Good afternoon, welcome to the Getlink 2026 Investor Day. Standing here today is a special moment for Getlink management team and for me. Three years ago, I was on the other side of the room, a sales side analyst covering Getlink, I'm here today, along with the management team of the group, to talk to you about the growth potential of Getlink. When preparing this Investor Day, I naturally came back to my previous life and kept asking myself: What did I not know three years ago that would have helped me better understand the group, its strategy, its growth trajectory, and ultimately, its value? What do I now see from the inside that I would have loved to understand as an analyst? These questions and the discussions we had with all of you over the past months really guided how we built today's agenda.
Of course, we'll talk about traffic, we'll talk about yield, about electricity spreads, but we want to go a bit further. We want to show you what drives Getlink, how decisions are made, and what makes us so confident in the group potential. Even more importantly, we want you to meet the team behind the business. Three years ago, I did not fully appreciate the depth of expertise, the diversity of skills, the commitment, the innovative and customer-centric mindset that shapes most of Getlink's decisions. This afternoon, you will hear directly from the leaders running operations, and we believe this will give you a better sense of the group's potential than any slide deck ever could. What's on the agenda today?
First, we will hear the strategic overview from our CEO, Yann Leriche. We will start a segment dedicated to the LeShuttle business with three parts. First one will be on Freight with Didier Cazelles. Julie Bagur will then talk about Getlink Customs Services. We'll finish with Deborah Merrens on passengers. Yann will return with a special guest to discuss the strong potential of high-speed rail. Following a 15-minute break, we will move to Europorte with Raphaël Doutrebente and ElecLink with Steven Moore.
We will conclude with two topics that are really key for Getlink's future: Tech and AI with Denis Coutrot, and Finance with our Deputy CEO and CFO, Géraldine Périchon. This will be followed by a Q&A session with our management team. Of course, a reminder of a disclaimer. With that being said, you will have a short movie to set the tracks Now I'm delighted to welcome on stage the one person without whom this whole story would be very different, our Chairman, Jacques Gounon.
Thank you, Virginie. I'm very happy to say that you are at ease on both sides of the table, and so but we do prefer that you are with us. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for participating to this Investor Day. I think it's something that we are very pleased to present just after the release of our 2025 results. I would like also to welcome Robert Sinclair, Head of the London St. Pancras High Speed. That's the right wording? Thank you. Because cooperation with Robert is absolutely key in order to make a new entrance a reality, but I think that Yann and Robert will explain why we have such confidence in passenger growth on the high-speed rail.
A few days ago, we have celebrated the 40th anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Canterbury, 40 years ago. I think at that time, we can say, regarding the movies which have been presented, that it has generated an incredible, successful story. Yes, I know we had some difficulties at the beginning, but thanks to the staff, and I would like to pay tribute to staff and management, just reminding that they are working all around the clock. We have been able, of course, to be successful once again, whatever the difficulties we had on our way. Now, you will see, and I hope that you will be convinced, that we are entering in a new phase, which is a growth phase, which is something which will give us some additional possibilities regarding the past situation we faced.
I would like also to pay tribute to the shareholders, because we exist only because we have shareholders, which are each time in the AGM, voting at 95 and plus all the resolutions we are presenting, and this support is absolutely key. It's a reason why, and you know that this is public since this morning. It's a reason why we consider that we need to serve higher dividends to our shareholders. We have, or the board has decided, of course, to propose to the AGM vote, a dividend of EUR 0.80 per share this year, which will be a cash out of EUR 440 million. EUR 440 million is roughly the total turnover of the company when I joined the company 21 years ago.
Just in order to highlight that something has changed in the life of that company. More than that, we are working hard with the team in order to have a continuous growth improvement of that dividend, because we would be very happy to reach 1 EUR per share in 2030. We do think it's possible, and I quite sure that we will do. It means that more and more, we want to be recognized as a very profitable company, as we call a valeur de rendement. This is absolutely one of our key strengths. Regarding the use of our cash, I would like perhaps to raise immediately a question which has not been raised, regarding the capital allocation, regarding the optimization of the balance sheet.
I think it's something which is very important. We are working hard on that. I will not commit, because some colleagues told me that we are not able to make such commitment regarding the regulation. What I can say is that if the AGM on the 27th of May will renew my position, I would like to, with my colleagues, of course, to be in a situation to deliver, I hope in 2027, something which will be a significant reallocation of our capital. Having said that, why not right now? We have time to do that. You know that I've been always defending a long-term strategy with a vision. It means that when we progress, it's step by step. I recognize that I am very cautious. I don't want to do something and perhaps after that, to consider that it was not the right decision.
We need, of course, to think a lot about such kind of decision. Yes, we will work with the board in order, before I leave the company, to be able to say the end of my story would be something regarding the balance sheet of the company and the free cash flows. Not too bad when you have in mind what has been the situation. The company was dead 22 years ago. Having said that, I would like to conclude the fact that we are entering into a new phase for that company.
It seem s that everything give us the possibility, of course, and I am sure that Yann and his team, and Géraldine, of course, will continue to explain why we are so confident in the capability of the company to deliver more and more. Growth will be our key target for the coming years. As it's mainly the responsibility of Yann to do that, please, Yann, come on the stage in order to start the presentation. I would say that I am very happy, working with Yann. I hope it's the same for you.
I do.
He can't say the opposite. It's not possible at all. He has no possibility. Beyond that, recognizing what Yann is doing in that company, the board has decided to give him the new definition of Vice President and, of course, Managing Director, CEO of the company. It's just a clear recognition by the board that Yann and his team is bringing a lot of positive impetus to the company. On that spirit, growth, dividend policy, and more than that, Yann, please convince us and convince our colleagues that we can do that. Thank you.
Thank you, Jacques. It's a pleasure to follow in your first step. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. I'm very happy to be here with you today to open this Investor Day. Many of you came today. It's a testament to your interest in our company. It's also, for us, a great opportunity to share a comprehensive picture of Getlink's full potential. I do believe that it has not been made easy for you, for the finance community, to get a full understanding of the value creation drivers of the company. Today, we have that opportunity. We have the opportunity to share with you our excitement, our enthusiasm about what's come next for Getlink. What lies ahead of us? A new area of ambitious growth. Our next milestone in that journey is 2030. We want to reach a EUR 1 billion EBITDA.
Beyond that, we want to continue, we want to accelerate and to generate even more value and stronger free cash flow generation. With that confidence in our ability to deliver on our plan, we want to have a reset in our dividend policy that Jacques just mentioned. Over the next 15 minutes, I want to share with you three main ideas. The first one, I want to explain you how we want to transform our unique asset, the Channel Tunnel, into a platform for growth. Second, I want to tell you what we have been doing over the last five years to put us in a position we are in today.
Of course, third point, I will tell you what's coming next, what we are going to do, how we are going to accelerate, how we are going to reach the EUR 1 billion EBITDA. We have a unique asset, the Channel Tunnel. There are very, very few companies that fulfill the dreamers in us and at the same time has an economic purpose. It's not me saying that, it's François Mitterrand 4 years ago, when the Treaty of Canterbury was signed, the one, you know, deciding between Margaret Thatcher and the French president to build the Channel Tunnel. To be more specific, we are unique for 4 main reasons. The first one is that the Channel Tunnel has no equivalent. Even today in the world, you don't have 3 tunnels under the sea, you know, running 24 hours a day, all year long.
Second, we are the only land connection between France and the U.K. We are a true binational company, and we can do that under the protection of the Treaty of Canterbury. Third point, we have a very long concession, 99 years. A lot of our competitors would dream of that duration. The concession will end in 2086. Last point, but not least, we are a low-carbon company, and it's becoming more and more important. We are also unique thanks to our teams. They have unique skills to operate the Channel Tunnel and all our businesses on a daily basis. They have critical skills in engineering, in operation, in railway infrastructure, in rolling stock, customer relationship, customer service, energy, data, AI, and much more. What makes me especially proud about them, it's their engagement, their commitment. They fight on a daily basis to make our company a success.
If we are all together here today in a position to announce great news, it's thanks to their great job on a daily basis. Thank you to them. Now I will tell you how, with them, we are turning our unique asset into a platform for growth. Our plan is centered around the Tunnel. It is at the core of what we do, and we want to deliver more value with the Tunnel. There is still a lot of potential to grow our revenue, to grow our profit. We do that, as you know, thanks to operational excellence, thanks to customer excellence, AI, data, and so on. Above all, our ambition today is to put more trains in the Tunnel. Today, on peak days, we have 450 trains in the Tunnel. We can go up to 1,000.
As we are a company with a lot of fixed cost, we have fixed assets, the more trains we have in the tunnel, of course, the highest our profitability. We focus on that. We have great perspective, especially on the high-speed segment. I will come back to that. Around that core strategy, we want to put additional services that will complement and enhance the service that we offer to our customers. We do that typically with Getlink Customs Services that we created. When our freight customers, you know, the trucks, when they cross the Channel, you know, they come from far away, and they still drive a long journey after that. We want to serve them end to end as much as possible.
Today, we help them with their formalities when they cross the border, but before they start their journey, now we also make their formalities for them, and we close those formalities at the end of their journey. It's complementary, it's enhancing, it's adding additional value. Third layer of our plan, we develop activities that are in synergy with the tunnel. The obvious example is ElecLink. We have an asset which has been built for goods and for people, and we are adding energy in it. It's a great success. We'll come back to that later on. Same logic with Europorte. What we share is expertise, it's people.
We are in the same rail industry. On top of that, Europorte is also, for us, a way to extend the hinterland, the rail hinterland of the tunnel, which give us potential for growth in the future. With that, Part 2, what have we been doing over the last five years to get in the position we are in today? If we look back, the 5 last years have been challenging. We had COVID, we had high inflation, we had high energy cost and high volatility on those energy costs. We had Brexit, we had the arrival of low-cost competition. We had new border controls. It's been a lot. Despite that, we reached record results. Of course, we reached those results thanks to ElecLink, our two legacy activities, Eurotunnel and Europorte, also delivered record results.
If you look at the last year before the years of disruption, 2019, our EBITDA was EUR 560 million. Last year, we reached EUR 859 million, plus 53%. That's great! How did we achieve that? We achieved that thanks to four main actions. We achieved that, first, thanks to a rigorous management of our cost. Financial discipline. In our OpEx, you remember that we had a plan that we called Shield during Brexit and COVID, between 2020 and 2022. We did EUR 40 million of ongoing saving. We continued with a performance plan at Eurotunnel, EPP, EUR 25 additional million, and we continue. It's today part of our DNA. Operational excellence is the way that we operate, and there is always something to do better. We'll continue.
We applied the same discipline in our CapEx spend, which enables us today to have a balance sheet, which is much stronger than what it was in 19 and the years before. I will not elaborate on that. Géraldine Périchon, our CFO, will tell you much more about it a bit later today. We also reach record results, thanks to our customer-centric strategy. How do we operate in each of our businesses? We put the customer at the center. We want to attract them, we want to please them. We want to offer the best value proposition. We want them to be willing to use our service, to pay for our service, so that we can increase our yield. It's a virtuous circle, and we did that very well. I will take the example of LeShuttle, and you know that we don't make the split between passenger and freight.
If you look at our numbers, between 2019 and 2025, we increased our yield by 44%, thanks to all the action that we have put in place to increase our competitive advantages. We also reach record results thanks to the way we proactively manage Brexit. Brexit was a systemic shock for us. You know, that was quite major. We launched a lot of actions. I will underline here two that were critical. We fought against social dumping. After Brexit, you know, that we had low-cost competitors on the short straits . We launched actions in France and in the U.K. Laws were voted. That fight is not totally over, but we already made key progress. Second, we innovated. I mentioned Getlink Customs Services. This is exactly a response to Brexit. There are new formalities.
Hey, let's take advantage of them and transform what is a constraint into an opportunity. We also reach record results, of course, thanks to the launch commissioning of ElecLink. Here I must say we are a bit lucky. We launched it in 2022 when the market were abnormal, exceptional. Without this exceptional period that we faced in the past, it's a very, very key asset today for the group and also opens a lot of opportunities. We reach record results because we are very disciplined in the way we manage our operations, because we manage proactively Brexit, because we successfully launched ElecLink, and thanks to our strategy, which is customer-oriented and generating value. During those five years, we also looked at the future.
We also planted the seeds of growth that we are going to harvest today. I will give you one example. We spent a lot of time to understand why we don't have more high-speed trains in the tunnel. Very quickly, we understood that there is a lot of potential, there is a lot of demand for high-speed rail in the tunnel, but after more than 30 years of operation, there are still only 1 unique operator in the tunnel. Why? The answer is that it was complicated to run trains in the tunnel. The main problem was us. We spent a lot of time and energy to simplify everything that we could in the tunnel, to standardize all the rules, to stick with the international standards, mainly the European ones, so that now it becomes very easy to launch a new service.
