To support our value creation to shareholders, I think we can clearly see that we have a very solid and experienced management team, and we have also a board of directors with a majority of independent members, all of them highly experienced members. Together, our professional management team and this independent and experienced board of director, I think is the best guarantee to the proper execution of our plan, and of course, to preserve our strategy in the long run. Well, that's all from my side. Just to sum up, Gestamp, following our 25 years of history, we are now the global leader in our business. Following the last difficult 3 years, Gestamp has emerged stronger, with solid strategic positioning and with a good profitability and sound financial profile.
For the following five years, when the transition to the more sustainable mobility is gonna happen, and is gonna be the priority for all of us, Gestamp has a solid plan with strong pillars to help us take full advantage of opportunities around the EV world. We have also a plan which is gonna allow us to create value to our clients, to our people, and also to our investors. We are convinced that in this environment, we are gonna be a clear winner in this new era of mobility. Thank you. Now I'm giving the floor to Ignacio Martin, our Chief Technology and Innovation Officer.
Okay, the new EV era is here, we are in the center of the most significant technology transformation since Henry Ford launched his Model T, in terms of product and process technologies. Today, we see on the market a wide scope of different mobility concept that goes from urban mobility, long-distance cars. They all use different technologies. However, CO₂ impact is important, as Paco mentioned before, we are responsible for the carbon footprint. Let me tell you, weight reduction is key in this, because weight reduction is equivalent to material reduction, and we'll see, proportional to the CO₂ reduction as a consequence. Technology solutions are required, and we believe, without any doubt, that this is the opportunity for Gestamp. Let me explain to you why.
Body architectures of new EV cars are completely different from those of the state-of-the-art ICE architectures. The new EV cars must be maximum efficient cars, it is not done just being an EV car. Cars has to be dynamic, efficient, light, and they have to be mandatory affordable. It's also not enough just putting a battery on that car, and that's electric. A far-reaching new architecture is required, and we believe that our products and technology will make the difference, a technology difference, and a significant one. We deliver for this, a wide range of high-engineered products, shaping materials, technologies, and process technologies. Today, we are the market leader in technology development in our field, and what we are trying is now to transfer these technologies into the EV world.
We do this in nearly all areas of the cars, so when it comes to a body, what we save life. When it comes to front crash system, we provide crash safety. In the area of the chassis, what we design is engineering and driving experience. When we do batteries, we engineer integration of functions. When we do closures, what we design is comfort system to the cars, and when it comes to rear rail, what we design are the most advanced rear crash systems to protect occupants and batteries. In a nutshell, we are essential part of this new body architecture, which will be now on the streets. All these technologies and solutions we develop following the corporate strategy, we call the 3R strategy. With firstly, reducing.
What we reduce is the, reduce the weight, with that the CO₂ in our products, and as well, the assembly time at our customer, we will see later, by delivering bigger components. Secondly, we reuse. We reuse our CapEx. We can do that because we have the product design in our hands, and we can move in the right directions. Finally, we recycle secondary material as well as scrap, that my colleague, Ernesto, later in the ESG, will roll out a little bit more. As well as we design products in green steel. At Gestamp, we leverage science, technology, expertise into product and process solutions. How do we do that? We have a wide range of own virtual cars. These virtual cars are constructed with the most advanced technologies that we can have, and they are on the market.
They allow us, and it's a unique tool, who allows us to test and validate materials and technology solution within these cars, rolling out the new solutions to our customers and be faster in time to market. How do we can get this value proposition with innovation into customers? In a normal project, where you have the project development timeframe, you have industrialization timeframe, we have production launch like we see here, you will have a very hard time to bring innovation inside. To do so, we need to work in advance, and we do that three years in advance co-development programs, that we're sitting inside the customer and designing with them three years in advance, innovative concept and innovative solutions.
Having these both tools, our own virtual tools and the capability to make co-developments around the world, this allows us bringing innovation go live directly into the serial production. We need for this, a backup of a certain number of R&D plants. We run certain R&D centers around the world, strategic placed in front of the engineering hubs of our customers, as well, we run on-site engineering. With this truly running network, we're capable to develop around about 450 last year, 450 co-development programs with more than 50 customers, OEMs. They are traditional OEMs and also new EV players. Let me say that new EV players are much more inclined to accept technology changes than the actual OEMs.
At Gestamp, what we provide as key solutions in the four field of applications, which is the chassis, the body, the battery, and the mechanism area. Before going into the different details, I want to mention the battery box. The battery box, a very heavy chunk of piece. You have seen the part here, up to 800 kg without any problem, changing everything. This is the main driver for all the technology changes that are coming into body chassis, and I would like to explain a little bit how. In any case, that's an opportunity for us. Let's go to the body in white first.
The new body architecture, basically driven by this extra weight coming from the battery, needs to be reinforced, and in consequence, we need to increase the quantity of hot stamping, the content of hot stamping in the cars, to make the complete structure reinforced by protecting batteries and occupants. Doing this, we increase the value added considerable on those type of parts. If we go to the battery back, the battery, when we said battery, what we say at Gestamp is the battery box. Once we have battery box, you have seen here one model. There are two consequences in designing battery boxes.
One is that we need to apply massive lightweight solution to the battery box, obvious because of the weight, and we have the option to move crash safety either in the battery or from the battery to the body. Both of these end results are very positive for us because this is exactly the field of activity in which we are operating at Gestamp. If you go to the chassis, well, they are now from the rear chassis, in which we need to incorporate electro motor. If we put electro motors on the chassis, this will change the driving dynamic completely. By changing the driving dynamics, the chassis becomes much more complex, and again, a higher value added to Gestamp, because the chassis are really double size, the new ones.
Of course, if the car is a full EV car, safety is a requirement, but comfort is a must. Here is where our powered solution from Edscha are coming into the game and become more and more important. Let me now introduce you to the extended product families that we have developed in our four field of application. These product families are all designed by introducing value proposition by function integration. I would say we start with the body in white parts first. Body in white is an extended product family with in the moment, with seven different components, starting with front rail, one-piece front rail system, the Door Ring, we will talk later, one-piece floor system. It is a product family which is made from hot stamping components.
They're building a system together. In some customers, we deliver these giga stampings, we call them, as a single solution, but they can be joined as a unique combination, and with that, you get an unrivaled body in white structure, which is the lightest one you can get. One example, I think we have seen here, was this new EV player in Berlin. All these solutions of the giga stampings, they deliver excellence and values to our customers. We have to say the combination of that, as I said, is the highest protection, safety, ratio versus cost and CO₂ that we can generate today with the technology. This technology is not only good for that, it also allows us to design as big as we want. Today, we have to say we are nearly unlimited sizes in hot stamping.
By doing so, we are creating these giga stampings that we convert into an Extreme Size Parts by adding some components, as we have seen here. This again reduces the assembly time with our customers. If we look to the functionality of the side crash system, a Door Ring, oh, this side. In this case, we are developing the Door Rings into the next generation Door Ring. We would like today to present you a Door Ring in which we have new engineering features. Basically, we introduce overlap technology, hot stamping manufacturing technology, together with the well-known soft zone technology. Both of them are totally new to the industry in the moment for the Door Rings.
In the crash, if you look to the behavior of the crash, in combination, a Door Ring with hot stamping proprietary technology of overlap and the Soft Zone, is today the optimum in weight crash that we can do. This is the reason why in most of the cars, we will see this application in the center of the car, as the technology would be rolled out in most of the cars. Independent, if it is a small size car, a big size car, no limitation on that. We'd like to present here also, take the opportunity to present you the latest member of our giga stamping, which is the one piece rear rail. In reality, this part, it takes the same advantage from our manufacturing technology, like the overlap or the Soft Zone.
It uses the same CapEx, the same machines that you've seen in Ludwigsfelde. It is our response to the, in the moment, a very interesting casting solutions that you can also find on the market, but to a much lower cost performance CO₂ ratio. It is an alternative that we are now designing in some of our customers in co-development. Crash performance on these type of products is completely different. This type of products allows us to have a crash performance by deformation. That is a slightly different act, and through the Soft Zone technology, we have the full freedom to design a crash purpose, and we believe that with this giga stampings of rear array, we're capable to create the most light rear crash system at the moment on the market.
Let's come now to Extreme Size Parts in general, and Door Rings in a specific way. For us, this is a success story, and we deliver Door Rings today about EUR 2.3 million in the NAFTA. We have EUR 3.7 million of the Door Rings in Europe. In Asia, around EUR 1.6 million. Bear in mind, every time we manufacture a Door Ring, we are manufacturing an A, B, C pillar, a rocker, which in the past, when we designed single parts, we typically have been awarded only from one or two pieces. Here, when we do Door Ring, we automatically generate a much bigger scope because we get the complete Door Ring.
Launching door rings, we did this here in Germany for a, for a non-EV, for a new EV player, which we deliver from here, the 100%. I think we've seen the production. We have been able, and this customer, to transfer the new generation of a other model by introducing our technology. We were able to bring these door rings with our proprietary technology into America and into China, where we're going to manufacture this, too. Door rings is a technology that we also have been able to roll out into a small A-segment electrical car for Europe, there is no limitation in size of a car. Coming now again to the batteries. Batteries are the so-called energy containers, which holds the cell for us, we design these battery boxes out of our technology toolbox.
The technology toolbox that Gestamp has, we can now design battery box to customer demand, and to integrate different functions into the battery by using our manufacturing experience. This allows Gestamp to design battery box either into aluminum or to steel, and some extent, also into fibers. We support the customers basically with, again, classified as three type of battery boxes. We have on one side here, what we call the aluminum framed battery boxes. Aluminum framed battery box, this is the one we have seen here in Grossbeeren. It's a battery which, who will act in crash. We also design what we have in the center, the cell to pack solution, which mainly a stamped version in the most optimal way.
