Thank you so much, everyone who's joined us. Some of you had to walk here. In fact, we are waiting for the green light from the control center. I hope everyone is okay. I hope you can all hear me. Sorry, my voice is a bit scratchy this morning. While we're waiting to get started, we'll let you admire the wafers and transistors. Are we ready to go? Okay, let's go. I will kick off with a few slides before I hand over to Thomas, who will talk to you about our very fine results for 2022. We are trying to be modest, but we are quite proud. He will also give you some guidance for 2023. As you saw the press release yesterday, there are some very interesting things coming our way at Mersen.
I'll come back after Thomas gives you the figures for 2022 to talk to you about our outlook. Here's to give you a little bit of a background on our progress since 2018. You can see the rising sales figures. Of course, there was the tough year of 2020. Before 2019, you can see we were heading toward EUR 1 billion. We had to wait until 2021 to get back up and fully running. In 2022, this was excellent, but I think there's even better to come. In any case, it certainly gives us a very positive outlook. We roundly surpassed the EUR 1 billion mark. You can see that our financial results, you've got EBIT, CapEx, and the ROCE as well at 12.5% is quite satisfactory. You can see a very fine streak here.
There's more to come that I'll talk to you about. Now, we've also been working on our CSR commitments. Trying to change slides here. Sorry. We can do better. It's always possible to do better. The ratings agencies are giving us a positive score. You can see here Mersen's progress over five years. We are showing here that, you know, thanks to our geographic locations, we can pick up growth across our three main zones. North America always doing best, top of the class there. They've got, well, these semiconductors, of course. And of course, they have great industrial facilities. Europe doing well, and you can see more variety in the contributions there. Asia Pacific, it's not just China. You know, Korea is also contributing greatly. India, we are still building up, but the sales figures are on the rise.
It's a very interesting country for us. Then, of course, Japan, where we have a strong presence, so plus 70 points there. They, we've got a good movement in the solar industry. China had a bit of a lag there. They're still strong. Our four main markets, our most promising markets, particularly in renewable energies, silicon, SiC, and the electric vehicles markets, really contributed over EUR 105 million, with a very strong growth, 12% for the period. Our other markets also saw a satisfactory growth, up 4%, with a broader base. You can see for the period from 2018 to 2022, overall fine growth. The group has been positioning itself from one year to the next on very buoyant markets.
It's true that, well, we've been talking about wind energy quite some time, then solar. Of course, a lot of work on silicon carbide, SiC. We've been talking to you about that quite a bit in the past few years. Very dynamic markets. We have achieved some major contracts, just very recently signed. In fact, the Peugeot contract dates back only to January. And the SSC, sorry. Of course, you know, we used to be happy to announce contracts for EUR 5 million contracts. Let's say, well, you know, we haven't seen, with, there was the Sebic contract at EUR 40 million, which is a huge contract. Now we're starting to see even larger figures, much larger figures. That, for us, this has allowed us to raise our ambitions, not only for 2023, which is already partly underway, but through the horizon of 2027.
We believe that the momentum will continue at this pace. Now Thomas has got quite a long presentation for you. We hope you can keep up. Thomas has a lot to tell you. Okay, yes, I do have a lot to say. It's true. Also on the guidance for 2023. Hello everyone. As Luc has just said, it was a great year. We can start with the sales, you know, with EUR 1.115 billion. That's 15% organic growth, as you can see on the screen. Starting on the left, you can see that our process industries remained dynamic during the year. That was, I must say, a good surprise. Deliveries to the American electrical distribution sector, in fact, reached a record this year.
The most dynamic markets were on renewable energies, semiconductors, and electric vehicles, even though EVs still represent a small share of our sales today. There are two highlights. First of all, very strong growth of SiC semiconductors throughout the year, and particularly in the second half of the year. Luc will say more about that later. Secondly, our deliveries in the solar market reached EUR 100 million in invoices. That far exceeded our initial targets because we had set that target for 2025. In fact, we are three years ahead of what we were expecting to do in solar. When we look at the situation more globally, we can see that our growth was balanced. First of all, in volumes, we are up around 10% on a like-for-like basis.
