Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our general meeting. I declare the combined ordinary and extraordinary general meeting open. First of all, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to all the shareholders who are here with us, as well as those who logged on to attend this meeting remotely. With me today, Emmanuelle Petrovic, General Counsel, and Bernard Delpit, CFO of the Alstom Group. I would like to welcome the members of our board of directors, with the exception of Clotilde Delbos, who sends her apologies for not being able to attend this meeting today. In accordance with the law, it is now my responsibility to appoint the officers of the meeting.
I call as scrutineers, Mrs. Kim Thomassin, representing the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, our largest shareholder, which holds 80,930,484 shares, and Mr. José Gonzalo, representing Bpifrance Investissement, holding 34,930,254 shares, are the two members of the meeting who represent the two largest numbers of the vote and who have accepted this position. With the agreement of the tellers, I suggest we appoint Emmanuelle Petrovic as the secretary to the Bureau of the Assembly. The statutory auditors of our company, Jean-Luc Barlet, representing Mazars, and Édouard Cartier and Cédric Haaser, representing PwC Audit. And I'm going to give the floor to Mrs. Emmanuelle Petrovic.
Thank you, Chairman. The agenda and the resolutions to be put to the vote at this combined general meeting are set out in the Notice of Meeting brochure, available on our website and sent to our shareholders. The agenda and the resolutions are also included in the notice of meeting, published in the ballot on the 15th of May. The Board of Directors' report on the resolutions is including in the Notice of Meeting brochure. The statutory auditors' reports have also been made available to you and are included in notice. In order not to prolong the meeting unnecessarily, I propose that we do not read out the agenda and these reports. The documents required by law are enlisted in the minutes of this general meeting, are also included in the file placed on the desk.
All those documents were made available to shareholders at the registered office of the company. I would like to inform you that the meeting, it will proceed as follows: Our chairman will present a review of the financial year 2023-2024, including an update on your company's climate strategy. Bernard Delpit, our CFO, will comment on the financial results for the year. The activities of the board committees will be presented to you by their chairman. Yann Delabrière, Independent Lead Director, will present the activities of the Appointments and Compensation Committee. The remuneration, the resolutions on the directorships, the remuneration policy for executive directors, the remuneration of Henri Poupart-Lafarge for the past financial year. Sylvie Rucar will report on the work of the Audit and Risk Committee. Sylvie Kandé de Beaupuy will report on the work of the Ethics and Compliance.
Frank Mastiaux, will present the activities of the Integration Committee. Finally, the statutory auditors will present their reports. Following these presentations, there will be an opportunity to ask questions to the audience, either from the audience, either orally or in writing, using the form you were given on entering the meeting. Then we'll conclude with the presentation and vote on the resolutions. As it is customary to facilitate voting and enabling the results to be displayed more quickly, an electronic voting system will be used. When you enter the meeting room, you were given an electronic voting box, which I would ask you to keep close at hand, and I would like to ask you not to forget to give it back when you leave the room.
The attendance sheet is currently being checked, so we will be welcoming shareholders until 3:00 P.M. At the date of the registration of the shares, to which at least one voting right is attached. Our company's share capital comprises 461,149,281 shares, and with a par value of EUR 7 each. According to the provisional attendance register, the shareholders present, represented or voting by proxy represent 63.5%. The quorum for the ordinary meeting is 25%, is 20% for the ordinary part and 25% for the extraordinary part. The quorum of 25% is already reached.
I would like to remind you that the meeting is being filmed and broadcast live on the website, and an usher is present in the room. I give back the floor to the chairman.
Thank you. Thank you, Emmanuelle. So again, good afternoon to you all. I'm going to say a few words about, the most, striking events of 2023, 2024. You have here the main indicators. It was an intense year. It was very intense from a sales and commercial viewpoint. You have the numbers here, EUR 18.9 billion, what we call the book-to-bill ratio, which gives us a, a book-to-bill ratio above one. It means that we'll go on growing. Our backlog, increased as well. So we have a very intense activity everywhere and in all our activities. It's been also a major year as far as the delivery of our products was concerned.
The growth number increased by 9%. It's EUR 7.6 billion . It's a record for the group. It corresponds to a growth of +12% number of cars delivered last year. A dense year as well, as far as transformation was concerned. We are being transformed. We have been integrating Bombardier for three years now, and we have been able to increase our operational earnings +17%. It's EUR 1 billion . It's in line with what we expect. It was also a very intense and difficult year, as far as generation of cash was concerned, with two different half years.
The first half year, the generation of cash was negative, so we had to correct a certain number of things and to counterbalance the problem. So, we used EUR 600 million in cash. It's in line with what we announced in November, but it's not obviously in line with what we expected and hoped. Alstom has a major objective to decarbonate mobility. Railway transport is obviously today the most decarbonated transportation system, and we have to go on improving our environmental performance within the group, but, as far as all the products we make are concerned.
Within the group, it's what we call Scope 1 and 2. It's the emission level of our production. Minus, it decreased by 40% over the, since 2021, so we've made major efforts to decrease the emission produced by our own activities. 13%, - 13% outside of the group itself, so it's, I'm talking here about our suppliers and customers. Everybody improves the situation and the level of emissions, so - 13%. Even if energy used by trains is decarbonated, we have to go on decreasing this consumption. Then we have what we call taxonomy alignment on sales. It's the share of the sales, which is in the right direction, or I would say, which will help us find a solution to the climate challenge. So 60% of our sales, it's much higher than in any other type of industry. And we are obviously also working on the development of people.
We are working on gender diversity, for example, and women in management, + 0.8%. 24% of our employees are women. We'll go into the details of all those numbers in the second part of this afternoon. Now, back to our market and the performance of the year. First of all, the market is still quite good, and it's quite strong. Two main growth factors on our market: urban development, obviously, and the desire of most cities. If you live in Paris, you know what I'm talking about. Most cities want to get rid of cars within the city centers, and obviously, it means that the cities have to invest in urban transportation systems. It's true in Paris, but it's also obviously the case in emerging countries which have extremely big cities. The second growth factors is intercity transport.
Decarbonation of transport is fundamental here as well. People are changing their way of life, and this increases traffic. In Europe, it's the case, but everywhere else as well, in the United States and China. You've heard the discussions on the fact that there were not enough TGV trains. People are asking for more transportation, railway transportation, and more trains in general. It's also the case everywhere in Europe, obviously in America, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Africa, Middle East, where we are developing urban transportation systems. If you compare the situation with what it was last year, we have slightly decreased our perspective because Indian Railways, for example, are reviewing their procurement strategy. So but the market is good. It means that we have a double, a dual strategy. We are selective in all the orders we sign.
We have to be selective in, as far as products and services are concerned, but we also must go on what I call a book-to-bill. The ratio should be above one here so that we can increase our backlog. The market is good, and this is why we have this selective strategy. Just a few numbers, but you know most of them, I'm sure. A few numbers about Alstom. First of all, half our activity is rolling stock. We have other activities: signaling, systems. We have a service activity as well, which is very important for us, maintenance of trains, long-term maintenance of train. It's not so much the case in France because French operators are in charge of their own maintenance, of the maintenance of their trains, but it's not the case everywhere.
Then we have also railway tracks, installation, new lines. New lines in emerging countries, but not only. The Line 18 of the metro in Paris, so we have other examples everywhere in Europe. So this is the distribution of our sales. Half is rolling stock. We are world leaders outside China. We are the only player everywhere in. We're present everywhere on all the continents. We have a market share which is 30%. A growth 6.5%, slightly inferior to the general growth rate of the group, not because we're neglecting this activity in particular, but because today we focus on services and signaling. The risk profile, growth perspective, cash generation, all this is better in those different activities outside rolling stock. We are leaders in services as well.
We work on 250 sites in 40 different countries all over the planet. We have 17,000 employees, so the growth rate for this particular activity is 14.3%. It's a major strategic line for us. We invest a lot in maintenance, optimization of warehouses, and so on and so forth. Signaling, it's a digital activity, very digital activity indeed. Three main stakeholders, Siemens, Hitachi, they bought the French Thales, and ourselves. It's a secure activity. There are barriers around this activity because obviously you have to guarantee the efficiency of the network while guaranteeing and the security and safety of passengers. So the growth rate here is quite good as well. The European signaling system is being installed at the moment, what we call the ERTMS.
Systems, we like these particular activities because it enables us to combine our standard solutions. We are in control of the interface between different solutions, and we think that, thanks to our model, we are quite efficient when we work with, Alstom equipment, with the Alstom systems, and so on and so forth. So the organic growth in all our activities, and in particular in, our target, most targeted activities, services and signaling. Now, a few pictures. You've seen some of those, products in the film. These are the orders assigned. Philadelphia Tramway, for example. We have options as well for the, metro or Line 19, the MF 19, Metro for France, Paris. We have services as well in.
We signed a certain number of interesting orders here as well in U.K. and Australia in particular, and we have signed orders in signaling and systems in Tel Aviv, Philippines, but elsewhere as well. So the commercial activity, again, was dense last year. It's going on, developing and growing. The first quarter, we have been able to announce some additional orders. The U.K. contract, Elizabeth Line, for example, it's a very important contract for us. We need workload for our British sites, and this is a good contract then. Locomotives. I'm insisting on locomotives because this is something we got from Bombardier. Alstom, before Bombardier, couldn't sell so many locomotives. Now, we are back on this particular market. We recently signed a contract with an Italian customer.
