Good morning. Good morning, and thank you for being here once again. I'm going to start the presentation. Can you hear okay? Yeah. Very good. I'm just going to kick off the presentation with a few slides. We're just going to come back to 2023. I'll then hand over to Thomas for the financials, and I'll come back after Thomas just to go through some of our businesses, the ones that will be driving the company's performance in the four or five years to come and beyond. We'll just give you an update also on what we presented last year in March, and we'll tell you about our new plan. The new plan was developed in 2022, end of 2022. We then started to introduce it in 2023. The ambitious objective is EUR 1.7 billion sales in 2027.
As you know, we have a strong CapEx plan as well. In 2023, we had a lot of contracts, especially the beginning of the year, Wolfspeed, ACC, for electric components for automotive. We had additional contracts we didn't really communicate much about, even if they were significant. But we had silicon carbide deals. We have a partnership with Soitec, which will or may soon turn into something more robust, probably a contract. I have a slide dedicated to Soitec, and we're going to... We also need enough flexibility in terms of equity, because between now and 2027, we have a long journey ahead of us. We've defined the company's growth plans.
We've also, which wasn't easy, we've also redefined our CSR objectives and roadmap. This roadmap is very much in line with the company's growth ambitions, and every year, we will be adjusting it as we move forward. Here are some numbers. Numbers, interesting numbers, exciting numbers. EUR 1.2 billion this year, and EUR 1.7 billion in 2027. As you can see, sales were very consistent this year. Thomas will come back to the sales specifically. We'll see that because of the currency, there is a currency impact of approximately EUR 40 million, so EUR 1.250 billion. EBIT has increased. Thomas, there again, will develop and explain.
So the EBIT has been good, and once again, I would like to insist on the fact that the EBIT is somewhat consumed now because we're preparing the future for Columbia, the EV teams, Soitec. Soitec went a bit faster than initially planned. Again, we'll come back to Soitec. We are going faster in terms of production. This was in the 2027 plan, but things have been somewhat advanced. And then the ROC, same thing, the comments are the same, and then for CapEx, just the same as well. We're maintaining our rating with CSR agencies. You have this information right below. We've made significant progress on the Green Taxonomy as well. 21% of the sales are aligned or taxonomy aligned.
21% is not that high, but very few companies in the industry are way below, sometimes, you know, 10 or even under 10. 75% of sales are taxonomy eligible, which doesn't mean we will be fully aligned, but it's a strong foundation as we move forward. So this is in a nutshell. We have... Again, we're seeing a good momentum. We will talk about the outlook and perspectives for 2027. Thomas, I think it's your turn, right? There you go. I need my notes. I'm going to talk about the performance, and I don't want to repeat the same thing over and over again, strong performance, strong sales, and so on.
As Luc said, 2023 was another year of profitable growth with record sales of EUR 1,211 million. There is a negative impact of currency, of foreign exchange, mainly the Chinese currency and the US dollar. Organic growth, as you can see, was 13% versus 2023. Five percent is coming from price increases. This strong progression is largely due to our growth market. As you can see, the SiC semiconductors, we went from EUR 50 million in sales to EUR 90 million in sales. That's an 80% growth, and this is why we have invested. We're also delivering sales very fast.
We're also seeing strong growth for electric vehicles, 16% growth. As you know, this market is still fairly modest, representing EUR 24 million in sales. But we're expecting much, much higher numbers, especially for the 2025-2026 period. I'm not going to go into the detail of each of the markets. We've already presented the detailed markets in January. What I can say is that all markets grew, all business units, all geographies have grown. Moving on to profitability. Profitability has also risen sharply. Recurring EBITDA exceeded 200 million EUR, 202.7 million EUR, precisely, up 9% year-on-year. After restating the Forex, it has increased 14%.
The same thing's true for the operating income, up 13% versus the previous year, and 19%, excluding the foreign exchange, the currency effect. Operating margin, up 0.4 points. And I would like to make a couple comments. One, that Luc already alluded to when it comes to amortizations. As you can see, amortizations have only slightly increased. Some of this is the Forex. If you can see the numbers are not the same for a like-for-like basis, and at the same time, we're investing significantly. The reason for this is that a lot of the new equipments we're investing in have not been introduced yet. So the amortizations will really start to increase, starting in 2024 and beyond.
The second comment I would like to make is on ROCE. Luc briefly mentioned it. It is reaching a high level of 13%. This is our objective. This was our target for 2027. It's been reached this year in very favorable market conditions. We haven't completely invested. Not all equipment has been is operational today, yet we're already seeing a very good performance. Moving now to the increase of operating margin. What does this show us? It show... First of all, we have a favorable volume mix effect, plus 2.1, 210 basis points, I'm sorry, coming from the strong growth sales growth, which I mentioned before.
The second, from lines two to four, with this, in the red lines here, this shows a very consistent set of numbers. First of all, inflation has been significant, especially raw materials and energy, and we've had labor inflation as well, payroll inflation, and those inflations were offset. This was a real challenge, mind you. Last year, we announced, we said we were going to offset this. We've done more than offsetting, fully offsetting the inflation by becoming more productive and by, thanks to price increases as well. All in all, as you can see, the margin has actually slightly improved. I think this is thanks to our business model. We have been able to create tailor-made products for our customers, and again, markets are very buoyant.
Point three, the operating margin includes temporary costs, one-offs coming from the p-SiC project, for example. This is the Soitec partnership Luc was referring to. So these are one-offs, temporary costs. We're preparing for, you know, much larger volumes and contracts, and we even have a negative P&L on both. And right now, we're really investing for the future. We're investing also in p-SiC and SiC. In general, we're investing in growth. When you go from EUR 1.2 billion in sales to EUR 1.7 billion in sales, you need additional resources, and those resources, you need to anticipate, you need to... And this is what we're doing here, and hence, the 140 basis points.
So all this combined, all these costs, additional cost factors combined, once again, they're temporary. We see we've had a very good performance, operational performance. Margin has increased to 11.3%, so that's a 40 basis points increase. So the increase in operating income has been consistent over the past 4 years in both divisions. Well, 2020 was an unusual year, but even in 2021, you can see we continued to progress. If you take a specific look at the last years, 2022, 2023, namely, starting with the advanced materials division, you can see that operating income grew, and margin is in line. There was a volume effect, significant volume effect, which allowed us to offset the p-SiC, which I mentioned earlier.
It also allowed us to offset some ramp-up costs with the for isostatic production in the Columbia plant. The plant to date is still not very profitable. We knew this, however, and prices and productivity did not completely offset inflation. Inflation again, there is inflation related to payroll, to labor costs, and energy, especially the advanced materials division, which obviously consumes a lot of energy compared to the electrical power division. So you have electrical power. As you can see, the electrical power division grew very strong, both the operating margin and margin. And you can see that prices and productivity significantly offset inflation, and there really is no energy inflation. And all this was made possible while in adding additional costs connected to the EV.
I think, we have a good mix in electrical power. All year, we talked about the electrical distribution, which did very well. It was very buoyant, the entire year, with very good margins as well. Okay, moving on to the net income. Let me first of all, say a quick word about the non-current expenses. This is mainly provisions for litigations and expenses related to current acquisitions. The financial expenses have risen sharply versus 2022 because of a sudden increase of interest rates during this period. This obviously had an impact on the variable rate debt. And...