We also worked with the train manufacturers to ensure that their new generation of high-speed trains could directly be bought on the shelf and run into the tunnel without many modifications that are, one, costly, and second, risky, because when you have to, you know, to go through a lot of safety certification and so on, it can last long and be risky. Finally, we got concretely prepared to get more traffic. Here also one example that you are aware of: we changed our STATCOM, static compensator. So for the non-experts, it's part of our power supply. To be able to have a quality of electricity in our catenary, which is good enough for the new generation of trains. That was a EUR 50 million investment. Thanks to that, we have a great opportunity to increase that business for Getlink.
I will come back with our friend Robert a bit later today. Now, what's coming next? With all that we did, we are in a very good position. We are also in a very good position because all our businesses will face tailwinds in the years to come. Look, LeShuttle Pax, we have opportunities for more traffic and for further yield optimization. Deborah will speak about that. High-speed rail, I already mentioned that business a bit, we'll also come back to it. ElecLink, all the trends on the electricity market are good for interconnections. Steven is going to speak about it. Getlink Customs Services, also full of opportunities to simplify the business of our customers. With AI and technology, you will see that we can do much more than today and create much more value for our customers.
Europorte, of course, the only profitable railway, freight railway company in France and one of the very few in Europe. We are very successful, and Raphaël is going to speak about it. Finally, Le Shuttle Freight will also benefit from tailwind in the future. I'm sure that you have many questions about the last one, Le Shuttle Freight, because that one, over the last years, suffered, let's say, quite a lot, and suffered for two main reasons. The first one is Brexit. Brexit is a 10-year process. It started in 2016, and it's ending now, 2026. Just after the announcement of Brexit and before we got the TCA, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, so the Brexit contract between Europe and the U.K. As of 2016, 2017, some companies already stopped doing business between Europe and the U.K.
The last formalities to be implemented after Brexit, are happening this year, in 2026, two are remaining. At the same time, second element, the U.K., during that 10-year period, continued to deindustrialize. Instead of importing more good from Europe because of Brexit, the U.K. imported more good from Asia, China especially, and also the U.S., and those exports were direct without getting through Europe and not, of course, through the tunnel. The good news is that those trends are reaching an end, and that business is ready to rebound. I will give you three key drivers for that rebound. First, if we take one key market segment for us, the automotive industry, from 2016 to 2026 or 2025, the number of cars manufactured in the U.K. was divided by two.
Now, with all the plans of the U.K. automotive industry, there will be a rebound by 30% by 2030. Second, all the logistic platform, the e-commerce platforms that were shipping directly from China to the U.K. or to Europe in a general manner, have now decided to implement large warehouses in the U.K. and in Europe for many reasons. Because of new taxation schemes that are coming, because it will be faster, because they want to become platform and also to source locally. All of that, we could enter into more details if you have questions, that would generate new e-commerce business for the tunnel. Last point, Brexit. Here also, there is a change of trend.
Last year, there was an agreement between EU and U.K. to do a Brexit reset. Part of the agreement is to simplify all the checks on sanitary and phytosanitary products, which is also a key segment for the tunnel. You see, all our segments have positive trends, which make us very confident in our ability to reach EUR 1 billion EBITDA by 2030. After that, with the growth of the high-speed segment, we will reach, you know, a new era. We plan to have 10 million more passengers in the tunnel in the high-speed trains by 2035. We'll come back to that. That will accelerate our growth. At the same time, we will have our CapEx spend normalizing, our cash generation is going to improve quite massively. All of this leads us to our dividend policy reset.
EUR 0.80 plan for this year, subject to the approval of the AGM, the plan is to reach EUR 1 by 2030, with an increase of EUR 0.05 per year. As a conclusion, you see that we have a plan. We have been working hard, we are still working hard, we'll continue to work hard to deliver on our plan to be very strong in execution, in acceleration, and in value creation to reach those targets. Thank you. It's now my pleasure to welcome on stage Didier Cazelles. Didier Cazelles is the Deputy CEO of Eurotunnel, he manages the business on a daily basis, all aspect, all segments. Today, Didier, you are going to focus on one key element, the one that I already mentioned, which is Le Shuttle Freight. Please tell us more about how this business is going to rebound after a few years that were quite difficult?
Thank you, Yann. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Didier Cazelles, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Eurotunnel, and I am pleased to open this three-voice presentation dedicated to growth for Eurotunnel. I will start, as Yann mentioned, with an overview of our LeShuttle Freight business. Then Julie Bagur. Julie is CEO of Getlink Customs Services. Julie will cover Getlink Customs Services activities. Deborah Merrens. Deborah is Chief Commercial Officer of Eurotunnel. Deborah will conclude with our LeShuttle activities for passengers. Let's start with the LeShuttle Freight business. LeShuttle as freight has faced significant headwinds in recent years, we are convinced that the fundamentals in terms of market size and competitive environment are improving, consequently, LeShuttle freight volumes will mechanically grow over the coming years. That's what I'm trying
I'm going to explain now through market analysis, competitive environments, evolution, and strengthening of our competitive edge. Prior to that, I will give some words on LeShuttle Freight business. LeShuttle Freight is the leader in the cross-channel market. We offer the fastest transit time, as well as the highest frequency. In addition, we are also the greenest, which is becoming a valuable advantage. Our marketing positioning is higher value, speed, frequency, reliability, higher price. That's why our 2,000 customers are mainly in time-sensitive businesses such as fresh, express delivery, and so on. It's true that the last few years have been challenging for LeShuttle Freight in terms of volume, 25 is 27% below 2019, just before Brexit. All our segments have been under pressure, automotive being the worst at -56%.
There are two main factors that explain the loss of volume: the Brexit, which has reduced the trade between EU and U.K., and the intensification of the competition. That's for the last year, but now, what is coming next? Regarding the market size, we are optimistic for the coming years. Looking to 2030, we expect a gradual demand recovery in all our segments, and it's about economic growth in manufacturing and retail, new EU-U.K. agreements on sanitary and phytosanitary products, relocation of the automotive production in the U.K., and reorganization of supply chains and e-commerce platforms in Europe. Taken together, all these elements will support an increase of our underlying demand on all our segments over the coming years. Regarding our competitive environment, the intensification of the competition is mainly due to Irish Ferries.
Irish Ferries entered in the market in 2021 on a low-cost model, which was rapidly replicated by P&O. This led to a race for volume through price decreases. We are convinced that this situation will not last any longer, as the ferries are facing massive increase in their cost base, and with at least 4 key extra costs. First extra cost, the increasing of port charges. The ports are investing massively in new facilities for EES, for power supplies, and these investment are translated into costs for the ferries. Second extra cost for the ferries, the seafarers' wages are increasing. The implementation of antisocial dumping regulation have already forced the ferries to increase the seafarers' wages, and it will go further, as there will be a regulation tightening on working time.
Third extra cost for the ferries, the carbon surcharge tied to EU ETS regulation is increasing up to EUR 11 in 2026, compared to 2024. It is passed through to customer, so it is price increase, and it could double as the U.K. is considering entering in the EU ETS market. Fourth extra cost for the ferries, the EU requirements regarding low carbon emission, reducing by 80% by 2050, will force the ferries to invest massively in new vessels. That's why, for us, the take-away is clear. The ferries will no longer be able to absorb this extra cost and will have to come back to a more rational behavior. That means price increases. Market size, competitive environment. What about our strengths? Our strengths are speed, frequency, reliability, and we are continuing to work on that.
In 2025, we are come back in terms of transit time at the pre-Brexit level, at less than 2 hours. It was achieved through digitalizing paper form and redesigning our flows in our terminals. We will go further. The Brexit, the strategy is to reduce cost and delays that emerged as a consequence of Brexit. The Brexit has imposed border formalities in our terminals that reduced the fluidity, and we want to improve it as much as possible by reducing the manual time required for these formalities. That's why we're working hard on new digital tools. We are automating the checks by using new technologies, such as license plate recognition and computer vision. This will shorten manual inspection, time inspection, and also reduce the costs, manual interactions.
We are also working, and we are an early pilot on for major EU new border digital schemes. It is called Smart Border. By using new technologies, such as facial recognition and pre-travel biometric data collection, license plate recognition, computer vision, will help us to be by far the best in class in term of fluidity. In parallel, we are working to improve our offer. We are working, and we made some adjustments on our pricing strategy for small and mid-sized customers, and we have also launched new initiatives to better serve our truck drivers. We know, that the truck drivers have a say in the decision to take Eurotunnel rather than the ferries. Market size will grow, price gap between Eurotunnel and the ferries will decrease.
We will reinforce our strength. LeShuttle freight volumes will mechanically grow over the coming years. Last point, we have developed a new Customs Services offer to assist our customers in the formalities linked to Brexit. As it was a great success, we have decided to transform it into a new business, Getlink Customs Services. I am pleased to ask Julie to come on stage to give information on Getlink Customs Services.
Thank you, Didier. I'm really happy to be here and build on what you've just shared about our LeShuttle Freight business. You may not know that each year, for businesses moving goods between the U.K. and EU, the cost of Brexit-related paperwork is around GBP 2 billion. This is an official figure from the U.K. government. GBP 2 billion of pure administrative burden for our customers. That's why at Getlink we decided to step in, first, to make life easier for our customers, and then we realized that there was an opportunity to grow a dedicated business. Since the return of borders, our customers face three major challenges. One, administrative cost, I just mentioned it. Second, delays.
Any truck can be stopped for a check, and if it's carrying phytosanitary good, it would stay on average, 3 hours and 17 minutes at the inspection point in the U.K. Third, compliance risk. If a shipment is improperly declared, the truck can be denied entry entirely, meaning the goods are turned back or lost, a nightmare scenario for any transporter. That's why at Getlink we introduced the Border Pass. The Border Pass is a digital wallet that allows the customer to pre-load their formalities that are being checked by our services, so when the truck arrives at Eurotunnel site, it gets automatically recognized and cleared for a smooth and paperless crossing.
Building on this smart border expertise and on our in-depth understanding of the customer's challenges, we launched Getlink Customs Services, or GCS, as a standalone business unit with a simple goal: to provide value-added customer support, not just to our own customers, but to all businesses moving goods between the U.K. and EU. Even ferry customers use our solutions today. Just a quick example. When a truck crosses from France to the U.K., it has to go through all these three steps: exit, crossing, and entering the U.K. territory. For each step, there are multiple forms to fill out and to lodge in various authorities' IT systems, and it is timely and costly. Per truck, per crossing, if all these formalities together cost from EUR 100 to EUR 350.
That's where Getlink Customs Services wants to make a difference. What makes us unique? First, we have our teams on the ground on both side of the borders, and they are ready to step in in case of any issue, in case of any check, 24/7. On top of that, we have digital architecture directly connected to the authority system, and we have invested in data and artificial intelligence to process the declaration as quickly as possible. With that, we are able to deliver our findings accurately and extremely quickly, and speed is essential in this business, as you can imagine. In a nutshell, we are committed not only to the paperwork, but to support the customer through all their journeys until the goods made it across both borders. This powerful offer didn't happen overnight.
It's the result of a journey. We started by investing in technology to serve our Eurotunnel customers with the first platform for customs services, then we built up our expertise on both sides of the channel. 2024, we acquired Channelports, a leading custom broker in the U.K., with a very strong focus on digital and speed of service. 2025, we acquired A.S.A. and BIMS, respectively, in the Calais and Boulogne Ports, providing us a strategic location at these major French ports. With that, we have a strong foothold on both sides of the channel. Recently, we started to expand the GCS model to support our customers on additional steps of their journey.
We acquired Custom Formal at the Swiss border, and we also formed a partnership just last month with Partida at the Spanish-Moroccan border to prepare for the growing trade coming from Morocco. With that, we have solid foundations based on our 3 key assets: our digital platforms, our fantastic and committed teams, and our cross-border local presence. This allows us to deliver a best-in-class customer experience, and it's translating already into tangible results. 2025, we generated EUR 20 million of revenue, and we processed 600,000 declarations for our customers, and we are ready for much more.
Indeed, the growth potential is still huge because you remember the value per truck I mentioned, it means just on the cross-channel truck traffic, it's a market of more than half a billion EUR that we can address. This growth potential is not just theoretical, we have also proved it in 2025, where we delivered a 10% organic growth. We have plans to do more. We have geographies that are currently underserved, where we will promote our solutions, and we have also new services that we will constantly continue to launch as the trade regulation and the supply chains keep evolving.
