Hello, good morning. Welcome to the 2023 WEG Day. My name is André Salgueiro, and I'd like to express my appreciation for your attendance and for all of you who are online. I'd like to also thank the presence of Mr. Décio da Silva, the Chairman of the Board, and all the C-level professionals who are present here today. For us at WEG, it's a great pleasure to welcome you today for sharing with you some of our projects and opportunities for growth the companies have in the upcoming years. This year, the meeting is going to start slightly different, so we're going to have the first Q&A session, followed by a coffee break, and then when we resume our activities, we're going to return with André Rodrigues and Schmelzer Jr. to update you on financial aspects and strategic plans for the company.
After Harry's presentation, we're going to have a second Q&A session for you to entertain all questions concerning today. I hope you all have an excellent meeting. I would like to invite to come onstage Mr. Décio da Silva for his initial remarks and greeting. Thank you so much.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, shareholders who are present here today, buy-side and sell-side analysts. I'd like to greet our President, Harry Schmelzer Jr., our CEO, our advisors, our board members, and directors of WEG, Brazil, and overseas who are following our WEG Day. WEG, on September sixteenth this year, became 62 years old. During this period, there were three chairman of the board, Mr. da Silva, who was for 20 years, the chairman of the board.
I had the privilege and the honor to run the company for 18 years, and Harry is now 16, has been 16 years as a CEO, our third CEO. We always understood that a mandate of leaders cannot be too short, because there's no time for climbing the learning curve, for acquiring experience, and for the consolidation of leadership. On the other hand, rather long mandates do not allow for fresh looks and may be detrimental to innovation, and, and sometimes even be over-reliant on the part of the person who has this job. According to the material fact that was announced to the market, we, according to a succession plan that is extremely well-coordinated with our CEO, Harry Schmelzer, we have decided that Harry's cycle as the CEO of the company is going to come to a close on March 31st next year.
Harry had a remarkable performance, leading a fantastic cadre of C-level executives of this company. During the 16 years, the growth of the company was of 15%. Consistency in solid 15 years. 15% growth for long periods of time is really remarkable. The profits grew precisely on the same proportion, really close to 15% by considering this 16-year period. As you all know, our most important indicator, and this is the one that defines the variable earnings and compensation of our executive, is ROIC. The closing of the Q3 indicated that WEG has 25.4% of ROIC.
I usually say that in a company, we have to take a look at many indicators, but if I had to observe just two of them being located in Brazil, I would keep ROIC as number one, and the second one, cash flow generation, which is extremely important for the financial life of a country that is stricken by inflation and interest rates that are rather high. Yesterday, WEG closed the day with $142 billion valuation, the second largest company in valuation terms in Brazil. Over the last two or three years, we had always among the top 10 when considered market valuation. In this period of 16 years, the company made 35 acquisitions, always faithful, speed and implementation of the strategies. More so, to be the ones enjoying that concept of expense control of expenditures.
Just to provide an example, and referring to the long term, looking back, when I took the job of Chairman of the Board 34 years ago, our administrative expenses were 10%, approximately a little more than 10% of our ROIC. In those days, we had, as we still do today, which is our management model, we had our business units, motors, transformers, automation, and so on and so forth. But before talking about the shared centers for services, even before that era, WEG had understood that they had to focus on all the company support areas and keep a business unit model, and that provides focus and speed on technology, on the customers of each one of our businesses. But we had to try and be a lighter company, so to speak.
In the year 2000, this administrative expense was reduced from the 90s all the way to the 2000s and was 6.6. Last year, the closing of 2023 was 2.9. This year, until the third quarter, by some non-recurring expenses, it increased a little bit to 3.2. This is the effect of scale. The scale has to create efficiency, and this is the focus that we try and keep. I think that for companies to be winners, they need two things: to have a very well-established strategy, like WEG, which focuses on new market trends, on like decarbonization, energy transition, digital world or digital transformation, to mention just a few. This is extremely important, but not enough to have a winning company, in my opinion. It has to be complemented with a world-class execution.
An execution that focuses on an operational efficiency that tries to reduce costs, and that provides a lead service that promotes its customer base to see value in the services we deliver. So I would like to conclude by quoting Morgan Housel's book, a recent book, that says, "We live in a world of transformation. There's no doubt about it, but there are things that have to be there forever." Inspired by this quote, I hope that our... Well, we are going to change leadership. We're going to evolve, but the core principles of our company must be forever, that our governance model and management model may even evolve, but its principles are kept forever. That the mission of growing sustainably and continuously keeping simplicity are forever, that the continuing training of leaders are forever. And finally, that the dreams of the three founders were, are forever.
Thank you.
... Obrigado, Décio, pelas palavras.
Thank you, Décio, for your words. I would like to invite Alberto Kuba to come upstage and greet us too.
Bom dia a todos!
Good morning, everyone.
Boa tarde, boa noite pra quem tá acompanhando online.
Good afternoon, good evening for those who are online.
Acho que hoje fui pego de surpresa.
Everyone was caught by surprise today. I was caught by surprise too.
Recentemente, quando fiquei sabendo-
Recently, when I learned about-
Dessa grande oportunidade que eu tenho pela frente.
This major opportunity that I had to have.
Primeiramente, gostaria de agradecer ao Décio-
Me, I would like to express my appreciation to Décio, to the board of directors-
Essa grande confiança em mim depositada.
To the CEO, Harry, for the trust that is deposited on me. It's a great honor to have been picked as the CEO of such an important company like WEG. And at the same time, a major responsibility to be the successor of Harry. If he's not the best CEO of Brazil, he's one of the best.
A primeira vez-
The first time I stepped on WEG-
em 1997
was back in 1997, in a program that we had: Know Our Home.
Quando ainda cursava o segundo ano de Engenharia Elétrica-
When I was being trained as an electrical engineer, second years of electrical engineer, the people who welcomed me and-
falaram
presented the company to me-
Tudo com tanta paixão.
spoke so passionately about the company and so-
motivação
Motivated, made me decide to one day work at the company.
E assim-
Décio said, "In 2001, I made my training here.
2002, fui contratado como trainee.
2, I was hired as a trainee in the commercial department.
E naquela época-
In those days, nobody spoke about diversity.
Parecia que eu cheguei em Jaraguá, parecia que eu tinha mudado pra Alemanha.
I thought I had moved to Germany.
Porque não tinha descendente.
because there were no Japanese,
Desde então-
Já se passaram mais de 22 anos.
background people here. 32 years have elapsed so far, where I built half of my career, overseas.
No Brasil.
I spent 10 years in China, as Décio told you.
Na época-
In those days-
Nós não tínhamos chineses na WEG, e como não tinha chinês, mandaram-
There were no Chinese workers at WEG, and so they sent the one who looked more like a Chinese.
E fui muito feliz-
I was really happy to build a company jointly with my Chinese colleagues, and I'm really proud of it when I look back.
Mais recentemente.
More recently, this new challenge-
Passei um ano nos Estados Unidos.
was to spend one year in the U.S.-
Conhecendo o nosso maior mercado
Knowing our most important market-
Aprendendo e desenvolvendo a nossa estratégia de motion drive
and developing our motion drive strategy-
e me preparando
and preparing myself-
juntamente com o André e o João Paulo
jointly with André and João Paulo-
Nossa maior aquisição, que foi a aquisição da Imperial Electric.
for our most important acquisition, which was our-
Uma empresa que há muitos anos nós olhávamos como-
acquisition. There, a company-
grande concorrente
that was a competitor, and today-
E hoje faz parte da nossa família de empresas.
is part of our family of companies.
Nossos fundadores-
Our founders-
Nos deixaram um legado.
left us a legacy-
Como legado, uma cultura de simplicidade.
A culture of simplicity-
austeridade
austerity-
ownership
ownership.
Esse senso de decisão.
This sense of deciding everything like an owner.
Uma grande disciplina de execução-
Uh, major-
uma visão de longo prazo
Execution discipline, a long term-
e uma enorme vontade de sempre fazer tudo melhor
vision, and the eagerness to do things ever better.
Ao longo de todos esses anos-
Along all these years, these values are perpetuated-
Primeiramente, sob a liderança do Décio, que é o presidente.
Under the leadership of Décio, who was the president when I-
nos últimos 15 anos
joined the company. Over the last 15 years, I had the wonderful leadership of Harry Schmelzer Jr., where we grew constantly and continuously building a company that was ever better, with ever more value, building ever more value, and-
transformando a vida de mais de 40,000 colaboradores
transforming the lives of more than 40,000 employees around the world.
Meu grande desafio é continuar esse legado-
My major challenge, to continue-
Desenvolvendo nosso negócio.
with this legacy, developing our business-
juntamente com nossos colegas de diretoria
Jointly with our C-level executives-
e levar esses valores para os mais diversos países onde a WEG está expandindo.
Taking these values to the numerous companies WEG is expanding to.
E na WEG-
We at WEG learned that we have to deliver and-
Sempre o patamar mais alto que recebemos.
Hand off our baton to the best level possible.
Espero ter feito isso como WEG Motores.
I did that on WEG Motores. On April first, next year-
vestir, então, a camisa de presidente da WEG.
I will be wearing the cap of CEO of WEG-
Com o propósito e o compromisso de trabalhar com muita humildade
with a commitment of working-
Energia e energia
hard, with energy-
para que a WEG continue a crescer de forma contínua e sustentável
for WEG to continue to grow continuously-
E seja essa empresa que a gente tanto orgulha.
Sustainably, being the company we are all proud of. Thank you so much.
Obrigado, Kuba, pelas palavras. Parabéns!
Thank you very much for your, for your nice words, and I hope that you have a very successful career in your new mandate that will start in April. Now, the floor is with Harry.
Good morning, and welcome you all to WEG Day. You know that at this moment, when my succession is announced, two things spring to my mind. The first thing is, it's a picture that I was given as a present when I was getting the position of CEO, after Décio. This painting shows a relay run. In this relay run picture, there were two people represented, he and I, and he was passing the baton to me, and now it's my turn to pass the baton to Kuba. I am happy that WEG had several athletes to be considered for leading this race. I congratulate Kuba for being chosen, and I wish him a lot of success.