So, I think this is worth being noted, and the EUR 19 million should not be connected directly to our net debt. You can't really compare those numbers because it also includes five million, which are IFRS-related costs. These are pension costs and rent-related costs. Those have been restated and are included in the financial expenses. So, then we have taxes, 23% effective tax rate, which is very similar, very consistent with the last year tax rate. I guess we can define it as or describe it as structural. So the net result has increased and net income has increased 16%. And if we take minorities into account, we have the net share, which has increased 20%.
Very good performance in net, in terms of net income, but also very good performance in terms of cash flow. I keep repeating myself. Very good performance, very high performance. The cash flow has... Operating cash flow has increased 70% before CapEx, before investments, because our EBITDA increased, of course. And it also increased because we had a positive variation of our working capital requirement. Despite strong sales growth, generally, the working capital generally goes up. This year, for us, it went down simply because we had a lot of customer prepayments for, on a number of contracts, especially the semiconductors and silicon carbide semiconductors. And this... So these prepayments allowed us to build some inventory, buffer inventory, which was necessary.
Since I'm mentioning inventory, and in spite of those, the buffer inventory with the stock delays remained the same. Working capital requirement is 19%. I don't think we've ever had this at Mersen. Véronique, correct me if I'm wrong. I think our best, very best performance was 20%. Anyway, very good operational cash flow, which allowed us to pay for a number of investments, EUR 176 million, significantly up as planned, once again. If we break down the investments, we have EUR 95 million that are related to growth projects. We talked about the EUR 300 million additional, so we've spent approximately one-third of that amount in 2023. Luc will come back to this.
The other investments are normative investments, about 6.5% of sales in total. This is what we announced, this is what we delivered. Looking at those normative investments, we have, you know, recurring ones, maintenance, productivity, expenses. We have additional growth projects. I'll give you one example: We've significantly increased our capacity in India. We made a public statement about a month ago, a press release on this topic, and we're continuing those investments, very much in line with our CSR objectives as well. We're investing in safety. We're investing in the environment, always to keep ahead of new regulations that are in the pipeline. As you know, regulations are increasingly strict and drastic. So our financial performance is excellent.
Our debt went down EUR 30 million. The operating cash flow is paying for the investments, and we've had a capital increase, EUR 96 million euro capital increase, and this also includes interests, the payment, payout of dividends, rents, as well as interests. Total is EUR 212 million. That's a leverage of 1.09. As you know, our leverage policy should be between 1.5 and 2.5, so we are right in the middle, and this shows that our financial structure is excellent. Liquidities are also very good. Once again, we have no significant debt to pay back before 2026, and as a matter of fact, we've reinforced our structure with a new EUR 100 million Schuldschein, which...
That, that's the financing plan of EUR 100 million, again, for, for almost six years. This allows the company to keep good maturity at 4.7 years on, on average, so we always have that long-term perspective, and it also allows us to maintain those other credit lines open and diversify our sources of financing.
Well, this transaction was placed with European investors and Asian investors, and it was a major success. The market was closed for a while due to OPA, so I think we're the second French company that has issued, and it was a massive success. We had oversubscription, twice the initial amount that we'd been thinking about. Now then, excellent performance in terms of sales, margin, cash at hand, but I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about our roadmap, which has improved, the CSR roadmap. Luc, in a minute, will be talking about the updates on our CSR roadmap for 2027, so that it is aligned on our plan. This is an overarching strategy, and it includes CSR. But to start with, in 2023, we've made considerable progress. We started conducting audits with our suppliers that didn't have a good CSR rating last year or in 2022.
What we did is that we asked our suppliers to fill out a questionnaire to get this rating, and then in 2023, we had 56% of audits with these suppliers. We've exceeded our number of women as engineers and executives by... We've exceeded the 26% bar. We were at 20% in 2018. We know it's not enough, 26%. We're working on that, but we've made considerable progress, and we'll continue with training efforts. More particularly, we'll be focusing on ethics and cyber security. There's no kidding about that, and if you look at our rates, they're rather good. But the best thing we did, our best achievement, is impact on the environment. We've reduced by 26% our GHG footprint versus 2022, which is good, in a year, and the reduction is 54% since 2018.
We have other plans for 2027, but Luc will tell you more about this. Now, given the good performance, what we suggest for the AGM is a dividend of EUR 1.25 per share, which is what we did last year. And as far as distribution is concerned, in terms of cash, it's more than last year, because with the capital increase, we've increased the number of shares, floating shares. So in terms of total amount distributed, the increase is 17%. This rate, well, represents a distribution rate of 33% from our net profit. A lot better than 2022.
We were at 33%, and now we are at 37%, which means that all of this is very much in line, and it's been a number of years that it's been in line with our payout policy, which is a payout ratio between 30% and 40% from the net income. There we are. Now, now that I've shared these good results with you, Luc will be talking us through the future. Thank you. Right, the first year of the plan is a year, thanks to which we can say that we got off to a very good start. Now, to be quite open, we've never really quantified that very specifically between 2022 and 2027. We have a good idea, though, of the amounts that are needed, for instance, based on silicon carbide and EV cars.
It's one of our business lines where we can have forecasts. We have forecasts. There's a company, Yole, that can give you numbers till 2030. Well, I don't know if we should believe in these numbers, but there are people who make projections, and part of our business at Mersen is connected to the general economic activity and to exogenous elements. So our sales, our 2022 sales figure, is a good milestone. Mersen are at the heart of the energy transition. I know this is a bit of a sophisticated sentence that says that we'll have to use fossil fuel less in the future. It's easy to understand. But it's not that simple to do, because if you look at power generation today, well, in some countries we obtain energy from coal and gas.
Nonetheless, I think, we had 520 gigawatts of renewable energy installed this year. 520, that's to be compared, I think, to installed nuclear power plants, 350-400 giga. And with the Chongqing Solar project, we were saying 10 or 15 gigawatts installed each year. So it's a different scale, and within these renewables, there's 75% or perhaps more of these renewables coming from solar power. Well, solar power, again, is an energy which is generated with photovoltaic cells, but it's DC, so you can't do much. Yes, you can store this in a battery where you have DC, but then it has to be injected in the grid. You don't have DC at home, even though this is something that people are thinking about in the future, in the long, long term.
So you need conversion, power conversion. So the more renewables you have, the more power conversion you need. And in general, if you look at the wind turbines, they're offshore, so we need to have current where we use electricity, which means we need overhead lines, high voltage lines, and there's less current loss, so we need conversion into low energy. And we have more and more electric vehicles, and that means more power conversion. At the same time, with these converters, and that's something we've been talking about in the past years, these converters are made of silicon, not very efficient, and now we'll use more and more silicon carbide. And thus, as you can see, our silicon carbide plan has really taken off nicely. And if we look at the deadline, 2030, we will see different numbers.
