Yes? We can go? Okay.
Busy.
[Foreign language]
Ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I am happy to welcome you to the Annual Combined General Meeting of Forvia. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Michel de Rosen, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Forvia. I have with me Patrick Koller, CEO and Director, Olivier Durand, Chief Financial Officer, and Jill Greene, our new Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of the Board of Directors. This annual moment is an essential event to inform and discuss with our shareholders about the results, prospects, strategy, governance, and social and environmental goals of the group. I would therefore like to thank you for coming today. I would also like to thank the many shareholders who've already cast their votes by mail and those who are following the general meeting remotely.
As you know, this general meeting is streamed live on our website and is recorded and will be made available for later viewing. I would also like to thank the members of the Board of Directors who are present in the room today or who are following us remotely. In 2023, in spite of a particularly complex and unpredictable environment marked by persistent inflation and high interest rates, the group maintained sustainable and value-creating growth. Commercial successes were recorded in all areas and all business lines, especially those devoted to tomorrow's mobility, such as hydrogen and sustainable materials, allowing for high and selective order intakes for a total of EUR 31 billion for 2023. After the acquisition of the majority stake in HELLA in 2022, Forvia has become a global connected mobility leader, mobility that is connected, personalized, and sustainable.
A tight and fruitful cooperation with HELLA teams helped already achieve many synergies in 2023 ahead of the roadmap, leading us to raise to over EUR 350 million the cost synergy goals by the end of 2025. This is the outcome of considerable collaborative work between the teams of Faurecia and HELLA. This is also evidence of the strength that these two companies have when they work together to create value for the entire group. As we regularly communicate, the group's deleveraging has become an absolute priority in the current macroeconomic context, marked by higher interest rates than in previous years. In line with this imperative, deleveraging the group has met its commitment by publishing results in line with its POWER25 plan.
The efforts made in terms of cash generation and the finalization of the first EUR 1 billion asset disposal program, therefore, helped reduce our debt by EUR 1 billion in 2023. A second disposal program of the same magnitude was announced at the end of 2023, and it will be a contribution to further deleveraging of the group. All this is done with professionalism and talent by the excellent team in our financial department. Forvia is, of course, a forward-looking company. In February 2024, the group announced the launch of the EU-FORWARD program. This project, which is a five-year project, aims to strengthen the competitiveness and agility of your group's business activities in Europe.
With this project, we will achieve higher profitability in Europe, in particular by accelerating the rollout of artificial intelligence within Forvia in order to optimize investments and R&D costs and through an improved management of programs and factory utilization. As you very well know, the automotive industry is transforming in general in the world, and in particular in Europe. We have no choice in the matter. We need to adapt to these changes to remain a competitive leader. The EU-FORWARD project is in line with this imperative. In this project, we are very careful about the social and labor dimension. The various local teams in Europe are actively working on promoting internal mobility as well as local partnerships in order to offer a viable future project for European team members who will be impacted. Several years ago, the automotive sector was stable with good medium-term visibility.
In 2024, such is no longer the case. Our environment has become more volatile, more unpredictable, especially when it comes to geopolitical factors or market changes or inflation. In such a context, the group needs to find the right balance between determination and agility. But be reassured, in this constantly changing environment, the group has major and valuable competitive advantages. Patrick Koller will tell you more about them in his comments.
Of course, I hear your questions this morning again about the weak share price of your company. All members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee own Forvia shares. Like you, we are frustrated when we see that the share price does not reflect the progress made by the company or its medium-term outlook. I'm very often asked why initiatives conducted to create value are not found in our share price.
Well, yes, yes, I think that the share price does not reflect the true value of your company. Of course, we do not determine Forvia's share price. The latter is determined by the market. But since the beginning of the year, we have indeed underperformed our French peers. But since our last general meeting, we've done a little bit better than them in spite of our debt, which is still high because of the recent acquisition of HELLA, and which makes us temporarily less attractive for investors who are reluctant to buy leveraged stocks in a global environment which invites to caution. It is my belief that as we further continue deleveraging the group according to an accelerated schedule, we will reduce the financial burden related to this debt and will prove our ability to deliver on our POWER25 goals.
So the group will recognize the value creation potential of your group, and that will be reflected in the Forvia share price. But be reassured, dear shareholders, that all leaders of your group are fully mobilized to serve Forvia's best interests. On my behalf and that of the Board of Directors, I want to express our gratitude to Patrick Koller and his colleagues in the group's management for their commitment. Every day, they fiercely fight with courage, energy, good judgment, professionalism, and integrity to grow Forvia and reach their goals, our collective goals. To close this introduction, I would like to thank you, dear shareholders, for continuing on in this journey with us in your commitment to sharing our goals in terms of sustainable development and value creation, for believing in our long-term value vision for Forvia. Thank you for your loyalty and patience.
I would like to recognize all employees of the two companies of the group for their engagement, their creativity, their solidarity, and agility in the way our companies work according to the challenges of a deeply transforming industry. Finally, I wanted to recognize two exceptional people. Jürgen Behrend left our Board of Directors last July in 2023 after our last general meeting for personal reasons. Before that, he was the CEO of HELLA, and he played a key role in the decision of HELLA's family shareholders to sell their stake to what was then Faurecia. We will not forget him. A second tribute, Odile Desforges, is leaving us after this general meeting after her term as Chair of the Audit Committee. With her wisdom and remarkable elegance, Odile was for eight years a pillar on our board. I would like to wholeheartedly thank her on our collective behalf.
I'll come back to the leadership team here. You know Patrick Koller and Olivier Durand fully. You don't know Jill Greene that well. Jill is succeeding Nolwenn Delaunay, who left our group at the end of October 2023. Jill is a U.S. citizen, and she's very familiar with the group. She joined it in 2016, first of all as Chief Legal Officer for the North American region and then as Chief Counsel in charge of international legal experts for the group and has been residing in France for three years. We also have with us in the room members of the Board of Directors, in particular Denis Mercier, who's the Chair of the Remuneration Committee. Jean-Bernard Lévy, who's the Chair of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee.
They will present the main topics discussed by these committees. Esther Gaide, who will succeed Odile Desforges as Chair of the Audit Committee after this general meeting. We also have with us Nicolas Peter, Member of the Audit Committee, who was co-opted in October 2023. You are now asked to vote on ratifying his co-optation. This combined general meeting of shareholders meets on first notice. The all convening information was made public in the timeframe prescribed by law. The accounts, reports, and all legally mandatory documents were made available to shareholders according to the legal and regulatory applicable provisions. All these documents, which I shall not read the full list of, are on the table at the back of the room if you want to check. We will now appoint the bureau. We will check the quorum and remind you of the agenda of our meeting.
I can see that amongst shareholders present or represented, we have the Peugeot 1810 company represented by Guillaume Falguière and the FCP Faur'ESO Mutual Fund represented by Daniel Humbert-Droz. Both are here in the first row. If you agree, Guillaume Falguière and Daniel Humbert-Droz agreed to act as scrutineers of the meeting. If there are no objections, thank you, gentlemen. I would like to inform you that Frédérique Lodieu, where are you, Madam? Yes? Bailiff is here to attend this meeting on our request to make sure that it is unfolding correctly. I suggest that Jill Greene acts as Secretary of the Meeting. Thank you, Jill. In line with applicable provisions, I will chair this meeting as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
I'd like to remind you that for the ordinary part of the meeting, the meeting can only validly decide if one-fifth of shares with voting rights are present or represented. For the extraordinary part, the meeting can only validly decide if one-quarter of shares with voting rights are present or represented. Regarding the quorum, I'd like to inform you that Forvia's share capital is currently made up of 197,089,340 shares. Out of this total number of shares, you need to deduct the number of Treasury shares of Forvia, or 790,091 shares. This to obtain the number of reference shares for the calculation of the quorum. I've just given the numbers. The number of shares owned by shareholders present, represented, or who voted by mail or on the internet, who have given proxies, is 120,511,230 shares, which is 61.39% of shares with voting rights.
This is a much higher percentage than the quorum of 20% and 25%, respectively, discussed for valid decisions by the ordinary and extraordinary parts of the general meeting. Since we have a quorum by a large majority, the meeting can validly decide. When it decides in the ordinary part of the general meeting, resolutions will need to be adopted with a simple majority. When it decides for the extraordinary part of the general meeting, decisions will need to be made with a 2/3 majority. I'll remind you also that this meeting is asked to vote on the agenda that was communicated in the convening brochure that was made available to you before this meeting. No changes have been made to this agenda, and so I suggest that I do not read it fully. I'm now calling this meeting to order.
This is the overview of our meeting covering the following subjects. First, Forvia is a tech and sustainable group, a presentation of Forvia leading positions in its business and in terms of ESG, financial performance 2023, a description of a quickly evolving environment in which Forvia is operating, Forvia's strategic responses, sustainable development and governance, remuneration of corporate officers, statutory auditors' reports, questions and answers, and finally, a vote on resolutions. Patrick Koller, Olivier Durand, Jean-Bernard Lévy, Denis Mercier, and the College of Statutory Auditors and myself will present these various topics before resolutions, about which Jill will say a few words. We'll now show you a quick video, and after the video, Patrick Koller will present the first topic, Forvia, a tech and sustainable group.
Ladies, and gentlemen, good morning. A very big thank you for being here with us today.
After this video, I'm going to show you the major progress of our company, which over the years has become a high-technology and sustainable technology group. 2023 was characterized by a contrasted environment marked by positive factors in the growth in automotive production, in growth in automotive production to 90 million vehicles, and gradual improvements in supply chains. But 2023 was also impacted by strong inflation, high interest rates, and unfavorable foreign exchange variations. Against this backdrop, the group's performance was robust, and we fully reached all our goals. Three key figures to remember: organic growth, 14%; increased operating margin, + 100 basis points to 5.3%; and net debt reduced by close to EUR 1 billion. To summarize, all of our 2023 goals were met in line with our financial roadmap, POWER25, and our deleveraging priority.
