Welcome to everyone. Thank you for coming. Super good to see so many showing interest for our company. A lot of well-known faces and also some new ones among, so really good. Been looking forward to this day. I think it's some years since we had our last Capital Market Day. We think it's right time now to have a day like a presentation like this again. Maybe we could say also it's really unprecedented times, looking at what's happening around the world. In Europe, energy costs are exploding, also have a huge impact on how we are running our companies and so on, and stock market's up and down, and so on.
It's very difficult times, volatile times, but we have tried it before, so I think we also know more or less how to work in an environment like that. We have a few Schouw people attending. We have Kasper Okkels. Everyone knows Kasper. I think he's somewhere around here. He's there. Then we have the other Kasper, that's Kasper Schmidt. He is doing our ESG Officer. Kasper is there. If there's some nasty questions on ESG and so on, then he will support me and help me. Then we have Morten Risgaard. He's our working in treasury. No questions on net working capital to Morten. He's just here for listening. I think that's the team.
Of course, we brought in two CEOs, Carlos Diaz, CEO of BioMar, who will present later on, and then Bo Lybæk from GPV. That's the Schouw team being around here. Just wait two minutes. Welcome. Just want to jump fast. Yeah, a short presentation to the agenda. We have sent it out already, but there will be kind of four streams. I will start up. Just giving a very short insight into Schouw & Co. It's not really the main purpose to speak too much about Schouw & Co. It's more to present, I would say, two of the jewels in our crown, as really a deep dive into BioMar, where Carlos will come on. We will have some insights from there.
Bo Lybæk will present GPV, the new acquisition of Enics, and I think we'll bring in some persons on video from outside also to give some presentations. Most of this day will be centered around BioMar and GPV. Just for those who don't know Schouw & Co. that well, I'll just very fast glance at Schouw & Co. A lot of you have been following us for many years and knows us, but today we are a global company. We have, when we have merged with Enics, hopefully in a month's time or something like that, we are having 70 factories around the globe.
We are expecting revenue before this merger of Enics this year of about DKK 30 billion, 15,000 employees in our companies active with factories in 31 countries, meaning we have full value chain, full production in 31 different countries around the globe. For the time being, our guidance is DKK 2.2 billion on EBITDA, latest update from our half-year result. Very short also on Schouw & Co. You know we are running this diversification strategy or being a conglomerate, have been that for many, many years. We have built on that strategy since 30 years. We, of course, fine-tuned and developed this strategy over these years.
We have been in and out of a lot of different companies, and today I think we have a very clear model, a very clear modus operandi on how we are operating and running Schouw & Co. I would say we are, we see ourself today as a truly global company and have a good insight on what's going on around the world. We have factories in China, we have in South America, in U.S. and so on, so we really have a strong feel of what's going on. A lot of things has changed over, I would say, the last two years. Think also we will have to look more and more into be in the region for the region.
Maybe we'll look more into three different regions of the U.S., Americas, Europe, Asia, and how are we going to handle the impact of Russia and so on in future. We have had operations in Russia, especially in BioMar, and we were very fast closing those activities down already. I think it was the fifth of March, we announced that we are out of Russia. Of course, it had a rather huge impact on our profitability in one of our BioMar sites. The Danish factory in Jutland had a big business going with Russia, and we of course closed it down, and we have taken some depreciations.
We still have a lot of cash standing in Russia and we of course working hard on getting it out because it is our money and it's money we made or profit we made before the war started. We are out of that. That's has been, of course, an impact around our conglomerate on also what has been going on in Russia. Now also we have to face energy prices increases, increasing and so on. We're not here for the short run. I think we can elaborate a little bit on that at the end of the day how do we view the world and so on, but more also to look into these 2 important companies.
I'll just show here, most of you also know we have six companies today in our portfolio. We say we have six very relevant businesses, meaning they are also future-proof. They are all of them in sectors that we expect to continue to grow in future, and we say they are as relevant as ever. We are all of them, the six companies today operating within the business-to-business segment. We call them solution providers, meaning we are supplying industrial global industrial companies or blue chip customers with a lot of materials from feed to salmon production, from materials to produce disposable diapers, from solutions to wind turbines, et cetera, et cetera. We are servicing a lot of different industries around the world.
Also, we are in what we call rather low margin businesses, meaning we need to have a very stringent model on how we run the business every day. Strong focus on being efficient, but also trying to innovate to get away from being a real low margin supplier. We have the saying we are working on moving from volume to value, and that's the thinking going on in our companies every day. We also have a huge sourcing department, but huge sourcing is going on in all our companies. I think we are acquiring input products for plus DKK 20 billion every year. Also means that we need to be really on top of sourcing on what is, how does the proteins develop, how does oil, how does energy, et cetera.
A lot of input costs are coming in. Plus DKK 20 billion is the sourcing challenge for Schouw & Co. in a year like this. The good thing is when we look at these six companies and they have a lot of similarities, meaning also we can apply kind of the same thinking in the boardroom in each of the companies. Also, when we take it up at Schouw level, we know and understand how businesses like this, they are operating, having large customers, what does that mean? Should we be nervous when we have a huge global customer pushing us on prices, et cetera, et cetera. I think we have learned to handle and that's super good.
I won't get into all of the companies, BioMar and GPV. They will have their time to shine today. Then, I think we have the two fiber businesses. They have been with us for many years. Looking at their energy position for the time being, maybe they're the most challenged in our portfolio because they are huge consumers of energy. Of course, we have a lot of initiatives around how to offset these energy costs. Won't get too much into that. Then we have our hydraulic solution provider, and then we have the latest kid in our portfolio, Borg, doing remanufacturing of parts for automotives. Won't get into it too much. Maybe elaborate a little bit on this one, saying what is Schouw & Co.?
What are we doing? What's our purpose? We have worked a lot with our purpose over the last year. Looking at it, we see ourself as what we call a responsible long-term owner, enabling growth through transformation. We are really working on being a transformative, continue to be transformative. If we can't continue to transform the companies in our portfolio, then we have to look at them in a new context. Should we consolidate or how should we do it with the companies? For the time being, we have six strong companies. We are able to continue to transform and work with them. We also like to grow. We think growth is fundamental.
Of course, it goes without saying that growth needs to go hand in hand with being profitable and something we also work hard on. I think over the last years we have always had a responsibility in mind, but over the last year, responsibility, ESG and so on is coming more and more. We are working a lot on how can we create value on really taking the ESG agenda, putting it forward and something, Kasper, our new man in the organization also is working on. We have a lot of good initiatives going on around the company. I think Carlos especially will present some ESG sustainability initiatives. We have a very distinctive model on how to run the company. We call it the Schouw Modus Operandi.
We are at headquarters level in Schouw, around 18 people, sitting there. We are having, we call it always work after a lean philosophy, and lean starts at headquarters. Very lean headquarters where we exercise on setting a strategic direction, being active owner, do the funding and the treasury, at a group level, et cetera. We're working on what we say, let's see if there are intelligent synergies we can create value by doing at group level. All other activities, they are placed in each of our six companies. CEO and the management, they hold the key to run the company, and that's very important for us that looking at Carlos, looking at Bo, they know they have full responsibility for what's going on in their company.
If something happens then, we can challenge management and discuss with them. That's very important for our model. Good. Very fast look into also saying that we have been transforming businesses for more than a century, as I said, +30 years with this strategy started. Won't go back in history, but started when we were a packaging company, sold 50% then of that, and then we started. You can see the light blues here are companies we have been in, and all of them are living a very, very good life today. They are standalone. A lot of things has happened. We have been in this company, out of them, and now we have these 6 strong companies in our portfolio.
Always had this philosophy that if we buy a company, we buy it, as we said, to transform and to hold. We never buy it with an exit or sell purpose. Of course, we have sold, we have been out of it because it has made sense. We were no longer the best owner or there was a lot of consolidation going on in the industries and we had to participate in that, and we have created a lot of value also by participating in consolidation. A good example is Vestas. Started back in 1993 with Micon, and then finally we ended up being a shareholder in Vestas because of different mergers, and then we sold the Vestas shares. We have been on the journey with the wind turbine for many years and continue to transform.
It was a rather bumpy road at the end of the day the story ended happy for us. It was really a lot of turmoil going on in this. We have the stamina to stay on. Have this one, and maybe I won't go too much into it. You can. It's in the slide deck sent out. Just saying, what does it mean when we are saying transforming? We really think it is to create a long-term responsible value. I think also our main shareholders, they have this strategy saying, "We want you to work long-term.
We want you really to have a vision on where should the company be in the long run." We call it a little bit the steady, the invisible hand sitting there giving direction. Of course, also having always in mind that we need to create value. We have four levers we work on. Won't get too much into it, but taking company to a next level, continue to grow. We have really a strong aspiration on continuing to grow, because if you don't grow a company, a lot of things happens, and we have learned over the years that that's necessary. Need to be innovative. It's very difficult to be innovative in some of the companies we are in, so really need to push and focus on this innovation.
How can you innovate a material for disposable diaper where you're just making white rolls made out of one raw material, but good example of making it more soft, make it more elastic, or for the time being downgauging from a weight of 8 grams per square meter to 5 grams per square meter, meaning we are a lot. It really goes well into the sustainability agenda. A lot of innovation is going on. Then the last one we really came up is the ESG agenda, and we will push hard for that over the coming years. I'll just touch a little bit on it today because we are still working on the platform. But if there are things, Kasper can elaborate a little bit on it, otherwise you can discuss with him.
Just a good example of how we transformed. I promise you I won't take you through all the companies, but I think this story about Grene, the first company we acquired when we started our diversification strategy back in 1989. We bought acquired a small company in the western part of Jutland, called P. Grene, and they were supplying as a wholesaler of non-original spare parts for the agriculture sector in Denmark. Before that, we were a process-oriented company doing packaging material for the dairy industry as a real process industry. It was a totally crazy move. In those days, this being diversified companies was really a good strategy. We went into it, spent a lot of money in it.
At that time, half of the proceeds from selling 50% of our packaging, DKK 123 million. Worked a lot with it and did a lot of things. Today, we are having one of the companies still in our portfolio called HydraSpecma, and it has been transformed through a lot of different steps, where we at a certain point de-merged Grene into two companies. Hydra Grene were in hydraulics and much more solution provider, and then Grene, who was only supplying spare parts or distributing spare parts in the Nordic, merged and created the biggest spare parts company solution provider in Europe, Kramp. Went out of that, and now we are, after doing acquisitions and so on, having HydraSpecma.
In this period, we have generated cash of DKK 1.7 billion in dividends from this structure here, and still having HydraSpecma as a strong company in our portfolio. Just telling the story about how we continue to transform. I think really just doesn't seem like anything but this idea of de-merging a company, saying, "We have this company, but we de-merge it." A lot of people said, "You could sell off and so on." We made two different companies and made a lot of good value out of that. All of a sudden, this de-merger made it so that the two companies could really concentrate on their focus.
That's what I'm always saying that maybe we are diversified, but each of our companies, they are 100% focused on what they do, as in fish feed or in electronics manufacturing services or in doing one material for disposable diapers and so on. It's more we have a framework on how to handle diversification at Schouw, but Carlos and his team, Bo, et cetera, they are focused on what they do every day. That's all the figures. I have already told them, but this one is very important. DKK 1.7 billion cash out, as I have already said.
Elaborated a little bit on that, looking at our portfolio and so on, saying, "Okay, maybe we hold a portfolio of what we call limited cyclicality." Looking at it over a long period, we have been. I have, you can see my hair color, I have been in three huge crises. I was also here in 2000 when the dot-com really exploded. Just looking at what has been happening on our earnings, et cetera, when we went through these crises. 2008, of course, a totally different situation than in 2020, 2022, where we had the COVID, we had the Russia, et cetera. It's more on an operational level we were impacted.
Here it was more on we had shares in Vestas and in 2008, I still remember we had 4 million shares, maximum price we sold at DKK 698, and then not long after we had a share price of DKK 23-DKK 26. That was really scary, and it went so fast. That was a different situation. That was a financial crisis. This is something totally different, and we have to understand how to handle and to go in it. So far, we have been able to manage through this cyclical situation. Of course, now we have energy and so on. A little elaboration on maybe we have a good risk spread in our portfolio and we can withstand what's going on. What is... How do we spend our cash?
What is really going on in Schouw & Co. in a year like this in 2022 where we say we continue to transform and really do a lot of things? Claus Almer is sitting here on the front row always pushing me on net working capital, rightly. Just to illustrate how we spend money in Schouw & Co. in a year like this. We have spent around DKK 4 billion this year or deployed DKK 4 billion of capital. We have every year mentioning a CapEx of around DKK 7 million. As having 71 factories around the world, you need it costs quite a lot to keep them running, and it's I think depreciation, Kasper, around DKK 800 million or something like that, DKK 700-DKK 800 million.
We have had to deploy DKK 700 million into increasing net working capital because of prices increasing, protein up with 40%, polypropylene up with a lot, et cetera. That has really driven a +DKK 700 million net working capital. We have expansion CapEx, and we used to invest a lot. Something we all need to understand also at Schouw & Co., we have to invest in CapEx a lot. Sometimes it comes in sequences. Looking into 2023, we don't really have huge CapEx investments. Of course, we have our maintenance, but we won't see big announcements on new CapEx investments. Maybe in 2023, maybe in 2025. Let's see what happens. We have had a huge CapEx expansion program going on.
We have, of course, on the M&A side, also been active. We are doing the Innox acquisition, and Carlos has acquired a small tech company in Tasmania. We have deployed what we call DKK 300 million in net working capital for growth, having the financial strength to say, okay, we put a lot of components, et cetera, on into our inventory, so we are able to supply our big customers. Of course, tax, et cetera. We have made a payout to shareholders of DKK 700 million in 2022. We say we are working in four. We have four ways of thinking, deployment of capital, sustaining the platform, growing our business. We have something we can't avoid, unfortunately, external outflow. Of course, we are proud to be a taxpayer.
We have to. Of course, also return for shareholders. That's the thinking when we are working on our capital base in Schouw & Co. Not going back to history, but 140 years, and still we are as ambitious as ever. I think we have very strong ambitions. I think you will see the two when you the two CEOs are presenting their companies, that there's a strong aspiration for growing and for being more profitable and so on. We think this ambition in four ways. Of course, we continue to have our transformation mindset also meaning we have to be bold. We cannot stop taking the right decisions because we have a crisis, et cetera.
Of course, we need to understand what's going on and how can we finance and so on. Also we need to be bold and dare do the right things in spite of what's going on around us. Maybe also it will open a lot of opportunities for us. We also need to work a lot into this being responsible, although I think we have always been responsible, but there's much more focus on the responsibility agenda. Somebody will maybe wonder on this people before profit, but we have a strong belief that having the right people, handling them the right way, et cetera, then profit will come, then growth will come. You'll be more innovative, et cetera. It's very important for us. Setting direction means a lot. Then, of course, also having these financial ambitions.
I think we are very ambitious when we are saying we still, we keep our return on invested capital at 15%, also in turbulent times. We have to work hard for it for the time being. This one just saying we still believe in the business model around Schouw & Co. We really have a also saying that we are patient. We have this long-term view, but of course, we know we need to deliver. Everyone has to understand that you need to deliver on the targets we are setting. Let me start with this one saying this is a little look into our engine room.
We had our top 40 one week at IMD in Lausanne just the week before summer holiday. This is my notebook. This notebook is really what we drive Schouw & Co. after. We were down there in 2019. There was a whiteboard, and every day I came, I just made a small note on this whiteboard, and all of a sudden it developed into okay, this is the way we think. It was really a whiteboard. This year, it's a green board on purpose. It's not a whiteboard, and that's because we have to think much more into to sustainability, et cetera. These statements here means a lot. If you can see here, we are saying +2 PP. That's a +2 percentage point on profitability. That's our ambition.