Sorry for my throat. These are the early stages of electric vehicles if you look at our numbers. Usually, we look at forecasts for 2030, but then we stop that because the quantities are amazing, very high, and the figures will be too high, and you will feel dizzy if you look at the numbers. Now, that's the plan that we presented last year. We've added a year, that's all. It's rather good. It's a nice milestone, and there you go. There's nothing else coming from our business lines, so we didn't have to change anything for 2027. As we say, we review our plans annually, and this plan, this year, the plan, of course, will cover 2028, and there's nothing really that's brand new. But it's good because this plan is quite ambitious.
As Thomas has said before, we'll have a quick look at our capital expenditure plan. 2023, we have the 95 number that is extra capacity, additional capacity for 2023, and then you have more particulars of the different building blocks. It depends on the CapEx types. We'll start with e- electricity, the electric capital expenditure. We have a slide on that, our industrial organization and EVs. We have a slide on that. So that's the first building block, the first brick. We've spent quite a lot, as you can see. We've used money for automated lines in China and in Mexico, and the ACC project mainly, which is making progress. So that's for semi-finished products and their factories. For isostatic graphite, I can tell you that the sales for 2023 will be obtained without any special increase in the product.
Well, we had a few extra tons, 200, 300 tons, more or less, for 2023. We didn't have more capacity for our clients that wanted isolation, so it was difficult, but we delivered. And if you look at the blue bar, that's what we did in 2023, these CapEx, and this will have effect on the second half of 2024. Sometimes that's the time it takes, one and a half years, so that we see the full impact on equipment. Then the finishing plants, they will transform these products into parts for our clients, and the story is the same. We have to always be abreast of construction. It's not just one building here, another building there. Two factories were totally redesigned. Their layout has changed, the Bay City factory and another one.
So it takes time to have buildings that can be used, but now we have more machining capacity at the end of 2023. And then insulation felts, again, will have more capacity at the beginning of H2 2024. It's a tough plan that we have, a very stringent plan for 2024, because that's when equipment will have to be up and running so that we're ready in 2025. Because we'll have a big leap forward in silicon carbide, a lot bigger than 2024, and then the important year will be 2026. So in 2024, we'll prepare not 2025, but 2026. So EUR 110-EUR 150, that's the bracket. We're never certain at the end of the year what's going to be done or what's going to happen, rather, and look at the carry over in 2025.
Also, there's Soitec, what we do for Soitec. It's included in the finishing factory. We try and work faster than planned, so that we can deliver large quantities in 25. Then let's have a look at power semiconductors. We had a slide on that last year, because it's different from what we do for semiconductors. Well, my slide's working, but the screen in Paris is showing a different slide. We have a slight technical glitch with the slideshow. There we go! There we are. It's not the nicest, perhaps, slide this morning that we can show you, but at least I can talk about power semiconductors. Here again, we use silicon, 90% of the cases, silicon. Maybe 80% or 90%, but quite a lot of silicon, and we have a role to play, but not that big.
It's a good business, that's all. But with silicon carbide, and we'll see this when we look at processes, we will have more Mersen products sold based on graphite, and therefore, the growth curve is a lot nicer, steeper. A lot of people communicate on this. The ones who produce transistors, they talk about silicon carbide, the increase in their sales. STMicro, of course, because they deliver for Tesla, and a lot of these wafers today. Oh, by the way, and that's why we have such good numbers, if you look at our sales, go to industrial players for drives, but also for railways, for solar power manufacturers or generators and surge arresters. They use silicon carbide, and today, 5%-10% goes to EVs. So there's a business case.
In the future, it's going to be one-third, two-thirds, or, it'll be in quarters, but at least some customers use those products as we speak. We're well-positioned in the value chain because the two businesses have an equivalent importance. First, materials expertise to the left. Without our production capacity today, we wouldn't look good. Go and meet full speed and say, "Okay, I have the best graphite in the world. We have epitaxy susceptors. We produce them. Can you deliver twice the quantities next year?" You're going to say no, and they're going to knock at your neighbor's door. So production capacity is what comes first, given the existing backdrop or context. And as we said last year, we can deliver 4,000 tons of products in 2025, 2026 for all these players.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have this plan with the objective of EUR 1.7 billion. We have to be close to them, to the clients, and therefore, our footprint is in all the industrial areas. This helps us. I'm not saying we can't deliver on another continent, but it's not simple. There's a lot of technical difficulties on the way, so you have to be close to your clients. Now, back to the products. The products are important as well. We have different grades depending on the process. It's an incredible process, one of the most incredible ones. 2,400 degrees, one of the hottest ones. That's high temperature, and there's only graphite that works at these temperatures. On the following slide, as you will see, we have epitaxy for the wafers, and that's very technical.
A lot of machining, and the parts are very complex to manufacture. This is an important application. Without epitaxy, you don't have transistors, so that's an important milestone or step. And in addition to this, there's the fact that we are able, and it took us two years, we are able to work for Soitec with p-SiC. It's a product that didn't exist before, and now we have it. The quantity is not high. We always say it's a prototype, but we deliver industrial wafers to Soitec, so that they qualify them and give them to their clients, so that the clients qualify them in turn. So in two years, we've done that. We're now ready to produce these products at costs that we will discover when the factory is ready, that is in one and a half years from now.
But we have a good view of what we can do. Now then, let's talk about SiC semiconductors. This year, we wanted to start with the wafer, production of wafers. At present, if you look at the processes, it's called the PVT process, the PVT line. At 2,400 degrees in a furnace, you produce an ingot, from which you're going to produce wafers. But it's a monocrystalline ingot that is the most perfect of all the products you could produce, but it's difficult to make, and all the players don't have the same grades, the same quality.
Now, I can't tell you who's producing the best, but given the contracts that have been signed, the official contracts, Wolfspeed delivers quite a lot of players, SiCrystal as well, and the other players as well, SiCrystal as well, but they don't communicate as much as the other two, the first two. So these are the two biggest players that drive the business in terms of grades and quality, but also in terms of quantity. There's a lot of graphite parts for that and insulation parts, and of course, the furnace will be totally insulated, and that's when we're talking about St. Marys, Columbia capital expenditure, Holytown as well, to deliver all these products. These products are not that complex in terms of their geometry.
It's a lot more difficult to produce the parts that you can see on the right hand side, that is epitaxy, substrates, and the product has to be produced in masses. If you don't deliver the same product, the ingot manufacturer will realize that, and the products will not be that good. Look at the names there, the players we work with at different levels, of course. We work with all of those players. And then there's the Soitec player. Here again, let me tell you what these guys do. What they do is that they take one of the best wafer producers, the monocrystalline wafer producers from the left column, and they split those down into as many layers as possible. The more they do this, the better their competitive positioning.
And the SiC layer will be coated or used on a polycrystalline wafer, and this will have a mechanical effect, that's all. So that the part can be used on a manufacturing line to produce a transistor, because some machines will be handling these parts, and it's a mechanical component to some extent. And the trick with them was to develop a polycrystalline wafer that more or less coats or glues the layer. It's not that simple. The specs are tough, and they wanted us to produce this polycrystalline wafer that would be a good heat conducive element with less resistance to avoid losses on the way, because electric current will go through the part from the top to the bottom. So, the less loss, the fewer losses you have, the more efficient it is.