We will also continue to consider strategic acquisitions to further scale our network. To conclude, GCS is a turning a major post-Brexit challenge into an attractive growth opportunity. Beyond that, we are really happy to also contribute to one of Getlink core mission, which is to make trade between the U.K. and EU as simple and as fast as possible. With that, I will hand over to Deborah Merrens, who will talk to us about our passenger business.
Thank you, Julie. Thank you. It's great to be here, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very excited to share the continued momentum that we're looking forward to with LeShuttle Passenger and how we're going to continue on our growth trajectory. Before I do that, I would ask you to watch a short film with me. Play the VT.
Let's go, Dad. 35 minutes to destination. 20 seconds, we have complete clearance to launch. 15 seconds, guidance internal. 12, 11, 10, nine. Ignition sequence start. Engines on. five, four, three, two, one. All engines running. Lift off. We have lift off.
Good job. It was a very smooth ride all the way.
We have lift off, and we're very proud. This TV ad accompanies the transformation of the LeShuttle brand and the relaunch, as do many of the things I'm going to talk to you about today. In fact, we've got some really exciting tailwinds that I want to share. A little bit of context first, a bit about LeShuttle. Despite the added competition, we are still by far the leader in our market with 56% market share. We have always been known to be the fastest, and we still hold that accolade. The thing that's becoming increasingly important is the fact that we're 52 times less carbon than any of our competition, and our seven million passengers really appreciate that. It's something that we're really amplifying the focus on. Who are our customers?
Well, 83% of them actually come from the U.K., originate U.K. travel. That's a clue to one of the opportunities that we hold. The other thing is that 90% of them, and this is a statistic that many of our travel competitors would give their right arm for, 90% come directly. They deal directly with us. They don't book through travel agents, tour operators, online travel agents. However, you'll hear later how that presents another opportunity for us for certain segments of new business. We're very proud of the fact that we've managed to grow through our yield and product policies. We've grown our premium business from 2019, where it was sat around just under 10%, to 17.5% today.
We've seen huge growth in the customers we've attracted and the way that we've converted customers to buy premium products. Last but not least, we let's talk about the dogs. We are carrying nearly double the amount of pooches that we carried before COVID, and the thing that's often said in the U.K. is that we're at peak dog in the U.K. It's very, very important because the customers that travel with their pets care dearly for them and are very attached to the Le Shuttle brand because of the fact that we're the only service that allows you to keep your pet in the car with you. Very important. Our growth strategy is, at its core, about customer centricity.
We've been very committed to this now since 2019, and we're going to continue to grow by attracting new customers, continuing on our path of yield optimization, and developing our ancillary products and services, such as retail, that I'll touch on later. We need to ensure that we continue on this path of attractiveness, so the customer experience will be at the heart of everything we do, and we focus a lot of energy and investment in understanding our customers and how we can best serve them. Similarly, our marketing strategy has to be on point. We know that we're competing with other travel and transport companies, and we have to be best in class.
Talked earlier about this imbalance we have with U.K.-originating travelers, and only 17% of our revenue today comes from the continental traveler, so we've seen it as a great opportunity for growth. We have done some intensive research, we understand better than ever our continental customers and their potential for growth. We've decided that we're going to focus initially on the Netherlands because that's the customer that has the highest propensity to travel with us. They've got the most interest in traveling to the U.K. They are not deterred by driving on the other side of the road. We start our campaign this year targeting our Dutch potential passengers. We don't do it just alone. We're going to do it.
Our go-to-market strategy is dependent on working with partners, such as, and I mentioned earlier, the travel agency and tour operator community that will really beef up for the Netherlands. VisitBritain are very much walking arm in arm with us in this journey. This is how we're going to drive new customers to effectively where we have today excess space and capacity. It's a great opportunity for us. Another opportunity that I'm particularly excited about is that of working with partners, and here's an example where we launched, in the summer of 25, a partnership with Avios, and Avios being the loyalty program of the IAG group, so British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus. If you take BA alone with their 13 million members, this gives us a phenomenal base to target to drive first-time users of LeShuttle.
In the first few months, we've seen a great uptake, and both they and we are very satisfied with the results. 13,000 new members we've attracted to our program, of which they use double the premium service, double the Flexiplus service of our standard customers, so they're very prepared to spend with us. In fact, they spend about 18% more. Their yield is 18% more than an average non-airline customer. We're attracting them through targeted advertising. You can see here, this was a billboard that we made for, and you may have seen it, some of you, at Terminal 5 on the carousel. While people are waiting for their limited baggages, we remind them that we have unlimited baggage when you travel with LeShuttle, and you can even bring the pet.
We're also advertising in-flight, so as people are sat there as a captive audience on British Airways, they see an ad that extols the benefits and the reasons to believe in traveling with LeShuttle. We're finding that when they do convert, and they travel with us, we see in the Net Promoter Score, they score us really highly. They really rate our service. This gives you a clue, too. It's the start of many partnerships, and we're in conversation already with similar airline and hotel companies that could provide us access to large databases. Day trip travelers, this is a really interesting sector. Now, you heard from, you heard from Yann and Didier about the aftermath of Brexit, and one of the big casualties has been the day trip and overnight traveler that really literally stopped just immediately after Brexit.
In fact, we saw a decline of 76%. Customers tell us that they just feel the perception is the onerous nature of the paperwork, the complexity of travel, it's just a turn-off. We've been working hard behind the scenes. We've been piloting the EU and U.K. borders to make sure that we have the smartest border possible, the most seamless experience, and that those customers will not feel the pain of Brexit when they travel with us. We're going to be opportunistic. We're going to put a lot of emphasis on how we regain this customer base. We feel that it's still there. We're told that customers want access to short trips to Europe, so we're going to facilitate it and bring them back.
The yield story is a really positive one for us. For the last five years, we've been growing our yield incredibly for passenger, it's not over yet. We start with understanding the customer, understanding the products and services, and the way that they want to interact with us from a pricing perspective. Then we can look at how we unbundle our services and offer them more personalization and more of a bespoke pricing offer. Then we've also been investing in tools using AI and best-in-class. In fact, we'll be launching a new booking engine at the beginning of next year, which will be game-changing for us. The first time in a long time, we'll have a state-of-the-art booking tool. There's much more to come. We launched something in 25 called New Fare Structure. It was just the beginning.
We have more to roll out this year and in 27. Watch this space. Exciting around the opportunity for yield growth for LeShuttle Pax. The retail offer, this is an interesting area for us because we, as we're targeting more and more airline travelers, as we're offering more and more premium services, people come to us expecting the airline airport experience. It's part of the international travel journey. It's something that they derive a great deal of pleasure out of, and it's an opportunity for us, not just from a revenue perspective, but from a customer satisfaction perspective. We've been investigating what the future potential is of this space and what our customers want from it. We launched a new partnership for the French terminal with Le Marché Duty Free. They introduced a different range of products. These have gone down incredibly well with customers.
We're seeing higher average transaction values in store. We are now moving on to our food and beverage options, we'll be rolling out in 2026, new food and beverage concessions in both terminals. The other great news is, by the beginning of 2027, we'll have our first pay lounge. We have lounges today for Flexiplus, but there is an opportunity for a pay-per-use lounge in the terminal. In the U.K., we start, that's very exciting. It's going to be operated by one of the world's leading lounge providers will be running that for us. That's not the end. We have the tender for the U.K. contract for duty-free in 2028. Plenty on this horizon that will grow our retail revenue and grow our customer satisfaction.
I have to say something about the customer experience, because this is really what we live and breathe every day. There's the premium experience that I've touched on that we will continue to deliver for our customers, both existing and new. An integral part of this is the frontline standards. It's how we interface with the customer and our frontline staff. We're embarking on a program of training them, using a best-in-class service training company, who are helping us to shape how we interface with customers to deliver that best possible service. Operational reliability goes without saying. We need to deliver this effortless and impeccable service that's expected from us, and that's enabled by the digital journey.
We see the companion app as a major game changer for our customers, that they can understand every step of the journey, optimize their time, take off the stress, and do as much as they can, pre-travel. That's another really critical piece of work that we're doing. Alongside all these softer areas of customer experience, let's not forget the physical experience, the enhanced facilities that we envisage for LeShuttle. If any of you travel, you'll see that this work's going on at the moment, that we are completely overhauling the journey from start, the check-in plaza through to the terminal buildings, and, we're looking at those from, again, from a customer experience lens to ensure the best possible experience, along with things like wayfinding and signage, which are critically important.
Children's facilities, another example of an area that customers told us that we needed to improve. Last but not least, the very important pet check-in facilities, because we know that that will make our pet owners love us even more. We're going to be relaunching how they check in pets, both in France and the U.K. very soon. There's this program of continuous investment, of looking for customer feedback and customer needs, and how we can best address them to create that stickiness with our customers. I touched on marketing. Like any best-in-class travel transport provider, we need to make sure that our marketing is on point, and there's three core bits to that: the acquisition, the activation, and then the retention of customers. Acquisition, we'll be focusing a lot on how we work with partners. I've talked about that.
It's a no-brainer for us to talk to other travel companies' databases, and they're very happy to collaborate with us. We have a pipeline of partners that we're already in conversation with. In tandem with that, we'll continue with our targeted advertising. Once we capture the customers, we then have to convert them, so we have now a very sophisticated program of customer activation that with a lot of targeted campaigns and offers that we continually improve through test and learn. We do that in parallel with the New Fare Structure work, so that optimizes our yield. New Fare Structure, as I said, will continue to be rolled out. Last but not least is retention. Of course, it's much less costly to retain a customer than it is to win a new one.
We launched in 2025, Club Le Shuttle, our first loyalty program. We did that in tandem with Avios, so we use Avios as the earn and burn currency, but Club Le Shuttle is our vehicle for loyalizing customers. We've seen a great uptake with that. It's less than a year old, and we've seen a lot of customers convert to membership and then give us 14% more bookings and 22% more spend than our average non-member. It's an area that we'll continue our focus and we'll continue to win more customers, activate them, and convert them. In summary, to deliver the next wave of momentum, our trajectory for growth, as I called it, we have a strong pipeline of incremental traffic growth derived from some of the areas I've talked today, but there are others.
Data is at the heart of everything we do. Everything we do going forward is based on customer feedback and customer need. We believe, and we know that this is highly scalable. The LeShuttle passenger is a business that is set to grow. I'm excited. I hope you are. With that, I'm going to pass you to our next speaker, Yann Leriche. She'll talk about another exciting driver of growth. Yann.
Thank you, Déborah. Okay, now time to speak about high-speed rail, an incredible opportunity for growth for Getlink. Today, high-speed rail represent 26% of the revenue of the group, and is set to increase massively. What do we expect? We expect the traffic to go from 12 million passengers today to 22 by 2035, plus 10 million in 10 years. Why is it so important for us? For 1 reason, because we get paid mostly per passenger, which is unique. If you look at other infrastructure managers, they mostly are paid per path, not per passenger. It is our direct interest to have more passengers using our services. We are fully aligned with the high-speed rail operators, you know, using the tunnel. Why, after 30 years, are we so confident that growth is going to come?
While, you know, over the last, you know, yeah, 30 years, we had only one operator, Eurostar, in the tunnel. This for three main reasons. The first one, there is a deep and proven demand, so that one is not totally new, but it's confirmed every day. Second, there is capacity which is coming, and that one is new. Third, the ecosystem is fully aligned, and that one is also absolutely new and critical. I will go step by step, describing you all those three key elements. First, the demand. We have made comprehensive analysis to really understand what was the potential on which corridors. You get the slide. The numbers are small. I don't expect you to read all of them.
Each time we look at the size of the cities, at, you know, the distance between those cities to look at the market share, rail against air, and so on. What I want to share with you is that those numbers are quite conservative. Please look just at the first line. From London to Paris, today, there are yearly 7.6 million passengers. We expect within 10 years, 11.1, so +3.5, which is a bit less than a 50% increase, five zero, 50%. If you look at what happened, for example, in Spain, where competition entered the market in 2019, thanks to competition, after 4 years, the traffic increase was 75%, +75.
The a bit lower than 50 that we take in our calculation compared to those 55 is relatively limited. If you look, for example, also at the Italian market, you will see the same kind of numbers. We are below in our expectations, just to be a bit conservative. Now, if we look into more details into the 5 main corridors from London to major cities in Europe, what do we expect? On the two legacy routes, London to Paris and London to Brussels, we expect an increase of +50% over the next 10 years. Why don't we have more traffic today while the demand is there? For one reason, there is a lack of trains. Eurostar, they have a fleet that is limited in numbers. They cannot meet the demand with their current fleet.