This year still, we've built on our strategy, which is fully aligned with the most buoyant trends in the mobility sector. This strategy is based around three areas. The first one is electrification, but also all the energy management part, which includes power electronics as well as battery management. You can see that this is major growth that we have ahead of us between 2023 and 2028, + 24% per annum. The second major segment is safety, which includes lighting and self-autonomous driving with growth of 11% per annum over the same period. And finally, regarding vehicle interiors, a cockpit which is more and more digital, but also more and more sustainable with new materials, new architectures, which help significantly reduce the CO2 content. There are also growths over 10% per annum.
Beyond our strategic positioning, we also have a wide, balanced, and diversified portfolio by business activity, by region, and by customers. We have six main business lines with leading positions in each of them. We are global number one in seating structure systems, our legacy business, and we are global number three for full seats. We are number one in the world for cockpits, and we are at the forefront in terms of development and production of sustainable materials thanks to the creation of our MATERI'ACT entity. We are the global number one for pollution control systems. Moreover, we have the ambition to become the global number one. We are on the right track for that when it comes to hydrogen systems with major investment and successes in the last few years.
We're also the global number three in the area of lighting, and we are recognized as a technology leader in lighting. We are positioned between number one and number three depending on the various segments when it comes to our electronics business. Finally, we are a leader in our European aftermarket in distribution. Geographically speaking, we are present in all major regions with an international production network, with R&D centers, and commercial offices as well. With that, we are able to be as close as possible to our clients to understand their expectations in the various regions and to capture potential growth opportunities. Meanwhile, when it comes to our clients, we have a balanced portfolio of over 80 OEMs with an ambition for none of these customers, none of these clients to account for over 15% of our global turnover. In 2023, this wasn't the case.
Volkswagen accounted for 17%, but there too, we are on the right track that we have set ourselves. To conclude, we have a diversified and balanced portfolio, and this is very important because that will enable us to withstand the market turbulences, to better anticipate them, and to better manage risk. In our permanently evolving environment, innovation is a key differentiation and success factor, and it also contributes to favorable pricing. This year still, we have proven our ability to offer state-of-the-art technology, which is high-performance and sustainable to meet our customers' needs. The group's footprint as it is now is no longer what you knew 10 years ago. From an equipment manufacturer, we've become a recognized technological leader. This year still, our innovations were recognized by major international bodies. Three received awards in the CLEPA Innovation Awards 2023, European Association of Automotive Suppliers.
Another four received awards at CES 2024. More recently, two innovations received awards as part of the PACE Awards of Automotive News. Of course, this made us really happy and proud amongst the team. Our leadership is also connected to the fact that all of our innovations aim to reduce our carbon footprints. 100% of our innovations or innovation projects should provide for a significant CO2 reduction. This is the rule that we set ourselves and that we check and control very closely. A few examples to name, but a few: NAFILean-R, which helps reduce CO2 emissions by up to 85% compared to traditional materials. Here, these are door panels. Developed by MATERI'ACT, this biocomposite, which is a mixture of natural fibers and recycled materials, will be found, for instance, on the new Renault 5 E-Tech.
Now, let's watch a quick video showing you a detailed overview of our technology portfolio.
Hello there. Welcome aboard. Thanks. Can you tell me more about tomorrow's car, about the experiences I'll have? At Forvia, we believe that we can go beyond what a car usually does. We pioneer technology for mobility experiences that matter to people, that matter to you. But concretely, what will you do for me? We provide technical and innovative solutions for electrification and energy management, safe and automated driving, and digital and sustainable cockpit experiences. Safety first. That's very important to me. Safety is our top priority, of course. We provide vision systems to ensure both you and automated driving functions make the right decisions. Awesome. But how do you do that? For example, we developed a new radar family, the 77 GHz Gen 7 radar, paving the way to automated driving.
We also designed the Skyline immersive display, including a driver monitoring system for safer roads. Okay, Forvia. I'm impressed. And there's more. The e-mirror with Safe UX engine also widens your field of view. And as we are talking about visibility, to protect both you and road users, we created the Light Tile for transparent doors. Okay. I understand that safety is a top priority in the road experience, but I also want to see and be seen. And you will. Our SSL HD headlamp meets the highest standards in visibility, making driving at night so much easier. And our brand new FlatLight offers maximum energy efficiency and performance. Tell me, Forvia, we often talk about interior beauty. What's your take on this? Interior beauty? I assume you mean the car's interior. Indeed, we design a digital and connected cockpit for personalized experiences.
Imagine a dashboard with a never-before-seen floating image technology. It's called Air Vision, and it offers new ways of displaying information and immersive experiences through image reflection. A cockpit augmented with our automotive apps market. All my senses are awake. But what about comfort for my back, Forvia? Do you work on it? Are you kidding me? We design sleek and premium intelligent sensing seats. They are safer, more comfortable, desirable, and sustainable. What else do you have in store? There are also great seats revolutionizing the driving experience for electric vehicles. Our Supremo seats, a leap forward for electric vehicles in comfort and sustainability. I'm glad to hear that you are committed to sustainability, Forvia. Maybe more than you expect. We drive innovations that benefit people, but also the environment, with sustainable materials. With NAFILean-R, for instance, a biocomposite range made using biomass and recycled plastics.
We are designing car parts that can have many lives with a greater focus on repairability and provide sophisticated automated diagnostics. Congratulations, Forvia. Integrating sustainability in your solutions is key to cleaner mobility. Talking about clean mobility, don't forget our solutions developed for hydrogen and battery electric cars: hydrogen storage solutions, the Coolant Control Hub max, and the High Voltage Power Box. So is this what the car of the future will look like? Future? Why future? These technologies already exist. We at Forvia are at the forefront of the mobility revolution.
Nowadays, you can't talk about innovation without talking about sustainable development, and sustainable development is core to our strategy. In 2023, we continued making significant progress on our CO2 reduction roadmap, which was validated by the SBTi, a scientific consortium working under the United Nations.
We are indeed the first automobile industry company in the world to have received SBTi certification for our carbon neutrality roadmap. It's an ambitious roadmap, and we aim to achieve zero net emissions by 2045 with two midterm goals. In 2025, we will achieve carbon neutrality for Scopes 1 and 2. In 2030, we aim to reduce our Scope 3 emissions by 45%. Now, these are projects which require us all to pull our weight within the company, and that is why we have launched the Design for Scope 3 project, which I will present later. But on this slide, what you see is some of our achievements so far on Scopes 1 and 2. We are one year ahead of schedule compared to the roadmap as of the end of 2023. Compared to 2019, in 2023, we achieved energy savings of 26%.
We've invested in renewable energy production capacity, 700 GWh in 2024, which is around 70% of our electricity use in Europe. Corporate ESG goals remain at our core to what we seek to achieve. Diversity is a subject we take particularly seriously. We've been working on that for a long time, and it's something which can foster innovation and growth. In 2023, we've continued making headway. We have 31% of women who are executives or engineering roles and 27% women in our top 300. This is an important result, and it's a result we've achieved two years ahead of schedule, as I say, compared to the roadmap. This is the fruit of a proactive approach involving training to promote better understanding of the benefits of diversity and to encourage an inclusive culture.
It's also the fruit of targeted recruitment, mentoring, and coaching programs within the company to increase the share of women in senior roles, as well as an ambassadors' network enabling us to make progress depending on local context. We've also taken a decision to index the variable share of remuneration of our top 300 based on the increase in women in senior roles in order to change things. Now, these are crucial pieces of work, and they're supported by our core beliefs and a set of common values which are shared throughout Forvia. Just to close this section, I'd like to pay tribute to our foundation, showcase that. It was created in 2020. One of our beliefs is that we need to support communities in the countries we work in.
The Forvia Foundation focuses on projects with a high social and environmental impact proposed by our employees, focusing on three particular areas: mobility, the environment, and education. Since 2020, the foundation has supported 75 projects, which have been carried out by 300 volunteers from within the group and benefiting 8,000 people across 19 countries. Let's highlight some of the key achievements from 2023. The foundation worked with two partners, Plastic Odyssey and the Maud Fontenoy Foundation, to raise awareness of the need to protect the oceans, which are the main sources of biodiversity on Earth. We support Plastic Odyssey to recover, recycle, and reuse plastic from the oceans to give a second life to that plastic and new applications. For example, using MATERI'ACT and their involvement, we've been able to design a full vehicle interior where 20% is composed of plastic waste recovered from the coasts.
As part of the partnership we have with the Maud Fontenoy Foundation, we support the Biodiversity and Climate Trophies, the purpose of which is to support projects of PhD students aiming to protect the oceans. While we have conclusion, we can say that 2023 was a year in which we made significant progress across the board and achieved a number of key milestones for our financial roadmap. It's Olivier Durand who's going to present that.
Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders. I'd like to review with you now the detailed results for 2023 for your company, starting with this slide showing that Forvia has improved across its financial indicators in 2023. Turnover is up strongly, up by 11% to reach EUR 27.2 billion. Operating margin is up one point, from 4.3%-5.3% of the turnover, representing in 2023 over EUR 1.4 billion in absolute terms.
Net cash flow is also up by 34%, reaching EUR 649 million, which is a doubling in two years, and it represents henceforth 2.4% of the turnover for last year. Net debt, reduction of which is the priority goal of the POWER25 program, is down EUR 1 billion over a year and EUR 1.4 billion over 18 months. Hence, the leverage ratio, as defined as the ratio between net debt and adjusted EBITDA, has fallen from 3.1% to 2.1% over 18 months, which is clearly in line with our goal of achieving a ratio below 1:5 by the end of 2025. 2023 was also a very good year, commercially speaking, for Forvia. We had an order intake of EUR 31 billion, which is a ratio of new orders to turnover of over one. We've been able to be selective about that.
