Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Willem Fransoo. I am Director of Investor Relations here at Barco. On behalf of our CEO and the entire management team, I would like to wish you a warm welcome here at our headquarters in Kortrijk. Also a warm welcome for those who are joining us online via the live stream for this keynote. I'm glad you all made it safely to Kortrijk this morning. It's a bit of a stormy day in Belgium today, but no worries, you're in good hands. Let's face it, looking back at the past couple of years, Barco knows a thing or two about handling storms. Our capital markets theme today is Eye on Tomorrow. We believe that looking ahead is not only about predicting trends or launching new products. It's also about daring to imagine what's possible and making that happen technologically.
Let's dive into our agenda today and we have three objectives for this day. One is we want you to really experience Barco. I think we will have a lot to show and we will go right after this keynote into a lot of product demonstrations. Of course, you also want to know about our strategy and our long-term ambitions. The third objective obviously is that we're here to meet you and our entire management team is really interested to hear your views on Barco. Diving a bit deeper in the agenda, we will start a keynote in a minute and that will be with our CEO An Steegen, also our CFO Ann Desender, and then our Head of Operations, Rob Jonckheere.
After that we will have a coffee break and then we will be splitting in three groups and on your badge you will find a number, 1, 2, or 3. There will be a guide taking each of the groups through our demo pods. We'll start with that before lunch and then break up for lunch. By the way, over lunch there is an optional demo for those interested of the residential cinema. Highly recommended. During lunch you will be able to join one of those groups to visit that optional demo. After lunch we continue the demo pod visits and then we will join here again at the end of the day for the last demo which will be on cinema. Obviously that will be here and then we will close also here with the CEO and then with a plenary Q&A session. Our management team is here.
Those with the red symbol will also be speaking today during the demo pod visits. We're all here to meet you and entertain your questions and insights and talking about the demo pods. Look at this. These are all, most of them are all new products that we are eager to show you and demonstrate to you. The last few years were a lot about building new products in all the different divisions, really. We will show all of these to you during the demos. With that, I would like to leave it to our CEO An Steegen, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Willem. Good morning everyone. My name is An Steegen, CEO of Barco NV. I also would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you. Also, on behalf of our entire leadership team present here today, a warm welcome to all of you visiting us here in Kortrijk and also a warm welcome to everybody online. Thank you for joining. Today it's all about strategy, it's about numbers. We also would like to show you how Barco NV has been evolving, how Barco NV has been innovating and positioning itself for future growth. We would like you to leave at the end of the day with a clear view of our ambition, our focus, and how we are going to provide value to our customers in the future.
Our business unit leaders, they're ready to show you how they are going to grow their business in the coming years. We are ready to show you all new products and we hope you'll get a lot of insights here today. We also hope we have open conversations and you give us feedback. Let's get started and let me start with zooming out and giving you a high level view of Barco NV. Barco NV, as you know, is a global technology leader in visualization, connectivity and collaboration. What makes us unique is that we combine display technology with image processing and connectivity into unique solutions and also more and more intelligent solutions for our customers. Whether those customers are in critical environments like control rooms or operating rooms, or in immersive spaces like cinema and an immersive experience digital museum, for instance.
You can bundle our expertise in four domains. First of all, of course, our legacy is we're clear leader in display technology. High end professional projectors for cinema and immersive places, as well as high end medical displays for surgery and diagnostic imaging. Today, what we do in display technology is making sure that every pixel counts. It can be brighter, it can give you more contrast, more color accuracy, more reliability in harsh environments, better frame rates. Every pixel counts. We do much more than that. We do much more than just displaying an image on the wall. We enhance it. That's where our advanced image processing software comes in. We enhance images, we scale it, we correct it, we reformat it.
In the end, it is our purpose that we display an image as close to the intent of the creator who made the image and sometimes even better. We also have a long legacy in AV over IP. We transmit audio video signals over the Ethernet, but with a proprietary Barco control protocol and also combined sometimes with open source protocol when the specification requires it. Here for us it's all about seamless, scalable, secure connectivity between devices, systems, and locations. Also, when you talk about AV over IP, what makes it better? You get better performance, better quality, better security. It's also better in flexibility and scalability compared to these traditional analog wires. You all remember that AG VGA. That's where AV over IP has an advantage.
Last but not least, we have been investing quite a lot in high performance, edge compute, and artificial intelligence to help our products real time, to improve the performance of our products, to make our networks more robust, but also to come up with new AI-empowered software applications. We are sitting literally on data. Our networks transport data. What can we do with the data? That has been a question that we've asked ourselves and we're going to show you how we believe that we can answer that. Barco is present in three markets. We are in healthcare, enterprise, and entertainment. Last year we achieved a revenue of €947 million. We have a solid balance sheet and a consistent dividend policy to our shareholders. We're also a global company. We have more than 3,000 passionate international employees. We have sites all over the world: sales, service, R&D.
Also, with our focused factory approach, we have five factories. We have two in China, one here in Kortrijk, one in Italy, and another one in India. With focus factories, we make sure that we have dedicated lines for our products to improve our operational excellence. We also have a plan B approach so that we can exchange the products when needed. How do we evaluate ourselves? How do we look at ourselves today? Clearly, our strengths are in display technology and network solutions. We are a leader. We have a large install base there. Over the last past years, we brought a lot of new products on the market as well, replacement products as new products. We have a strong balance sheet and we also have a good track record in sustainability, also in macro-economic situations like today.
