Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you. Thank you for joining us for our annual presentation of our results. Yves and I are very pleased to welcome you and to tell you first that this meeting is carried under very strict compliance to our safety rules, especially in this moment where the sanitary measures are very strict. But once again, thank you for joining us. So, of course, I'm sure all of you have noticed we have spent a year 2020 in very, very exceptional conditions. So, in this environment, let me tell you that our group successfully protected its employees, maintained its business continuity throughout the year, while supporting vastly its host communities, starting from suppliers, customers, people, and our communities surrounding us.
We experienced a steep drop in markets over the year, and our segment operating income came to almost EUR 1.9 billion, which is a 37% decline, reflecting the COVID-19 crisis impact on our operations. In this segment operating income, actually, the drop in volume created a specific condition I will, and Yves will come back on this. We've been able to generate a EUR 2 billion structural free cash flow, reflecting the very strict discipline on cash management during the crisis and an exceptionally low level of year-end inventories, which was a little bit unexpected following the sustained recovery in demand in the second half of the year. The group is continuing to deploy its strategy despite the environment, with the successful integration of its recent acquisitions and by expanding its business in new areas of growth.
At the end, we generated EUR 625 million in net income, and we recommend to the shareholders a dividend of EUR 2.3 per share. During 2020, in this very exceptional period, we set very clearly and very soon, very early last year, two priorities. The first one was to protect employees and associate health and safety while ensuring the business continuity of our operations. I think we did that very successfully. While we were doing that, we have deployed our expertise and our capabilities to support associates, customers, suppliers, and surrounding communities by donating more than three million masks, innovating and producing visors, masks, positioning cushions, air cushions, and more for the medical community. At the same time, we continued to improve our competitiveness structurally, driving this competitiveness measures with the strict respect of our people and our territories.
We ramped up production with Multistrada in Indonesia and León, our León plant in Mexico. We restructured our European footprint with the closure of Dundee, La Roche-sur-Yon, and Bamberg, unfortunately. At the same time, we did this in the most responsible manner, and we committed to revitalize and repurposing the closed site and with a very strict and exhaustive individual support for all the people implied or concerned by this plant restructuring. At the same time, we launched for , let's say, staff and people, the Simply plan which is to streamline processes and improve efficiency in our SG&A functions, and continuing our improvement in industrial efficiency, which is a constant effort over the past decade, especially by speeding up our digital manufacturing effort.
We created, in a socially responsible manner, an innovative co-construction and extensive social dialogue process supported by a framework agreement, and we reaffirmed our commitment to developing new high-value segments and businesses in France, which can be a good example with the launch of the Parc Cataroux in France, and I'm sure we will have occasion to come back on this project later on. Now, let me leave the floor to Yves, who is going to pursue our conversation.
Thank you, Florent. So before entering into the detail of our financial and business performance, we would like to share with you a broader perspective of our 2020 results, which reflect our sustainable development model. Looking at our results through three perspectives, the first one being the people, we have progressed in terms of diversity. 28.2% of managers and supervisors are now women, which is an improvement by 0.8 point versus 2019, and the engagement rate of the Michelin Group employees has improved by 2 point at 83%. Looking now for the, let's say, shareholder perspective, our operating margin has landed at EUR 1.9 billion, 9.2% of the sales, of course, less than in 2019, but at the same time, the group has been able to generate EUR 2 billion of structural free cash flow.
Last, I would like to comment on the environmental actions that we are taking, particularly in our factories, but also beyond the factories. Within the Scope 1 and 2, we have emitted 2.5 million tons of CO2 in 2020, which decreased by 16% versus 2019, which is more than the decrease of our volume, which is 14%, so we have improved the overall efficiency of our systems, and the Michelin environmental footprint has been stabilized at 48.9 points, which reflects beyond CO2 emissions the consumption of energy, the water consumption, the quantity of waste, and despite all the disruptions linked to the closure and the reopening of our factories, we have been able to stabilize this indicator. Now, going through the annual results, the financial results, I will start by the market.