We need to push for that. There's a lot of things, can we do it, et cetera, but and how should we think solution, innovate. Bold. Still need to be bold. Don't be afraid, even we have a crisis, et cetera, going on. Et cetera, I won't go into all of them. Push for return on invested capital. Diversity. We changed diversity into cognitive diversity, meaning, of course, we need to be diverse, gender, age, color, et cetera, et cetera. It's something we really elaborated on, and we think most value creation would be if we really could push for this cognitive diversity. Of course, we were challenged. We were 42 persons, I think, all the first day in blue shirts, and everyone was really ready. There were 400 participants, and we had this group photo, and then some, "What?
One woman. That was, of course. That was how it was, and I think we really, it took our mindsets a lot. It's, there's a lot in a green board like this one. It means a lot. That starts my mindset, and we put it into action plans, et cetera. A mindset like this can, of course, elaborate into strategy, how it is to a lot of things. This is how we think, and this is how we work. Again, people drive profit and purpose. I think that's very important also. Just a little look into our to my notebook, and still saying we are very ambitious. We think it's very important that we continue to transform to sustain. I think that's very important also.
If you stop transforming or if you stop having ambitions or aspirations and so on, you cannot sustain. Things will happen. Into this, we have two types of targets. We have a what we call the group target. We named the group target, mentioned the group target on the turnover and profitability. I think it was after Q1, saying that ambition to 2025, grow revenue to more than DKK 35 billion. I said already now, expect DKK 30 billion in 2022. A lot of things has happened since we came up with this ambition here, because we are raw material driven, meaning if prices explodes up, then our turnovers also explode.
This is before Enics, and a lot of people would, of course, challenge us and say, "Okay, is that maybe as ambitious as you think?" Looking at it now, we are elaborating, we're going through all our companies and what does the new situation mean and so on. I think when we are finished, we have a strategy session with our board in 2023. I think we'll be a little bit more ambitious here without disclosing any figures because that would not be serious. We have not worked through it, but I think I see a potential both here and here for. I think after you have seen what the two gentlemen will present, you will also see that there's a good momentum in our company.
We work at group level with 3 strategic goals, return on invested capital, really driven on that. We say it's our key figure, and I think the CEOs also know that we are discussing and elaborating a lot of that. Of course, some of our companies, difficulties for the time being in delivering here. We are also working a lot on how much should we leverage our company. We have this gearing target saying between 1-2.5 times. Of course, if something very exciting happens, maybe we have to go to the banks and see if we could have a attractive funding instead of. We would like to go back again into this, we call it our strategic comfort zone.
Also being able to pay out dividends, clear target of consistent or increasing dividends year by year. Last five years, DKK 1.8 billion in dividends to the market. We move into the target setting for each of our portfolio companies. Three targets. Growth. We want them to grow because we don't, as I mentioned earlier already, we don't believe in companies that don't grow. We want each of our companies to have earnings on par with the best. We cannot see why they shouldn't be able to deliver that. They have always access to finance, to CapEx, to whatever, you know, and they have a very clever and good owner. Why shouldn't they be able to deliver here?
We put in much more on the responsibility and clear EBITDA targets also for all of our companies. I think some of you could elaborate on, okay, where are you now on these EBITDA targets? BioMar, I've just mentioned, EBITDA, half year, 4.1%, but, half year, H1 is low season for BioMar, etc. Here challenged, here we are close, here we are very close, here we are close. We always work on these targets, but very important that they have a band they work in and we really follow hard up on that. Also three group or corporate targets and three targets for our portfolio companies.
Also looking into what I call our new framework, our ESG. We used to work with an active ownership model. We call it three by three as a kind of levers. One is margin management, how you deploy your capital. Now we have four by three because ESG has come on as the fourth lever in our business system, and we have four three areas. The three Ps, we call it, produce responsibly, protect our workers, and promote innovation. A lot of things is going on underneath here. I won't go into them. Maybe just saying that, one, we want a transition to 100% renewable electricity. We want to strengthen our diversity mindset.
A lot of things is going on here, and I think just a few minutes ago, we announced that we have started a cooperation with Schneider on a PPA power purchase agreement. We want the 40 factories in Europe to be on renewable energy. I think Kasper has worked a lot on that, and we'll see what comes out of it. We just started the framework. Really pushing hard for also being strong on the ESG agenda. Again, it we have to create value out of it. Don't be naive. We also need to create value out of pushing this ESG agenda. We think we can.
I think Carlos has a lot of good examples also on how we push it and how we create value both for company, for employees, and for customers. Closing remark from my side before we start the more exciting presentations is looking at Schouw, saying, okay, we drive our profit through this transformation agenda elaborated on. We have a lot of good tools in our toolbox, as we have our four by three, we have our strategy house, we have the way we exercise active ownership, and maybe the most important thing is that each of the six CEOs, they hold the key. They are full responsibility for running the company on a daily basis. We also have this long-term responsible owner.
I think also for our company, it's very important there's a steady hand out there. We are patient but demanding. We have six companies in our portfolio. Risk spread. I know time is running, Kasper. Then we are return on investment capital driven. We of course also know we need to deliver to shareholders and have a strong focus on that. That was the closing remark, and then maybe a few questions. Otherwise, we can wrap up at the end of the day if there are things. If there are a few ones, then yes.
Claus Almer from Nordea. Two questions, Jens. One is, you mentioned ROIC as on your board, I think it was. You have this at least 15% ROIC target.
Mm-hmm.
If you're going to put focus on ROIC.
Mm-hmm.
I guess it's going to go up. What should we think about ROIC?
No, but we are so as I said, some of our companies are close by, and if we look back in 2021, some of the companies that had been struggling with ROIC, they in fact got over the 15% bar but now in problems. We will push a lot on that and also look into the potential for if we don't see on the longer run that a company can deliver over some years up in that area, then we need to do something. We need to think in consolidation or other ways. We push for that. Absolutely. Yeah.
Is 20% a possible target?
No, I don't think so. We go for whatever ROIC we can, and I think some of our companies have been up there touching even the 20%, even +20%. If we can, of course, we don't stop, but I think that's our minimum threshold we really push hard for.
Okay. Just a final on M&A.
Yeah.
You're saying you need to use a crisis to do M&A.
Yeah.
You're at least thinking long term.
Yeah.
Shouldn't you just, you know, go all forward here in a possible downturn to do M&A?
Of course. Maybe. But we have our leverage target also saying we cannot take Schouw too high in gearing because we also need to be able to do and support each of the six companies. But of course there will be opportunities, and we could also be open for it and I think everyone, we are looking at attractive targets for the time being, and then we evaluate it always. Is it worth the risk? Can we finance it? Et cetera. Let's see. Things might happen. Yeah. I think the Enics in fact is a very good example because it's a company, and Bo will show a little bit. They are profitable, but not as profitable as us.
They realized maybe they need to get into a company with the momentum, the business model, et cetera, that we have. That was an opportunity that came out of, not the crisis, but still, and we were open to take it.
Yeah.
Claus Kej from Nykredit. Another question to your ROIC targets. You talked a lot about it, and you also talked about organic growth, et cetera, and it all sounds, yeah, fine. But is it embedded in your bonus model?
We don't have a bonus model on growing like that. We have two models. We have a STI as a short-term incentive year on yearly basis, and then we have a share option program.
Yeah.
We don't say, "If you just grow into the sky, then you will have a bonus." It has to go hand in hand also with the profitability, et cetera.
Okay, wouldn't it make sense to include it in a bonus model?
We are, without disclosing too much, of course, we're also looking into a LTI program for management in each of our companies. We are not a private equity company. We are a listed company. We've always been running the company like that. I don't think just because you have a bonus on driving growth that will be the lever.
Okay. Right. Second question. You also talked about being the right owner of your portfolio companies.
Mm-hmm.
If you just look, let's say, three years down the road.
Mm-hmm.
GPV could double its revenue. It could be a rather large company.
Mm-hmm.
Are you the right owner of GPV three years down the road? And do you-
I could also ask the same question about BioMar.
Of course.
What I'm thinking about.
Yeah.
Is whether it could make sense to make a separate listing of some of your companies.
Of course, it's in the toolbox also, things we have worked on before, going way back to Energy, Maersk Investors, et cetera. We know also how that works. We always say we are the best owner as long as we're able to fund the growth, setting strategic direction, et cetera. Of course, we also need to look into how to create best value. Let's see what happens. We can still fund M&A and growth for both BioMar and GPV, and then we don't see any reason to change that. I think also, I said we are open. We are always looking at are we the best owner? Can we continue to transform? Can we continue to create long-term value?
Yes. Hello. Ulrik Bak from SEB. Just a clarifying question about your ROIC definition. Can you... Is it pre-tax and excluding goodwill, or, how should we think about this?
I think we'll let Kasper elaborate on that. It is. Yeah. We have been discussing it a lot. Kasper, you know exactly the
Yes. The ROIC is pre-tax.
Pre-tax
In our mindset. When we say including or excluding goodwill, it is, when we look at acquisitions, it is of course including goodwill. When we look at our individual businesses, then we tend to measure them on what assets they are having. There we are also having a ROIC look without having goodwill in it. We tend to look at both, and in our internal management reporting, we have both numbers.
I think also in our reports you will see both figures. In fact, in the annual reports, we disclose both figures.
Okay. On a group level, it should be including goodwill above 15%.
Yes.
On a company level.
No, that's our internal when we are looking at.
Right.
Of course, we also know that there's a goodwill in. We have one figure we are reporting on.
Yeah. Okay.
One way of doing it.
All right. A question on this revenue level of DKK 35 billion. What is the impact from these increased prices for raw materials and that you've been on 2022, in your 2022 guidance compared to maybe 2021?
Yeah.
What, how much? And how do you think about the level of these cost increases and, yeah, how it affects revenue going forward?
Of course it has had a huge impact. I think we increased the revenue first. First take on revenue in 2022 was DKK 27 billion, I think, so plus around DKK 3 billion. What is our take on it? It's very difficult. We can see proteins are being reduced a little bit after Ukraine opened up for getting grain out of Ukraine, etc. But still it's very volatile. Polypropylene down for the time being because oil prices may be a little bit down. But to be honest, it's very difficult to say anything about what's going on. But of course, we need to make our mindset clear when we go into 2023 and guide and what do we guide on? Do we guide on actual raw material and component levels or what? We haven't made it up yet.
Okay. If you say DKK 27 billion, that was your guidance.
Yeah.
coming into the year, and now it's up to 30.
Mm-hmm.
following the raw material prices.
Mm-hmm.
Should we, assuming that all raw material prices are constant from now on, would the ambition then be DKK 38 billion?
No, I think I said also that I think we will have to look at our top-line ambitions, and we have our strategy seminar in January. There are so much volatility going on, so I could easily. Not easily, that was the wrong word. I could see it trending towards DKK 40 billion. We have to be more clear on it. We are not naive. Of course, we can also see that maybe this figure is we have to work on it. Yeah. Okay. Maybe if there's not one last question, then I think we will look at the watch. Do we have a small break now, Kasper? Or do we. I have to look at the. Yeah. We don't have any break.
I would like.
Excuse me.
A short ? Sorry.
Sorry. Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah, I'm also from Nykredit.
Yeah.
From the ESG team.
Yes.
I have a question regarding your diversity.
Yeah.
At the board level.
Yeah.
When we look at your board and management composition.
Mm-hmm.
The overall diversity, what is your thinking on the number of, for example, women in the board and management? You're at 12.5% females. There's an EU directive coming-
Mm-hmm.
In 2026, where at least 40% of board members in European publicly listed companies with above 250 employees should be the underrepresented gender.
Mm-hmm.
You're a bit behind the 40% target.
Yeah. Yeah.
In your ESG report and also on your site, you talk a lot about diversity. Maybe a bit on that.
Yeah.
In terms of age, your average age is in the board and the management is 61.7 years.
Yeah.
If you look at trends such as digitization, automation.
Mm-hmm.
Robotics, big data, et cetera, what are your thinking about access to the latest knowledge at your board and management level, given these numbers?
Mm-hmm.
Thanks.
First, normally never comment on board because that's my bosses, so I cannot set the board. I'm quite sure that the board are aware of the diversity theme, and we have also a policy, and we are looking for how to do that. If that will come, this 40%, then of course, we will apply to that. I honestly have to say it's a board matter. Also, if it's top management, of course, then there's the age thing, I fully understand. Nowadays we have the age we have. I still use iPhone and iPad and things like that, and I'm not dead, luckily.
No, it's more to say a little bit, of course, the older you get, the more open you also become to these discussions. Say, okay, I think also I know exactly what's going on digitalization, i.e., et cetera. When we change management, then, of course, a younger person will come. I think also I addressed it saying that we were 40 plus 40 males and one woman at our IMD, and all of us looked around and said, "What's going on here?" We have to work on that, absolutely. I think we are very much aware of it. I think on the age thing, that's, of course, I have the age I have now, but that's the composition we have.
If you look into just one thing more, if you look into top management, we are two men. If we should change that, either we should extend, I don't think we should do that, or we should change one. Let's see what the board will do. We are open on it, they know it's an issue.
Thank you.
Okay. If something, then, take it, we have a final wrap-up. Let me shortly introduce BioMar, and Carlos Diaz just have one, slide. It's also again thinking a little bit about the, transformation. BioMar came in 2005, December 2005. Interesting company that had been, in a lot of turmoil, were looking for a new owner. They didn't know they were looking for a new owner, but I knew. We went to them and, luckily, we got it into our hands, and we have been transforming it a lot. Got into, LATAM, America, into the, very, interesting, Chilean salmon market with a big acquisition. We expanded our salmon markets into Australia, and now we are looking into Iceland.
We have ventured into shrimp by a big acquisition, very big acquisition in Ecuador, has been so far very successful. Then, now we are looking into tech and digitalization, artificial intelligence, et cetera. A lot of things has been going on. I would think super interesting to say when we acquired in 2005 company with a turnover of DKK 2.6 billion, now looking for DKK 12-14 billion in turnover, and Carlos will show you strong plans for growing. I think also accumulated average growth 11.6% over the years. We have all in all we also merged with BioMar into Schouw & Co. We say we have a acquisition price of DKK 1.6 billion. Some of them were shares we swapped.
Cash out was, I think, DKK 900 million or something. Yeah, DKK 900 million. We have had dividends so far of DKK 3.2 billion out of BioMar. Then we still have BioMar, and that's good we have that. With these words and no further ado, I think I would like to introduce Carlos. Carlos has been with us for many years, Chilean by nature, and know this industry and business out and in. I think you will introduce yourself, Carlos, but welcome.
Can you hear?
Yes.
Perfect. Okay. First of all, thank you very much for being here, attending to this Capital Day. I will try to show you something about BioMar, what we do, as an important part of Schouw & Co. I will try to make it interactive, so if you have questions, you can interrupt me, or then we take it at the end. As Jan said, I have been in the company for a long time. I'm Chilean. I have been the CEO of BioMar now for since 2015. But been in the company for long time in many positions, from technical, sales, a lot of things, operations and in general. In the aquaculture industry also for a very, very long time. This will be the agenda.
We will start with a short introduction about BioMar. I guess you know a lot about it, so it will not take a long time. I will try also to show you what do we think about and how do we see the global aquafeed market. Then we will try to talk about our strategy, Above and Beyond, a very interesting process that we have just finished in June, and it's what we have set our ambitions going forward. Some BioMar insights, different things that we are doing, how do we think. Then very important, I know there's quite some people here interested in ESG, sustainability.
How do we see it from a company point of view, but also how do we see that we can take value out of sustainability, which is what we really try to do in BioMar. As an introduction, this is. Most of you know these figures. This is our key figures for 2021. Turnover of around EUR 1.9 billion, an EBIT of around EUR 82 million, tonnage of around 1.6. We have around 1,700 employees, so we are not a very intensive people company. We feed about 45 species around the world, from shrimp to different fish in every part of the world. More or less sales in 90 countries between operating units and exports. We like to say we are a purpose-driven company.
We like to be considered as innovators, not only in feed, but in aquaculture in general. Really focused on sustainability and performance. This is our global footprint. It has been growing a lot since it started. Right now we have around 17 sites around the world in the main aquaculture hubs for aquaculture. We also have our global headquarters, as you know, are in Odense here in Denmark. We have a, what we call the Aquaculture Technology Centers, which is our trial units. We are really focused on R&D. Everything that we do is try new raw materials, is to do trials with fish, with shrimp in different parts of the world, different conditions. We have trial facilities in Chile, in Ecuador, in Denmark, and in Norway.
