Thank you for being here for today's presentation, which is going to happen in person. We are going to present the annual. A brief comment about this meeting. We hesitated a lot about having it in person. Many of you would attend in person, so this is a tryout. We will see what happens, but we're delighted to have you here, both in person and online. We have recorded a significant growth of 29%. There was a twofold factor for this external growth. 18% of organic growth. 11%- As COVID period, especially in the aeronautic sector. Now we have to be very cautious and look at the forecast for Suge. We have been underestimating our potential in France because we have been the leader for many years, but it is still the case today.
Our activities in other sectors, in other regions and areas where we are not sufficiently present. The potential remains important and significant in France. Of Lyon, in the east of France. We also want to conquer the west of France because we have so far concentrated on Paris and Toulouse. In the north and in the south, everywhere, we offer many IT services. This is what we are known for, but we are of potential. What is reassuring is that there is no one that can compete with us, so we are still small, but the others are smaller than us. This development potential is going to be linked to our management and coordination capacity, and I will come back to this later. The OPA was. I'll come back to this a bit later.
Let's talk about this 11%. This is very good news. I need to show you the picking up of the activity after COVID. Some activities represent 7% or 8% of our revenue. I'm thinking of acquisitions, for example. We have this average of 10%. When we reach 10.5%, we're very happy. It's a good year. When we remain at 9%, we are less happy because Percent is very good, very positive for us, so we would like to secure this 11% for 2023 as well. This is not to be taken for granted for many reasons, and I will explain that. Usually, we talk in numbers of billing engineers, and then we look at the average contract. We have 47,500 engineers. Created new engineers in the M and A.
We will see that the figures will significantly increase some three-fold. What we can say is that since 2016, if we look at December 2016, and we compare it to December 2022, we have doubled our head count. This is aligned with our strategy because it represents approximately 50% of our growth, and the remaining 50% of our growth is in France. We can say here is that we look at the number of engineers. We look at the 47,500 engineers who are working on various projects throughout the table with the specific figures from each country. We can see where the demand is higher from our clients. In that case, we will talk about projects and not engineers.
If we were to adopt that lens, many projects in America and in France are executed. four countries actually deliver offshore projects in a low cost fashion, the cost is not the only reason. Excellence and centuries of competence in India, for example. This is why the number of engineers that you can see on the screen does not correspond to the revenue. Let's take Revenue have significantly increased, those projects have been executed in Romania or in India, for example. The same is true for Asia. You can see the figures on the screen. The revenue is different. Some of the revenue has been generated by morale. You have to take this into account in this presentation. You have the increase in the number of engineers and the increase in revenue and projects.
There are some exceptions, of course. All countries have recorded some growth. The momentum is very positive, and we need to accelerate. This is where we have placed our hopes for the future and in the Asia Pacific region as well. Some time talking about it because it is important for you if you are interested in ALTEN. Internally, our teams are a bit bored of. In blue here, you can see the engineering team with medical equipment, medical research. It's basically everything that we design, that we produce, and we sell. It's. Yellow, you can see all the administrative and internal services. Accounting, HR, sales management, web marketing, mobile apps, et cetera. Everything that has to do with the infrastructure, networks, the cybersecurity, cloud, and so on. In the past, we used to say...
That's not true because we have IT components both in the blue and in the yellow team. We have a lot of software, engineering, IT engineering in the blue section here. Planes, cars, and many other situations we need for IT, for example, in... We design and we produce the software in the blue section, and we also do that in the yellow section. In the blue section, we also take care of ALTEN as a company concentrates on engineering with approximately 75% of our activities. The remaining 25% is about... We came up with the colors, of course. It's just a way for us to make a distinction here. 75% is represented by engineering services with the manufacturing subsection. With robotics, IT, and everything that has to do with manufacturing. We are not really involved...
Management and the supply side of things. This is not really what we concentrate on. Projects on average involve 15 people over a period of 1.5 years. Usually, people involved come from great schools. They are more specialized in robotics or automotive or something else. Usually, they have four or five years' worth of experience. As I said, teams are usually made up of 15 people. For bigger projects, we have teams of 30 people, and for smaller projects, we have teams of 5 people. New solutions for internal needs, revolving around major data solutions such as SAP, for example. Infrastructures and et cetera. We need to be present in both areas, but of course, we need to concentrate on the blue segment. Patients, for example.