In services, it's this is the Dominican Republic maintenance contract. So this activity will go on all year long. Now, execution. Back to the process we are, we've been working on for three years. We have improved the situation over the past three years. We have really worked on the quality of our production. Three indicators which are key for us. The first is obviously customer satisfaction. This is our first objective. We have a client Net Promoter Score, which is at 8.4. It's very positive and very stable indeed. It's stable at a high level, I should say. Second indicator, on-time delivery. We have been able to improve this delivery on time, on-time delivery, +27 points trains delivered on time over the past three years. So we made major efforts here to satisfy our customers.
Another example, another indicator. Last year, we divided by two the stock of late cars. If you take some cars which should have been delivered at the beginning of the year, they were not. We were a bit late. Now, this stock was divided by two all year long. So we are really improving the situation here. We are catching up. And quality, major efforts have been made as well here. It's fundamental. Quality is really important, the quality of what we deliver to customers, visual quality, technical quality, availability of trains, and we have divided by four here quality problems on our trains. And you have a major sign of this improved quality. When we deliver new trains or new programs, those new programs have no difficulty.
They don't have to be adjusted, I would say, whereas a few years ago, that was not the case. It took three, four years to improve to actually adapt some programs. The Line 14, first day, all trains worked extremely well, so major efforts here in this particular point. A major delivery year, 400,000 cars have been delivered, + 12% compared to the previous year. So, compared to March 2021, + 40%, a small number of industries have been able to improve so well over the past three years. And this year, it was particularly true in France. We've delivered many, many cars and trains in France. Why? Well, we want it to be on time for the Olympic Games, obviously, and it's so specific.
We've been pushed by the Olympic Games, by the fact that Île-de-France wanted to really improve its fleet. So many, many extensions have been made, six of them, six major operations on existing metro and tram lines in Paris, and they are ready for the Olympic Games. And Alstom teams in Valenciennes, but others as well, were really all mobilized, actually, to meet the demand of the customer. Line 14, for example, that will go from Saint-Denis to Orly now. The Line 11, which has been, which entered into service in June. Line 4, automation of Line 4 since the 19th of January. We have delivered a hundred train sets to be on time. The RER, a new generation RER, and that's not something which happens every year, obviously. So but we were on time.
We were on time for the extension of RER E, which now goes to Nanterre. So the trains are absolutely beautiful. New generation trains, really radically different from the first RER trains. The tramway, same. The T3 extended between Porte d'Asnières and Porte Dauphine, and the T12, south of Paris, Massy-Palaiseau to Évry. These are what we call half trains, half tramways. They're heavy tramways, in fact, so they're very symbolic of all the efforts we've done this year. We are on time for the Olympic Games.
So 2023, 2024 was also an intense year. I said it right in the introduction, in terms of the challenges and cash generation. We have to come back to this period of time. It was in October, November, and it forced us to review, in the short term, a number of plans, and in the midterm and long term, to look into a greater depth, what had to be accelerated, strengthened, and improved, so that we no longer have this problem, and that we could draw all the lessons from this. Let's come back a bit. There were some external factors, the sharp increase in the interest rates, having an impact on our financial statements, and the fact that the financial markets became risk-averse.
It created a lot of volatility on the financial markets. A weaker commercial momentum during the first half year. So those were external factors, but also internal factors, a number of contracts we were awarded. It has a major impact on the cash, because the advanced payments of the customers are important to feed our system and to feed the cash generation. The fact that during the first half year, we didn't have as many advanced payments had an impact on our cash generation. Since the acquisition of Bombardier, it's normal that further to an acquisition, a special effort is made, and a part of the acquisition is financed by debt.
But the debt level became too high in the context of cash generation, which was too low and negative because of the commercial activity, as I described it, and because of a number of operating problems, and especially an accumulation of stocks. The situation at the end of September was not sustainable. We have to admit that there were some weaknesses in terms of cash generation planning and the seasonality of the cash, and we had to improve that. So given this situation, which was a very difficult situation, what have we been doing? Which type of actions have we taken? The first category of actions, there is no hierarchy among all those actions. We had to conduct them all.
First, it was to reduce the debt of the group. Obviously, the group had a too high level of debt, given the external and internal situation. So this debt reduction plan, and I'll come back to it later, was implemented, and now it's almost completed. The divestments, the transfers, are signed. We have to finalize that. Number two, we had to strengthen the financial controls in order to better forecast cash flow and to have a better communication on that.
Maybe what is more fundamental is the speeding up of the transformation plan, and we had to add to this transformation plan a number of actions to improve the situation of the cash in terms of governance, the decision made by the board to split the role of the president and the general manager. So let's look at the debt reduction. Bernard will come back to it afterwards. So divestments mainly for the U.S. signaling and also the stake we had in a Russian player, TMH, for about EUR 700 million. Issuance of equity-like hybrid bonds, EUR 750 million, and then an increase in capital, EUR 1 billion, which has been completed.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all, because you renewed your trust in subscribing to this capital increase, and it was a huge success with a very, very high level of subscriptions. Altogether, EUR 2.4 billion revenues corresponding to for the debt reduction, it was EUR 2 billion, and because the hybrid bond is 50% at equity by the rating agency, this plan was necessary. Let's look at the acceleration of the transformation plan. I would like to insist on it because it's really at the core of what we have to do. We wanted to stabilize projects, and this was largely completed. There is no longer any major technical problems in the projects, not only in the Bombardier projects.
And then second step, the lean management. That is to say, lean management for the Bombardier engineering and sites, and of course, efforts were on the Alstom engineering in order to be more efficient. This is what we have been doing. It's not completed yet, but hence, the results in terms of quality, and, NPS, the customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, even if, we have not finished our work there, we still have some work on our plate. And then, we started, in-depth transformation plan on products in merging the range of products. Of course, for the time being, we have the locomotives, Bombardier locomotives, in which we put Alstom signaling systems. Let's combine some equipment.
We are going to enter into the products into greater depth and in the production facilities in order to optimize the production facilities and to be stronger and, and, reduce cost and, have a more effective production. This was our plan, and it continues to be our plan, of course. Beyond this, we said we have to speed up a number of things to speed up the cost reduction plan, the structural cost. This was made possible by the end of the process deployment. Now the group works with the same processes. We can be more efficient, and the same applies to the indirect procurement. So we have to speed up the transformation, and we need to have this industrial optimization. Two points very important for the cash generation and stock optimization.
We need to have enhanced discipline on cash levers for the supply chain. It's not only an Alstom problem. The industrialists say altogether that the supply chain is the weak point, and this may introduce disruption in production. So supply chain is very important. We are focusing on it to make sure that there is no disruptions, and we have to be sure that our management is really the just-in-time management. It's not completely just in time, but as just in time as possible for the stocks. This goes through better planning. It may seem obvious, but in the Alstom activity, you have a lot of plans. What does the customer want?
When does the customer want the rolling stock, the industrial planning, engineering planning, planning of the supply chain, and all this is not static, it's extremely moving. Therefore, we need to invest in the planning is key for the future. And of course, we need discipline on tender submission. Discipline for the terms of payments, the technical conditions and terms, and of course, penalties and others. So we need to have this discipline because we are confronted with very special markets. During the second half year, we generated EUR 600 million cash, which means that those actions have started to bear fruit. Of course, it's far from being over. We'll have to strengthen this effort. It's not the end of the tunnel.
We have to continue working in order to have the most sustainable and stable cash generation. In conclusion, you see that this year was an intense year. We should not forget, and, we should step back some words for that. We should not forget the market, which is, quite, good and dynamic. The position of Alstom, very good, a real leader in the marketplace, the only player, truly global, with a global reach, position number one or two in all our product lines. No specific strategic weaknesses. We have a strength in financial structure thanks to a debt reduction plan delivered.
The year was also to us the possibility to say that we have to be even stronger and quicker to carry out our operational transformation plans in order to create value for our customers and our shareholders. So this is it. Thank you very much, and I'm going now to call to Martin because our sustainable manager could not come, but Martin was also in charge of the relationship with the investors. He's going to talk about the sustainable development and the strategy. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Henri. Good afternoon. Now, Alstom priorities as far as sustainable development is concerned and, social responsibility, obviously, they're based on five fundamental pillars. Four of them, which we have been working on for years now, and a new pillar, which I'm going to, explain later. So you have, net zero mobility, its climate strategy, carbon emission, community empowerment. We have to be close, as close as possible to the communities with which we work, the value chain, what we do vis-à-vis our suppliers and the supply chain in general. Employees, resource preservation, people, people care and growth, obviously, and something new, it's resource preservation. We are aware of the global trends. I mean, resources are becoming, rarer and rarer, so we are focusing on resource preservation.