In the Q4, in the second half, you will observe that passenger car and light truck markets are back in line with 2019 level. The truck tire markets are being growing in the second half, and particularly during the last quarter. When the specialty markets have been hit by the decline in mining. Aircraft markets have been already down since the end of the first quarter. At the same time, we have observed the rebound of the two-wheeled and the agriculture market, particularly in replacement, during the second half of the year. Replacement market regarding passenger car and light truck replacement markets have been down by 11% over the year when original equipment has decreased by 17%, which shows, let's say, the resilience of replacement for individual vehicles.
Regarding the truck business, while the replacement market was down by 10%, the truck market has been slightly growing at the worldwide level, but it was mainly pulled by the Chinese original equipment market, which grew by 30% during the year. In this context, our sales have been down by 15%. The main volume is obviously the volume effect, nearly EUR 3.4 billion at -14%. The second most important effect is the currency exchange rate effect, which mostly happened in the second half of the year, which weighed 2.6 point on our turnover. We have recorded a positive price mix effect of +1.2% or EUR 300 million over the year, with a mix effect which was positive by 0.8 point.
So in 2020, we have carefully managed the price mix material balance, enhancing the mix and reducing our cost in order to absorb as much as possible the impact of the volume decline. The impact of the volume decline has been huge, EUR 1.7 billion versus 2019, of course, linked to the sharp drop of the market during the second quarter, and our inability to absorb the fixed cost during that period. We have a very positive price mix and raw material effect of EUR 570 million close to EUR 580 million, which has been already positive at the end of the first half, EUR 260 million. And we have been able to have also a positive price mix effect of EUR 318 million during the second half.
Of course, you see the impact, the SG&A cost reduction that we have been able to implement during the year of EUR 240 million. We have isolated in a separate line, the COVID-19 measures that we took both in our factories and in our offices in order to protect our employees, the purchase of masks or for the production of hydroalcoholic gel, but also all the measures to clean the areas, particularly in the factories when at the moment of the shift change. Overall, the group operating margin has been at 9.2% with a strong performance on the second half where this ratio was at 14.1%.
Looking at the distribution of this results per segment, you will observe that although during the first half of the year the specialties have been pretty resilient, in the second half we have benefits from a robust upturn in the automotive and road transportation segments. Overall, if we look overall over the year, the SR1, the automotive segment, has a slightly better resilience than B2B activities with a drop in operating margin of 2.8 point versus 3.7, 3.9 point for the B2B segment. As we mentioned, we have globally pretty well managed our free cash flow despite a very sharp drop of the EBITDA by EUR 1.1 billion. We have been able to more than compensate this negative, these headwinds through very decisive measures regarding our working capital, which has a positive impact of more than EUR 750 million.
Of course, the measures that we have taken in order to better manage our capital expenditures, which in terms of cash has a cash impact of EUR 400 million. Coming back on the working capital, we have managed, let's say, a structural decline of our inventories in line with the plan that we have launched in 2019 in order to overall reduce our inventory by EUR 500 million by 2025. But at the same time, we have exceptionally low inventory level at the end of the year for an amount that we assess to be around EUR 400 million, which is mostly due to a much faster than expected recovery in the demand. So despite the crisis, Michelin is continuously investing into its future, and I would like now to zoom on two dimensions: the durable material and the mobility electrification. Sorry. Sorry.
I missed the chapter on the debt. Thanks to the strong free cash flow generation, we have been able to decrease our debt by EUR 1.6 billion, and we have, at the end of 2020, a gearing ratio which is now at 28%. This strong financial position has been confirmed and reaffirmed by all the rating agencies at the end of the year, which have all confirmed our rating with a stable outlook. Coming back to the area we are investing in, including during the crisis, I would like to zoom on the durable material. One of the main challenges our industry will encounter is to increase the share of sustainable material in our production. By sustainable material, we mean either reuse, like retreading, renewable, like natural rubber, or recycled material.