We can focus on high-value segments because we're selective from a financial point of view, because our results are in line with POWER25, in particular as it concerns reducing industrial investment before pre-launch and production starts up. By business line, 25% of order intake was for electronics. In terms of motors and engines, around half the contracts we won, or 46%, for our four electric vehicles. And from a regional point of view, Asia represents 36% of the overall total, which is over EUR 11 billion, meaning that our geographic exposure is more consistent with the global market. And it brings us also into this area of the world, Asia, which is a strongly growing one. To focus in now on turnover, here we have organic growth of 14%, which is an outperformance of 4.3 points compared to overall automobile production, which is up 9.7% for 2023.
All our businesses across the group have contributed to that performance, led by seating, with 16.2% of organic growth. It's also true for the regions. Asia stands out with organic growth of 17% for 2023. Two other points to bear in mind in the development of our turnover. First is the negative changes in exchange rates, which has a negative impact of 5.2% or - 15%, which is around EUR 1.3 billion. This is due to the drop in the Chinese yuan. It's also to do with hyperinflation and strong devaluation of the Turkish and Argentine currencies. The second point is a scoping effect, + 2.1%, representing EUR 515 million. And that essentially represents the 12-month consolidation of HELLA for 2023 compared to 11 in 2022, because in 2022, we started as of the 1st of February.
The second point to bear in mind is the sale of the exhaust utility vehicles, which sold in early October to Cummins, representing -EUR 102 million. Coming back now to the operating margin. So we were saying before, here we have a one-point improvement over the periods, 4.3%-5.3%. This is a strongly growing market, and so the increase in volumes is the biggest reason for that increase. The margin has also benefited from two engines of growth, which are specific to Forvia. First of all, generation of EUR 139 million of additional synergies due to the teaming up with HELLA, and I'll come back to that in a second. And secondly, the drop in losses relating to the seating contract in the U.S., which we exited at the start of the fourth quarter of 2023. This increase has been possible despite two unfavorable aspects.
First of all, the impact of currency. Obviously, that is an across-the-board impact and therefore has an impact on the operating margin of EUR 138 million, plus the non-recovered inflation of EUR 75 million. If we're able to pass on to our customers most of the additional cost of raw materials and energy, that's one thing. But wage inflation is more difficult. It requires negotiation, and we need to make every effort to improve productivity gains in order to offset those additional costs. Coming back now to the synergies we've achieved by teaming up with HELLA. As you can see from this slide, the program is going better and faster than what we had planned. For 2023, we are well ahead of our target with an overall amount for net synergies of EUR 190 million, which is well above the initial goal of EUR 120 million.
The closer we collaborate, the more we see potential synergies that we can release. So we've generated purchasing cost synergies due to the size of the new company. We've also developed shared service centers, which bring down our overheads. We also have efficiency gains in the field of IT, for example, having created a shared company to manage both companies' IT needs. And the last point is logistics, where there are a number of opportunities, the effects of which will be felt in 2024. All of this means that as of the start of the year, we're able to once more revise upwards our target for 2025 from EUR 30 million -EUR 350 million of aggregate profit. Looking now at the profit and loss, the highlight of 2023 here is the return to an overall net positive result, EUR 222 million in the black, which is EUR 600 million better than 2020-2022.
Part of that improvement is due to the fact that the net result of 2022 was impacted by one-off costs, which were important or significant, rather, in particular due to asset depreciation relating to exiting Russia as of the start of 2022, plus some exceptional losses relating to the seating contract in the U.S., which I mentioned earlier. In 2023, this improvement was also buoyed by our improved operating margin to the tune of EUR 378 million, plus the increase in financial costs due to essentially rising interest rates in the context of refunding debt, having acquired HELLA. That was more than offset by around EUR 150 million of capital gains generated by asset disposal, in particular selling a part of a share of Symbio, which is co-owned by ourselves, Michelin and Stellantis, in equal part. This also demonstrates the quality of our financial results for that first asset disposal program.
As you know, under the POWER25 plan, the group has made deleveraging and cash flow generation its priority targets following the acquisition of HELLA. On the left of the slide, you can see the effects of the managed-by-cash program on the generation of net cash flow, which increased by 34% last year, EUR 649 million, 2.4% of the turnover, and that's double over two years. EBITDA growth obviously helps that performance, but it's also the fruit of good management of working capital. The net contribution to variation factoring, EUR 182 million greater than in 2022, plus we have the increased financial costs due to debt refinancing, EUR +167 million last year. We also have a higher tax burden, EUR 153 million over the period. This tax burden is high for two reasons, which are temporary and specific.
First of all, the withholding tax due to the high dividend from HELLA and a timing effect due to VAT recovery in certain collection in certain jurisdictions. Now, these elements will be offset this year and will contribute to cash generation for 2024. On the right of the slide, you can see that net group debt has thus dropped by almost EUR 1.4 billion since last June and is now stable at under EUR 7 billion. The reduction of this debt is thanks in particular to the generation of net cash flow, which I've just mentioned, plus the finalization of the first asset disposal program for EUR 1 billion, which took place under 15 months in five transactions, where we had 30% cashed in 2022 and the 70% remaining, the balance, cashed in 2023. Looking now to 2024, our guidance for this year shows that our financial performance is further improving.
We have an automobile production market, which is expected to be stable overall compared to last year. Taking account of our ability to outperform the market, we're aiming for an increase of turnover, which should be somewhere between EUR 27.5 billion and EUR 28.5 billion. We also aim to further increase our operating margin, somewhere between 5.6% and 6.4% of turnover. This will be driven by this outperformance and synergies, as well as by net cash flow, which will be at least as good as in 2023 in absolute terms. In this context, we are expecting a further decrease in the net debt to EBITDA ratio, which should have dropped to 1.9 by the end of 2024 as opposed to 2.1 at the end of 2023. The financial performance at the start of the year has two key points I'd like to mention.
First of all, our sales in the first quarter are consistent with our targets for the year. Now, the market is slightly down, 0.8%, but the group has organic growth of 3.1% and therefore is overperforming by 3.9 basis points compared to the market. As regards to scope, we have a marginally negative impact to record there. On the one hand, the negative effect of the asset disposal, which is the anti-pollution systems for the utility vehicles, that was done last year, start of the fourth quarter. And secondly, since the start of the year, we've been consolidating HBBL, a joint venture with a Chinese lighting manufacturer, and that, of course, increases our exposure to Chinese competitors in the market. Plus, there's a significant negative effect in terms of currency exchange rates, 4.2%, like last year.
Essentially, this is linked to a depreciation in the yuan, but also hyperinflation in Argentina and Turkey. Now, we're assuming that this will switch to a positive impact in the course of the second half of the year. Now, particularly these exchange rate effects, which lead to the 1.7% drop, we are forecasting for turnover in the first quarter. Since the start of 2024, we've also made progress in terms of deleveraging, in particular with carrying out the second asset disposal program, which we announced in autumn 2023 for another EUR 1 billion. This is a reminder. In a context where interest rates remain high, this new program aims to accelerate our deleveraging journey and go beyond the target to achieve a leverage ratio of below 1:5 by the end of 2025. To date, we've carried out 25% of that second program in two transactions.
Like for the first asset disposal program, those two transactions obviously release liquidity, but they also simplify our asset portfolio without weakening our core businesses. We're working actively to execute the rest of the program, most of which should take place next year, 2025. That concludes my detailed presentation of results for 2023 and the first part of 2024 for your company, and I'll pass the floor back now to Patrick.
Thank you, Olivier. Now, I'm going to talk to you about the rapidly transforming, evolving environment in which we find ourselves and the way we intend to manage that. Many of the drivers of this change involve technology. I'll start with that. The first technological shift concerns drive chains. This is due to climate change, which requires us to decarbonize mobility. Decarbonizing involves a significant transition towards electric mobility, driven in particular by changing regulations, notably in Europe.
Things are moving very fast. In 2019, so before the COVID pandemic, over 90% of cars manufactured had an internal combustion engine. For 2030, the forecast is that that will be a mere 30%. Electric cars are booming, and that's supported by a second technological shift, which is a fundamental one, which is changing architecture and increase in the electronics and software components of cars. That's facilitated by electrification, but it's not the only criterion. Nonetheless, it's a fundamental shift. And the third technological shift relates to the need to develop and use materials with a low CO2 content. We'll need to make vehicles lighter, less energy intensive, and ensure they emit less CO2 for the same cost.
All of these changes will be accelerated by developments in artificial intelligence, which is developing at speed, not just in our industry, but in others also, the impact of which is already visible in the automobile sector. What will make a difference in this context is both the quantity and the quality of data, but also the organization and our ability to train our staff in these new fields, new professions. So to conclude on this point, what is at stake is economic affordability for the end consumer. We'll need to act quickly in Europe, in particular, in order to provide sustainable, safe, and in particular, affordable technologies. The second shift concerns our geographies and business models. Growth is no longer to be found in Europe or indeed North America, both of which are mature markets. Growth is to be found henceforth in Asia.
Asia is the only region in the world continuing to grow, and Asia has become the hub, the epicenter of the car industry. That is the reason for which we introduced the West to East program. Asia will represent 60% of global car production, automobile production, by 2030. It's also the biggest exporting region in the world. So this rebalancing is not just a question of volume. It's also a question of technology and technological leadership, in particular, in certain segments, including electronics. Business models are also evolving. In Asia, the business model is becoming more and more similar to that for consumer goods. What that means is that you have more and more brands trying to obtain market share. That, in turn, fragments volume per vehicle and reduces life cycles. For us, this means we need to reduce development timescales, reduce cost, reduce investment.