It's a steel stamped version, which allows us to make cell to pack solutions in the first stage, later to integrate these systems into this cell to body into the car, reducing also the functionality and the cost. We have also some designs of very small city cars, where we do battery box on composite. In these cases, we can introduce functionality by putting fiber protection into the process or magnetic shielding into the process, it's related more to very small ones. Battery boxes, we have been able to roll out as a product family into the complete regions of the world. Today, we are delivering battery box components in all the regions of the world as multi-material mixed solutions, manufactured with Very High-Advanced Solution.
I think here we had the chance to see how complex some battery box assemblies can be. Thanks to our technology toolbox, we're capable to do this for traditional OEMs as well as for the new EV players. There's no different on that. Coming to the product family chassis again. Chassis, as I mentioned before, the most important thing for us is the integration of the chassis, here, the product family basically has three main products, which is the front chassis, the rear chassis, and the control and the links. Everything in the chassis is about the new driving performance by introducing motors inside, here's where our technologies will allow to design chassis either in steel or in aluminum. Some very limited application will be fibers, but mostly of them will go in steel.
Excellence and values are coming from the integration of the motor, this integration of the motor will, to explain this, as we put the motor now front directly in the chassis, we have to take the torque of the motor, the chassis becomes more heavier, more stiffer, at the same time, the requirement of the motors must be that the chassis has to work in crash. If to have in crash, we need to make it softer and deformable. At the end, we are creating a very high engineered product. To create this high engineered product, we would like to present you one of our solutions, which we call the Hypertube solution. Hypertube stands for, i t's a super lightweight for high performance tubes.
It's a combination of a hydroforming technology, which blows water the tubes to a certain geometry using an extreme high-strength material and a very specific technology. We can do that, again, because we are toolmakers, this combination gives you a quite top-notch technology product. In the video, you can see how this tube version can integrate very easily the motor, and this geometry really allows us to take complete torque, or manage the torque management, as well as we can get inside the right deformation. This is a steel version, which gives you the best weight, CO₂. Again, we're going to the same basics: weight, CO₂, and cost reduction as we can do. We are able to get chassis developments around the world also as a success story.
In 2020, we start with developing this motor-integrated chassis, bring this into the EV platforms, mainly from the German brands, then we transfer this into the Americas in 2023, 2024. We are rolling out this type of technology in the future, we believe this will be an ongoing business for us. When we come to the Edscha products, in the family of the Edscha, we find mechanical products, mechatronics, and powered system. Here in this simulation, we have only put three of them as to show, which is the front flank system, the power liftgate system, and the side door systems. The Edscha products, the functionality we design in, basically have the most advanced, like, stopping systems.
In the doors, we have in gravity movement, and in the front, we introduce features like safety crash features to open. We not only design the products in Edscha, we also design the ECU, and according to it, also the software development. Edscha, at the end, provides basically two main things for us. Products, which has, say, easy ingress and egress, which means this is a comfort, how we can get into the car, and then secondly, and finally, also the safety functions. In Edscha, I would like to mention, for us, Edscha is a success story, as we have been able to roll out into to China, all our products, from mechanical, mechatronics as well, into power system, into nearly all local and traditional Chinese brands. It's important to mention BYD.
In BYD, we are delivering today for more than 30 million cars on lifetime, a wide scope of product mix into this. With that, having Edscha almost like 25% of the sales in China, which we believe is quite important. At the end, as Gestamp, we are capable to develop a value proposition by creating a portfolio with a high-value added, which is required for the electrical architecture. We not only develop these products, it's important. We develop this product, we test the product, and we bring it to serial production, thanks to the use of our Gestamp proprietary technology, like we show you with the Door Rings, using our own cutting-edge technology. In most of the cases, also linked to our tools and to our equipment manufacturing building.
Important, we apply, as we said before, the 3R strategy, in which the priority of the 3R strategy, when it comes to design, basically is the CapEx reutilization and the carbon footprint activities. As a result, we deliver, we believe, unparalleled safety products, which can, in every field, reduce the weight, the cost, and the CO₂, at the same time that we can increase the value added and the car content. That is the reason why in Gestamp, or why we can leverage science, engineering, and technology expertise into EV. For this, we believe that in Gestamp, therefore, we are the technology partner supplier for our customers.
Imagine that you're traveling along an infinite road. You're in no hurry to arrive. You feel safe, and so you enjoy the journey. It's not by chance. It's our commitment to the long term. A commitment that is not always visible, but is always present from within. It all starts with a promise. Ours is with our own, with those around us, and with the planet. Sustainability has been, is, and will continue to be a strategic pillar of Gestamp's business model and the way to achieve our goals. Moving towards neutrality, decarbonizing mobility and industry, relying on circular economy, recycling, reusing, and reducing waste, improving people's lives, health, and safety, promoting diversity and inclusion, being responsible with our environment. These are the steps that will lead us to an incredible future, and we will do it by manufacturing sustainability from within.
I'm here to provide you with some more details about the meaning of our message, "Gestamp Manufacturing Sustainability from Within." We have seen through previous presentations that our sector is in the middle of a big transition, and this transition is.
with very difficult challenges, but this opens an amazing amount of opportunities if we are able to manage this in a proper way. The thing is that now we need to meet mobility needs, but in a sustainable way. To decline this, and to better explain what we consider sustainable way, we use the ESG concept. If we start with the environmental part, which is the part that everybody has an opinion and is receiving all the focus from the regulatory and from all the media, every different stakeholder, what is clear is that we are embedded in this process of decarbonization. Until now, we have been really focused on the decarbonization of the energy. When we talk about decarbonized mobility, we think always about mobility. Now is the time to decarbonize also materials.
What the society is expecting from us as a company, is that we have an impact also on society. Society is also now changing in a way that is providing us with a completely new competitive scenario, where talent is the thing that we need to secure. When we are expected, as a company, to deliver something more on the communities that we are operating. All this done with the highest respect to all the standards and the norms that are defining how a company needs to be applying governance in today's scenario. On this, what we are facing, and you have seen also through the news and on the different presentations, how important the value chain for the automotive sector has become during the last years. Luckily, for us at Gestamp, most of those topics are not new.
We have started with our ISO 14001 as a way to manage environment. Then we have evolved this into a completely new certification with Zero Waste, with AENOR. On the same tone, we have started with the United Nations Global Compact, being one of the first companies signing on this as a way of giving our commitment to this new initiative. This was then translated into the approval from the Science Based Targets initiative on our emissions targets. Not only this, now we are able to present some details about our strategy covered by the ESG plan, always working for a Net Zero Car. Our plan is part of our strategy and has been deployed by eight different working groups with a composition that was completely crossing all departments at Gestamp.
That's why this allow us to really embed it on the strategy, but also making sure that the implementation will be led by the same people that was very involved on the definition. What does it mean, this definition? The definition was to, first, select the four mega trends that are framing our strategic plan. What are the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations that were mainly on our focus? Having different boxes where we could allocate all our previous activities, but also the ones that are needed to succeed on these new challenges that we are having and generating the right opportunities. We start always with health and safety, because you have seen also, visiting our nine sites here, how safe is to work with us.
As requested by society, we have defined a clear road map to do the decarbonization and to provide this expected neutrality. We are pioneering on the implementation of circular economy, a topic that is well discussed in academical terms, but then it's really rare to see companies really investing on this, as we did during the last year. All this managed through our environmental targets, having this talent focus for a company that is having people at its core, with all our social contribution, giving an answer to those needs that are popping up in different communities where we are, and again, with the highest respect of everything related to ethics and governance. All this cannot be done alone. That's why we have integrated as a key element on our strategy, the value chain.
In the same way that we have been talking until now about new players coming as OEMs in combination with the traditional ones, when we talk about raw material suppliers, we have exactly the same situation. Very traditional players and now startups allowing us to dream about new technologies on how our metals will be prepared. The challenge here also, and you have seen through these first elements of my speech, is to keep the balance between the E, the S, and the G. When we move to the E, these three chapters already announced: the CO₂ road to neutrality, circularity, and all these under the environmental target. How will be our contribution defined? Three main elements. The way that we manufacture, the raw materials that we are using to manufacture all those products, and the products that we are manufacturing.
You have seen how innovative can be our portfolio of products, but also you will see that step by step, we are introducing innovation into the raw materials that we are using for those products, and also in the way that you have seen and the contrast between the two factories that you have been visiting. The GHG Protocol allows us to define how we manage our CO₂ emissions, and this can be a very complex topic, so that's why our approach is to simplify this. Scope 1 is our direct emissions that are coming from the use of any source of energy except electricity. Scope 2 are all the emissions that we are generating linked to the use of electricity.
On Scope 3, out of the very different categories that are in this chapter, what we consider the most relevant for Gestamp is the emissions linked to the use of materials, because we have all these validated by the SBTi, and this is the only way to fulfill the requirements of the Paris Agreement. Electrifying our production is the parallel to electrifying our mobility. If we have been discussing about how important is to move out of combustion engines into electric vehicles, same in the way that we are producing. We were having some processes that were using fuel, gas, diesel for the forklifts. All those things needs to be step by step, moved into electricity. It's not only a question of which kind of energy are we using.
The key point here, and this is linked with the operational excellence that Patricia will explain in detail later, is that the best energy is the one that is not being used. That's why the efficiency is one of our key things. Last but not least, the electricity sourcing. We need to make sure that all the electricity that we are buying is produced in the right way. For this, we have detailed a very strong roadmap, where we are combining the Scope 1 and Scope 2, because this is the energy, and then the Scope 3, and we are having different set of actions going in parallel to tackle the two things. When we are pioneering and when we are offering something slightly different, is on our position in front of this big challenge of decarbonizing the raw materials that we are using.
At Gestamp, this means mostly steel. On this steel, what we see is that there is not a question only of the energy that you are using to produce this steel, is also embedded emissions linked to the metallurgical process, how you move from iron ore with oxygen and iron into real steel. The only way to reduce those emissions now, until the new generation of steel manufacture technologies is really in place, is melting scrap coming from already produced steel, because then you don't have those embedded emissions coming from the metallurgical process. It will not be enough steel for everybody, that's why what we will be managing is this coexistence between linear and circular economy. There, to prepare this circularity, is where we have been investing, and this is having two main effects. One is decarbonizing the material itself.