He has a very successful team of executives, and you will see that it's gratifying, and, it will give you a lot of pleasure to build and to keep on building, WEG with such a talented team of executives that we have, an extraordinary team of executives. So I congratulate him once again. I'd also like to take opportunity of this, moment, to manifest my gratitude to all my, fellow directors, and also to the fellows that had been with me, directors that have already, retired, because we all have built notable results together. It is beyond any doubts that I am leaving the CEO position in March—on March 31st, very proud for all we have built together.
The second thing that springs to mind at this moment is when I took over the CEO, the first interview that I gave. The reporter asked me: "Harry, what is the legacy that you would like to leave to your successor?" At that moment, I didn't even know what I was going to do. The first thing I said, "Well, the legacy that I have to leave is to learn something. For the first three years here, I'll have to learn. I'll have to show why I was chosen for this position." But now I am reflecting upon this legacy, and doubtless, the people that are closer to me will remember many things.
They will remember many things related to the way I work, to related to the values, the way I conducted a few good things and, good, bad things. But without any doubts, the legacy is not a personal thing. The legacy is the result, and it's the result that was built together with such an extraordinary team, such a brilliant team of executives. So thank you very much to all of you. Thanks to the trust from the board of directors, from the shareholders, and the excellent relationship that we have always had with all of you from the capital market. Thank you very much.
Harry, thank you very much for your kind words. We are now moving on with our event, but I would just like to remind you that the presentations that are going to be made here, they are available in our investor relation site at weg.net. I'll now call Carlos Grillo to take the floor to talk about electric mobility.
Hello, hello, hello, hello. Hello. Good day. Good morning. Presentation, please. Please, can I—please, can I have the presentation here—Okay—on the screen? Good day, pessoal. All right. Good morning, everyone. Vamos seguindo aqui. Let's move on. Ottimo. My name is Carlos Grillo. My name is Carlos Grillo. I am the chief officer of WEG Digital and Systems. I am the chief officer of WEG Digital and System. This is a quite new business unit that derivates from WEG automation, and the systems for us are four systems: the electric mobility system, we will try—I'm going to talk about right now, the storing energy storing unit, the digital systems and automation systems, automation and electrification system. So that's why we're gonna talk about electric mobility.
I think any analysis that we are to do about electric mobility, be it any institute evaluation or the trend is always positive. Electric mobility is going to be a future path for electric transition, and it's inevitable, so the numbers are positive. When we talk about, and when we analyze Brazil, in the last eight months, we can see that about 15,000 cars have been electrified or have been licensed in Brazil. That is a very interesting figure, but later, when we are talking about EV charge, I'm going to address back to this number. So about 50,000 EV were licensed in the first eight months of the year. And let's start with the traction systems for electric vehicles. WEG has a very big history in this.
We are also talking about. Since 2001, we have step on this business, so that's brought a lot of knowledge and technology processes, tech, and knowledge and people that are dedicated for 20 years to this topic. Some things went, were right, some things changed, the technology didn't work out so well. Well, we're missing one slide here. From some time, there are more robust movements, especially in mobility for heavy vehicles. This is a general view of ours for electric mobility. We can see that we're going to talk a lot about EVs and charging station. Connected to electrification, and that's why Carlos Prinz is going to talk about transmission and distribution and transformer.
Behind this, there is a whole support of electricity reaching it, and we can see in the world it's heating up of all these activities since controlling and protection panels, transmission, distribution, the storing part as well. For WEG, these are businesses that march together, although they are distributed in different unit business units. Let's talk about EVs. For us, there is a clusterization that is very clear for EVs, the light vehicles or and utility vehicles, and heavy vehicles. WEG is working a little bit differently along all these segments. This is the slide that we was missing before, after when I was talking about history. We were evolving a long time, a lot in the heavy vehicles business. What are our products? They are the traction systems, the auxiliary systems, and the power supply.
So we are working on these three segments in electric traction, on the focus, increased on heavy vehicles. When we look at the frequency inverters, which is a key component, we also use this clusterization, but the inverter has a characteristic of clusterization that is connected to the voltage. So that has an impact on technology, in our production scale, and we have three very clear niche of market for the inverters. For inverters, for this is connected to the voltage, the higher the voltage, the higher the inverters and motors. Motors, we are proud to have a very reasonable offer of electric motors, and that brings to WEG a larger scale in terms of technology, engineering, suppliers, and industrial processes.
Today, we have a wide array of motors for electric traction that covers a very interesting range, starting with the light vehicles up to the heavy electric vehicles, especially urban buses. Another product that derivates and is very near electric motors is the transmission. WEG is working with some clients on this area and has prepared itself increasingly to supply this market that integrates the engine to the transmission system. Another important product connected to electrification, and we have invested in the last two, two, three years, is what we call the battery packs. What is a battery pack? The pack is a structure that contains a series of battery cells. It is very well standardized, the battery that is in this guy here has a standardized format, et cetera. So we buy the cells, there is no Brazilian production of the cells.
We assemble what we call the pack, which is a customized engineering assembly that integrates this structure into the vehicle. This integration, apart from the BEMS, which is the battery storage system, which is an electronic system, has a managing software. So there is an integration with the vehicle. So there is an engineering work behind this to integrate it with the vehicle. So that is part of this product that we are developing, evolving, and supplying. It has an autonomous and intelligent system for suppression for thermal runaway, that is the undue heating of the battery. Although our technology is very adequate, the cell technology is very adequate for heavy vehicles, that is less sensitive to this phenomenon, that has electronic protections, electric protections, monitoring systems.
So there's a series of ingredients that makes this product a very sophisticated one and very apt for being used in a heavy vehicle. And you can also have a traceability system for a second life of the battery, which is very important because that is connected to the circular economy concept. So that has to do with that system that I spoke before about energy storage. Today, battery, I'm not sure all of you know of this, but the battery of an electric vehicle, anyone, but I'll use the example of a bus in which segment we are better positioned. It's going to decrease its utility during life. It decays over time.
Obviously, the system maximizes the life, the charging, recharging, the equilibrium of the tensions of the cell, but that happens at a given time. So, depending on each case, we can say that at a given moment, when it has only 80%, life left, the battery is not suitable anymore for this vehicle. So we can change, and that can vary according to the number of cycles, but it can be a long decade, or anyway, it will happen at a given time. So at the end of this life, the natural thing would be to recycle, but at WEG, we have a very specific product for energy storage, in which this cell, this battery pack, can be used directly in this storage system. So that is our vision. Today, we're also selling this. We are selling, storing...
Energy storage systems, and we are in need that the cells grow old, that decay, so that we have more cells for doing this. But soon enough, we are going to have more cells available for this. Well, obviously, there is the recycling process after the second life given to the batteries. So you remove it from the pack, you evaluate, you disassemble the pack, you evaluate, you recycle the electronics, you can use it in the battery energy systems, and later on, you can still recycle the material of this battery. And this trend is going to increase over time because these materials that were somewhere in the mine, somewhere in the world, they start coming into the cities, São Paulo, et cetera. So this is also a trend for the recycling of batteries.
Going back to our vision, here, let's talk about the charging stations. This diagram here looks a little heavy, but it's very important because it pictures and WEG's vision, where lies all the opportunities for charging vehicles, and this is effectively where we are working on. We can separate in two quad, two pictures here, the heavy and utility vehicles. So we can also separate the light vehicles. We can use, we can charge them at home, you can charge them in a condominium, at the company where you work, or, a destination where you're going. So this is a trend. The heavy, in a similar way, although you will do that in their, in the garages, in the distribution centers for trucks, and obviously, during the itinerary, the route, you will have this need.
So for each of this niche, there is a product and a strategy that we will work differently. And also, there are different clients. And when we look at the residential use, we believe that we are well-positioned. Today, WEG supplies along with 24 automakers. And when we think about the destination, then we are thinking about centers, recharging centers. It's not only one isolated recharging station, but with more units. So we are working in centers, and this specific news is a charging center for the biggest hub in Latin America, which is a Volvo office in São Paulo. It's a charging hub, the biggest in Latin America. So we have hundreds of charging equipment. So this is a trend that we see that is going to increasingly be used.
Another opportunity, and this is what we are being asked for, is if you have an electric vehicle, you will think about your travel. You will want to know where the charging stations are. So there is a big concern of people. So we have to create those charging station hubs. And at WEG, we also think that we are well-positioned, and one big example of this is this news made by Volvo that they want to consolidate electric vehicles in Brazil, and it is investing a significant sum in charging station hubs for rapid charging with 101 hubs, and WEG was happy enough to be chosen as the main supplier to conduct this project.
In a similar way, which is very well known for those of you who go around the roads of Brazil, the Graal network, I think they have about 50 gas stations, petrol stations around Brazil, and WEG was chosen by this network to supply 25 electric charging hubs, and Graal is obviously going to do this in all their network as they grow. So as time goes by, in the next one-two years, this network of charging stations on route is getting consolidated. It's the same way that we can see in Europe. Another example that makes us also proud is this, the equatorial route in the Mercosur, and WEG was also the main supplier for these charging hubs that were placed along these roads.
These are the station ones that go up to 180 kW, and if you are thinking about buying an EV, you have to consider: What is the capacity of battery? How many kWh your battery is? 60, 40 kWh, that's a very good autonomy. Well, 180 kWh, that would be fantastic. 180 kWh, you can charge in one hour at a 180 kW station. So that's just quick math you can do to answer your doubts about EVs. And something that we're thinking about, urban transportation for bus, which has created a very complete offer, and we... a turnkey solution for this niche of clients.