We have invested, particularly in 2020 in several startups. I mentioned Enviro and Pyrowave, where we invested during the first half in order to leverage these technologies. One example is the factory that we are going to build in Chile in order to recycle, thanks to Enviro technology, which is based on pyrolyze, in order to recycle earthmover tire. This factory should be operating by 2023. At the same time, the Pyrowave technology will start up a demonstrator in one of our factories in France by 2023 equally. Electrification is for us a no-brainer. We consider that it is a main lever to make the mobility cleaner and over the years.
And that's why we consider that from a tire perspective, the electric vehicles are tightening the technological challenge for tire makers, as these vehicles are contributing with some performance like range, interior noise, or the weight of the battery that are pretty heavy. So in this framework, we believe that the share of EV in the total market will probably multiply by three by 2025 from 12% in 2020 to 30% in 2025. And we believe at Michelin that we are very well placed to sustain this increase in demand. We have an overall market share in an electric vehicle and the original equipment, which is 1.5 x our average market share at original equipment. And we believe that our technology will benefit to us both on the original equipment and the replacement market.
An illustration of this, of the strength of the group is the e.Primacy tire that we launched in 2020. This e.Primacy is answering the trend toward the mobility electrification, first by reducing the rolling resistance by 27% compared to the category average, which translates either in fuel saving of 0.2 L per 100 km or in longer autonomy, longer range by 7% for an electric vehicle. Of course, it contributes in the case of internal combustion engine to decrease the CO2 emission by 174 kg on a lifetime of a tire. Moving now to the future, and particularly to 2021, I would like first to comment the hypothesis on which we have built our 2021 guidance.
Since, let's say, the publication of our last year results, in July, we have commented that we believe that, of course, the market will recover, but it will take time, and we believe that we should get back to our 2019 level during the second half of 2022, so 2020 has been a very deep crisis, but we are seeing that a lot of perturbation is occurring beyond the sanitary impact, the short-term impact of the crisis, particularly in different supply chains, such as, for example, the chips in the automotive industry, so we believe it will take two years to recover the pre-crisis level. That's why our assessment is that the passenger car and light truck business market should grow by a range between 6% to 10%. It will be also very depending on the geographic mix of this market.
We expect a strong recovery in original equipment, but it's threatened by the chip shortage. On the replacement market, despite in some regions remaining measures that are taken to limit mobility, we believe the demand will overall rebound, and we should come back to pre-crisis level in 2022. The truck market should see also a recovery between 4% and 8%, driven mostly by North America and Europe on original equipment, while China is expecting to decline or to stabilize after a strong 2020, and we also believe that there will be a strong rebound on the replacement market, driven by the freight activity in the different regions. Regarding the specialty, it's probably the segment where we expect the sharpest rebound between 8% to 12%, mining demand recovery, slightly penalized by a slowdown in coal extractions, but very sustained demand for our raw material.
Beyond roads, agriculture and construction should continue to grow and to accelerate, with a strong demand recovery both at original equipment and replacement. We believe that two wheels will also sustain growth when the aircraft business, the market will be, of course, impacted by the consequence of the grounding of the airline. Based on this hypothesis, our 2021 scenario is based on volume that should grow in line with markets, slight positive price mix raw material effect after very strong, historically strong effect in 2020. We should have, of course, a negative impact of raw material prices and customs duties, and currency effect which will be a negative in the continuity of the second half of the year.
We are also expecting to pursue our synergy extraction following that we have achieved over the past two years, aiming to reach 60% of the synergies we assess during the acquisition of Fenner, Camso, and Multistrada by the end of 2021 and according to our plan. So based on this hypothesis and on that scenario, we believe that we should be able to generate at constant exchange rate segment operating income above EUR 2.5 billion and a structural free cash flow of around EUR 1 billion. And last, I would like to invite you to join us on April 8th for a digitally organized event, which should be our next Capital Markets Day, where we will uncover our strategic plan, our new strategic plan for the 10 years to come, along with our growth and value creation objective.
Of course, the level of continually improving our competitiveness and the financial commitment and ESG goals for 2023 and beyond. Thank you very much, and now I hand the floor to Florent for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Yves. Just before we enter into the questions, I just wanted to first of all express to all our Michelin associates all my pride and all my thanks for what they did in 2020. In these exceptional circumstances, they did exceptional, and they behaved exceptionally well. So thank you to all of you, if you're listening. Really, Michelin is what it is because of you. Now we can open the question and answer session.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. If you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad.