I'll tell you about what we've done for each pillar, and I will give details about our ambitions for the future. First of all, this new resource conservation pillar. First type of action, it's what we call eco-design. We want to go on reducing the environmental impact of our products and solutions throughout their life cycle. This means more and more innovation. We have to improve the energy efficiency of our rolling stock and reduce the resource intensity of our services and signaling solutions. 87% of our solutions have been eco-designed, and it will reach 100% at the end of March next year. We are also increasing our target for recycled content in rolling stock, up to 40% recycled matter in our products, and we are getting.
That's the final objective, but we are close to 25% today. In the area of the circular economy, we will develop our existing successful initiatives, such as the recovery of electronic components, which we sell on our StationOne marketplace afterwards. We will increase the recycling rate at our own site 85% by 2030. Now, everywhere in the world, we are present everywhere in the world, and we have four ambitions here to mean that we care about people. We have to be a leader and diversity leader. As an illustration, in fact, we are increasing our number of women as engineers, of managers. Our objective was 25%.
It will be 32% in the near future, and a new objective is to have 30% top managers, women top managers. We have another new objective for all our employees. In 2030, we will have 100% social coverage and health coverage for all our employees everywhere. So this will be the case in a few years. We also give our employees the possibility of learning and develop their skills 25 hours per employee and per year in 2030. All these initiatives will help us improve the engagement of our employee. We measure their level of commitment. We measure this level of commitment every year with a survey, and we are going to go on with this dynamics. In fact, we have an objective of 72% engagement or commitment in 2030.
Now, local communities, we are present all over the planet in many different countries. Some concrete examples of what we do. We want to increase the number of people we actually work with, with our Alstom Foundation, for example. 400,000 people will be supported by the foundation in 2030. Today, 300,000. We'll give more time to our employees as well, for, if they want to be volunteers in all these actions organized by the foundation, and we have developed our development. We have improved our development strategy, a more inclusive mobility, for example, in particular, access of chairs in vehicles. The value chain is obviously quite important. We are developing our responsible value chain. We are developing our partnership with our suppliers.
We want to be sure that all our suppliers are not exposed to risks, environmental risks in particular. Again, 95% of our suppliers should meet our demand by 2030. At the same time, we will continue our successful initiatives to train our suppliers to improve their environmental and social performance, and we are constantly improving the situation. We have trained 100 of them today, and we will have trained 1,000 of them in 2030. In terms of net zero mobility, our climate strategy, well, Alstom, we provide solutions, obviously, to green mobility. Different elements here. First, Scope 1 and 2. In fact, the emissions of carbon we produce. We have made major progress in that field. We've made major efforts in that field.
We've reduced these emissions by 22%, and, but what we produce is a small number is a low emission. We don't produce much carbon. We, the emission rate is fairly low, but we'll go on this, what we call Scope 1 and 2. The level of emission should be reduced by 40% in 2030. We'll have LED bulbs in all our plants, for example. We'll develop sustainable electricity production. We'll invest in farms, solar farms in Spain, for example. So this represents 1% of our total carbon footprint, but we are also working on what we call scope three, what we buy and what we sell. The way our products are used in the world.
So the upstream, Scope 3, what we buy, we will reduce in a very significant way, the level of emission here by 30% in 2030 compared to 2023. We are now using a new tool. It will be fully operational in October. Thanks to this tool, the supplier can declare their own level of carbon emission. They will define an action. We will help them define an action plan to reduce this emission level. Scope 3, downstream, the emissions produced by the products we sell, by trains. Our commitment here is to reduce the carbon level by 42% for passenger trains and 30% for freight trains compared to 2022. There are actions on which we have no influence. It's the energy mix of the countries where we sell our trains, obviously.
But we are doing a certain number of things. For example, the efficiency. We're working on the energy efficiency of our trains, of our solutions. Obviously, we will go on working on these various points.
The most visible example or illustration is this one. Most of our Alstom solutions are electrical, so zero emission. But nevertheless, we still have some trains in Europe which are operated by diesel, so we are going to replace them in the future by clean solutions, zero emission solutions. So two types of solutions: hydrogen trains for long sections. We have already sold these solutions in Germany, Italy, and France. We are the first, actually, with such a fleet of trains. For shorter lines, we have battery electric traction. They will replace diesel, and it's a solution we have sold to Dublin, for example, in Ireland. I will conclude this presentation with a few words on European taxonomy. We recently published our performance, 60% alignment of what we sell on to European taxonomy.
It's much better than most industrial players. Thank you very much for your attention.
[Foreign language]
Thank you. I'm going to give the floor to Bernard Delpit for the financial statements.
Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders for Alstom, I'm going to give you the financial statements, the main pieces of information, which will allow you to read the resolutions subject to your approval. I would like to start with the main indicators, which are the growth in sales and the operating margin. You remember that Alstom doubled in size with the acquisition of Bombardier, and the sales of your company reaches now EUR 17.6 billion. It's an organic growth of 9.4%. So, a strong increase, better than what was planned.
For the period to come, we'll continue having a growth in sales by at least 5% each year for next year and the years after. In terms of profitability margin or the operating margin, this margin is also on the way up. The adjusted EBIT margin reaches EUR 997 million, 5.7% of the sales. It did not grow as quickly, given the situation of some contracts after the acquisition of Bombardier and given the time necessary to get the synergy linked to the acquisition of Bombardier. And for the year to come, we aim at 6.5% of adjusted EBIT margin.
And for the midterm, March 2027, we are aiming at having an adjusted EBIT between 8% and 10%. I suggest beyond the sales and the adjusted EBIT, we look at the other items of the income statement. Some of them are in the second resolution proposed to your approval. Under the operating margin, we provisioned restructuring expenditure for EUR 147 million this year, and spent the following years for the efficiency program for the general and administrative cost, and a number of operations, we anticipate to adapt the production facilities in a number of territories. -EUR 360 million, this line here, this is mainly expenses linked to the integration, the convergence of the IT systems with Bombardier.
We have been carrying out this program for three years. There is still another year of integration, and afterwards, we'll have EUR 450 million synergies, thanks to the convergence of the IT systems. On this line of loss in value on the assets, there are two main litigation provisions. One was already settled, one in Turkey and one in the U.S., and for which we are appealing the U.S. decision. As to the financial result, it was EUR 242 million, but the financial expenses have increased a lot because of an increase in the interest rates and recourse to debts, and therefore, we decided to reduce this debt level.
Therefore, this line should decrease this year already, thanks to the debt reduction plan. And as we indicated. We divested the stake of 20% we had in TMH, the Russian player. And this sale of our stake led to capital gains, but it was resulted in a non-cash recycling charge in the income statement, because this stake was in ruble, and we had it in euros in our accounts. Therefore, this resulted in a non-cash recycling charge. Therefore, on this line, you have -EUR 7 million. So usually this line is quite profitable. So the adjusted net income of some for this year was EUR 44 million before depreciation of goodwill.
That is to say, the revaluation of a number of items on the balance sheet when we acquired Bombardier. And after this purely accounting impact, the net income of the continued operations group share - EUR 351 million. Another very important point is the net debt of Alstom. Given the development of the cash situation mentioned by Henri during the first half year, this net debt reached EUR 3.4 billion at the end of the first half year. And thanks to the generation of cash flow during the second half year, it was possible to bring it back to EUR 3 billion at the end of this year.
So I will comment on this debt reduction plan in a few minutes. The fact that we have a debt is not really a problem in terms of liquidity of your company. At the end of March 2024, we had EUR 6.3 billion liquidities with the agreements of the banks and the access to short-term debt with commercial papers. I would like to say that before October 2026, Alstom has not to reimburse any bonds. You have the timing for the years to come, and of course, it's a favorable factor, beyond the fact that this debt has almost no cost since it comes from a period of time where the interest rates were almost equal to zero.
Let's say a few words on this debt reduction plan, launched in November 2023, to face the debt of Alstom. This plan has three components, one, which was a divestment of assets. Altogether, it was almost EUR 700 million. Divestment in the TMH, I already mentioned, and divestment of an asset in the U.S., coming from General Electric some years ago. This divestment was signed in April, and it should be completely closed next summer. Second point, we issued a hybrid bond, permanent capital, in other words, which can be reimbursed if we wish so, after five years. This instrument is regarded 50% as equity, 50% as debt. The annual cost is less than 6%.
The investors for this product, this product was launched last month, the demand was very strong, and this issuance is regarded as a success. The last step of this debt reduction plan is the capital increase. You subscribed massively to this capital increase, and it allowed us today to have cashed in almost EUR 1 billion cash. So altogether, with the three operations, once completely finalized, will allow us to get EUR 2.4 billion cash, will improve the net debt ratio by EUR 2 billion. Therefore, Moody's rating agency has changed the credit rating from negative to stable, which was our objective, of course, as we launched this plan, because you know that the credit rating is absolutely essential to conduct our operations.
When we launch an operation, when we cash in advance payments, we need to issue warranties for our customers, and if we have good conditions, of course, this is absolutely essential for our business. Let's say a few words on the objectives, the guidance for the next financial year. I already talked about the growth, at least 5% each year, a ratio between book-to-bill above one, sales average growth, and EBIT, adjusted EBIT margin within 8%-10% range. The free cash flow conversion, sorry, free cash flow generation, EUR 300 million-EUR 500 million.