This is more or less our footprint in that. Our sales is everything that you see in light blue. Maybe we should have taken out that light blue there. As Jens said, unfortunately we have to be out of Russia, which was a very important market for us. Basically we did it because we believe it's the right thing to do. Even if it really affected our sales, especially for the Danish factory, this year. How do we see the global aquafeed market? How is it developing in the different areas, geographies, species? Where do we play in BioMar? First of all, there are some global mega trends that have ripple effects into aquaculture, and some of them have really been more strong in the last period, especially due to COVID.
Demographic change, shifting economic power, climate change, very important, rapid urbanization, digitalization, that is influencing a lot our sector and having some effects. We have an expansion. We say aquaculture will double until 2050. There is an increasing demand for sustainable products. People is more interested in that. They are more interested in knowing what they are eating. People is also buying more online. When you buy online, you really look at what you're buying. Difference to when you go to the supermarket and just read for 5 minutes the label. There's a focus on circular and restorative economy. Retail is changing. There is an expansion and adoption of technologies, both in retail, in production, but also in the way we do assistance to farmers.
All of this, of course, is having an influence on what we do in BioMar and how do we see the world. How do we see the global market growth? As you can see in the slide, there is still a nice growth. It's lower than before, but still some really nice pools of growth and over a very nice total volume. Shrimp is definitely the star here. Still growing a lot in many countries and very attractive. Salmon, it's slowing down, but still 2% annually over a quite big base. Mediterranean, slowing down, but still growing. In general, all of them are growing, which of course is very good for us. We are in an industry which is growing.
There is a demand for these products. Aquaculture protein is definitely the most efficient way to produce protein. Of course we are where to play. We are in the right place as BioMar. With all of this background, demographic change or shifting economic power, mega trends, and a market which is growing, we decided in at the end of last year actually, we were ending COVID, which has been extremely special years for everyone, raw materials going up, energy and a lot of things happening. It's time to do a new strategy process. We went with one of the big strategy houses and really look at what we were doing. Where should we play? Has that changed? How? How to win there? Of course, how to execute it later. We created this strategy.
We named it Above and Beyond for good reasons. We really will try to take BioMar. We already took it to another level from 2017 when we did our last strategy process. To take it to the new level with new ambitions, and that's why we call it Above and Beyond in many aspects of our strategy. What are our core ambitions? We divided to make it simple in three. Of course, we recognize there is a lot of things that we can do better, and that usually in a strategy, you say, "Where I can grow, where I can go, a new market, a new." We really now we looked inside our own, and we believe that we can do some things better.
You have talked about working capital, you have talked about the operational excellence, commercial excellence, how to commercialize what we have in sustainability and really take the value out of it. This is what we call protect the core. We will really focus in this period not only in the growth, but also in do better what we're doing every day. Of course, we go for growth. As Jens said, we that is our agenda. We want to grow. We will accelerate growth in the period, and we will go to new geographies, new markets, and I will show later where do we see the profit pools, remembering the global megatrends and the species that you saw in the slide before. Then we will try to move into another area, what we call future-proof, beyond feed.
We believe that we could become, not only a feed producer, but a solution provider. We have many a lot of knowledge in our company, many competencies. We believe that we can be the best owner for some of these new ventures, or they can be a complement for what we do, becoming a solution provider for the farmers. Farmers around the world, depending, of course, on the species and the maturity of the different industries, they require more than feed. They require knowledge and sustainability in how to produce, in farming, digitalizing, new technologies, and we want to be there. We have the competencies, so why not to explore these other areas, which I will show later, which of them are them.
This is what we call our strategy house, how we try to summarize our ambitions in our new strategy period, which is until 2028. Not 2025, but 2028. Basically, of course, starting from our purpose, our guiding principles, innovation, collaboration, sustainability, and performance, as I said before, moving to the enablers, which is basically all what we do in our company, global functions, but also operating companies. Then the three areas that I described before, protect the core, accelerated growth, future-proof beyond feed. Starting with protect the core, as I said before, we see a lot, we did a very deep dive into what can we do better, what can be improved, and definitely we will focus in commercial excellence to better what we are commercializing in the different markets.
Now we have many different markets, very different, many different customers, different contracts that in some cases were not made for what has happened in the last period, with increase of energy and, you know, a lot of things that we have openness. We need to be better at this. We need to be better in commercial excellence, be prepared to think. Of course, nobody could imagine that this was going to happen, a pandemic, then a war, et cetera, et cetera. We need to have be better in what we do, how do we sell the products, but also how do we make the contracts, commitments with customers, adjustment of prices, et cetera. Operational excellence. Again, going global is very nice, but of course, it increase, complexity. Different species again, different products, many products. Product life management becomes really important.
Managing the stocks becomes really important also in terms of working capital. With increasing raw material prices, with increasing price of feed, of course, because we also increase our price of feed on raw materials, we really need to become better at operational excellence in all our units. That especially working in our product portfolio, our stock management all around the world, where we really see that we have still something to do. Last but not least, we consider ourselves leaders in sustainability. We have done a lot, a lot internally. We also have some very nice examples of working with customers in different concepts in some countries, especially, I would say, in Scandinavia and especially in Norway, and we see a big, big interest around the world to try to do that. Customers, of course, are caring about sustainability. Aquaculture impact is.
80% of aquaculture impact is feed. Basically, if we don't get it right, the farmers will not get it right. From that 80%, 90% of our impact, or more than that, 95%, is raw materials. Basically, we really need to be good at raw materials, R&D, innovation, and hopefully use that to create a story for the farmers so they can differentiate, and we can also differentiate. We're really focused in commercial sustainability, not only in salmon. We have some very good examples around the world, the shrimp industry, the Mediterranean industry. Asia is starting. This is a big move, and we want to be ready for that. Accelerated growth, different to the strategies we had before, where we said, "Okay, we go into shrimp," because we were not in shrimp in the last strategy or Asia.
Now we are there. Now we will focus, actually, we have targets identified very clear targets, some of them already happening, as you maybe have seen in the news. In salmon, we are quite strong where we function, but there are still two markets where we are not working. That's Canada and that's Iceland. We are looking into the future in both markets, and as you saw, we already announced some possible collaboration in Iceland. EMEA, we call EMEA, of course, all Europe, north of Africa. We see some good opportunities, not so much for new markets, but consolidating some of the industries, especially in the Mediterranean industry. We are very strong in bass and bream in the Mediterranean.
There's especially two countries there where which are still fragmented, say very fragmented, and we really see the opportunity to consolidate it. We have some very profitable operations in both Greece, Turkey, for example. We will really try to reshape that industry and be an active consolidator. Asia. As we know, we are in China for some years now. We started in Vietnam last year, in the middle of the pandemic, which has not been very easy. We see especially some other countries there where we already are identifying targets also, mainly for shrimp. You will see happening in the period one, hopefully two, new countries, in order to have a bigger footprint in the Asian region. That's basically India, Indonesia, not so much Thailand. Those countries are the most interesting ones.
There is some, of course, interesting targets for us in those markets. Last but not least, future-proof beyond feed. We will not go for everything out of feed, of course. We made a long list of possibilities, analyze where should we play, where are we best suited to do it. Some of them are maybe new revenue streams where we could be the best owner because of our knowledge. Some of them are complementary, and some of them are enablers. We choose these three. Novel feed ingredients. You will not see BioMar being a soy producer or a corn gluten producer, but we could play a role in the single cell protein area, in the novel oils area, either through strategic partnerships, ownerships, or different models. Genetics and larvae.
This is especially important in shrimp, where some of the offerings, especially in Asia, are linked to the genetics, to the PL that the farmers put into the ponds. Also the developing feeds for special strains of shrimp, which is one of the bottlenecks, to have a healthy, small shrimp that can be developed to be a big shrimp. Then farming technology, where we really see a new way of doing technical assistance, a new way of managing farms, a new way, especially in the shrimp, going in the same way as salmon. We were already, just after finishing the strategy, had this first opportunity, AQ1, and we took it, basically the leader. We see more movements coming in that direction.
All of this hopefully will end with, of course, very important, we have our ambitions, our ESG ambitions, climate action, circular and restorative, enable people, which definitely we are working, also according to the agenda from scope, which I will talk a little bit, later. All of this leading to double volume, double revenue, and I will show later what we expect in terms of EBIT, in 2028. Ambitious, yes, but our last strategy was also ambitious, and we managed. We really believe the market is there, our organization is there. We have the support. This is doable until 2028. This is how we see it, split it with the. Hopefully, Kasper will not kill me because of the details, but some of the details that we will do.
A lot of it is coming, of course, from what we call the base case until 2028. Our existing units developing, this is what we call the best case, which is already growing quite a lot. We talk about the protect the core initiatives, which is commercial excellence, operational excellence, and commercial sustainability, which also will bring quite some contribution. This is what we call organic until 2028. We come in the different acquisitions that consolidations in the different areas, EMEA, Salmon, Asia. We are not including in this calculation of ambition LATAM yet because we see that happening at the end of the period. It's more in this area. We expect a lot of development in LATAM, but more in this area in the period.
That doesn't mean that we are looking also into targets there. Then the last part, the future-proof beyond feed, which also will have a contribution. Of course, we already have AQ1. We have some nice companies in the pipeline. Definitely that will have a contribution to reach the targets for 2028. This is how we see that it will happen, and this is what we are really working in the different initiatives from June. We're still very. Well, not very, but concentrated in salmon. It's very relevant to know how is the salmon world looking and why we are taking the steps that we are doing now. This is the growth in salmon, as I said, slowing down. Of course, from a big base, different growth in different areas. We still see some growth.
Trends, consolidation, definitely. Big farmers all over. Transparency, sustainability, the name of the game right now. Salmon is the most technologically advanced species, and we take that knowledge also to other species. Focus increasing in RAS, in land-based. They still have to prove that they are successful. There have been a bumpy road for them, but definitely, we believe this will happen. We see good EBIT pockets in RAS in the smolt production. Definitely, that is the name of the game in the salmon countries. They need to produce their smolts, bigger smolts to produce into the sea, inland-based, and of course, for that is a special feed. Our footprint, we are a quite relevant player here. We have around 31% market share in UK.
Around 78% of the free market in that country. We have Mowi there with their own feed. We have another competitor, and we have 78% of what is not Mowi, and then this means 31% of the total market in UK. Norway, around 26% of the free market. Again, we also have Mowi there, so from the rest, we are around 26%. A big shift happening there right now. Capacity is getting to a limit, which is beginning to be very interesting. Maybe it will be beginning to be our time. Longer-term contracts, capacity to really work margins and more and better conditions. This is very nice, at least for us, what is happening there. But I have to say, a little bit worrying with the capacity in that area.
Sustainability, the name of the game in Norway. The focus on this area is really, really important for all the farmers, especially in Norway. Australia, we just started a couple of years ago. Already have 38% of the total market. Nice story. Very profitable market. Changes of ownership. Have you heard maybe Huon change of hands, which is one of the big ones there. Tassal now change of hands, one of the big ones. This for us is good, actually. These companies that really will focus on those companies and maybe grow in salmon, but also in other species. Australia is really, really an interesting market. Last but not least, Chile. We have around 31% of the total market and around 38% of the free market. Remember that AquaChile has their own capacity.
From the free market, we have around 38%. A very strong position. Again, some of the same trends, sustainability, community impact, farmers in this country developing channels and digital channels in the US. A lot of things happening in Chile also because it's more focused in the US and Brazil. Iceland is considered a growth area, and that is exactly what we just announced after the strategy, that we are signing the MoU to really try to build a new facility there. Why? This is why. Iceland, we see quite a nice growth, of course, from a very low level, but they're becoming quite important. We also see the opportunity to have a carbon neutral operation there because of the thermal and geothermal energy.
We will build, if the MoU is successful, the first absolutely carbon neutral operation in the world for salmon. Iceland is also a very attractive location for marine raw materials. We have been working a lot with these companies, and they are very focused on very interesting products and also sustainability. They are also exploring land-based in a very interesting way. I have to say quite successfully. This is one of the land-based project which is really successful. Of course, it could be a capacity support for the other units in the North Atlantic. With this, of course, we will even be stronger in the salmon world. It will be only one market where we are not in, and we will be the first one to be here.
Not a lot of details about what, how is Iceland looking, but, of course, some of the big ones, SalMar, Måsøval, are already producing there. Some capacity not used yet. There is also other species, very interesting, sole, Arctic char. Quite an interesting market to go in. We hope to have some news very soon, after the MoU has been signed. Shrimp world. Nice story. Different picture to salmon. Nice growth coming from different areas. Quite impressive. It's even more impressive when we did this, we saw this was the growth, but already now, as you see in the arrow, Ecuador is way ahead of what we thought. Very nice growth, and of course, we are in Ecuador, so we are very happy about it. Selling much more feed.
Movements are going from Asia to LATAM, especially because of Ecuador. Fast consolidation in LATAM, that's also happening there. Bigger farmers. Shrimp 4.0, what we call Shrimp 4.0, is the new technologies for shrimp, getting closer to salmon, and that's exactly why we're going into AQ1. Increased sustainability focus. The same. It will follow the same trend. Genetics becoming very important, as we discussed before. Land availability, very important. Extrusion. Usually, feed for shrimp has been pelletized and is moving more and more into the extrusion, which of course is very good for us because we are experts in extrusion, and especially because of the shift to technology and automatic feeders, like in the salmon world or in the fish world.
Growing within shrimp, of course, we will use our platform in Ecuador and Costa Rica to grow. There's plenty of opportunities in those two areas, Central America, but also Ecuador, and profitability is quite good. There is some interesting countries around like Brazil and Mexico, which of course we will look into the period, but we have not included yet in our ambitions. We are concentrated before in Asia. Which are the attractive markets. As I said before, we are already in Vietnam, we are already in China. Of course, we will use that platform to grow, but there's some other countries which are very interesting, especially Indonesia are, and India are the most attractive hubs that we see in the period, and we are already identifying some targets after finishing the strategy in those two areas.
I was talking about the technology development, and I tried to do a parallel or comparison between what has happened in salmon, which is exactly what is happening in shrimp, basically. We started in salmon, as you remember, you know, with these bags and hand feeding these cages, moving to very simple automatic feeders. Well, not automatic, but semi-automatic, more automatic feeders. Now on really sophisticated control rooms with cameras, artificial intelligence, feeding the fish and having a much better performance, less people, more sustainable, controlling every parameter in the water. The same is happening in shrimp. Starting from really a basic guy feeding the shrimp in a pond in Ecuador or Vietnam to some basic feeders.
We are going into really sophisticated, not only feeders, but sensors, artificial intelligence to manage that, to the same monitoring and digitizing the management of the farm. This is exactly what is happening in those two species, and of course, it will go to all other species. It's one of the reasons why we really believe we need to be in this world. We analyzed, of course, as I said before, where to be as a feed supplier. Of course, the top is obvious. Grass feed, different meals in different areas and, feed for new species, that was the logical. We also analyzed a lot of the others, as I said, novel ingredients. Especially we focus on the ones in the.
This part, blockchain solutions, data, software for farms, diagnostics and hardware, which we really believe is part of the equation for the farmers. You can have the best feed, but if you don't utilize it good, if you don't control it, if you really don't work on efficiency and performance, then it doesn't help to have the best feed. We really see this as a complement, but also a nice profit pool. That's why we invested in AQ1, just after the strategy. Starting distributing, the same with Iceland, but this one came first. Headquartered in Tasmania, a very innovative company, fully owned now by BioMar. 75% market share in this starting move for really putting technology into shrimp. Around 50 employees. We have sales offices in Panama, Thailand, Japan, and distributors in Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela. Quite a footprint.
What is our intention? Of course, to grow it, to maintain the nice development it has had, and maybe also to do some business development in this company to complement it with other technologies around the world. Maybe not only for shrimp, but also for fish. This is the rationale for entering. Customers are demanding it. They are getting bigger, they are consolidating, and they need to be more efficient. Just to give you a sense of what this means, a farmer can increase the performance and the yield per hectare, 25, 30, 35% in some cases. This is really changing the name of the game. Big customers really want to use it. It's also part of our feed solutions. It's not only the feed, but how do you use it.