On top of that, there was an increase in our sales prices of around 5%. And we've got 15% organic growth. Now, there was a currency effect there coming from the appreciation of the US dollar and the Chinese renminbi. In fact, these are conversion effects because our international footprint allows us to sell where we produce. That is a great strength for Mersen. It means that we've got a natural hedge against the volatility of exchange rates. This is why our good geographic distribution is all the more important. All regions contributed to the growth. Luc showed you some of the background on that. We saw more pronounced growth in North America, less so in Europe. Part of this is due to changes in the exchange rate.
If we look at organic growth across all zones, we were in double digits, across all regions. Both segments of our activities contributed as well, particularly in materials in 2022. They are contributing quite strongly this year, and we saw over 20% organic growth there. Let's look at EBITDA now, or profitability, which you can see here is recurring EBITDA exceeded EUR 185 million. That's 25% up from last year. The margin, EBITDA margin, also improved 60 basis points compared to 2021. Let me say a few words about depreciation. What you can see is this is rising significantly, EUR 8-9 million. This is, well, tied to our increase in investments in the past two years, and so the weight of the depreciation could have impacted our current operating margin. In fact, it was absorbed by the increase in our volumes.
Also, our investments enabled us to increase production capacities. We'd already made a lot of investment in 2019. This allows us to generate more sales and increase our operating margin. You can see that here, the margin rose by 90 points, coming in at 10.9%. If we look in more detail, some of the trends there, what do we see first of all in the margin increase? First of all, there was a favorable volume mix effect. That, of course, ties into the sales figures. The second element is the combination. I don't know if you can see there the four lines in reddish orange. What do we see there? There is inflation, raw materials to begin with, also in wages. High levels of inflation compared to previous years.
We can also see that those different forms of inflation were offset by gains in productivity. I mean, we have continually improved our productivity about, nearly, 100 basis points. It is also really thanks to raising our sale prices. I do not know if you remember, but last March, a year ago, we said we were going to try to pass on the inflation by raising prices. We managed to do it. We were not quite there as of last June. It was slightly negative. In fact, all told, at the end of the year, it means that we fully offset the cost of inflation. Third point, these volume and prices, if we extract the inflation, this helped to offset the impact of the Colombia startup, as well as the additional resources that we have devoted to electric vehicles.
We do not have much sales coming from that yet. That is a temporary situation. You can see that we managed to absorb those costs thanks to volume and prices. The key message this year about our cost model is our ability to pass on inflation in our selling prices, thanks to our high-tech products, our custom-made products that we improve every year, working in close collaboration with our customers. What about our net results? Let's look at our non-recurring, EUR 11.4 million non-recurring expenses, mostly corresponding to an impairment of goodwill on the anti-corrosion equipment, which is devoted to the chemicals market. What is the reason for this? Like every year, we do carry out impairment tests. We compare our flows, and we compare the past values to the new values in a discounting measurement.
Our flows have, in fact, improved. We've got good orders on the books. In fact, it's the cost of capital, which rose the WACC. You all know the reasons why these rise. Mechanically, there was an EUR 11.4 million impairment that was tied to the WACC and not due to a change in the environment, which, in fact, is positive. You'll note this charge is not booked as cash. Other than the impairment, non-deductible, you can see our debt levels. We are partially taking debt in dollars because that's where we have a lot of activity. This can lead to more financial costs. As concerns the effective tax rate, we are at 21%. This is thanks to good rates and results in China, stronger than other regions. The net results are up by 27% overall.
Let's look at the cash position. We generated an operating cash flow of EUR 105.5 million. This is a good level, especially given the variations, well, the increase, in our working capital. This, of course, is linked to strong growth in activity. You know, I told you 15% organic growth. You need inventory. You also will mechanically see client outstandings that add up as well. We did have to increase our backup stocks to secure production also. You know, the ramp-up of the Colombia plant, not much sales yet, but we have to have a lot of works in progress there at Colombia. This weighs on the WCR. It is a good ratio there, in fact, at 21%. It is better than 2021. You know, in our line of business, keeping it at that level requires a lot of work, in fact.
This takes into account as well, some provisions for bonuses which have not yet been paid out like last year. What about investments? We invested heavily in the past two years, EUR 79 million, 2021, EUR 97 million, in 2022. These are industrial investments. The effort is in line with the acceleration of our markets. What's important to note is that this came with a strong increase in the ROCE already in 2021, but now 12.5% in 2022. The EUR 97 million, where did we invest that? There's maintenance, of course. There's growth, and a specific point on Colombia that I'll come back to. Then, of course, there are safety and environment investments that, from year to year, represent about the same proportion. Let me just give you two examples of growth projects.