They can't. This is the main limitation. With more trains, there will be immediately more traffic. Second, corridor, London to Amsterdam. On this route, the main limitation was the international terminal at the Amsterdam Central Station. I guess that many of you know that terminal, it used to be very small, and so the train from Amsterdam to London couldn't be filled out just for that reason. The work has been done last year, completed in February, so now it's not a limitation anymore, and that's why we see an increase in the traffic from London to Amsterdam. If we just compare, for example, January of this year compared to January one year ago, it's a +17% increase between London and Amsterdam. That's quite massive already.
Now, like for the London to Paris route, the limitation is in the number of trains that Eurostar is able to operate between those two cities. You have on the slide the number of rotation that they have. The good news is that thanks to improved maintenance, they were able to add a fifth rotation in December, but to fulfill the full potential, they will need a more, at least, another one. There are the new destinations. The most obvious one is Germany. Eurostar is already operating in Germany since the merger with Thalys. Here, the development will be from London to Cologne and from London to Frankfurt. One key data point is that from London to Cologne, by train, it will only take three hours and 45 minutes, less than 4 hours.
Four hours is the point where below that, the market share of rail is higher than the market share of air. After four hours, the market share of rail is lower than the one of air. You see, in Cologne, there is a huge potential. All of that has already started. There are working groups at different level: political, technical. We meet on a regular basis with DB Netz, with in France, SNCF Réseau, of course, London St Pancras High Speed, yourself, to make all of that happen. I will come to it later on. The market potential is of 1.7 million additional passengers within 10 years. One last point about it, for direct services from those two cities in Germany, Cologne to Frankfurt to London, there is also a need for international terminals within those stations.
The design is already completed. We have the plans; we know what it will take, to be built. The last important corridor is London to Switzerland. Here, there are 2 routes: to Geneva, one, and Basel and Zurich. The potential is of 1.9 additional million passengers per year by 2035. Those cities are a bit more remote from London than the German ones. The size of the market being bigger, the potential is higher than in Germany, you know, almost two million. Same way as in Germany, a lot of working group are already underway to make all of that happen. You see a lot of potential on those different corridors, the existing one and new ones. Second point, capacity is coming, and that's new, and it's very concrete.
Eurostar already signed their orders for new trains. I mean, they have signed an order for 50 new trains, 30 firm, 20 optional. That was made end of 2025. They plan to put those trains in service between 2031 and 2033. A very interesting point is that they are double-deckers. In double-deckers, there are more passengers. Remember, we are paid per passenger, so this is great news. Eurostar is really motivated. They have already signed MOUs in Germany, in Switzerland, and they are very clear about their ambition to improve, to increase their service on the current routes, but also to serve Switzerland and Germany. Awesome opportunity for all of us. On top of Eurostar, there are new entrants that are going to come into the market. Virgin.
Virgin today is very motivated. They benefit tailwinds. You know that Eurostar is using a depot in London, the Temple Mills depot, which has free capacity. The regulator in the U.K., the ORR, has decided to allocate that free capacity to Virgin. Great news for them. They know when they are, where they are going to be able to maintain and stable their trains. On their side, they plan to launch service by 2030. They expect to transport 6 million passengers per year, the next milestone for them is to complete their funding and to buy a fleet of trains. They want to buy 12 units of Avelia Stream, so which are Alstom, a new generation of trains. There is a third player, which is very interesting in that business, which is Trenitalia. They're also moving at pace.
On their side, they have decided not to go to the Temple Mills depot, but they are in the process of building a depot in the Paris region. This depot will be used both for their business towards Italy and also to their forecasted business to the U.K. Each time their CEO, Mr. Stefano Donnarumma, speaks about their ambition, he mentions his willingness to connect London to European cities. Their first announcements were about starting business by 2029, and he even said recently that if they could start in 2028, that would be even better. On their side, the goal is, of course, to connect London to Paris, and Brussels, but also to have then longer connection to the south of France and also to Italy, Milan especially.
They will buy trains from Hitachi, which is the trains that they already operate in Italy. It's a well-known generation of trains which can run cross-channel. This is also good news. The next step for them is to sign, you know, this additional order within a framework agreement that they already have. Third point, ecosystem alignment. The ecosystem is now politically aligned. U.K. and all the other countries that I mentioned are today willing to increase traffic from London to major cities in Europe. Concretely, MOUs have been signed between the DfT, Department for Transport in the U.K., with their counterpart in Germany and Switzerland, especially, to ensure that everything is happening as fast as possible.
The ORR is also very motivated by the government to make things happen, and you can saw that they were very quick to decide who would benefit from the free capacity of the Temple Mills depot. The technical ecosystem is also very much aligned. We meet with all our peers. Of course, we have a special relationship with the London St Pancras High Speed, probably because we are the only two private infrastructure managers in the mix. Still, you know, it's important that we coordinate. I will give you one key example.
For a new entrant, or even for Eurostar, to launch a new service between Cologne and Frankfurt and London, if they have to go London St Pancras High Speed, ourself, SNCF Réseau, and DB Netz to get a full path and to negotiate, you know, with the four of us to get the path that they want, it's bureaucratic, it's very long, it's cumbersome. We already, on our side, align to offer a one-stop shop and to be able to offer attractive path, you know, in a very simple manner. Among our partners, of course, there is SNCF Réseau. I mentioned that what is limiting the increase of traffic today is the number of trains, but you also know that the station in Paris is a bit small to accommodate the increase of traffic.
Here also, good news, SNCF Gares & Connexions are working at pace to extend the size of the station. You have concrete, you know, pictures of their new design. They are going to increase the size of the international site terminal by 1.6 by 2029, by more than two just after 2030. They have also the potential to go even to 2.5. This is optional, depending on the traffic. Very good news. The same kind of work is happening in London St Pancras High Speed. I'm not going to give you any detail on that because my friend Robert Sinclair is there.
He's the CEO of the former HS1 today, London St Pancras High Speed. He manages the full track between the tunnel and London and all th e stations along the way. We work almost on a daily basis on this. He has clear plans, but more than this, what I like about what he does is his clear vision on how the system could and should operate in the future. Robert, please come on stage. Thank you for coming here.
Yann, you are most welcome. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Just over a year ago, I was delighted to stand with Yann in Calais, just outside the entrance to Eurotunnel, and just after we had signed a strategic partnership and growth alliance between our two organizations. It is clear that we are very aligned with respect to the demand and also the growth opportunity. Perhaps more importantly, it's also very clear that we are aligned about the steps necessary to realize that potential. Since then, there has been an extraordinary level of coordination and cooperation between our two organizations, and actually also between other infrastructure managers, regulators, and governments on both sides of the Channel, as Yann has mentioned.
The ecosystem really is truly aligned in terms of our support, collectively, on both sides of the channel, to make this growth opportunity happen. I think in terms of our view on that demand opportunity, it is very consistent with Getlink. In April last year, we commissioned a transport consultancy, Steer, to undertake forecasts for international passenger volumes across the cross-channel market, from now until 2040. Their base case forecasts confirmed that there could be passenger volumes in the order of 24 million by 2035, so very consistent with Getlink's numbers. Also, there could be, on a high-case basis, the prospect of passenger volumes tripling by 2040. In terms of the key drivers for that, of course, there is underlying economic growth, and there is transport and travel propensity.
Most importantly, in our case, there is a key driver of modal shift, and with that, increasing numbers of passengers who are very climate conscious in their travel choices, environmental policies, as Yann has mentioned, corporate travel policies, propensity for people to travel city center to city center. Of course, with that, the desirability of people focusing on total travel time and people's also increased appetite to take longer journeys if they are traveling by train. However, the key fundamental driver to those forecasts is competition. We certainly know with competition brings choice, it brings new destinations, it brings better customer service, new rolling stock, and most importantly, lower fares. I can certainly say from my experience in aviation over 18 years, that price elasticity of demand in travel, in particular, leisure travel, is extraordinarily high.
I can see that it's very clear from my perspective in the U.K. for all consumers, but in particular British consumers, that if there is choice and if there is a lower price point, there will be switching from one mode to the other, and that switching will happen incredibly quickly. You've seen, as Yann has shown, that the evidence from the European high-speed network, where there is competition, is very, very clear. There has been growth that has outstripped the increase in capacity. There has been minimal, if any, cannibalization when new operators serve the same destinations and grow the overall market. Likewise, with respect to this particular case on the cross-channel market, we believe the most compelling evidence that you have in front of you for the growth opportunity is actually what is happening.
Never before in the history of the high-speed line have we seen a situation where there are multiple operators simultaneously progressing plans to launch cross-channel services. Combined with, of course, Eurostar themselves, refleeting and looking to add additional destinations. There is, in effect, a real race for that capacity. Both the high-speed line in the U.K. and the Channel Tunnel, as you have heard, has 50% spare capacity, and with those fundamental dynamics that we're seeing in the market, we certainly believe that it's only a matter of time before we see significant growth materializing. Of course, we're incredibly focused on being proactive and being very methodical about addressing the barriers to entry that exist. From our perspective, changing our name from HS1 to London St Pancras High Speed was very deliberate.
We have an opportunity to create our own consumer brand, to move away from a government acronym, to actually develop and to use our own voice to support our operators as they look to launch and grow new services. This is particularly important in a multi-operator environment. This is particularly important when we are looking to establish London St Pancras as a destination where passengers want to go to catch a train, multiple operators, where there is choice. In addition, in July last year, we launched an innovative international growth incentive scheme. This provides a significant discount scheme for our track access charges over a period of five, sorry, three years. And of course, is there to incentivize the growth in new services, new destinations, new intermediate stations, new rolling stock, and growth in passengers.
This recognizes the fact that there is a very long lead time between operators ordering rolling stock and commencement of services, and the cash flow implications of doing that. Perhaps more importantly, we are progressing plans for the expansion of St Pancras International, as Yann mentioned. These are incredibly exciting and ambitious plans that will look to double the capacity of the station along a similar timeframe that is being progressed by Gare du Nord, in terms of the Gare du Nord station.
We have the ability to do that by repurposing the existing areas of the station, particularly on the ground floor, where there is underutilized space in the arrivals area, and we can use that to increase the space in the departures processing area and in the departure lounge. For us at London St Pancras, we have an amazing opportunity to deliver a fast, convenient, stress-free, city center to city center, turn up and go, international travel experience that we think will appeal to everybody
But in particular, the climate-conscious traveler. In summary, from our perspective, we are also incredibly excited about the opportunity that is international high-speed rail. We believe that we are on a cusp of a significant step change in volumes and activity. Of course, it will take several years to happen, but we have never been this confident and this certain about the outlook. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'll hand back to Yann.
Thank you. Thank you, Robert. An awesome opportunity for London St Pancras High Speed, awesome opportunity for Getlink. We are just entering into a new phase of development for high speed. We are totally changing scale, as you have understood, all the planets are aligned today, which is the first time in history. That's why we are so confident. We are going to take our break now. That's the end of the first part of this presentation. I propose that we extend the break from 15 to 20 minutes, that we come back at four. Thank you. Welcome back to the second part of our Investor Day. The two next speakers are CEOs of first, Europorte, and second, ElecLink, that will cover all our businesses. It's my pleasure to introduce Raphaël Doutrebente, CEO of Europorte. Raphaël, floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Yann. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to tell you about Europorte, the best rail freight company in Europe. Very excited to build on Yann's presentation because Europorte is a great illustration of the coherence of the Getlink Group and our capacity to bring together the components that form a forward-looking rail freight operator. I am happy to say that Europorte is a solid company, and the only profitable rail freight operator in Europe. Just want to start by giving you an idea of where we stand. We represent 11% of revenue of the group, and our purpose is to continue to develop synergetic activities within the group.
Our core business is a long-distance rail freight transportation on the conventional freight market, not on the intermodal freight market, only conventional freight market. This activity is representing 63% of revenue and is driven by our modern fleet of locomotives, and one-third of our revenue comes from Europorte logistic operation and infrastructure activities. Our unique positioning allow us to generate commercial synergies for our industrial customers, and our complementary business lines generate operational synergies. We have experienced significant growth, supported by continued trust of industrial and infrastructure customers, and exceptionally high client loyalty. We generate EUR 172 million. Europorte is well established on the main European freight corridors, creating value for Getlink in three ways. First, through enhanced financial performance. Two, by creating direct value through expertise in the rail freight transport market.
Three, by creating direct value by providing opportunities in cross-Channel freight flows. We aim to offer innovative services and solution for our customers. As an example, we developed with Kerlink, a listed company, a business use case called TrackValue. TrackValue is a solution for assets, monitoring solution, and using mature technology, and also the constellation of Kinéis. Why Europorte is the best company in the rail freight? Our DNA, first, we have the performance, but also we think customers. Our customers are in petrochemicals, in agrifood, in cement, and also in automotive industry. We are well known for providing agile services. In 2021, we launched FLEX EXPRESS, a service of shuttle connecting main industrial and petrochemical zone in Europe, and in 2025, we handled 25,000 single wagon loads. It's important to note that few operators have the ability to perform cross-border operations.