This shift is really helping us to develop our activities. It allows us to work with a wide range of companies. Thales Competencies, our clients are very varied. In this slide, you can see also some of the companies that we work for. Group, which were not called ALTEN because they are quite distinct. For PMO, you can see it on the top, left-hand side. Throughout the world, we have another section for rail or telecom providers, energy, et cetera. This is a strong request that we have. Further, there is another segment of technical documents. I don't know if you have this kind of presentation from our competitors. Now, about the breakdown of turnover per sector. You can see the same ratios on the previous slide because you can see here...
Visual section in blue. In 2020, the majority of those sectors recorded. Industry was really doing well with a new plane type. With a focus on decarbonization. We saw need increase, and there was a significant need of a leadership, which is what ALTEN has positioned itself as. In the. This is not only because of the war in Ukraine. Rather, the defense sector is turning digital and needs are changing in nature. There is an overhaul of military equipment. This is true with Thales, Bas- The deployment of constellations, satellite constellations. In the aerospace and defense industry, we have recorded some. We have seen some increase as well with traditional engines and some additional investment in revenue or the turnover.
We have seen some differences compared to other sectors. One of the powerful, they are present everywhere, they look at costs very closely. They include in the cost, the technical services. We do Morocco, India, and other countries because of this reason. This phenomenon is also arriving in Germany. We have seen a sharp increase in the number of... We have energy, life sciences, industrial equipment, and telecoms. You can see that life science is a sector where we were almost at... It is about clinical trials or high quality manufacturing when we talk about drugs, of course. It is as complicated as in the aerospace and the nuclear sector. We have renewables as well, which are going to see an increase in our activities. For the next three years... France as well.
For the telecoms, we talk about equipment, of course, and many instrumentations and machines. This is how we have established ourselves. We have been a bit disappointed by telecoms, we thought that the needs would be higher, especially with the deployment of 5G.
In yellow, bank and finance. It went very well in 2021, 2022. There's a warning sign for 2023. This, the arrow is not pointing... World of the IT finance. The only sector where there's a really strong demand is cybersecurity on all investments, admin ID... Based on the analysis that we've done, it's only affecting the first half of the year, it should pick up again from January to July. I've already commented on them.
In the next slides, sector by sector, we could see the major trends, automotive, aerospace, rails. Line in the first slide with a breakdown by sector. Then for the sectors in yellow, you have bank finance, insurance, retail services, and public sector. We are not... The major players because they take what we call BPOs, big processes of 200, 300 people for 10 years. Sometimes, they cut the price on a life cycle of 12 years, for a full process that is externalized. It's not to do... It's been offshore at 70% versus the blue sector, where the offshoring rate is 30%-40%.
It's not the core. That look like what we do in the blue sector, projects, including five or 10 people on work on specifications, and we have a technical team that knows how to manage and lead this. For CSR approach. It's something, it's part of our board. It's not just a trend because everybody wants to do climate carbon, inclusive company, inclusivity, diversity, gender parity, which are the major items of the CSR. Part of ALTEN's DNA, we have grouped them around some major themes and pillars. It's good to be measuring what we're doing. Major rating agencies, we're now at the top. We're still top two, top three of the service sector, including all companies. Parity approach is only 20-25 years old.
It's 20, 25 years old at ALTEN, supporting The promotion of women in management positions, and particularly in the world of engineering diversity by giving opportunities To this technical sector. It's all being measurable, we're very proud of the scoring and the ratings that we got. We could find or not. Go back on the M and A strategy. You could see at the bottom this divestment of a company. We don't give the name of that company. It's a subsidiary It didn't match the ALTEN business model. It was a service and distribution of software on The types of consultant. It was more like an consulting company like an Accenture, we didn't know how to develop.
The leader left, and we had a proposal from The money, we're going to try to buy some other 2,000 people who are much aligned with our business model, which is what we're trying to do. On board as of January 2023, we have some add-on that go from 200 to 500 people. This is our target for the moment. We can see In India, it's a company specialized in product engineering, which is our core business. They work on analytics project, but automotive as well. Allows us to get to a significant size. In the U.K., we are over the 2,200 consultant. In Australia, one company specialized in By developing the software development. In the U.S., we are working on the aeronautics in Seattle.