It will bring a synergy, as I've shown you in the diagram, with the traditional businesses, such as substations, electric panels, cubicles, protection devices, and skid. It's been a bit difficult for this public, for the bus, urban bus companies. It's not a people that deals with electricities, such as our traditional clients, so we have—we are showing this kind of solutions for them. Recently, we also have our digital platforms, supporting systems and the offer of a complete package, not only the design, but also the execution, installation, and maintenance. One of the great difficulties of the rapid charging is the rapid... is the availability. If you have an EV, you may have noticed that when you get to a charging station, there is a sign saying that it's out of order.
So that's very common because these are very complex stations. They have software, they have... You have to update. As you update your cellphone, you have to update the charging stations. You have to update your smart TV. That happens, too, with charging stations. So we also have this offer of maintenance for keeping them all, making them available at all times. And in parallel with all that, our digital arm, developing a lot of solutions to give support, the EV, WeMob, for managing the fleet of vehicles. And here in the middle is a very interesting product, which is what we call the smart charging system. It's a system that brings intelligence to a system, to a public environment, to a condominium, for instance. A condominium needs to have a system that gives support.
The gradual introduction of stations, this is a typical example of one of our applications, in which you have a charging station in a condominium, and the residents of this condominium will get interested in placing their own charging stations. And how can that be done? With a smart charger, you measure the entrance of the condominium, see what demand it has, and create an internal network through the connectivity that these charging stations possess, and you manage this demand, never overcoming the allowed limit. That is very interesting for brownfield applications, but it rapidly became also an advantage for greenfield applications. If there are cities, municipalities, local rulings, how do you do? You dimension it for each place, for each vacancy.
That would be good if you have a very big transformer, but we know that this is not suitable for a new system, for a new resident. So that became a very interesting application as well for greenfield projects. We also believe that a strong point of ours. It's our integrators network. WEG has over 140 integrators that work with higher or less involvement, this giving support for electric vehicles charging infrastructure in Brazil. And our line of products, I'm showing you this first hand, is our range of products from AC charging stations, compact but intelligent ones, up to our G3 station, which is the new station that we intend to reach 170 kW-720 kW.
This is a launch, something we're launching and making public right now, is by using recycled material, effectively being recycled for the manufacturing of this charging stations for the WeMob Park. Another launch is the WeMob Easy. It's a very interesting launch that was called upon by an automaker, which is the, a portable charging station customized in the color of the vehicle. But this is not only a simple charging, traditional, charging station, it's intelligent, it communicates with the vehicle. It has a series of electric protections, which was extremely necessary for this automaker. Also made with 100% recycled material. Another launch is our high power charging station, which is a generation three charging station with a capacity of charging four vehicles simultaneously.
It's a very modern equipment that has a very generous display, allowing for the client to make his own marketing while someone is charging his vehicle. Another. Some general figures, what is, what does WeMob represent for WEG? We have produced over 10,000 charging stations, and we have kept a three-digit growth. Obviously, that in proportion of the WEG size is one digit only, but in terms of this in the world for this electric mobility is a big thing. So I go back to the Brazilian electric vehicle fleet is about 70,000 plug-in vehicles. So last eight months of the year, 50,000 EVs were licensed, but these are some involve some hybrid, but these are all the plug-in ones.
So 70,000 units today we have in our Brazilian market, and we sell mostly in Brazil, and we have sold 10,000. So one for each seven cars. I have an EV, my wife has also one, and we have only one charging station. So this proportion is very well distributed, in our view. In the internationalization point of view, it's something that we're starting now. It's called... To start with a series, offerings in terms of markets and products, and specifically in terms of certification, that demands an effort in engineering in the offer of our products.
We are taking part in, we are exposing ourselves in this market, certifying our products in different markets, or by giving support to our clients that initially, are in Brazil, but are not, but also have some influence in other places in the world, specifically the automakers that, produce in Brazil and in other parts of the world. In the growth strategy, something that we have already announced at different moments. This is our Plant 8. It's almost ready, and possibly it's going to start operation in the beginning of 2024, and it allows for the continuous and gradual growth of production according to the demand. As it grows, we will be able to meet it.
Another relevant thing is the investment in the PEX plant, which was an investment, well, BRL 100 million investment, and we have reached already perhaps 30% of this built area. We are doing it in a segregated way. We have 140 new employees, and it will probably start operation in the beginning of 2024, and it will have invested a lot of this plant, so as to have a very automated one using our own electric and automation solutions. That is, AMR, autonomous mobile robot made by WEG. That allows us for reaching, getting, and transporting materials inside the plant. So it's aligned as well with electric mobility.
Another investment that we have made was to create a specific area with dedicated people, specialist people, to oversee the assembly and manufacturing of the charging stations associated with our panels, control panels, which is where the DNA of this construction lies, but it is starting to have a life of its own. The other one is the very smaller, the AC charging station that has to have a more aggressive lead time according, because of the volumes, and it need to have heavy automation in their making. Specifically in this case, if you can notice here, there is the need of testing. There's a lot of LEDs, and these tests are all automated, automated because the charge of the firmware is very important for this kind of equipment.
Going back to our diagram here, just to remind you, I spoke briefly on electric vehicles, charging stations, and I could dwell the whole morning talking about all these other aspects here. We have noticed a great demand, increased demand, and the energy transition has called for that. We see that WEG is also structuring itself around this offer in investing. Yesterday was another announcement showing these new investments, and I think that Carlos is going to speak about that later on. This part that supports behind the scene, this electric mobility. To wrap it up, our last slide, I'm still in time. I could say that today, we are focusing in the reinforcement of our position of electric mobility in Brazil. We are very focused on it. We've had, in our view, very good results.
We are already in a very expressive and relevant moment to increase our participation in LA—in Latin America. We are also working heavily on that, and as always, you have to have products, you have to have the capacity to deliver these products in time, and we are going to continue our capacity, our expansion of the production capacity. So we are concentrating on electric mobility with these investments and these actions.
Thank you, Guerilo. Electric mobility is certainly a very hot topic for people who are here, and it often comes up in our presentation. I'd like to invite now, Carlos Prinz, who's going to talk to us about WEG transmission and distribution.
Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon, good evening, for those of you who are joining us remotely. I'm really happy to be here with you to show you a little bit of our T&D business, transmission and distribution. Let me start by showing you some figures concerning our T&D. We have 13 plants, five of them located here in Brazil, and eight of them overseas. I'd like to show you in further details, which are these plants and our market coverage strategies, where more than 5,200 employees, 62% of them are in Brazil, and 38% are abroad.
Today, we are the largest manufacturers of transformers in Latin America, and maybe one of our major strengths are a complete line of transformers. Most world manufacturers specialize on some product lines, some of them on power distribution, others on medium-size transformers or large-size transformers. But WEG has the complete line, from small light pole transformer to large pieces of machinery for hydroelectric power plants, solar power plants, up to 550 kV. We today are certified by the major power utilities of the markets we operate. Last year, I told you that the most important challenge we would have ahead of us, especially in the U.S. market, would be to enter on the very large power utilities in the U.S. Last year, we were able to advance a lot. Today, we have been accredited by the largest power utilities in the U.S..
The doors are wide open, not only accredited and certified, but we're providing transformers, supplying transformers to them. We have more than 500 substations supplied to the market, not only Brazilian market, but today we have our substation business centers that build the turnkey substations in all our target markets. We are Brazilian leaders in the substation and mobile solutions segment. The other things that set us apart from our competitors is that we have a network of technical assistance and representatives. This undoubtedly is also one of the most important strengths we have, and is a unique strategy. Our sales force, through representatives and our technical assistance network, is really important. Here, I briefly show you some milestones of WEG Transformers. We started back in 1981, 20 years after the foundation of the company.
We bought in 1981, 50% of a small transformer manufacturer for rural areas. Small transformers attached to light poles. Now, I leap to 2006, when we started our internationalization process. We established a joint venture with the Mexican company called Voltran. This association continues. So far, we have almost 80% of this business. We also kept Voltran. We kept that brand that is very prestigious in the Mexican market. In 2007, we bought another transformer manufacturer in the city of Gravataí, in Rio Grande do Sul State. In 2008, we removed the all lines, and we started our disconnectors manufacturing line, very important component for substations. In 2009, we built in Greenfield, our power transformer in Mexico for 550 kV transformer.
In 2013, we started out our activities in South Africa with industrial transformers, and in 2015, we made the second acquisition in Africa, more dedicated to large transformers, up to 40 MVA. In 2015, we started out our journey in Colombia through another acquisition of industrial transformers for oil and gas industry in that country. In 2017, we started operating directly in the U.S. through the acquisition of two plants, one of distribution transformers, and the other one, power transformers. In 2020, we expanded in Brazil, our transformer through the acquisition of the Betim plant. State-of-the-art plant, internationally recognized as one of the best transformer plants in the world, up to 800 kV. In 2021, we built the third transformer plant in the U.S.. This one, fully dedicated to renewables, solar transformers, mostly.
In 2022, we bought out Balteau in Minas Gerais State, also an instrument transformer up to 550 kV. This is briefly our history. I will move faster, a little faster on this slide here. You think that all transformers are the same: the little box with three ceramic components, but all lines, all product lines are very specialized and dedicated because the loads they deal with are changing according to the application. A transformer for same power transformer for a given industry is totally different from a solar power transformer. The way of designing the product is totally different. That's why I tell you that WEG is the only manufacturer that has a full and complete line of transformers, all types. Here we split.
Very clearly, the solar application transformer has an engineering of its own, which is different from the wind-wind transformer, power transformer, and also large transformer. Special transformers also, and rectifiers, rectifying transformers. Here at the bottom, you can see the Balteo transformers. They are medium and high voltage, up to 550 kV transformers, and the most important step we took over the last two years is this: today, all WEG transformers have a channel for digitization. I'll show you the latest developments, but I can assure you that over the last two years, we took the leadership position, providing digital solutions for transformers. Today, transformers, and you'll see up next, also, substations are not only monitored, but also taken care of, both considering the building up of gases and stuff, and the health of the bushings and the ceramic insulators. The whole machine is monitored.