And Soitec has a technology which is better, with considerable efficiency gains. And I suppose as well, economically, it is a solid plan. Anyway, the two products that you can see after being produced are on the right-hand side. So there's epitaxy products, as you can see. There's a number of names there. ASM took over a company in Italy. They don't work on epitaxy, but only the machines. And ST, Infineon, Bosch, and all those people use these machines, the ones who produce the transistors. And after epitaxy, there's quite a number of steps, but there's one that's very demanding, which is ion, the ion process, that you use ion in the epitaxy layer to produce a transistor. And we're well positioned with Axcelis and Applied Materials, sorry.
And that's a process that you can use, for instance, for memory cards, or a transistor for a laptop. And there's no difference for us between the world of, silicon and P-SiC. It's the same machine. We have Axcelis and Applied Materials that, produce the same machines. It goes then to ST, Infineon, and Bosch, and many more. And we can deliver some parts, spare parts, to Infineon and Bosch, but usually we use the OEMs. So this is the cycle.
A quick slide here to remind you of our footprint. Holytown is an acquisition 10-12 years ago. This is where we have our expertise center in insulation felts. Companies that started in this business a long time ago, who make quality wafers, I don't know if there is a reason for that, but they use the Holytown felts.
We ship to the US, Europe. We have a few customers in China as well. There is a lot of demand. It's a very unique product, and the graphite is made in St. Marys, or Columbia. Both plants can make the same grades, and the extension capacity is in Columbia. St. Marys is saturated. So Columbia, by the end of this year, will have a 2,000 additional tons, eventually 4,000 additional tons, in line with the 2027 plan. Chongqing is not involved with isostatic. It is used mainly for the solar Chinese markets and other markets. We have specialty sites to make certain parts, like Bay City, for example, and $90 million in investments.
Greenville as well, for graphites and insulation. And we have additional purification and coating capacity in Cheonan, South Korea. We have... there is only one player there, which bought Dow Corning in the US. And Malon no, Italy, delivers to STMicroelectronics. And in Gennevilliers, we have a facility which also delivers the traditional SiC market. But since the beginning of this year, I wouldn't say we've dedicated, but we made some adjustments to only do p-SiC for Soitec. So we have the p-SiC plant, the only one we have is in Paris, to deliver Soitec. And hopefully there will be more news there in the four or five years to come. A quick update on the Gennevilliers site.
Initially, we picked Gennevilliers to launch a small production. We didn't really have a clear forecast of Soitec. And then when we continued our discussions with Soitec, we came to realize that we had to move fast. We had SiC coating, fac-
... capabilities in Gennevilliers, the p-SiC ovens. We had some prototyping in the pipeline in Gennevilliers, and this is when we decided to do everything in Gennevilliers. There was no time to move it somewhere else. So we did this. We made a very conscious decision to invest quickly. This was a massive investment to deliver, you know, decent quantities of wafers to Soitec. We're talking about 400,000 wafers. Don't really keep this number in mind because there is going to be... there are shifts. Initially, they were 150 millimeter wafers, and all silicon transistors were 200. No luck. So the transistor, silicon carbide is based on those wafers, and everybody's asking for 200.
We, we know how to make 200 ones, so we're delivering more p-SiC wafers to Soitec that are 200 mm versus 150 mm. There is a ratio. I don't know exactly what the ratio is, but, but anyway, that's, that's not important. But, soon we would like to produce maybe not 400,000, but many by the end of 2025, 2026. We had some state subsidies, with the, the France 2030 program. We've also had some subsidies with, with R&D. It's pretty... They're pretty easy to get in, in, in France. And, as you can see on this slide, you can see the Soitec wafer, what it looks like. So nothing very tangible from a commercial standpoint. You may, you may know that they work with STMicroelectronics.
I think Infineon was also interested in their technology. They are very actively prospecting other geographies as well. We're going to continue and deliver Soitec if one day, who knows? One day, we could also deliver p-SiC to their customers. So this is the story, and all this is quite new, I must say, compared to last year. Even if our yields can be improved, I do want to insist on the fact that we make a lot of wafers. We have all the equipment necessary for p-SiC, not enough yet to meet all the needs. Let me reconfirm what we already said last year.
After the spectacular leap of last year, we're now well on the path to 2027, and there will probably be, again, some Soitec. There will be a lot more in 2027. We will give you more information as we move forward, probably next year. A word on EVs. Here again, quite some interesting news. Last year, we didn't have much. We make busbars for batteries. We could also offer busbars for converters. We have some business in this area, a bit less, but I... Then we have the fuses. We have a range of fuses, and you may say, "Ooh, this looks like things I've seen before." Well, not quite. They are for current voltage.
We are using semiconductors, but we redesigned a completely new range, and this requires physics, right? So it was interesting to increase voltage up to 800 volts, sometimes occasionally 1000 volts, Mercedes, for example. But the products that are used are very different. So we're continuing to develop new fuses to serve that 1000-volt market. In cars, you will find all kinds of amperage, amperages, depending on what components and what parts of the vehicle. You know, yeah, there are all kinds of standards, all kinds of calibers. And the busbars, well, it depends on the size of the busbar, the battery pack. It could be 15, 20, 30, 80, if it's a very large pack. So...
ACC, we'll come back to ACC in a moment. This slide is really dedicated to fuses and fuse qualifications. We have a top five customers, car manufacturers, representing EUR 30 million in sales over several years. We're qualifying additional customers. They will probably increase that number. We have some well-known brands. And with Marquardt, we're also serving Volkswagen, Kia. We're now qualified with Hyundai. It took us about a year. We have a lot of full electric vehicles that will be coming from Korea, so this is obviously a country where we have to be, delivered out of Shanghai. And a lot of fuses also in BMW vehicles delivered to Panasonic. They're one of the battery manufacturers working for BMW. So I mentioned ACC. ACC has a major contract with battery manufacturers. There is a video.
We looked, we tried to find it, and we couldn't find it yesterday, but it shows the STLA. That's the platform we're using. It's a great platform. You will see how it's designed. You have the battery, you have 10 different packs. For the L platform, they're going to range one additional line of packs, and it will be slightly longer. So you have this video which shows how the cells are added to the pack, and then the busbar that connects them, and then the hood. It's very interesting. It's a great video, and the guy who shows the video pretty much says what I said a few months ago: it's the first platform, not in Europe, I think, but in France, that only contains European or Europe-made products.
So the cells are made in the ACC's Gigafactory busbars from Mersen and other components. So they completely redesigned the platform, and all the vehicles that they use that we see today are Chinese packs. We have a lot of CATL ones as well. I mean, nothing wrong with that, they're great products, but this is really a more recent development. So the cars will receive our busbars and so far, I must say, we've been more successful than the ones we worked on in the early days with ACC. The numbers speak for themselves. They've increased the number of busbars to make for the term of the contract, and ACC has added a lot of features to the busbar.
So the value of the contract has increased. We're between EUR 250 million and EUR 300 million over a 7-year period. There will be some production peaks in 2026 and 2027 with, you know, very impressive volumes of products that will need to be delivered. We have the plant in Saint-Bonnet, France. We're struggling with some of the logistics, simply to get 25 trucks in and out every day, more than actual technical problems, so because the volumes are simply very, very high. After 2026, we're going to be delivering to another gigafactory, which is currently being constructed. There will be some assembly there as well, without any details, but the investment... We made an investment of EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million in Saint-Bonnet. We made fuses initially.