We reduce from 2.2 tons of CO₂ emitted per ton produced of steel to 0.4 tons per ton, so it's a substantial reduction. That's why we talk about low-CO₂ steel or green steel. Not only this, once the decarbonization objectives will be achieved, or even there, society will require from companies like us, that we are moving three million tons of steel per year, that we have a responsible use of those raw materials. It's not only a value proposition that will help now to achieve the decarbonization, it's also something that will stay because we will have the responsibility on top of all what we do. As Ignacio was explaining, we have the weight reduction on our parts. The core is this circularity that Gescrap allows us to deploy.
Very easy to talk about circularity, very difficult to succeed generating the whole ecosystem. If you are able to have all the key elements to create those ecosystems between the steel manufacturers and our customers, the OEMs, now we have Gestamp and Gescrap allowing us to close those circles. This is what allows us then to deploy digital solutions and everything that will go even further on the definition of traceability, accountability for CO₂ emissions, you name it. First, the ecosystems needs to be closed by a clear set of companies. Last but not least, our role is that new categories of steel will be placed on the market, while our customers, what are looking is for stability on the supply.
We are there to buffer these two processes during the homologation of the new qualities of steel that are produced, and also passing to the steel manufacturers the new requirements that our OEMs are passing to us. In social impact, we have health and safety. This will be explained later on our operational excellence, because this is a core element of everything what we do. The attraction for talent. You see that this is paradise for engineers, but we need all kind of good people working with us. These people that will join us, we need to keep those skills at the path of the evolution that is forced by the market. The impact that we are doing on those communities. This can be measured by the number of hours that we are giving as a voluntary contribution, also our social initiatives.
Even more important is giving the meaning of everything that we do, trying to select the activities where we can have a much better impact based on our core elements on the knowledge. That's why we are focusing on education and training, mobility, transport, environment, without forgetting the emergency help that is needed sometimes when there is a crisis that we are facing lately on different countries. This governance, we have now the challenge that in one hand, legislation is forcing us to control our suppliers and to be responsible for everything that is happening on their value chain. On the other hand, what is needed, and this is highlighted by the SDG 17, is partnership for the goals. What is clear is that although there are very difficult things to be achieved, we have more or less all the elements to succeed.
The only thing is that maybe the one that will make something possible will not be one of the traditional partners or one of the big companies, and you need to deal with a little one, or you need to reframe the way that you are cooperating with an OEM or with a steel producer. This partnership needs to be balanced with the need to control, to the last extreme, everything that is going on on the value chain. Not only this, when we talk about circular economy, the value chain is coming back to you. We need to be coherent on the way that we implement all our policies, because if not, we will have some problems there and so on. How we do this? We have the best of the independent oversight, and then the best on the family route, giving us the leadership.
We have more than 2/3 of our board directors, the independent ones, are on key committees. More than 50% of our board directors are independent ones. Also, answering or giving a solution to all the new challenges that we are facing as a society, we have more than 30% of our board directors that are already females. All this rooted in our long-term strategic focus. All those challenges needs a long period of time to be solved. We are talking about 2045, 2030. This, without a strong set of culture and values, this is almost impossible to pass all these key messages across all of us.
Last but not least, this new relationship that we will need with suppliers needs to be extended to all different KSK stakeholders, and there is no better way to do that, what we have now. Then, this needs to be done, this needs to be implemented, this needs to be reported, this needs to be proved, this needs to be managed. That's why on this structure that we have developed, we have all the key elements with an ESG department managing all those things, reporting to our executive chairman, having an ESG committee that is supporting us from all the serial management at the company. When we go to the board, there is a sustainability committee helping us and giving all the support on all those topics that we are doing. Those topics are not always easy ones or not always technical ones.
We have 12.5% of our variable remuneration link to the achievement of all those things that are described on our ESG plan. We are becoming tangible, and things are not only a promise for the future, but this is touching your remuneration on daily basis. Not only this, we are under the continuous scrutiny from the different rating agencies, and we are there listed with the most renewable ones, and we are trying always, in continuous way, to adapt the new requirements and to deliver the best that is required from us. That's why, with this active role, we are convinced that we are manufacturing sustainability from within, and that's why we are here to be your ESG partner supplier. Thank you very much. Now Patricia will follow with the operational excellence.
Hello, everyone, and welcome also from my side to our second Capital Markets Day. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm Patricia Riberas. I'm the Chief Operational Excellence Officer at Gestamp. Yes, that's a very odd job title. That's because at Gestamp, it makes sense, because operational excellence is a key competitive advantage for us. What is our definition of operational excellence? It's about a continuous improvement mindset, about promoting change across the organization and doing our business, the business we already know how to do, but better. Operational excellence has always been a key pillar for Gestamp since its foundation. It is the basis of our clients' trustworthiness. The industry dynamics are changing. You have seen it all around you. With stronger technology and innovation, we need to build more complex products.
With larger global platforms, we have to become a global player. With increased volume volatility, we have to have more resilient operations. With the shorter timelines with electric vehicles, we have to have shorter industrialization phases. The world is changing very fast, but we want to be the first movers. As you know, Gestamp has a very solid manufacturing track record. Since our IPO in 2017, we have developed 11 new factories. Just to give you an idea, only in 2022, we were working with 49 different OEMs in 100% of the global platforms that exist, with 110 different product types, and that's over 38,000 unique references sold. Our strategy is very simple. Like I said before, it's about doing everything we already know how to do, but doing it better.
Doing it better by taking flexibility and efficiency to the next level through three key enablers: Industry 4.0, data, and people. Our ultimate goal is to be trustworthy for our clients in order to become and be their partner supplier. In order to raise the bar in efficiency and in flexibility, we have four levers that I will speak about today. We have a continuous improvement mindset, we have operational cost control, we have OpEx and LabEx adaptability, and then we have capital optimization. A continuous improvement mindset is not just based on mindset or culture. It's based on data. Here you have a dashboard that we use to measure all the different industrial KPIs that we have around the world, and we measure them on a monthly basis. We have very clear targets and objectives for example, the year 2023.
Just to give you two examples, we have an improvement of 2.5% in our OEE, that's overall equipment effectiveness, that you probably have seen around the plant, like I said, 2.5% versus 2022. Also, for example, in our strokes per shift, improving by 2.5% also compared to 2023. We monitor this with every single division, every single month. We're also changing the way that we're doing things. We are digitalizing and standardizing the routines that we have in the shop floor. For example, running predictive rather than corrective maintenance routines or changing and optimizing our spare parts management. This both reduces our downtimes and our cost. These are some of the examples of the initiatives that we're powering through the Atenea initiative.
I'm gonna show you a quick video of the KPI dashboard that we have. As you can see, you can go into the different KPIs that we use to monitor our operations, into the different types of assets that we have across the world. This is our quality KPI system. Any plant manager can go and see their specific plant. They can also see other plants around the world so that they understand what sort of targets they have, and the same thing with the different divisions across the world. We're also running other types of global programs in order to reduce cost control. An example of this is our energy efficiency program. It's a new model, and it's a framework that already in 2023, will help us save 28 GW in electricity.
Currently, we have 27 plants within this scope, but we plan to add 42 additional ones by 2026. This means that by then, we will have 87% of the total energy consumption that we have in Gestamp monitored under this program. Of course, energy efficiency is not only about cost, it's about reaching our ESG targets, like Ernesto said before, about being neutral in Scope 1 and Scope 2 by 2045. We're also looking into our supply chain. An example of some optimization that we have is a collaboration between Gestamp and Gescrap, that work together to use and refurbish old racks for a new project in the U.S., and this helped us reduce 77% our costs for those new racks that we would have used in that project specifically.
We're also looking into our logistics internally with the use of AGVs. You've seen some of them running here already, but we want to make sure that it's an absolute reality for Gestamp. It's already extended in many of our plants, but we have the objective of reaching 43 plants by 2026. We also have the maintenance optimization plan, this not only promotes new ways of working, but it deeply impacts our organizational structure. With this, we intend to achieve a 4%-6% reduction in our maintenance costs for parts by 2027. Of course, in the world that we live in today, we need to be flexible in OpEx and CapEx as well. As you know, Gestamp has been very good at flexing in times of crisis, achieving an operating leverage of 19.5% during the COVID crisis.
We not only need to be flexible during times of crisis, we need to be flexible always. We are in the auto sector, after all. In order to do that, Gestamp has a lot of different tools that we can use around the world. First, 20% of our workforce is already flexible. We have the use of pools of hours in certain perimeters, where we are allowed to use that to adapt to periods of high and low volumes. We're also redesigning different cells in order to have a more flexible design that can help us adapt to daily changes in volumes. As you know, and like we said before, managing our capital employed is key to our strategy. We want to fulfill profitable growth, and we want to fulfill our ROCE targets.
In order to do that, we have to maximize the use of our existing assets, and we do that with three main pillars: our capacity optimization, our reuse strategy, and our global maintenance strategy. With capacity optimization, the first thing that we need to be able to do is have perfect capacity visualization. In order to do that, we've implemented a tool worldwide called from SAP, it's called IBP, and we right now have a lot more visibility on the existing capacities that we have on our assets. We have our reuse strategy, which means that certain generic assets that we have around the world can be reused for different projects, also, in many other places around the world. This, when possible, helps us decrease our use of CapEx in almost 50% whenever it is possible between projects.
We have our maintenance program, which means that we work on predicting rather than correcting, and this helps us increase the life of our assets. We're currently working this global maintenance strategy on the very key 1,400 assets that we have around the world. Our focus is to maximize our investments. In order to do that, we have to make our investments more flexible and valid for all types of different products. Our traditional flexibility that we've always implemented, and we're actually supporting to make sure that it's happening all across the group, is transforming small, dedicated welding cells into flexible cells. We're taking this to the next level. As you know, in the last Capital Markets Day, we spoke about flex manufacturing concept. It's no longer a concept, it's a proving factory for us.