It's very good to have our focused factory footprint that we can basically, in a flexible way, exchange products from one plant to the other whenever the macroeconomic situation demands it. We also see a lot of opportunities moving forward, opportunities in continuous differentiation in our flagship products. More and more, this will come from software. Software to improve the products, standalone software applications to improve the workflow of our end users. We also are continuously expanding into new markets. That can be also new verticals, that can be new segments like mid-segment range. We see opportunities in strategic M&A in the future. Now, we're clearly not without weaknesses. Our forecasting ability over the last years has been weakened, especially since COVID. We identified pockets of growth, but our overall top line did not grow. Our Chinese market is still weak. We have products that are commoditizing.
We see in other markets fierce competition, especially the enterprise market. The trends in the enterprise market have been evolving very quickly over the last years. Last but not least, although we have built very strong foundations over the last years, the macroeconomic and geopolitical situations mean that we have to remain vigilant and agile, focused on execution, and be prepared for what might be coming and what might be unexpected. Now, our vision is clear. It's actually very simple. We visualize and we connect the world. We truly believe that we can empower our customer in critical workplaces, in immersive environments with intelligent visualization and connectivity. We truly believe that every surface can become an immersive, interactive, intelligent display. We connect people, data, and decisions in real time. We will improve the productivity of our end users with AI-empowered software applications.
Now, before we get into our strategy, let's have a look at the market trends that influence our future. First of all, visualization is everywhere. Visualization is truly the center of engagement and productivity. It is a fact that every surface can be turned into an interactive display that gives you real-time, more insights. Every surface can also become an immersive display that gives audiences a closer connection to the storyteller and the content. That is the impact of connectivity. Connectivity is all around us. We need seamless, scalable, secure networks that connect devices, that connect systems, that connect people at different locations in a flawless way. This is typically when you see AV over IP network solutions as well as cloud architectures are the backbone for providing that scalability of the network as well as the interoperability between different systems.
AV over IP and cloud are typically the backbone technology that you need for that. We have digital workflows, digital workflows that improve and enhance the productivity. We're all getting smarter in the way that we work. We connect systems. These siloed systems where you juggle on one system and need to transfer the data to another system, that's over. We connect now many systems on one platform, integrate the data, and by integrating the data you can provide automated workflows that improve the productivity of the end users. For instance, in service, productivity can be improved. We move more and more to modular designs. We have more and more connected devices, which allows remote service, improves the downtime, and also again improves the productivity. There is AI. AI that is changing the world. AI, which is a completely different way of processing data, of also making use of data.
You see more and more AI-assisted workflow, AI agents helping professionals in their daily tasks. The AI technology has been evolving very quickly from rule-based, where you say one thing and it does the other thing in a very rigid environment. More and more you have self-learning AI tools, AI agents who learn on the fly and get smarter every day and become really very useful agents, assistants for the professionals in their work environment. Also, again in service, you can apply quite a lot of AI agents. Not only do predictive maintenance like monitoring the data, that machines can monitor the data, know when a prevention is needed, but also AI agents are more and more used for first pass intervention during service. Last but not least, sustainability is there to stay, right?
It's not only that stakeholders expect sustainability KPIs from companies, it's also that we, through sustainability, you can really differentiate your product portfolio more and more. Designing in energy efficiency, designing in circularity, also for your operations and procurement, making sure you have a carbon-friendly footprint, all of that makes the difference in your portfolio. It's also so that sustainable companies can hire more and better talents. Now, based on all these trends, what does that mean for Barco's strategy moving forward? First of all, let's step back four years ago when Charles and myself presented our new strategy as new CEOs here at Barco. Basically, what we told you at that time is that it was our ambition to set standards in our markets. What that actually means is that we would differentiate with our product solutions, our markets.
We would come up with new flagship product that sets us apart from the competition and gives us first movers advantage. The way that we were going to do that is of course with investing in innovation. That's one thing. The second thing, improving our operational excellence with our focused factory approach. Thirdly, we reorganized our organization in six business units. The six business units, we folded R&D, product, and sales under one business unit to have faster time to market, closer interaction with the customer, faster execution. Despite many headwinds, many storms, as Willem said, that was Covid, there were shortages, there was unexpected inventories at our customers, Paris crises. We remained very agile, very resilient to navigate through all these challenges. Despite all these challenges, we stuck to the course, we stuck to our ambition, and we executed on what was our long term objective.
At the end of those four years, we can say that we have built very strong foundations here at Barco. We have brought many new products on the market, we have gained market share. We also have defined pockets of growth and we still of course have a very strong cash and balance sheet. For the coming years, we're going to build on those foundations and we're going to basically grow this company with expanding on the core, harvesting on all the investments that we've done on the new products that we have been introducing, continue to differentiate on these products, but also continuously expanding into new verticals and new segments. On top of that, we're going to create additional growth. That additional growth is going to come mainly from software. Software that improves our products, but also software applications that improve the productivity of our end users.
Secondly, we're going to lead a new wave of premiumization in cinema with our HDR by Barco technology. You're definitely going to hear and see more of that today. Thirdly, we're also going to grow through strategic M&A. In M&A, I know that many of you know that we've been talking about that for a little while. We're looking for strategic, creative, but it basically needs to have a synergy of Barco. That can be a synergy in go-to-markets so that we can increase market share. That can be a synergy in expanding our portfolio to have a bigger and broader portfolio in certain of our markets. We continue to work on that. Of course, it always takes two to tango. We'll keep you informed as we go.