There will be a seasonality, slightly negative, during the first half year, between - EUR 300 million and EUR 500 million , for the first half year. Another objective, which was examined by the financial markets, is the generation of cumulated cash flow over three years, including this year, EUR 1.5 billion. Let's say a few words on the third resolution, subject to your approval. The financial statements of Alstom SA, the one which is listed. We do not suggest dividends this year, so the whole net income, 89 million EUR, will be put in the reserve in order to improve the balance sheet of the company.
I will finish in describing the share price development of Alstom since the last general assembly. It was on the 11th of July 2023, and the period between the last general meeting and the end of 2023, we experienced a sharp drop in the share price because of the debt situation in October. Then a development since the beginning of 2024, which was favorable, even in some days were more erratic than others. And since the 9th of June, a drop related to the situation in France.
The announcement of the plan , you see it, in the diagram in the middle, was welcomed positively by the markets, and the share price therefore could hold, and we could organize the capital increase under good conditions. Thank you very much.
Now, our lead independent director, chairman of the Nominations and Remuneration Committee, Yann Delabrière.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. So I will explain the activity of our committee. The missions, they remain as they were. We working on two major, two chapters, which are fundamental for the company, the organization of the governance of the group and the composition of the board of directors, and so on. And we are also obviously working on remuneration. The remuneration, obviously, of the members of the managing team, Mr. Poupart-Lafarge, and all the members of his team. And we also add to this general policy of the company as far as shareholding schemes are concerned, employees' shareholding schemes.
Now, very briefly, the activity of the group this year, it's obviously organized around these various chapters, so we had to do quite a lot, given the circumstances. First of all, governance. Henri presented the governance of the group. In October, we had to review the organization of governance of the company. We had to dissociate the functions of the chairman and president of the board of directors and the managing role of the company. So we had to select a new chairman of the board, given the importance of all that has to be done in the coming months. So Henri will have now the ability to work on these plans, so he will no longer be the chairman of the board itself.
The activity of the committee, in a more traditional way now, we worked on monitoring the assessment exercise, revision of the internal rules, necessary given the dissociation of the managing team of the company. We obviously kept in close contact with all our shareholders and with a certain number of governance roadshows, for example. Remuneration. The year was important as well here, and this will be the object of the resolutions later on. We had to adjust our remuneration policies in order to be able to include in our objectives and the objectives of the managers of the group, an incentive. They have to work harder on the recovery plan, you know, the cash generation plan.
These new elements of the year were added to the remuneration policy that you voted for last year, so we'll have two specific resolutions on these points. In a fairly traditional way, obviously, we have reviewed all the remuneration ratios, remuneration of the Chairman and CEO, remuneration of the members of the leadership team, of the board members. So you will vote on these various points as well later on this afternoon. And we also worked on the remuneration of Henri for the coming year. So I talked about governance of the company. I explained the reasons why we had to change the structure of the governance system, and I've talked about the results of this decision.
The board has immediately started working on the recruitment of the new Chairman of the company. We wanted to have someone with an industrial experience. We wanted someone with a long and successful experience, as well as a top executive in top executive functions. We wanted someone at ease with the governance of a company, the organization of the board, and so on, and we wanted someone with a good experience in the transformation plans of the company, in the integration of major acquisitions, for example, which is characteristic of the phase the group is in today. So I will come back to this point. According to these criteria, we asked Mr. Philippe Petitcolin to join the group, and this is something you are going to vote on in a few minutes.
Now, mandate renewal. So the Board of Directors is going to slightly change. We are going to renew the mandate of the first member will be an institutional investor, a non-independent board member coming from the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Henri mentioned it. This Caisse is represented by Mrs. Kim Thomassin today. She is with us this afternoon, and that's the first resolution you will have to vote about when we vote about the board composition. Two resolutions now with on Mr. Philippe Petitcolin. With the agreement of Monsieur, with the agreement of Philippe, he joined the board in March 2024. Because, you know, we needed to recruit someone, so you will have to vote on this particular point, even though Mr. Petitcolin started working for us in March.
The second element, we will appoint Philippe for a full mandate of four years. As announced, if you accept the resolution, this is what the board is going to do. He, Mr. Philippe Petitcolin will then be able to become chairman immediately at the end of this specific meeting. So, Philippe, you will take the floor to talk to all our shareholders.
It's difficult to talk immediately after you, but what you said about me is too much, you know? So my name is Philippe Petitcolin. If I start in 2000, well, in 2000, I was appointed General Manager of Labinal Group. Labinal is in the distribution of electricity in planes. In a plane, you have something like 300 km of cable, so we worked in that particular field.
In 2005, SNECMA merged with SAGEM and became Safran. In 2006, I was appointed chairman and general manager of SNECMA, the engines of Safran Group, military, army, from the Rafale, for example. We work on Ariane launcher as well, but we work obviously as well on commercial planes. With General Electric, we're the leaders. We are the main manufacturer of commercial engines for Airbus, Boeing. In 2010, I launched the LEAP engine, the newest engine that decreased consumption of planes by 15%. We sell them to Airbus, Boeing, and the Chinese as well. After 15 years, they only have five planes in China, but anyway.
In 2011, I was appointed as chairman of SAGEM, SAGEM Defense, all the defense activities, electronic systems or weapons, ammunitions. A year and a half later, I was appointed as managing director of SAGEM Security, biometrics. We're talking about payment cards, documents, identity cards, passport, biometry in general, and by biometrics, identity. In 2015, I was appointed general manager of the group, of Safran Group, and I stayed as a top manager of Safran until for six years. I sold Security during those six years. They were really not doing as well as the other branches of the group, and I helped buy Zodiac. So 35,000 employees in Zodiac, so something close to what you have in Alstom, with Alstom and Bombardier.
Zodiac was a very international company, and at the end of 2019, just before arrival, just before COVID, they employed 100,000 people, so EUR 24.23 billion in sales. So similar to the numbers you've seen. It's an activity I kept until the end of 2020, and at the beginning of 2021, I was appointed as chairman of KNDS. KNDS is the result of a merging between two French companies. A French company, Nexter, 25,000 people, and a German company Wegmann. And we became the first manufacturer of equipment and vehicles of the army land forces. We manufacture the Leclerc tanks, and we work on German tanks. We manufacture the Caesar cannon, the gun, ammunition, and so on. So we are leaders in Europe in that particular field.
As Chairman of the Board of KNDS, I only have two shareholders. So we have the French state on the one hand and a German family. But even with two shareholders only, it's not, I would say, easy anyway. It's not easy to chair such a company, especially when the French state is one of the two shareholders. That's something I can say. So I've got an industrial experience. I have an experience. I've worked a lot on projects, long-term projects. When you manufacture a landing gear, for example, or an engine for a plane, it has consequences. So it's comparable to what I will do here, I suppose. And I have a long experience in the defense sector. I have a long experience in merging operations, Zodiac that was merged in Safran.
A few words about Alstom, which I've now been discovering for a few weeks. It's a great company that had a crisis, growth crisis, external growth crisis, I suppose, but I've met employees. All the people I've met so far are talented people, motivated, so I hope a lot for the future. People, customers trust Alstom. EUR 90 billion in your backlog, you know, it's quite extraordinary, obviously. And I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, I would say, by innovation, the level of innovation of the group. So I'm very happy indeed, and if you obviously vote in and appoint me as chairman of the board and then as general manager of the council, I will do all that I can to make your company, our company, even more competitive and performing. Thank you very much.
Okay. So the last resolution submitted to you on the composition of the board is to give a new mandate of four years to Mr. Jay Walder, who joined us in the last few years, a few years ago. And he already had the opportunity to introduce himself, and we thank Jay Walder for his contribution and the in-depth knowledge of our industry. So the resolutions regarding the board of directors and, further to those developments, if you accept them, the board will have 12 members representing seven nationalities with 50% men, 50% women, a very nice balance, and independence rate of the directors of 80%. Let's come to the resolutions regarding the remuneration policies.
As you see, seven resolutions will be submitted to you. I'm going to take them one at a time. I'll be brief on this slide. First, resolution number 11. Some minutes ago, I said to you that given the circumstances, we changed the remuneration criteria of the CEO and the teams for the past year, so that we could introduce a criterion completely focusing on the restoring of the free cash flow commented by Bernard Delpit. You see that what we decided, if it was not restored, we would get rid of the variable portion.
If it was an intermediary level, we would reduce a variable remuneration by 50%, and if we had the final performance to restore a positive cash flow, of course, we would maintain those variable remuneration. We are in the second case, so as you see, a huge effort was made during the second half year to have a free cash flow significantly positive during the second half year, but unfortunately not at a high level enough to join the initial objective. So we are in the second case, 50% of the variable remuneration. That's where we are, and it will be presented to you in a few minutes. We did the same adjustment as to the Board of Directors.
Why we are sharing responsibilities with general management, we want to show solidarity with them. And as you see, the Board of Directors has no variable remuneration. It is based on the fixed remuneration. So we apply this criteria on the fixed remuneration or the portion of the fixed remuneration was not paid yet because the remuneration is paid in two half years. So it's the remuneration of the second half year which were applied with the same criteria and the same results. And let's say that the remuneration of the board was reduced by 50% during the second half year of the financial year. This will be submitted to your approval with the resolution number 12.