We now have this building, which is entirely dedicated. It will be one of our flagships. We're working a lot on automation as well to, you know, keep up with the pace. We need to make one part every 10 seconds. So this is it. France is in blue. We have the research and development center in Angers. The ACC busbar was mainly developed there, and then teams hand over the project to the Lyon teams that are working in production. I'm not sure this picture is very clear, but everything is robotized, a bit like in a gigafactory. As a matter of fact, the busbar has some areas that are specifically designed so robots can pick them up and move them around, move them to the pack. Everything is robotized.
Eventually, there should be three or four production lines. We're developing the first one as we're speaking, and we should be ready to deliver next year. We're talking about tens of thousands of products that will be delivered, you know, and installed on cars, and in 2026, volumes are really going to pick up. So we have this real challenge of having fully automated lines when necessary. As far as fuses are concerned, we have a new line in Mexico, and we had customers, Chinese customers, who went faster than Marquardt and Volkswagen. So we have three lines in Shanghai to deliver BMW, Panasonic, Kia, Nio, and other manufacturers. We're also working with CATL for power storage and so things are. A lot is happening in this segment.
I think we've made tremendous progress when it comes to industrial equipment. The bottom line, bottom left line we had last year, but all the others didn't exist, so we have a lot of people, 100 people who are working on this, 60 for ACC, really dedicated to the project, simply because it is a lot of work. Just once again, to reconfirm what we announced last year, between EUR 100 million and EUR 120 million in sales, busbars, and fuses by 2027, with a nice increase this year and a real leap forward in both 2025 and 2026. In the meantime, we have additional markets that are also doing quite well, starting with solar. Solar, excluding China, outside of China. Our ambition is not to further grow in China, but we have a number of projects.
Some projects were launched about a year ago. We have a few in Europe. I'm really interested in two projects in India and in the US. I have nothing tangible to share at this point, but things are really moving fast, especially in India. So this is, we think this is going to generate additional tons in sales, and they, they've not been included in the plan. Wind power as well, there again, things are growing, are moving, not at an extraordinary pace, but it is a profitable business and again, growing. We have energy storage. No slide this year dedicated to it, but we have some interesting developments there, including with large power storage units, with some technical challenges as well facing us. We're not in automotive here.
We're not. We're talking about 250 volts. We're looking at potentially 3,000 volts in. Which is important with potential sales opportunities. We had, we were in the vicinity of 5, 6 or 8 million EUR, but we're looking at more than that. So guidance for 2024. Let me very briefly take you through the numbers. Organic sales around 5%, operating margin around 11%, and CapEx between 200-240 million EUR, with based on all the growth projects I've just mentioned. So organic sales growth of approximately 5%. SiC is going to drive growth. We're also expecting very stable renewable energy markets.
EV is going to generate some additional millions, especially with ACC, which could offset some of the process industries if they were to slow down. They're only very slightly slowing down this year, in 2023 versus 2022, but there is some uncertainty. It's 33%. It represents 33% of company sales, and especially for North America, we're waiting to see what the growth perspectives are, and so far they've been good. They were so high over the past years that... But we want to be, we want to be cautious. Operating margin, again, very much in line with what Thomas mentioned earlier. We still have wage inflation, energy inflation seems to be more or less under control, or at least doing better. We have additional resources.
p-SiC is increasing, but we're going to need 100 people for p-SiC. We have 25. We won't have 100 people by the end of the year, but we have some efforts, so some resources to mobilize, and there will be a slight increase in depreciation and amortization. So once again, operating margin guidance around 11%. This slide is to reconfirm the 2027 targets. Once again, the key number is EUR 1.7 billion. You then have the operating margin objectives, current EBITDA and ROCE, which remain unchanged.
The climate plan, we've called it the climate plan, but Thomas has already shared with you some CSR KPIs, and they've improved. I'll stick to what has an impact on the climate, that is CO2 emissions, mainly. The ones you can see are in scope 1 and 2, and look at what we've done since 2018. We've done nicely in terms of CO2 reduction. Before, that is, between 2018 and 2021, if you look at tons and absolute values, but since we have a growth plan, which is quite ambitious, and since this is something we're allowed to do, we think it's a better indicator if we compare this to our sales. So look at what we've done. Nice improvements. We wanted to go fast, not to have plans for the year 2030, which is what we saw somewhere else in other companies.
Look at what we did in 2023. The numbers have decreased considerably, and the objective for 2027 is 79 to 2027. Not that easy, but at the same time, we've moved towards renewables whenever we can. So we're at 73. We think we can go up to 80. And in terms of CO2, well, why should we use renewables in France? Because we have nuclear power, and there's zero CO2. So that's the objective for renewables in the group, 80%. And then to preserve the water resource. Here again, the indicator we use will be tracked, so that is we measure our intensity, but also, if you look at absolute values, we've really decreased. Except if you need to have water cooling systems, then it's difficult to decrease the number. But we're working on other technologies with closed loops, et cetera.
But in absolute values, we can't use less water in 2027 compared to 2022. And then waste recycling. Well, this started a long, long time ago. I remember at the time the number was 38 or 40, but we're on the right tracks to reach 80. I think, well, we didn't show you the year 2022, but two years at 70%. It's difficult to do more than 70%, but we'll manage. We recycle as much as we can, that's waste recycling, and we reduce the amount of waste we produce, which is not easy. 56% of the group's sales is already on renewable markets for renewables, so that's quite positive if you think about Mersen's image. And something I'd like you to pay attention to, which is the project we have with the Polar Pod. And it's a nice, an interesting topic.
How much CO2 can be absorbed by the oceans? That's the objective of this mission, the Polar Pod. And this year, we decided to offset the CO2 emissions due to the new CapEx. That is EUR 300 million, that's our CapEx in a factory, have a footprint, 250,000 tons of CO2. So we pay for that. We have contracts to install renewable, renewable factories in India, where we are. The Indian teams really were happy because we're helping them, and we're investing in these projects, and we're going to be able to save or offset the equipment that we will need in Mersen. EUR 300 million, 250,000 tons of CO2 that will not be emitted. That was perfect, I think.
Now, before we put an end to this, meeting, even though we're going to have a Q&A, apart from what you can see on the screen right now, there are other things happening in the group that are not in the plan. The solar projects, for instance. A few words about this. This is a nice opening, I think. We don't need to have a capping of as a static production in Columbia or St. Marys. If we need to have 1,000 tons more, if there are projects, we'll do this. But there are two important projects in India making considerable progress. There are some in Europe. I wouldn't really bet on those ones in Europe. I shouldn't say that. Let's be positive. And in the U.S., we have one or two large projects, thousands of gigawatts, and they will come to fruition.