We doubled the organic growth of these countries by targeted M and As and easy to integrate. Usually, they're in earn-out for about two or three years, we can't really touch them for seven to 10 times the EBIT. With the goals that we present when we perform the acquisition. This is for the M and A. The capital side, it hasn't really changed. We still have a very strong share of the public, particularly like this for the last 17 or 18 years. I had announced that I would sell some of my shares to charities. I haven't done it, I decided to wait it out, but I will probably do it in 2023 or 2024 because it's something that I committed to.
Now I'm going to give the floor to Bruno, who will go into further detail in the financial results.
Anne. The slide that you used to look at, because that's how we present by half years. We like to show you the progression of the group's revenue. This is a goal that we set for ourselves and that we reached thanks to acquisitions and also a growth dynamic that is more important internationally outside of France and operating % 2021 and 2022. As Simon told you, they're a bit special years as well. We'll go back to 2023 at levels of operating margin that will be probably this year. The particularity is it didn't slow down particularly, it didn't slow down in the last quarter. Versus an adverse comparison with 2021.
For 2023, we'll have an embarked growth that is at 7% versus usually we have an embarked growth at 4%. 20.27% outside of France. We'll like look at this where the geographies of this outside growth. A contribution of the exclusively done internationally. Finally, a Forex effect that represented 2% this year is quite significant. The breakdown by geographical area, you can see that all geographies believed grew very significantly. They all have the revenue one month ago. I'll be more concise, but just in France. You know the growth in the automotive sector grew throughout the year. We started at 2% growth.
We ended up going through our old geographies, picked up very significantly in 2022 as, because, you know, catching up effect from COVID, but also because we launched many new projects. The other industry is that there's a pickup, very strong pickup in Germany, which has been sustained throughout the year, with aeronautics, energy, life science, and automotive that represent Germany. Sorry, Spain and Portugal, a growth above 20% that kept throughout solid throughout the year. That is well broken down on between differing. A very strong growth of 27%, so same similar sectors. Italy, for the 3rd year in a row, mostly those that I already told you about. Benelux, we have a situation that is a bit different between the Netherlands, on the one hand, that represent 60% of the area, that Belgium.
Scandinavia, you can see that Scandinavia is the only geographical area where we under 10%. The major count since came off of the local activity, and the activity picked up, but throughout the year and only increased in the last quarter. That's explains that growth that is smaller. That is, the business takes 38% growth. Poland is representing half of this in business. Romania is doing well as well. The appendix, you have all the growth rate quarter by quarter. You can see that the growth has slowed down at the end of the year, but the base effect was quite growing. In Canada, it's the banking sector and the space sector. Finally, we have Asia-Pacific growth of 30%, thanks to the automotive sector mostly.
India, 30% of the area and 40% because of the tertiary sector and automotive as well. Japan is 10%, represent two years ago that developed and that now represents 10% of the area and has a growth of 30%. The area of South Asia. The result now. An operating margin of 11% this year, a little, just a bit of you a while back. We have reached because of an improvement of the activity rate in 2022. We see on some projects, which is what we do regularly at ALTEN. We improve our capacity to manage the work packages, our margin grows. That allowed us to mitigate the inflation has been affected that. For some clients, depending in me.
That has allowed the group to go over the 11% in 2022. If we look at the semesters, you have the second semester would be lower than the first one. That was our forecast. Operating margin, that is the calendar, because the gap between the working days, between H1 and H2 is only two days. If you take into account the vacation and all that, it doesn't really affect the margin. Structuring of the group and acquisitions that were consolidated in H2, particularly the company in the U.S., that Simon mentioned, methods that cost very satisfactory and higher than our best forecast. You could see the share-based payment that represent there. You'll find the sale of shares of shares and minority interest in the U.S.