The first question comes from Tom Narayan from RBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Both of mine relate to the 2021 guidance. The first on the SR3 market guidance for 2021, you know, the 8% to 12% growth to me seems really robust, very impressive. Just wondering if you expect Michelin-specific outperformance above that level, and what that could be since that's a market guidance. And then my second one is, you know, on the operating income, EBIT guidance of greater than EUR 2.5 billion, you know, if I use the margins you posted in H220, that EUR 2.5 billion would be pretty conservative. I know it says above EUR 2.5 million, but is this just conservatism or perhaps, you know, are there costs that come back in 2021? I noticed, for example, selling and marketing expense was again down quite a bit in H2.
Maybe this is because of the raw materials impacts that you called out. Thanks.
Thank you. I will answer the first part of your questions and the second part, I will let Yves answer. So for the SR3 growth, yes, it will be. We anticipate it will be robust. We have many signals about this, especially when we consider that the second semester in 2020 has been slightly down in this activity. So that's why in perspective we have all the indication at this stage that, of course, without any new systemic effect of the COVID, that the specialty business should come back to a strong and robust level. Now, whether Michelin will outperform, it will be the decision of our customers. But we are very confident in our offerings and our product offerings and our service offerings in this segment.
For the second part, I leave it to Yves to answer you.
So regarding our segment operating guidance to be above EUR 2.5 billion, keep in mind that at the time we are issuing this guidance, there is several countries that are still in a lockdown situation where mobility is highly constrained. First, although we have also some, let's say, promising signals on the vaccination standpoint, but we see also that some supply chains, just to mention the automotive original equipment semiconductor supply, have been really impacted by the crisis. And we believe that the markets are rebounding. That's what happened during the second half. But we are not totally out of the crisis. The crisis is still having some ripple effects. And we have built our guidance, taking into account also some opportunities and some risks, and try to have a central guidance.
Thank you, Yves. Thank you.
Maybe, yes. And we like to overdeliver.
Yes. Thank you.
Second question.
Next question from Thomas Besson from Kepler Cheuvreux. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I'll have three, please. Firstly, on the cash guidance, can you just help us understand how conservative that may be eventually as well, knowing what you have achieved in 2020, and give us some indications around CapEx and working capital that have been substantial boost to your free cash flow in 2020? The first question. The second question, you may tell me that you want to keep that for April, which I would understand, but basically your balance sheet has improved faster than what we were expecting thanks to the strong cash. Could you talk about capital allocation? I've noticed you've suggested a dividend above consensus expectations.
Could you say a few words about the need to invest in startups or bigger companies or eventually the willingness to reward investors with a bigger dividend from here? And the last question is really very small. It's about the mention you make about coal exposure in the specialty business. I thought your exposure to coal was relatively small in the mining business. Can you remind us what it is as a proportion of the overall mining business, please, and whether we should expect that to only cap you in the years to come?
Okay. Thank you, Thomas. So, for the third, I will answer first on the third question on coal. There are two types of coal. You have thermal coal where we are underindexed in thermal coal, and that's the one that is declining.
And then you have other coal, and that's where we have the majority of our business. And that's why we on this one, we don't experience the same drop as what exists on thermal coal. And I will let Yves answer for the capital allocation and the balance sheet, maybe.
Yes. So regarding the capital allocation, I think we'll have the opportunity on the 8th of April to further develop what will be our capital allocation strategy for the years to come. But you can observe, as you have seen, that the dividend that we are going to propose to the shareholders meeting represents around 47% of our net result, outside non-recurring items, and around 63% of the net consolidated results.
So it's, let's say, a small sign, and we will give better, let's say, more information about our overall strategy on the 8th of April. Regarding the cash guidance, as we mentioned during the presentation, so we expect to come back to the, let's say, normative CapEx level by 2021, although we have a slight impact that we had in 2020 in the other way of the supplier, the payables of suppliers for capital expenditure. So in terms of cash, it should have an effect of around EUR 1.6, EUR 1.7 billion versus EUR 1.3 billion in 2020. But the main effect is really the need to rebuild our inventory to come back to a better service level for our customers. As I mentioned, our inventories have been decreasing by EUR 550 million in 2020 besides the Forex effect.