It also involves working across the board to reduce spending and to manage our vehicle projects by cash. It's probable that that business model will arrive in Europe as well, with Chinese brands soon to arrive, and we need to prepare by improving our competitiveness, not get behind. We also see that manufacturers are opting for more and more differentiated strategies. So some of them may have vertical integration strategies. Some of them may go for different technologies, have differentiated regional strategies, distribution models which are different. The only thing we can be really certain of is that not all these strategies will pay off. That means that for us, we will need to be more selective, that we need to plan ahead, understand those markets better, and to understand that complexity in commercial terms.
Finally, the geopolitical and environment part. These are macroeconomic factors like geopolitics.
It's also about possible decoupling issues, decoupling between technologies, between East and West, with specifications that can differ widely, that can force different developments on us, for instance, in the area of electronics because of components, but also in terms of software and algorithms that we use. There too, there are cost and structural cost issues which are very different, such as the cost of energy in Asia, in North America, and also the cost and accessibility of raw materials. Finally, an important aspect, crisis management and potentially climate-related events management, which have a direct impact on us via our supply chains that force us to respond and also force us to manage our risks in terms of supplies in a more elaborate way than in the past.
Of course, all these risks can be political or climatic or even industrial-related, as was the case on semiconductors with a gap in supply and demand management. Now, let's look at our strategic response to this constantly shifting and fast-shifting environment. In this context, it is our role to be agile and adopt the necessary measures to get the most out of these market changes and seize the opportunities that can result from it. In this framework, we've defined four priorities: West to East, EU-FORWARD, Engage, and all that should fuel overall group performance that we've summarized in POWER25. The West to East project should help us leverage growth in Asia while rebalancing the contribution from our main regions to our operational profits. This rebalancing is also at the heart of the EU-FORWARD project. Both go hand in hand.
The aim of EU-FORWARD is to strengthen our competitiveness in Europe, a mature market where volumes dropped from 21 million cars in 2019, including Russia, to less than 17 million cars in 2023, excluding Russia. This new production level is now structural. So we need to adapt and we need to adjust our capacities to this new reality. With Engage, we are going to optimize our R&D throughout the life cycle of our programs. We need to reduce our CO2 emissions via Design for Scope 3, and all that whilst building on artificial intelligence tools and generative artificial intelligence tools. All three initiatives contribute, of course, to POWER25, our financial roadmap by 2025, which supports our ambition and strengthens our transformation into a technological leader in sustainable mobility. Let's look at that in more detail. First of all, West to East.
In 2028, our goal is for Asia to account for over 35% of our global turnover, with an operating margin which should be higher than 10%. How can we reach those figures? First, by building on our strong positions in China and with Chinese carmakers. We've been in China for 30 years, and amongst the 20 biggest carmakers present in China, 19 are customers of ours. In 2030, Chinese carmakers will account for over 34% of global volumes, and they will thus also become-they are already now, but this will only get stronger-they will become the biggest global exporters. Well, it's not Chinese carmakers, but rather carmakers in China that will account for 34% of global production. We also need to become closer to Japanese carmakers. Their current production levels are around 25 million vehicles per annum, of which 70% stay in Asia.
We'll also need to benefit from a growth driver in India, supported and fed by the growth of the middle class and by significant investment to improve road infrastructure as well as political stability. The aim in 2030 is to reach 7 million vehicles produced in India, as opposed to slightly over 3.5 million in 2023. EU-FORWARD, as Michel said in his introduction, is the European equivalent of West to East. In Europe, we want to consolidate our strong positions with a robust 40% of our global sales and with a significant improvement in our operating margin higher than 7%. We will achieve that by adapting our production capacity, by also adapting our R&D capacity, and by significantly reducing our overheads. The third element is Engage.
This is about engineering and the way we design our products, with a reduction goal of our CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 for our Scope 3. Artificial intelligence, especially generative artificial intelligence, will considerably help us reduce our development times and consequently our costs. Our aim is to deliver 50% in efficiency gains by 2028. These three major projects, these three main priorities, as I've explained, will come and support, as I've already said, the priorities of our POWER25 plan that I will give you more details about in a minute. But a few examples simply to illustrate our change in Asia. In Thailand, last year, we started the construction of a new seating assembly factory with our partner BYD, proving how close we are to this major Chinese carmaker and also how able we are to follow them beyond their domestic market.
This is the next decision that we'll have ahead of us: it will be about their next location in Hungary. Last month, we signed a joint venture agreement with Chery, strengthening our strategic cooperation in the area of smart and sustainable cockpits. In this framework, we are going to open an R&D center and start two production sites this year, and our ambition is to reach EUR 1 billion in turnover by 2029. The scope of this JV is the whole interior of the car. In April still, we signed a letter of intent with Gree Electric, which is the Asian leader in air conditioning systems, so that by the end of 2024, the goal is October, we create a joint venture for China in order to develop high-recycled content plastics. And this is a first significant step for MATERI'ACT in China, and this is only the first step.
Now, regarding West to East, and if you look also at EU-FORWARD, this pair that I was mentioning earlier, you can see that Europe now counts for 46% in 2023, 46% of our sales, but only contributes to our operating income by 22%. The region, as I said earlier, is characterized by structural overcapacity, both for carmakers and suppliers. The European market is also facing accelerated electrification because of regulations that will ban internal combustion engines by 2035, which forces the whole industry to adapt its structure and its cost. And this because, at the same time, Asian players are going to strengthen their presence in Europe. In this situation, status quo is not an option. It is our responsibility to anticipate and adapt our production capacity and R&D capacity to stay competitive in Europe. This is the ambition and the mission of EU-FORWARD.
This is a five-year project that I've mentioned earlier, the aim of which is to deliver sustainable profitability in the area. Some industrial and labor redeployments have already been announced locally. We are doing our utmost to find socially responsible solutions. The partnership with LTTS, which is an Indian engineering company, is a good example because that way we could secure jobs by repositioning some of our employees to new projects on new industrial segments. To conclude, this project will contribute to rebalancing the regional contributions to the group's results, and this is what you can see on the right-hand side of the slide for 2028, where we wish for Asia to grow to over 35% in global revenues, Europe to maintain a robust position at around 40%.
When it comes to operating profit, 35% of Asia will make a 40% contribution to operating profit, and Europe will contribute to operating profit to the tune of 35%. We need this balance so that our profitable growth becomes sustainable in Asia. Of course, we care strongly about France, and the evidence of that is threefold. First of all, Allenjoie is the first factory in Europe that mass-produces hydrogen tanks. Our ambition is to produce 100,000 tanks by 2030. The second example is MATERI'ACT, our company specializing in the development of innovative and sustainable materials. Our aim is to produce these materials so that by 2030, we can reduce our CO2 emissions by up to 85% so that we can also generate sales of EUR 1.5 billion. MATERI'ACT is based in Lyon.
And finally, we also opened Symbio, the Symbio Gigafactory, which is a joint venture with Michelin and Stellantis, which is the largest integrated fuel cell production site in Europe, with an aim to produce 50,000 systems per annum as early as 2026. Now, I'd like to talk about Engage to transform our R&D. That should allow us to address issues of speed, competitiveness, and sustainability in industry. We need to become more flexible when faced with increased diversity in programs, with adjustments in our clients' footprints, and new regulations in terms of sustainable development. We also need to drastically reduce our development costs and times. We are aiming for development times of less than 20 months, and in China, we're already somewhere between 15-20 months. Artificial intelligence will be an accelerator but also a competitiveness lever.
We are already building on the many opportunities for time savings and efficiency that it offers for engineering or design. For instance, for every step in the life cycle of a product, we are checking how we can save time, improve quality, and reduce costs. And so we are taking our entire development program, we slice it up in thin slices that we have full control of, where we know costs exactly, but also we know deliverables fully. And for each of these slices, we are checking where we can use new technologies. Of course, for that, we are taking into account our ability to feed that technology with the right level of data. And I think that this AI part, this artificial intelligence part, will make a difference in terms of quality and speed at which we'll be able to develop our future products.
We have a large amount of data that will differentiate us. This is one of the things that will be taken into account in the future and that will make life more difficult for smaller firms or structures that won't have access to the same level of data. All that, of course, as I said, should help us deliver significant efficiency gains of up to 50% in 2028. Right now, as we speak, in many cases in electronics like radars that we've talked about earlier, we are limited in our ability to bid in RFPs from clients simply because we do not have the resources. So these projects should also help us make savings on one hand, but also to increase our profitable growth on the other hand for some technologies. The other major aspect is, of course, our Scope 3 emissions.
As part of our zero net emissions roadmap, we are committed to reducing our Scope 3 emissions by 45% by 2030. Scope 3 emissions account for most of our emissions, 98%. They are twofold. One third of these emissions are fully within our control. Two thirds are related to the use of products and the way our clients and the customers of our clients use them. To give you but one example, when we deliver a seat to a carmaker, if this seat, the exact same seat, is fitted into an electric car, zero emission car, the amount of CO2 that we will record will not be the same as if it's fitted into an ICE car. So here, we are dependent on what others are doing, and so that will be related to the development of zero emissions mobility by 2030.
For this 45% reduction on our Scope 3, there are three generations of cars ahead of us, not more. So we need to be able already now to offer attractive solutions, and these are solutions that cannot be associated to cost inflation. It's up to us to find a way to offset increased costs for recycled or biosourced materials with lower costs related to lighter design with fewer materials and processing that uses less energy. This is really what MATERI'ACT is doing, to formulate new materials and understand the materials' variability so that we can then process the materials in the best possible conditions. We already have a designed for Scope 3 product offering, which is state of the art in terms of technology and sustainable development.
This designed for Scope 3 approach is going to become the bedrock of our process and offering, and this means that we need to be present on a wide spectrum of subjects. We need to get our supply chain on board. It's obvious that we won't do it alone to develop our sales of products dedicated to electric vehicles. We'll need to develop the increase the recycled and biosourced content in our products and improve their recyclability and also develop the circular economy as much as we can. POWER25, I can confirm the financial objectives of our plan as presented during our Capital Markets Day in November 2023. Turnover of around EUR 30 billion, which may change marginally depending on market volumes and foreign exchange rates. Operating margin higher than 7% of turnover, an improvement compared to our guidance for 2024.