Resolution number 13. This time, we are talking about the future, the remuneration policy applicable to the CEO. We reconducted the remuneration policy of the previous financial years. We have reconducted to a large extent, but we added two changes, however. The first modification is, The variable items based on the financial performance of the company, especially the cash flow generation. The collective items is mainly the financial items, will increase in significance from 60%-80%. And the second modification is to reconduct for 2024-2025, the same type of mechanism of minimum cash flow thresholds to reach. We introduced this in the financial year 2023-2024.
So those two modifications, minor modifications, result unfortunately from the experience we had during the financial year of 2023-2024, and to be sure, as Henri and Bernard has said, both of them, to be sure that we get out of those difficulties. So this leads to a remuneration policy. I'm not going to comment each line because it is reconducted to a large extent, but you'll find the details in the Universal Registration Document you have read. Let me come to resolution number 14, related to the remuneration of for the chairman of the board.
It's a standard remuneration, if I may say so, in terms that there is only a fixed annual compensation, as usual, and that the amount proposed is the amount being an average amount if you, if you look at our French and European companies and our peers, so no special comments. The remuneration policy for the board members, resolution number 15. Here, again, no change in the current allocation rules. We have exactly the same amounts as the one you have known since several years. Then, the remuneration. Oh, sorry, I forgot something. We are coming to the ratification of the remuneration for the financial year 2023-2024.
For the Board of Directors, I've already mentioned it, compensation reduced by 50% for the, so altogether for 2023, 2024, it's EUR 678,750. So, much under the amount of the previous year. So we consumed slightly over 50% of the total envelope authorized by the shareholders, compared to 70% for the previous year. Resolution regarding the remuneration of this Chairman and CEO for the past year, resolution 17, I already commented on the criteria and the items. So the variable remuneration is EUR 418,000, and as you see, the objectives were met at 88%, but not for the cash flow.
On top of that, we applied this adjustment of 50%, therefore, we have this amount of EUR 418 ,000. This is it. Henri, I'm going to give you the floor.
Yes, thank you, Yann. Thank you, Yann. Thank you very much. I would like to call the chair of our Audit and Risk Committee, Sylvie Rucar.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor of chairing the Audit and Risks Committee. I've been chairing this committee since 2018. We now have four members. Three of them are independent, myself included, according to the rules of MEDEF. A new independent member was appointed in September 2023, so we're now four members in this committee, and the level of independent members was 66%. It's now 75%. What about our role? It's decided by the rules of the group. We attend.
We support the board with overseeing issues relating to the preparation and control of accounting and financial information, and obviously, sustainability information. We keep an eye, we monitor, the quality of the financial and sustainability information. We control the effectiveness of internal controls and risks management systems, as well as internal audit, and, we control the statutory, auditing of the annual and consolidated accounts by the statutory auditors. In attendance, the Executive Vice President and CFO, the audit manager, the general group performance manager, the accounting, general accounting as well, are constantly invited in this group. Other people come, according to the subjects we discuss. We organize a regular review of, procedures, we monitor their financial impact, and we, discuss, these points with the manager of sustainable development. Statutory auditors are present to all our meetings.
They will give us their conclusions at the end of their work. I make sure that they are independent all the time. Specific points can be addressed without the presence of management. We have this meeting without the presence of management at the end of each of our meetings, with the presence of statutory auditors. Internal rules were updated in March 2024, now in accordance to the European Directive on financial transparency. We organized a better reviewing of information on sustainability, in particular. We work in full coordination with the various committees of the board. During past fiscal year, we organized five meetings with 100% attendance, and the audit report is in page 240 of the document you were given.
Let me say a few words about our specific activities this year. The committee reviewed the half-year consolidated account as of end of September 2023, and the annual consolidated and statutory account at the end of March 2024. The committee made sure that the method used were the correct one. The committee reviewed the budget of the year 2024/2025, and the financial chapter of the three-year financial plan. Sustainability information. The manager of sustainable development presented the methodology used for the taxonomy and the results obtained. She also presented the progress made in the implementation of the CSRD directive. We were presented the methodology for assessing double materiality and the draft consolidated matrix of impacts, risks, and opportunities. Risks now.
As we do every year, the audit committee examined and worked on the various on the top risks for this group. We made an in-depth review of the management and mitigation mechanisms for foreign exchange risk. So these mitigation mechanisms, as I explained, were obviously studied, and we approved the group's tax policy key elements. Given all that has been said about the results and the situation of cash, we obviously paid attention to cash flow generation. Specific reviews were organized. In September 2023, we had, we made a review of the cash performance project, something we started in March 2023, and it was. It's been reinforced, and it's now developed. Now, internal audit and internal control, the auditors have presented the activity.
We made a review of the main findings of the year audit program, and we monitored the progress of corrective measures arising from the completed audits and approval, and we approved the internal audit plan. We made an evaluation of internal control actions. We made an internal review of the efficiency of the internal control procedures implemented within the group, and made sure that everything was done in compliance with the situation. The various results were presented and discussed during our committee meetings. We also examined the fees paid to the statutory auditors. We made sure that they are obviously fully independent, and we controlled their relationship with this group.
At the end of all these meetings, we wrote a report, which we gave to the board of directors. We explained our comments, and we made a certain number of improvement suggestions. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your attention.
Thank you, Sylvie. I would like to invite the chairwoman of the Ethics and Compliance Committee, Sylvie Kandé de Beaupuy.
Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, chair, it's an honor for me to chair the Ethics and Compliance Committee, created in 2010, and since, I manage it since 2017. We have, as the committee, our missions. The committee reviews definition of the core values and the ethics and compliance policy, and makes recommendations to the board of directors. Within our mission, coming from the internal rule, updated this year, in practice, the committee, throughout the year, has to see to the compliance with the rules, and you see the main missions of this committee. I'm not going to read it out.
We'll just mention a few missions, like, the review of the core values when necessary to adapt them to circumstances and to the development of the commercial practice, the, review of the organization of the ethics and compliance function, and, makes recommendations as appropriate. We review a presentation on the group's risk map concerning ethics and compliance, and, the, examine the relationships with the stakeholders regarding ethics issues, and we examine the human resources policy concerning human rights. Let's come to the more specific activity of our committee as conducted during this financial year. All information on this, are in, the business report or management report, page 125, 126 of the URD.
So, during the last financial year, the committee reviewed following objectives: the objectives and performance indicators of the group, and we monitored the status of the implementation of the integrity program, including the new Code of Ethics 2020, the group's instructions, but also the training and awareness efforts of all employees, the deployment of additional resources to the ethics and compliance department of the group, notably in light of the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation, without forgetting the examination of the integration plan of Bombardier Transport, the monitoring of the implementation of this plan and its finalization. Further to the results of the six audits of the anti-bribery management system, the results were also reviewed during the meeting of the committee.
The renewal of the certification for the whole group, including the former Bombardier Transportation, was obtained till 2026. The committee reviewed also the sanctions policies and the initiatives promoting the ethics culture and the speak-up initiative culture. We were kept regularly informed of the progress of past or pending procedures and investigations, which are also described in the universal registration documents. During the financial year 2023-2024, our work was mainly three meetings and attendance rate of 88%. Emmanuelle Petrovic, General Counsel, and the Ethics and Compliance Manager, attended to all our meetings. Further to those meetings, we reported to the Board of Directors. We communicated on our comments, and when necessary, we made recommendations for improvement.
Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, Mr. Chair, I would like to thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Sylvie. I would like to invite the Chair of the Integration Committee, Frank Mastiaux, to take the floor.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Chair, I have the honor of chairing the Integration Committee. I've been doing that since 2021. We have four members in our committee, two of them are independent. The objective, the main objective of the Integration Committee, that was created after the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation, is to support, facilitate, supervise the various integration processes of Bombardier within Alstom. Report about its development to guarantee the board of Alstom, to guarantee the fair execution of the plan to Alstom. We make a certain number of recommendations to the chairman. We try and work on the integration of a different company. The committee was created for a duration of two years, for a period of two years, but it's going to work another two years until January 2025.
During the past fiscal year, the committee met twice with a level of participation of 100%. Besides, a presentation was shared with the members of the board. The Integration Committee reviewed the work in progress and the integration process. We made sure that the deployment of this plan, the deployment of synergies and progress were made in this integration procedure. The committee has three different priorities: drive change, and make sure that it's properly implemented at local level. We also work on the convergence of processes. Third point, we validate the process. This year, the main point of attention of the committee was the action plan following an external evaluation. After more than two years of integration, progress and results are obvious.
As far as human capital and change are concerned, we made a survey on the commitment of employees, and we obviously have to make a certain number of efforts in some regions. The economic model has been reached, but it has to be improved. The various processes are being deployed at the moment, and IT convergence is up to 90%, so it's in line with the objectives. The commercial dynamics has been confirmed with a good level of synergy, EUR 260 million in 2023-2024, last fiscal year. The positive trend observed in the integration schemes must now be reviewed, and they have to be controlled from a financial viewpoint. The deployment of integration plan is on the right tracks.