I compare it to a person at the ICU, measuring all vital signs. Such is the condition of monitoring we have to this piece of machinery. Here at the bottom, you have all the substation line. And here, I wanted to highlight three products that are now out of the oven, so to speak. The first one is the full monitoring of substation. Here, we're not only going to monitor the WEG producer, the power and current transformers, and the most important transformer, and the disconnectors, regardless of all vendors, regardless of being WEGs or not. The other product is the merging unit, which is a cubicle, fully interconnected through fiber optics to substations. Those copper wirings or cables are no longer used. This is all monitored through fiber optics, and from this little box, the merging unit, controlling the substation. And finally, our green hydrogen solution.
We developed a rectifier transformer up to 150 kilo amperes. This is an extremely sophisticated, giant piece of machinery. 150 mega amperes is really challenging to operate, but it was fully developed by us. For any hydrogen system, we have a solution with our rectifier and also power substations, turnkey substation, that is. This is a product I want to highlight also. WEG, undoubtedly, in Brazil, is leader in the overhauling of transformers. This is a market that for many years had this gap. It was a market of large transformers, that there are just a few specialized companies in the world that deal with. Especially, this is well, this is an excellent opportunity for business, and this is also a way of contributing towards the emissions, the reduction of greenhouse gases.
When WEG overhauls transformers, and I'm referring to large size machines, we're able to use, reuse the whole transformer. We use the tank of the transformer, we reuse the core, silicon steel core. We are able to overhaul it, providing 30%-40% more power than it was, and it leaves the overhauling plant with two years guarantee and ready to operate for 30 years more. So this is a very important contribution that we are giving the environment. Here, I'd like to show you the locations of our plants, and I'll take the opportunity also to show you here, or better, to update you about our market strategy. Let us start by Brazil. In Brazil, we have five manufacturing plants, one of them in Gravataí, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the other one in Minas Gerais, Betim, and Itajubá.
These five plants, manufacturing plants, operate synergistically, the two African plants with two African plants. In South Africa, we have two manufacturing plants, up to 45 MVA, 145 kV. Just for you to have an idea of how synergistically they operate and the importance of this joint operation. This year, we have been placed orders to provide seven transformers in 2024, 400, 145 kV for the whole of Africa, to provide transformer for the whole to the whole of Africa. And this was possible because we had a foothold in Africa. Can you imagine 400-ton transformers, 45 MVA? They will also be supplied to Brazil. So we have to take advantage of the strength of operating synergistically with South Africa.
Likewise, the Colombian manufacturing plant of up to 30 MVA transformers operates synergistically with the Brazilian manufacturing plants. For you to have an idea, more than 50% of transformers that we provide to Colombia are manufactured in Brazil, the other half produced in Colombia, and this is only possible thanks to this joint operation or collaborations that we have with the Colombian plant. So these transformers also have a social component attached to it. When we sell a component anywhere in the world, of course, we sell it to the power utility of that country, and in most countries that we operate are privately owned, but there are also state-run. So having a local production creates for job the opportunity for WEG to export machines we oftentimes don't produce in Brazil. To conclude, our strategy, I will refer to North America.
As I told you, we have 5 manufacturing plants, three of them in the U.S., where we produce transformers up to 60 MVA, and we have two manufacturing plants in Mexico, where we manufacture the large-size transformers. The 5 plants, the Mexican and American plants, operate in integrated. Most components are manufactured in Mexico to enhance our competitiveness. These 5 plants in North America operate synergistically and harmonically. Now, referring to the future of our operations, undoubtedly, we are getting ready for the growing market that we envision for the T&D market. Since 2018, we've been growing at a rate of 6.5%, physically. This is physically in MVA year. This is extremely important. Today, our manufacturing plants are operating at full capacity, and we are to continue growing. In GVA year, we estimate an 8.4 physical growth a year.
That is higher than the rate we had been growing so far. In built area, our growth is going to be estimated to 10.3, up to by 2026. It's important to highlight here that basically, this growth rate by 2026, considers just a little, the investments that we've announced on Wednesday. On Wednesday, yeah. These are investments that are underway and are part of the package we have announced. We are going... Well, the question is: Will WEG have plans enough for this growing demand in Brazil and for the markets we operate in? Yes, WEG will have plans to deal with that. Now, I will refer to the opportunities that we envision, for our T&D business.
This schematic depicts the most traditional markets:
transmission, generation, infrastructure, solar energy, industry, wind energy, the energy distributors, all this group, all this package of businesses, they need transformers and substations. The good news is that all new businesses, when we are talking about electric, mobility,
... energy storage, everything needs in a great scale, transformers and electric substations. And I'm talking about all the new trends that we hear about, that are already taking place, need transformers and substations. A little bit here about Brazil. These are public figures on our decennial year for electrical expansion plans. Brazil should invest, invest up into 2030 to about BRL 16 billion per year. And the main focus here is to bring this energy, the, the, the renewables from the north and northeast to the consumption centers in the southeast, center, west, and southern parts of the country, and that is a reality already. Here I am showing you a little bit of the auction expectations for the coming years. These are pre-announced auctions, some of them already confirmed in 2023.
We're going to have now in December, the last one, the last auction of the year, it involves about BRL 18 billion. There is a share of dedicated AC/DC that does not take part, but it has all the peripheral components for this line of HVDC. And the first auction for 2024 is in March, in approximate value of BRL 20 billion, I'm sorry. And a second auction is being announced for the second half of the year. So if you consider 2023 and 2024 with a historical curve of the past auctions, we see a very good window of opportunity. Now, speaking about the U.S. market, we have also opportunities there.
People talk a lot about the Inflation Reduction Act, but these are facts from the Energy Department in the United States, is that there is a gap of 400 GVA, def-- there's. So this deficit in transformers for a short term, for the next four years. 400 GVA, just for you to have an idea, Itaipu Hydro plant produces about 15 GVA. So see the size of this gap and the need of transformers that you have ahead of us in the United States. So I'm talking about new endeavors. And besides, there is the substitution movement, especially in substations, in coal, the coal plants, so they are going to be replaced. So there is an...
So the transformer market in the US should grow in the coming years, and the projection, the forecast is long, up to 2031. It should grow from 5%-7% yearly. And what's important? For all this growing demand and this need, WEG is in position, is ready. We have the technology, and as I have previously mentioned, we have access to the main investors and utilities in the U.S.. We are ready and in place to take advantage of this moment. Now, speaking about Mexico, they are starting an investment wave. You possibly are following the number of companies that are installing themselves in Mexico. There is an increasing demand for data centers, for industrial condominiums, and we are taking part in substations in industrial condominiums.
Just for you to have an idea, 300 MVA, 350 kV, feeding this industrial condominium. So these are impressive numbers. The generation of clean energy is—it's in infancy in Mexico. It's still handled by the government, but obviously, it's going to increase and take off very soon. Besides, there is an opportunity for WEG to take part in a stronger way, also being able to increase its market share in Mexico. Now, speaking about Colombia, here, the expectation is that the energy metrics for renewable and clean energies will increase up to 20%-30% at a pace from 5%-15%. Another very interesting thing that is happening in Colombia is that there is a gradual modernization of substations.
10, 15 MVA being powered and replaced for ones that has a higher capacity. And we also see that this trend in Colombia is going to last for a longer period. Let me now show to you, speaking about the scenHarryos and opportunity that I spoke, what are our growth strategies? What are we getting ready for these opportunities? First, these investments that I like to call the day-to-day, the year-to-year investments, they are the more ordinary and common ones. We have in Blumenau, enlarging our transformers, renewable transformer for wind and solar energy, and we are investing also on the verticalization, making radiators, tanks, transforming our manufacturing plants in, automated manufacturing plants in order to increase our productivity and competitiveness.
In Itajaí, we are finishing a new sector, a new manufacturing plant for vacuum-impregnated transformers to follow WEG automation in their skids with the inverters. And in Gravataí, we are expanding our medium power transformers line. We are building a new line since the winding, the coiling, and also investing in the improvement of our capacity, the increasing of a capacity of our boiler work. And now speaking about investments, that we consider more strategic in Brazil, the first one is in Betim. Betim is acquisition, as I shown, made in 2020, in the transformer, up to 800 kW. And we are investing in Betim, BRL 200 million, basically, in order to increase the capacity and build a new manufacturing plants for radiators.
In Itajubá, another very important investment, we are doubling our transformer for medium voltage transformers. We are doubling this capacity there. Now speaking about the investments abroad, in the U.S., we are expanding our capacity to meet the demands of the renewables. In Mexico, we are expanding the manufacturing of power transformers. So these are ongoing investments. In South Africa, we are also expanding our heavy-duty transformers production capacity. In Mexico, we are building a new transformer, extra high voltage, dedicated to 500 kW. This manufacturing plant is being built on a plot of land that we have acquired as an opportunity for the whole WEG group to be able to grow in the North American market.
This manufacturing plant, for you to locate yourself, it's very similar to the manufacturing plant that we have for the larger transformers in Betim. It is basically the same design, the same built area of 33,000 square meters of plant. And apart-- besides of that, we are in starting a BRL 190 million investments in order to build a new manufacturing plant of transformers up to 1,150 kV in Colombia. So that is also... Now, here is thinking about not only Colombia, but also about Chile, Peru, thinking about Central America as well.
To wrap up my presentation, I would like to supply a summary of our key messages, of our actions are gonna focus on maintaining the focus on the markets of Americas and Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa. As I mentioned, the expansion of our production capacity, intensify increasingly the synergy between our manufacturing plants, especially in North America, and following the same verticalization process that we have in Brazil in order to be make them more competitive in the North American market, to participate very actively in the expansion of the business in renewable and transmission of energy. And here, an important aspect is to internationalize the Valtor, which works basically in Brazil.
In Brazil market, to increase the transmission, the participation in our in the transmission auctions, to continue strong in the renewables area, and expand our capacity in manufacturing products for this area. That was all. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. I would ask you to stay on the floor because we're going to have our Q&A session now. Grillo, please, if you can come up the floor, the stage as well. So we're gonna have our first session of Q&A, and whoever would like to ask a question, please raise your hand and identify yourself, and stand as you are asking, so that we can also show you on the camera for those of who are at home or in their offices.