Europorte international positioning is a key differentiator for our customers. Thanks to our interoperable assets and our cross-border drivers, Europorte operates in France, in Germany, in Belgium, and also in Switzerland. We generate 25% of our revenue thanks to our cross-border traffic. Our operational expertise and knowledge of European freight markets are key to support cross-Channel trade flows and new projects. They are a valuable asset for growing the Channel Tunnel internal through continental railways services in the future.
In the coming years, France commitments and Europe commitments to increase rail freight transport will only accelerate Europorte's development. Thank you so much for sharing our success. Just to have in mind, in 10 years, we increased our turnover by 50% and our EBIT by 200%. It was a real pleasure to give you this overview of Europorte, from the best company, I'm very pleased to announce my best colleague, Steven Moore.
Thank you very, very much, Raphaël, good afternoon, everybody. At our last Investor Day in 2018, I introduced ElecLink as a new exciting development project for the group. At the time, I remember some people saying it couldn't be done, that there were too many hurdles in the way. Well, I'm delighted to say we were successful, and I'm very proud to be talking to you again today about this fantastic asset that's delivered beyond all expectations and is now responsible for 14% of group revenue. I haven't got very long to do it, so you're gonna have to hang on to your hats. Today, I will explain why ElecLink is truly unique and a key strategic asset for the group. I will show you how it's strong and getting stronger operationally, commercially, and in its market positioning.
I'll share with you how we're continuing to leverage our experience and our asset, including the pathway to Eleclink 2. Let's start with the basics. ElecLink is a 1 GW, high-voltage electricity interconnector that links the energy systems of France and Great Britain. It's where and how it's built that makes it truly unique. Most interconnectors worldwide use subsea cables, and this exposes them to marine risk, weather, and significant inspection challenges. By contrast, ElecLink is located inside the Channel Tunnel, and it's this tunnel environment that provides unequaled access to our asset and provides unique inspection, repair, and maintenance opportunities. ElecLink is a regulated asset, and our regulatory framework spans for 25 years, from go-live through to 2047.
ElecLink was awarded a use of revenues exemption as part of this framework. There is a profit share mechanism above which a certain threshold, we share 50% of revenue with GB and French consumers. It's this attractive regulatory framework that's allowed us to retain 100% of revenues since go-live. What makes up these revenues? They're made up of three things: capacity sales, capacity markets, and ancillary services. Our primary source of revenue is through selling access on the interconnector through open and transparent auctions. These auctions vary in time frame. It can be from one year through to seasonal, quarterly, monthly, daily, and finally, intra-day auctions, where we actually auction and deliver capacity on the same day.
Our customers range from specific trading houses through to some of the world's biggest energy companies, and they're a mix of traders looking to close out financial positions before delivery, through to physical players who want to utilize their capacity on the interconnector to flow electricity. The capacity markets are mechanisms designed to increase energy security by incentivizing players to be available, and not just for the energy that they produce. We also provide and receive revenue for certain services to help the network operators maintain network security. Having a structural difference in the generation mix in Great Britain and France naturally leads to a difference in the wholesale prices between these two countries. In Great Britain, the marginal demand is typically serviced by gas generation. You can see that on the chart in the light green.
Whereas in France, it's serviced by nuclear generation, which is the navy blue. It's worth remembering that unlike other commodities, electricity cannot be stored yet in meaningful quantities. In real time, the system operator has to constantly match demand with generation supply. If we look at the picture in 2050, that structural difference remains. Gas is still expected to meet the marginal demand in Great Britain, and in France, it's still expected to be nuclear, with perhaps a little bit of help from interconnectors. The key message here is that for the next 25 years, the fundamental drivers that lead to the existence of a price spread between France and the U.K. will remain. In fact, volatility is expected to increase, given the growing impact of renewables in setting the marginal price in both countries.
As we will see, price spreads and volatility are very good for ElecLink. Let's take a deeper dive into what sets the auction prices for our capacity sales. This is the main part of the revenue that we achieve. As we've already said, having a generational mix in the two countries causes a difference in prices, if you have in real time, hour by hour, differences in fuel prices, demand, the weather, plant availability, renewable generation, you will have a difference in prices. This difference is known as the intrinsic value. If we take a really simple example, a simplified example, if the price for a particular period in France is at EUR 70 and in the U.K. it's EUR 50, that intrinsic value would be EUR 20.
Of course, a trader has various things that they have to consider when bidding for capacity on our interconnector, and they could be their own transactional costs, the cost of credit, the profit margin that they want to achieve, et cetera. Let's just say, for simplicity's sake, that the trader discounts the intrinsic value by EUR 7 a megawatt hour for this. The third component of what sets capacity prices is extrinsic value. This is the time value and optionality embedded in our products, or to put another way, it's the value of uncertainty between purchase and delivery. If this extrinsic value is valued at EUR 8 a megawatt hour, that leads to an auction clearing price, which, as you can see, can in fact be above the intrinsic price.
We quite often see intrinsic clearing prices clearing at anywhere between 80% and 110% of intrinsic value. Auction timing and placement can make a big difference. We have an exceptional team at ElecLink, and our commercial analysts constantly optimize capacity sales by looking at what we sell, when we sell it, and how much of it we sell. It's a fine balance between regulatory compliance, where we must comply with the market splitting rules. This is regulation that imposes minimum capacity in certain products to maintain system security and market access. Product mix. What auctions do we schedule? How much capacity do we assign to these auctions? How many auctions do we have per product, and when do we have them? Market analysis.
We constantly track the key price drivers in Great Britain, France, and continental Europe. This can be wholesale prices, weather, plant availability, renewable generation, to ensure that we are fully understanding what is driving the prices. Understanding that we are in a highly connected European transmission system with neighboring interconnectors. We have another example here for you, and I've taken the example of the first of May, which you can see on the screen. That product, we started 463 days prior to the first of May with the first auction, which was an annual product. We then had 10 further auctions of 5 different products for that particular date, seasonal, monthly, quarterly, daily, et cetera, with a weighted average clearing price of EUR 24.45.
What you can see here is what, is by using the product mix, our market analysis, and understanding what our competitors are doing, staying within the market rules, we're able to capture the intrinsic value and monetize the extrinsic value. Our innovation doesn't just stop at our commercial optimization. It is embedded in the way that we operate and maintain the asset. I've mentioned that a unique feature for ElecLink is the fact that we are situated inside the tunnel, and we are learning constantly the lessons from our cable outage to reduce future risk by developing new, innovative, physical, and automated monitoring techniques. The entire 21 km. Sorry, I got that completely wrong.
51 km of cable inside the Channel Tunnel is monitored on a fortnightly basis by high-definition video cameras that pass through the tunnel on a dedicated platform, and the footage from this used to be reviewed by our teams. This was time-consuming, expensive, and always prone to human error. We partnered with IBM to develop models using AI and machine learning to review this footage and identify areas of potential concern that could then be passed on to our maintenance engineers, and my colleague, Denny, will talk about this in his really good presentation later on. We're taking on board all of the lessons learned from our operations so far, and we are developing a 150-meter-long tunnel training simulator.
This will be an identical physical replica of the tunnel environment, it will allow us to test new equipment, practice repair techniques, carry out simulated intervention scenarios, and ensure that everybody is completely trained and up to speed using hands-on techniques. The objective of this training simulator is to ensure that new innovative technologies, and also that we reduce future downtime risk, should we need to go in and have an intervention. I think we mentioned earlier, from Yann, that ElecLink went live in 2022 during the global energy crisis, during a period of exceptional market conditions, since that time, the markets have gone through a gradual normalization phase.
The new market conditions are significantly lower, of course, than those that we saw during the exceptional market, they are significantly higher than those we saw pre-crisis at a time when we set our investment case. If you look at the prices for the next two years, they are more significant than they were even two years ago. The strength of ElecLink allows us to move into the next chapter, which is ElecLink 2. ElecLink 2 will be, excuse me. Elecink 2 will be a using the tried and tested technology used in ElecLink 1, located in the second running tunnel. ElecLink 2 has a number of significant advantages over other potential interconnecting projects.
It will be in the same safe and secure tunnel environment, which is one of the most secure and controlled infrastructure environments in the world. ElecLink 2 is backed by a developer, the only developer that has designed, privately funded, constructed, and operated an interconnector on the GB border. ElecLink has a tried-and-tested team with a proven track record in interconnector delivery. Just like ElecLink, which is the greenest interconnector, ElecLink 2 will have no impact whatsoever on the very sensitive marine environment. Of course, any investment in ElecLink 2 will require the right regulatory framework and, more importantly, the right rate of return. I will leave you with these points. ElecLink is a truly unique asset that has delivered beyond all expectations since its go-live.
ElecLink was a first-of-a-kind engineering project. We will continue to invest, to innovate, to learn operational lessons, to relentlessly focus on operational reliability. Given the market conditions and our expertise and understanding, we firmly believe that ElecLink will continue to outperform its initial investment case. Based on that strength, we're firmly committed to developing ElecLink 2. Thank you very much. It now gives me great pleasure to invite my colleague. Géraldine Périchon up onto the stage. Géraldine is the Deputy Group CEO and the Group CFO. Géraldine.
Thank you, Steven Moore. I'm delighted to be with you here today. This session concluded the business session this afternoon, I think that you have understood that the theme today is growth. Growth in revenues, growth in EBITDA, and growth in the return to shareholders. All this growth need fuel, one catalyst to ensure that we put the right resources on the table is innovation, in particular, AI. You might have heard about AI. There's a lot of hype. For Getlink, AI and tech is not hype because it is already delivering for us, we're quite serious about it. Please welcome Denis Coutrot, our Chief Data and AI Officer, who will explain how we do it at Getlink.
Thank you, Géraldine. Welcome to the heart of the Channel Tunnel. Here, we operate two rail tunnels. We operate 450 trains per day and an electrical interconnector between the U.K. and Europe. We do so 24/7, 365 days a year. With more data than ever and a 30 years history to leverage, we have the power to harness new technologies and AI to level up our operating model. This is exactly where AI is good at. By helping us detect weak signals, improve our maintenance, and use our resources more efficiently, it strengthens our competitiveness and optimize our investments and cost. I am Denis Coutrot, Chief Data and AI Officer at Getlink. I will guide you through what happens when we supercharge our operation with tech and AI. At Getlink, we are integrating AI across three performance lever.
The first lever is the availability of our assets. We ensure 99.7% availability of the tunnel, which means we push our operations to a frontier. AI helps us to automate the health check of our assets in real time. The second lever is teams and people performance. AI put the power of large language model into the hands of our frontline staff and help them focus on high-value tasks. It also help us to orchestrate the complex team planning. The third lever is customer excellence. AI absorbs complexity in the back office to help us deliver a seamless, fast frontline experience for our customer. Today, I'd like to walk you through two examples, and tangible examples, to illustrate the impact of tech and AI in our operation at Eurotunnel and ElecLink.
My first example is how we manage at Eurotunnel to expand the lifespan of our train wheels by up to 25% from four to five years. To do so, I will need to dig a bit into details. Our trains travel more than 250,000 km a year. That is six time around the Earth. Expanding the lifetime of our twin wheels can therefore deliver significant cost reductions. We do so thanks to a new monitoring device called Prism, which allows us to monitor our wheels from 30,000 km before to near real time, and while the train is in service.
Coupled with AI-generated alarms, we can increase the monitoring so that we keep the system under constant scrutiny, we can identify weak signals, such as cracks on the wheels, and we can take immediate corrective actions and routinize the reprofiling operation. The more precise the reprofiling, the slower the wheels goes to their end of life limits and the less raw materials we waste, in this case, steel. I'd like to show you how it works in this video. The train you see here has just exited the Channel Tunnel and is heading towards the French terminals. The Prism system opens and is activated, and when the train passes, it provide thousands of measurements for each wheel through a technique called laser monitoring system.
What is true for wheels is also true for highly solicited system, such as train brakes, such as track circuits, where AI successfully detects and reduces forthcoming events by up to 50%. At scale, the potential is massive, and this is exactly what we intend to do. We are in the process of connecting our commercial engine to the cloud. We are currently in trial phase with already three engine equipped with IoT device, and by the end of the year, we intend to have half the fleet equipped, flowing data up to 30 minutes. The mid-life renovation program will give us the opportunity to roll out the connection to our passenger trains. When data flows in real time, it opens many opportunities, as I will show you with my second example.