Definitely it made a lot of sense to expand, and to go into this, for BioMar. Carlos, maybe elaborate just a little bit on what is AQ1. I will. I have a slide later. I forgot about that, sorry. Yes. This is what it's doing. Very short. This is the shrimp, of course, down there. In the salmon or in the fish, basically, you can have cameras down the water, and you can see them, of course. Basically, you see when the pellets are going, and then you have algorithms calculating the movement of the fish, how many pellets are going, so you can control the feeding. You don't lose any feed. You optimize, and you are learning. The machine learning is going every day. That is based on cameras.
Of course, this was extremely difficult to do it in a pond, which is usually with brown water, you don't see anything. What did these guys develop? What they call a hydrophone. A hydrophone, of course, measures noise. The shrimp is eating and making a noise. It's hard to believe, but it is making a noise, which this hydrophone, very sensitive, can sense, and then it can measure how the shrimp is feeding. When it's feeding, how much it's feeding, when you should stop, and when you should feed. That, of course, goes to a very sophisticated controller, also with sensor for temperature, for oxygen, a lot of different parameters, learning and very sophisticated algorithm, which is, of course, the brain of all this, learning every day how to feed the next day and the next day according to parameters in the environment.
This has been the game changer for shrimp farmers. As I said, the yield per hectare can increase 30, 40, 50%. All the growth of Ecuador that you see right now, a lot of it is coming from automatic feeding. This company has a big, a huge actually market share in Ecuador, a good market share in Central America, starting slower in Asia and some in the Middle East, where there's also some shrimp farming. Definitely a big potential and also big potential to improve it and to mix it with feed. Because of course, we know the other part, what to do with the nutrition, the digestibility, not only the sound. This is really, really a complement and a very synergetic approach.
On top of that, a very nice software, AQ1 Analytics, which basically the poor farmer that was going very hot every day to the farm to see the shrimp, now they have everything in a screen or in the telephone where he can see the ponds, he can have a Google map knowing what is happening in each pond, alarms, oxygen, feeding, your feeding is not working, everything in your phone. Of course, our people also in screens instead of, you know, going there and trying to find, guess how many shrimp are in the ponds or whatever. Definitely a very sophisticated system which we plan to develop going forward. Talking about the future of BioMar aquafeeds. As I said, feed is 80% of the impact of aquaculture producers, more or less.
From that, raw materials is 90% or 95% of the impact. We are developing the feeds for the future. If aquaculture need to be successful and grow by double until 2050 in a sustainable way, it's impossible if we as a feed supplier don't work, especially in the raw material part. Not to go long, that was sustainability journey started in 1988. The first environmental feed in the world actually coming from Denmark, actually. Ecolife, and it has gone all through the years introducing new ambitions and very sophisticated tools and parameters in order to measure carbon footprint for the farmers, eco-efficiency parameters, putting targets, et cetera, which I will show you now. We put our 2030 ambitions. One is called climate action.
We are committed to decrease by one-third our carbon footprint until 2030. This is not only the factories, this is the, I would say, the easy, expensive but easy part. This means also the carbon footprint of all our sourcing. That means that we need to be circular and restorative. 50% of the ingredients we use in our feed by 2030 need to be circular or restorative. Of course, something related to people. We have a big role in training farmers, our people, but also suppliers in order to be able to achieve this. If we don't work with that one, it will be impossible to achieve this one. We show a little video about this.
Humanity has burdened our planet and pushed beyond planetary boundaries. We must strive beyond sustainability and innovate with solutions that restore the planet while supporting its people. At BioMar, we are making a promise to our planet and its people with a set of ambitious targets that will seek to aid in the restoration of our environment while enabling humanity to thrive. We commit to company-wide science-based targets to reduce the carbon emissions of our feeds by one-third by 2030. This will ensure that we are net zero by no later than 2050. Through innovation and sustainable sourcing, we will collaborate with industry partners and redefine traditional aquaculture feed ingredients. By 2030, 50% of our raw materials will be circular and restorative. Knowledge and education are at the heart of resilient societies.
That is why we have committed to enabling 100,000 people annually by 2030 through capacity building initiatives. By enabling the few, we can have a resounding ripple effect for the many, far beyond our traditional reach. BioMar promises to do our part in driving innovation towards a restorative aquaculture industry. Together, we can build a better future for both the planet and its people.
Of course, this goes beyond what is fit. This is our responsibility. The only way agriculture will develop will be this way, in a responsible way. It will not be allowed to be done in an irresponsible way. We are a big part of this success. How do we use all of this? The one thing is to be sustainable. This is very good, but as Jens was saying, hopefully we can commercialize it and do it. This is the evolution of the product or the product development in salmon. If you see it for shrimp, it will be more or less the same actually. From really selling a raw or a whole salmon to sophistication in products. First the fillets, then going to portions, then the certifications come in.
ASC, Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Norwegian Council, GSI, Global Salmon Initiative, a lot of certifications coming now to the very special production, where companies or products are trying to be differentiated, telling a story based on sustainability, based in biology, based on nutrition. This is happening also in shrimp and also in most of fish. Of course, salmon is the most advanced, but we see that this will be definitely the development in all of them. Of course, that will require a lot of traceability systems, tools, marketing, but this is definitely the way the industry is going forward and where we want to play. We have introduced this concept, connecting value chain insights. Of course, as you see there, we are in the center of the value chain. As I said, we are 80% of the impact to build this story.
If you look here, most of the concerns of the consumers, overfishing concerns, food safety, deforestation, climate change, et cetera. These are the concerns. They are all linked to basically raw materials. We are the ones mixing these raw materials, making the R&D, looking for new sources. Definitely we see that the market pull will come this side, but technology push that side. This is the role we want to play together with the farmers and together with the retailers. Again, requires a lot of tools, documentation, traceability, eco-efficiency tools. But definitely this is the way going forward for a lot of the farmers. Raw materials, as I said, I was talking with some, I don't remember who, in the ESG part, is a very important part of the story. Not to make it complex, this is a timeline.
Started with a lot of fish meal and a lot of fish oil some years ago. Has gone going down, and you are seeing more vegetables coming in. Very interesting, more new ingredients, novel ingredients, single-cell proteins, novel oils coming to the picture. What happened in the period? Very nice story. Fish in, fish out ratio. How many fish you need to fish to produce fish or shrimp went down, of course, because we reduced this one. This is the carbon footprint. We increase the vegetables. If you do it with soy from, I don't know, Brazil, this is what happens. It goes up. We need to do something. Fortunately, we found a way, and now it's going down again. Basically, because we are also, first of all, searching some better raw materials in other areas in a more responsible way.
Second, because we are introducing these novel raw materials which are designed for producing in aquaculture. A very important part of the story, and definitely we are the ones that hold the key to these ones.
Question.
Yes.
On the slide, my name is Anders Nyskov. On the slide, I can't see anything with insects. You mentioned on a previous slide.
Yeah.
that novel feeds could include insects. Is that just on a theoretical basis or do you expect it here by 2030?
No. It is there. It is somewhere here. It's very small still, so that's why it's not. But definitely insects is one of them for sure.
Thank you.
Yeah. Raw material is part of the story, but also it's part of a very not very nice story
Is it working? Okay. Can you go back to the previous slide? Again, on the new types of raw materials, and I'm from Nykredit Asset Management from the ESG team. Could you elaborate on the amount of protein that you get out of these single cell raw materials and micro ingredients? When we talk to experts in the feed industry, they say that it's very important that it's a high protein feed that you give to the salmon, for example. How do you ensure that the amount of protein is as high as it should be with these single cell raw materials and micro ingredients?
Yeah.
Thanks.
Just not to be very, very technical, but explain it in a simple way. This is the beauty of these raw materials. Basically, you can tailor-make raw materials for aquaculture feed. Yes, they are more concentrated in protein, but salmon feed is. The challenge is, especially in salmon feed, the challenge is not to be high in protein. The challenge is that they are very energy-dense. Basically, you have a lot of energy coming from oil, which is what the salmon need to be converting and growing faster, and you have less space for the energy. When you find ingredients that are much more concentrated in protein, that has a bigger value for especially for salmon diets. Because the space is lower, you have a more nutrient dense.
Basically what you can do with these new technologies is to design the perfect raw material with the perfect amount of protein, amino acids, et cetera, et cetera. It will depend, of course, of the raw material, but definitely it is. I mean, it's starting. They need more scale. They need to be more efficient. They need to work in their sustainability parameters, but definitely this is the way forward, especially for salmon feeds, but also for the rest of the species. Does that answer your question?
Yes.
Perfect. Of course, a good part of the story is raw materials, but also a very nasty part. You have seen what has happened in the last period. First COVID went to sky. This is a BioMar index, which is combining all the raw materials, the normal raw materials. Then Ukraine, and then, well, the sky is the limit with especially some of the vegetal raw materials. Of course, this is difficult. You can imagine if feed is 50, 60% of the cost of aquaculture, increasing prices by, I don't know, 10 or 20% every quarter, that's a tough one. There is a positive side of this, if we can find a positive side.
This has accelerated definitely the development and the introduction of these new raw materials, insect meals, single cells, that before it was more difficult because they didn't have the scale, but they are not linked yet. At least they are more industrialized, so you can control the cost better, except for the energy, of course. This has accelerated. How do we see the future? More coming from trimmings. Definitely. We need to be better at utilizing the waste, not to waste anything. More ingredients from single cell technologies, more ingredients from lower trophic levels. Still there will be vegetals as a majority, but vegetals sourced from a responsible part of the world. Just an example, exactly about the single cell production. This was the way we produced fish oil for aquaculture before. Starting with microalgae, all those steps until finishing in aquaculture.
With the new raw materials, this is an example. AlgaPrime, you know that salmon is very important, the omega-3, EPA and DHA levels. Now we take a alternative way, use sugarcane as a substrate fermentation, and then we have the oil. Skipping all the fishing in the sea to produce omega-3. This is the way of doing it, not continue depleting the ocean and going in an alternative way. This is the kind of raw materials where we have strategic partnerships and possible new ventures in BioMar. The same with the protein. Another example, Proton. Traditional way, now we can take emissions, convert it into fermentation, and produce a protein meal almost designed for us. This is the new way of seeing the raw materials in aquaculture feed.
All this brings us how to commercialize this. We are introducing a very ambitious project, which farmers are really finding it very attractive. I think we are changing the name of the game here, transforming aquaculture. Applied sustainability, continuous improvement. This is what we're introducing. Of course, working with raw materials, all what we have showed, lower raw materials, optimizing not only on price and availability of raw materials, but also on carbon emissions and putting to the farmers three parameters where they can show continuous improvement to retailers, to customers, to whoever it is. One is circular and restorative, which percentage of their diet will be circular and restorative. The next one is fish in, fish out day ratio, how we can reduce it, the use of fish meal or marine raw materials, and CO2 emissions.
How can you have a feed which is lower in CO2 emissions so they can show to their customers that they are reducing their. Because they can show that they can reduce the energy in the process plant. That's nothing. They need to show that they are reducing it in the feed in order to be significant. This is a very ambitious program, but this is the way to commercialize all what we do in sustainability, R&D, innovation, especially on raw materials. I think we will show another video after this one. At BioMar, we understand our role and responsibility in the agriculture value chain. We strive to positively impact the world.
Which is why we have created Blue Impact, the first aqua feeds that take a holistic view on sustainability, addressing areas of critical importance to our industry. Circular economy principles and restorative practices are central to sustainability. Blue Impact contains higher levels of circular and restorative ingredients as we seek to decouple from environmental degradation and direct competition with human food production. Good stewardship of our oceans and the aquatic environment are of high importance. Blue Impact is a catalyst to adopting novel and low impact ingredients while reducing dependency on scarce resources. With aqua feeds accounting for about 80% of the total carbon footprint of farming, a shift to Blue Impact feeds will make a significant difference to the footprint of aquaculture farming. Quantifying and disclosing the impact of our feeds will help steer us towards a more sustainable industry.
We have created the BioSustain Impact Parameters using the most accurate data and robust scientific methodologies. As we continue to innovate towards a sustainable future, low impact feeds will be a necessity for driving change.
Our Blue Impact feeds are for innovative farmers who want to lower their footprints and lead the way in ensuring a viable industry long into the future. We hope you will join us on the blue journey, where we together can transform aquaculture. Final remarks, and then we open for questions. We believe BioMar starts from a very strong base, from a knowledge point of view, from a footprint point of view, from a volume point of view, despite the challenges in the last period. The strategy above a million is ambitious. It has ambitious targets, and these are targets or ambitions. Shouldn't be their promise. If not, Kasper will kill me. But definitely it's ambitious that we're going for. Definitely we believe it's a realistic growth and profitability. Of course, if the targets, especially if the targets for acquisitions are there.
Commercial excellence, sustainability, will be a driver for the future. It is the name of the game, but it's also a fantastic opportunity to do new business and transform the industry. The development, as you have seen, goes in the case of BioMar Beyond Feed. You will see BioMar maybe going into more of these ventures, as I mentioned before, novel ingredients, maybe genetics, and definitely technology. Thank you very much, and I hope we have some time for questions.
Now, Claus Almer from Nordea. The first question goes to the whole ESG drive, which you spend a lot of time on. How do you see this from an industry point of view? Is it a license to operate? Is it a way to increase your market share, increase your profitability? That'll be the first one.
Yeah. Oh, first of all, it is the right thing to do. We need to do it because it's, it is the right thing to do. It is a license to operate, to be sustainable and to be focused on ESG. We really believe it can be used as a commercial driver. These are very sophisticated tools, actually. Very sophisticated. We have a big team working in sustainability. What we would see usually is that we could have longer term contracts. That means usually better margins, definitely. More profitability, for sure. Of course, hopefully be their preferred customers. Their preferred supplier.
In some of the countries, we are the preferred supplier because we are ahead on this on a more practical way of doing it, not the nice, greenwashing, speech, but okay, this is the way to do it. Let's walk the talk and do it. This is something that is measurable, is audited, is certified. Let's do it. We believe really we can have, we can bundle or we can get the customer to be more linked to us, and that usually allows us for a better profitability in the period. Not these negotiations every year, especially in some of the markets.
Okay. The second question goes to your 2028 targets. Given the new markets and new species you want to enter, when we are in 2028, so CMD 2029 maybe, where do you see the biggest impact came from? Is it still the business as it is today, and these new things will just be small part of the new BioMar? Or will it really transform and grow the business?
Definitely. Well, I think I showed a slide with the split. A big part was what we're doing now, but what we're doing now already includes the new species, the shrimp. It's not that we're going to a totally new species now. Actually, we are using the salmon knowledge, and especially the shrimp knowledge, to grow. What you will see will be more influence from shrimp, especially shrimp, some other species also, but especially shrimp in BioMar. That by nature carries a higher profit margin in EBIT or EBITDA.
Shrimp, you're already in shrimp, so.
We are already in shrimp, but we're not. What we're saying, we're going to Asia, which is the ones there. That is mainly shrimp also. It's not that we're going to some very strange species. Actually, different to what we did before. This time we're using the knowledge from salmon and shrimp and going to new countries where we have identified some very nice profit pools. The consolidation part of EMEA, that's another thing. Of course, if we manage to do this consolidation in some of these two countries, that's also an existing, usually bass and bream sector, which also has a high risk, but a higher reward, for sure. And then the salmon that we see in Iceland and Canada, of course, will also contribute to that. The new ones, which could be the Asian ones, are mainly shrimp.
You will see, of course, starting maybe some of them at the end of 2028, but definitely they have a big growth potential for the future.
Okay, thanks.
Yes. Ulrik Bak from SEB. Also a few questions from my side. This organic target you have for 28, what level of work does that imply?
The organic one?
Yeah, the organic one.
More than 15%.
More than 15?
Yes.
Does that require additional capacity investments?