Net cash flow of 4% of sales, which confirms the effectiveness of our managed-by-cash program to better convert EBITDA into net cash flow. A net debt over EBITDA adjusted ratio of less than 1.5 times at 31st December 2025. This performance does not include the positive impact of the second asset disposal program, which is being executed as we speak. To summarize our three, our four priority projects, West to East, EU-FORWARD, Engage, and POWER25, these four programs plus, well, these are three programs plus POWER25, which is a summary of the company's performance. All that is fueling sustainable growth. Our overperforming growth, EBITDA improvement, increased cash flow generation, and also, in addition, the contribution of asset disposals, all of that is there to address our number one priority for 2025, your group's accelerated deleveraging. We have competitive advantages. What are they?
Well, we have in our hands a portfolio of key technologies, a wide international balanced client portfolio. We have the necessary critical size to face current and future challenges. We have a strategic positioning on future geographical markets. We have leadership in all our areas of activity, constant focus on what we can control, our operational excellence, a robust roadmap. We have a lead over others because we've solved our strategic equation in terms of powertrains. All of us at Forvia are united in a mission because of values and strong beliefs, and we are confident in our ability to materialize our ambition for safer, more sustainable, and particularly more affordable mobility for all. Thank you so much, and I think that I will now we have now a last video to show you.
Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do.
We always go beyond what we can provide in the industry. We all know words aren't enough. This decade matters, so the time for action is now, and we have no time to lose. When it comes to energy transition, as an automotive supplier, we have an important role to play. Mobility is at the heart of people's lives, but mobility has also a huge impact on climate change. So working on sustainable solutions for sustainable mobility is an absolute necessity. It's our mission to provide solutions, sustainable solutions, to help carmakers and users to go through this environmental challenge. Forvia Net Zero Roadmap includes ambitious targets that we have set ourselves in 2022 to tackle climate change. Three words to qualify our approach: using less, using better, and using longer.
Allenjoie is a benchmark plant on the Scope 1 and 2, but also on the other environmental topics such as water waste management. This plant is producing hydrogen storage solutions for zero emission mobility. Another example is our Fengcheng plant in China, which is the first CO2-neutral plant of the group. But we cannot stop at energy savings. We need to rethink how we design our products, how we produce them, how they can be recycled at the end of their life cycle. And that's why we created MATERI'ACT in 2022, leveraging material innovation and also leveraging artificial intelligence. MATERI'ACT is focusing on cutting-edge low-carbon material. The main complexity is that a sustainable car has to remain affordable. That's why we are not only moving on the sustainable materials, but we are rethinking completely the product. Sustainability is not only about climate and environmental protection.
It's also about social and governmental aspects. Climate change is a huge threat, and you cannot face the challenge by being alone. This is a collective mission that we need to achieve with our employees, our suppliers, our partners. The emissions of our purchased goods and services weigh around 80% of Forvia's CO2-controlled emissions. So it's really important to onboard and have the entire effort of our complete supply chain. So, for instance, we ask as a prerequisite to have our suppliers assessed by EcoVadis along environment, ethics, labor and human rights, and sustainable procurement. We need to really put substance behind our commitment to have an ethical and compliant company environment. Corporate governance gives us the framework upon which we deliver on the promises that we've made to our customers, to our shareholders, and to our employees. Forvia has lots of tools to help us engage in compliant behavior.
We have codes of conduct for both HELLA and Faurecia. We have two speak-up lines, one for HELLA, one for Faurecia. Speak-up culture is an important culture. It plays an important role in our cultural DNA as a company, but it also plays an important role in the jobs each one of us do. We are people developers. We give the priority to promote internally in order really to create our next generation of leaders with our DNA. For example, RISE Program, it's about accelerating our gender diversity journey. It's a nine-month collective coaching program. The purpose is really to raise awareness for women to help them to clarify their ambition and put all the means in order to achieve this ambition. So the talents concept is super key within our organization. It's also a respect for communities, the communities that we operate in with our plants.
We want to have a positive impact, so we created Forvia Foundation in order to contribute to local economic development. At Forvia, sustainability is a matter of conviction. Sustainability is something that will also drive economic advantages for our customers and for ourselves. It's important to embark everyone on this journey. This is not easy, but it's possible, and we can do it. We onboard our talents in a journey that matters, in a journey that matters for them and for us.
[Foreign language] . This video is a perfect transition towards the next topic, and I will now give the floor to Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chairman of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee.
Thank you, thank you, Patrick. Good morning, ladies, and gentlemen.
I will now comment on the committee's work, the company's work in the area of sustainable development, as well as the usual subject related to the makeup of the board of directors in 2023 and proposed changes in this makeup for 2024 that you will have to vote on later. As regards, first of all, the activity of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee. As was already said in particular by Patrick Koller a few minutes ago, Forvia is still a leader on its market segment when it comes to achieving its carbon dioxide emissions goals. The fight against climate change, as well as looking for a more inclusive world, are more and more at the heart of our societal concerns, and Forvia is a pioneer amongst the automotive sector.
The Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee were strongly invested in the year 2023 on these topics, supporting general management and making sure that it monitored the progress achieved within the group. Our committee met six times in 2023. Several topics related to sustainable development were addressed. I'll name a few. The committee reviewed and commented on Chapter Four, devoted to CSR subjects in the Forvia URD for the fiscal year 2022. The committee was involved in approving Forvia's roadmap in terms of carbon neutrality on the carbon neutrality pathway. It is noteworthy that 2023 was a year of concrete achievements. For Scopes 1 and 2, the committee is glad that the ambition and speed of Forvia are above the sector's average.
On Scope 3, which is complex, as Patrick's just shown us with many examples, Scope 3 that encompasses the entire value chain upstream and downstream, Forvia is making remarkable progress, especially thanks to investment in sustainable materials. We've presented MATERI'ACT. The Scope 3 goals were widely presented and shared with stakeholders during our specific day devoted to sustainability in March 2024. The committee also monitored progress in the group's diversity policy. We now have 27% of women amongst the top 300 leaders. The group also reviewed the non-financial roadmap, which expects 30% of women amongst managers and professionals by 2027. The current figure is 28.6%. The committee also studied initiatives deployed by the Forvia Foundation with six environmental projects that came to fruition in France, South Africa, Portugal, and India.
Finally, the committee analyzed the impacts and challenges with European regulations in terms of environmental and social performance, in particular the CSRD. Now, you have a presentation, a summary presentation of what this European directive is. You often hear that it's a complex issue. It's about company, corporate non-financial reporting. The structure of the directive shown here is followed by our roadmap. The directive we strengthen expectations that already exist in terms of CSR reporting since 2014. France is one of the most demanding European countries in this area by mandating non-financial reporting every year. We've now harmonized our CSR reporting with this European requirement, with a focus on transparency about the potential impact of our business on the environment. Here's then the timeline for implementation of the directive within Forvia. It applies as of the 2024 financial year.
Our Sustainable Development Directorate is overseeing that project, collaborating with external consultants and a number of specialist directorates affected within Forvia, so HR, purchasing, et cetera. The directive is broken down to three levels of information. First of all, there's the double materiality criterion, identifying key challenges for Forvia and its ecosystem. There's qualitative reporting, covering 70% of the directive's requirements. The rest, the 30% remaining, is quantitative information. The project was launched in July 2023. Across those three levels, Forvia then validated the reporting grid in January 2024. We're now working on developing those qualitative and quantitative information items required under the directive. As you can see from the bottom of the slide, in terms of our agenda, the board of directors and our committee are invited to review and provide comments on this project, which is an important one for the group.
On governance now, having talked about sustainable development. On this slide, you can see the makeup of the board of directors and some key indicators for 2023. It's a diverse board. It's an international board, and it's interdisciplinary. It has 14 board members, two of whom represent our employees. Of those 14, we have five women, a share of 42% if you carry out the calculation, excluding the board members who represent employees. There are also five nationalities on the board. 83% of our board members, and again, excluding those representing the staff, are considered independent. During 2023, our financial year, the board met 24 times.
The main topics dealt with were the asset disposals, in particular under the POWER25 plan, synergies resulting from the acquisition of a controlling stake in HELLA, the group's strategy and CSR results, group's results overall, and approval of the budget and plan for the medium term. In terms of the terms of office, which are going to expire as of today's meeting, we have five resolutions which will be presented to you today. I'll come back to those later, but they aim to renew the terms of office of Michel de Rosen, Judy Curran, and myself to appoint a new board member in the shape of Christel Bories to replace Odile Desforges, whose term of office is arriving at expiration after today's meeting and who doesn't wish to be renewed in her position.
And lastly, to ratify the co-optation of Nicolas Peter, who was co-opted on the 19th of October, 2023, to replace Jürgen Behrend, who resigned his post. First of all, Michel de Rosen's term will expire at the end of today's meeting, and you are invited to renew him for a further term of office of four years. He has been a board member since 2016. He's Chairman of the Board and indeed chairing today's meeting. He's also a member of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee. He has a lot of valuable experience as a manager within the international multinationals, both in terms of the work of the board and as a member of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee. And we'd like to thank Michel de Rosen for agreeing to put himself forward for a further term of office. Proposal to renew Judy Curran.
Again, her term is due to expire, putting herself forward for another four years. She was elected as a board member in 2022. As a member of the Audit Committee, she has long experience in the automobile industry as well as new technologies and energy markets, all of which is extremely valuable in the context of the Audit Committee and the board of directors' work. We thank Judy in advance for agreeing to put herself forward for a further four years. I'll pass the floor back now to Michel de Rosen. I wanted to interrupt Jean-Bernard to talk about Jean-Bernard, because his term of office, Jean-Bernard Lévy, it's his first term of office, but it's due to expire at the end of today's meeting, and it is proposed that you renew it for a further period of four years. Jean-Bernard is a board member, has been since 2021.