The result of our new objective and our new strategy is that you'll see gradual, more transition to recurring revenue in our top line. We continue to stay focused in optimizing our capital allocations. The priorities for Barco in the coming years are clear. First of all, we're going to expand on the core. We're going all in on entertainment, expanding on the core through differentiating products to expansions in adjacencies and all in on entertainment, making sure we have a complete portfolio in our entertainment markets and lead this premiumization wave in cinema with our HDR by Barco. Secondly, we're going to focus more and more on software. Software as the key differentiator in what we're going to offer in the future will give more value to our end users. For Barco, it allows us to step more and more into recurring revenue.
Last but not least, we continue to optimize our capital allocations through strategic M&A, but also with a consistent dividend policy and selective share buyback programs. This is what we're going to do. The question is, of course, how we're going to do that. Let's first have a look at our innovation strategy. Our innovation strategy is built on three pillars. First of all, there is what we call the digital canvas. That's our display technology. Secondly, the connectivity layer. These are our AV over IP network solutions. Barco is, of course, already very strong in these two domains. Thirdly, we're going to build software, AI-empowered software applications on top of these platforms and these networks.
What you also see is that in each of these layers, edge compute, so high performance edge compute and artificial intelligence, come in more and more on the products to improve the performance of the products on the networks to make them more robust. Of course, also adding compute to the networks to be able to run real-time software applications on the data streams that go through our networks. Let's start with the digital canvas. As I mentioned before, we believe any surface can be turned into an immersive, interactive, intelligent canvas. The way you do that is with advanced image processing software. We'll make sure that visuals are going to be greater, richer details, more interactivity. When you look actually at the products that we have launched recently over the last years, they're all unique and one of a kind. Very unique and flagships in their market.
There is our Coronis OneLook. This is our new state-of-the-art mammography display. Just to give you an idea, the last version was 12 megapixels. This is 32. This is state-of-the-art. Nobody else has this in the market. Very well received, by the way. There are 3D glass-free displays. You all know the 3D displays where you typically have to wear glasses. Here we optimize the technology so that you do not have to wear the glasses anymore. First application domains here are in pre-surgical studies and patient information sharing. That's where we're going to roll them out first. There is, of course, our HDR by Barco light steering projector in cinema, where we built in big graphical processors in the projector to be able in real time to steer the light. This gives then this enhanced brightness effect, more contrast, real time while playing the movie. We will do more.
We not only focus on high-end products, we basically also are making derivative products for the mid-end markets. Typically, these products need to be more compact, they need to be more cost effective. Wherever we can, we leverage our R&D and manufacturing teams in China to make our products more cost competitive. An example that we show here is our i600 projector. This is a one DLP mid-end projector for our immersive experience business. This projector is designed and manufactured in China. We typically outsourced this projector. We got it from a third party and off-the-shelf product. We insource it now so we could make it more unique with all the knowledge that we have from our high-end products. More and foremost, we also made it more cost competitive with local component sourcing in China, with having R&D very close to manufacturing, improving yield and quality of this product.
You'll see it also here demonstrated; it's also very well received in the market. Secondly, our connectivity layer. What we intend there is, in a seamless, scalable, and secure way, to transmit audio, video, and data over a standard network with our own proprietary protocols. When you look at that today, we have already AV over IP networks in many of our businesses. There is Barco Control for control rooms, there is an Encore suite, and that is maybe at this moment more even an analog switcher. I'll talk more about that in a minute. This is for the event space. We have ClickShare, of course, for video conferencing in meeting rooms, and then our Nexxis platform in operating rooms in hospitals. Also here, we're adding Compute, where we can edge compute for real-time data analytics and computation—Nexxis Compute.
Is there an example from how we're adding high-end, high-performing graphical processors to the network? In this market, you see a lot of commonalities. First of all, you see also a lot of commonalities between these products. The AV over IP network solutions we apply for control, for compute, there are commonalities, but in Compute Nexxis, for instance, you need zero latency, no delay on the video stream from the endoscope to the surgical display, uncompressed data, and no pixel loss. For instance, in control, we put a lot of emphasis on security, and we share their commonality. We also make the products unique for the markets that they're in. Encore and Encore 3—you might have heard us talking about that quite a lot the past months. We're very pleased the product is released.
This is the state-of-the-art event switcher that is out there. It basically has a lot of demand right now in our markets. Today, you could say it's still analog switching, cables in, cables out switching, but more and more also in the event space, you'll see us moving into software-based switching. In this market, we're not only sticking with the high-end products, but we're also migrating to mid-end to make sure that we have also compact and cost-effective solutions for the mid-end markets. An example here is Nexxis Cube. It's not on the chart. That's a product we're going to release early next year, and that is a compact Nexxis version for smaller operating rooms like day centers, ambulatory surgical centers where we will roll out these products.