Right now, we have our first pilot plant in Spain, and it's running eight different body in white products in eight different assembly cells. This is all running around with 35 different AGVs that are monitoring the flow around the factory, and everything is monitored using our internally developed software called Brain. Brain receives, in this case, over 10,000 signals in order to monitor production and adapt to all the different changes that exist. This is not only the first factory that we have, the smart factory, we're starting a new smart factory also in the United States, and hopefully, in the next couple of years, we'll be able to show you something else. I'm now gonna show you a video that explains our smart factory and flex manufacturing concept.
At Gestamp, we develop the best solutions to adapt to the great challenges of the industry. We are innovation. For this reason, we adapt and develop flexible and intelligent manufacturing solutions: agile, efficient, and sustainable. This is why we are creating the smart factory, the next level of digitalization for business with the most advanced engineering concepts. A new, smart, and flexible industrial ecosystem. Factory 21 is evidence that Gestamp is always on the move. The first smart factory pilot project encompasses a revolutionary concept, whose main function is to create a flexible production flow, managing all available resources in real time. Optimal data management through various layers of software and artificial intelligence, as well as the use of traceability systems, makes it possible to link the physical world with the virtual world, interacting with equipment, products, and people.
These new modular assembly facilities are distributed throughout the production area in a matrix to be able to manufacture any type of product. The rest of the process areas are linked by autonomous vehicles within the production system. It is a production system designed in circuits and movement flows between the different process areas: kitting area, assembly cells, quality control cells, and racking areas. This is Gestamp. This is our manufacturing model. At Gestamp, we have been preparing ourselves for quite some time to tackle the challenges of the industry. The smart factory is our solution for achieving flexible, efficient, and sustainable factories, able to adapt to the unexpected and to overcome uncertainty. This is how we see the future. This is how we anticipate it.
This brings me to our enablers. We have Industry 4.0, we have data, and we have people. We believe Industry 4.0 is a key pillar for our operational excellence model. In order to do that, since 2017, we have developed an ecosystem in which not only we can develop, but we also get external partners to co-develop with us. As you know, since the last Capital Markets Day, we've increased significantly our 4.0 approach. I want to give you an understanding of everything that has happened since then. We've evolved from an ad hoc, very centralized development and very unequal adoption across plants, to a very clearly governed federal ecosystem. This has helped us boost our 4.0 growth. Since the last Capital Markets Day, we are almost doubling in 2024 the connected lines that we have across the group.
We will have real-time data analytics on all of our key processes by 2025. We have developed over 20 apps in the world, and we are currently simulating 100% of the complex projects that we're running before nomination. During the Capital Markets Day in 2021, we had 25 plants with Industry 4.0 packages. Right now, in 2024, we expect to have 65 plants with the complete Industry 4.0 package. This means that for Gestamp, this is not the future. This is already happening for us. This is our reality. This reality is, of course, not possible without our people. We have 42,000 employees in 24 different countries across the world, and we need to get the best people in the right places in order to deliver these operational excellence strategies.
Therefore, we've had to elevate our HR strategy. In order to do that, we have updated our global talent and global taxonomy model. We have launched a global site for job posting across the world to improve the global mobility of our talent. We have revised all of our compensation schemes, also in the different areas of the world, and we have updated our learning and development offer for all of our employees. Just to give you some examples, in the USA, we're working to achieve in 2023, the certification called Great Place To Work, and in 2022, in Mexico, we achieved the Best Employer recognition. Talent nowadays has to go hand in hand with data. Our data strategy is based on the concept of maximizing the value that we add to our business using our data.
In order to do that, we have to transform both our people, but we also have to transform our internal processes. Now I'm going to show you a video around Ipatia, which is our Gestamp data platform.
We are living a smart industrial revolution, where every company has to be digital to be competitive, and data is more relevant than ever. In this context, Gestamp wants to transform its way of using data to gain an additional competitive advantage. Empowered by Atenea, Ipatia is the cornerstone of our data and analytics strategy. Ipatia is a global platform that gathers data from our multiple sources. It offers a single point of quick access to unique, high-quality data for consumption across the organization. A key factor of the platform is the construction of a business context layer, setting up a common business glossary across the company to ensure that everyone uses the same version of the data. This allows the data marketplace concept to be integrated into the platform, facilitating visibility and secured access to data across the organization.
This is only possible thanks to a global data governance and management model, committing both business and IT areas to create together a transversal platform to generate value throughout our organization. Gestamp's Ipatia data and analytics platform, leveraging data to drive transformation into the future.
Our ultimate goal is to keep our clients' trust, and for that, we have to always deliver the best quality. How do we deliver the best quality? We deliver it leveraging on data analytics and also on the different technological controls that we're implementing in the different lines. We also have to be able to deliver on our commitments, and as you know, Gestamp has a very long-standing reputation in doing so, even though our clients' requirements increase every year. For example, we were able to build a plant in Poland in 10 months. We were able to launch a battery box assembly from nomination to start of production in Asia in six months. The Door Ring line that you saw before, that was launched in nine months. We not only want to be trustworthy for our clients, we have to be trustworthy for our people.
That's why, like Ernesto mentioned before, health and safety at Gestamp operations always comes first. We have a global health and safety system for Gestamp that is implemented in 100% of the group. That goes way beyond our local regulations. In conclusion, in the past, our operational excellence model has helped us achieve our client trustworthiness and therefore strengthening our commercial positioning. Today, we spoke about taking flexibility and efficiency to the next level using the three levers: Industry 4.0, data, and people. This helps us embrace the mobility revolution hand in hand with our clients in order to continue being our client's industrial partner. We have a clear roadmap. We have the people and technology to achieve it. Now, I'm gonna turn it over to Nacho for the finance section. Thank you.
Good afternoon. Thank you very much for joining us here. I'd like to first talk about our financial profile and how we have navigated on these very difficult and challenging times, as Francisco explained in his presentation. You can see that we have improved our EBITDA margin. We have positive free cash flow, and we've reduced our indebtedness. Therefore, we are becoming a reliable financial partner. Well, actually not. We are already a reliable financial partner. A reliable financial partner that is ready for the next phase in EV growth, and that is ready to create value for its shareholders. Furthermore, we deliver on our commitments. At the time of IPO, we had a commitment on growth, we had a commitment on profitability, a commitment on net debt, and a commitment on shareholder remuneration.
In terms of revenue, we grew above the market by 10 percentage points. In terms of EBITDA, we achieved a 12.7% EBITDA margin, record EBITDA. Net debt at 1.8 x, which is below the threshold we imposed at 2 x, we maintained a dividend payout of 30%, except once during COVID. What's next? We want to continue doing what we know best and doing it with a clear financial strategy. That clear financial strategy has four levers. First, growth, which is in our DNA. Second, transform that growth into profitability. Third, that profitability into cash generation, and therefore have a healthy balance sheet, being able to deliver better. How are we going to grow? We expect to continue growing mid-single digit above the market from between now and 2027, based mostly on three levers.
First of all, market volume. We've explained in other parts of this presentation that we expect the market to recover. Secondly, through our positioning and gaining market share. Third, in EV, where we have a commitment to grow and reach more than 50% of our sales of parts by 2027, and therefore growing by 5x . Furthermore, these sales are largely underpinned. 91% of our revenues between now and 2027 of sales of parts are already in our backlog of EUR 55 billion. The backlog, which we're presenting here, is the backlog based on awarded projects and is based on the projects which are under production. By the way, we will be reporting this backlog on a yearly basis from now onwards.
As we explained also, we are committed to profitable growth, and that profitable growth will be based, first of all, on a margin expansion between 150 and 190 basis points, which will be based, first of all, on volumes leverage, and therefore operational leverage and fixed cost absorption. Second, by raising the bar operationally, as Patricia explained in her presentation, and therefore achieving a better margin. Third, by our commitment to the NAFTA region, where we expect to have double-digit EBITDA margin by 2026. Secondly, we're gonna have an efficient capital employed, reuse of assets, CapEx execution, and selective CapEx investments. All of that to drive or return on capital employed from 14% to 17.5%.
This commitment, which we're now stating to the market, is a very strong commitment also for the management team, and it's actually part of our long-term incentive plan as management to deliver on it as the same to the market. Just recapping on our capital allocation policy. Growth, which is part of our DNA, continue to focus on profitable growth. Second, leverage. Leverage between one and 1.5 x at the end of the period, and the free cash flow generation of between EUR 300 million and EUR 350 million by 2027. Third, balance sheet efficiency, rating improvement on the one side and a focus on financing expenses and working capital management on the other. Fourth, M&A, by having a discipline, but active strategy towards complementary M&A.
Fifth, a dividend policy, which we will maintain at a 30% payout ratio, but should grow as net profit grows between now and 2027. To recap on what are our objectives and the commitments that we have for the market. In terms of sales, mid-single digit outperformance. Part of those sales will be driven by EV, where our commitment is that more than 50% of the revenues of sales of parts will be electric vehicle driven, and that means 5x the sales that we've achieved in 2022. Third, EBITDA margin expansion between 150 and 190 basis points. Fourth, net leverage between one and 1.5x by 2027. Fifth, and this new commitment to the market, return on capital employed of 350 basis points expansion by 2027.
Being our value proposition, finally, accelerating growth, strengthen our leadership in electric vehicle, improving our cash flow generation, and having a prudent leverage, and having a smart capital allocation, which includes an attractive shareholder remuneration. Becoming, therefore, the financial partner supplier. With this, thank you very much. We will now turn into the Q&A section. Thank you.
Well, thank you, everyone. Now we will open for our Q&A session, and if you raise your hands, Sierra or Martha will bring you the microphone to you.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Yep, okay. This is Francisco Ruiz from Exane BNP Paribas. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one is on the growth because you reiterated this mid-single digit growth, despite growing in natural bicycle, well above the industry in most of the cases. Also, you commented that your addressable market will grow 8%. With a market growing only two point something, mid-single digit means that you're growing in line with your addressable market. Don't you expect to gain market share on your market? The second question, I make two, and probably I will get back for more. It's on the net debt target.