He chairs the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee. He has robust experience as a manager in a number of multinationals. He's an attentive, good listener, all of which has been valuable in the work of the board of directors and in his capacity as chairman of the Governance Committee. We'd like to thank Jean-Bernard Lévy. I would like to thank Jean-Bernard Lévy for agreeing to serve a further term of office if the shareholders' meeting today votes in favor. Jean-Bernard, back to you.
Thank you. Now we move on to the next proposal to ratify the co-optation of Nicolas Peter as independent board member. As we said, Jürgen Behrend resigned on 13th of July, 2023.
The Board of Directors, at the proposal of the Governance, Nominations, and Sustainable Development Committee, decided at its 19th October meeting to co-opt Nicolas Peter, who is a candidate put forward by the Hueck and Röpke family pool, as a Board member to replace Jürgen Behrend with immediate effect. This co-optation covers the remaining term of office of his predecessor. That is to say, until the end of the annual meeting, which we can convene in 2026 and which will validate the accounts of the financial year just expired. We are proposing to you to ratify his co-optation today as a Board member. I'd like to thank this opportunity, Jürgen Behrend, for his valuable contribution to the Board of Directors over the previous years. Nicolas Peter was with us, and I'll give him the floor for him to say a few words of introduction.
Thank you, Jean-Bernard. Ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders. I'm very pleased to meet you at this 2024 annual shareholders' meeting. As you are aware, as Jean-Bernard has just said, I took up this post following Jürgen Behrend's resignation on the 13th of July, 2023. I was very honored to be asked to do this by the board of directors of Forvia at its meeting on the 19th of October, 2023, as was said at the proposal of the HELLA family pool and on the recommendation of the Governance Nominations and Sustainable Development Committee. Since then, I have become a board member within your company, replacing Jürgen Behrend with immediate effect. It's proposed today that you ratify my cooptation for the remaining period of Jürgen Behrend's term of office. That is to say, until the end of the annual meeting, which we'll deliberate in 2026 on the accounts for the expired.
I'm a Franco-German citizen. I attended the University of Mannheim. I have a doctorate in law. I joined BMW Group in 1991 and spent 32 years of my career working within BMW, where I had a number of roles, one of which was Chief Financial Officer and member of the Management Board from January 2017 to May 2023. I'm currently a board member of the BMW Herbert Quandt Foundation. I'm Chairman of the Board of that since 2020. I'm also a member of the German Government Commission for the German Corporate Governance Code. So I would be very pleased to bring my experience of the automobile industry to bear on the board of directors of Forvia, as well as my knowledge and understanding of financial matters. I am well aware of the duties and responsibilities of a board member of a listed company.
I look forward to the opportunity to pursue this term of office on the board of directors of your company. Thank you very much for listening, and thank you very much in advance for your trust.
Thank you, Nicolas.
The proposal to appoint Christel Bories as an independent board member, if you decide, as much she will succeed Odile Desforges, whose term will expire at the end of today's general meeting. It is proposed by the Governance Committee that you be asked to approve her as a new board member. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Odile Desforges for her contribution to the work of the board and the Audit Committee, which she chaired since 2016. Christel Bories is CEO of Eramet. She's been CEO since 2017. She can bring to the board her experience as a manager and her knowledge of this industry in international contexts, which are complex and varied. She will be an independent board member, and her term would expire at the annual general meeting in 2028.
She was not able to be with us this morning because Eramet's AGM is also taking place today. Nonetheless, she has recorded a message to introduce herself, which I suggest we watch now.
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
[Foreign language]
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[Foreign language]
Thank you, Christel, for those words of introduction.
No, the work of the board in 2023, it's supported by its three specialist committees, which have an important role in preparing the work and the recommendations of the board. First of all, as I say, there are three permanent committees. You here have the makeup shown on the slide. First of all, the Audit Committee, which has been chaired by Odile Desforges to date, which oversees financial matters, as well as risk and accountants' matters. Esther Gaide, who has been a member of this committee since last year, will take over the chairmanship as of the end of today's meeting. Then there's the Compensation Committee, chaired by Denis Mercier, who will be taking the floor in just a second, which looks at the issues of management and corporate officers' remuneration.
Then there's the Governance Nominations and Sustainable Development Committee, which I continue to chair, oversees all issues relating to governance, succession of corporate officers, and sustainable development. On this slide, you have the makeup post general meeting of the board, assuming that you vote in favor of the resolutions put to you. Following today's meeting, there will be 14 members of the board, two of whom represent employees, and it will remain 83% independent board members and 42% women, both of which are, I think, good figures. Following today's meeting, the three standing committees would, assuming you vote in favor of the resolutions, would be composed as follows. The Audit Committee would be chaired by Esther Gaide, as a new chair, with members Valérie Landon, Emmanuel Pioche, Judy Curran, and Nicolas Peter.
The Compensation Committee, chaired by Denis Mercier, with the members Daniel Bernardino, Michael Bolle, and Christel Bories, who would be new, and the Governance Nominations and Sustainable Development Committee, still chaired by myself, with the following members: Michel de Rosen, Penelope Herscher, and Robert Peugeot, acting as the standing representative of Peugeot 1810. That brings my presentation to an end. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll pass the floor back to Michel. Thank you, Jean-Bernard, for that very comprehensive report. I'll ask now Denis Mercier to present the news from his committee.
Ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning. On compensation, there are seven resolutions put to you today. The first concerns the compensation to be approved for board members. For 2023, board members received EUR 703,571 out of a maximum allotted amount of EUR 900,000.
This is lower than last year since the board has resumed its regular pace of meetings, having had to manage the refinancing following the acquisition of HELLA in 2022. The recommendation of our committee to the Board members, at its meeting of 14th September 2023, considered that it was necessary and desirable to change the structure and level of remuneration of its board members in order to continue attracting talent, noting in particular that the mean fixed remuneration of Forvia board members is lower than the average operated by the main listed companies. We are therefore asking you to increase that overall maximum envelope for the remuneration of your board members from EUR 900,000- EUR 1.2 million.
That's the 12th resolution, and to approve the remuneration policy for board members, which is an ex- ante vote, whereby a number of modifications were made to the rules for the distribution of that overall envelope. That's resolution 16, and all that's described on page 26 of the brochure. Then we have two resolutions concerning compensation to be paid to the chairman of the board of directors. First of all, an ex- post resolution concerning the remuneration paid to Michel de Rosen for 2023. This is EUR 311,189, and it's stable compared to previous years. Then there's an ex- ante resolution on the remuneration policy for the chairman of the board of directors for 2024. As we stated, this fixed annual compensation is the only part of the board of directors' remuneration, and that's remained unchanged since 2017. The chairman receives no other remuneration, whether one-off or variable.
He also receives no remuneration in his capacity as a board member. At the proposal of the Compensation Committee, the board of directors has decided to propose to you an increase in the fixed annual remuneration of the chairman from EUR 300,000- EUR 400,000 to take effect as of the 1st of January 2024, in order to maintain the competitiveness of this remuneration for the chairman of the board compared to practice on the market. Moving now to the CEO, I have two resolutions concerning his compensation package. First of all, an ex- post resolution concerning the remuneration paid to Patrick Koller as CEO for the financial year 2023, and an ex- ante resolution concerning the remuneration policy for the CEO in 2024. In 2023, Patrick Koller's remuneration can be broken down as follows and shown on the slide.
Fixed remuneration of EUR 1.1 million, which is unchanged compared to the previous year, and then a variable annual remuneration of EUR 1,782,921, slightly down compared to the previous year. 2023 was characterized by continuation of the group's transformation, as has been presented this morning, in a context which remains a challenging one for the automobile industry. The company has continued taking the necessary action in order to deleverage, to improve its operating result, to maintain cash flow, and to render more flexible its overheads. The quantifiable individual criteria for the variable part of the CEO's annual remuneration, as determined by the board of directors and approved at the previous annual general meeting of 2023, have been met in very large part, and that's in line with the group's priorities. Amongst the quantifiable priorities, you have the debt-to-EBITDA ratio, synergies relating to onboarding HELLA, and carbon neutrality.
With regard to individual criteria, these concern order intakes in association with the operating margin and reducing overheads. These two last individual criteria are measurable in the same way as the quantifiable criteria. Long-term variable remuneration in the shape of performance shares. The CEO's remuneration is thus strongly correlated with group performance, as can be shown by its development over time. For your information, his variable annual remuneration for 2021 and 2022 was respectively EUR 300,000 and EUR 1,980,000. We ask you to approve the remuneration policy for the CEO in 2024, which will be stable compared to last year. The only change proposed compared to last year concerns the assessment of performance conditions for the long-term variable remuneration plan.
This change would involve replacing the reference to the strategic plan by reference to an overall achievement over three years of the budget targets for internal financial conditions, for example, operational result or net cash flow. The other conditions, whether internal or external, would remain unchanged. We propose that this change be applied as of plan 16 to be enforced as of 2024. That closes my part on remuneration. Thank you very much, and I'll give the floor back to the chair, Mr. de Rosen.
Thank you, Denis, for that very clear report. I'm going to ask Guillaume Brunet-Moret from Ernst & Young on behalf of the College of the Statutory Auditors to present their reports in advance of today's meeting. Ladies, and gentlemen, shareholders, good morning. On behalf of the Statutory Auditors, Ernst & Young, Audit and Mazars, I'd like to present the reports we've prepared for 2023.