That is EUR 200 million. This added million euros, but that for EUR ten and a half million corresponds to earn-out payments that turned out to be higher that we had budgeted. That is showing in the... No non-recurring items, very few non-recurring items. The operating income is EUR 590 million. That is lower. The income tax expense is, we have a 22% rates of taxes on the added value that we did when we sold out our activities of the Agile Harbour , because half of the business is in the U.K. and the other one is in the U.S. Deferred tax that we have 22.16%. For 2023, we'll be at about 24.8%. That's what we're forecasting for 2023.
If we take off the lease costs, we have 5.2 million EUR. That's the number that you need to keep in mind. We have financial euro, other financial products that are exchange results, 3.5 million EUR, and the other net financial product, 3.2 million EUR. Is aligned with the one of last year, 8.2%. I would like to draw your attention that these costs integrate corporate margin of the margin is close to 10% and not 8%. In France, we have a gross margin that progressed by 90 bips for the same reason of the ratio price to salaries. In France, the SG&As, the sales have made progress. The participation of the employee for costs, of course, and that brought down the operating margin to 8.2%.
Internationally, we're at about 12%. The operating margin, it would be a little higher. Depends on countries and companies. Germany and Scandinavia kept going up with a margin of EBIT between 10, 7%-9% and all the other countries. Most of the non-recurrent is for the international, and our tax bracket is in 10% in France and 21% internationally. Over 1 billion, the goodwill over EUR 1 billion equity represents still 50% and of the companies that we mentioned early on that give us the gearing just under 23% and the earn-outs that are budgeted for EUR 55 million. 16 IFRS, 16 financial impacts.
I'll give you a few indications that you asked for to have an economic vision of our financial statement impact, nor on the balance sheets, nor on the income statement, nor on the financing statement. The free cash flow and cash flow, ALTEN's cash flow. Cash flow usual cash flow of EUR 430 million, a free cash flow of EUR 148.7 million. That allows us to... Because of the sell-off of the Agile Harbour this year is the positive. It includes the cash coming from that sale. The amount of the divestment is not shown, and it's of course calculated in gross value. The dividends were increased in 2022 over a year.
Finally, the other flow that you can see is it's all the Forex, the change effects. At the end of the on the WCR and cash flow, if the operating cash flow, I always present by, the increase of the WCR is very strong in the first semester because EUR 160, EUR 155 have the adverse impact.
We have an increase of the WCR EUR 118. If you take away the scope effects, we're talking inflows only. This variation of EUR 130 million to the growth of the activity, so purely organic growth, which is a mechanical effect, and EUR 90 million is linked to the DSO 1 days. This increase is explained as well by the same reasons, but clients and late billing, particularly on the work package activities. We need to be able to get some documents. We're trying to get the DSO lower by... To reduce it next year. Fiscal budget and fiscal debts, WCR imply the payment of the taxes. On the CapEx, not much to say. They are at about 0.7% of the revenue.
A free cash flow that represents 3.9%. It's still 3 points below the operating income. This is the explanation that I just gave you. To remember, 2022, another year of very high growth, organic growth, 18%, organic growth, and 30% overall. Very high, 11.1%, thanks to the improved gross margin, relative decrease of SG&A, and a stronger contribution of international, of course, that have profitability that is, are often lower than the runner group. A strong organic growth generated by the mechanical increase of the WCR revenue. As always for ALTEN, no to financing of its organic growth, external growth, self-financed and dividends, and a net cash hope will be able to invest very soon into other acquisitions.
I will now give the floor to Simon, who will present to you our development strategy for the years 2023.
Two slides to conclude this presentation before we give you the floor for the success of our plan for the future. We like to present the plans with a horizon to three to four years in order to specify and clarify our realization and reorganizations, both internally and externally. We had a plan for 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, so a four-year plan. Down to going from 30,000 to 50,000 engineers. This plan is now outdated because we are all 2022, so we had almost two years of advance here. The organic growth was beyond our expectations. Reassess, review our four-year plan for from now to 2026.
We can't stick with the current plan because it is outdated, and we need a new four-year plan from above 60,000 engineers. We could even aim higher than that. This is the plan for, yes, 70,000. To be successful, we need to shift our focus, the sense of the revenue. However, it is the country where we most capitalize our know-how, organization, both technical and commercial, the emerging countries as well. Of course, Alten remains a French company, very much centered in France. For example, in India as well, which are becoming increasingly important. To be successful in the next four years, we need to overcome. For 10 years, we've heard ministries and other organizations saying that engineers were not valued as they should. Pointless to just say this.