You mentioned that you're gonna reduce the leverage, also with the improvement that you expect on EBITDA, that means that practically, the absolute level of debt will not decline in these five years. With EUR 300 million of free cash flow, where the excess of cash will go? Thank you.
Okay, thanks for your question. I take the first one around the growth. I think, as you know very well, we have always tried to deliver in terms of growth. It's true that, from our history, we have always guided, maybe a little bit more conservative. It's true that we have a good target. We have a growth ambition. As we mentioned, we have a good positioning. The EV market and our sales to the EV, we feel quite comfortable, I think, we have always, let's say, decided that we don't want to put an additional pressure for us because the market is gonna evolve in the next years to come. To your question, I'm being quite straight, yes, maybe we are a little bit conservative in our growth targets for the next five years.
In terms of net debt, the way we measured it, which is basically the free cash flow before dividends and any potential M&A transaction, what's gonna happen in the next years to come is that obviously we have investment plans which are driving a large part of the cash that we'll be generating, as it has done in the past. In order to be able to meet the growth phase, which we are facing in EV, to meet the expansion that we've said in terms of sales, we will be investing a part of it through free cash flow generation.
Could be.
Could be, but it's not something which we are now foreseeing.
Thank you. Akshat from J.P. Morgan. Three questions from me, please. The first one, coming back to ROCE as a core KPI. You mentioned that you have a target to improve from 14%- 17.5%, and a couple of points that were very important in that is, you mentioned strict CapEx control, and you mentioned North America margins. I'm just keen to understand if you can provide more details on that. Do you have an absolute CapEx range that you're willing to talk about for the next few years, that you're willing to spend in terms of organic CapEx? Even on North America margins, you have talked about double-digit. Is it possible to be more specific, and do you have a timeline on North America margins?
Are we talking about 12%, 13%, or maybe an ambition to get to 15%? Probably just some more details on that will be helpful. The second question is on China. You mentioned 12% of your revenues in China today. How much of those revenues are with international OEMs? How much of the revenues are with local Chinese, and how do you expect that to change with the order book going into 2027? What portion of revenues will be in China, and how much with the local Chinese? Thank you.
Maybe I can take the one on CapEx, if that's okay.
Yeah.
In terms of CapEx, we have not provided a specific guidance as we have provided in the past, as you have seen, and that's basically because the shift right now, it's towards profitable growth and towards showing to the market that we are committed to this profitable growth, and that we can demonstrate that profitable growth by means of return on capital employed. We are going to invest, obviously, in growth CapEx, and that investments in growth CapEx is what's going to drive top-line growth, mid-single digit above the market, between now and 2027. Therefore, I cannot or we're not sharing any specific guidance on the CapEx investments going forward.
Yeah, in terms of our North American operations, it's true that we have guided to be in double-digit by or before 2026. We know that now the kind of projects that we have been awarded, we have a very sound profitability, and we have also prepared in full detail all the costs associated with the different launches. In Mexico, all the programs that we are facing and the average profitability of our operations in Mexico are running very well, and we see a lot of opportunities, also quite profitable, in this idea of Mexico as a near shore.
Of course, in the case of EBITDA, as far as we are gonna get to products like, slim size parts, like the Door Rings, and in the future, to battery boxes, we are convinced that very quickly, we are gonna have our operations in North America with an EBITDA margin in line with the average of the group. That is our target. Of course, right now, the target that we have committed is by 2026 to be in this double-digit. Of course, the real focus of the complete organization is to improve much more. Concerning China, right now, it's true that it's 12% of our sales. Today, still, let's say, probably around more than 70% of our sales is to a kind of international players.
in the last two, three years, we have increased a lot our cooperation with local local players, and also for pure EV players, some of them Americans. in the long run, we see clearly that year after year, Chinese OEMs are gaining land in the domestic market. I remember that just eight years ago, the share of the Chinese OEMs in China was basically 30%. Now, probably something around 50%. when we, when we are coming about EVs, the kind of market share gaining by new Chinese OEMs is dramatic. probably what our real focus right now is to work more and more with local Chinese OEMs, and especially to be very close to the pure EV players.
Thank you, Alexandre Raverdy, Kepler Cheuvreux. I have three questions, please. On the EBITDA bridge, which of the building blocks you think is the most contributing to your target? I mean, the other way to put it, if anything goes wrong on the volume side of things, are you still comfortable to reach your target? That the first question. The second I have is on the pathway to this target and related to what you mentioned during the IPO, so 15% EBITDA margin. What is needed for you to reach that? I think during the last CMD, you confirmed this target. Is it still the case today? The last question I have is on the management incentivization. There is this new KPI.
Do you confirm that it's part also of your incentives direct, whether it is short term, long term, and is it replacing another KPI, or is it coming on top of that? Thank you.
Okay. You can take.
On the EBITDA bridge and volumes, in general, I mean, we've seen substantial volume change over the last years, and what we have managed is to be flexible and to be able to transform our financial profile during those times. Obviously, we do have the expectation that volumes recover in the foreseeable future, in the next five years. At the same time, if that were not to happen, it could have an impact, obviously, on our profitability, but at the same time, we would take other measures, in other places in order to be able to try to reach our objective.
Talking about the 15% EBITDA margin commitment at the time of the IPO, I think it's fair to say that it's a commitment that was done at the time when volumes were more than 90 million vehicles, when raw materials prices were substantially lower than they are today, and where the cost structure inflation was obviously completely different. Just talking essentially only about raw materials, I think that our EBITDA margin would have been much higher if the raw materials would remain stable. That's why going forward, when we've done this commitment between 150 and 190 basis points, this commitment is based on reported EBITDA. It wouldn't be adjusted for raw materials as we have been doing over the last couple of years.
In essence, because we think that going forward, raw material prices are gonna remain higher at the levels that they are today. On your last point on the incentive, I guess you're referring to the KPI on return on capital employed and not, w e do have also another incentive based on the ESG plan that Ernesto mentioned. In the case of the return on capital employed, it's the metric which the management is gonna be measured for the long-term incentive, and it's not replacing any KPI.
Hi, good afternoon. First of all, thank you very much for the tour and your time during these days. It has been a pleasure to be here, and it has also improved a lot our knowledge on the company. Thank you, I appreciate. My first question, probably is on EVs. I mean, we have spent a lot of time during these days and a lot of time on the presentation talking about EV prospects. I see little concretion on the 2027 targets, especially on the margin side. I will expect that with that massive improvement on EV, that will translate something into profitability. When I see the different levels of the profitability, I see little reference of that massive shift in terms of the mix of the company.
My second question will be probably on the CapEx front. It is fair to say that a significant part of the improvement on the return on capital employment, it's coming from benefiting from extra investment in the past? You need a more limited contribution going forward, that explain a little bit of the mathematics of the improvement on the return on capital. Probably my final question might be on the phasing of all these targets. This is something that will be back-end loaded, or it will be progressively through all the time frame? Thank you.
For sure.
Well, I think, referring to your first question around EV, I think, we have committed to a kind of aggressive target, which means that, we are planning up to 2027 to multiply by five our sales related to EVs. It's also true that, you ask, what is gonna be the impact on the increase on profitability? I think we should not forget that, we are all aware that we know how the trend is gonna be, but there's gonna be some delays. We have today, here, we are here in a plant that we were supposed to be starting some years ago, but still, the product is not well-defined, and that's why we have some delay. We are gonna have some delays.
We are gonna have volumes from EVs and ICE, which are gonna be, let's say, confused. I think we need to be very careful, because in some moment of time, it could be that we have some part of this capital, which is probably good employee, but maybe in advance, because there are some delays associated with the launch of the new programs. I think regarding the CapEx, maybe you can talk, Nacho, but it's true that we have had, in the last two, three years, a very important support in terms of our, of our capital utilization, because we have the investments done in the past. That is already happening today, but less and less, because we should not forget that now we are coming back to a period of CapEx, which is quite relevant.
Just to mention, when you were talking about the extra investments, it's could be a part of it, but it's not so much related to that. It is on CapEx execution, being able to execute in less time. I think Patricia provided an example around being able to do the investments in Poland in less than a year. It's talking about a very, say, a reuse of assets, being able to reutilize some of them, and therefore being able to have a better depreciation and amortization, or it's being able to basically do more focus on the way we want to expand our lines or use the capacity of our lines. On the phasing of the targets, we have not disclosed that.
I mean, I think it's going to be relatively evenly distributed, but at the same time, as Francisco mentioned just a minute ago, I think we need to be cautious about the volumes between electric and electric vehicle and ICE, and how the phasing of ICE goes in the future. There is regulation, there is incentives to the consumer, there is obviously a lot of, a lot of brands going into electric vehicle, but that phasing may have certain shifts that could impact essentially the phasing of our objectives.
Just a follow-up on the EVs story. Given that we are making the first step, no, on this electrification story, with the information that we have today, with the target that you have already provided, it is fair to say that on the coming five years, you see limited margin expansion coming from this area? Because of whatever, lack of visibility, ups and downs.
No, no, I don't think we have said that. No, I think that there's gonna be margin expansion because of our product portfolio, because of our positioning with clients, because we are anticipating and we are doing co-development with them, because we're going into more added value products, not specifically to EV, I mean, specifically to the positioning of our company. Obviously, with the transition of the market from ICE to EV and our positioning with our clients, we are going to have margin expansion. That relates to the three building blocks, which I mentioned in my presentation, which is basically volume-driven, and that big part of volume-driven, it's electric vehicle-driven. There is a part which is operational excellence and raising the bar, and being able to basically have a better cost absorption. The reality is that volume and that operational excellence applies to both ICE and electric vehicle.
Okay, great.