The organic? Yes, yes. It requires a capacity. This plan requires. It is a quite heavy investment, for sure. Not only the capacity investments. Remember, we have the climate action targets, and especially the climate action our factories, that is a very, very big investment to transform our factories to different kind of energies. Yes, it requires quite an. This is exactly also why we are working internally in commercial excellence and operational excellence. Because of course we need to invest, but we really believe that, some of the things we are doing in stocks, in products, in different kind of products, in things that you develop over time, it is time to really narrow it and make it more efficient.
We should see, yes, more investments, but hopefully we will see also a much better use of capital because of those improvements in the protect the core part of our strategy.
All right. Then I recently read an interview where you, I think it was in person, where you mentioned that you wanted to double revenue 5-6 years from now, and I think that would be prior to 2028. Is this just a way?
No, it is 2028.
Okay.
As I said there, it will, of course, again, what Jane said is true. I hope raw materials don't continue the same development, then it will be very soon. Volume and revenue in a normal way, that is our target until 2028. Taking away the increase of price of raw materials, of course.
All right.
Yeah.
Maybe going back to the capacity. Where do you have the most free capacity currently and where are you meeting the ceiling, so to say?
In the existing business? We don't have a lot of free capacity, to be honest. Chile, there's still some free capacity. Not us, but the industry. Fortunately, we don't have a lot of free capacity around. If you see as a market, which of course could influence margins, Chile is one. But not extreme. Maybe the EMEA part, which is very, very diverse. There you have Greece, Turkey, Spain, France, Denmark. There's a lot. There's still, as I said, small players there or integrated players that have plenty of capacity, which is exactly where we believe we can play a role in the consolidation as it has happened in the salmon markets. I would say that area definitely is the one with more overcapacity independent if we have. We don't have a lot of overcapacity in general.
All right. Just a final question. In Ecuador, you showed that the market has been increasing quite remarkably over the past many years and is expected to grow even more. What has happened to the profitability level in this market as it grows? Will it just continue to be above your average of the group? Or will it at some point attract more players and drive profitability down?
You're talking about feed?
Of course. Yeah, yeah, feed.
Yeah. Definitely, we will not see the margins that we saw in the past, but we believe in the margins we have projected. We are already in. I think we acquired the factory, the company. It was a very nice company to acquire, focused on the smaller niche players. The reason we have seen also. It is not because the market has declined at all, but we have gone into the bigger players. The bigger players, the more consolidation, they have lower margins, but definitely in a very extremely acceptable level. We are already there. Capacity will come there. Competitors, both our two biggest competitors are already there, and there are a couple of other big ones there. For sure, I think you will see some very soon, some consolidation in that market of some of the local competitors.
That's our impression.
Thank you.
Daniel Petersen from SEB. Historically, the farmers have had, you know, regular problems with sea lice or bacterial outbreaks and things. Is anything happening here, you know, on innovative feed that can reduce the risk of this or maybe sort of hardware technology, where you see some changes here that can sort of alleviate these problems for the farmers?
Yes. Here, I showed part of the picture, which is what we call dynamic solutions. That's where we classified our sustainable feed or concepts. We have other parts of BioMar, which is health or functional feeds, which is addressing exactly that, where we do a lot of R&D in order to find ingredients, usually not to cure, but to mitigate or to prevent the diseases. Yes, there is, especially for, I would say, for the bacterial and viral diseases, quite effective ways of preventing, not curing. Lice, I think nobody have found the silver bullet. I can tell you that this is a big part of our R&D budget, to find something that really prevent it. Definitely. There is a big part of the picture, which is functional feeds.
Thanks.
I have a question.
Yes, sir.
I have a question regarding the beyond feed. You mentioned genetics and larva.
Mm-hmm.
Does this mean that you want to move from being a pure aquafeed manufacturer to also include genetic improvement, maybe specific pathogen-free larvae, so you offer a package in the future which will be the livestock plus the feed?
This is what is happening in some places of the world, especially in Asia. The reason for this is especially in shrimp. As I said, shrimp is a less developed compared to salmon. In salmon, they already have integrated smolt production, very high quality. That's not happening in shrimp in many countries. Of course, we can wait until the industry do it, but if we really need to drive the performance of shrimp, someone need to do it, and we could play a role in that one. Of course, we will not start from scratch with genetics. That would mean either a strategic partnership or acquisition or being part of one of these groups. This is what we are exploring right now.
On top of having this healthy input, which is your P&L, we see that what is happening in pigs or chicken, when you develop a strain which is fast growth or resistant, whatever, you can really develop a different nutrition for that kind of strain. We also see a role in that. More and more, we really are seeing the need for a joint work, at least a joint work with the genetics and larvae. Why not to take part of it if we have an opportunity?
This is a trend you've seen already in agriculture for many years.
Yes.
That the big manufacturers will offer the entire package.
Yeah. Yeah. In, not in every place, but in some places. Yeah.
Coming back to your target of double volume, double revenue, at what cost, what kind of investments do you need to make in order to increase 100%? What about the profits?
Well, the profits are. You saw there is a.
Will they also double?
They will go.
When you double the volume and double the revenue, will you also double the profits?
We will. I think the profit, as I showed there, will increase around 54%, something like that, in the slide that you show. Maybe it's in the slide deck. 50%. Yes, the profit will follow. We are growing also in higher margin sectors or areas. That's one of the reasons. Also the profit margins are increasing also because some of these pieces have a lower price or revenue. It's a little bit tricky. On number terms or on millions, yes, definitely, it is following. The investment target, I don't think we can reveal it, but it's significant during the period to achieve that growth. Mostly in acquisitions, but also in investments in our own factories, capacities and especially climate action.
That's a big one, very big one.
Thank you.
Jonas Bækmark, Analyst, DNB. You have a goal now to double volumes to 2028, and I saw the organic figure was going for 2.4 million tons from 1.6 today. That's significantly above the market. If you look at the Norwegian market the last couple of years, we have some overcapacity and profitability problems. How do you view the risk that this destroy market discipline and that will lead to overcapacity more or less?
That's a very, very good question. To be honest, I'm worried that there could be a lack of capacity very soon in Norway. There's no overcapacity at all, actually, right now. As you said, the profitability has not been the best in that market. We have improved it a lot. I don't see investment coming very, very soon there. At least not announced. Having said that, we are actually quite full there, and Norway is a very important market for us, so we will invest when needed.
Mm-hmm.
Taking into account the market dynamics because we learned the lesson already. Definitely.
Looking at towards 2028, you will significantly outgrow the market figures we saw here. How do you view the risk that this creates an overcapacity in the market? Let's say your competitors have the same goals that you will, let's say, destroy overall market profitability.
As I showed in the slide deck, what is happening right now, actually right now in this minute, literally, customers are realizing this. The game has changed because also all the sustainability programs and all what has happened in the last period actually has led to customers wanting a longer-term relation. The contract that we have seen with ridiculous margins in the past, my personal opinion or our opinion is that they will not come back. Because now all farmers are talking about longer-term relations, with a lot of work from our part in sustainability. This needs to be a collaboration, actually more than a transactional relation with a supplier. We are seeing a big game shift in Norway right now.
Claus Kej from Nykredit. Also, follow-up questions on some of the things that you said. You talked a lot about technology, sustainability, transforming the industry, et cetera. Yeah, great to hear, but do you have any edge compared to your peers, or are the peers doing exactly the same? That's my first question.
We believe we have a strong edge compared to our peers.
How come you have a strong edge?
Because we have invested more and focused more in that for the last. As I showed, this didn't start in BioMar yesterday. We started a long time. Maybe it's because of what started in Denmark sometime. We have always been focused on Ecolife because of the need for emissions here, and that started a whole thinking in BioMar, that you need to work first in eco-efficiency and then more sustainability. We see ourselves ahead of the game. Of course, the others are working in that direction, definitely. Of course, they are trying to do the same things. We just need to stay ahead, and we need to keep our competitive advantage, which again is back to people. This is what we believe. They will try for sure.
They will try for sure to do it. We believe we have been competing with these two, especially one, huge monsters for a long period. We have shown that we can do it as good as or better than them. Why not? We also put a strategy period the last time that we would double volume, and everyone asked the same questions. "Are you sure?" Yeah, but we did it. Why not? We really believe that we can keep that competitive advantage. Of course, the bar is getting every day striving for a bigger target, definitely.
Who is the big monster you just talked about?
Our two biggest competitors are Skretting and especially Cargill.
Yeah.
Cargill is, of course, very big.
Okay. How big are they compared to you?
In our sector?
Yeah.
Not that much big. Of course, I guess you know Cargill. That's quite big as a company.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Yes, second question, you talked a lot about internal improvements.
Yeah
Commercial and operational excellence. Is there a lot of low-hanging fruits on these two levers, or is it really hard work? Yeah, because you need to improve your margins in order to reach your targets, and at the same time double your volume. Yeah. There could be a lot of potential if you can-
Yes
Can improve here.
Yes. I never like to talk about low-hanging fruits, because if there was, why didn't we do it, okay? If you ask the consultants, we did this with, of course, with a very reputable strategy house. Yes, some. They will talk about low-hanging fruits. We believe that there is. Definitely, we identified very much things that we can change fast. We are already changing it, actually, because during that strategy process, we did a deep dive, actually, into commercial excellence. In a way, it already started. Part of what you're seeing now on our better development, it is coming from that. A lot of it is contract management, which had to change anyways, because a lot of the contracts for many companies were not prepared for this. A lot of it is contract management.
Is that a low-hanging fruit? To change it, yes, but then you have to negotiate it with customer. We have seen some acceptance. That could be something fast to change. The rest is product life management, which we at least have to do it better. It's longer term. It is a different way of thinking in all our commercial department together with our marketing department. It's a mix. Some will come easier and faster, and some is more a change management exercise. That's how we see it. The same in operational excellence. We have grown a lot. We have grown in species, complexity. Maybe we need to really look at it, and not only focus on the growth, but do it better and reduce inventories, complexity, logistic costs, et cetera.
That I think is, again, more a change management exercise and a really deep dive into those costs.
Last question.
Last two questions. Thanks, Carlos. The first one is, you are excelling versus your peers, as I understand, in some of these ESG areas, yet you're still number two or three in most areas. Why is that?
Why is that?
If you are the best, you should also be the biggest.
No, no. I mean, in some of the places, we are the biggest, but they have first of all a bigger footprint. They are in more places than what we are. I think we started the venture into new spaces later. I would say we are later into the journey compared to one of our competitors, which is Skretting. In the case of Cargill, we were ahead because they were only on salmon almost, but then they merged into Cargill, which was also a huge footprint in many countries. I would say they are more spread into many of these countries where we are going now.
also within salmon, you are not the biggest one, right?
No.
Is it?
Uh-
Shouldn't that be the ambition if you have the best product, you have the best organization?
We are the biggest in Chile. We are the biggest in the UK. We are not the biggest in Norway. I think that comes back to the question that you are raising. Maybe it costs too much in profitability to really go for that market share and be the bigger. We try to focus more on profitable growth than only growth. In the Mediterranean, I think we are quite big. Where we are, of course, smaller is in the shrimp world because we started later, for sure.
The strategy is not to gain market shares. That's the organic way.
No. It's not. We focus on market share only because of the critical mass. We need to be sufficiently bigger not to have a cost disadvantage. This is how we see market share, in a way.
That's good to hear.
Yeah.
Compared to the historically always winning market shares and destroying the product.
No, no. At least not my focus anymore.
Good.
Yeah.
Second question goes to the CapEx. As you said, you're almost sold out across your factories. You need to do these CapEx investments. When will the next investment come?
We are right now, as we're speaking, investing in two extruded lines in Ecuador. We announced some time ago that is a project of four. We will finish the two extruded lines in Ecuador by the end of this year. I think very soon we'll need to start with the other two because this is increasing a lot. On top of growing, it's changing from pelletized to extruded. That is definitely happening right now. The climate action investments that is happening all over, which is very significant, changing, I don't know, to electrical boilers, that's also a huge one. Of course, we see the capacity in Iceland. I think you will see investments coming in. We are getting very close to the capacity in Australia.
We're getting close to the capacity in WestMed, which is Spain and so. The major investment is that one. It's the big lines coming in Ecuador. We don't foresee that we will put a line in Norway right now in the next two years, definitely.
Given the growth in volume you have until 2028 must demand a lot of new capacity.
Yes, we are focusing on investing in those markets that I mentioned. We will not invest in huge capacity. Debottlenecking, yes, of course, there is some investment in that. A new huge line, I think we learned it the hard way that we need to be a little bit more disciplined from our side in Norway. We have still some debottlenecking to do for the next couple of years, which could be a huge investment.
Okay. That was the one question. Thanks.
Yeah.
On that note, then it's time for a break.
Thank you very much.
Ready to the next thing on the program. I'd like to introduce Bo Lybæk.
Yeah, can hear you.
Just a fly-in slide here, showing that we acquired GPV back in 2016. It was a carve out from two banks that were owning GPV, and luckily wise, it ended up at Schouw & Co. Think it's that kind of companies we are good to spot and find that maybe there's something. There was not a big process around it, so was super good. We have also been on a transformation journey with GPV. Won't go too much into it, but been acquiring, first very small acquisition, then doubling the company via acquiring Swiss-based CCS. Bo will also get into that. Been doing a lot, and then recently announced the very big acquisition/merger with the Finnish Swiss-based Enics. Bo will also elaborate on that.
has been a super acquisition and really Bo and his team has been on a transformation journey. Also good Carlos with your presentation. I just also think that here you see two very seasoned leaders in Schouw & Co. I think that's just showing the quality of leadership we have in all our companies. As I said, they hold the key, they are running the company, and that's very important for us. Bo, I think you are welcome on stage, and looking forward to hear.
Thank you very much, Jens. Thank you very much for being allowed to be here, also to Jens, and I look forward to give you a little bit of insight into GPV. About myself, I joined GPV as CEO in 2008. There are some of you who may be looking a little bit back in the history, and you'll remember that 2008, 2009, that was really a turmoil time for GPV, where we came through a restructuring in 2009. Got into the so to say, into the hand of two banks, as Jens said, and we were there until 2016, when Schouw & Co. took over as owners.
I've been living earlier eight years in Switzerland, so some kind of German, Swiss-German touch, I think I can say that I've captured over the years. The agenda of the program, what I will try to go through, it's a little bit about who is GPV, the transformational journey that we have been on, a little bit on looking ahead, and then summarizing with key takeaways. We'll have a live stream with our facility in Thailand, and followed by an input by Thomas Kaiser. He's Swiss, so he's also linked up on a link, and after his session, there'll be a possibility to ask some few questions to this, just to let you know so that you can prepare for it.
I think it was Jens saying that our people drive purpose and profitability. For GPV, it really also counts that it is our people delivering the results. We are the company with the most employees in the Schouw & Co., and we are really depending on all our people that they are delivering every day. The last two and a half years, they have been troublesome. First, we had a year with COVID, where we had to change everything, and we lately had one and a half year, and we'll see how long time it continues on with the big challenges in material supply situation.
Also here today, a big thank to all my colleagues, for the big and hard work that they have been doing in the last years, and hopefully also in the years to come. With this also nice picture, we will get into more facts and figures about GPV. I'll start here in the center. GPV is this company with around EUR 430 million revenue, around 4,000 people. We are operating in three main areas in Asia, in Europe, and in Americas. We are in this high-mix area, so we have a lot of deliveries. We're delivering a lot of different products. We are handling our customers their products.
If someone is sitting and thinking, okay, but, couldn't you streamline the product portfolio so that you're doing less, because you can see we are doing more than 14,000 different products, then it's not in our hands. We are doing the products that we are winning from our customers, and this is exactly what we are so good at handling this complexity. We're also very proud of that nearly 30%, exactly 28%, of our revenue is less than 24 months old. It is a very important figure for us to try to follow, that we gain and win new business all the time. That is the part which is driving this organic growth that we have also had.
If we go out to the left-hand side, and maybe there sitting some being a little bit in doubt, what is it actually that GPV is doing? We are a manufacturing company, but actually we are a service provider. We take over products from our customers, we produce these products, and this service is what we provide. Our services, that is electronics, it's cable harness, it's mechanics, and it's design and engineering. We offer that to our customers, and we would like to combine that, these offerings, and that is what we in our industry call box build or mechanical products to our customers. Of course, there's a lot of supply chain and total cost of ownership included in our offering.