It's adapted, it's properly driven according to the various needs of each organization, region, function, and line of activity. In order to meet all the challenges, an external evaluation confirmed that the integration corresponds to the highest existing standards, and actions are, as I said, on the right tracks. The Integration Committee has constantly kept the Board of Directors informed about its work and made comments on the main points of discussion, and we made proposals to improve the situation whenever that was necessary. So thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Frank. Thank you for making the effort to speak French. Thanks. I'm going to give the floor to the statutory auditors, represented by Cédric Haaser from PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit.
Thank you, Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, good afternoon. On behalf of PwC and Mazars, it's an honor for me to report on our mission for the financial year closed on the 31st of March 2024. Our report on the annual financial statements on the related party agreements are in the URD document, as well as in the notice brochure. You see the different pages. I suggest, as usual, to summarize the main items. First of all, our firms, PwC and Mazars, control the financial statements of all subsidiaries of the group.
The objective, our mission, is to be sure about, have a reasonable position of the loyalty of the accounts, and that there is no insignificant abnormalities. We have an audit approach, taking into account the main risk, the economic environment of the group, and the scope movements. Our audit approach is adapted to the various business lines of the group and the organization. We check the current relevant operations and the non-recurring events, and we act according to the professional standards applicable in France. Our conclusions were shared with the financial managements of the entities, the regions, and the financial management of the group, with regular meetings and with the general management.
We also reported on the organization of our works and our conclusions to the audit committee, as well as the board of directors of your company. In line with the European regulation, our reports are on the key items of the audit regarding the significant risks and our answers. Our first report on the ordinary part for this meeting is the annual financial statements. The first resolution you'll have to vote on for this report on the annual financial statements of Alstom SA. According to the French accounting rules, we checked the evaluation of the securities. We certified these accounts without any reservations and observations, and we proceeded to the specific checks on the content of the report on the corporate governance. No specific comments.
As to our report on the consolidated financial statements prepared according to the IFRS, the subject of the second resolution, we certified the consolidated financial statements without any reservations and observations. A key point of our audits was the significant items, the accounting of the sales and margin in the long-term contracts, and the evaluation of litigations and investigations. We also produced a special report on related party agreements. We said that there is no authorized agreement during this year, and so the special report is clear. And PwC, as a third independent party, issued a moderate report on the verification of the consolidated extra financial performance declaration. No specific abnormalities as to the sincerity of the information.
Finally, our last report for the ordinary meeting is on the profit forecast for the outlook 2024, 2025. We implemented the diligence in line with the professional standards applicable in France, and we do not have any specific comments. So the report is on page 61 of the URD. I will finish with the extraordinary part of this general meeting. Resolutions 19 and 21- 30, you'll have to vote on those resolutions regarding operations related to the share capital, i.e., possible reduction of the share capital, issue of shares and miscellaneous securities with preservation and/or cancellation of the preferential subscription right, issue of ordinary shares and/or other securities, so the company reserved for members of a company savings plan.
Report on the issue of ordinary shares and/or other securities giving access to capital with cancellation of the shareholders' preferential subscription right, reserved for a category of beneficiaries, and the authorization to grant free existing shares or shares to be issued. We established a report. You see the pages indicated here on the slide, and the reports are to be found in the URD. For the authorization to give to the board of directors, to summarize the conclusions of all those reports, we have no observations on these modalities proposed by your board, and we'll produce an additional report if necessary. This is it. Thank you very much, shareholders, for your attention.
[Foreign language] Thank you. Thank you, Cédric. We are now going to open the floor to questions. We have received no written question, so I would like to give the floor to shareholders. We have hostesses in the room if you want to ask your question, or you can obviously fill in a form if you prefer to ask a written question. Or take the mic, if you want to.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Just a point of clarification. If I understood you well, 2023, 2024 was not a good year for Alstom. A certain emergency measures have been taken, divestments, the issuing of hybrid bonds, this obligation in euros, and separation of the position of chairman from the position of CEO.
So the CEO, if I understood you well, had a fixed remuneration of EUR 950,000 before the separation. Today, the CEO still keeps the same salary, EUR 950,000, plus the salary of the new chairman, EUR 450,000. So it means that the level of remuneration of the two jobs has increased by 50% compared to the past.
Maybe Yann, who is the chairman of NRC, it seems to be true from a mathematical viewpoint, but because you have now two positions and no longer one position, so I guess you cannot really compare the situation. It's normal to give a remuneration to a CEO on the one hand, and a remuneration to the chairman on the other hand. That's the only comment I can make on this point.
I think that each remuneration is in line with the benchmark. The new chairman has an added value, so he has to be to get a remuneration. Sorry, no microphone. Any other question?
Oui. Good afternoon. Will we catch up this two-year delay on the delivery of the train sets, MI20, if I'm not. And what about the penalties regarding the fact that you did not deliver a certain number of products on time? Will we catch up, or how much are you going to pay in penalties?
Well, thank you. I'm not going to make any comment on each contract one by one. I'm not going to make a comment on these contracts. It's a contract managed by SNCF and RATP, and the region Île-de-France.
They will have to tell you more about the evolution of the contract. We cannot make any comments on these different contracts. It's not our role here. We have improved the situation. We deliver more on time, so we have more satisfied customers. We have better cash situation during the second half of the year. Yes, the situation is improving. If we had to pay global penalties, you know, it's always very complicated. When you have a delay, it's due to all sorts of different reasons, and Alstom is not always at the origin of the delay. So a certain number of things have to be taken into account, and this is very complicated, and I'm not going to give you details. But the evolution, the situation is evolving in a very positive way.
That's all I would like to say. Good afternoon, Monsieur Duchet, individual shareholder.
You have talked about the success of the Traxx locomotive. We read about that in the press, by the way. I think they're made in Germany and Italy. Now, what about the Prima locomotives? And my second question, the TGV M, TGV, I've seen a short film on the concept. It seems very interesting indeed, but what about the situation? What about of this particular train?
You obviously have read about that. The locomotives, first of all. The Traxx range, it was, it's mainly a European range of locomotives. As you might have heard, Alstom, before the acquisition of Bombardier, had not sold any locomotive in Europe for a long time.
So the Prima range had a certain number of products that we sold outside Europe. The situation of the freight in France is very bad, but in Europe in general, we did not sell any European Prima. So the Prima range was not up to date, I would say. We were not able to deliver any interesting locomotive to the European market. Now, we have a more uniform range. In Europe, we have the Traxx, and at international level, like India or Kazakhstan, we are still selling Prima, but we call them Traxx because we want to sell. But they are the locomotives we sell outside Europe are the sort of similar to the Prima. The TGV M, I won't go into the details. It's a major innovation. You have now a traction battery on board this particular train.
The train can work with it, or can run on 40 km on the tracks, so in case there is a problem with the catenary, for example, it doesn't have to stop anymore. So we are solving a certain number of technical problems at the moment. So we are on the right tracks from a technical viewpoint for this new generation TGV, TGV M.
It's a written question. The acquisition of Bombardier was an operation full of mistakes. How is it that we still have the same members on board the board of directors in spite of the mistakes?
Bombardier operation was a major strategic operation. I am still convinced that it's been very positive for us. It's given us a different positioning on the market. We were a small player. If you remember the discussions we had, you know, when Alstom Transportation became Alstom Group, everybody said that Alstom was too small to survive. We focused too much on Southern Europe. We didn't have the necessary technology, and so on and so forth. The operation and the merging with Bombardier gave us the critical size, market by market. It's necessary. It's necessary if we want to have a sustainable success on this particular market. We had to face a certain number of challenges.
We had to find solutions to some difficulties, but we are overcoming the obstacles one by one. We do it on a very systematic way. Each year is better, so we have to go on in the same direction. I'm convinced of that, and we have to increase and develop even more the plans. We have to be able to build an efficient group, a group that will create value for the shareholders.
Dominique Chauvin. I work in prospective. Since COVID-19, the air transportation sector is attractive again, I would say. And it's doing well from a technical viewpoint, new engines, and the fact that soon they will use decarbonated fuel. There are radical change which are possible today with electricity, for example, a short-distance planes in particular. And as far as urban area, cities are concerned, most vehicles will soon be electrical. So my question is about the market you're talking about. How do you see this new competition of air transport? If they're going to be more and more decarbonated, how are you getting ready? How are you preparing this new competition?
Well, a few elements.
Obviously, as a citizen, I'm the first to approve the fact that, planes and cars are less and less, have less, less emission of carbon. It's more and more decarbonated. The trains are decarbonated. The quality of the train is not only due to this pure decarbonation. It's not only due to that. If you take, cities, obviously cars will be more and more electrical. But if you take, an RER here in Paris, it's, the. It's like you have a motorway in the middle of Paris. The flows of passengers transported by urban systems have nothing to do with the flows of people traveling by car. As soon as you are in a densely populated zone, you must have better transportation systems, and the only ones which are available today are trains.
The movement in favor of trains in cities was not born with decarbonation. It was before we had the problem. It was born something like 20 years ago, when cities became bigger and bigger. In emerging countries, cities are so big now, so they had to find a solution. If you take Paris, the CO2 level in Paris has nothing to do with the CO2 in Île-de-France itself, in the region itself, due to cars. Now, if you compare the train to a car, we are not really in competition with planes, and planes, as you know, for long distance long-distance transport, they have no specific solution for decarbonation. The train is also transport more people.