Hi, good morning. It's Enrique Yágüez from Bestinver Securities. Have four questions. The first one is regarding capacity optimization. You mentioned that it was one of the priorities in the operational excellence program, so the key question is, how much spare capacity do you have? If you could give us a breakdown among the different business areas in order to see where this spare capacity comes from. Secondly, you gave an aggressive target in terms of return on capital employed. Could you disclose what is the internal rates of return of new projects? Because, you know, your new return capital employed target is well above, you know, the internal rate of return of 15% when the IPO.
Third, I don't know if you could disclose some breakdown among the new EV players in terms of sales or backlog, you know, in order to know how much do they represent currently? Finally, in terms of M&A, what are your priorities? Is acquisition like Gescrap in order to improve your sustainability profile, or are many minorities remaining that you would like to acquire or something like that? Thank you very much.
[crosstalk] Okay, maybe capacities?
As you know, like, we said before, in order to be able to optimize it, you have to be able to visualize across the world. In the past, we did this at a very local level. Within a plant, obviously, they have their reuse strategy. They understand how their different assets are saturated, and they manage within. You also have this in different divisions, and they've been managing that since the beginning. Now we are trying to do something different. We're trying to do something that's global. In order to do that, you need data, because when you ask a plant manager if he has extra capacity, the most likely answer is, "No. Don't take my assets away from me."
Now we have some data, and we've used that data to understand in certain areas where we can consolidate our current production into the different assets to be able to extract an asset from an area, maybe where it's being underutilized or where we have our volumes very divided into different assets, so we consolidate. We've been able to move some of these existing assets already in a lot of projects around the world. You saw an example today in Ludwigsfelde with the press from Sweden, and you also saw it with the furnace. We do that since the very beginning, and now we're trying to get a better visibility. We have to do that in terms of data. That comes first.
In terms of IRR, I think that the 15% threshold which you referred to, and that was referred at the time of IPO, has evolved over time. Obviously, a 15% IRR applied in any region of the world, any technology, any investment, it doesn't fly completely. We have a 15% target, certainly, but we look at it on a flexible way, depending on what are we investing on, how much are we investing on, with which clients, what volume risks does it entail, what type of technology. It's not a fixed thing, that 15%.
Refer to the breakdown of sales to pure EVs, it's not easy to provide this data because most of our customers don't like too much that we provide this data. It's true that we had quite a relevant sales figures for one pure EV American players. also in most of the other pure EV players, we work basically in China. We have provided, for instance, some data around the growth of the activity of Edscha in China, which I think is quite relevant.
There is going to be always a battle between the traditional OEMs with the new EVs, that today, for instance, some of the non-Chinese OEMs are losing the battle in the EVs in China, but that maybe is not going to be the same in the rest of the world. Coming to the M&A, Nacho can talk about criteria, but I think probably there are two different kind of M&A, no? There is one which is basically related to specific topics that we want to cover, no matter whether it's geography or other topics. And there could be another kind of M&A acquisition, which is coming from the offer from some of our customers to support them whenever they could have potential problems with suppliers.
That was important some years ago. In the previous crisis, we did several acquisitions. We did that in the plant, the initial of the plant of South Carolina with Lear. We did that in Edscha. We also bought, at that time, the operations of this group, Metalforming. That kind of things have not happened during this crisis because it's been, so far, a lot of liquidity. As you know well, things have changed in the last months with increase of interest rates, and we start to see some kind of problems. For our rest of our M&A.
Yes, I think it's fair to say that we have grown through M&A. I mean, this company would not be at where we are right now if we had not done some acquisitions in the past. That's obviously something that is not something that can be overruled in the future. Now, going forward, when we look at M&A, we look at it with a strict hurdle rates. We look at what is the value, a creation in terms of that acquisition towards the company and towards our shareholders. That's the way we're going to look at it going forward.
Hi, thanks for the presentation. This is Álvaro Lenze from Alantra Equities. My first question would be on the competitive advantages in Battery Boxes. I think it's fairly intuitive to understand your competitive advantages in stamping, given the decades of acquiring know-how in manufacturing. Looking at the facility tour that you've provided, it seems quite a different manufacturing process. Since probably the configuration of electric vehicles is going to change, I wanted to know how, having developed this technology in such a short period of time, what's the advantage that you have here, and that if products evolve in the future, you will not be displaced out of this market? The second question is in North America, it has been a significant performance drag since the IPO.
In the presentation, you've mentioned focus on electric vehicles and growing with the local OEMs as the key levers to improve the situation. Does this imply that the problem is lack of capacity utilization, or that the facilities that you have deployed there are at some cost, and that you need new investments to make matters better? This takes me to the third question, which is: if I look at Gestamp on a global level, since the IPO margins, especially look at EBIT margins, have not improved that much. What's been the reason for this, given that since the IPO to today, now you have much more hot stamping, much more co-development, Industry 4.0, and this does not seem to have translated into better margins. What is the reason for that?
Given those reasons, what are the main things that are going to drive that margin upgrade over the coming five years? Thanks.
Okay, good. Maybe Ignacio.
Battery boxes, no? To explain, the market of the battery boxes, as we mentioned, is very fragmented. Depending on when the car is launched, technology is changing. Here, you have seen the extruded version, and we actually expand our capacities into GV. It's eight them, where we are doing our own extrusions in order to manufacture robust technologies. Battery boxes will change in the future. The main driver will be the chemistry, and the energy density that chemistry will provide will also have an effect in size and technology used in battery boxes. The general tendency, if we can say, is back to simple and more simpler battery boxes in the future. Every customer, I have to say, is doing different. This is, it is big.
Generally spoken, we have, with our technology toolbox, the capability to develop for every customer exact what they are, have in their demand, always looking to reuse these capacities later, when there is a technology switch.
[crosstalk] I think, just to complement what Ignacio has said, I think, battery boxes has been a kind of a transversal competition from different experts. I think what we have, and maybe others don't have, is a complete view of the car and the crash model and all the board itself. I think the kind of idea that we can provide to the customers when they are evolving their solutions around battery boxes, I think, are much more valid and solid. In the case of the North American plants, we have right now, a footprint that in some extent is much more located for the European companies. We have plants in Tennessee, in Chattanooga. We have plants in the Alabama for Mercedes-Benz, and we have plant in South Carolina for BMW.
In all these cases, we are now replacing and taking the new nominations. In the case of Volkswagen, with a new EV, part of the MEB, or in the case of Daimler, also moving the EVA2, and now we are quoting for the next generation of the SUVs of BMW. These plants are well seated. We need to focus a little bit more in efficiency rather than in nomination. Now what we have is an opportunity to grow and extend our footprint back up in the north and trying to support these moves from the American companies, like General Motors or Ford or even Chrysler inside Stellantis. All of them, they have the big vehicles, and now they are moving these vehicles into EVs, and we need to provide them with new plants and new capacities in order to ship.
Our plant in West Virginia for hot stamping is absolutely full, not just with traditional work with the Europeans, but also with the Japanese, including Honda and now Toyota, and also with a quite relevant order also for an American pure EV player. I think, of course, we are launching new plants, but these plants are gonna be absolutely different. Maybe for EBIT.
Yep. I mean, I think that when you referred in the past to EBIT margins not having improved, you need to take into consideration the exceptional circumstances that we lived over the last few years. That despite that, we've managed to decrease also substantially our break-even point. We've been able to manage our costs.
We've been able to manage basically our EBITDA margin and achieve record EBITDA margin with adjusted for raw materials. Going forward, what's going to improve for EBIT margin? Well, certainly there's going to be a volume increase. That volume increase will translate in further operational leverage. There is going to be an increase also in terms of that operationally raising the bar. There's going to be the NAFTA improvement. In addition to that, below EBITDA, when you look at EBIT, it's going to be a much more efficient use of our CapEx by doing selective CapEx investments, by doing reutilization, and by monitoring very well the use of our capacity and being able to extract that extra mile out of it.
Thank you.
Yes.
Yes. Hi, thank you. Anthony from ODDO. I just had a question on your growth drivers. Maybe looking at them individually, firstly, on the battery box business, could you maybe update us on your market share in that business? You gave some targets previously, I was just wondering where you sat versus these targets today. Then on the hot stamping, how do you see the penetration of this technology evolving and also your market share within that business?
Do you still not expect any loss of business from gigacasting, in light of recent comments from more OEMs deciding to adopt that technology? Lastly, on outsourcing, where do you see this higher outsourcing rate coming from, considering we're seeing also further investments from OEMs themselves in the U.S. and also in Europe, notably to fill up capacity? I just had also a little side question on the battery box business. Just wanted to know if you could provide more details on the returns and the return profile of that business, considering what looks to be quite heavier investments and a rapidly changing technology. Thank you.
Okay, thank you for your questions. Many questions, we try to answer quickly. Maybe in terms of battery box, it's not easy to right now define what a part of the market share we have, and we refer to the battery box and not to the battery pack. I will say that today, from the experience we have in different areas, probably we will have a more than 20% market share, but we don't have this kind of market share in China. Even though we do have a quite important program there in China, still our market share in China is lower for battery boxes. In terms of hot stamping, the penetration of hot stamping is really moving ahead every day.
I think, we are absolutely leaders in this technology with more than 100 hot stamping, and not just traditional hot stamping, but the kind of hot stamping that you have seen before. In terms of geographies, we see now hot stamping, for instance, growing in areas like in India. It happened also a lot in Brazil. We see that now the technology of hot stamping, which used to be the expensive one, now could be the cheaper one if we compare with aluminum.
In terms of the outsourcing that you mentioned, what we feel clearly right now is that there are many car makers, that they have internal capacities, that they need to replace them, and today it's very difficult to do a make or buy study because all the OEMs right now are facing huge investments, and they need to focus where they need to grow, which is electrical vehicle. As you know, they are even investing a lot in producing their own battery cells. The trend is clear. Whenever we have some kind of discussions around a make or buy, right now, in most of the cases, tend to be that they will prefer to buy rather than to make. We see that in some old processes that are about to be depreciated, and they need to change.