Could you maybe just elaborate a little bit on the box build? Kind of key things and what key features you can play on?
Yes, I have 3 product cases, so I'll come back to that a little bit later, if that is okay. Yeah. The segments that we are working in or the industries, that is 6. The 3 to the left-hand side here, that was earlier 1, and we thought that was becoming so big, so we have split that up into 3. These are all in some kind of industrials. To the right-hand side, we have clean tech, med tech, and transportation. In our new strategy, and I'll show our strategy house a little bit later, the aim for us is to gain a lot of additional competencies within each of these industries.
If I take med tech as an example, then it's important that we are able to speak the language that you're using in this industry if we should really make something out of it. That is a part of our new journey. Here is the first product case. It's a company called Indra, a Spanish company, and we are supporting them with products, and the product is shown here in the center. This is a box build product, and I'm sure that most of you will appreciate very much that it's working and working every time, because it's used for ILS landing systems, guiding the planes down when they are landing.
Next time, maybe even this afternoon when you go to Copenhagen Airport, you can actually see these orange antennas, and our electronics is supporting that we can land safely every time. I think Indra, they are showing on their webpage that the electronics from GPV has now supported far more than 100 million landings. This is one example of what we are doing. We produce the entire control system and deliver this to the customer. Of course, we also like when customers are satisfied with us. I can also tell you that I have not shown any examples where they are not satisfied. The next example is in the med tech sector.
It's a company called BK Medical, recently acquired by GE HealthCare. There we produce also the electronics controls, and that is a picture of this that you see here, going into an instrument which is used, for instance, when we are going to be on an OP so that they can follow what is happening with us. I think this particular photo is from a product where they're controlling that we get enough oxygen during the OP. This is another example of a sector that we are supplying into.
Maybe some of you remember back in 2020, Corona, med tech was suddenly becoming very interesting, and I think the reason why we had a good, actually a record, year in 2020, that was exactly because we also have customers in this sector. The third and last example that I would like to show you, that is a Swiss customer, Mammut is the name of the customer. For this customer, among other things, we are designing actually product development for them, of course in close cooperation with them, and we're producing and assembly and sending the final products fitted with instruction and so forth to either the customer or to some of their customers.
It's an avalanche beacon, and it's used by some of us who enjoy skiing, but I think more importantly, it's used for the professional ski rescue teams around the world, and it is today for the professional sector. Mammut has the highest market share in the world. These were three different product applications where GPV is in, and I hope that gives a little bit of an impression what it is that we're doing together with our customers. We are this service provider, and we are trying to help our customers to transform from fixed cost if they have their own production or manufacturing to variable costs.
It is the same in this last example also with the design and engineering that we're transforming or helping them to transform their fixed design and engineering cost to variable cost. Maybe they have an interest to focus on certain specific things themselves and let us do some of the rest. I'll make a little bit of introduction to Thailand because we're going to have this video link. This is our facility in Thailand. It is a facility that we built back in or we opened it officially in 2015. At that time, it was a big facility. Since then, we have already extended it once, and we are right now in the middle of a further extension in Thailand.
Electronics for GPV was established in Thailand in 2001, so we have been there for quite some time. We have a very mature organization. They have been working in this environment for many years. It is also today still our biggest site in GPV. It is also a little bit big. In order to show you this in a few minutes, we'll of course only show you very limited part of the site. Therefore, a little bit about the main processes.
Ready?
What GPV is doing in general and also in Thailand. It's not that I'll go into the technicalities, but you can try to separate what we're doing into three main process steps. There's the first one, which is highly automated, where we are mounting automatically electronic components big time. At least we think. And even with this challenges that we've had in supply chain, microchips has become a word that everybody is knowing nowadays. Earlier, nobody knew about it. But in the month of May this year as an example, we had a record high number of mountings. We mounted 134 million electronic components in the month of May. So this is the high automated area.
There is a part which is semi-automated, where you mount components that you can only with difficulty mount automatically in the environment that we are in, this high mix environment. There we also have a number of lines. There are some which are quite automated and some being less automated. The final picture to the right-hand side, that is the final assembly, where we making the products that we are producing. It can be finished products, it can be a module to our customers, but there's a number of assembly work. There's typically also a lot of testing to be done, and this is typically manual because also in the last phase, typically the products are then configured to the exact need that we have.
What we're going to show today in this video that is a little bit from this highly automated part, and then we'll jump directly over to this part. In order that you're not falling asleep, we'll try to keep it a little bit short. With this, I would like to say hello to my colleagues in Thailand. It is our Operational Director, Alessandro, who will guide us through, and I can see he's already on the screen. I hope that you can hear what I'm saying, Alessandro.
Absolutely, Bo.
Yeah. The word is yours and take it away.
Thank you very much, Bo. Hello, everybody. I'm Alessandro, the operations director in GPV Thailand. Today, I will drive you through our SMT department. Actually we have 14 SMT lines today, as mentioned by Bo, using very high speed, high precise pick-and-place machines. We also have very fine optical inspection machines to guarantee the quality of what we produce. We are checking 100% of the PCBs that we run through the lines, and we strongly believe that quality is one of the major KPIs for our customers. Before going through the process, let me introduce to you this guy. This is a PCB, the base on which we are going to build our electronic board. This is a base where I have copper tracks and some golden parts, as you can see here.
We are going to put some paste on these parts and then place the components. Then after that, we will go through a reflow oven, and we will create this solder joint that is going to complete the circuit. This is how it will look like at the end of the process. I hope you can see. Now we can start, and let me go through the process. Please follow me. This one is our first step, the laser marking. As it says, we are literally marking the PCB with a QR code by means of a laser. The purpose of this marking is of course to guarantee traceability of the material that we use and also the processes that we use.
This is a very standard and very demanding procedure for automotive, and GPV has required this to be a normal service to deliver to our customer. We strongly believe in this service. After that, we pass through a screen printing machine. Here is where we're actually placing the paste on the parts as I mentioned before. We meet the first inspection machine here. This is an SPI, solder paste inspection. Here we are checking 100% the parts of all the PCBs in order to guarantee that we have the right solder paste thickness and placement in order to have afterwards a good solder joint. We move to the core of the SMT line. These are our high speed, high precise pick-and-place machines. These machines can place up to 90,000 components per hour. You can do the math.
We have 40 of these machines in SMT, so here we are talking about millions of components that we place every day. We can place components as small as 0.1 x 0.05 inches, the same as we can place component that can be 1.2 centimeters x 1.2 centimeters. It's up to 256-pin with a pitch of only 200 microns. That is explaining to you why we need to be so precise, and we need very high-tech machine. Once the placement is done, we reach the second optical inspection machine. This machine is literally taking pictures of all the components that we place in each PCB. Here we are checking if the component is being placed in the right way with the right polarity and the right coplanarity.
Only and only if this test is passed, then we can move to the reflow oven. In this step, we have setting a thermal profile, and the PCB will go through the entire length of the oven, and we will have this new alloy created between the solder pad, the solder paste, and the terminal of the components, and then we will end up with the final solder joint. After that, we can arrive to the last point. Here we have the 3D AOI machine. This machine is also checking and taking pictures of all the components, and it will focus a lot on the solder joints quality because we need to be sure that we have the right amount and the right shape of the solder joint. At the end of the day, we end up in this situation here. We have our electronic boards.
As Bo has mentioned before, we have also other steps, and at the end, we have a sort of very complicated box building procedure. Today, we are going to show you an example of that. Let's move over there. Please follow me. This is an assembly where for the product that is supposed and designed to measure noise and vibrations in the building industry, also you can find them in the airports and in train stations. GPV produces the entire part of this product. Also the metal frames in our mechanical department and also the electronic boards as you seen before. Once the assembly will be finished, here we going to give an example. There will be other cases that can be slotted in. This is the part that I'm talking about. You can see how complex is this PCB. Okay.
They will be mounted into the case, and then they will be slotted in. These cases can provide channels for measurements up to 1,000. The operator is following, of course, procedures that in this case are online. These procedures have been designed by our NPI together with the customer and approved by them. We are using this online system because we have put in place a paperless policy in GPV, and we strongly believe in our environmental strategy. I hope you enjoy this short and maybe quick tour in GPV Thailand, and I wish you a good day. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Alessandro. Thank you for what you have been showing us, and say hello to all the colleagues.
Thank you.
I hope that gave a little bit of a sense of what it is that we're doing. So that is typically what is happening in our electronics sites. Alessandro also talked about that we have mechanics. Of course, that looks different because it's different kind of machines, but it's also set up in a professional way because it has to fit into that it can be used also in these electronic products. The same goes with cables. With this, we will go to the next part where we have Thomas Kaiser, who is responsible for sales as Executive Vice President in GPV. He will also be coming on in a second via video link.
Thomas, he has been heading, and he has been driving the change that we have been doing in GPV in the last years to really modernize and focus our pipeline management. This strong focus on that we would like to win the right things for GPV. Do we have Thomas online?
Yes, I'm online. Can you hear me?
Yes. Now we can also see you. Maybe we can also get a picture of Thomas on the screen. Yes, now you're on, Thomas.
Hello, everybody.
Hello. Yeah.
Good morning.
I hope that you could hear the introduction, and if you could, then please take it away.
Thank you very much, Bo. My name is Thomas Kaiser. As Bo said, I'm Executive Vice President for Global Sales and Global Procurement. I have started 18 years ago with CCS, the former acquired company located in Switzerland. There, I acted as a CEO. Today, I'm a proud member of the top management team of GPV, and very glad to present you now and give you some insights about how we are navigating through this electronics market. The first page. Can you. I have to move by myself. I think it is like this. Yeah. The electronic manufacturing service market, where we implement our business, is a giant market sized by approximately $480 billion and a yearly growth rate in the range of a global average of about 6% is predicted for the next coming years.
This average of 6% is roughly twice as high in Asia and a little below average in Europe and the U.S. The total available market now for GPV, so our TAM actually, is, from a global perspective around $200 billion and does not include the 3C markets, means the computer, communication, and consumer industries also nor the automotive car industry, which is not in our focus. That will cut this full potential market approximately in half. Our market share from a NewCo, as you have heard, we are in the middle of an acquisition, and, we take the numbers from there.
Our market share from a NewCo perspective will then be in the range of 0.5% and from an, let's say, an old GPV perspective in the range of about 0.22%. In this huge potential customer universe, our approach is to identify the ones fitting best to the GPV enterprise setup. How does that work? On the one hand, we are seeking for market leaders or so-called hidden champions offering sophisticated product solutions and requiring both proximity for full turn-key and life cycle services, plus manufacturing and after sales services in their end markets. This to meet and align with their continuously growing sustainability agendas. As a GPV, we feel responsible, and we are and will play a very important role to support this for now and for the future.
Our approximately 300 customers are therefore mainly headquartered in Europe, where we can meet with the decision-making buyers, but servicing them across the globe into more than 60 countries worldwide today. To ensure a tailor-made customer support, we have grouped them into customer categories, and none of them represents more than 7% of our total revenue. Means we have an extremely well-balanced customer portfolio today in place. Of course, again, in the new setup within the NewCo, we will review the best fitting threshold, but will not change the successfully implemented concept. Having all this in mind, the same rules and conditions are applied to our sales funnel and pipeline management also, what you can see on the right end.
A very structured approach with clear KPIs to measure the conversion rates between the different pipeline phases ensures a very lean and rigorous focused sales management in all of our defined sales regions. Our sales regions are the Nordics, where we play a number one position in Denmark, and the so-called DACH region, the German-speaking area of Europe, where we play again the number one position in the Swiss market. Another focus is the US market, where we serve our growing customer base from our site in Mexico. The ambition level of this pipeline now is equal to our revenue target, and it only contains activated projects from new customers, but also larger new businesses from existing customers. The consequent review and controlled push forward approach helps us to create substantial growth by converting all these amazing opportunities into our future business.
The management of the pipeline across GPV, meanwhile, is fully digitized and 100% captured in our CRM system, which is the heart of our sales monitoring. It starts from the left hand with a comprehensive lead qualification selector supported by a software called Leadfeeder, which alerts us quite detailed on web traffic analysis to identify the interested companies in a very early stage of our dialogues. This ensures that the fit of both GPV and the lead stays according to our lines. Followed by the famous LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which accelerates the buy rate management process to convince all involved decision roles towards our GPV offerings. The more we get this interaction with all these decision-makers, the better we can ensure that we convert all these talks into future business.
The quoting and negotiation is then integrated part of our Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution, which is interfacing with our business intelligence tool called TARGIT to support best guidance and availability of real-time facts and figures across all sales-related aspects during our face-to-face meetings with our customers. We are very glad that we are back in physical meetings because that is one of the crucial elements to work closely in a trustworthy environment. That is what I wanted to explain to you along our market activities and customer interactions. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much to you, Thomas. Because we have Thomas on this link, there is a possibility if there are questions to Thomas, then we take some few questions. Don't be shy. It seems, Thomas, that it was crystal clear.
Hopefully.
There is one question. Thank you very much.
This is Claus Almer from Nordea. One question is regarding your pipeline. Now you're saying, you know, physical meetings are very important for getting a new client, and hopefully corona is behind us. How does your pipeline look like, and how many new clients can you actually onboard within a year, for instance?
As you have seen, we have a categorized pipeline. We are seeking for customers in the larger category. The so-called AA, if we can go probably one back here, if that works. Here you can see on the left-hand bottom, you have these categories, what we are seeking for. We have pipeline wins for the last two years of 25 new wins of customers coming or having the potential to go into these categories. It is about half per year. It is eight to ten new customers per year what we are winning.
Do you see a pent-up demand? Now we are again behind the COVID, hopefully. You are ready to onboard more than these 8-10 you've done in the past per year.
It is very much aligned with the capacity increase of the sites, of course. That is why we are not just hunting like, excuse me the word, hell to acquire new customers. The new customer or the conversion rate from a lead to become a new customer is, as you can see on the right end, between 18-24 months. We already have in the attract phase, very deep identified potentials where we are already working with to, and knowing that they get converted into customers over the next 1-2 years. Yes, you're right, since we have started this further focused approach around the pipeline management, we see, of course, a significant growth of the in-progress pipelines or the activated pipeline.
As you can see here as a detail, this track bar, this gray bar, starting with a 2 on top, is the second phase. The first phase is the lead qualification phase, which is not active part of the pipeline, because otherwise we just boost up the potential of it. We have said we only consider activated projects to show within our pipeline. The pipeline grew by approximately 30% over the last 2 years also. It is a continuous growth, and we raised the bar, of course, in alignment with the revenue targets we have in place.
Thank you, Thomas. Thanks. There is one more question.
Hi, my name is Johannes Møller. Some of your Nordic competitors are doing a lot of business and making a lot of money, working with small startups that have come up with some kind of electronic device. They don't have any manufacturing capabilities. They just want to get the product into the market. It could be like some kind of Wi-Fi connected electronic device, some of these head protection things that you wear when you bicycle or EV charging units and stuff like that. It doesn't sound like that's business that you want to go after. Why is that?
These businesses you just mentioned are in the sector of high-tech consumer markets. It is about wearables, it is about audio, new fancy gadgets, let's call it that way. It's also professional stuff. Of course, there are many very promising startups on the road, but the main difficulty is to identify the ones who will survive the next 10 years. That is, of course, we have them on the radar as well, but we are not that much only focusing on them. We are focusing on the so-called hidden champions, the very well-established market leaders, and also to increase the share of wallet with our existing customers. That's the main focus. If there is a startup coming in with a really good idea, then we are thoroughly looking into that.
In the one or in the other case where we all believe that could become a success, then we also jump in and try to support that as good as possible. It's not that we are now having meetings with these startup clusters sitting across Europe. That's not in our current strategy, at least.
Is it okay with that? Or I'll just give a couple of additional comments, Thomas.
Yes.
When we talk about these AA and A customers, then it is not that they, from day one, have this revenue target, then it is the potential which has been identified. If you take for instance EV chargers, we are delivering into a number of EV charger business, even that they maybe do not have this threshold level today, but we see that they can reach that threshold level. I think we have one more comment or question.