When you're going between Paris and Lyon by train, if you have 16 trains per hour between Paris and Lyon, it's something you cannot do with a plane, obviously. Even cities, countries with airports, more than with a lot of airports, they are now choosing the train. So, I'm not worried about that. I think it's good. It's a good thing that you have decarbonization in all transportation systems, but I have no worry whatsoever about the future of the trains.
[Foreign language] Good afternoon, Chairman. Jean Richard, individual shareholder. We were amazed at your profit warning. I've been a shareholder for some time, and I thought, we thought that everything was fine, and we read everywhere that you had five years of order book. So it's very seldom for a company to have such an order book. You had a wonderful order book. The quality of your works was fine, and all of a sudden, we were taken aback. You didn't mention that so much in the past, and I wonder, I wonder whether what you are saying is going to manage or solve the problem of Alstom.
I do understand that there is some inflation, but inflation, well, I experience inflation rates at 10%, 12%. So here, 3% or 4%, it's not the same. It's more than zero, that's for sure. But the inflation is not the only guilty. Of course, you had the Bombardier problem. I recognize, I admit that Bombardier was a good opportunity, but if you pay for Bombardier a much higher price than what it deserves, that's a problem. And the final problem is that the contracts, the agreements that Bombardier had and you took over had showed a deficit or with a very low margin. So you had analysts, and they probably warned you, so you should not have been taken aback by this Bombardier story.
The inflation, okay, I can understand. But Bombardier, no, you had plenty of time to analyze the situation. So I wanted to know whether you are going, in the future, going to solve your problem of governance in a correct way? Because the press is talking about it, governance and management problems, not now, but a few months ago. So is it going to be solved, and will it be possible to trust you again, to trust your company? Sorry. Thank you.
I fully understand your remarks. I have not really necessarily mentioned the problem of inflation. I've not looked for excuses, given the situation we had to go through this autumn. Let me remind you of the fact that the Bombardier case took place at a difficult macroeconomic and geopolitical time.
The COVID crisis, for instance, and now the Ukraine war, which disrupted the supply chains, which created bottlenecks, the inflation, of course, which was, of course, lower than what you are used to, you know. But you can live in a stable way with inflation, or if all of a sudden you have the inflation going up, it's not good. So I'm not looking for any excuses or pretexts. We had a high number of negative external factors, and by the way, we forgot the crisis of the electronic components. Many industries. We increased by 40% our production, but many industries had to stop their supply chain because of a lack of electric components, which was not our case.
Every year, every day, you hear the defense industry saying that they cannot produce more, the aircraft industry as well. So the external environment is not that favorable. This being said, you're completely right. We put into place a plan. The operating margin, it keeps increasing year-on-year. Let us say that the mix of our projects keeps increasing, but there was this accident, and we talked a lot about it, and I'm ready to talk about it. An accident of cash generation, cash flow generation, related to a debt, too high a debt level. Yes, we have to improve the governance. Yes, we have to improve our action plans. I can only agree with what you say. We drew lessons from this incident. Well, you know very well that life is always more complex, not black and white.
This being said, we absolutely need to draw the lessons from this so that we can be in front of you and that you can trust us, and that's the decisions we made. Within six months, many, many actions were taken because the crisis emerged or the difficulty emerged in October. I'm in front of you in May, and as you said, the press. Well, I'm not going to comment on the press, but the press itself evolved within the six months, and not everything is black and white. Within six months, the debt reduction plan has been implemented. The de-risking plan was put into place. The actions taken by Bernard to improve the management of cash flow and the
All, all this has been put into place. So actions were taken swiftly, and they will bear fruit. I'm sure of that.
When?
Sorry, it's off mic. It's off mic, I'm sorry.
Answer?
Well, you know. There are governance principles. We have to follow governance, and the governance will decide on the actions to take. I don't know whether sanctions are key now. Let me say something to you. We changed the bonus criteria of all managers to. So that they are stricter.
In which other group or, do you find this situation?
The allocation criteria have stayed, but the many groups, because of the COVID and so on, on the contrary, they changed their bonus allocation criteria to allow the employees who were talented, of course, to obtain those bonuses, although the objectives had not been reached. We did the opposite. If we had not changed the bonus allocation criteria, the bonus of everyone, not my case, of course, but the 18,000 employees of Alstom, it would have been probably multiplied by two of what it is today. So we took the actions, and the employees of Alstom, who worked very hard during this period of time, showed responsibility that the word sanction is not adequate, so we have to balance things.
Good afternoon. I have several points.
First of all, I would like to thank you on the parity for the increase in capital. You said one to five. That's very good. Often, banks have complex parities, and the small shareholders are the first to pay those expenses. So one to five is good. We ask the small shareholders and all shareholders to make an effort. Mr. Delabrière should show us that the management has made an effort in terms of remuneration. But it's like last year, we do not know exactly how much the management is paid. You send us back to the universal registration document nobody has. So I wanted to see that the management contributed to the effort. Second point, you talk about hydrogen.
I don't know whether it is profitable, but there are black clouds on hydrogen. You have the French Academy. They said it's a nonsense. Then Jancovici, she interviewed at the National Assembly, said the same. Total and Engie have just said that they were reducing to a very large extent their forecast in terms of hydrogen. So every day there is something against hydrogen. So to me, it's nonsense from an economic and industrial point of, and energy point of view. I have another question or observation. For the CO2 footprint, you talk of Scope 1 and 2. It amounts to 1%.
Scope 3, it will be 1, 2 of our suppliers and subcontractors, and you will have this information because the subcontractor will say, "I changed my material, the method is going to be very costly," and it will be passed on to you and your cost. How do you take account of this? And what does Alstom do for the small shareholders? What about information clubs or meetings? Do you see, do you organize anything on that? Thank you.
Several questions of different nature. Well, the capital increase, yes, it was a good ratio. Participation in the effort, I answered that point. Once again, the bonuses of the 18,000 employees of Alstom have been impacted by what happened, and it's, of course, the case for the general management as well. On hydrogen, careful.
We should be careful about the fashion and the fads. I've been in the industry for some time, in the railway and the power industry. I've seen different fashions. I attended seminars of Total, explaining that the solar power will never be a solution because the solar panel was 10 times more expensive. I'm saying that hydrogen, of course, has characteristics. We have to know them. I do not know any other solutions to decarbonate over longer stretches, because only the hydrogen can be carried as an energy instrument. It's not energy as such, but it allows to carry energy, the power.
Yes, to produce energy, it's maybe costly, but at the same time, you can produce it in an intermittent way, and it is rather well coupled with renewable energies, which are intermittent as well. We talk of the energy crisis, but in some areas now, the cost of electricity is negative. So we should have to take this, all this into account, and let's step back somewhat. Let's be modest. Europe missed an opportunity with the batteries, and we are catching up. But we have to catch up. We, the industries, the automotive industry, the battery industry, we have to catch up on this European. We are lagging behind. Europe is lagging behind. In China, in Japan, some of our partners invest billions on hydrogen.
So we should not wake up in 10 years' time, and we should be facing the same situation as with the battery. They invested ahead, and now it's too late for us to catch up. So what I observe is that hydrogen is not a mature solution now, given the cost and so on. But let's be modest in our forecast. Many made mistakes in the past, so we should not close all doors. This solution is interesting. The small shareholders, Martin described the sustainable development strategy. Martin will be listening to you, and if you have a telephone number, you can explain to you what the small shareholders can do.
I'm a bit disappointed that you do not read the universal registration document. If you think that we should do more to better inform the small shareholders, of course, we are all ears. There's a phone number, and the investor relation department can answer your point, and we can organize visits. And then for Scope 1, 2, and 3, you're completely right. Scope 3 is the most significant one, but it's not so much the suppliers. Of course, the suppliers, but Scope 3, that's mainly the users of our products. That's what we are doing to reduce the energy use, and it is very much impacted by the energy mix of our customers.
Scope 3 in France, SNCF and nuclear energy is very different. Nuclear power is very different in France, in Germany. If the suppliers have to increase their prices because of this, and it is absolutely necessary to reduce the emissions, those criteria have to be taken on board, and most operators take into account environmental criteria for the calls for tenders. So we'll benefit from the fact that the emissions are reduced by our suppliers. It will be better valued by the operators.
I cannot let you say what you just said about batteries. You're saying that we work, France is working hard to catch up. But we started early, maybe too early. France, anyway, started early, and with Renault-Nissan, we were global leaders on batteries. We had 50% of the market share at global level in those days. Unfortunately, the government did not support the players, Nissan or Renault, and they had to slow down. Because in those days, the only thing that was interesting or seemed interesting was hybrids, rechargeable hybrid, and it's a. It has no meaning whatsoever. And the battery today is developing. It will go on developing. I think we are at the Stone Age of batteries. I mean, things will develop. And electrical planes, it's a bit early, obviously, but they will happen.
They will be manufactured. Short distance planes and so on, flying cabs that will work here during the Olympic Games, they will have to be electrical. So you agree with me, we have to be careful about the forecasts. It's difficult to forecast anything, and if we. We can't focus on one possibility only or one development only. We can't afford to miss the winning energy of the future. One last question, because I think that we have reached the end of the discussion.