Mid end products in general help us to have more volume, more reach, but also protect us from sometimes more cost competitive competitors who will attack us from the base. Basically, that's the way that we also protect our portfolio there. Of course, there are our AI-empowered software applications we have been working on, that we have been investing in, that we're very happy. We can show you a few of these applications today. All of them are basically focused on improving the productivity of our end users. I'll give you a few examples. The first one is Swift Agent. This is now our software-based switcher for events, but actually using it right here in this auditorium because it is an AI agent for corporate events. It automates the workflow for the operating member who is there in the booth. It operates the graphical effects that they can show.
It operates the presentation mode, and it also has virtual camera tracking. It is automated camera tracking, so when I start moving around, the camera follows me. That's our Swift Agent product. We have the Lightbox for the HDR because when you go into HDR light steering, you need to have your movie content in HDR format. That basically means that you need to grade the movie in post production. We have built a very intuitive, user-friendly software suite to grade these movies. It is very intuitive. It's also fast. You can create a movie in a couple of hours, a couple of days, depending on how complicated the movie is. We've rolled out this product already. It's already installed in many, many post production houses in Hollywood, even one also in India. That product is already on the market.
Then there is Brilliant Assist, that's our new generation of surgical displays. They are of course also high resolution and all of that. The reason why we've put it here is because it's also voice controlled. It can follow commands of the surgeons during the surgery. This is very interesting because more and more surgeries go to minimal invasive or to surgical robots. They have one thing in common, that the surgeon does not longer look at the patient, needs to look at a display. Typically, the hands of the surgeons are busy with other things, so they need to be able to talk and give commands to the surgical display. The surgical display is set up in such a way with AI and machine learning that it can respond. The last example we want to show you is SlideRight QA, or I want to talk about SlideRight QA.
This is basically to improve the efficiency of the sample prep during digital pathology. We'll show you today what that does. Basically, it improves the sample prep where there is a lot of yield and quality issues today. In an automated AI-enabled flow, it can improve the sample prep and it saves time in the whole digital pathology end-to-end flow. These are actual solutions that we have worked on. For us, it gives our end users more productivity. It also helps us to step into recurring revenue. If that's now on Swift Agent to sell licenses in the Lightbox or the whole HDR light steering in basic box office sharing in SlideRight QA, counting samples and basically get recurring revenue that way. All of that allows us to gradually step up our recurring revenue in our top line.
Now, with these examples, it's also important to know how we see the future of the workplaces where we are active in, and I have a couple of examples here. First, there is the surgical operating room in a hospital. The future operating room will be a room where all machinery that are in an operating room, and even across multiple operating rooms in a hospital, they're all centralized and all connected to one network, which is Nexxis. All these machines, and that is more than just the endoscope today, the camera and the surgical display, that can be anesthesia tools, that can be patient monitoring tools, that can be energy devices, they're all hooked up to the network. Data from all these systems can be combined. Automated workflows can be created on the data.
If you know that in a hospital, the operating room is truly the money maker of the hospital, then you can understand that the hospital is very interested to improve the efficiency of that operating room. Secondly, we're going to add high-performing compute on the network. This way, all the data that can be combined in workflows can also be analyzed, can be processed real time, and give extra information to the surgeons. Also we're building in advanced video conferencing because more and more during an operation you need to call in assistance from another surgeon somewhere in the world. Now this is not a simple Teams platform. This is a very advanced video where all the data that are being processed in the OPERA in a very efficient way can be shared with somebody outside the hospital or the operating room.
Last but not least, as I mentioned already, many surgeries in the future will be minimal, invasive, will be done by a surgical robot. There the surgeon does not longer look at the patient, needs to look at that surgical display. Having the highest quality surgical display, highest resolution, 3D for more depth, and voice control is really a key asset to have. So Barco's role in this entire environment is that we want to provide this end-to-end solution for operating rooms and very intuitive, robust technology backbone that helps the surgeons and gives more advice during the surgery, gives them more intelligent information without the surgeon having to be concerned about the technology in the background so that they in the end can focus on what matters most and that's saving lives.
Control rooms of the future, so also here we want every control room of the future, where every decision is made in a control room, to be supported by intelligent tools, that every pixel that is being shown in a control room is secure by design. From seamless, scalable, secure network solutions, also here, combining the data that are going through those networks in automated workflows, in data analytics that can help the operators in control room to make more informed decisions is critical. Again here Barco wants to deliver this end-to-end solution. The network, the compute, the workflows, assisting the operators at every minute during their day jobs, and their day jobs, that's typically making very critical decision in a very short time in critical situations. Barco wants to be helping there. Last but not least, another example I brought is the cinema, the cinema of the future.
Why do people go to cinema? To socially engage and to have an experience that you can't get at home. Here again, Barco is using their HDR by Barco technology brand to lead the new wave of premiumization in cinema. We have been commercially rolling out HDR by Barco since April last year. We are very proud to say that today we have more than 150 systems on order for more than 100 locations. We also have graded more than 30 movies. If you think that that's typically the amount of blockbusters that can be released, we basically have all the blockbusters created. They come from the nine major Hollywood studios. We have our Lightbox, our AGR grading tool in many post production houses today. We can only say, and that doesn't come from us, people love it, studios love it, exhibitors love it, moviegoers love it.
From the many surveys that are being done not only by us, you'll see actually that everybody recommends people to go and see a movie in HDR by Barco. These are just a few descriptions of how we see our future workspaces. It's not that far out. You're going to see live today that we're already basically developing these technologies and can show you already how these future workspaces are going to look like. Now, before I end my part of the keynote, I would give you a few takeaways and a few sneak previews of how each of the businesses are going to position themselves for growth. First of all, in healthcare and diagnostic imaging, we are a market leader in radiology and mammography and we continue to grow in that space with differentiating products.