We've prepared eight reports. The first concerns the consolidated accounts for Forvia Group. The second concerns the annual accounts for Forvia SE. We have as well as five on resolutions nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, which you'll be asked to vote on during the extraordinary part of today's assembly. Now, all these reports are available for you if you wish to consult them. I'm going to wrap up the key findings. I'll start with the annual accounts for Forvia. This report was prepared in line with the accounts as filed per the French regulations, and we included the shares in that, and they have no reservations. We approved the accounts without any qualification or reservations. With regard to the consolidated accounts, these were carried out in line with the IFRS standards as adopted by the EU.
Here again, we have certified the accounts without reservation or observation, and we consider a key point in the audit value of recoverable assets, the development costs, and the cost of recovering deferred taxes inter alia. For those reports, we've also checked whether the presentation format was complied with in terms of filing them in electronic format in line with regulation 2019-815 of 2018. Concerning the special report on our regulated conventions, we have two new such agreements signed with HELLA, a licensing contract, as well as the agreement signed in 2022, approved at our 2023 assembly on the coordination agreement with HELLA. That brings us on then to the extraordinary part of today's assembly, where you'll be asked to vote on resolutions 20- 29. Here, we have written reports on these.
Our first concerns resolutions 20-24 on proposals for delegation to the board of directors of various share issuers or securities, maintaining or with or without, rather, the preferential subscription rights. Then there's resolution 26 concerning offering free shares, whether existing or new shares. Resolution 27 on the issuing of ordinary shares and various stocks in the society for those with a company saving plan. Resolution 28 on the issuing of shares and various securities without a preferential subscription rights for a specific category of beneficiaries. And lastly, resolution 29, which concerns capital reduction. We have no observations to make about these operations that follow the conditions provided for in the Commercial Code. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Mr. Auditor.
I think that shareholders are aware that the reason why the auditor's report is so favorable is that the financial team did such a sterling job this year as in previous years. Olivier, this is a compliment to you and your team members, and thank you for that. Now, we will move on to the Q&A sequence. Let me point out that we haven't received any written questions from our shareholders. In order to be able to manage time constraints as best we can for the Q&A, we will take your questions in blocks of three. Ask your questions. If you have questions to ask, ask them. Maybe, if possible, if you're in the room, by standing up and by mentioning your name. Then once we've taken three questions, we will answer them and so on until midnight if there are enough questions to justify this schedule.
There are microphones. Sir, you're the first.
Yes, I'm Loïc Duval, an individual shareholder. I had a question about the currency issue. You have sales for EUR 24 billion. You have negative impact from Forex of EUR 1.2 billion. For FY 2023, that's - 5%. And already for Q1 2024, you already have a currency loss of EUR 280 million, -4.2%. Are you maybe considering putting a hedge system in place as they do in other firms? This is costly, but it's also quite convenient. And secondly, interest rates are on the rise. I don't know whether your debt is covered by swaps or such like, because then you're selling assets to cover debt in 2023. You're selling more assets to cover some of debt in 2024. But at some point, once you've sold off a number of assets, what are you going to do?
This is your question.
Yes, thank you. Yes, a third question. Sir.
Yes, Danielle Vallière. I'm an individual shareholder. Well, I would like to make a comment before I ask my question. I consider that the company is a great high-technology company that is well managed, but I really enjoyed what the manager said regarding all the goals and the scenarios that were presented. This is a lot of work, and that's quite appreciable given that we're working in a constantly evolving world. I'm sorry. Now, coming on to my point. A month ago, the European Commission said that the automotive industry, the EV industry, was at an impasse. Well, this is for the electric part. Now, when it comes to hydrogen, it's even much worse. On a global scale, there were 360 gigawatts of expected installed capacity. By 2030, we're at 16, so a 4% completion rate compared to what's expected for 2030.
A few days ago, the Science Academy said that policymakers needed to revise their hydrogen policy because it wasn't a good solution. A couple of days ago, Jean-Marc Jancovici was heard at the Senate, the French Senate, and he said that the use of hydrogen for mobility was nonsense. The other day, I was at the UN general meeting. I'd like to interrupt only. I would like to be courteous to the others.
What's your question?
My question is very simple. How are you considering these various dark scenarios regarding how do you include these issues that we're seeing when it comes to electricity and the fact that hydrogen seems to be a total no-go?
Thank you, sir. We'll take another question there.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for your presentations. Three quick questions. I am leasing a Peugeot i-Cockpit.
I rented it in Marseille, and I needed to go to Camargue. I had a smartphone that helped me reach Camargue, so I wanted to know about the development and fine-tuning of intelligence in this i-Cockpit. Second question about hydrogen. I noted with great interest you have a partnership with Stellantis, and Stellantis is partnering with your competitor, OPm obility, for Citroën light commercial vehicles. Did you bid for this project yourselves? Third question about the integration of headlights coming from your merger with HELLA. Thank you.
I think that, Olivier, you'll maybe address the first two financial questions, and then Patrick will answer the other ones. Well, regarding the questions from the first speaker, there was a question about currency. Well, there is an impact from Forex.
We have a Forex hedging policy, which is mostly based on purchases made in a different currency from the currency in which we sell, but this is minor. We buy locally to sell locally. So in China, we buy in yuan to sell in yuan. And so the impact that you're seeing is mostly a translation impact. And in terms of profitability in percentages, the impact is fairly small, but we are monitoring all this closely. And on our supply policy, if there are long-term changes on currencies, we're taking that into account. Over the recent period, there's a specific element about Argentina and Turkey, where there was a strong devaluation, and there's an accounting rule, which is that of hyperinflation. You need to translate your accounts at the latest exchange rate and not the average over the period so that inflates our accounts.
So you can see that the Argentine currency is still devaluing, but not at the same pace as what happened recently. Ditto for Turkey. So this effect is really specific, and that will be reduced majorly in H2. We've also reduced our activities in Argentina, especially as part of our divestments, because one of the factories that we sold as part of SAS was in Argentina, so we are reducing our exposure to this currency.
Now, regarding your second question about debt. Firstly, most of our debt is at fixed rates. Three-quarters are at fixed rates, which is a very good thing because most of our debt is at pre-Ukraine war rates, if I may say so. And secondly, as part of the rollover of the bridge loan for the acquisition of HELLA, we constructed debt at fairly high rates.
So what we are currently doing is, as part of the rollover that we are doing now, we're able to do that at rates between 5%-5.5%. And so we're replacing debt, which sometimes had 7.5% interest. Our average rate is at 5% now, and with current operations, we can stay around 5%. However, our goal is to reduce the absolute value of our debt. And reducing our debt in absolute terms is not just achieved through divestments. We generate twice as much cash flow as two years ago in 2023. Our goal is to go from 2.4% in 2023 to 4%. So the goal is to have most of proceeds coming from operational generation, and we will complement that with asset disposals when it makes sense.
The divestments that we've carried out, one of the indicators which help gauge whether that was positive or not, is whether that impacted the core business, whether that impacted central technologies, and whether we did so at a loss. Of all three points, the first program is positive. We divested non-core business activities. We divested assets, which are sometimes related to our exposure to ICE technologies, such as the latest disposal on pollution control activities on LCVs to Cummins. So we're involved in our transition. For that, we generated about EUR 150 million for a total of EUR 1 billion in the disposal in total.
So for the first wave, as you could see, there has been a capital gain on one of the two operations carried out as part of the second divestment plan, the sale of our shares in BHTC, and a capital gain, which is a three-figure capital gain. So, of course, the aim is to reduce the absolute value of our debt. We've reduced our debt by EUR 1 billion so far in net or gross terms last year. And this is what is important because that explains the structured debt burden. An addition to that is that when interest rates start declining, there will be an additional favorable impact, and we haven't waited for that decline to manage the company correctly.
Thank you, Olivier. Patrick, regarding questions on BEV or hydrogen cars, what is clear is that we are moving towards zero-emissions mobility.
The way we get there and the timeframe according to which we'll get there may lead to questions and discussions, but I think the trend is very clear. You've talked specifically about Europe. I think that in Europe, considerable investment's been made and remains to be made, and it's important to support such electrification and that we do not call it into question because we need scale effects so that we can be competitive with newcomers, especially those coming from Asia. I also think that technology is changing. We are witnessing very steady progress when it comes to the battery electric part and the hydrogen electric part, where we are at the beginning of the journey. Now, speaking of the battery electric and hydrogen electric parts, these are technologies that are not competing with one another. They are complementary.
It's obvious that for all urban and peri-urban uses, battery vehicles have an advantage, and they will probably be the main technology. When it comes to heavier mobility, commercial mobility, then there will be other alternatives, such as the use, the injection of hydrogen in combustion engines, the use of e-fuels as well. There will be intermediate technologies for larger cars over 4 m in length, to put it simply, where we'll probably find hybrid solutions, but with a battery and electric range component in excess of 200 kilometers, probably between 200-300 km in the future. We're not at an impasse. The system is not being called into question significantly. You're talking about policymakers, but in industry, our roadmaps are clear. Investments have been made, and we've invested a lot of money. I wanted to discuss our collaboration with Stellantis.
Stellantis has communicated very clearly their intention to equip SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. with hydrogen, and we are with them working on the Ram brand to do so as early as 2025, 2026. Therefore, hydrogen in mobility is running a little late. I think it's about two years late, and that forces us to adjust our investment consequently, but we still believe in this technology. There is no other solution for heavy mobility, and we also think that although now development is not linear, the development of electric vehicles will continue. And finally, I wanted to tell you that in 2027, European regulations will change again, and cars that will not be electric or zero emissions will need to have at least 200 km electric range on batteries so that they can work with only a reasonable financial penalty estimated around EUR 3,000 now.
I can see that you look despondent, but this is what we are experiencing in collaboration with our clients.
Thank you, Patrick. Dear shareholders, are there any further questions? Maybe the third question from the gentleman.
Thank you. Regarding a vehicle belonging to Stellantis, you'll understand that, of course, we cannot answer your question.