Then there's another line that we'd like to keep for later, but let me talk about it right now. You've seen that there are many projects mushrooming in the nuclear business in France and elsewhere. We tracked 25 of those projects all over the world, mainly in Europe and in the U.S. I'll skip the EPRs that are smaller, the 200-megawatt that EDF is in charge of. It's a copy of an EPR, but it's smaller. There's no graphite in there. Why should we be there? And all the new SMRs, 20 megawatts, Jimmy Energy, Aria, and all that, well, many of these SMRs can use graphite in the core or in the reactor, or silicon carbide that we produce in the Tarbes . That's the case of Naarea with molten salt reactors.
It would be SiC for this company. Now, of course, if you look at the quantities, there's no need to mention the quantities because we have to go through a series of tests. But these are the things that have emerged in the past year, and there was acceleration this year, and we've produced many prototypes for the American companies with our graphite grade. And of course, it's a lengthy process, but some people would like to market their first prototypes as early as 2028. That's like tomorrow. I think they're very optimistic, but never mind. There we are. Maybe there's going to be more to tell you in a year. We're working hard on that. And then a reactor with graphite or silicon carbide, the quantities could be high, several thousands of tons. And then electrification.
DC, direct current, will require quite a lot of fuses. I'm not saying that circuit breakers can't be used for DC current, so a fuse is better than a circuit breaker, and we hope that with this, we'll be able to grow even faster. We've seen this with energy storage and PVs. Look at the SiC fuses we sell. Otherwise, the markets would have been going down because fuses are little by little replaced by the circuit breakers, and that was good for us with this lineup of products. Power conversion, as we said, more and more, we need power conversion. We've added AI. If you don't speak about AI, look like old-fashioned. And all this means that these are very fast, very powerful microprocessors. That's silicon semiconductors. That's good for us. That's good for us. So far, so good. And then green transportation.
Our story ends at 2027, but we'll ask ourselves the question, one of these days, what's going to happen after 2027? That is, between 2027 and 2032. Green transportation is going to be the story, an important story for the group, I think. And I think I've finished. There we are. Thank you very much for your attention. Now, the time has come for the Q&A. We'll start with the in-person meeting in Paris, and then we'll take questions from those following the webcast.
Hi, I'm Tamar Renault from Gilbert Dupont. I have a series of questions to ask. Number 1, your organic growth guidance in 2024, usually, your uncertainty in the group leads to a bracket that you give us, a guidance bracket. Whereas this time, you're more specific about the numbers for 2024.
Does that mean that there are fewer uncertainties hovering on the year, the fiscal year, and you have more visibility? That's my first question. And what about the 5%? How should we look at those? What's the mix between price increases and volume increase? I have a second question about the WCR rate for 2023. You've given us a 19%. 19%, which is an exceptional number for you. Could we expect the same in 2024? There are good headwinds in terms of advanced payment, and these will not stop this year, I think. Another third question about your CapEx on p-SiC. Now, I think you've mentioned a capacity of 400,000 wafers for 2027. I was thinking 200,000 and EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million in sales in 2025. That's what I thought was the number.
Can you perhaps shed light on this? 'Cause we're talking about capital expenditure, but we're not talking about your growth prospects connected to these investments. My final question, question four, is your external growth objective. Your debt position at the end of the year is really good. Given your leverage policy, could you perhaps afford to be more aggressive and buy more companies to grow? That's all as far as I'm concerned. Okay, we'll answer these. That's Luc on the mic. I'll answer your question on p-SiC with Soitec. Yeah, you're right. That's your question number three. We had a plan which originally... Well, I don't know if it was less ambitious, but we had a plan, and that's true. We thought we would change the Gennevilliers factory to produce these 200,000 wafers.
Yes, with a lower level of CapEx, but given the forecasts and what's going to happen with Soitec, not over time. Well, I mean, not for years 26 and 27, but if you look at their plans for 2024, it's going to be tough. But if you look at 2025, we decided to saturate the factory. We have the go-ahead from the French prefecture. It's in the middle of nowhere, in a village, Gennevilliers, that's the name. And we thought, "We'll do as much as we can." We have the rights given by the French prefecture, and we can reach 400,000 wafers, which is a lot better for Soitec compared to the former quantities. So to give you a point of comparison, but there's nothing I can say about the sales number because we are still discussing the price.
It's going to be more than what was originally planned. Thomas will answer the other questions. So 5%, we said around 5%, so there's a bracket. Don't take the 5% for what it is. It's not between 4.9 and 5.1, if you see what I mean. It's a broader bracket. We have an order book, which is quite good, so it's quite safe for the beginning of the year. We have the SiC contracts, the SiC contract. We have some uncertainties with the process industries and, as you know, power distribution as well, which was really good last year and still is. Then you were saying prices? The prices will be at 1% or 2% price increase. This would offset inflation because it's mainly wage inflation.
Last year, we had 6% wage increases, and this year it's 4.5-5% wage inflation, and that represents one third of our prices. Then there's also what we factored in already in our pricing. So if we reach 2%, that's good. For us, it's going to be between 1% and 2%. That's the price increase. Then your question on WCR. It's not going to be easy to stick to the 19% objective. We're working on other SiC contracts where we could have advanced payments, and we're also working on our inventory levels to optimize our inventories. 19% for working capital requirement, it's going to be a stretch goal. I grant you that. Then you've talked about the debt. Yes, the debt, your fourth question, and that's why we had the capital increase. We were thinking about acquiring companies.
You're saying big-sized companies. Well, the first thing that matters is to find the right company, to have a target, and we were thinking about bolt-on, the Bolton acquisitions. And in the bridge, I showed the acquisition costs, and we've made headway on two targets, two acquisitions, we think, in 2024. It takes more time than planned, but we still hope we can make it. Have we answered all of your questions, sir? Hello. I work for Stifel. Julien Onilon. Let's come back to your pricing policy. You're saying 1%, 2%. Last time, you said your cost inflation was to be offset. That's why you're going to increase your prices. So my question is: How are you going to do this?
Now, you have different types of products, I know, and the market conditions are different for these different products, but let's come back to your graphite business. You've reached full capacity for isostatic products, as you said. So my question is: What about these markets for all the products based on isostatic technology? What about the price increases? Will this be where you're going to have price increases? Because if you have full capacity, all the other peers will be in the same position. So that's when you have a pricing power that's good enough to increase your prices. And maybe with fuses, it's different. With fuses, you'll be more conservative. So that's my first question. I have a second question: your margin guidance. You mentioned costs on a page for 2023.
You've said the investment costs would increase exceptionally, and that's what you said for your hiring or recruitment policy, for the busbars and all the projects you, that you have. And I think you're saying... Let me see. I have to find the right page first. "1.4% margin," you've said. So my question is, will you go down to zero this year, or could you have a positive effect? Because you said these are one-off costs, and in theory, the costs could zeroize, and therefore, the impact would be positive. And that's a very specific element in your margin, which is connected to your objective, which is 1.4%. But also, as we know, there's going to be an increase in amortization. And my third and last question is more business-oriented. It has to do with ACC and the busbars.
What you were looking for, well, potentially, is to gain new large customers, just like ACC, which is not the case today. You've said that potentially with ACC, you would have a new factory in Italy. I've taken due note of this, which means you would have a second large customer. But to meet your initial objectives, you were saying you would need, in addition to ACC, two other clients. With Italy, that's one more, okay, if the volumes are the same, but then you would miss one big customer to gain. So do you trust that you can have a new, big customer? What about the battery producers? Thank you. Well, you're right. At the time when we talked about ACC, we said, another second big customer would be something interesting for us. But, with ACC, we've increased our quantities.