Also, make sure we cover the mid end base, but that's how we're moving forward. More and more software differentiation you're going to see to enable the hardware, but also standalone software solutions to improve the workflow and the productivity of the end users. For diagnostic imaging, we're also going to step aggressively in new domains. Digital pathology is one that we have already been embarking on, remote home reading, but also in new segments outside hospitals, like CROs, like pharma, like clinical labs. We're also there, they have a need on very high end diagnostic displays and we are embarking in these segments. Also for surgical, the whole digitalization of operating rooms is in full swing, but it's far from done. Maybe today 20% has been digitalized.
Barco is in more than 12,000 operating rooms with Nexxis and of course it is our ambition, we continue to grow our Nexxis footprint. We're also coming up with a mid segment version there for smaller ambulatory surgical center day centers, also to equip and digitalize those. On top of that, we're rolling out our new surgical display, our voice control surgical display, and we're adding then Compute together in our partnership with Nvidia to the network for meeting experience. Today you could say that 16% of the meeting rooms are equipped with video conferencing. Barco has historically been a leader in wireless BYOD, bring your own device to the meeting room. We are today in more than 1.4 million meeting rooms. Now we are renewing our entire ClickShare platform. We're doing that together with Microsoft so that in the end we will have a complete offering in video conferencing.
We cater to BYOD, we're catering to room systems and we'll do that in many different form factors. Also, when it comes to AI and AI assistants, we will focus on the meetings. First of all, how can we make the meeting experience more robust? The setup of the meeting, so kind of a troubleshooter for the meeting room. Also, how can we improve the experience of the people attending the meeting, the ones physical in the room and the ones participating in a remote way. For control rooms, the whole market in control rooms is also driven by the geopolitical uncertainties. There again, we are rolling out our control platform. We continue to roll that out. It's a software-based platform. We're adding more and more software features so that we can cater to more and more vertical markets in the control room space.
Also here, we're stepping into workflows that can be in certain verticals, can be across verticals, but also to improve the productivity in the control room centers. Also here, we're driving consolidation in the market because of the performance, because of the security that we have in the center. We make the barrier for others to enter very high. For our entertainment market, first of all in cinema, the full lamp-to-laser replacement wave is in full swing. There, like one third of all the projectors in the world are replaced and are now a laser projector. Barco has a large market share. We have more than 100,000 installations in cinema. Our capture rate for the lamp-to-laser conversion is more than 60%. Of course, we continue that replacement wave.
On top of that, as I mentioned before, we're going to basically lead a new wave of premiumization in cinema with our HDR by Barco technology. Last but not least, our immersive experience, here we continue to focus on gaining market share. We complete our offering as well. In high end, we call that three DLP projectors. As in mid end with the one DLP projectors, we also continue to grow our market share in event switchers. The Encore 3 is the one that we just brought on the market. Also, they're moving more and more and more into software-based switching. Last but not least, we also going to step into improving and automate the workflows for projection mapping. That is very manual work today. Can we automate that? That helps really the productivity of the operators who are basically planning these projection mapping projects.
With this in summary, our key priorities for the coming years are expanding the core and harvest on what we have invested the last couple of years in our core markets with differentiating products, go all in on entertainment, and there definitely remember that we want to lead the new premiumization wave by Barco. We are also going to add additional growth with stepping more and more into AI-empowered software application that will help us also to gradually increase our recurring revenue. Last and again not least, we continue to optimize our capital allocation through strategic M&A, through our consistent dividend policy, and selected share buyback programs. Now again, I hope that makes the direction clear that we are going to follow. It's all driven by our vision, our vision to visualize and connect the world.
It's also driven by the power of our people, which is very important because you can have the best strategy in the world. If you don't have the people to execute it, then it's also not going to happen. Today our cultural values are all about innovation. It's all about getting closer to customers and collaboration. You can only execute when you collaborate. That's why our HR strategy is really basically focused on changing our cultural behavior to stick to what the key values that we have implemented, focus on diversity and inclusion, and also focused on learning and training because we're living in a very dynamic world and we have to adapt our know-how as we go. Also, that learning and training will focus quite a lot in the future on AI.
With this I'd like to hand it over to Rob Jonckheere who is going to give us an overview of our manufacturing services and logistics strategy. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alan, and good morning to all of you. My name is Rob Jonckheere. I'm responsible for Operations and Services, which of course also entails Manufacturing and Logistics. Now, three years ago, during the previous Capital Markets Day, I explained our strategy to go to focused factories and to drive more vertical integration of key technologies which are relevant for Barco. Let me give you a retrospect of what has been done since then. In 2023, we installed a bonding line, a display bonding line for optical clear bonding of healthcare displays. This enables us to increase the picture performance of our displays but is also a key necessity for our surgical displays. In 2024, our Wuxi factory became fully operational.