Good afternoon. I have a question on the difficulties of the production. You are increasing production to counterbalance your loss of cash flow. What about the situation this year? Have you solved your difficulties in production? Are you have you increased the production level?
What about the future?
Now, two things. As you've seen, and during the second half of the fiscal year, we were able to increase production. We delivered more trains than planned, so, and that was very positive, and this is the reason why we were able to generate cash during the second half of the year. It was supposed to stop this year. In the coming years, we've reached a sort of plateau, you know, as far as the delivery of trains is concerned. So we are not going to go on increasing the production tools or the production itself. Now, you know our activity. We work on projects. Every project takes time, but we're not producing cars, for example, like in the automotive industry.
So some projects are big, others are slowed down. So this has an impact on our stock, but our production capacity is probably reached its maximum. There is no need for increasing it again.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
One last question.
Something I'd like you to talk about. The question was asked. I mean, there was a question about the remuneration of the CEO and the remuneration of the Chairman. I heard, but maybe I was wrong, I didn't hear properly. I heard that the remuneration of the Chairman would be added to the one of the CEO. Now, if you have two different functions now, two different persons, one should take half of what the other one gets, you know. I don't understand.
No.
Remuneration of the Chairman was calculated according to different references, according to a benchmarking analysis of, you know, the remuneration in similar groups. Similar to Alstom anyway. But the CEO remuneration didn't take into account the fact that the CEO was also chairman. We took the reference of the average remuneration of a CEO in other similar groups. You know, there is no major difference between, people who are chair person or people who are CEOs. Sorry, no microphone. We really have to move on. I would like to add something. The Board of Directors, with its remuneration committee, every year, you know, the board makes a comparison between companies which are in a sort of similar size, industrial companies, French companies.
We do not compare ourselves to American or British examples because the remuneration levels of other CEOs in those groups is usually higher. So we compare what we give to the CEO and to the Chairmans. We compare ourselves to other similar French groups. That's what we did this year, and I can tell you that the level of remuneration that we are suggesting are the results of this comparison. This is true for the Chairman and for the CEO. Now, back to what Henri said. How do we compare the remuneration of the CEO and Chairman to. We compare their remuneration to the remuneration of General Manager, of Chief Executive Officers. Most companies today have dissociated functions. Chairpeople and CEOs are no longer the same person, in most French groups anyway.
So in the past, we had a remuneration of CEO, not remuneration of CEO and Chairman, because you don't have many CEO and Chairman in French groups, so we are using the same criterion. And today, we are comparing the remuneration of a CEO with the remuneration of other CEOs in other groups. We have the details of all that in the report. You have the points of comparison in the report. I hope that you can read it. And you get, in details, the way where we are, at which level we, the group is for this and we've done the same for the Chairman of the Board of Directors. So that's what I wanted to explain.
Thank you, Yann. Okay, now we are going to have the vote of resolutions.
So thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, we are going to explain the electronic voting procedure.
[Foreign language]
As indicated at the start of the meeting, the quorum required for this meeting is 20% for the ordinary part and 25% for the extraordinary part. The final statement on the attendance sheet shows that the shareholders present, represented or voting hold 291,168,034 votes. So we've reached the quorum, 63.14%. The resolutions must be passed by a majority of the vote as held by the shareholders present, represented or voting by mail in the case of ordinary resolutions, by 2/3 majority in the case of extraordinary resolutions. I propose to present the title summarizing each resolution, provided that no one requests that it be read in full. I see that there are no objections.
I shall now present the resolutions and invite you to vote on each of them after I declare the vote is open. First resolution. Approval of the consolidated accounts for the financial year ending on the end of March 2021. That's approval of the annual accounts. The vote is closed. Resolution is adopted.
Resolution two. Approval of the consolidated accounts for the financial year ending on the 31st of March 2024. The vote is closed. Resolution is adopted. Third resolution. Appropriation of the result for the fiscal year ended 31st of March 2024. The vote is open. The resolution is adopted.
Fourth resolution, ordinary resolution again, special report by the statutory auditors on regulated agreements. Acknowledgment of the absence of new agreement. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution is adopted. Fifth resolution, ordinary resolution. Renewal of the term of office of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec as board member. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.
Ordinary resolution number six. Ratification of the co-option of Mr. Philippe Petitcolin as board member. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted. Seventh ordinary resolution. Appointment of Mr. Philippe Petitcolin as board member. The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is adopted.
Ordinary resolution number eight. Appointment of Mr. Jay Walder as board member. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution is adopted. Resolution, ordinary resolution number nine. Appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit as statutory auditor responsible for certifying the sustainability information. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution is adopted.
Resolution number 10, ordinary resolution again. Appointment of Mazars as statutory auditor responsible for certifying the sustainability information. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution passed. Resolution 11, ordinary, meeting. Approval of the adjustment, to the 2023-2024 remuneration policy for the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Voting is open. Vote is closed. The resolution was adopted.
Ordinary resolution: approval of the adjustment to the remuneration policy 2023, 2024 for the members of the Board of Directors. Voting is open. Vote is closed. The resolution stands adopted. Resolution 13. Approval of the remuneration policy 2024, 2025 for the Chief Executive Officer. The vote is open. Vote is closed. Resolution passed.
Resolution 14, ordinary resolution. Approval of the remuneration policy 2024, 2025 for the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The vote is open. Voting is closed. Resolution passed. Resolution 15, ordinary resolution. Approval of the remuneration policy 2024, 2025 for the members of the Board of Directors. Voting is open. Vote closed. Resolution was adopted.
Resolution 16, ordinary resolution. Approval of the information specified in Article L2210-9-1 of the French Commercial Code, Report on Remuneration. Voting is open. Voting is closed. The resolution was adopted. Resolution 17, ordinary resolution. Approval of the fixed, variable, and exceptional components of the total remuneration and benefits of all kinds paid during the last fiscal year or allocated for that fiscal year to Mr. Henri Poupart-Lafarge in his capacity as chairman and the CEO. The vote is open. Closed. Resolution is passed.
Resolution 18, authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to trade in the company's share. Vote is open. Vote is closed. The resolution is passed. Resolution 19, extraordinary resolution. Authorization to be granted to the Board of Directors to reduce the share capital by canceling treasury shares. The vote is open. Vote is closed. The resolution stands adopted.
Resolution 20, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to decide to increase the share capital by capitalization of premiums, reserves, profits, and other sums or other sums. Vote is open. Vote closed. Resolution was adopted. Resolution number 21, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to decide to increase the share capital to the company or of another company by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the share capital with pre-emptive rights. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted.
Resolution 22, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to decide to increase the share capital of the company or of another company by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the share capital with withdrawal of pre-emptive rights by public offering other than the public offerings referred to one, to-- in one of Article L411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was passed. Resolution 23, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of authority to be given to the Board of Directors to decide to increase the share capital of the company by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the share capital with withdrawing of pre-emptive rights by a public offering specified in the one of Article L411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. The vote is open. Closed. Resolution passed.
Resolution 24, extraordinary resolution. Determination of the issue price, within the limit of 10% of the share capital per year in connection with an increase in the share capital by the issue of equity securities with withdrawal of pre-emptive rights. The vote is open. Vote is closed. Resolution passed. Resolution 25, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of will be given to the board of directors to decide an increase the company share capital by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the share capital with withdrawal of preemptive rights reserved for members of saving plans. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted.
26 extraordinary resolution, delegation of authority to be given to the board of directors to decide to increase the company share capital by issuing shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to the share capital with withdrawal of preemptive rights reserved for a category of beneficiaries. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted. Number 27, extraordinary resolution. Delegation of authority to be given to increase to the board of directors to increase the number of securities to be issued in the event of a capital increase with preemptive rights maintained or withdrawn. Vote is open. Closed. Resolution is adopted.
Resolution 28, extraordinary resolution. Right to issue issue shares and/or securities, giving immediate or future access to shares to be issued by the company. The vote is open. Vote is closed. Resolution is adopted. Resolution 29, extraordinary resolution, delegation of authority to the board of directors to issue shares following the issue by subsidiaries of the company of securities giving access to the company's share capital with withdrawal of preemptive rights of shareholders. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted.
Resolution number 30, authorization to be given to the board of directors to grant free of charge existing shares or shares to be issued to employees or corporate, and corporate officers of the group or to some of them. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted. Resolution 31, extraordinary resolution, amendments to the articles of association, raising the percentage of shares or voting rights, triggering a declaration of crossing statutory threshold. The vote is open. Closed. The resolution was adopted.
Resolution 32, extraordinary resolution, amendments to the articles of association, raising the age of the chairman of the board of directors. The vote is open. The vote is closed. Resolution passed. Resolution 33, ordinary resolution, powers to carry out legal formalities. Voting is open. Voting closed. Resolution is adopted. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I would like to thank our secretary, and, I remind that, hostesses are available in the reception hall to collect the voting boxes you've been given, which can only be used for electronic voting. Before adjourning this meeting, I would like to thank you once again for attending and for your renewed confidence. Thank you very much.