You just have to look at the world around you and see what happens. We should have been saying the know-how in the origin country. We should to say in the past, because we know that this can have some significant impact in geopolitical terms. This has been the case with some electronic components. It is important for our future. Schools, French schools are filled with foreign students. At the moment, we have mainly. It is important to change this situation. We need more engineers. We have a recruitment problem. We have this problem everywhere. We have quality standards. In order to reach that quality, we need to re-give them a salary which is satisfactory for them.
We will of course, have a delay between the pressure that we had in 2022, which has started to raise to our clients in 2023, 2024, and we need to concentrate as well on training to attract more engineers. Luckily, ALTEN is a. We need more young engineers compared to what happens in the yellow segment, where we need more experienced engineers around 40 years old. program. We, when we recruit engineers, we train them for six months, and we accompany them throughout their careers until they become, is what is going to help us to develop our markets. We are the leaders on the market, and we don't really to say that ALTEN is the favorite target of all recruitment officers and cabinets, because they know that we have the best.
We need to be able to send French engineers in the U.S., for example, to train local engineers. We'll need a few volunteers in order to develop our model abroad and to recruit and set up training and recruitment centers abroad. Commercial reorganization. We know that project leaders are present in various countries. I think of Peugeot and then PSA. Look at Airbus. We need to be in Montreal to be able to take part in the development of... All our clients are international clients, Japan, Korea, China, India. We have, this is expensive, of course. This should not significantly impact our profitability, we need marketing in other sector activities. The majority of our projects are multi-country. For example, in Airbus Defence and Space , we work both in space- our clients.
This requires more coordination of our activities. This is different from what we used to do in the past because we had more. We need to give more value to our competence centers. We have approximately 50 delivery centers which are concentrating on some core competency centers throughout the world. This requires some more dialogue in order to match the right clients as well to develop these centers. I think that the potential is immense here, and we need to concentrate more on this. The last but not least, we need during COVID with Adentis, for example, which went from 100 to 200 people. We want to concentrate in the future on companies which may be the target. The interesting target can be at 200 employees. It really depends.
These are the key factors for success for the next four years. six. We have everything that it takes to be successful. We have the offer, we have the excellence sectors, centers, or the expertise centers. Organization to be successful. We also can rely on a healthy financial statement in order to overcome some of the major challenges on the market. There are many challenges. In terms of integration. The objective is also to be above the 10% of operating margin and to have approximately seventy-. Questions, if you have any.
What about the free cash flows expectations for 2023? I'm not sure I understood. Let's say that the DSO decreases to three day and that the great increase of the WCR of 30%-40%. Does it make sense for you?
Could you maybe clarify the geographic area is sufficiently leveraged. Could we maybe improve our margin in some key areas? About M&A. If that's the case, don't you think that prices may be higher and therefore be above the range of seven-eight times the EBIT? Thank you very much. For the WCR, depending on good and bad years, we need between 12%-14% of our revenues, depending on the model that generate an additional EUR 13 million of WCR. This is a rule of thumb. If we do well, it can be higher. If we do less well, it can be lower. We can advance payment in our field of activities, we only get paid when the project is delivered.
Bruno, maybe you can say a few more words about this later. Options and where we have not yet deployed our model, we have a model which is not as profitable as the work package. Yes, we can improve our margins in many geographic areas in the Nordics, in North America as well. In India, too. We call deployment and the work package deployment. We will see, I think, some significant improvement in our gross margin, and I think that this will. Yes, that's the answer to your question. Regarding the M&A, Have already sold their souls, so to say, to investment firms or have been sold their shares. Two-thirds of them are already majority owned by investment funds or private funds.
We know how ahead, we know that in five years' time, we will have an opportunity. We can see that the situation is very target because usually they are lured by the call for money by investors, and they need to secure a very. That can go at 11, 12, 13 points of EBIT if the company is very, very interesting. We need a third of earn-out, so in order to secure our one point of EBIT. Usually it increases by three for every investment fund involved. I can tell you that there aren't many that are still. These has been fragmented in a great number of small companies of two-300 employees every time. That's it. Take your question. I wanted to say something. What really encouraged us to.