At ElecLink, as Steven mentioned before, technology and AI helps anticipate structural defaults in the infrastructure and prepare maintenance program. As I said before, we operate in a 24/7 environment with limited access to the tunnel. This is where AI comes into action. Do you see this bolt? Can you imagine how many of these bolts do we have in the tunnel? That is 360,000 components. 360,000 components that we need to detect and to monitor. That is huge. Since February 2025, we have installed a new system which allows us to monitor all these components, and I'd like to show you what it does. Can you activate the image, please? The green parts on the screen are the Shield, the Shield frame and alignments. This little square in purple over there, are the bolts, just like this one.
How does it work? Every two weeks, a dedicated trucks equipped with 8K camera is sent into the tunnel during commercial service. It scans the entire 51 km of the cable structure. Based on this, and within hours, the footage is uploaded to the ElecLink facilities and analyzed in our labs using the techniques called image recognition. Based on this, the ElecLink maintenance team gets a comprehensive health check of the cable and can schedule pinpointed inspections and civil works during the very limited time allowed for tunnel maintenance. This improves dramatically the productivity of the time spent into the tunnel. Having seen the clear potential operational and financial gains from AI, we want to scale it across the entire business. Our priority is sharpening our competitive advantage, speed, and fluidity.
For instance, we now use it to simulate the potential impact on the customer journey of new development in our terminals, such as border controls. We do so before we go live to continuously improve the customer experience. Availability of the assets, teams and people performance, customer excellence. We are living in a very exciting moment at this, and I am convinced that AI will continue to play a major role in the way we invest, we maintain, and we optimize our operation in a financially wise manner. Now, I would like to give the floor back to Géraldine for the last session of this Investor Day. Thank you very much.
Hello again, and I, still delighted to be with you. What we've just heard is truly inspirational, almost as exciting as the massive growth potential my colleagues highlighted earlier today. I'm going to take some time this afternoon to tell you about the three main drivers that will sustain our value-sharing creation. I will start with growth, how this growth stem from our different businesses, and we'll recap on what my colleague highlighted earlier. We'll then look at the discipline we'll continue to deploy on resources to deliver this growth. I'll continue with the solidity of our financial structure. Those three dimensions will enable us to share our value creation through our capital allocation policy. Let's start with growth.
You heard Yann says it at the beginning of the afternoon, we are targeting a EUR 1 billion EBITDA by the end of 2030. Importantly, this is not a destination, it is a step in our growth trajectory. Beyond 2030, especially in high speed, the momentum will be extremely strong. Let me consolidate what my colleagues told you earlier about our potential growth. Within Eurotunnel, we will start with the shuttles-related business. They account for nearly 49% of our revenues. I'll begin with the shuttle freight on the left side of this page. This business, was the most impacted in recent years, is now positioned for a real rebound. We will benefit from a strengthening of our competitive edge, also better market fundamentals.
Didier was quite clear about our 3 core segments that have positive dynamics: fresh products, small parcels, and automotive. The fresh segment should rapidly benefit from the deal that is being negotiated right now between the U.K. and the EU, that will alleviate constraints and checks. The reorganization of small parcel logistic platforms in continental Europe will enhance the tramming, the traffic coming into the U.K. from the EU. Finally, the automotive industry in Europe is going through a major overhaul that will again contribute to the growth in transport. There is also the success of the Getlink Customs Services business, which is delivering double-digit growth with very healthy margin. This is powered by our AI-native approach, it is giving us a competitive edge that is quite difficult to replicate. I'll move now to the passenger shuttle business.
We believe there is room for growth, both in volumes and in price. Passenger demand will keep growing, thanks to our targeting marketing campaigns, especially in Northern European countries, but also targeted at premium and high-end travelers through partnerships like Avios and the potential for day trippers. On pricing, we are not at the end of the journey. Our yield sophistication is still increasing. There is still a lot of untapped potential with a major step happening this year with our change in the booking system. Retail is also a promising add-on. We are gradually increasing value there with the reinstatement of duty-free, retendering of our contract, and new layout for our premises, all of which improve both revenues and customer experience. We are well behind airport standards with a lot of potential to improve. Regarding high speed, as Yann said, this is a very exciting moment for us.
Unmet demand is strong, especially in Amsterdam. We expect over 2.3 million of additional passenger by 2030. This is just the beginning. New entrants and new destination will create a powerful volume effect by 2035. As you heard before, this, for us, is an incremental direct EBITDA. ElecLink, as just explained, very expertly, I must say, by Steven, benefits from strong structural market fundamentals. Volatility in energy market is a strong driver for the long-term spreads and the spread capture in our own auctions. Obviously in our world, volatility is not scarce. This gives us a strong confidence that this activity is now stabilizing. To push it further, we will also continue to work on the asset optimization to ensure the maximum availability possible.
We will also pursue the work on the second ElecLink, as we see great value creation potential in this long-term project. Of course, we need to find the right regulatory framework and the right return, as Steven said. Finally, Europorte. It will continue to execute on its winning recipe: profitable growth, convincing clients that quality is actually worth paying for, and tactically expanding its international footprint. Not only are we growing, but we are growing in our all different businesses. Growth requires resources, and this leads us to the foundation that we allow us to deliver it. To deliver this plan, we need the right resources, and the good news is we already have many of them. Our model, particularly Eurotunnel, is built on a fixed cost basis. On this chart, based on shades of blue, you see the fixity of the different types of cost.
It shows that the vast majority of costs at Eurotunnel are of fixed nature, which means that every additional volume directly boost margin. This is, of course, very true for high-speed new volumes, it is also true for the continental traffic in the passenger shuttle business, where we still have a structural imbalance in our load factor. This cost structure is one of our strongest levers, we work relentlessly to keep it as an asset. At Getlink, we know how to manage resources. We are disciplined. As we demonstrated, we closely manage our cost and tailor our resources to fuel the growth. The left side on this slide underlines that during COVID and Brexit, our Shields program delivered EUR 40 million in two years.
Through the Eurotunnel performance plan since 2023, we delivered EUR 25 million of savings. Europorte is systematically streamlining its portfolio of contract as its increasing profitability demonstrates. We will stay focused on discipline in the coming years. We'll continue to deploy lean management, procurement excellence, pursue the systematic digitalization, and the AI deployment Denis talked about, both for support functions but also for operational needs. We will also make targeted investment for yield, expert staffing, and marketing, for example, in the Netherlands. I'll talk about CapEx in a little while, but you can also be sure that we intend to make the most of those investment to drive down maintenance costs and reap the benefit of those refurbishments. Rolling stock maintenance represent approximately EUR 100 million of annual cost.
We are in an elevated phase that is related to the age of the fleet and the work that we need to do to maintain the required availability. Our refurbishment investment aim to deliver between 15%-20% cost reduction on maintenance. This will be gradual, of course, with the delivery of projects. Here is an illustration of our cost management, our energy procurement transformation. Like any other energy-intensive companies in France, until 2025, we benefited from the ARENH tariff at EUR 42 per megawatt hour. That scheme has now ended. We prepared early. Two-thirds of the former ARENH volumes are already secured through long-term, low-carbon contracts and our own internal solar program, as you can see on the chart on the left. We also deployed a more sophisticated procurement strategy.
We are spreading our purchases over 24 months with stop-loss, take-again mechanism and a set of alerts that enable to spread out the risk and seize opportunities. We anticipated and diversified our procurement, but we also optimized it. How did we do that? Well, we reduced our consumption of electricity by 14%, as you can see in this chart in the middle. This was quite hard work, as you may imagine. Last year, our last reduction was 3%. As a result, we considerably slowed down the effect of the energy increase because of the ARENH ending, and in 2026, the global increase should stay below 10%. Another example of our execution discipline is the redesign of our mission planning. With changing travel patterns, new border rules, we have longer journey times, lower load factors, and reduced punctuality. We redesigned our interio...
entire planning strategy by leveraging our data, The outcome is 3% reduction in the numbers of missions, higher load factors, and a much better customer experience with less waiting and higher NPS. I have told you about discipline and agility for OpEx. Let's see how we deploy the same kind of energy on CapEx. We invest the right amount at the right time. We are in an elevated capital cycle until 2032, This elevated cycle coincide with the life cycle of our core equipment. Indeed, as you can see on this chart, 75% of the investments are relating to rolling stock and infrastructure. This is not just maintenance. Whenever we manage life cycle obsolescence, we embed growth and performance enhancement.
Our Mid-life Program, on top of delivering very important technical features and extend the life of our shuttles, will add more than 10% capacity to them. The ERTMS project will add 20% tunnel capacity at peak times. It lays the first brick towards autonomous driving system. While we refurbish our locomotives, we also equip them with sensors that will help us optimize maintenance work and reduce, again, the traction energy consumption. We also invest in innovation. Denis gave you a glimpse of what we're doing. This is quite a targeted approach to enable operations to make a better use of our resources and equipment. When we assess projects and determine the right timetable, budget, staffing, and operational goals, discipline is always top of mind. Let's look at the Mid-life Project that requires particular discipline. The Mid-life Program is our largest project. It is absolutely core.
It will turn our nine shuttles into more spacious, modern, reliable, efficient travel capsules, set to last for another 25-30 years. On top of the 10% capacity gain we just talked about, I want to underline the importance of this project on our running cost. As I said earlier, this refurb will deliver considerably on our maintenance cost, up to -23%. It will also deliver massive gains in terms of reliability. Today, we have on average, 5%-6% loss of capacity relating to passenger rolling stock issues. Our target in the mid-life project is to halve those capacity losses. This will contribute to reduce maintenance costs, of course. It will also create additional capacity at peak times when we need it.
We incurred difficulties with one supplier that exited the project in 2025. We have turned this setback into an opportunity, and we have reorganized the project in a more efficient manner at the right cost. We have split the project in two main phases. The first one, that will last 3 years, is focused on extending the life of our shuttles and putting on some new equipment that are critical and already available, like the new air con system. In parallel of this phase, we will finalize the pilot. The second phase will see the industrialization of the program. This was Midlife. We have other projects going on, as you may imagine, and they are being delivered right now. On this page, you have a couple of illustration. We have redone the roof of the U.K. terminal building. That pleases Deborah especially.
We have also revamped the waiting and shopping areas. The premium lounge will soon complete the offer. We have finalized the new border facilities with fluid, state-of-the-art, and modern journey path, and the new check-in infrastructure will be delivered in 2026. Our solar program construction is starting, with the priority on the deployment on allocation lane, because that will provide, on top of green electricity, a welcome shade and protection to our customer during their waiting time. We've seen the growth potential we have and how we optimize the resources to deliver it. Now, let's look another key strength of Getlink that has enabled us to take dividend today: solidity of our financial structure. Our balance sheet is strong and where we want it to be. Recent performance, ElecLink exceptional start, and Eurotunnel cash generation enabled a significant reduction in our net debt.
Our net leverage is now below 4x , and we have a 1.5 cash position after reducing the size of our green bond issuance and paid EUR 314 million of dividend this year. Our debt maturity profile is very long term. It's resilient, designed for stability. Most of the maturities are between 2040 and 2050. The debt structure has also proven very resilient during COVID and Brexit, as we were able to negotiate smoothly waivers and workaround solutions to covenant constraints. The average cost of this debt is 4.75%, which was totally suboptimal three years ago, but we can live with it in today's market condition until the restructuring becomes an economically palatable solution. Of course, our ESG profile, naturally aligned with the climate transition, is a major strength in financial markets.
We have a 96% decarbonized margin. Our revenues are 89% aligned on taxonomy, our ratings are first class. We have fulfilled our 2025 CO2 reduction objective and reset a new one for 2030. This strength, our gradually diversifying sources of revenues, has naturally been spotted by the financial rating agency that upgraded Getlink and Eurotunnel in 2025 to respectively BB+ and BBB+. This is exactly where we wanted to be. We are now in a position to deliver our growth and capital allocation policy. We have the growth, the resources, the financial solidity. Now is the right moment to reset our dividend policy.
We have announced that we plan to have a dividend at EUR 0.80 per share in 2026, to increase it by EUR 0.05 per year until 2030. As Yann said, this is a momentous step for the group, which makes me very enthusiastic. I hope this is the first step of many in a successfully renewed contract with our investors, with you. This sharing is in accord in our growth objective of reaching EUR 1 billion EBITDA by 2030. It will continue to be fueled upwards by the achievement of our longer term milestones, especially in high speed. I'm happy to conclude, leaving you on this high note. I thank you for your attention, I welcome back Yann on stage.
Thank you, Géraldine. We are now, at the end of our presentation, and we'll go to the next awaited phase, which is the Q&A. Please, Virginie, come on stage with me, with Géraldine, and we are going to take questions now.