Yes.
I think we close it. Thomas, there's one more question.
Yes, Ulrik Bak, SEB. You mentioned that you expect the market to grow 6% annually. Now with Enics becoming part of or merged with GPV, would you expect to be able to grow faster than the market growth rate or more in line? If you are able to grow faster than the market, what's the secret sauce?
Yeah. The business plan what we have aligned together is at least above this average growth rate. Again, it has to be understood that the 6% global growth rate is not the same for Europe. There is slightly lower, whereof in Asia, it is probably the double. It is not a linear growth rate across the globe. What we have shown in the past is that we were well above these figures and also having the first talks with Enics. We are very confident and think with adapting our model, we can bring them back to a good growth as well.
I'll just help Thomas a little bit, because I'm sure that the figure that Thomas is sitting and having in his mind, that is including some potential additional M&A. I will come back to the figures a little bit later.
Yeah.
Is that it? Thank you very much, Thomas.
Thank you.
See you soon again.
Okay.
Thank you very much. Have a good session. Bye-bye.
Yes, it works. Now we will go into the second section. I hope that this first section gave you a little bit of understanding about GPV, and what we're doing from the customer cases, how we are doing it from the factory in Thailand, and how we are dealing with pipeline management from Thomas. This is an illustrative drawing of how the journey has been for GPV. I have allowed myself to start in 2008, not because I started necessarily, I also did that, but it was the time where GPV was in deep trouble and there was a restructuring then taking place in 2009. Then we have been on this journey, and in 2016, we were...
Actually it was in 2015, we were in a sales process, and at the end, it is a fantastic journey that I've had the privilege to be part of, and I'm really looking forward to this next step. I really look forward to having closing so that we can start to interact with our many new colleagues, and I'll come back to that in the next slides. First, our latest strategy house, you saw Carlos 28+. We have also been creative 25+, and WOF 25+, that is Winning Our Future 2025+. Winning Our Future, maybe some of you recall that we have used that name also for our earlier strategy.
We think that there's still fertility and room and energy in this wording, so that's why we have kept it. We are this service provider, and we are so focused on our customers. We have a close relationship to our customers. We are closely following up that we get the business every week that we should from our customers. This time we have also updated our vision and mission. I'll not go through all of it, but I'll take a few words out of the mission. That is trusted, it's powerful, and it's top of mind. When you're a service provider, you need to be trusted. That is important to us because we can have the best conditions, but if our customers don't trust us, then we don't get the business.
Powerful, that means that we are also able to step in, do things. In the last period, it has been about materials. It could be about building a new factory. It could be taking on a bigger business from a customer where things have to be carved out. Powerful is important, and also here to mention is materials. Materials is a big portion of our cost, and buying power is important. Top of mind, we don't need to be top of mind for everybody on the street, but for the professionals in the industries that we are targeting, we would like to be top of their mind so that they are asking us.
We have some financial ambitions to grow to EUR 1 billion, and of course, we have to revise that now. That's clear. We also have a target to deliver 15% on return of invested capital. We have some market initiatives. I'll go a little bit further into those in a second. We have some ESG ambitions, the same there. We have some internal ambitions. These three elements, I'll go a little bit further into details. Market initiatives, there are four elements. Expand service offerings, and here it is about expanding the offerings that we are giving to our customers, especially design and engineering. We see that as an area where there's a lot of appetite.
Our customers, they would like to see that they could go from fixed cost to variable cost on future of these design and engineering things that they are doing so that they can focus their own resources on what they think is most important. Life cycle services, that's about managing the product from birth till it goes back into the grave. There's a number of elements and we are also doing that today, but we can see that we can do even more in that area. After sales is an area that we have not explored too much yet. There we can see we can go in and do even more together with our customers. Logistics, there we think about logistics concepts.
Of course, we are also doing logistics today, but we think about to make this into a more conceptual thing that we can offer to our customers. That could be a way for us to broaden our service offering. Expand in high-potential regions, that is in regions where we already have a certain foothold, where we are there but we are not number one. And we can see that there is a good potential there. Here it is especially in Germany, sorry. It is especially in Germany, in Sweden, and the U.S. With Enics, of course, Sweden will be a completely different picture. There we will have a much stronger foothold when we come to grips with Enics. Expand in attractive segments.
That is an area where we have used quite a lot of energy in this strategy process. This is about professionalizing how we are approaching these different 6 segments that we are targeting. That we ensure that we have enough knowledge of what is going on in these 6 segments. We know the language. We know how things are done there. We are especially starting with MedTech because that is an area where we have maybe not had the growth that we could have had. There we need to do more. We also see that there could still be M&A on the radar, and I'll come a little bit back to that later.
If we go into sustainability, there we have started this journey. We took the decision with this new strategy that we had to incorporate it directly into our strategy house, and start pushing even more on this. We would also like to see if we can find a way to do things together with our customers, as Carlos was talking about, but we see that a little bit further down the road. At least we need to find our way together with the customers. What we have decided on now, that is two high-profile ambition targets. The one is about safety in the workplace.
We are on a very good level when we talk about lost time injuries, but we want to bring that down to below 1 LTI per 1 million worked hours so that we can be world-class on this. The other one, that is, greenhouse gas ambition that we want to achieve a 50% reduction there by 2025 based on our baseline, which is 2020. Here we have seen quite a bit of movement in the last 12-18 months from our customers, where they before this time was not really so interested in this, and now this is becoming a ticket to play, I would say. It's not the reason why we're doing it.
Because if you look back and see how GPV has been doing business, then I have said many times in the past, we are doing business in an orderly way. A part of doing business in an orderly way in today's environment, that is also that we do something on sustainability. We take our responsibility there. Our customers are also starting to request this. On the internal initiatives, we have five areas. First is a standardized business platform. You can nearly imagine that when you make acquisitions, then it's not all standardized, so we have had to find our way, and we learned a lot with the acquisition of CCS. What does it take to be able to standardize things?
We just said when we updated this, that this is an area where we can do even better. We have a GPV business system, and we are now updating that to a version 2 of that business system, and that is a part of this standardization. Our customers simply expect that when they come to this site or that site, then we're operating in the same way. Operational excellence, we have got a COO function, GPV Operations, on board, and he's really driving this operational excellence, and that is very good to see, and I'm looking forward to see that we can also harvest the results of this. Together with Enics, we see even more potential in this area. Operational footprint.
It is important for us that we have a strong operational footprint. It is important that we understand what is the reason for a site to be there. That is, this is about a clear profile. There's maybe some of you sitting and thinking, "Yeah, but don't you have too many sites in Europe?" Maybe, but it's also important to understand why we have the sites. It is always for us the reason, if there's a good reason, if they show that they can do things in a profitable way, then they are a good way in staying in. Of course, we have to look at our footprint. The last two, four and five was important things that we put on because we had this ambition to grow to DKK 1 billion.
We said we need to do something to make sure that we have the capability in our organization, that we have also the capability to set up the necessary governance structure so that we can handle a bigger business. Also this about our GPV culture. We have a strong culture, we believe, and that needs maybe to be even stronger if we have to grow the company to become a bigger company. That was what I wanted to say about the strategy house that we have had and our latest update to this WOF 25+.
Going to the Enics merger, we have GPV plus Enics that is bringing the two together into a number two in Europe if we take it as EMS players with European headquarters. That is shown a little bit more precisely on this slide, where we take GPV and Enics, merge these two companies into one NewCo, and that will bring us into a number two position. Number one is a German player, Zollner, and they are quite far ahead of us in terms of revenue. If we try to take a look at the two companies, it is GPV to the left-hand side, and it is Enics to the right-hand side. If it's fine, then I'll start on the right-hand side.
That is for us the new part. We have an Enics. They have been a relatively big company, above DKK 500 million for the last 7 years, DKK 500 million plus minus, and they have been used to for quite some time to be this bigger company. They have established procedures. They have had a lot of focus on operational excellence. There I'm sure that is our clear feeling and also from the data that we have, that we can learn from Enics when it comes to this operational excellence, daily management board, lean, and so forth. That'll be a good asset for GPV.
You can also see in the last period, there has been a little decline if you take the percentages, but that is of course influenced also by 2020, where we had the COVID situation. If you go to the left-hand side, there you have GPV. We have not yet achieved DKK 500 million. It looks like we'll do it this year, but we have a lot of energy, we have a lot of motivation to drive business, and we want to also drive this merger successfully. I will also come back, because that is of course one of the challenges, but also one of the big, big opportunities that you can see there is also a difference in profitability level.
I really hope that we can do this in a similar good way as we did it with CCS. If we look to the left-hand side first, there we can see where we are market-wise, the two companies. If I again start with Enics, then Enics have a strong position in Switzerland with a lot of sales. It's not delivered into Switzerland necessarily, but it is the buying power or decision-making sitting in Switzerland. They are strong in the Scandinavian area. They are. I think they would say themselves that they are number two in Finland. We'll have to find out if it is number one or number two, but they are very strong. They have a very strong foothold also in Sweden. They also have good business in Denmark and in Norway.
If we jump to the green circle, then that is GPV. We are, as Thomas also said, number one in Denmark and number one in the Swiss market. We have a strong position in the DACH area, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and we have a good position in Sweden and Norway. On the right-hand side, we have tried to make a listing of the comparable competencies in the two companies. Both companies are to a certain extent focused on this high mix value chain. I think it is also fair to say that Enics is typically slightly higher on volumes as we see it. Both companies are focusing very much on integrating things, so not just delivering one service offering. We have a strong portfolio of blue-chip customer base.
All the greens then we come down to where there is a gray. The first one, that is in-house application design. There, both companies have this competence, but we deem that GPV has the strongest position there. I hope that we can combine that into a much stronger position. The next one, that is test systems. In the industry that we're in, test systems are very important. Both companies do test systems, but Enics has a much stronger position there. Also here we hope that we can bring that good together so that we can make it even stronger. The two last, that is where GPV bring for the totality for the NewCo service offering in, that is mechanical competencies, and it is in-house cable harness competencies.
For the NewCo total customer, there will be, in general speaking, more service offering, from GPV. In terms of sites, you can see the green dots are GPV, the orange dots are Enics, and you can see out to the right-hand side that GPV has 12 sites in total. If we start from the bottom, then it is Sri Lanka, then it is Thailand. In Thailand, you see two flags. It's actually on the same site, but we are very keen on running things in an operational structure. We have electronics and mechanics there, and they are operated separately. It is with the sites where there's dual flags. You can also see that only in Slovakia there is a site overlap.
We actually hoped that Enics had quite a bit of free square meters because we need more capacity or square meters in Slovakia. Unfortunately, they don't have. They were hoping for the same for us. There we'll have to find out how we can generate even more space for capacity going forward. I think together we have a really good strong footprint. Without knowing that this was coming up, I think that I today can say that it was really good that we took the decision to close our Chinese factory, which was too small, in the wrong location, and we didn't feel that we could bring it up to the right size.
That was why we closed that some time ago. Now we have two big or significantly bigger sites in China. If we look at the NewCo, there we have compiled a business plan, and we have had good help from a prominent consultancy company to do this, because it had to be done with the two teams and then a partner in the middle being allowed to look at the old data from each site. I have not seen all the details. We have seen some aggregated results. This is the combined business plan, and it's going from 2021, and there the figures are just summed together from the two companies to 2026.
Maybe you can figure out this 25+ is coming from there. There we have illustratively also put in another acquisition. We have not yet any name or any specific thinking around this. I think right now we have to focus on what we have on our plate. With this, we have 7.6% growth rate over the period. If you take away the M&A, then the organic growth rate is 4.3%. That was. I think it was you having the question about the 6% of the market. Here we see a couple of things.
There is typically, at least we also saw it with CCS, there is a year of integration where we really have to focus on some integration. There, we are a little cautious about new business. We need to implement a different pipeline management system into the totality. You could maybe envision that it is what we are doing today in GPV. I think there we have an advantage on doing business. Earlier I talked about the advantage in Enics on the operational side with good technologies and so on. I think we in GPV have some good ways of doing business and driving this growth. We also need to get that growth rate up running.
With the inflow of 18-24 months, we have decided to be a little bit cautious on this. I have also brought a page on profitability. We measure that on EBITDA level. Also, if I start out to the left-hand side, 2021, it is simply the figures from the two companies just summed together, and that gives this 7.9 average EBITDA margin. We see the journey towards 2026 with three main pockets of synergies that we have to work with. The first one, that is, coming from revenue growth from these 4.3%.
We are convinced that we can do that in a good way, where we have a little bit better margin level. That is an important part in this, and it is actually the biggest part. The second one, that is primarily driven around procurement and this purchasing power. We have in our plans put that a little bit later. Maybe we can see that the climate is changing faster on the supply chain so that we can move that forward. But we had to say to ourselves or ask ourselves the question, with all the supply chain challenges that we have, missing materials and so on, is then really realistic to go in and harvest a lot just tomorrow.
We know from the last time with CCS, there is something to be done, and it is substantial, and we need to harvest this. The last bucket that is coming from the EBITDA from this acquisition that we have put in towards the end of this period. Our aim, and I think that is also what is written in the headline, that is to achieve this high benchmark level on EBITDA. You have seen, or at least you can see, that GPV has been able to deliver around this 10% EBITDA level, and probably it's also there that we are aiming at again.
It is a larger case, so it also requires that we have a little bit of patience. It also requires, I'm sure, a lot of work. I can sense that there is a lot of interest in achieving closing so that we can really get to work together with our new colleagues. This is saying more or less the same in this, but maybe a little bit more carved out in different things. We have a customer portfolio. We need to bring the right customers together. We have learned that Enics has around 100 customers. Thomas said that we have 300 customers. That is 400 customers.
At the end of this period, I think that we will have significantly more than 400 customers because we need to have and to win some new customers where we can have a good margin level. That is a big important thing in this journey here. We strongly believe that we need to align things on the market side quite fast. I'll come back to that also in a second. On the market side or market offerings, we have to utilize this about the cable harness and mechanics. We called it last time cross-selling. I think we'll use a similar term this time. The same goes with test systems, where Enics actually have quite a good revenue stream out of test systems.
Of course, we would like to utilize and see if we can push more on this. Materials, and maybe someone is sitting and saying, "So why is that under top line materials? Because why is that under bottom line?" Of course, there's a lot of bottom line in materials, but it's also extremely important to our customers. Because if we do not have the right material cost, then they will select somebody else. It is really a good and very important driver for also creating a new business. Jumping over to the right-hand side, the bottom line areas, we have two and we will, we have already established an integration office, and we will, of course, follow up on these synergy fulfillments.
That is important, and we are dedicated to do that. We also learned from last time that we have to be concerned about IT and this technology side. We are right now in the middle of looking at how the level actually is in both companies on IT, because we are not going to join the two IT systems together if we do not have a sufficient high security level on both sides. That is an experience from last time. We solved that last time, and we'll also solve it this time if there should be an issue. I'll take the last one, culture and change. With all these people, we're getting roughly 3,500 new colleagues.
It is a lot about people. It's a lot about telling them that this could be fantastic to participate in, and why should they stay on, and why should they participate in this. Of course, it's also complex to get 3,500 new colleagues into the picture, but it's also a lot about the same because it's factories. They have 7 sites. These factories are doing more or less exactly the same as we are doing. So we know a lot about what are the drivers in this business. So we are feeling good, and we are really looking forward to this fantastic journey. This is a little bit about what can we learn or what do we look into as learnings from last time.
To the left-hand side, you see the GPV when Schouw acquired GPV. We had this merger between GPV and CCS. There, the picture was that GPV was bringing in around 45% of the revenue and CCS around 55%. If I look back on the figures, it was the opposite way around on the profitability. Not exactly the same percentages, but GPV was bringing more in than CCS. If we look at the merger or coming merger now, we're still waiting approvals between GPV and Enics. There, GPV is bringing in around 45%, Enics around 55%. If I look at the earnings, then it's a similar picture as with CCS.