That this would give us the opportunity to acquire companies that are more aligned with our business model. Hello, Valérie Lecaussin-Sesia . We'll implement regarding the SO. What about the margins in those geographic areas where they are lower as to margins?
Well, I will answer the second question and Bruno will answer the first. Regarding incentives, ALTEN has the good or bad reputation to... 40%. Any manager in charge of 30 consultants or any department manager or any country manager, by the way, have a variable... To the growth of the growth margin, this is very important. We look at this and not at the EBIT, because we want to be free to invest without... Want to grow the number of managers that we have. This is what we do in acquisition.
When we have an earn-out, usually they don't invest. We want to find a compromise and make sure that this mistake does not happen with our managers. We look at the increase in growth margin, which is linked to the growth in. Have red flags that appear, and we know that we need to take some actions.
Yes. Let me answer your first question. We need to reach out to our clients. Lead to. I don't think that this is going to imply any changes in our processes. Once we send our invoice, we have no payment issue at all. You mentioned some pressure on salaries, a pressure which you have revenue as a whole.
Could you tell us a bit more about how you intend to pass on this increase and what are the salary inflation in offshore countries has become significant in some instances. Do you think that this implies some kind of a structural problem and a gap between the onshore or offshore? What about the trend? Can you tell us a bit more about this? Thank you.
Valérie?
The pressure on wages is not homogeneous, depending consultants. It goes from 3% to 12%, depending on the countries. It's often gaps over time. In some sectors, imagine these salaries working for the GAFA. A starting engineer can still make 120K per year. It's not what we give them. We cannot afford . We bill maybe in the U.S., we bill $120,000 in engineering. Location. In engineering, the average wage is very low, and we attract very young engineers by the quality of the projects. They come, and they learn for 3 or 4 years with us. Before, we like them to keep them for four-five years.
We like to keep 5% of the, all of them that we train to become business managers.
Strategy or support functions. We have not managed to reach this goal over the last 20 years. We have gone on being more aggressive on the recruitment side, it hasn't completely changed things around, but we had to because we have to address the experience or age. It's not the same at all. The people who have, from zero to two years of experience, they complete the project, they do two or three projects, and then they maybe they leave. At 40% turnover rates, it's also on the older ones. We have to deal with that. We have invested in trying to learn from each country. In India, it was very violent. In Eastern Europe, it's very violent as well. Comparing to offshoring, you are right. There are some clients that are wondering because...
Not to deter other countries to offshore towards their country they do that. They do the devaluation of the currency regularly. On 2022, I valued at 2%. We cannot pass it down. Some prices are negotiated with major key accounts, and after three years, we renegotiate with them. Some clients, I will take an increase on prices because I know the quality is there, and some people don't want it. It really depends on the clients. I think it's about 2%. I believe that we'll be at 3% in 2023. That will probably pass on by two-thirds. Will there be a loss that... Experience the... Who leave, they become freelancers? No. When they leave the group? No. Either freelancing is not really...
It's quite expected for industrial clients because we built their flagship products. They don't want any freelancers. We have confidentiality agreements, non-disclosures, et cetera. In the yellow sector, it can go up to 20%, the freelancers, because it's a world of specialists. The margin of offshoring, is it higher than onshore? If it's well managed, which is not always the case. Be careful, there are two ways of doing offshoring. You have the transformation offshoring, which is, Do some cost reduction, and I would like to have these projects in Romania or India. That we don't make any money there because the technical management is still based in the origin country, which is Germany. They are projects that we win from nothing. As the major Indian companies, they have sales reps in all Western companies, and they bring it back.
They have sales teams that are not even based in the local country. If you look at the Indian, major Indian companies, there's Indians. People go back and forth between India and the U.S. They can make 20%, 25%, and the client is happy because at the end of the day, he has the same cost than if it was a transformation cost. Hello. In countries where the margin could go up, you didn't. For the rest of the group and for the bank, can you give us more details, why it slowed down at the first semester? Is it specific to your leading margin in France? The numbers that we presented, it's complicated because we have many structures and many investments made in France that serve other countries.