We are now ready for your questions. Of course, we'll take the questions from the room first, and I already see some questions. Maybe, before taking your question, some guidelines for those online. If you want to ask a question, you have two options. You can click the green hand button on the player
to ask your question orally, please make sure to allow your audio devices on your browser. Once your line is activated, you will receive a pop-up message to unmute your mic, and then you can ask your question. I hope everything is clear. You can submit a written question in the box below the player. First, questions in the room. Amal?
Mike.
Hello. Thank you very much. Amal Patel, UBS. Thank you very much for the presentation. It's been super useful. Three questions from me. Number one, circling back to the 2027 capital deployment, appreciate it's non-committal at this stage, but could you just elaborate a bit more on the possibilities? You know, are we talking share buybacks? If you were to hypothetically look at acquisitions, what areas would these be focused on? Secondly, on the shuttle yield, 3% this year. Why not 5%, 10%, even if you lose a bit more volumes, you know, in this environment, would it be more optimal? Could you provide a bit more color there? In that environment, could you maybe talk about OpEx, Géraldine? You had the chart with the fixed and the variable costs.
I mean, would there then be an opportunity in this environment to reduce OpEx further? Thirdly, just how confident are you on sort of the order book timelines for the new trains coming in? To my knowledge, I know the Frecciarossa trains for Trenitalia and the Horizon trains, you know, they're coming off the production line. When I look at, for example, the Avelia Horizon train s for Eurostar, these were meant to come in before the Olympics, and only now they're starting to come in, and there's a long order book. What is your base case scenario in those forecasts for your incremental passengers? You guys are typically quite conservative in your nature. Are you assuming some delays there, or are you working to the timelines currently provided by those companies? Thank you.
Okay, I will take the one on the yield and new trains, and Géraldine will finish with the capital allocation. Shuttle yield, why have we not made a different number? We just focused on value creation. We are not targeting the highest yield. We are not targeting volume. It's a mix. It's the yield multiplied by the volume minus the cost. 'Cause from time to time, you know, if we have to add capacity, so additional cost, you know, the equation is not optimal. This is really what we are looking at. The 3% that we mentioned for this year was for LeShuttle Pax, LeShuttle Freight at the same time, because, as you know, we don't make the split, we don't disclose our precise pricing.
Please do not forget that there is also the electricity value adjustment, the EVA, which is factored in, which decreased, okay? If you remove that from the equation, in reality, the price increased more than what you saw on the screen. New trains. All the dates that I provided are the dates that are the official one provided by the new entrance and by Eurostar. Here, we don't give our own personal opinions. You're right to say that a few train manufacturers, and one especially, Alstom, has been late in the past. Here, though, we can be quite optimistic for several reasons. First, the contract that Eurostar is using to order new trains is the framework agreement from SNCF, and they order many of them. It's a question of priority, you know, in the production line.
Are they going to get, you know, the first one to come on the market, or will they be later, you know, produced? That they will decide, but if they wanted, they could probably accelerate the speed. Please keep in mind that the great news about Eurostar using the framework contract of SNCF is that SNCF will for sure get the first one, you know, in the months to come. They have already gone through all the testing and commissioning, you know, and safety certificate phases. All of that, you know, will be accelerated. For the other players, you know, they have not signed for Virgin, the contract, so it's hard to say. It's not exactly the same train. It's not double deckers.
The Italian, I mean, quite realistic what they announced, because here also, it's not a new generation of trains with a new contract. They are going to tap in their existing framework agreement that they have. Here also, if they want to accelerate the production, they can just decide that the next train that they are going to receive are for the cross-channel business instead of other opportunities that they also pursue. Those one are very credible. Géraldine, please tell us about our capital allocation and the acquisitions that we mentioned.
Sure. Maybe I'll start with acquisitions. I think we've made it quite clear, and Julie explained that in a little bit more detail, that we are quite keen to continue to consolidate our custom services business. This is a very fragmented market, we are speaking about add-on, build-up, nothing major, but we will be active in that sphere because we believe that there is value to be created in that in that area.
Regarding the rest of the capital allocation in 2027, what I can say is that we are here today because we believe that we have crossed a step in terms of confidence in our financial structure and perspectives, we have announced a new capital allocation policy with the reset of the DPS at EUR 0.80 per share. I think Jacques was also quite clear on the fact that we will continue to work on capital allocation and the right remuneration to our shareholders. Next question from the room.
Thank you. Eric Lemarié from CIC. I got three question, if I may. The first one on your 2030 EBITDA guidance. Maybe could you give us a rough idea of the split between your return on EBITDA, ElecLink EBITDA, Europorte EBITDA, and maybe Getlink Customs Services EBITDA within this target? This EUR 1 billion EBITDA target, it's equivalent, if I'm not wrong, to a 3% growth in average, a CAGR growth. I suspect 3%, if there is an acceleration, it will be above 3% beyond 2030.
C ould you give us an idea of what kind of growth we could expect beyond 2030 for the EBITDA? Could be, I don't know, mid-single-digit, a nice single-digit growth, beyond this first step. The last question, you mentioned for, if I'm not wrong, ElecLink, 150 meter tunnel training simulator, right? If I'm not wrong. I was wondering, why not a digital twin for the cable? Thank you.
Okay, thank you for your question. I will let Steven answer on the first one regarding the simulator that we are in the phase of building. Steven?
Can you hear me? Yes. Yes, at the moment, we're just in the development stage of the tunnel training simulator. It will be 150 meters long. As I mentioned earlier, it will be a perfect physical representation of the tunnel environment. Why is that important, rather than just using a digital? We will use digital as well, so we'll use augmented virtual reality as well. I think already we have 400 trains a day running through the tunnel. We want to increase that to 1,000 trains a day.
We do not want to be constantly interfering with train operation by going in to do maintenance, practicing training, testing new equipment. Having a perfect physical replica of the tunnel is really powerful and important for us. Should we ever need to go in and make a repair, I want my teams drilled, experienced, using equipment which is tested, that you can't do that, unfortunately, on a digital twin.
Thank you, Steven. On the other one, we will not provide you know, with the split of the different activities by 2030. We've never done that, and we'll not do it. It's a global, you know, target. The good news is that our group is more diversified today than what it was in the past. We'll have some businesses that will probably do better than what we had expected. Some other, probably, not as, you know, well as we had expected, but we are very confident because we are solid today, we have strong tailwinds.
Let's be clear, if we can reach that EUR 1 billion target before 2030, we will be the first to be very happy about that. For what's coming after, the key, you know, difference will be the acceleration of the high-speed business. I didn't commented it, a lot. You saw in our slides that today we have 12 million passengers on the high-speed segment. We forecast 14 by 2030, +2, and then +8 to get to 22 by 2030. Today, on average, we get EUR 21 per passenger. You make the math, plus inflation, and you will see the extra potential of that. Next question.
Okay, if we don't have question in the room, I think we have some question on the webcast, and I see Sven Daunfeldt on the line.
Hello?
Okay, please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah, thank you for taking my question on, I apologize not to be there in person. I would have two questions. The first one is on the EBITDA guidance that you gave. Could you be a bit more specific on the traffic growth for truck, how much it implies? The second one, I would like to come back
Yes
On the 8% stake disposal from the Qatari, last October. Have you been invited to this auction process to repurchase your own stocks, or has it only been a dual auction between Eiffage and Mundys? Thank you.
Okay, Géraldine will take the second one. Your first question was about traffic growth for trucks. Here also, we don't provide detail, you know, numbers per business segment. The key, you know, discussion that we wanted to have with you today, it's about the fact that clearly that business is the one which suffered the most for us over the last years. I told you, we told you for many reasons, but the two main ones are: one, Brexit, 10-year process. 10-year process, quite long, and the second one is the deindustrialization of the U.K. with massive direct import from China, Asia as a whole, but also the U.S. Good news is that the trends are going to change.
Already for Brexit, the turning point is this year, this year for two reasons, because the last two controls at the border are going to get implemented this year, the ENS formalities and ELO formalities. If you want much more information, Julie will tell you a lot about that. After that, we see a simplification. That's why we are optimistic, and the EU-U.K. reset will also change the nature of the controls that are happening at the frontier. This was the last, you know, business for which we had declining volumes, and the trends, which is good news, is going to change. Geraldine, the sales of the share of,
Asia. We were not invited. We might have put a better price on the table if we had. Of course, I'm not going to go in that. No, we were not invited.
Next question is from, Luis Prieto.
Do you hear me?
Yeah.
Yes.
Excellent. Good afternoon, thanks a lot for taking our questions. Super useful amount, very good amount of information. Just one question for me. We're seeing significant pressures on the EU ETS system. Are you concerned that this could ease the carbon surcharges for ferries at some point, reduce their push towards alternative fuels, or even increase the attractiveness of air travel in relative terms? Thank you.
I mean, your last question, will EU ETS increase the attractiveness of air travel? That will be the contrary, for sure. I mean, air travel is already paying a massive amount of money for to buy, you know, quotas, carbon emission rights, and this is only going to increase over the next years because you know that they will have to buy more and more of them. The good news is that we are totally outside of that scheme, but our direct competitors, the ferries, are on that scheme for only half of their emissions because the U.K. is outside Europe. What was mentioned briefly already today is that that will probably change. Why? Because part of the EU-U.K. reset, there's been a decision to align the two ETS market. There is already an ETS market in the U.K.
There is an ETS market in Europe, and the goal is to align those two schemes so that it will ease the trade between Europe and the U.K. In Europe, ferries are part of the ETS scheme. Ferries are outside the scheme in the U.K. As you understand, for a full alignment, the prices will have to be the same, but also the scope. You cannot have some companies, you know, paying on one side and not on the other one. There will be, of course, friction at the border. We don't see at all when those two schemes are aligned, Europe deciding to have the ferry business outside of the ETS scheme. Why? Because they emit a lot of CO2.
We are quite confident that when those two schemes are going to be aligned, our ferry competitors will also have to buy quotas on the U.K. side. You saw the numbers for our ferry operators. For one crossing, this represent today between 10 and 11 EUR, which is a lot. If you double that, more than 20 EUR per crossing of price difference with us, that would become quite massive. Plus, with the ambition of Europe to further decarbonize, the price of the ETS market is only set to increase. That price gap will continue to augment, which is good for us. This is part of what Didier presented to you. There are many factors for which the price gap between us and the ferries is going to be at our advantage because of ETS, or thanks to ETS for us, and thanks to other measures that were mentioned.
What I was. Sorry to interrupt. I was referring more to the overhaul that the European Commission wants to implement of the system in the summer. We don't know what sort of overhaul will be implemented. Some countries have been saying that they want a relaxation or even a suspension of the EU ETS at some point over the next years. I was more referring to that. I totally acknowledge what you're saying, and that's precisely my concern, though, that if we go to a more, a laxer EU ETS situation, in an extreme scenario, that suddenly you lose that edge, no? That the ferries don't happen, you, and you do half a minute from a current perspective, yeah.
Okay, if I understand well, what you have in mind is not ETS, but EES, Entry/Exit System. Is that correct? The new.
No, no. No, no.
Con
It's a trading system, the emissions trading system. There's a big discussion in Europe, what happens to this in the future, no? I don't think that EU ETS will disappear. I don't think so. The terms might change.
Yeah.
There was a call, for example, Italy saying today that they want a temporary suspension of the system at some point.
Yeah.
It's all more theoretical and philosophical than anything else. Yeah.
No, no, on that one, you're right, that there might be some modification. What is already discussed today is the ETS2 system, the new one that is not implemented yet, that will concern, you know, the construction business and also transportation business. That one is not in place yet.
Yep. Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Yeah, Nicolas?
Right, sorry. Nicolas Smale from Morgan Stanley. Just a few, when you think longer term beyond 2030, what do you think the high-speed rail accelerated growth can do to the business? Do we have a big expansion of the margin, big expansion of the cash flow, as also the CapEx on maintenance and heavy maintenance on shuttle lanes? If you look beyond 2030, what can the business look like? Can we dream of, I don't know, 60% plus EBITDA margin on fixed rail, high cash conversion and so on? Just trying to understand a little bit where we're going, the journey there. Then on the shuttle freight, what can go wrong?
A lot has gone wrong over the past five years. We hear what you're saying on the potential for volume to turn around, the pressure on the cost base of the ferries. A lot of that has been already around for quite a while. We're still waiting, so we feel there's maybe a tipping point, but, you know, how do you protect against basically things going against you? Last point on the shuttle car pricing. We're talking about client segmentation and bundling of the offers or the Avios programs. Historically, you've been growing pricing quite aggressively, you know, kind of CPI, RPI plus 2%. It seems to be easing a bit of late. Can you regain, give a bit of a shot in the arm to car pricing again with all the initiatives you have? That should be it.