This factory was built in a record time of only 11 months, and it is now fully operational, producing projectors for mainly immersive experience, but also producing all the sub-assemblies which are required for our projectors in 2025. This year, we kicked off the integration of our K warehouse, which is a remote manual warehouse, into our Kortrijk factory. We also have insourced the video switchers, which was a key technology enabling immersive experience. We have expanded our service footprint. Next year, we will kick off the build of a new factory for healthcare in Jirenzano. It's about 3 km away from our current old factory in Saronno. Also, we are going to move in additional innovations. We have an automated projector alignment set up now in Kortrijk and in Wuxi, which will allow us on basis of AI to fully align our projectors and assure the quality.
We are currently investigating an investment in optical clear coating, which is relevant for our laser technology. Lasers are becoming more and more, let's say, powerful. It also means that the optical engine driving our projectors needs to become more robust. Let me give you a view on the footprint as I explained. We have five factories. We have basically two mirror factories for projection, and we have two mirror factories for healthcare. We have a healthcare factory in Suzhou, China. The mirror factory is in Saronno. Later on, it will be built in Jirenzano. We have our projection factory in Wuxi, and the mirror factory of that one is the factory here currently in Kortrijk. We also have a factory in Noida. Noida is actually making rear projection cubes and large screen LCDs.
That factory will transition towards a global service center because the rear projection cube technology is phasing out. If you then look at the service footprint, you also see that we have invested in more spare parts warehouses closer to our customers. We have set up in the U.K. and also in Dubai, a new spare part hub. Import and export into those countries has become cumbersome. We really want to maintain our SLA of same day delivery of spare parts to our customers. Likewise, we have set up repair centers in the U.S. and Dallas, but also in Tokyo and Japan to make sure that for Dallas on the projection axis, in Tokyo, on the healthcare axis, we can serve our customers real time. People might wonder what are all those black dots in the U.S. and in the Americas. Those are actually forward stocking locations.
They are spare part hubs, small spare part hubs which allows us to be able to deliver to cinemas within the same day if they have a failure or they need a spare part. Global operations of course it's all about efficiency and productivity. What we're really driving at this point in time is really to create flexibility. Our focused factory strategy has enabled us to switch in this difficult geopolitical context in between factories. What was built in China can be built in Europe as well, both for healthcare and for projection. That allows us to maneuver around in the difficult and also changing geopolitical context. We're also driving more vertical integration which means investing in key technologies relevant for the BUs. Of course everything is also going to be more and more automated not only to save on labor force but also to assure the quality.
To give you an example, the HDR by Barco projector that I explained, this cannot be made without full automated production. It's just not possible. Let me give you an update and a short video clip on the Wuxi plant which was established in 2024.
Okay, let me now address the services part. Service is also part of Global Operations and actually we have been driving there two main things. One is same day delivery of spare parts, proximity to our customers, and by doing that enable actually an increased net promoter score. We have expanded the regional footprint. Why did we do that? One SLA, service leverage agreement with our customers, same day delivery but also transport costs. To give you an example, if a projector fails or an engine fails in the U.S., we typically send that back to Kortrijk, needs to be repaired, sent back, that we want to avoid. This is now all done regionally and of course it also enables a faster turnaround time. We have AI-driven global tools and processes.
We installed Salesforce and we installed SAP4HANA, the update of the current ECC module, and by doing that we have increased our efficiency by 15% over the last three years. The service experience digitization is key. AI-driven knowledge management, self-service enabling for customers is key. We have omnichannel access to our service teams, 24/7 support around the world with a follow-the-sun principle. By doing that and enabling that, we have currently achieved a 64 NPS, so net promoter score, which is up from 45 in 2022, and going forward we will co-work with our business to go for more and more recurring revenues and the services team will support that drive. Now to conclude on the Manufacturing axis. We will continue with focused factories.
We will continue to invest in vertical integration to ensure flexibility, quality, and value add in the service footprint about proximity work to our customers, same day delivery of spare parts, operational excellence, and 24/7 support. Thank you.
Now figures. Good morning. Good morning. For the ones who do not know me, I'm Ann Desender and I'm the CFO. There we go. Before just not only figures. I have the pleasure to give you an update on sustainability. Where we are there, great journey it has been and actually it has become part of our culture, how we go at it, but also there is no lack of where we want to be at and what are then our non-financial targets. It again comes with figures and targets. When we talk about sustainability, it is the three angles. It all starts with our people, the people, the global teams that we are. People that challenge each other, that work together, that go for it, that are engaged. That's all about the people pillar. We want to be good to the world, lower our carbon footprint.
We really found that also as a key value driver actually because most of our footprint comes actually from the energy consumption by our products, which is electricity consumption. If we can lower that, we are good to the climate and we are good to the total cost for our customers. We listen to our customers, we work together with our customers. We go for the highest business ethics, actually being compliant, and as they say, we go for highest quality and we ask the same from our suppliers on protecting earth actually. It is the second time that we filed with SBTI actually our targets. We did that before for the targets up to 2025. If we look back, our carbon footprint over the past 10 years, we've been able to lower that by 50%. Now it's taking a next milestone, going within the next five years.
We want to lower that again by 25%. We're talking about a full scope, scope 1, 2, 3. Not only outbound versus indeed what's the energy consumption of the products we have at customers in the market, our install base, but also in and the invert the carbon footprint of our suppliers to get our products made. With us, as the biggest footprint goes into energy consumption of our products. That's why we already early on and since about 10 years, we worked on how can we gradually bring more products to the market that have an eco label scoring A or better. We call it like that. It started really internally with a kind of testing. When then do we get actually a product that we can give that label. As regulation then actually evolved, we hooked it up and tested it extra.