We see a lot of difficulties for them to invest in battery boxes, that there is something that they could do in-house due to logistics, and they are outsourcing and for many other projects. In terms of gigacasting, maybe, Ignacio, you can provide a little bit more data.
Yeah. Let me explain. The gigacasting and the rear, which is just used for some customer, it will affect for us two rates. Generally spoken, gigacasting is used in a few application. Hot stamping is used nearly in every car of the world, so there is a difference in application of technology. Today, what we see through our core development activities, as we are, I would say, with nearly every OEM developing the next generation solutions for their cars, is that the decision which material to use is depending on the CO₂, on the life cycle analysis that we do. There, aluminum is not the best one, we have to say, so they have other reasons to use it.
Basically, there will be on the market always different options and technologies as we present here, the one-piece rear rail as an alternative, and more of these evolutions will come. Also to mention that on steel grades will get a higher strength level in the next years, which allows steel solutions to go even lighter than what we have today, state-of-the-art. I would say in the future, there would be always different technologies, but hot stamping, of course, more cars will have that. It's our vision.
Yes. Just to provide some question to the return profile in terms of battery boxes, it's true that there is a lot of uncertainty, that's why we have decided not to invest and to enlarge a lot our generic capacities, for instance, of extrusion. We had done a small capacity, but we are buying the most of the extrusion. That happened also with other kind of materials, and when we are doing the quotations, all the investment associated with this is depreciated in the life of the program. It's true that sometimes we have the possibility to reuse part of this robot, but the idea is to be in the conservative side. This definition of battery boxes is going to change a lot, as Ignacio has mentioned, and we need to be in the safe side.
That probably means that whenever we talk about battery boxes, the return or the EBITDA margin could change a lot, depending on what part of the added value we decide to buy from outside and what kind of depreciation rate are we applying to this investment, as far as we believe that this project is not going to be extended.
Just to complement, we are firmly committed to profitable growth, as we've mentioned before. In that commitment to profitable growth, when we look at battery boxes specific investments, we look at it also in the context of an IRR target, which as I explained before, looks at that volume volatility, looks at which client are we talking about, looks at technology, looks at the lifetime, and takes into account all of those key parameters in order to look at a profitable investment and a profitable CapEx.
Okay.
Hi, thank you very much for your time. José António Suare z from CaixaBank BPI. I have a couple of quick questions, if I may. First of all, Ignacio, you mentioned that all the M&A will be value accretive, could you give us a little bit more visibility on, about the range of M&A for this year?
for the upcoming period, something you could provide to us? On second place, you have mentioned that from a leverage point of view, net debt to EBITDA will be around one to 1.5x . This ratio includes inorganic growth via M&A or it doesn't include it? If it doesn't include it, what will be, and if it includes, what will be the leverage without M&A? Thank you for.
Maybe I'll tackle the second one, and then I can go to the first one. In terms of net debt, one to 1.5x , this does not include any inorganic growth foreseen in our business plan. That's the first point. In terms of leverage, what will happen is that we are firmly committed to a healthy balance sheet. In that healthy balance sheet, whenever if we were to do an acquisition, we would look at it in the context of what would be the additional cash flow generation that that acquisition will bring, and how much would be the leverage pattern that we will get through that acquisition. Okay? In terms of the range of M&A, look, it's too early to say.
I mean, we were talking, as Francisco mentioned, we were talking about different types of acquisitions, either complementary geographically, complementary technologically, complementary client-wise, complementary or just by our own clients, which are having issues with potentially some of their suppliers. I think it's too early to state what could be the range of acquisition that we could be seeing in the next few years.
Hi, this is Robert Jackson from Banco Santander. First question is related to your co-development. The word co-development has come up a lot in the presentation. Looking at the battery box, is this, could this be an area where you could develop or strengthen the co-development and go further integration, see further integration in the battery box? That's more a longer-term question. The shorter-term question would be: the issues you have in NAFTA, what are the challenges you have to just improve slightly the margins or recover slightly the margins, say, this year?
We start with co-development. Co-development is an activity which starts typically a lot of years in advance and can cover the complete crash analysis of a car. In some extent, when we design the battery box co-development, we have sometimes the freedom to decide whether we're going to one or another concept, and how much of the crash safety we want to take into the battery or into the body structure of the car. That allows us to understand customers much better and to co-develop with them the best solution. It is really, for us, it's a right tool to leverage technology into the right products, but also for our customers to find the best way for their needs.
Technically, in the battery boxes, we see, let's say, a wide scope of different solutions in co-development, especially because we work with crash models of our customers. We have the real crash models. We're working actually on the right solution.
On NAFTA operations, of course, we are doing a lot of work in operational excellence that maybe Patricia can talk a little bit. I would say that in the short run, right now, probably the most important difficulties in our U.S. operations are related to labor. The labor market is difficult. It's difficult for us to find good and talented people, and also the turnover of people is quite high. That's why we are still facing problems. In any case, what I can tell you is that we are gaining ground. Gaining ground, building up good management teams in some of the plants in the south. Also, last two, three years, we had some inflation.
We have had some kind of discussions, let's say, with our customers. Now I think we are about to go to a kind of reasonable agreement with all of them. That means that this improvement in terms of how we are in the, our human resources area, and also about the kind of prices in order to be able to offset the inflation in the last two, three years, I think it's gonna give us a lot of opportunity, let's say, starting from end of this year. In any case, we have been awarded very important projects. Some of them are still in their ramp-up phase, projects which are rather profitable.
That's why we feel that just with the ramp-up of the new projects and with this improvement in labor and also in the pricing of our projects, I think we are gonna do, or we are gonna start doing things better in North America as soon as possible.
We have an operational action plan that's specifically designed for every single plant, and there are certain KPIs in the short term that we're wanting to tackle. One of them is scrap, the other one is related to labor. It's more the overtime costs that we're facing. Of course, in the long term, the levers that we're trying to promote, one of them is our labor strategy. We need to change the way that we're acquiring talent in the U.S. We need to think about different global ways or global support, different ways in which we can bring people into the U.S. in order to be able to really stabilize a good management team in every single one of our plants. Then we have the issue of Industry 4.0.
Once you have Industry 4.0, you have a very detailed understanding of what is going on in every single one of our plants. That's one of the key levers that we need. First, we need the visibility. Then we monitor both the action plan in the short term with the long-term ideas and improvements that we need to do.
Just a follow-up. Regarding M&A, could you be looking at technologies, expanding technology, for example, the battery box? Would you be looking to get a closer value added there with new technologies?
Yeah, let's say, actually, we have with our technology toolbox, all technologies available, in order to design battery box for the market, for local, or for normal OEM, as well as for the new EV player. There is actually, I would say, not much or not new technology that is needed in the moment for the battery boxes. In this sense, we are covered at the moment with these technologies, yeah.
Just going a little bit in detail, one thing is that Ignacio is using all kind of technologies, but also usually inside the group of what we need to take a decision whether to incorporate or not our industrial capabilities in one specific technology. That means that sometimes things are evolving. For instance, today, we decided that we did not want to have an extrusion, aluminum extrusion capacity, just a little bit to understand. In the case of the casting, whether it's a high pressure or low pressure, we have decided to buy it from the market, there could be that in some moment of time, some of these technologies become more important, and we decide that it's a good opportunity in the long run.
So far, we believe that it's better to buy from the market, but if it becomes a kind of a standard, probably we will integrate some of these technologies, the same way we are doing some developments in fiber or in other, in other topics, no?
Yeah, correct. From all available technologies, the design capabilities, validation, simulation, bring that into a virtual and validate the, let's say, cost perspective and performance, that we can do for every technology, independent if we buy it, as Paco mentioned, or if we manufacture in-house. We have the same. All these capacities are at Gestamp in-house.
Sorry, can I just have one point? Sorry, can I just have one follow-up again?
Sure.
When we left the hotel, there was a car with a hydrogen, a hydrogen taxi. Can you tell us anything about that? There's no mention. We haven't seen anything about it in the visit.
Yes.
[crosstalk] messages there?
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
Hydrogen is an option in the future for, we believe, maybe more in long-distance cars, if hydrogen is available, another discussion. From engineering perspective, for our product, the needs for a hydrogen car are the same on the requirements that we need for electrical cars. Basically, the same, except the protection of the tanks, the gas tank itself, which we do not manufacture, but the rest of the architecture will be the same from an hydrogen car than from electrical car.
Just to be clear, we see in all our customers that right now, the mainstream of everything that they do is electrical. Even though companies like Toyota and others are keeping and preserving some part of the hydrogen, we see hydrogen more into industrial applications, as we know. For instance, in the manufacturing of steel, we will see this green hydrogen, and we will see it probably for all kind of transportation, maybe large trucks or maybe ship, and these kind of things. We don't see right now that this is gonna be any trend in the light vehicles manufacturing.
Hi, thanks for allowing me to jump back into the queue. Just a couple of questions. Have you seen any trend of nearshoring since the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, seeing OEM shortening the supply chains and bringing production of their suppliers closer to home? Whether that is an opportunity to fill up spare capacity, or could that be a threat of leaving some of your installed capacity obsolete or as a some cost? My second question would be on the margin expansion guidance. I've noted that the starting point that you've chosen is the reported EBITDA margin in 2022, which was depressed by the raw materials.
Just wanted to understand how this 150 to 190 basis point expansion would change if we see changes in raw materials, whether that would be included in that or not. Thanks.
Yeah. Well, starting with nearshoring, I think we see movements, but it's taking time. In any case, we see clearly that the U.S. is taking some kind of quick steps in order to be able to move some production of a specific topics to U.S. or even to Mexico. This kind of decision by a company like Tesla to move their battery plants to U.S. or to start a new plant in north of Mexico, I think is a good example of something that is happening. That is in U.S. regarding Mexico. That could be an opportunity for Spain inside Europe. I think so.