GPV is bringing more into the picture than Enics. It is a very similar journey that we're on. Of course, a lot of things can go wrong, but we also feel strongly that we have good experience. We know something about how to do this. It is vital for us to keep the customers in focus. It's vital to do this with respect because it's two big companies, and we have to find a way to take the best out of the two. It is also important that we communicate this ambition level that we have to the organization. We have already created the direction for us. The ambition is to create a European EMS leader together. For me, this together is the important word here.
Maybe for others, it's being a European leader, but we can only do that if we do it together. Then we have a guiding principle, prompt merger in the market, step-by-step operational and back-office integration. Because it is so important that we can communicate to our colleagues that we cannot do everything the first day. We have a sequence, a clear sequence, and we have not established that yet in this case, but there will be a clear sequence because there are so many good ideas. But we can also do this or that, but we have to take things one step at a time. We want to operate as fast as possible as one on the market. There are many opportunities going forward.
When we look down the road, there's a lot of things I also have to say. There's a lot of things we don't know yet. We have to get under the skin. Can we do even more on expanding our service offerings? Both companies have strong sides there. Can we develop that even further? Turnkey test systems, and so on. Also, if we go into attractive segments, there we have and we know that, Enics, they are strong in some other segments than we are. There we also see a lot of potential going forward. Then we have below the margin drivers, which we believe are important to start to work with.
It's in sales, it is about materials, but it's also about manufacturing and how we do that. Of course, it's also about how we operate with our SG&A. That is the synergy pocket that we have to work with and capture. We believe that with our many new Enics colleagues can create this second biggest DMS player in Denmark. We are really dedicated to go for this. Thomas explained this about organic growth. Organic growth is important for us, and we have clear targets how many AA customers, how many A customers do we have to win per year to say that we have fulfilled our target.
It is also so that the M&A going forward is a theme for us. We have had this step change in core market, and that is what we have done with Enics, and we are now awaiting a closing. What is then the next? It could be something in the US, that is probably what we are going to look for. It could also be about new capabilities, whether it's different types of technology, whether it's more into software than we are already. That is a way and the way that we follow, and try to track that we are also going in the right direction on M&A.
Of course, when we get a little bit further into the integration, then we will have to update this also. The last that is key takeaways. For me, it is this Schouw transformational drive. Jens have talked about that many times, that is really working. We are keen on it, but it only works because our owners are also pushing for it and supporting it. We have three successful years behind us. Maybe I could even take a couple of more years in, but I've taken from 2019, and we're also looking into 2022 as a successful year. Knock on wood. We have to finalize it first. But it looks like it. We have also been through two tough years.
There's been a lot of pressure on many people in our organization. 2022, we thought should be a little bit more quiet. Suddenly we had a war. What is lying ahead of us? We don't know. Is it a recession, or whatever it could be? We are following that as well. We are looking towards this EUR 1.4 billion target or DKK 10 billion target, but we also have to reserve and respect that we have focus on this Enics integration right now. We want to deliver a growing, sustainable business going forward. Thank you very much.
Claus Almer from Nordea. First of all, congratulations with a strong performance. Given the history of GPV is quite amazing. One thing you didn't mention is what is actually behind this success. What are your key selling points or advantages versus peers not, you know, insourcing, outsourcing, but when you're winning a new client versus a peer?
That is a good absolutely a good question. Maybe first, thank you very much for the applause or the nice words. I think we try to be very transparent in how we do it also with our customers. We are really focusing on selecting the right customers. That goes back actually from when I joined GPV because at that time, we had all kinds of customers. If a customer is not fitting to you, if you're not fitting together, then it gives a lot of noise and disturbance. There we started slowly this about that we need to have the right customers.
Thomas have refined this, and we are so focused on this that we try to have the right customer, and then we go for it. It is about transparency in the communication with customers. I think also this about being easy to do business with. That are the important factors. Of course, at the end, it's also about that we are able to deliver, that we are doing what we say, and I think that is also a very important part. Our industry is not that big, so there are many people shifting around. The best which can happen for us is that a purchasing guy is going to a non-customer.
I've seen so many times. I think we could actually be nice to do a statistics. I think that the win rate is close to 80%, that we then get this new potential customer in.
Okay, just to follow up. When you're winning a new client, what is the onboarding cost? A second part of that is, if something goes wrong with the products, what is actually your liability if that happens?
Yeah. I'll try to take the first. Onboarding costs are very different. It depends on the case, on if it's a big case which has to be implemented fast, then it could requires investments in machinery or in equipment. Typically, it is so that all what is standard, we would like to do these investments. We would also like to, that the customer buy test equipment from us, but that is not always the case. Maybe the customer want to do it himself, and then they also pay for it, and they provide it, because they have this feeling that then when they are not satisfied with us, then they can take the test equipment and move to somebody else. It is rarely happening, but that, I think, is the thinking behind it.
I cannot give you a figure that it is costing so and so much.
Just a broad range. Is this DKK 2 million, DKK 5 million, DKK 15 million?
It really. It's not because I don't want to, but it really varies so much from case to case, so it would just give a wrong impression if I said that it would be between so and so much.
Liability, risk.
Yeah, it depends on what you mean with liability. You said if something goes wrong? That was how I heard it, yes. If something goes wrong and it has nothing to do with a new customer or a new product, if we produce a product where we have made a mistake, then of course we're liable to make the correction of this what we have made wrong.
Only with reproduction, not any tail risk or revenue at risk or?
We are always having a cap in our liability. Of course there's also commercial considerations. Sometimes we of course have to look into this. Typically, we are liable for the failure that we have made and not for following failures. We always have a cap on our liability.
Okay, thanks.
Yes. Ulrik Bak from SEB again. Just a question about or clarification of the revenue target. You mentioned DKK 10 billion revenue by 2026+. And then you mentioned an EBITDA margin target of 10%. Just to be clear, when we sit in 2027 and look at 2026, will it be the DKK 1 billion EBITDA we have to use as threshold whether you reach the guide, the target or not?
I think you are fully capable of doing math, so I will leave that entirely to you.
Okay. It was just whether the 10% EBITDA margin was more like longer-term ambition or whether or not?
Yes.
Okay. Would that also equate 15% ROIC, or would that be maybe even higher?
It is our clear target to achieve, and we have done that also earlier. There has also been years where we have not done it. We have a clear target to deliver the 15% return on invested capital.
Great. A question about the competitors. I noticed the slide you had with the different competitors. There was only European-headquartered companies. What is the competitive landscape like globally? Now you're also focusing on North America.
Yeah.
How's the market share look like among those peers?
Yeah, I think that Thomas talked about the market, but I think it's a very valid question. We have been focusing on these European-headquartered companies, and that is where we get this number too. Of course, with the size that we get now, we have to start looking also or in a different perspective on this. We will embark on this journey and start to look at that. If we did it in a European picture, because there's also some good reasons for doing what we are doing, because if you look at it in a European context, there are some of the big players also operating in Europe, and we are actually not competing with them.
They are in a completely different kind of business than we are. We have to find a way to make a comparison with the relevant peers. I fully appreciate that what you're saying, that we need to have a broader scope going forward than just European-headquartered.
No, just a final question. In terms of these energy prices and the raw material prices, how is GPV exposed to high electricity prices at the moment, but also raw material input? Are you hedging that, or what's your company policy?
We don't hedge on a group level. I'll start with electricity. We don't hedge on a group level on electricity. We actually do that country-wise. With the announcement today, I hope that we will also be able to utilize this for GPV so that we can have green power in all our European sites. Electricity is of course increasing, and it's of course a cost for us. We are not a huge energy-driven company. We have taken the step back in late spring to tell our customers that we need to make a price adjustment because of these energy prices which we have seen increase.
That was the first part, and the second part I've forgotten again.
Well, it was just the raw material prices.
Raw materials, yes. We have introduced what we call PPDs, where we are going out or where we have to go out and buy raw materials on what is called the gray market in our terminology, in our business. There's talk about a gray market, and their prices can be exorbitantly high, and we have unfortunately seen that, and that is passed on one-to-one to our customers. It's a very, very unusual situation that we are in.
Thank you.
Christian Reinholdt. I have a question actually for Jens Bjerg Sørensen. Now we have heard a lot about growth, and growth of course is very important when you're looking at equities. We are now moving into a totally new territory with inflation that has been underestimated by almost everyone. The central banks, economists, I don't know, companies. I just wonder if you have to have a new look at your cost side, because probably we'll end in a recession. That's my personal view. Paul's speech the other day said that they will do what it takes to bring down inflation. Most people that are making decisions these days, they have never experienced inflation, so it's a brand-new territory. I just wonder if you're going to move cost control high up the agenda. Thank you.
It's a super good question, because maybe I'll elaborate a little bit on my final slide, but it is high on the agenda. I just spoke to Kasper yesterday evening saying that we need to rethink how we are doing the budgets, what will be the scope for the budget 2023, and so on. I fully agree, and I wrote here on this, it's as I also said, unprecedented times. Luckily, we have experienced some inflation in our time, but we need to go home and bring out a totally new toolbox, I think. It's a very valid input, and we are focusing on it. I think also Bo and his team is well aware of that, so.
Yeah. Cost is one part of this. I'm also so old that I can remember inflation. Cost is one part of this, if you talk about the internal cost structure. I'm also concerned about, so what is the cost of the products going to be? Will the customers, of ours and their customers, will they continue to buy, because things are getting more and more expensive? What kind of influence is that going to have also on our, revenue, side? I think it is, again, it'll be very interesting times that we are approaching into, also in the next phase.
If I could maybe ask a follow-up question to that. Frederik Duus Hansen from Carnegie. Also to you, Jens. So relating to the inflation perspective and maybe on your ROIC, could you maybe elaborate on the pricing power across your business units? And maybe also break it down into the invested capital side and whether it's fair to assume that in an environment with higher inflation, you would have a greater tie-up of invested capital?
I think we already showed that we had to tie up more net working capital this year, something because of price increases and something also because we deliberately decided that we want to be able to supply. We acquired and sourced in much more electronics and components and things like that. Of course, in these environments, we'll try to stick to our return on invested capital, absolutely. We also need to be realistic and look into what we can do. We have a toolbox also where we work a lot on what we call margin management, and I think all the companies need to be innovative on trying to do something on their products to keep the margin.
Margins will decline a little, as a margin percentage will decline because raw material will will mean a lot, but we will not accept that over the long run. We have to continue to push for reaching our margin targets.
Could you put some color to pricing power across-
No, sorry, yeah, the pricing power, I think, we already showed in most companies that we in fact have quite strong pricing power. One thing we were surprised a lot about, Carlos Diaz elaborated on that, we have these contracts with pass-on mechanisms with cost plus and so on, but we never factored in energy, to be honest. It has not been part of our contract thinking. I don't think we could imagine making a new long-term contract five years or four years without also having a kind of a energy mechanism in it. We have pass-on mechanisms at some very large customers.
We have also in our Fibertex business where we have an index on the polypropylene, but unfortunately, we're always lagging one quarter behind when it increases, and lagging one quarter behind when they are decreasing. I think we have a lot of good mechanisms on that, and we have showed also that we can increase prices, but we have to fight hard for it, depending also on segments. Looking into the automotive segment, they have a clear strategy for postponing, and then eventually they accept. Okay, then you get, but then they saved half a year and we are suffering half a year. We have smaller customers where prices all of a sudden get too high.
Simply the input cost for them gets too high, and they can't sell their products to 20 or more. Overall, I think we have quite good pricing power.
Thank you.
Just a question related to GPV. One thing I've been wondering about for quite a while is that when I look at you are a high-tech company, and you do partnerships with very large, respectable companies, et cetera, yet your margin is, if I look at the EBIT margin, I don't know, 5, 6, 7%. That tells me that's a low-tech margin. How come your margins aren't any higher than that?
We are this outsourcing partner doing our customers their products. If you take a look at that, it is a low-margin business, as Jens also said in the morning.
I'll go back to the EBITDA levels. I fully appreciate the EBIT levels, but I remember the other figures better. If we have this 10% EBITDA level, then we are in the top earners in our industry. And maybe we can do that better, but then we have to add more services to this. And that we need to explore more. But first, we have to take this new company that we're now having with Enics together and bring the totality up to a higher profitability level.
It is something that I would also like to wish for, but it is we are actually at a high level in our industry.
Okay. Thank you.
No other.
Okay.
Yeah, of course. Come on. No, no, we are here.
I have to ask about net working capital. Jens, please close your ears. How irritating is it that your owner keeps hopefully saying that you need to control your net working capital? How much more could you grow if you were just spending your money on net working capital or tying up money in net working capital? Or do you even care, actually?
Yes, we care. I think we are 100% aligned on this topic. There's actually not a conflict between the owners and GPV. We actually feel that we have a duty to run our business in a good way, also when it comes to net working capital. We also have taken deliberately some decisions in the last period here where it has been more difficult to get materials to increase net working capital, and we have also done that together with the board of GPV. Of course, we have to bring it down again because we don't need to be at this high level in more normal times, is our strong belief. We were not lacking net working capital before.
as you said, in these times, it's good to have money in your inventory. Shouldn't you just, you know, increase it even further?
I don't think so. We actually think that we could maybe have stopped this decision that we have taken a little bit earlier than we actually did. We are now trying to level it out. That is the first path before you start bringing it down again. I also think that we have customers who have really, really appreciated that we were able to do this because otherwise we would not have been able to mount 134 million electronic components in a month this year.
Good.
Thank you for asking, Claus. Bo, you forgot to say that I call you at least once a week on.
Yeah, we talked.
On your net working capital.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
I said that we are fully aligned on it.
Yeah.
Because it has.
You're right.
To go down.
Yeah. It's a good question. Of course, also, we tie up a lot and we deploy a lot of capital, net working capital for the time being. Of course, it also jeopardize our return on invested capital. Each company, they know that it's part of looking at return on invested capital. I will finalize very fast. In fact, I only have. Sorry, it's me who is doing it. I only have one slide and two slides. This one. Won't go much into it, just also say here from my side that we are not forgetting that we are also here in the short run. We have to deliver a 2022 promise on guidance and so on. We are really now working in what I also said this morning, unprecedented times.
As I said, BioMar brand in July months up on energy from I think it was DKK 6 million-DKK 21 million energy costs in 1 month compared to last year. Just showing how crazy things are. I think we are very sure that we are managing it as good as we can. We have to bring in everything we know in the operational toolbox in the coming months. I think also Christian had a very valid point that we also need to not cry the wolf is coming, but we need to be aware of something is going to happen around us, and we need to push hard for our margins and also deliver it on our cost structures and so on.
We are doing that and it is really important also thinking a little bit about could we de-risk in some areas? What does it mean to de-risk? Need to have a discussion with our executive committee on that. We are running the business day to day. I think also we used to say that every respect for every cent because we are in low margin businesses. If you are in low margin businesses, you need to have the eye on the ball every day. A good example I always use is we say every cent normally in Danish, every one øre counts. In BioMar, they are optimizing their recipes by the øre per kilo. We do 1.5 million tons of fish feed.
If they say, "Okay, who cares about one øre per kilo?" Just start adding one øre per kilo on 1.5 million tons, it means a lot. I think especially in these times, we need to be running on this high efficiency, looking into whatever we can do, and then at the same time, looking ahead and taking all the opportunities. I think we show today that in the years to come, I think we are very ambitious. We have growth ambitions, but we need also to align that with being profitable. I think also you heard that the two biggest companies in our portfolio today, they know they have to deliver on return on invested capital. We want to grow. I think also they brought out some very ambitious targets also on profitability.
I have to go home now and count a little bit on what did they say. For sure, I think, with these two companies and I strongly believe, of course, we believe in the strategic plans, they have shown that we are on a very strong journey. We also have to know that maybe there's some turbulence ahead of us, but we are in a good position to manage that. I think that should be my closing remark. Then I have to push the other one, Claus, and that is, we will serve some. In fact, I don't know what kind of fish it is. It should have been a salmon, Carlos, or something like that, but lunch will be served. Thank you very much for attending.
If there are any final questions, or et cetera, then just speak up. Otherwise, we can mingle and talk over lunch. I was very happy to see so many coming, and thank you for spending time this morning. Hopefully you learned something and got new insight into our, I have to say in American, our great companies. Yeah, thank you for that. How is it lunch is? Yeah. On the other side of the yeah.