Good morning. Thank you for this event and for welcoming me. Here's Lucas from BTG.
I have a question in the transformers area. Along the time, we were educated, so to speak, to educate, to see the verticalization of motors. We always discuss as how verticalized was the motor manufacturing. I would like you to compare, how verticalized is the production of transformers, and how much is internal or not, and also whether it's true or not, with these investments that you have announced on Wednesday, whether you are on the way of verticalizing more in Mexico, the operations in United States, if that somehow allows you and helps you to closer to a pro production gap in Brazil with the operations abroad as well. So I would like you to hear you speaking about this a little bit. Very well.
Well, speaking about the verticalization here in Brazil, for you to have an idea, the transformer, a large transformer, what Brazil doesn't produce is the bushing, the isolators, and the sub-load computer. So everything else, the copper wire, the construction of the tank, the building of the radiators, the conservers, everything is produced internally. The nuclei, the core, we buy the steel directly from the steelmaker, and we assemble the core. So our level of verticalization here in Brazil is doubtless at the same level of WEG Motors. And abroad, we have started this process, and part of the investments that we have demonstrated will help and support this idea.
For you to have an idea, we have concluded in March, the building of our boiler works in Mexico, which is a very extremely automated, roboticized one, and it is going to supply tanks for Mexico, as well as for the three manufacturing plants of the United States. So, abroad, we do not have the same level of verticalization, but that is an opportunity that is contemplated in our investments and is going to allow us to be even more competitive, mainly in that market. Have I answered your question?
Thank you very much. Alberto Valerio from UBS BB. Thank you for the presentation. It's very very emotive, the transition at the beginning. About electric mobility, I have a question: How is the competition in this very growing market?
What can we expect in the margins of in this market, whether... I know it's at its beginning, but it will be a leverage for the growth in the future, in this transition moment. Well, competition is out there. Obviously, it's a new market with several players, but WEG is well positioned in Brazil, with a line of products that is very robust in our view. And our presence, especially when you're talking about EV charging, is a product that is very well connected to the transmission system, all the electrification of the building and everything else. So we believe that our position in Brazil is a strong word with integrators, with technical support, maintenance, with lead times that are very competitive. It's been a difference. It's been something that has made WEG stand apart.
In the electric traction, these are projects that I call, they're not a B2B project, they are engineering to engineering, E2E. They have a very high customization. They're not shelf products. In this aspect, the strength of the WEG engineering in a very accelerated because of our experience in inverters and motors, it has been is making it stand apart as well with the project that we have participated and showed to our clients. Obviously, WEG has still a little participation, but in the case of electric traction, Brazil is a strong player in the automotive industry, and many players have invited us to participate in international projects.
Good morning, Lucas Laghi from XP. First, I'd like to wish success for Harry, for Kuba, in this succession plan.
As the first point, I would like to explore with you the T&D market, especially when we talk about the U.S. market, but I think that we have this context that is helping the demand. I would like to understand the competitive market in terms of the capacity increase expansion in the U.S., and you're seeing it as a transformer, and that was made to supply the U.S. T&D market. So how are you thinking about the competition in this market, and how do you evaluate the future cycle of this segment in the coming years as the incentives, the government incentives, are going to diminish?
And would it be reasonable to think about an oversupply scenHarryo as you have this, T&D investments, or whether you expect in a structural, stronger demand for this market, even in a context without the incentives from the government? So I think is a... This is the context in the T&D segment in the United States. Please elaborate on this.
Let me comment upon the second part of your question, which would be the continuity of expansion of the market. I was, two years ago, in, at the board meeting of WEG Transformers, US, and I had the opportunity to talk to the presidents of four major utilities in the U.S.. Of course, there is the opportunity to get subsidies for ITC, which is part of IRA, but their need in T&D is transformers. As I told you, there's a gap of 400 GVA for the near future, and all of them requested me loads for 2027, 2028. So you can see this is a long-lasting cycle, and it's going to last longer, I mean. What people is looking into, the T&D business, is for the opportunity to get credit lines.
Yes, they see that for generation, but once the generation system, solar or wind, obtains this credit, it's integrated to the consumer center, will occur regardless of those subsidies. Yes, we can see those cycles in a very long-lasting fashion. As far as the movement of competitors is concerned, I think WEG has a major competitive edge by producing from Mexico. I mean, producing in Mexico and supplying from there. All our integrated production system between the U.S. and Mexico is there. We have the right operational costs, and as I told you in earlier, we are verticalizing those manufacturing plants. I have no doubts that WEG is really co mpetitive, and the growth rates we've been showing are a proof of that.
Thank you. Good morning. Question is addressed to Grillo, to explore some more of electric mobility.
What segments do you imagine will have more potential for creating value? Charging stations, lightweight vehicles, utility vehicles, heavy vehicles, and do you believe that having local production is really important for growing here? We believe that this growth is homogeneous. There is no way of detaching electric traction products and power products, like recharging stations and batteries. In our vision, the growth of light vehicles will be really big, I mean. We've been focusing on recharging stations because of that. We see many opportunities there, and this, naturally, is a market that local positioning makes the difference.
... involving what I told you, the DC charging hubs, the building of electric charging infrastructure. So if you import an equipment and just deploy it, if you don't update those and you don't have them with good maintenance and stuff, it's no use. So we noticed that, and believe this is what sets us apart from competitors. As far as the powertrain is concerned, our focus has been heavy vehicles, buses and trucks, and right now, the bus segment is really heated up. And city halls, municipal government that is, are encouraging electric mobility. Brazil is the second largest market for electric buses in the world, and we believe that we are helping build this market in Brazil.
Good morning, Marcelo, from Banco, JP Morgan. A question to both of you. When you see your presentation, you refer to a lot of sensors and monitoring, at the charging station, et cetera. Considering a five-year business plan, will there be a part of your revenues coming from those? Or do you see the possibility of creating a new line, for example, software for charging, and how does it impact the revenues?
Well, this digitalization movement is not new in WEG. We have been working on it for a few years, and what have we noticed? Digitalization is something that enables us, or it's not a differential for the business in terms of hardware. It's necessary. You have to have something to make it possible, and along this journey, we have identified for certain niches, the transmission and distribution is one of examples, in which the digitalization, the sensor monitoring of the operation condition, the health of the asset, obviously, it has a very high cost, so you have to monitor. It will bring opportunities for services, for recurrent revenue. And it is a much bigger, or it tends to be bigger than the very subscription of the software. So we have noticed this, and we've walked towards this.
So our projects of sensing and monitoring are developed around this. So we've developed this in the last three years, hardware, software, the productivity, cybersecurity aspects. So there's a lot of demands that need your attention. So we noticed, we believe that a part of the business is going to be connected to the recurrent revenue linked to services. Good morning, Lucas Barbosa from Santander Bank. My question is about the international strategy for internationalization for EV charging station. If you notice, it's clear that WEG is going to be a dominant player in Latin America. But thinking like Europe is evolving well with rigorous goals, the United States, too, Asia as well.
So I'd like to learn how is WEG's strategy in regards to whether you wanna join these markets? Would you like to start with a specific product, like a rapid charging station, so as to increase your shHarryng in other products? And how to position in with utilities, with charging or gas stations, with the end consumers, whether you have any interest in reach the end consumers, residential one, to gain penetration. So just elucidate a little bit on this. In the external market, we are starting our first steps, and there are several channels. Since from the residential charging stations, in which the competitive is a drive, we need to have price, and there are the hubs for recharging, that the service is the very differential.
We're studying the markets, the same thing, how is happening in Europe, but it all starts with the product. So if you don't have a certified product and recharge, the charging station is already a regulated market, there, there, there are several interesting regulations that will impact the product. Things very simple. If they have a blackout, a shutdown, and you have to reload, all the charging stations have to have market. In the European market, specifically, they have a random time to reoperate, to get back in operation. They cannot get back to operation all at the same time. So we are at a stage in which we are understanding and choosing the ways and see what products that we should accelerate the production of.
So we have time for two or three people raising their hands, but we only have time for one more question, but later on, we'll have an opportunity. So we'll prioritize the ones that have already raised in the next session. André Mazini from Citibank, thank you very much. The question from batteries, as you said, the models and the cells, they are not made in Brazil, they come from abroad, and here is just assemble the pack. So where exactly do you bring them, the, them from the South Asia, they have the CATL, Samsung, Panasonic. So do they come from there as well? How do you think of diversifying the chemicals? The chemical is not well defined. What is the ending chemical of the batteries, the sulfur ca-- geography, the geopolitics of the battery?
The second, I would like to make a follow-up on Lucas. If Trump comes back to the government, he is less endorsing of renewables. So this T&D investments would change a little bit if you have Trump coming back to government. So perhaps you will need less transmission lines with this new scenHarryo in the United States.
As far as battery cells are concerned, today, WEG buys them from suppliers from Asia, not only from one vendor, because this is a standardized, relatively standardized product. China, China is number one producer of battery cell. As far as chemistry of batteries are concerned, there is an uncertainty of who's going to win in the future. But we've been investing a lot on trying to understand. We have laboratories and projects running with universities and research institutes. There's a strong group dedicated to that, and we've noticed that this chemistry is going to differentiate themselves evermore, LFP and NMC, which are the top of mind ones.
They will differentiate, but be in function of the application, a mining truck takes a load and of ore, and is back in 30 minutes and does it 20 times a day, is a chemistry that is more susceptible to volumes of reloading or recharging, excuse me, in this case. So, there are projects with Unicamp, for example, studying that. So it'll come to point where this is going to be standardized, but... Well, answering the second part of your question, the perception we have, and this comes from our customers' comments, too, at the utilities, this moment is going to last regardless of government administrations, and this is happening worldwide. I think this cycle is going to continue. Thank you for your questions. Thank you once again to Grillo and Carlos for their presentation.