We consider that EUR 100 million is real progress as we are updating our supply chain processes and improving the way we manage inventories and we serve our customers, but we also believe that we have not made EUR 500 million of structural progress in 2020, so we absolutely need to rebuild our inventory to come back to a better service level, and of course in parallel we continue to improve our supply chain, so we are not going to. Our aim is at, let's say, lower raw material prices probably to rebuild at least EUR 300 million of inventory, knowing that we will continuously improve our supply chain processes,
and maybe on top of that as well as we intend to grow in 2021 we will have to also experience a customer credit, a much higher customer credit.
The net between customer credit and supplier, we will consume some cash. That's why we have this. But if you average the two years between 2020 and 2021, you will obtain the cash generation and the structural progress we have that Yves was mentioning, that has been offsetting the drop in EBIT.
Thank you very much.
Yes, next question
Yes, next question from from Gabriel Adler from Citigroup. Sir, please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. I'd like to come back to the operating income guidance, please, if possible, because if I apply a 40% drop-through on the volumes at the bottom end of your range and then include a slight positive net price mix raw mat as you've guided to, then I quite easily come out to EUR 2.5 billion, and that's before any SG&A cost savings.
So my question is, are there other aspects of the EBIT bridge that I should really be thinking about here? And particularly, can you give us some sense on SG&A savings, you know, how much your Simply Plan will be contributing to the EBIT bridge in 2021, net of any cost reversal?
Okay, Yves.
So we are expecting a drop-through around EUR 100 million in 2021. SG&A that hopefully, I say hopefully because we all expect that we are able to travel to organize motorsport events and to participate to events. So that should increase versus 2020, but still be slightly below 2019. And that's basically in a small, relatively small price mix effect.
Raw materials have started to increase during the last part of 2020, are expected to further increase if I look at the price of the natural rubber prices as of today. And of course, you know that we have part of our business which is indexed to raw material costs that are, of course, that we will leverage, but with generally a slight lag, which is included in the way we have built our forecast for SOI at EUR 2.5 billion.
Okay. So I'll have a second question on U.S. tariffs, please. Do you expect to win new market share in the U.S. as a result of the tariffs that are being introduced on Asian tire imports? And generally, what expectations do you have for the impact on the market there?
Sorry, can you repeat?
Because your question is, the line is not very good, so we have difficulty to understand your question.
Sure. It's on U.S. tariffs, so the impact of tariffs on Asian imports into the U.S. market.
Okay. Yes. So, yes. Thank you for the question. So in 2020, the U.S. tariff led to huge influx of Asian tires into the U.S., which explains why the market went boom in the market. And of course, which also explains our relative performance against that boom. We anticipate that as soon as the tariffs are implemented, this influx will diminish drastically.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question.
Thank you. Next question from Martino De Ambroggi from EQUITA. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good evening, everybody.
The first question is a follow-up on one of the previous questions concerning the profitability in the second half, particularly in the truck. So apart from the EUR 133 million in partial unemployment benefits that you mentioned for the full year, is there anything we should be aware to adjust the rate of non-sales recorded in the second half, just to have an idea what is the entry speed for next year in terms of profitability for all the divisions?
Okay. I will start answering and then Yves will complement. I know it's difficult to understand, but under exceptional circumstances we have the way of looking at our business has to be looked at exceptionally so we have some exceptionally low spending right now.
and as the market recovers, our plants are now able to be operating at full speed, but due to the sanitary conditions, we still have some bumps in the ramping up of our plants. And also as the market recovered, we had exceptionally low staff to produce in our plants, very high levels. And now that we are putting additional shifts into our plants, of course, we will have additional input costs into industrial. That's why you have to be cautious in not extending the profitability in the second semester in a straight line for the first semester of 2021. Maybe Yves, if you want to complement.