I think, we can talk about what could be the use of this next generation funds, not just to be in the defensive mood, but maybe to be a little bit more aggressive, taking advantage of what is Spain, what kind of cost of energy we can have, or if we talk about renewable energy, try to see whether we can allocate here important manufacturing of some relevant topics and not to depend 100% from other regions on the world, no?
In terms of margin expansion, yes, you're spot on. It was on reported EBITDA. Yes, it is, because as briefly mentioned before, we're gonna start reporting, as reported, basically without the effect of raw materials, which has been something that has happened over the last couple of years, but it's here probably to stay. The projections which we have made and the margin expansion which we have made are at FX constant basis and on a raw materials price as is of 2023.
Hi, Iñigo Recio from GVC. Coming back to the CapEx, my question is reasonable to think that CapEx over sales in the coming years could follow a little bit from 8%, 9% to the range of 6%, 7%, for example? Thank you.
I think we touched on that topic a few minutes ago. Going forward, we will invest in order to grow as we have projected in our business plan, so mid-single digit. We will be committed to profitable growth, and that commitment to profitable growth will mean that we will have a selective CapEx investment profile. Now, whether that profile is based on a 6%, 9%, 8%, it's a little bit too early to say. We are committed to net debt, we are committed to cash flow, the CapEx investment profile will depend a lot on how it evolves that growth in EV versus ICE, how the plans, the volume plans of the different customers happen in the future. We're not going to be providing guidance specifically on CapEx going forward, but more rather on the return on capital employed.
No matter what happens, free cash and good leverage.
Exactly. Yes.
Yeah, good morning, and thank you for the presentation, for the plan visit. It's Alberto Espelosín from JB Capital. Sorry to come back to these two topics, I just need a clarification on both. On EBITDA margin, if we assume raw materials flat, that means that on a comparable basis, you are aiming to a 14.5% EBITDA margin, assuming no raw materials effects in the past two years? Also, on net debt and free cash flow. With the revenues and EBITDA guidance you provided, net debt should stay flat for it to be a 1x EBITDA. If you generate EUR 300 million free cash flow, assuming you distribute EUR 150 million in dividends, where are the other EUR 150 million going, if this net debt target is excluding M&A? Do we expect, d o you expect to invest them in new EV projects, maybe?
Last question on the sector. We are seeing pent-up demand being fulfilled and supply chains getting better and better. This should pressure OEMs' pricing power at some point, maybe into 2024. How are you seeing this situation, and could this have an impact on you, mainly regarding cost negotiations with your clients? Thank you.
In terms of EBITDA margin and assuming the raw material costs at of 2021, the margin which you're putting, I think it's about right. Probably, it's about right. In terms of net debt to free cash flow, I think that as we've mentioned, depends the phasing of the free cash flow generation, the phasing of all projections, has some puts and calls, depending on that volume growth and on the transition between electric vehicle and combustion engine. That's why we think, and based on our business plan, that that commitment to one to 1.5x reflects probably on a conservative way, what we think is going to happen between now and 2027.
Refer to the pent-up demand. It's true that this picture is moving, no? We had a clear pent-up demand, probably all around the world, 1 year ago, one and a half year ago. Since then, it's true that the especially the semiconductors problem is not over, but it's not such a big problem. We have seen already that in some geographical areas, the pent-up demand is now about to end. We have seen it in China, of course, not only because of they are intending now to export, but there is capacity available, and today there is a kind of fight in the market, and there is some pressure in the prices in China.
In the U.S., the latest figures I've seen is that also the inventories are coming close to the normal levels before 2019. Probably, there is still some gap in Europe because the loss in terms of demand in Europe was more than that, and we feel that there's still today is a kind of pent-up demand. The number of new orders probably is being reduced, and probably we will come back, let's say, to normal market conditions by the end of the year. In any case, what is important is that the power or the pressure that our customers can put on us is of course, depending not just of what are the needs of this customer, because they always want more, so it's not a matter of whether they are earning or not.
It's, it's also related to what kind of a need they have in order to launch their new vehicles. As far as they need to deploy a lot of capital around EVs and suppliers like us, we are in a very good position to do it's not so easy, let's say, not to agree on a quite reasonable basis. There is no this kind of pre-pressure for us. Is it gonna come for some other local suppliers and maybe not so much focused in EVs? Well, that could happen, but that is happening always in our sector. That I think probably the strange thing that we had in the last years is that, there was a demand, and the industry was not able to cover this demand. That was an extraordinary issue, which is probably not gonna be easy to see again.
Thank you.
Sebastian from InnoCap. Just question on the U.S. turnaround. Three years to turn around double-digits seems quite long for problem that has been already identified. Can you help us to understand the phasing? Do you see kind of fix quick things? If, if the basically long, mid long term, the target is to get back to the average of the group, I think the double-digits is one phase before the second phase. That's the first question. The second one, which I part is linked to this, would it be excluded to reach your target, which seems to be more commitment than target, one year before? I know you put 27 to reach your return and the EBITDA margin target, but it seems to me, especially given the potential in the U.S., you can reach it earlier.
Is it something excluded or it's potential? I know you're conservative is good, but that's a simple question.
Not so simple, but in any case, I give it to you, the second one. About the turnaround of the U.S. plants, it's been. Even though we have detected the problems, and we know a lot, and as Patricia has mentioned, the most important difficulty we are facing is the labor market. I think sometimes it's a little bit difficult to explain, but whenever you get some program and you have difficulties in order to have the right people, and with the kind of inflation that we have had in the labor market, even if we are improving and improving, we have not been able to have enough turnaround. We need to have a balance, also, including some kind of negotiation with, of prices for customers.
Whenever we are doing now the extension of the programs, now we have a good vision in order to renegotiate all these prices. We need to build on people. If we are not able to build a good talent and a good organization and to move people from other places, it's gonna be difficult. Of course, it's also important that the ramp up of the new projects is coming well. We are putting a lot of pressure in order not to have any problem in any further quotations or any project launch. Now we have a perimeter, which still is big, which is difficult, it's isolated, it's been difficult, really, to do a turnaround.
Whenever we have this extension of programs, this negotiation and stabilization of labor, together with the launching of the new vehicles, I think that's gonna happen. I don't wanna give you more details around the phasing because it could be we have already failed sometimes. I've been a little bit more optimistic sometimes around the North American operations, because I've seen it. I've seen it in the figures, I've seen it in the budget, and we have not done it. This time, the kind of plan that we have and the focus we have, the complete corporate organization is there, and is a very important part of what we wanna do until 2027. Whether we are optimistic is.
I think that, I referred in my presentation that we deliver on what we commit. Basically, the commitments that we're putting here between now and 2027, we are firmly committed to them, and we're firmly committed to delivering on them. If we can deliver on them earlier, the better, but for sure, we are committed on 2027.
Okay.
Hi, just a follow-up on the NAFTA thing. It is fair to say that there has been somehow a lack of controlling in the area? Because as you refer, you were mentioning labor issues in the U.S., that I believe that they are not going to improve in the next years. One of your issues in the area has been controlling, and that you have now tackled it, so that gives you comfort in the sense that things are going to improve going forward?
I think, North America story, I think it was difficult to tell, that's why I have tried to focus a little bit more on what had happened. It's true that for many years, the kind of control that we were doing from corporate to the operations was, let's say, a little bit more in the long run and focusing in the strategy and the approval of all the different projects. It's also true that whenever you had an internal problem in one area, it was not so easy to detect some years ago. I think, the team that was able to grow and to develop our position in North America was a very good team.
It's true that an important mistake came in 2015, when we decided really to be aggressive and to double our market size. That was our commitment. We had opportunities, and we have a good positioning, but this team committed some mistakes, and we were late as corporate to react. That was something that happened in 2016, and it's already long time. Still many of the programs that we took at that time, in 2017 and 2018, we are still suffering. Suffering from a very bad program management, suffering from a not adequate consideration of some inflationary issues, and suffering from all the topics. I think we did quite well in 2017 and 2018, replacing the management, putting new management in place, attracting talent from all over the world.
The current situation in U.S. for the last three years is, the knowledge that I have about, how it's performing, rest of our competitors and rest of the peers, I think everybody is suffering. We have not been able to really complete this turnaround of the operations. Now, I think we have a good visibility. It's not just a matter of control. There is much more integration, there is much more data, and I think, this time we are gonna do it. I think it's not fair from my side, to blame, an old team or lack of control. It's been rather difficult in the, from 2020- 2023, and the mistake we committed, I think, at the corporate level, moving too fast.
understanding that we had a solid team, but this solid team was not prepared to be able to cope with all this complexity. That was the mistake, and that's why we need to be sure that whenever we are moving forward, we have a complete knowledge of what is going on. That's why we have rebuilt our organization. We have Operational Excellence. We have also the office for the new Strategic Projects. We want to avoid that we are not gonna have this kind of mistakes.
I see. Just another follow-up on the free cash flow. I'm gonna try to answer in a different way than any other of my colleagues to see if I can come up with something different. Do you see any reason why your free cash flow conversion over EBITDA in the next years is going to be something different what has happened in on the past years? Because embedded on the targets, looks like you're expecting a worsening on that conversion. I don't know, it's because world is more difficult than in the past, that you will need to boost, to put more balance sheet on the projects, or?
So, um [crosstalk]
We are missing EUR 100 million somewhere, no?
Couple of things here.
In the good side, no? We are missing-
We're missing [crosstalk]
Yeah, yeah.
In the good side, yeah. Couple of things here. If you think of margin expansion, if you think of better capital expenditure, obviously, the output should be better free cash flow conversion. We are aiming at a better free cash flow conversion, for sure.
I think probably it's in part, it's my fault, because as you know, we always need to be close to customers. We have all this plan in place. Whenever you talk about individual targets, sometimes we like to have a little bit of flexibility in order, for instance, to take a very important large project with one single customer, or maybe to do an M&A. Everything that we have said is correct, but probably we wanted to have an extra margin over there. I think even if you ask us again, maybe we are not gonna give you different answer.
Thank you again very much for joining us here today, and for your time. Let's hope we can enjoy some lunch at the back, okay?
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.