Now, we're going to break for coffee, and for those who are online following, we are resuming our activity very soon, at 10:20 A.M. Brazilian time.
Eleven.
11:20 Brazilian time. Apologize.
Pessoal, bem-vindos de volta! Vou chamar agora ao palco o André Rodrigues, para fazer a apresentação sobre a atualização financeira. Por favor, André.
Now we're going to have a presentation on financial update. André, you have the floor.
O pessoal que tá acompanhando remotamente-
People who are following remotely-
Pra passar uma breve atualização-
From home or the office, I'm here to provide an update on the finances.
Então vamos começar.
Well, our revenue for the first month of the year, we grew 9.2%.
Quando a gente vai-
Well, we'll have the opportunity to talk about each one of the businesses. The area that is showing the best performance was generation, transmission, and distribution, with 13% growth rate. I think that relative to last year, the foreign market is becoming more relevant, with 53%, accounting for 53% of the external revenues. The message here is the diversification of our products.
Diversificação de produtos.
Diversification of products. Our presence in ... has helped us show growth rates for different market cycles, even in a year that, after a strong demand over the last three years, the market returning to normal, we are still finding opportunities for growth. When we talk about short cycle, we can say that, yes, indeed, we're having a good performance, both at the domestic and external market, and as in the long cycle part, an excellent opportunity for industrial businesses of WEG in the generation, distribution, transmission, and distribution. I will talk about each part of the four business pillars of WEG. When we talk about electro-electronic industrial equipment, which is the major part of our revenues, accounting for almost half of our revenues, with 32% of our revenues in the foreign market. Here, we're talking about industrial motors, reducers, and industrial automation equipment.
Our diversification of products and the constant development of our products and the exposure in segments that have been contributing as oil and gas, mining, water, sanitation, pulp and paper, and agribusiness, has taken to a growth rate of 8% accumulated. That is, when we talk about generation, transmission, and distribution, GTD, we're talking about transformers, power transformers, distribution transformers, and also solutions geared towards e-energy transmission and renewable solar, wind, hydropower. We can say that in Brazil, we had a performance that was really positive in transformers and a good portfolio of products in the wind power, but we're not able to compensate solar energy in this year.
When we move to the foreign market now, the GTD in the external market is concentrated in T&D, thanks to the exceptional moment we're going through, both in North America, Mexico, and the U.S. especially, with an exceptional growth of 56%. Now, motors for the appliance industry. Since earlier this year, we've been announcing that this year was more of a normalization, and after the pandemics, where there was high demand in Brazil, the good news is that when we start analyzing the orders that were placed, we believe this is going to become ever more consistent, and the domestic market is going to respond, and the foreign market has to do with our units in Mexico and the U.S.. As far as coatings and varnishes, we're talking about industrial paint, powder industrial coatings and varnishes, and liquid coatings for domestic and for industrial use.
We have good news that as in commercial motors, the portfolio of orders have been, or order book backlog have been improving over the last year. Now, talking about our operational results. When we analyze the performance of the first nine months of the year, almost 30% of growth, undoubtedly, the fact that WEG is been constantly presenting cost reduction plans and rationalization of expenses, and the re-results and improvement of results, financial results of long cycle operations and foreign operations, and the product mix have been contributing positively for the operational growth rates and margins. When we consider the historical margin of this accumulated product is the best of this first nine months of the year. 32% is very healthy and attractive, very sound and attractive.
As Décio said, the most important performance indicator of the company is ROIC, return on invested capital, our ability to develop good return businesses and the allocation of capital and our CapEx plan, has led us to achieve an exceptional performance of 35.4% in the nine-month of the year, and we expect that we will constantly return attractive returns. Décio said cash flow and ROIC. As in 2023 to the first quarter, EBITDA in generation of operational cash flow. If we consider this series until 2020, we have an average of EBITDA conversion in operational cash flow of 94%.
What happened right after 2020, when we had an exceptional period, is that during the pandemic, we made a strategic decision to enhance our operational capital working capital flow, which impacted in turn the conversion of EBITDA into working capital. The good piece of news is that the first quarter, the accumulated of the last 12 months, we are returning close to normality. And it's crucial, this operational cash flow, for financing or funding the operating results for enhancing our performance. As I told you, during the pandemic, we had made the right decision, a strategic decision of increasing our stocks so that no customers of WEG would have lack of products provided by the company, because we were ready to supply them on this disruption on the supply chain that the world has experienced.
Now, we're getting back to normality, and there was a positive evolution in our stocks and in the deadlines for receiving it. Now, talking about an increase of 60% of investment expected in the first 9 months, we reach BRL 1.22 billion. The focus on the company's investment continued to be the same, be it through the expansion of capacity, increase of internalization, automation, or robotization of our plants. Throughout the years, WEG has been investing between 3%-5% of its operation, net operational revenues, operating revenues, but in average, we always operate in this level, at this level. Carlos Prinz and Grillo had the opportunity to talk about investment in their investment business units. Now I will talk briefly about the other business units in which WEG is investing and placing its investments. Now, starting by India.
India, our history in that country started 12 years back, a little longer than that, when we built an average, medium voltage, generators, manufactured the low voltage motor plant, and now we are expanding this unit to start producing wind turbines. This country has a strong potential, very attractive market for our products, and WEG is concluding and taking a new strategic step, extremely important with the conclusion of this, expansion for the end of this year. Up next, a unit that constantly has been receiving, capacity expansion and investment, China that is, and winning market share in that country is the Rudao plant. It's the most modern plant we have in the group. The other important step taken was this investment of $12 million that will assist us to increase the local verticalization with the...
According to the Jaraguá do Sul model, taking it elsewhere to the world. Carlos also mentioned about a very important purchase, a plot of land, 640 square meters were bought in Mexico. After this acquisition, Mexico will have more than 1 million square meters, and thanks to this investment, we will be able to, in the future, continue expanding our business to meet the demands of North America, one of the most important markets for WEG. In addition to being close to our facilities, which will help us integrate our production processes more effectively and continue with our verticalization processes.
Portugal, a new unit on the left-hand side also, and thanks to this unit, we will be able to expand our production capacity of large-sized motors and anti-explosion motors, migrating my operations to this plant, gaining more productivity and enhancing our production capacity. I refer to the plants abroad, but we also invest in Brazil, and continue to do so. Investment in Itajaí, in industrial automation plant, trying to achieve ever more verticalization of production and production expansion for outlets, power outlets, and circuit breakers and switches. Now, to conclude the investment chapter, also in Jaraguá do Sul, we're expanding our plants, our productive units, to be able to expand our production capacity of components, and thanks to this investment at WEG Motors, we're going to increase 25% additionally, our production capacity when all these investments are concluded.
To conclude my presentation, the take-home messages I want to leave here are, first off, we're going to continue working to deliver ever more sound, EBITDA and ROIC results, continuing enhancing our competitive edges like verticalization, our continuous productivity gain plans, through robotization, automation, WEG will continue to develop, and we will continue to deliver something that sets us apart from our competitors. The other thing I mentioned is the normalization of the working cash flow, working capital cash flow. The good piece of news is that we consider the last 12 months, the conversion of EBITDA in work operating resources or cash, will be crucial for us to continue financing our investment process. An investment increase to support our growth process, aligned with our mission of continuously and sustainably g rowing. Thank you. That was my presentation.
Thank you, André.
Now I'd like to invite to come and sit, Harry, to make his presentation about WEG's strategy.
Good morning, everyone.
... Good morning, everyone. I'm going to make a brief description in order to show you why WEG is optimistic in the project of continuing to grow, in spite of analyses that the economy is slowing. Recently, we have seen an industrial boom, and now there is an accommodation that's worrying some. But we keep optimistic, at least within WEG, and we think that we are going to continue to grow. There are several initiatives, not only on the part of WEG, but also the market in which it operates, and it's exposed to, has a lot of opportunities, and this is what I will try to convey to you. The first thing for that to happen... Well, I'll give you an overview of the last three years.
You know that after the pandemic, there was a strong demand for industrial products, and there's a strong demand for industrial products. WEG was able, and WEG is still a very agile company in spite of being that big, and it was able to do very rapid investments to eliminate bottlenecks in the logistic areas. Everyone had problems, but WEG was very successful in dealing with this, and it was able to supply a great part of this growing demand, and that allied to some investments that we were already been doing in sales structures, and that allowed WEG to gain market share.
WEG had this market share gains not only with increase of sales through the increase of demand, but it had the best positioning in several markets in which it operated, especially in the low voltage and inverter, low voltage motors and inverters. It has grown, and there's both markets. It was not only the growth in the demand, but also there's growth for this product specifically. And the last two years, we have a markedly growth in the revenues from solar energy, especially in 2022. In 2023, we suffered a bit, and transmission and distribution since 2021, we're still growing from 2021, 2022 and 2023. These were significant figures, very impressive numbers. And all of this brought margins improvements, and there was a and that was brought along to 2023, and 2023.
So these topics were all dealt with today. WEG has invested in three very important business that will be very important for WEG in engineering products and wind generation. You knew that we had a 2.1, we went to 4.2 MW turbine, and soon we're gonna have the 7 MW wind turbine, and that will bring good opportunities for the futures. And you saw Grillo mentioning what the situation is in the digital opportunities, and there are a lot of opportunities, and WEG is prepared, especially for the Brazilian market and the battery storage system business. And that was, that brought us this increase in the years, the growth in the years 2021, 2022, 2023, and an average of 9%. And now moving on to 2000...
2023, and somebody asked me yesterday, China, we were also impacted by the decreased Chinese economy, and the impact is, it affected not only WEG revenues, it impacts a lot of consumption and the consumption of products all over the world. China has had an important role in this, the conflict, conflicts in Europe as well. So there was a sort of a accommodation from this great demand of industrial products that were, previously, and WEG has also felt that, especially after the third quarter, and that was also, influenced by the high interest rate, the lower projected, gross domestic product, GDP, and, slowly, this scenHarryo is changed from the great demand. So how does WEG view this ahead of us? Undoubtedly, there was a decrease in the GDP.