They've increased their quantities during the year. So for the Saint-Bonnet factory, that's okay. We're not running after a second client as big as they are because it's almost full capacity that we've reached. Now, we'll have to meet these quantity objectives, but that's their business. If they stick to the contract, it's okay. We don't really need a second big client, as we were saying last year. You know, what we're working on at present is that we'd like to be qualified by OEMs that will provide us with more sales in addition to ACC. Not at the end of the plan, but let's say in 2026 or 2027. Let's mention the names. Renault. Renault started later than planned. They still use Chinese batteries, and by the way, if you look at their small cars, they will still use the inexpensive pack units.
It's difficult for them to sell them at the right price, at the right selling price. There's a difference between Chinese packs and the European ones. So you know what we're doing? We're looking for other contracts, but on the fuse market, it's easier to do. If you look at these discussions we've had over the past two years with ACC, it was a lot faster and less complicated with fuse contracts. And we have manufacturing lines where we could increase our capacities, so fuses mainly. And I also mentioned converters. We have two or three clients interested in power conversion. It would be good to produce more converters, I think, and well, to meet the objectives with ACC. But we're careful, you know. It is a complicated business. There's the supply chain. There's quality that matters.
As we said before, we don't want to have four busbar clients, a one-off client... a one-off deal with four clients. We need to gain experience with ACC. It'll take us one or two years to show that we can be aggressive with this type of plan and business. You've talked about our hiring policy. Well, we're not saying there's going to be a peak in recruitment because we have a contract, and after this, we'll kick people away or out. No, we'll have 120 people working on EV, EV segment. This is going to be offset with the product margins, and it's the same for p-SiC as well.
We will have more or less a manning of 120, 100-120 at the beginning of 2025, even though if you look at our sales at that moment, it'll be really low. So that's a liability, but it'll disappear as we sell more. Thomas: Well, in other words, there's going to be no margin gain. Question again. Okay, I get your point, but you've hired people, so will you have a second recruitment wave? Because there's two things, you see. Either you stay at the same level, and therefore, this burden on the year was one-off, and/or the fact that you're going to recruit again, and that's my question. Luc, you're right with EV, what you said about EV. We are manned correctly, but for p-SiC, we've only got a team of 25 for the time being.
We need more or less 100. So there's going to be mainly the p-SiC effect if you look at our manning and the teams, the R&D and development teams. Thomas, and this will be offset because there's Columbia. You know, the ramp-up costs in Columbia, and they will vanish little by little, which means that by and large, all these extra costs will have no major impact, no significant impact, neither upwards nor downwards. I have another question then. The prices, Thomas? Oh, yes, the price question. There's two things I could say, well, three things I could say about the prices. First, we increased our prices with fuses as much as we did with graphite products, and, that's due to the market structure, probably. So, we had this price increase with fuses. Now, for graphite, there's two things.
Well, we had a big price increase two years ago, and there comes a time... I think Luc mentioned this before. He said, "We are close to our clients." He said that. It's a relation based on trust, and the clients accept this. Well, you have to foot the bill, but they accept us passing on the inflation costs. If you open that door and start saying, "I'll use my pricing power, you will have price increases," if that's what you tell your clients, what they might do is that they might look for other specific suppliers. It takes time to be qualified, but that's an open door. And my second answer to your question is to say that we've signed long-term contracts, and, the prices are pegged on inflation, but it doesn't mean we have more pricing power.
What we want with these long-term contracts is not to use our pricing power, but to make sure that we have the right level of CapEx, that is, to have a safe ROC. And that's why we're going to have, for these long-term contracts, we have a slight inflation factored in, but a price inflation that is going to be reduced. And if you look at the cost of energy, recently, they went down in 2024 versus 2023, yet there's still the wage inflation. It's still there. It's still high for 2024.
Just to close on this, the fact there is a lot of volume, growth volume with SiC, does that mean that for more traditional products, graphite used in other applications, does that mean that there is less capacity available for those other applications? And how does that affect the pricing? Well, it's definitely easier to increase prices on a market like this. Well, yes, that, that was indirectly my question.
Well, here is what I can say. In 2022, 2023, we had general price increases. In 2024, we are going to be more selective.
Okay. Thank you. Jean-François Granjon from ODDO BHF. I'd like to come back to M&A. You mentioned provisions for future acquisitions. How confident are you about your ability to close those deals in the year? You said some of the potential acquisitions are family businesses. As we all know, family businesses can be more difficult to acquire. What is your level of confidence? You said EUR 100 million for M&As this year. Is that still the earmark, or are we looking at different numbers? I'd like to come back to the question with a question on the guidance on operating margin. Do you expect stability of EBITDA margin, or do you think there could be some changes compared to the 16.7% we had last year? Question three, CapEx is accelerating. The bulk of the investments will be in 2024, less in 2025, which means we could expect a negative cash flow. Does that mean that in 2025, the cash flow should be largely positive again?
Well, to that question, I suppose we will answer in March next year. What I can say is that the cash flow should be better. We said 2022, 2023, and 2024 will be negative. In 2025, since the beginning, we said it would depend. It will be positive, very positive, in 2026. That was to question three. Luc will answer the question on M&A, but I can answer the guidance question. Our amortizations are going to represent approximately 40 basis points, right? Operating margins going from 11.3% to 11%, that gives you a rough idea of the EBITDA margin, which in other words, should be more or less stable.
Thank you, Thomas. That gave me some time to prepare for the question on M&As. We're struggling sometimes with administrative complexities. Some countries really like to monitor, control who buys what. Even family businesses, even if they're not huge. It's been a bit of a surprise to see what some countries, how some countries behave. They really look into. They scrutinize the potential buyers very closely. I think we're fine, but it's interesting to see we're getting questions we did not have a few years ago. If even only 2% of your sales are going to the army, for example, in a given country, or if you are working in a very critical technology, well, then you're scrutinized a bit more, and things take a bit longer. But I think we'll be fine. I, honestly, I, I don't expect any major difficulties.
I think we're pretty much in agreement on everything. I don't believe we ever said we were going to do EUR 100 million CapEx in 2024. I think we said half of that amount. That is more likely. Hello, Antoine. I'm with Gilbert Dupont. I have a question on Soitec and Soitec volumes. Obviously, having significant Soitec volumes is a prerequisite to for your 2027 plan. There's been destocking, and they've somewhat postponed their destocking several months, several quarters, and not giving much flexibility. How much risk is there for you on the volumes they've ordered? And do you think there is any threat to the execution plan? No impact. No impact.
The shift in sales, lower business is in standard digital and not in high power. They have their SOI business. We are interested in their power electronics, the EUR 300 million they invested. That's where... that's why what they need the wafers for. And I'm not saying we have no questions because we're obviously forced to follow their qualifications, qualifications coming from people, from companies who make transistors. Again, so far, so good. It could take... qualifications could take up to 2 years, which means, again, there would be large volumes to deliver in 2025 and 2026, as we said before. So I don't really see a connection with the non-digital. Jean-François Delcaire with HMG Finance. The drop in energy prices could help you. To what extent? We talk...