No. Well, first of all, I don't know what car you are talking about, but on IVI, we are probably not the supplier. On headlights, if you're talking about modules, we sold that. That was a JV between Plastic Omnium and HELLA, and HELLA's stake was sold to Plastic Omnium. That was called HBPO. Now, the front ends on electric cars, you've got front ends that include lighting, but not only, with also some animations on the front ends. We have a presence in these products.
We are even the European leader there, and we intend to keep growing in this area.
Thank you, Patrick. Ladies, and gentlemen, are there any further questions? Sir, please wait for a microphone to be brought to you.
When it comes to please, who are you?
I'm Mr. Pradel, a very small minority shareholder. Thank you. So regarding electronic chips, there were delays in previous years. I wanted to know what the situation was like, and especially when you compare it to 2019. Regarding semiconductors, last year, we didn't have any constraints in our supply chain. We could work normally with a volume of 90 million cars, roughly. This volume will be the same this year. Although electrification is rising because it is still rising, maybe not at the pace that we initially expected, there shouldn't be any difficulties.
However, it all depends also on how inventory is managed by the various users of these components. Maybe with a microphone, sir, so that everybody can hear you.
Well, you had a 1.5-year delay last year.
No, last year, supply and demand were balanced. They matched, so we were fairly synchronized. Once again, existing capacity is there, but we'll need to be careful about how inventories are managed overall because all various stakeholders want to secure their supplies, and sometimes they tend to hoard components, and that could cause some difficulties, but for the moment, it's working.
Thank you, Patrick. Any other questions? On my right, on my left, in front of me. You can't see any other hands raised?
All right. Well, thank you for this discussion. We've now reached the last sequence in this general meeting, the vote on resolutions.
I will ask Jill Greene to start the vote.
Thank you, Michel. My French is not yet precise enough, and in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I've asked Melissa Bensimon, who's on my team, who is Vice President and Chief of Governance and Regulatory Affairs, to please read the resolutions in French. Melissa, you have the floor. And there we recognize the Breton accent.
Yes, thank you, Jill. Ladies, and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. Before we formally move on to a vote, we wanted to remind you of these few preliminary aspects. Regarding the final participation figures, the present or represented shareholders, or those who voted by mail, represent 120,536,725 shares with voting rights or a quorum at 61.4%.
The majorities for resolutions in the ordinary part, from resolutions 1- 19 and resolution 30, need to have a simple majority of votes who are voting today or have voted by mail. For the extraordinary part of the meeting, resolutions from resolution 20- 29 need a majority of two-thirds of shareholders represented or who have voted by mail. We'll now invite you to take your voting device. On this slide here, you can see how it works. To vote, when the vote is open, please press the corresponding key for your choice: 1 for, 2 against, 3 abstain. You can change your vote as long as the vote is open by pressing the key. You should read "acquitté" at the bottom right of your device for your vote to be taken into account.
That said, the full text of resolutions was published according to prescribed times and available in pages 20 - 45 of the convening brochure available on the website. This is why we will only give a short introduction of the resolutions, especially financial ones, when we move to a vote. Let's start with ordinary resolutions. First resolution, approval of the company financial statements for 2023. You're asked to approve the financial statements for the fiscal year 2023 with earnings of EUR 87,551,249. The vote is open. The vote's closed. The resolution's approved. Second resolution, approval of consolidated accounts for 2023. You're asked to approve the consolidated accounts for fiscal year 2023 with earnings group share of EUR 222.2 million.
The vote's open. The vote is closed. The resolution's approved.
Resolution number three, allocation of earnings and setting of the dividend.
You're asked to approve the allocation of distributable earnings for EUR 4,352,562.46 to legal reserves and allocate EUR 98,544,670 to distributed dividends and EUR 2.15 billion to earnings carried forward.
The vote's open. The vote is closed. Resolution approved.
Resolution number four, approval based on the auditor's report on regulated conventions. You're asked to approve the renewal of regulated conventions signed in 2023.
The vote's open. The vote's closed. The resolution is approved.
Resolution number five, you're asked to appoint Ernst & Young Audit as statutory auditors in charge of certifying sustainability information as required by the European CSRD directive.
The vote's open. The vote's closed. The resolution's approved.
For the sixth resolution, you're asked to appoint Mazars as auditor in charge of certifying sustainability information as required by the CSRD European directive.
The vote's open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
Now, the five next resolutions are related to governance. Resolution number seven is about the reappointment of Michel de Rosen as director for a duration of four- years.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The 8th resolution is about the reappointment of Jean-Bernard Lévy as director for a duration of four- years.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The 9th resolution is about Judy Curran's reappointment as director for a duration of four- years.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The 10th resolution is about the appointment of Christel Bories as director to replace Odile Desforges for a duration of four- years. Christel Bories' term of office will expire after the ordinary general meeting taking place in 2028.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The 11th resolution is about the ratification of Nicolas Peter's cooptation as director to replace Jürgen Behrend. You're asked to ratify Nicolas Peter's cooptation as director for the remaining duration of his predecessor's term. Nicolas Peter's term of office will expire after the ordinary general meeting taking place in 2026.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The following resolutions are about remuneration matters. The 12th resolution, you're asked to approve the annual fixed amount allocated to members of the board of directors.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
In the 13th resolution, you're asked to approve information mentioned in Article L22.19.10.2 of the Commercial Code about the remuneration paid to corporate officers for the fiscal year 2023.
You may now vote. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
Resolution 14 is related to the ex- post vote on the Chairman of the Board's 2023 remuneration. You're asked to approve the elements of remuneration paid or attributable to Michel de Rosen for the fiscal year 2023 as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
The 15th resolution is related to an ex- post vote on the CEO's 2023 remuneration. You're asked to approve the remuneration elements paid or given to Patrick Koller for the fiscal year 2023 as CEO.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
Resolution 16, you're asked to approve the remuneration policy for directors for 2024.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
In the 17th resolution, you're asked to approve the remuneration policy for the Chairman of the Board of Directors for 2024.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
In the 18th resolution, you're asked to approve the CEO's remuneration policy for 2024.
The vote's open. The vote's closed. The resolution is approved.
Resolution 19, you're asked to authorize the board to buy back the firm's own shares. The maximum price for purchase is set to EUR 60 per share, excluding acquisition costs. The use of this authorization is restricted in times of public offerings. This is an authorization valid for 18 months.
The vote's open. The vote's closed. The resolution is approved.
We are now going to review the extraordinary parts of the meeting. Resolution 20 asks you to authorize the board to issue shares and/or securities giving access immediately or eventually to the company's and/or an affiliate's share capital with preferential subscription rights. The use of this authorization is restricted in times of public offerings.
The vote is open. The vote is closed. The resolution is approved.
Resolution 21, you are asked to authorize your board of directors to issue shares or securities giving immediate or eventual access to capital of the company or of a subsidiary without the preferential rights in the context of public offerings or way of offerings for limited group investors. Again, not to apply during a public offering period.
The voting is open. Voting's closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution 22, you are asked to authorize the board of directors to issue shares and/or securities giving immediate or eventual access to the company's capital and/or a subsidiary's capital without the preferential subscription right via an offer addressed exclusively to a limited group of investors acting on their own behalf or to invested investors, but without that authorization applying during a public offering period.
Voting is open. Voting's closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution 23, you are asked to authorize the board of directors to increase the amount of issues provided for in resolutions 20, 21, and 22 with suspension during a public offer period.
Voting's open. Voting is closed. Resolution approved.
Resolution 24, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to issue shares and/or securities giving access either immediately or eventually to the company's capital without a preferential subscription right with a view to remunerate contributions in kind of securities granted to the company. Suspension during public offer periods.
Voting is open. Voting's closed. Resolution adopted.
Resolution 25, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to increase the company's capital by incorporating reserves, profits, premiums, or other amounts, the capitalization of which would be permitted. Again, with suspension of this authorization during public offer periods.
Voting's open. Voting's closed. Resolution approved.
Resolution 26, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to grant free performance shares to employees or corporate officers, which may be existing or newly issued shares.
Voting's open. Voting's closed. Resolution approved.
Resolution 27, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to increase the share capital by issuing shares and/or securities giving access to the company's capital without the preferential subscription rights for employees who are part of a group or company share scheme.
Voting's open. Voting's closed. Resolution approved.
Resolution 28, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to increase the share capital without preferential subscription rights to benefit a category of beneficiaries.
Voting's open. Voting's closed. Resolution is approved.
Resolution 29, you're asked to authorize the board of directors to reduce the share capital through the cancellation of shares. Voting is open. Voting's closed. Resolution is approved.
Lastly, resolution 30 concerning powers for filing and publicity formalities.
Voting is open. Voting's closed. Resolution is approved.
All the resolutions have thus been approved. I shall pass back to Michel de Rosen to continue.
Thank you very much, Jill Greene, for your modest contribution to the voting on our resolutions. Thank you, Melissa Bensimon, for maybe a more substantial contribution. I'd like to thank our shareholders for attending or otherwise for voting. It's a very high rate of participation and the rate of approval as well. That's confidence, which is a source of honor for us. We will do our very best to deserve the confidence you've placed in us. I'd like to say sorry for this meeting having taken longer than we planned. We had planned to finish it midday. It's now 12:45 P.M.
Hopefully, that won't have interfered with your plan for the rest of the day. I apologize for the delays. I'd like to thank all those who've worked to make this a success, who've prepared the necessary logistics, HR, legal aspects. It's a lot of work every time. When things go well, it all looks easy, but it's never easy. So thank you, everybody, for your hard work to ensure that this annual general meeting has gone as well as it has. For those who have time, we can meet outside this room. As you've all well understood, the culture of this company is somewhat frugal. Perhaps don't be too hopeful as to what the lunch buffet might look like if there is one. It will simply be an opportunity to continue our dialogue. I look forward to seeing you next year.
That brings us to the end of today's agenda. Therefore, the meeting stands adjourned. Thank you.