This is macro numbers, and for 2024, there is still forecast that there's small decrease in regards to 2023. We can say that in the short cycle products, we are feeling a certain accommodation, so to speak. I wouldn't like to say a fault, but there is a more an accommodation of price. It has to do with pricing. The raw materials go down, and that is reflected for the short cycle products. Here we can see now trying to be optimistic in 2025, a very good projections for the GDP. Here is an index that I haven't brought, but there is one called the Purchasing Managers' Index. It's for the purchasing, the procurement area. So for the short term, they are trying to analyze how the next month, order book is.
Every month, they ask the same question, and, and, and the same month that you are analyzing today for the next year. And in 2022, it was forecasted that things will be stable or to a lower tendency, and in reality, it was lower than 50, saying that it wouldn't get any better. And in fact, it was not in the red. But when you ask this today, for October 2024, the number is green again. It's blue. Already forecasting for October 2024, that production is going to be better. The order book will be stronger, and that coincides with this growth in the GDP forecasted for 2025. This is sort of a coincidence. And when we talk about...
So macro for Germany, it was very bad as well as it was for China, not only for Germany, Europe in general, and the trend, the tendency is for things to get better for 2025. What importance in this macro analysis are the opportunities that are taking place in what is called the energetic transition. That is a umbrella name for a lot of initiatives that are out there. But there is also the nearshoring and the shoring back to the States, and that is bringing a lot of opportunities. Carlos has mentioned a few of them, this new shoring, reshoring, the lot of industrial condominiums that are building in Mexico for the nearshoring. So that is bringing lots of opportunities to Mexico. A lot of companies are also placing themselves or are returning to manufacture in the United States.
That is bringing more opportunities for ourselves, and that what happened last year. We can see that we are getting opportunities with this new movement and and all the investments for the Inflation Reduction Act, with investments in infrastructure. The U.S. has a lot of subsidies and incentives for energy sector to grow, for the energy industry to grow. So that is positive. Electric mobility. Grillo has mentioned what is going on in Brazil, and our focus on electric mobility. When we forecast our revenue, we talk about Brazil. It's a lot focus on public transportation, buses, and we have expressive figures already, and very important ones for the short term, let's say medium term as well. But this is something that starts from here and then, that will spread all over the world, creating a track record.
We believe a lot in this market, and it is where we are investing, and more new opportunities will come up, like EV charging, as was mentioned here before. And this is something that I would say that in the short term, we'll see good results. And when we talk about electric mobility in terms of the world, oil and gas has always been important for WEG, and it still is. But we, we're not saying any slowing in investments in this area. Oil and gas, they are going to invest in carbon capturing and sequestration, green hydrogen, synthetic fuels, several things to come. But for batteries, for EVs, mining will have to play an important role, and more investments are needed, and WEG has a very consolidated position in Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil.
WEG mining, if there is an industry in which WEG stands out, is in the mining industry. New opportunity for traditional products of WEG, also talking about an energy transition, low carbon, hydrogen, carbon sequestration and storage, synthetic fuels and biofuels. All these investments they will need motors, inverters, converters. And if green hydrogen, if Brazil here will have production of green hydrogen, including for exports. The partner for the suppliers for all these plants will be WEG. Not only WEG, but I'm sure that WEG will take part in it, and as an offer of product, this is going to be very important. Because the people that put together this, these plants, these hydrogen-making plants, are EPC contractors that have a very close relationship with WEG. WEG will be with them, helping them, supplying their contracts.
But WEG is ready not only to count on the development of Brazilian companies developing, and now I was recalled of a number of electrolyzers, and also those that are outside, and WEG is closer by because it has relationship. So WEG is in position to be a partner in this as well. For all this, in sequestration of carbon, storage of carbon, synthetic and biofuels, this transformation counts on the presence and the know-how of WEG. And we have an internal structure that is working specifically on this, the energetic efficiency and decarbonization. This, about the decarbonization, is irreversible in all areas. I'm not only talking about electric vehicles. All the world, everyone is seeking to decarbonize their productions, industries, companies, and in order to do that, it will have to get more electrified in order to substitute fossil fuels.
So they will have to get electricity instead, so they'll have to electrify. And besides having more electric consumption, they will have to have more efficient products. And we can see all over the world, you know that. There was a strong demand on the part of certain government to have more efficient motors and engines, and that has is again another trend, but also a trend and also very common, what is happening is a replacement of engines and motors, choosing more efficient ones. So imagine, imagine the change, the replacement of the assets for a bus company in São Paulo, that the light bulbs is a solve problems. But we're witnessing something like this. We are looking for more efficient technologies. And we also mentioned in one meeting of ours about digitalization.
Area, WEG in the automation area is very strong as well. Automation for manufacturing and processes, and this area of automation with the digitalization, the search for efficiency in the processes and manufacturing will, in order to save energy and to produce more of the energy, that means decarbonization. To use less resources, getting more production. That will also bring an increase of, the demand for digitalization, products. So this is all positive for all the businesses that we are involved with. The renewables, it's the base for all of this transformation. Energy storage also goes along with this. It's a consequence of these renewables and the equipment for the protection and the management of electric system. WEG switchgears. Brazil has plants in Brazil, Colombia, South Africa. Have I forgotten anyone?
Guadalajara, Mexico, and we're now seeing how we can expand also, expand this expertise all over the world. So all of the opportunities that are happening in the market, WEG is very attentive to this, is investing in these areas and getting ready to make the most of it. What is the strategy? What are the directions to follow? Well, this is now more of a complement. What is the global strategy of WEG in a general way? WEG is still, is going for a two-digit growth. And when I spoke about legacy, I now remember one, and that was back in 2008, when we... Perhaps 2009, when we decided to make the vision, the statement of WEG as a sustainable and continuous growth.
I was very marked for WEG, because with this sentence, with this mission statement, nobody grows without innovating if do not develop leadership and people and invest in technology. And I, WEG will not stop doing this. Because this is something that has worked well and has allowed us to grow continuously and sustainably. So we'll go for a two-digit sustainable growth. And how we do this? This growth avenues is going to be through internationalization. WEG, every year, takes a step towards this direction. It's not only to grow in the same place X%. What is a new place, a new segment? So every year we have to take a new and different step, so you can notice this in all our actions. Besides, of course, growing in all the markets in which we are already present.
WEG has made a strong commitment for opening new businesses in order to help build a more sustainable world. All new businesses that WEG is involved with, renewable energies, energy, storage, electric mobility, we, we are involved in all these businesses for a more sustainable world, which ends up being an electricity world, the world in which we are already involved, but always going in that direction. So more and better, WEG does not forget about that. We are a company that has a different side other than market and product. We're also a company that is worried about management cost. We are a cost-cutting company. We do that all the time. We increase our efficiency in our processes. We do not have a strategy that chooses only one thing. We work on several fronts at the same time. Mergers and acquisition strategy is going to go on.
Recently, we have one of our big ones, and that strategy is going to be maintained in order to conquer new markets, bring new industries into the company, new technologies that we still didn't have. And the business model is only a two-item strategy. It is still going to have this fiscal discipline, this investment discipline, and the verticalization strategy. This is WEG in a nutshell, is financial discipline, and we believe that we know how to do and where to make well every product that we do, that we manufacture. And now, specifically, talking about the external market, we intend to continue advancing in electric motors, new manufacturing plans and expansions.
We are going to invest in China, India, Mexico, Portugal, Turkey, to incorporate the Regal Rexnord businesses, which has plants in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Netherlands, Italy, India, and China. And when we talk about Regal Rexnord, it's not talking only about electric motors. We are bringing in also two, two or three, João, two alternator manufacturing plants, one in Mexico, one in China. There's WEG Alternators was not a consolidated company in the international market, but now we are going to be. So our strategy for that industry as well changes, and these are only the highlights. There are several others, but inverters and gearboxes, gear motors were also. We also had a growth that was above the average. We, we...
Where Kuba stayed for almost eight months in the United States, he dealing with this to implement the strategy for this in the US, and Manfred in Europe as well, doing the same thing. You know that WEG has a very good participation in low-voltage motors, and in drives, our participation is not that good, but we are very competitive, and we have products. What we are lacking at the moment is to invest in supporting the structure, the approach, the services, sales, and to put this all together, and to also put the gears so that we can work this... and these offers have to be directed to industries in which WEG is not very well present. Regal Rexnord has a very important presence in food and beverages.
WEG also has a presence, important one in food and beverages, but in Europe, not in the U.S. market. So these presence in food and beverages will use the gear motors from end drives. So this will give us a new channel of entering this market and offering a complete package, and to take up opportunities, to best of opportunities to grow in T&D in the Americas. To continue to develop the traditional businesses and motor drives, and controls, and generation, distribution, transmission, and distribution, and that has to work all the time in order to maintain its position and be updating this market in order to supply and service the best possible way.
To expand the offering solutions for electrification, automation, and digitalization, this is going to be an area in which WEG is going to make several new offers in terms of new products, in switch gears, automation. We have several digital products for all industries. WEG is very strong in the industrial area, infrastructure. We have advanced a lot in infrastructure. We are talking about ports, airports, and now we are moving on to the buildings area, construction, such as this. We want to strengthen our position in the construction and building areas, so we're going to increase our offer in this area as well. We are seeking to create synergies with our existing businesses to strengthen the solutions for renewable energies.
And here I include to offer the electric, solar, wind, energy storage, and whatever new comes up in the renewable area. Green hydrogen, and we are speaking in a broad sense here. We have to structure ourselves in order to work with all these renewable energies that come up. And participation and new segments, the powertrain for buses and trucks and lorries. And yesterday, somebody asked me, in Brazil, in the short term, what is going to be more successful? And I think that is going to give the more participation is powertrain for buses and trucks and charging stations. And this is speeding up, and it's going to be something very important in the next three to four years. And lastly, I'd like to talk about ESG.