Some people are talking about the IRA and the potential election of Donald Trump again, which could put an end to IRA. What are your perspectives? Well, I can pick up the Trump question. He could have an impact on other businesses, not necessarily on... I mean, I don't think Trump will put an end to IRA. He likes products that are homemade, and it's actually quite surprising to see that Biden did this. We've launched several plants. I think that with the industrial fuses, things have really been buoyant for us. And we have local teams. They're delivering the local market. So it's all fine.
I think if they decide to keep plants, industrial plants at home, it's probably better for us than if they decided to offshore to Asia, for example. So that's your one question. The other question you had was on what again? Energy costs. Right. Well, the energy costs, that's a European question. It's not something that applies to China or North America. Our consumption in Europe is fairly limited. I think that if the prices go down, it will give us some tailwinds, but not significant, nothing significant. And never forget that energy, no matter what, will be higher, the costs will be higher than what they used to be. It's better, it's better than where we were a while ago, but it's still higher than before, before the main price increases.
A quick question on sales in 2024. You announced a production increase starting H2. Does that mean H1 growth will be driven mainly by prices? That's 1%-2%. H2, more significant, 7%-8% growth. Is that a good interpretation? Not exactly. I think there will be more production towards the end of the year. That's true. In the process industry, we expect to be less, a bit less buoyant. So right now we're working on, we're delivering the backlog, so one could offset the other. It's difficult to say for sure. We do not see any growth changes that are going to be radically different. A bit like in 2023, because we had. In 2023, we did EUR 300 million in sales per quarter. We...
The total was 1.2, 211. 1 billion, 211 million. Now, there's no reference, no reference market. We still have that EUR 300 million, and we're seeing we have some tailwinds and front winds, headwinds. You know, we have the, the, the process, industries. I'm not saying that the, the growth will be exactly the same, but I don't think there will be a huge gap compared to 2023. Okay, so you think H1, H2 will be fairly balanced? Yes. You know, things don't radically change on July thirty-first.
Now, we have questions from the ones following our webcast. So questions from Thomas, analyst at Berenberg. What level of amortization could we expect for 2024? I think we've answered this one, but also, what's the level in 2025? Then, what about graphite volumes earmarked for SiC in 2023? Then, the advanced materials segment margins not increased in 2023, despite the good SiC volumes. Fourth question: What about the cost of the debt for the new Schuldschein? And what about your CapEx plans in France for p-SiC and in the US for graphite? Are your plans in line with the original objective? Thomas will answer the first questions. Amortization, we can't give you the levels for 2025. We have given you guidances for 2024 and 2027, so we're not going to answer this question.
We've answered for 2024, when we discussed the weight of amortization. It's the same between the graphite SiC and the felt. We're not going to answer this, otherwise, the competitors would have information that's precious. We've given you the overall number. Then the question about the margins for advanced materials. Why didn't they increase more? Well, there was the volume effect, but as I said earlier on, there's always the ramp-up costs in Columbia. There's also the p-SiC costs, and the prices couldn't really offset inflation. I was saying the cost of energy. It's not that high, but they only impact advanced materials. That's why we've had these headwinds, negative on the volumes. Then the next question, the cost of the debt, and then I'll hand over to Luc. Luc says you've covered everything.
No, no, there's something about the cost of the debt, 160 basis points above the variable. That is, it was 80% variable for us because we think that the rates go down. The floating rates, that is, not variable rates, but the floating rates. So 160 basis points for Schuldschein, 6 years. Here again, the market was closed for 1 or 1.5 years for the French issuers. Luc will answer on the investments. Are we late or not? No, no. More or less, this is very much in keeping with our plans. We've made progress with Soitec. The initial plan was not that stringent or ambitious. So there we are. No, no, no, that's my answer, which is quite simple, I gather. We've received a question from Jill Chauffeau about nuclear power and SMRs.
Can you tell us, please, if it's a one-off sales that you have for the SMRs or sales that could be repeat sales? My question is it, is therefore, is it consumables? Well, my answer is it varies. If it's for graphite, well, when the reactor is being built, when it's totally new, when it's new built, an SMR, 100 tons of graphite, let's say. But in the core, there's a special area, of course, which suffers more from radioactivity and will have spare parts. People don't exactly know when, but it all depends on the running temperature for these machines. Some elements might be replaced every two years, or four years, or six years. This is what we did in the past with the graphite reactors. We had some in France, we still have some in the U.S. and in the U.K.
So there's one-third that's replaced every four or five years. And then for an area SiC, they mention us. So back to them. I think that the product is based on the life cycle of the reactor, and it's okay for radiation. Next question, quantification, and I would say it's too early to quantify these projects. As you can see, we have so many projects, it's too early. We can't give you the numbers. We've received another question online. Let me see.... from Philippe Dubois. At the beginning of 2023, you gave us provisional sales improving by 5% or 6%, and at the end of the year, you have 13%, and you're more profitable. So my question is about 2024. Could we bet that we would have 9% or more? Thomas answer is, "It's totally different.
In 2023, or rather in 2022, we had very good tailwinds, and we had an economic horizon with clouds on the way that had been announced. So we thought, there's a crisis ahead, but we never saw it. So, growth was slowing down in Europe, in the US, to some extent. And if you look at China, they'd run out of breath, so there's no big recovery in China. And, today, if you look at our market conditions, well, we know that the process industries will not be as buoyant as you might think. For instance, for electrical distribution, that was really good. It's going to be less the case in 2024." So you shouldn't think, "Okay, we can add up more numbers than the numbers that we've been sharing with you." That's it for all the questions received online.
Any more questions in Paris for the in-person meeting? Oh, yes, please. Question. Emmanuel Pinault. I have two questions to ask. Bookkeeping first: Could we have the figures excluding IFRS 16 for the EBITDA margin? And second question about the SiC, which is your big growth relay for 2027. Could you know more about your margin in 2027? Today, you're suffering because of the ramp-up phase. Could you give us colors on that? That is, what's your objective to reach 12% operating margin for the group? Thomas will answer. "Well, I don't know about the margin, but I can tell you the difference in value is between 13 or 14 million EUR in value. So to go back to the previous EBITDA, you have to deduct the 13 or 14 million from the number we've given you.
Luc, I can't really say anything about the margin for SiC. Well, if you look at Soitec's margin, it's going to be different from PVT's. And today, our margins vary depending on the clients. It's due to the volumes, due to what we've done in the past with them. So this margin would be exceeding the margin we have for many more products, that we have in the group. You've said 12.5. Okay, but that's because we've improved the margin of some products in the group over the past four years, but the cycle is really profitable. And then it's for the car market. So we start from a high point, and we know there will be some trade-offs. And we've included all these elements in our targets for 2026 and 2027. Question: Let me pick on that.
I was thinking more than 20% for semiconductors. That's the number you gave at the end of 2021. Is that still the case, this EBITDA margin, 20%? Luc says, "It was the EBITDA margin? Yeah, I think so. It's bound to be more than 20%, but it's an average." Any more questions? No more questions, Thomas. So we'd like to thank you all.