Yeah. If I catch your question well, Martino, I believe that the partial unemployment benefits that you mentioned have mostly, let's say, impacted the group during the first half of the year.
We have a very small portion during the second half.
Okay. Is there any other item we should be particularly aware of?
Not more than what, I mean, Florent has told you. Our factories were running at full speed, but with a lot of constraints due to the COVID-19 sanitary measures. And also with some hiccups in the restart of the factories because from time to time we have to isolate some people because there was one person who was a contact person or who had been himself infected. So, it has disturbed a lot of our operation, particularly from the summer and till the end of the year.
Yes.
We are seeing increasing logistics costs overall, especially in North America, but also in the shipping of natural rubber, so we are seeing some incremental costs, and that's what we have factored in into first in our price increases and then into our profitability for the first semester.
Yeah. On price hikes, if you could update the picture of what you already announced, and I suppose all competitors are reacting in the same way as it usually happens.
What the competitors do is the competitors field. And what we have announced is basically in passenger car, roughly a 2%, on average a 2% increase, which varies from country to country, but on average 2%, effective 1st of March, and between 3% and 4% in the truck tire field, effective 1st of April.
Okay. Okay, you cannot comment on your competitors, but I saw many other announcements. So I suppose the pricing discipline is always perfectly respected. Very last question. You didn't mention anymore in your presentation the market, the car market for the 18-inch and above. And are you gaining market share in that field, or you are in line with the market?
We are continuing our progression. And right now, in 2020, the content in our mix, internal mix of 18-inch plus is now reaching 47%. So almost one out of two tires right now that we sell is in 18-inch and above, which is in constant progression.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Victoria Greer from Morgan Stanley. Madame, please go ahead.
Evening. Just a couple from me, please.
Firstly, on the pricing environment, you know, you talked about the price increases that you've announced. You know, we're probably in the best pricing environment there has been for tires for a long time. You know, you've got the recovering demand, your very low inventory level still, the tariffs in the U.S., and the transportation costs, probably keeping imports to Europe down a bit too. You know, firstly, could you talk a bit about the replacement channels? Do you think they are fully restocked now, or is there a bit more to go there? And then, you know, you've talked about being slightly positive on price mix versus raw materials. Obviously, that's coming off H2 where it was very positive. So that's already pretty good.
But, wondering, you know, given the very unusual pricing environment, do you think you could do a bit better than that?
We can always try to be better. Now, especially in price mix. Now, more seriously, on the level of inventory in our distribution, it's at low level across most of the geographies. That's the only place where right now the levels are high in the distribution channel is in China. But that's for very local reasons right now because they've been anticipating the price increase and loading their inventory because of that. Apart from that, the inventories are at low level almost everywhere. Maybe Yves, if you want to complement. Next question.
Yes. Next question from José Asumendi from JPMorgan. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Hello, Yves. I'm Florent. Couple of, José from JPMorgan.
Just a few items, please. The first one, or three items, please. Can you comment, please, on mix overall for your budget planning for 2021? Are you expecting it to be, you know, neutral or negative in 2021? Second, can you come back again to the comments you did on working capital? I understood the moving pieces, but, you know, the overall net effect that you have within working capital, are you expecting it to be an outflow, or is it still an opportunity to create an inflow in 2021? The third element, I'm struggling to understand the EUR 100 million drop-through for on volumes for the budget planning. You know, you've taken substantial capacity out of the European business. You're gonna benefit from rising volumes. Can you maybe elaborate a little bit around the cautiousness behind this, you know, I think, conservative drop-through?
And then, final topic, slide 13, the share of recycling, you know, or recycling activities that you have there. When I compare your recycling activities versus peers, it looks to me like you are well. I think you're ahead of peers. I think you have differentiated assets. I would love to understand a bit more strategically how do you want to take this forward in terms of, you know, your share of recycling within the business, not just, you know, using it for, you know, the different applications, including cement manufacturing, etc., but, you know, just pure recycling of, obtaining raw materials out of your recycling activities. How far do you, you know, can you take this? How big of a differentiating asset is it versus your peers? How important is it for you from an ESG perspective? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Jos é .