WEG has always been a company that was very well recognized by the market. As an example, in governance, in social participation, and the communities in which it operates, and it has always been a benchmark, a reference for other companies. In the last few years, WEG decided to structure this in a more robust way, not only dealing with this as we were dealing with, but to guarantee that we are increasingly, increasingly present in these actions, not only in Brazil, but also abroad. I think that a third of our employees are abroad, 12,000 or so abroad. So we have to start involving everything, and we have then structure ourselves around this. We have a sustainability policy that encompasses everyone and everything, and a social investment policy. Here we have two work recognitions. You can see what has already changed.
With all this we've done in the last two years, the Sustainalytics, and this is new for me, too. We are among the least level of risks in this industry, and what is not new for me is the EcoVadis. We were bronze medalist, and this is from a group of 100,000 companies, and as a bronze medalist, we were classified in sustainability among the 50 best class classified. So we were among the 50 best. Two years on, we are with the gold category. That means we are among the 5%, the five top companies that are best classified. And above that, there is a platinum category, which is only 1%, but that was a very important leap that we are able to create in these two last years.
Here is just to show one of the programs. We have this, zero neutral carbon, the Scope 1 and 2 for 2021, which was to reduce 52% of the emission of greenhouse gases, and for 2022, our goal was to reduce in 15%, and we were, we're able to do it. We have over 700 projects in the reduction of emissions that were- that are already concluded but are ongoing. Everyone must have seen this, that now, WEG has a contract of self-production of renewables. An important percentage is self-made, and we are going to extend that to the, to other markets, to other worlds. It's not the same proportion as 90% as we have in Brazil, but we're doing this in Germany, Portugal.
In a general way, we have 75% of our energy produced by ourselves. Well, that is the energy that we use to consume, are coming from renewables, either being produced by ourselves or certified.
So growth at all markets continue to expand abroad, solutions geared towards energy transition and move towards evermore ESG. This is my presentation. Now, thank you so much. Thank you, Harry. Now, I would like to invite Andrea Rodriguez to come also to the stage. We're going to start the second Q&A session. Those of you who are going to address your questions, please identify yourselves, and the speakers are going to entertain your questions. We're starting back there. Congratulations for this meeting, Andrea, Harry. Two questions, one for Harry, the other one for Andrea. The first one is about the global industry and repricification, the... and the customer trying to bring prices down. What is the position of WEG concerning pricification of products? Because you've changed your approach on how you position yourselves and your products. This is the first question.
Andrea, now, concerning Regal Rexnord acquisition, how do you see the timeline for margin accommodation or reaccommodation of margins in the next years, for us to understand how the EBITDA margin is going to behave? Can you please touch on those points? First off, concerning price, I think this is a dynamic. It's the, this decision to position WEG. This is a WEG dynamic, as I told you, 2023, 2022, the price of, inputs increased greatly, raw materials, and, and the demand was good. In the short term, it is possible to transfer that. Short run is three-four months. You can transfer this price to the market, and the consumer accept it reasonably well. Now, in 2023, increased in price, but copper decreased a little bit.
Steel prices dropped their prices, and obviously, WEG does not come on to reduce our prices. So we have contract agreement with so many customers. So the price pressure is coming because the price of raw materials, inputs, was reduced and is subject to renegotiation. As with steel prices are reduced, there is not a reduction in demand, but we have to adjust our prices because this is fair. We accepted a price increase in raw materials, and now when there is a reduction, people have to accept it. Things comes gradually, let's say. As far as the Regal Rexnord acquisition, we submitted and we this process, this purchase, and we have to be analyzed by this antitrust board, and on the third quarter, we're going to receive authorization to do the closing and start the integration process.
And that is being acquired by Regal Rexnord. When we announced this acquisition, well, this is a one-digit margins by Regal that is smaller than WEG's, okay? Compared to WEG's revenues last year, accounted for 7%-8% of the group's revenues. So it's natural that during integration, we're going to have a reduction in our consolidated margin. This is a process. As WEG S.A. is a company that has many business units and is present in many countries, this is an integration process that is not simple. And even considering all that, a good piece of news is that we are really prepared to continue this process, this integration process, and coming to fruition, bringing it to fruition, where WEG is strongly present. A team that is very well prepared in Mexico, in India, in China, in numerous countries.
So, first, we're going to have a reduction in the consolidated margin, and throughout the integration process, we are going to bring the margins in each countries closer. It's still too early. Let's see when we're going to approve this antitrust board analysis and continue from there on. Good morning, this is from BBI. We are used to seeing WEG with fantastic growth rates, and part of it, as some segments start getting to a mature level, a new product or application. I would like to understand, excluding maybe the electric mobility part, considering the opportunities from now on for new products or applications, how would you harness those opportunities? And can you please comment, how is that going to be on the market? Well, market estimates, we have been doing this exercise at WEG, but as you know, this is really hard.
We work with many scenHarryos. For example, energy storage. When this business is going to happen in Brazil, in three years' time, in five years, it depends on this, on that. There are many scenHarryos involved. So because of those scenHarryos, possible scenHarryos, WEG projects investment levels for development, for structuring, to be ready to invest faster when the market starts taking off. But we have a huge, we have numerous initiatives. I mean, what WEG sees in addition to electric mobility, what WEG sees and envisions is energy storage possibilities, automation, in industrial automation, processing industry, and also manufacturing industry. We have MES, now we're moving towards digital. The difficult thing is to establish how big this market is going to be and how fast this movement is going to take place.
Even though wind power, wind power, we haven't fully enjoyed the potential of wind power here. The market is not doing very well right now, but the potential for wind power generation is huge in Brazil. If you consider this plus green hydrogen, there is no green hydrogen without wind power and solar power. Brazil is going to be a major producer of green hydrogen. We are going to supply compressors and everything else, but we are not going—we won't be able to estimate that without considering the potential businesses we are investing in and the possible scenHarryos for that. But we are part of this two-digit growth project. Some of them will go beyond two digits. Some of them will take longer to achieve the two-digit growth rate, but this is on our spreadsheets.
We create a scenHarryo, we play out where we're going to invest the money, and... But I won't be able to tell you one by one, assigning figures to it, because it depends on many scenarios.... Gadiel Gasparetti, thanks for the opportunity. Two questions again. There you spoke about Regal. Can you tell us something about the expectations for November? And second, about the evolution of our ROIC. It would be fair to think that if we consider the fantastic evolution, maybe the future will be the accommodation of ROIC, because of Regal is going to also enter the group. Well, what we announced contemplates that explanation.
The new rule has been established from January the first; it's in force, and the expectation that we had earlier this year, that we would have the impact of our structure geared toward that, that would impact half of the benefit that we, that we have, is going to be confirmed from January the first onwards, with all our structure, and we're going to see the rates that are around 17%, and will be close to 20%. This is a fact, and the good news is that this confirmed what we had as an expectation. Considering everything you mentioned concerning return on invested capital, this is going to be accommodated. You mentioned it very well. There is this normalization, price accommodation or re-accommodation, or normalization process when we are to operate investment on the upper range. Regal integration.
But the message here, despite accommodation, the accommodation, we're going to work to deliver really attractive, above average returns.
Thank you, Salgueiro. Harry, André Rodrigues, thank you for entertaining one more question. Valerio, from UBS, two points. We are going through a transition according to Décio's words. There are good things that stay and others that will be changed. Values, sustainability, organic growth. As far as segments are concerned, what stays, what continues to be a pillar at WEG? What can be removed from the portfolio and focus on other values? Rodrigo, can you please elaborate some more about India and investments in that country? Can you please tell us what's the capacity there that is being used in India? As far as segment is concerned, I'm going to first make a definition of what we have.
WEG was a company, manufacturer of motors, transformers, and automation items, and automation systems to meet the demands of the manufacturing industry, infrastructure. Now we're moving towards building. We are moving towards building, construction. This is the macro of WEG. Now we are moving to other segments, other industries. WEG is really strong. Well, in Brazil, we are in all industries to sell our solutions, our products, and for developing customized products. But abroad, I would say that WEG... And now I will refer specifically to motors and drives, more specifically. We have to strengthen ourselves in food and beverage, water and waterways. These are segments or sectors or industry. We are strong in oil and gas and mining. We are really strong in manufacturing pumps and compressors.
So WEG's movement, and we've been doing this for two years, is creating a specific structure to specialize ourselves for water and waterways, specializing ourselves for to service the food and beverage. We're fHarryng well in Brazil, but I'm referring to the overseas market, okay? Motion drives. This is what is relevant about our work to deliver results in the medium run. And the energy sector, our most important area is the Americas, okay? Substations and so on and so forth. We are not changing anything in that respect. Let me see. Well, energy, automation, let me see... But I think that what, what I should highlight is this: in alternators, we are going to plan something for them. Now, referring to India, as I told you, it's a really important country for WEG.
Differently from other countries, we started a greenfield plant in medium and high voltage motors plant there. In just a short time, we became market leaders and the largest irrigation project through different river beds, okay? We supplied the motors, and we made the important decision of starting with low voltage. In India, the low voltage market, motor market in Brazil is larger than Brazil's, so we really hope this is going to grow evermore. It's a greenfield plant. We start slowly because we are in a hurry. We started first with an assembly line, not investing right away to produce all components, and this winning of market share was part of our plans. We broke grounds two years ago. And next step to be taken in India is wind turbine, one of the most important markets in the world.
We are about to conclude the certification of our machine there. João Paulo may correct me if I'm wrong, the largest wind turbine that will be made available in India on this certification process is ours. That's why we are expanding our capacity, and next year, after this certification, we are going to supply our 2.4 MW wind turbine to the Indian market. His microphone is off, unfortunately. Okay, we are concluding the Q&A session.
Thanks, Harry, André, once again. Thank you so much again for Décio's participation, Harry, all our board. A special thanks to the organizers of this meeting, our marketing teams, our IT team, all our suppliers, service providers that made this effort to deliver.
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