That has been also externally each time confirmed with this external regulation, which is actually putting the bar then also every year higher and higher. That's what it is. Happy that actually by this year the target for this year is to get from our total sales, sales from what we call eco-labeled products to 75%, and we want to further step it up to 85% within three years. Mind about three years ago we were even below 50%. We really made step changes there, and our full force wants to go forward in that, people. We want the spirit of entrepreneurship. We want people working on that also through training, how we select people, how we work together that are adaptable. The world isn't a rose garden every day. In that sense, the world comes with changes. The world, doing business, comes with challenges.
Grasping them all together, being resilient on a bad day, I would say that's what we want. We want people to speak up, to put the bar high for each other. Foremost, to work together to reach that bar. On our targets here, we every year do an engagement survey. We want to get beyond the 75% on engagement scoring and further improve on that. Foremost, it's also listening to the people, what they bring on, and how we further can learn all together. We have a very transparent culture. Speak up if there is something, not just be nice to everyone. Anyhow, listening and further moving on, that one is a key one. Put a lot of training effort also, and training, far and foremost, you learn from your daily jobs.
Helping to have the managers train and put a lot of effort and train their people, but also help on them really on what we then call lessons or training hours, the classic way so to speak, and to have a minimum 20 hours per employee globally. That's the target. Your global teams have the riches of having these global international diverse teams, want to do that and work together in a very respectful way, an inclusive way. That's also something which we really embedded into our culture, and we're working on to really keep on fostering that empowering society. That umbrella, it's a big umbrella which comes in that. It starts with having quality, quality products, working in a safe environment. The target there on critical issues, you do not want to have them. It's a clear target there.
We talk about safety, quality, security, then systems tools, cyber security is a big one, keep on working on that one and then one of the targets. We have many more targets, but here really selecting on the key ones. We want our NIST 2 scoring to be at 3 by next year actually. Today we are at 2.7. In that sense, going to that gap will get there, but you don't get it for free. That's a lot of hard work across the processes, systems, and teams. We listen to our customers minimum twice per year. We also have an engagement survey with all of our customers. Have a lot of replies on that one actually. The bar which we put there on NPS score is to never go beyond the 50.
Very glad that since the many years we are doing it and over even I would say the more challenging times over the past years we've seen increasing that at mid year this year we're at 56 overall. This is the voice from distributors, from end customers relating to service etc. In that sense, keep at all times minimum that 50 is the target set and then we want to have the same quality business ethics from our suppliers and working with all of them to work together on that sustainable performance and keep the bar also high for them. With that, moving over to the financial targets, you've seen them already in the press release, I know this morning. In that sense, going forward starting with this year.
As you've read in our trading update last week, we have been reconfirming the targets for this year, the same ones exactly as we started and we went to the year end with, so means growth year over year on top line and also on profitability margin, which is our EBITDA margin, and it's certainly another year you would say with no lack of external challenges, but that's doing business and that's up to us to make up for that. In that sense, first party spoiler along the way for not only us but in the world has been the tariffs as of then the second quarter April actually. In that sense, we gave a larger update on that one also as part of our mid year update. Dealing with that, it's primarily on projection that this has an impact.
We have the beauty of having the mirror factories and in that sense being in a better place than even our competitors and the markets which we are serving. In that sense, with having factories in Europe next to the factories in China actually. You've seen along the way also in mid year that we could keep our gross profit margin at the same level of last year, whereby the impact of the tariffs, which was done primarily actually on the outstanding orders in the order book, because we looked how can we mitigate. We increased prices then towards our customers, but there is a delay effect. We could not do that on our open order book. We've been able to offset impact actually by a better product mix, so more products on the market. Of course, new products always help.
That's a good thing that we had many of those. Working on costs along the way in the gross profit margin and OpEx wise, then as of mid year, as of the third quarter, the impact of a weak dollar and then dollar-related, all currencies which are not euro, call it like the other headwind to deal with and which we are dealing with, having an impact. We have a quite high natural hedge, 75% actually we have, but 75% is not 100%. In that sense, it does have a remaining impact on our top line and also on our bottom line. Mid year we gave the range on this year, second half then actually on EBITDA, that means a nominal impact between €6 million and €8 million. In that sense, you have to be made up, and that's what we are doing actually.
These were then, I would say, the two, I would say, much more headwinds, but that has not led us from reconfirming our full year guidance on doing better on top line and on EBITDA margin. Where do we want to be within three years? A little bit of context before is a repeat of what you heard from An Steegen, but a little line up here done per division on Entertainment. Going full force on what we are doing on grasping and keeping the high capture rate which we have per today on the cinema and cinema renewal. HDR by Barco comes with new opportunities and in particular also then more recurring revenues. Not only HDR by Barco but also the existing portfolio. The first year you don't like it that much because it comes with a deferred piece, but in the long term it comes with higher margin.
That's the beauty of recurring revenues within Immersive Experience. We've worked so hard on broadening the portfolio, going broader not only in the mid on the high end but also taking that mid end, taking new segments along. When you will see the presentation or the demo later on, will come back. Also grasping, for instance, the opportunity in theme parks. That's really a nice growth factor for Entertainment. On Enterprise it's capturing now this piece into that bigger market which we were not addressing before. The meeting room systems next to the offering which we have and where we are then market leader in that smaller market you could say which is no longer growing, the BYD market within control rooms. We are gradually shifting as you know, taking down whole hardware on there is less money to be made and then stepping up into software.