I will answer two questions, and then Yves will answer the rest. On working capital, in 2020, what Yves explained is that we had exceptionally low level of inventory towards the end of the year. Normally, at the end of the year, we use the lower period of December to rebuild some inventory. We were not in position to do that because the market was stronger than expected. Those tires that were not in inventory towards the end of the year, we would like to rebuild the level of inventory because we think we are not at the normative level to have a good service to our customers. Right now, our service levels are poor to our distribution channels because we lack inventories. Basically, for next year, we will have to rebuild some inventory.
We will have also, as we have growth, we will see additional revenue in the EBIT, which would translate positively in the cash, but at the same time, we will consume some of that cash into customer credit. And therefore, the net customer credit and supplier payables will be high in terms of cash consumption, and so we will only retain at the end of 2021 in the cash flow the structural gains we made on our inventory management, which has been recurring over the years. So the best for you to look at it is to average the two years between 2020 and 2021, and you will see that on average, we are continuously progressing on our cash generation, but of course, we have experienced the drop in our EBIT in 2020.
So as far as whether it's cautious or not, I'll let you assess what it is. But in terms of cash flow, we have been. 2020 is more advancing some what should have happened in 2021. The second thing is about recycling, and I will let Yves on the mix and the drop-through. Recycling is clearly. It's a clear differentiator for our offering. It has been the case for many, many years because Michelin has always advocated the fact that tires should be reloaded with rubber, and that at the end of the life of a tire, so that's retreading. And at the end of the life, there should be a new use for all these so-called scrap tires.
So we have been investing in many different areas, and there, what we have shown you is different type of proof of concept about how we could regenerate new good raw materials out of scrap tires, basically. And we are investing in different type of technologies to see how, based on finished product at the end of their life, how we can regenerate new raw materials that we can then re-input into our tires. And our commitment is by 2050 to have 100% rate of either biosourced or renewable or recycled materials into all the product we manufacture. If we look at now the other two questions, Yves.
Yeah. Regarding the mix, of course, the mix, there is one part of the mix that we manage, which is the product mix, and particularly for SR1, the mix enrichment.
Basically, if you look over the past few years, we have increased the share of 18-inch and above tires in our total SR1 sales in volume by 3 points incrementally every year. There is a mix that we manage less, which is the market mix, which is linked to the original equipment and replacement mix, but also the business line mix, which, for example, in the second half of 2020, has been negative within the SR3, as we have seen. Our off-road activities, particularly agriculture, OTR, and the two-wheel businesses, growing when the mining business was slightly decreasing. Of course, the aircraft business was decreasing.
So we have built our vision for 2021, based on the scenario where we continue to grow, to enrich our mix for SR1, but there will be also some, maybe some negative mix effect, linked to business line mix, and regarding the drop-through, of course, as I mentioned, we took a drop-through of EUR 100 million, which is, by the way, higher than the drop-through that we used to have when the activity was, let's say, slightly increasing, of course, in this drop-through, you have the effect of the footprint measure that we have implemented in 2020, and all the continuous improvement measures that are made in all our factories across the world. Maybe a last comment to come back on the free cash flow and the working capital.
If you look overall, we'll have been able, assuming we will deliver this EUR 1 billion free cash flow in 2021, we'll have delivered EUR 3 billion free cash flow over two years, with an activity which has been down by 15% the first year versus 2019, and still be down by 5% or 6% the second year versus 2019. So this, let's say, on average, EUR 1.5 billion per year is a pretty good performance given the overall market environment.
Excellent. Excellent. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Next question from George Galliers from Goldman Sachs. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question.
Just on the EV market share that you highlighted, can I just ask, is that a function of the fact that it's just a much more consolidated marketplace at this point in time with far fewer players entering the tender process? And if that's the case, for how much longer do you expect it to remain like that? And also with respect to the EV tire space, in terms of profitability from a mixed perspective, how does that compare to 18-inch and larger tires?