I will start with the last one. Deborah, please speak about our pricing plans without disclosing any confidential information to our competitors.
Commercially sensitive, but we are convinced that there's headroom. Whilst you talk about 2%, I mean, that's the transparent pricing, but of course, a lot of it is opaque. I think we have a far more sophisticated pricing model than we had previously. We believe there's still plenty of headroom, and it's maybe not quite as obvious as it was in previous years. We have a plan. We've delivered, as I say, the first stage of our New Fare Structure, which, you know, is fairly more transparent, but then there's different facets of it that will drive those price increases. Maybe it won't be the shot in the arm that you're looking for, but it will be a slower burn increase that's sustainable over time. Definitely, we've got headroom.
Thank you. Géraldine, beyond 2030, with high-speed rail growing.
We still, we see growth in all our businesses, but clearly, there will be an acceleration in the high-speed segment. The way the high-speed segment is structured as a business will translate a vast majority of the revenues directly into EBITDA. Mechanically, yes, it will increase the percentage of EBITDA margin by then. Especially because we are speaking about numbers that are vastly superior to the one that we have today. If you just do the numbers of passenger multiply by EUR 23, which would be roughly the toll per passenger by then, that will give you a hefty number.
Nicolas, your last question about the shuttle freight, you know, recovery. We are at a tipping point, you know, what can go wrong? The main element that could go wrong is the anti-social dumping regulation. All the seafarers from P&O were fired during one day. That was in March 2022. One year after, we have laws in France and in the U.K. Fantastic. Quite quick, you know, for a new regulation to be voted. I mean, as you know, takes to be written, to be approved, go in front of the assembly and so on. I mean, it takes time. The year after, we have all the decrees on both side, and we have them in France, summer of 2023.
For the first control to happen, it takes ages. It turns us crazy. On the French side, for one control to be made, you need someone from the Affaires Maritimes, so from the Minister of Sea, and one from the DREETS, so that the local authority of the Minister of Work. Those two public entities, they do not work well together, you know? One is doing the control without informing the other, so that control is useless. We have to fight to ensure that they connect, they agree to do one control together in the proper format, and it took them more than one year, you know, to publish their first report. In France, it takes longer for public entities to produce one report than to pass a regulation, a law, and to sign decrees. Unacceptable.
On that one, controls now have started, but we need to continue to push. If not, you know, all of that will not translate into concrete actions, concrete sanctions, and, you know, a level playing field at the speed we want it to. My first worry is that everything is in place, but because of bureaucracy, red tape, you know, it takes ages when it should go fast, fast, fast. That's why we push, push, many of us in that room, to ensure that things are moving at pace. I will not tell you that it is easy.
We may take written questions now. Question from Riri, RBC Capital. If market truck volumes pick up, is there a risk of truck driver shortage and Getlink losing share to unaccompanied options?
Didier, take that one.
No, we do, we don't consider it is a key assumption to consider a driver shortage. We stopped unaccompanied business because it was a very small business and a loss-making business. We consider in the long term, it's not a very good business.
Yeah, our key competitive advantage is speed. If speed is accompanied, you know, we transport good, that must cross the channel as quickly as possible. This is already where we are strong, where our customers are ready to pay for. If not, we don't have already any competitive advantage. Next question. The mic here, please.
Thanks for allowing me to follow up. I just wanted to ask on the Valuation Office Agency, can you remind us last time you negotiated down the rate, what levers did you have to be able to do that? Like, what was the h ow did they come to that compromise? If you could expand a bit more on that. On the EES, I mean, clearly this keeps getting pushed back, and as you say, you know, you're ready to go. In that context, do you foresee any incremental OpEx these coming years, or have you already sort of put the cost stuff in place such that it's ready to go? Do you see any incremental OpEx from EES? On the VOA, can you provide a bit more color, please, on the tools you have?
The VOA, I don't know how familiar you are with the calculation of what is called the rateable value . You know, a bit or a lot?
Not much.
Okay, not much. I will try to make it quite simple, but the way it's calculated, they organize a theoretical discussion between a landlord, an owner, and a tenant. They try to calculate, you know, if your tunnel was not one company, but two companies, one owning the tunnel and another one running the trains in the tunnel, how would the tenant pay for using the tunnel? This is this amount that will now be considered to organize the taxation. As you can imagine, that discussion is highly theoretical. If you are, I don't know, a restaurant in downtown London, you have many restaurants, so you know, you know a tenant, how much they are ready to pay to use that space. The tunnel is so unique.
How would you, in the room, pay, you know, to rent the tunnel to operate trains? Very complicated. That question, all the discussion that we have are, you know, what is the cost of the rolling stock that the tenant should provide? We have that kind of discussion, you know, new trains, how much would they cost? Which kind of return, you know? That means what kind of risk that tenant would be ready to take. It's about our work and perspective. This is really the discussion that we have, that are really about the assets, the return on those assets, and the split between the tenant and the landlord. Here we argue, you know, in both direction, and we try, as you can imagine, to lower as much as possible, the cost.
Today, we absolutely disagree because the assumption that they take are totally stupid. I mean, no one, you know, no real discussion would happen the way they describe it, and that's why we are ready to go to court under the concession contract and with the standard check change appeal process that the VOA put in place to ensure that our interests are preserved. EES, one word about it. Yannine said it this morning. With EES, yes, there will be a few extra OpEx cost 'cause it's a new formality. We will have to have people, you know, just to maintain the system and to help our customers when they go through the system. First, we have designed it to make it a competitive advantage.
Our system is much, much, much better than what you can find in the ports. What we want here also is to create more value, thanks to that system. I have one point of attention that will be the launch of EES, it has been, you know, postponed and postponed. We know that there will be probably bad price at the very beginning because some players are still not ready, you know, ready, and they will say that it will be a drama, and some customers might postpone their trips. After that period, that might not last very long, we want, you know, to increase our competitive edge, thanks to EES. Two additional things.
One is that, yes, we will have additional OpEx because there is a European regulation which obliges for four kiosks, the presence of one police officer for the primo-entrant . I know it's a bit technical, but basically, when you are crossing the border for the first time, you have a process which is a bit more comprehensive than when you are a subsequent traveler, and you are in that category for three years. You have a bit more formalities, and you need to have a policeman next to you, and that policeman can oversee only four people. We will have, we'll have also, you know, more cost there, to accompany the, you know, the border forces.
We are one of the very few areas where we can start from day one, replacing the physical policeman by video surveillance. Concretely, we will have, you know, an eagle-eye camera and all the border force officers. The PAF agents, Police aux Frontières, will be remotely controlling exactly what, you know, you have in the U.S. when you go there. You don't have a lot of policemen, you know, police officer around you. Everything is done through cameras, thanks to AI. We are part of the few on our Folkestone terminal to benefit from that. It will first decrease our cost. Everything that we told you about the Smart Border, this is because we want to go much, you know, further than this. Our kiosks, that's only the 1st step.
Our competitive advantage is speed for passengers and for freight. That's why we are very well advanced, you know, regarding all the technology that is available or will be soon available to ensure that in the future, you know, you can cross in a even faster and smoother manner. I will not elaborate here for long, but we are in contact, for example, with the U.S. authorities and many other countries in the world that are much more advanced regarding the technology than Europe.
There is, for example, a general agreement that in the future, your passport will be your face. You won't have any paper anymore with you. That won't be easy. You will just walk through the border, you will get recognized. We already work on that. We know that Europe will not be the first country, you know, to a first area because of our GDP and so on, you know, to launch those kind of technology, but it will come. So we want here also to be the first one. We are going to test over the next month and years, technology to here also increase our competitive edge. Next?
Written question. Question from Marcin, Bank of America: Can you provide an indication for annual CapEx for Getlink beyond 2032?
No, Géraldine, tell us.
No, we can't. The point is, yes, the CapEx is going to reduce, but we are not guiding on a number beyond that. I think you're quite familiar now with the type of investment that we are facing. We are looking at cycles. Here we are on an elevated cycle that coincides with the shuttle, ERTMS, the locomotives. Those are the big ones, as well as some work in the tunnel, in the fire detection system. This is the bulk of the 30 years anniversary. Yes, there will be an easing after 2032, when those projects are mainly delivered. It will be gradual, and after that, we'll enter a new long-term cycle.
Question, I guess for Julie. DCS, what will be DCS turnover in 5 years? Where do you see Getlink Customs Services then?
We will continue our organic growth journey. We have a lot of opportunity to keep gaining market share and to cross-sell to existing customers. As you can see, the breadth of the different formalities that are mandatory. On top of that, yes, we will continue to expand with some selected acquisitions, and the goal is to be present on all of the main European freight corridors going to the U.K.
Thank you. Virginie, next.
Any other question in the room?
Yeah, here, two more.
Thank you very much for this presentation. Laurent Emad from Macquarie Asset Management. I'm quite curious about your, the way you intend to fund your growth plan over the next few, five years, and at which level do you intend to fund? Do you think about staying, keeping the same financing strategy, or do you think that your financing strategy will evolve as your growth plan evolves as well?
Geraldine?
So far, I think we, our growth strategy, is well-funded by our cash generation and the cash that we have today. As I said, I think in my presentation, we have a very long-term debt that is quite stable. We have a few refinancing events, coming every two, thre years, but basically, this debt is extremely long term. So we have a financial structure that does not need major overhauls, and therefore, the cash generation that we see in the business will cover the funding of the development, CapEx, and potential extra investment, as well as the dividend, even if we may have to reduce a little bit our cash position.
Thank you. Eric from CIC again. Just two follow-up question. The first one on the new ElecLink 2, so the new the next high voltage cable. When should we expect this project to start? I ask the question because in France and in Europe, I suspect we will have more and more data centers, so we will have the need to upgrade the grid, and we will have probably the need to have more interconnection. Maybe more pressure to to progress on that front, and maybe we could expect ElecLink 2 maybe more rapidly than initially expected. I got a second question on capital allocation. you know that the French autoroutes concession contract will be renewed in the coming years. I was wondering if you could be interesting to participate to the auction, maybe, as a minority partners.
Steven?
Okay, it's quite a difficult question. As the only developer who's actually delivered an interconnector, if the right conditions were there, we would start ElecLink 2 tomorrow. There's nothing to stop us starting tomorrow. We've been there, we've done it. We know what to do. The problem is, the U.K. and French regulators need to decide on what the regulatory framework is for a new interconnector. There's no question that a new interconnector is required, and that has been publicly stated and quite recently. We're waiting, as with other interconnector projects, potentially, for the regulation to be in place.
It's always the same when you develop a new project. It was the same with ElecLink. The governments have to decide on the regulation, and then the developers will develop the project. We're at that stage now. We've come a long way. We're in a very good position. The French energy regulator has given a in 2024, has given a an outline preference for ElecLink 2 to be the next interconnector on the GB-French border. I just repeat myself, we have to wait for the right regulatory environment to be in place, and then, as I've said, we will start tomorrow.
Thank you. Géraldine?
I will answer that this is not on the top of our list. First of all, I think minority investments for us are clearly not our priority because in every acquisition that we've made so far, we've tried to foster synergies with the rest of the group. As a minority, it's always more complicated to deliver this. Regarding highways, in themselves, here, we don't see a massive potential as well, of leveraging a lot of business out of that kind of combination. Last written question. How do you think about rail passenger growth potential beyond 2035?
I will be clear with you, we didn't make ourselves any forecast after 2035, Robert Sinclair did estimations. He told that they work with Steer. You saw, by the way, that their estimations are a bit higher than ours, so they were a bit less conservative. What I didn't say is that when we did our forecast, we only focused on the main corridors, you know, London to the main European capitals that are Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, cities in Germany and in Switzerland. There is also a potential for direct routes from London to Marseille, for example, to Bordeaux, to Charles de Gaulle. That will be one of the first one, by the way, that could be opened.
There is a great potential. We are working with the ADP staff to make sure that there are connections here. We also are working with some airlines, Air France in particular, so that they can offer, you know, a bundle with. You know, you are coming from London, you take the train, stop in Charles de Gaulle, then you fly to New York, for example. In their forecast, in their best-case scenario, there is a tripling of the number of passengers crossing the channel by 2040. I cannot give you more. You will get the slide. Their forecast, the Steer's one, are still optimistic about the potential for further growth after 2035.
That's it, I think.
That's it?
We're not out of time.
We're perfectly on time, which is very important in the transport business, as you know, to be on time. Thank you all for coming to this Investor Day. I hope that you learned a lot. We enjoyed preparing it and delivering, you know, our strong messages, our optimism about the future. We do hope that you share it, and we will probably not wait eight more years before we meet again in such a, in such a room. Thank you for being here today, and see you soon.