There it's really the full focus on bumping up gradually that profitability margin. That combines it within Enterprise. In that sense, when you look at gross profit margins for instance, the uptake will really come from the more software products and has how fast and how steeped and growth in grasping that extra market share. The meeting rooms market will go as a really nice opportunity which we full force go for. On Healthcare, Healthcare gradually beyond defending our strong market shares which we have is tapping into more software software offerings. We are at the start there. You will see quite a lot of very nice examples. It's really scaling up so into the numbers. That's not yet the big numbers, but it is a big opportunity. It's anyhow gradual on top and coming with extra gross margins within surgical and modality.
It's a twofold of going really cost competitive on everything which is displays and then further working on more and more software software enabled offerings and solutions for the operator room. One last more slide on context and then numbers. Where do we go on the growth? A little bit below that actually support to get there. Within three years, more than 50% of our sales will be coming from products which we brought on the market now or in the next years to come. If you look for today, actually we really stepped it up on bringing new products and faster to the market. Actually this is in part replacement income, but it also brings of course it helps you to get your an additional income as well sales. It does keep your price levels which where you want to hold them, the margins, etc.
On software, we do not have any product anymore without software or without embedded software. Then we have the more what we call software products here. Think of what we categorize under their control and control rooms Nexxis and Healthcare ClickShare. The Encore 3 image processor, not yet the software software switch. The software-based switcher will be one there on top. The new products within Healthcare still for smaller figures. But then the next update for sure will be bigger ones recurring revenues. You all know it, but I like to repeat it. If you look to why not more growth, sometimes you then say okay, a part is defined preferred. That comes with a higher, more profitable, and longer-term capturing of these sales, customers, and profit, profits, gross profit margin as you have seen it in the past years.
Even in times where the top line was not growing, we did capture extra gross profit and gross profit improvements, which is not only because of the scaling, because of the automations and the fact that factories, but far and foremost also because we have more software into our offerings. Operating leverage always helps. It's easier when you grow, but also in other times keeping cost consciousness. We've been able to train ourselves on that quite a bit in the past years. We start from a structurally lower cost base, so ahead that's a good thing to have, that it's getting out of our budgets, which we have, making wise decisions on where we invest. See how can we grasp the return on automations in our internal processes and all of that together.
At that, the ambitions within three years, we want to be at a mark of €1.1 billion of sales. Starting from last year, this is a CAGR of 4%. We want to gradually grow further our recurring revenues to the amount of 15% of our total sales. Comparing to last year, that was 11%. This one in there is and still in this time frame will be cinema, but other divisions actually and offerings also gradually really adding up to that with even more opportunity on the longer term. On our profitability level, want to step it up to 15% of sales by 2028 compared to last year 12.8%. The non-financial KPIs, just 2 here repeated, 85% of our total sales. We want to do it equally products, and we would want to further lower our carbon footprint with another 25% compared to last year by 2030.
Last but not least, capital allocation. By the end of this year, we forecast to be at a net cash level just under the €200 million. This is including, you know, of course, the dividends that we, that was this year good for €44 million. We've executed in the first semester, completed that early July, a share buyback of €60 million. Last year, as part of the trading update, we announced another extension of the share buyback with another €30 million, which we are starting as of right now. We'll see whether it gets fully completed or not by year end, but that will be quite close. Assuming it is closed, this €30 million free cash flow for the next years puts the target there between €200 million and €250 million.
Starting, of course, with the EBITDA targets which I shared, we want to keep our working capital at least at the level or better as it is per today. Actually, keep that under the 12% in there because you might say it was a lower target in the past. We have more regional hubs in the sense to be faster for book and turn business. We have more, what we then call, contracts in progress on Cinema as a Service. You can have an impact in there. That's working on that one. Together, we further invest. We split it out for your convenience in the models on the capital expenditures and what we then call SaaS and non-SaaS. Over the three years, €70 million on capital expenditures. Biggest chunks go to Rob, not you personally, but automation and factories, and then CapEx SaaS. That's how fast it goes.
Including an HDR over three years, an impact of €70 million to €80 million on our free cash flow. With that, I want to go and grasp the inorganic opportunities and further are working on that, and we'll find one to tangle, but working hard on that one. Want to be nice and not only nice to the shareholders but through dividends and make it worth from that end, share buybacks when appropriate. With that, I am concluding my part on that. Done with PowerPoints now, guide us through the rest of the days.
Thank you, Rob and An, for these insights. I hope it was useful for you. Indeed, done with PowerPoint, we're going into the demo pods, and I think that will make it all a bit more tangible. We are keen to show you all our latest products. We end the keynote here, so we will also say goodbye to the people dialing in remotely, and we will first break for coffee. After the coffee, we will call you in three groups. We will do that in smaller groups—three groups, and that is deliberate. We want you to be able to get interactive with other teams and really ask Q and A at the end of the day. We will also break for lunch, but at the end of the day, we come back here, and then there will also be a final Q and A session here, plenary.
During the day, we encourage you to ask as many questions as you like. Our teams are here for you today, and they cannot wait to show you the latest innovations. Have a good break, and we will call you after the break. Thank you very much.