Example, in India, we're imposed to make 15 points of EBIT, for example, and it's the same for other countries. A lot of costs are coming. Says, but that's complicated to evaluate what is really an international service or a French service. We have maybe a lot of cost-cutting structure. Can we improve the margin in France? Substantial offer, but that won't be a big volume, so it won't have a huge impact. You had another question? On the slowing down. A lot of budget costs from 10%-20% on deploying the networks and cybersecurity. We receive questions on the platform, so I'm going to take a few. Growth for the years to 2023 to 2026 were our goal. First, question is, why is the end of last year and...
2021 and the end of 2022 that is higher than the previous years. We finished the year with a number of engineers that is higher than the average headcount. One that we are used to have. For organic growth, for 2023, 2026 expected, it depends on. For 2023, 2026, we're not going to communicate them, but the 70,000 engineers are going to be explaining that. We slow down as well. It's just to give some indications on what we can reach on the turnover rate, Simon already answered. On the margin, we have several questions on the Not stay at 11 or more, considering the growth that is expected. We already gave some elements of answer.
On the one hand, this year we had a business rate that was higher, we're not scale, we understand that the growth does not generate economies of sales. I would say that it growth requires us Volume does not allow to make some economies of sales, such as in the other industries. If we take into account a business rate, that would be guidance, which is about the normative level for ALTEN, which is just above the 10% but not an 11. It's not how we feel today. There's a couple gains to zero. There's another question for Simon. Somebody's asking Simon why you want to sell a third? It's not sell, you've It's a personal commitment that I made since the IPO of ALTEN in 1999.
Also I have a lot of ideas, a lot of projects for charities that will need funding in different countries. It seems that in x number of years, you'll see that the group will be managed by a foundation. Not at all. The shares that are going to be given to the foundations will be. There's a member that left with the sell of the Agile Harbour in the U.S. There's a new board member that is coming in. It's on internet, it's first, it doesn't make a big difference. What matters is governance. You have many groups where you don't have any more major shareholders. In this way, sometimes. We have a board that is well, gender parity, 50/50. It's quite, works well.
Who can predict the future, you know. On the divestment, it was EUR 145 million revenue. You've sold it? Or did you have a very good multiple? We cannot disclose anything on that, unfortunately. If you read the income statements, you'll find all the. It was just for the sales of the software. There are two margins. There's the real margins of the services and one into that. Great. Hello. Axel Sznajer from ODDO BHF . I have an question. Line. If I exclude those that were mentioned on the slides, and if we go back to the slide on 2023. I'm trying to find my slide. In January 2023, to be precise, and you have about 1,100 that will only have an impact on 2023.
The other ones were already integrated in the number of consultants. Looking at another 1,000 consultants with 300 that are potential. Our target, our annual targets. Question. On the telecom sector, we thought we understood that the growth was not up to your expectations this year. Can we expect a ramp up? Still is doing well. It was performing well, and there's a potential to ramp up. It's often our Well in telecom in three countries only. It's about our capacity to have a significant size to address all the needs, managing the architecture. VMs also in telecoms, very localized in California or Northern Europe or China. We have to be very good on their ground. That's for the equipment side.
We've identified some targets with the due cloud migration of all the data from telecom operators. That would be great if we could buy this kind of companies. Thank you. Hello. I would like to go back on the goal, the historic goal of 10% of operating margin. That side to be, to make more margin on the yellow part, because it's, maybe, something that is... Can be more easily offshored for improving margins. Maybe is it linked to the global context for 2023 that explains that. Maybe, we can have, a change thanks to the yellow side, or is it... What, how do you feel about that?
Our goal is not to increase the percentage of everything that is enterprise services, because we only take over the part that we know how to do as engineers, product development. We develop softwares. We have people do that. We don't sell it. We're not distributor. We don't partner with the major players. When it's IT. Our share will represent 25%-30% of our revenue. Package is software development with people are hard to get at the moment. The only way where we can do much more, go get projects with the sales forces in Western countries that are entirely priced in India and made in India. There you.
What you can do over 20%, look at the service companies, IT service companies, which make 15.20%. There are no further questions, we'll conclude here, do not hesitate to-