Thank you for your question. So first of all, an electric vehicle is more demanding on tires. Why? Because you have more torque. You have torque decelerating to regenerate your battery, and you have torque accelerating. And an electric vehicle has a continuous torque, higher than what you experience in ICE vehicles. So, tires for electric vehicles are, have to be more robust.
They have to be very low rolling resistance because you want to have the least rolling resistance to generate new range for the batteries. Therefore, basically, I'm saying very often that the electric vehicle specification for a tire is essential tires, basically, that it has to be long-lasting. It has to be low rolling resistance. It has to have very good grip. It has to be able to sustain a lot of torque, and it has to also support all the weight of the batteries. That's why we see the electric vehicles as, first of all, an opportunity for the environment, but also for Michelin tires. And that's why our share as well, and that's regardless of the vehicle manufacturer, our share in electric vehicles due to our technology is higher than what we have everywhere.
Now, the bigger the tire, the lower the rolling resistance, and therefore, what you see in electric vehicles, you see the rim diameter increasing like in other like the trend you have been experiencing over the past few years in the market, and electric vehicles demand higher, bigger rim diameters, so the 18-inch and above would be accelerated with the introduction of electric vehicles.
Thank you. And then just with respect to the pricing development that you're seeing, do you see scope for further price increases over the course of the coming months? And when we think about pricing in your bridge through the course of 2021, at the moment, would it be more first half weighted in terms of the benefit from pricing than second half?
Or actually, is it fairly evenly distributed as we think about the cadence through the course of this year?
Yves, you want to answer?
Yeah. Of course, for the replacement market, the price effect will be more heavily on the second half because we are implementing these measures during the course of the first half. So they will not have full effect over the first half. And we also might have some lag effects for the indexed businesses. But overall, we are expecting probably. It will, of course, depend on what is going to happen in the coming months on the raw material price market. But overall, it will have a stronger effect on the second half than on the first half.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Last question from Edoardo Spina from HSBC. Sir, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Three very quick questions. Thank you for taking them. The first on the CapEx, if you could confirm, I heard EUR 1.6 billion to EUR 1.7 billion, informal guidance for 2021. I was just curious whether that's the case. The second question is on the tax rates. If you can provide a rough guidance on that and can comment whether the changes, the restructuring, will affect the tax rates going forward. And the very final question is on the under-absorption of fixed cost. I apologize. I did not really understand from previous discussions. Given your guidance on volume growth and also inventory restocking, I would expect strong production levels in 2021. So would it be reasonable to expect to have a reversal of this fixed cost under-absorption, which was more than EUR 500 million in 2020? Thank you.
Okay.
I will start with the under-absorption of fixed cost, and then Yves will answer for the rest. We have the market demand to be operating at full speed, but because of the sanitary situation, we are not really in a position to be as effective as we would be in normal times, so we constantly have here and there production perturbation due to the sanitary crisis. So that's why, even though the fixed absorption will be improving, it is not optimal compared to normal times because of the situation. Now, as far as tax rates and the EUR 1.7 billion CapEx, Yves?
So the EUR 1.6 to EUR 1.7 billion of CapEx is a figure that we have used for our 2021 forecast for our free cash flow.
Regarding the tax rate, due to the decrease of the overall results in the different legal entities of the group, we have an apparent tax rate, which has increased from 22%, 24% to 36% in 2020. We believe that it should, with let's say the overall performance improving across the different geographies and legal entities, the effective tax rate should improve again. But it will not reach immediately the pre-crisis level, as it will probably take time for all the legal entities and all different businesses to reach their pre-crisis level profitability.
Maybe a last comment on CapEx. You have to consider that we had to, due to the uncertainty of the COVID situation that we have experienced in 2020, take some exceptional measures on reducing slightly the capital expenditure.
But this was only postponing. And now that we are and we know how to operate with the COVID, all the projects that were postponed are now reframed for the next year. So the savings that we've experienced in 2020 is just postponing. Thank you. Next question, if any?
No more questions.
No more questions. So thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate your interest in Michelin, and we wish all of us the nicest 2021 as possible. And if possible, without masks. So thank you very much, and we'll see you in April for the Capital Markets Day.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.