First of all, we are moving our Korean operations to a much larger and ultra-modern factory. This will allow us to keep up with the growth in the semiconductor market. A second example, and we communicate about this, is the implementation of a new thermal treatment project at the Amiens plant, which consists of combining the firing graphitization stages in one phase. This reduced our costs, energy costs to begin with. It also reduces our WCR and, of course, our CO2 impact. Let me say a bit about Colombia more specifically. This is a very strategic plant for our future growth, and as we've been saying for the past few years, this is a modular plant that we can ramp up or put on pause as needed. We began to build up our capacity for extruded graphite.
This is primarily for process markets. So we built a capacity of 2,000 tons there for the process industries. And we are continuing on our roadmap and will be doubling that capacity. So we also use this for, so in fact, we are bringing back in-house production, and this will improve our margins. It allows us to integrate the chain of production. So that's good for our margins. We are also in the process of increasing our production of isostatic graphite, which is our flagship product. And we're increasing by 2,000 tons. That's a 15% increase, in fact. And this is a key material for semiconductors and, in particular, the SiC semiconductors. And that's why we're making that investment. With all of that, high level of CapEx, we did buy back some shares, and this has raised debt by about EUR 50 million.
There's also, so this was for dividend share buybacks and lease payments. We're seeing an improvement here. In fact, we're at 1.36. You can also see here, our pension obligations have decreased by 10 million. This is good news. What about, so what about now liquidities? Okay. We have no significant refinancing until 2026. We have EUR 250 million in available credit lines. That is our syndicated loan, which was refinanced in 2022 with a maturity now in 2027. In this context of higher percentage points, you should know that two-thirds of our gross debt is at fixed rates, which is also in our favor. Here's our slide on CSR. Luc mentioned, that's a lot of effort was made here.
You know, a good performance would not be complete if we hadn't also made progress in our CSR roadmap. As you know, there are the ratings agencies, Covadis amongst them. This is, and MCI for the financial markets. All of this really reflects the efforts that we have been making in the company. They are giving tangible results. We have met the targets that we set for 2022 for responsible purchasing, for the percentage of women engineers and managers. We made major efforts in training in ethics and compliance and cybersecurity. Of course, we will be continuing all of those efforts. One area that we're particularly proud of is the reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions intensity, 38% down compared to 2018. This is, in fact, much faster than what we had set.
You know, we thought we would reduce it by 20% for 2025, but we're already down by 38% in 2022. In view of this good performance, we're proposing a dividend of EUR 1.25 per share to the general meeting of shareholders. That's a 25% from last year. This represents a payout ratio of 33% of net income in line with our distribution policy. Now let me say a bit about our outlook for 2023 and our guidance. We are targeting a sales growth of between 5-10%, driven by the SiC semiconductor market. The gap between the high and the low growth ranges comes primarily from the process industries, including electrical distribution. As you know, these markets are sensitive to the economic environment, so the macroeconomic environment, which is still uncertain.
As we've told you before, we are going to be limiting our growth in solar in 2023 because we are at full capacity. We do not want to increase it in China. We would rather allocate our additional capacity to semiconductors. Luc will say more about that. A final comment on the sales figures. The growth rate should be higher in the first half of the year than in the second half due to a benchmark effect. In 2022, it was EUR 524 million. Sorry, in 2021, there was EUR 524 million in the first half and EUR 591 million in the second half of the year. Just by comparison, you will see this noted difference because we are coming off a high base of comparison for the second half of the year. What about our current operating margin? Between 10.5%-11%.
This will, of course, depend on the volume of business and also on our ability to pass on wage and energy inflation. It will be more about wages, in fact, not so much on the raw materials. There is also the energy costs as well taken into account. Will we be able to pass on all of that increases? That's certainly our goal, but the challenge is to make it happen. This will also take into account a significant increase in depreciation and amortization in line with our investments. It also includes increased costs for electric vehicle developments because we are strengthening our production and methods and supply chain teams to prepare for larger production runs in 2024. There is going to be additional effort to be made there.
The final element of guidance concerns our industrial investments, which may surprise you because it is double what we usually present to you. This takes into account that EUR 150 million-EUR 200 million is, of course, our regular investment level, about 5%-6% on average of our sales. On top of that, we have new investments coming with the Wolfspeed contract that we announced yesterday and other contracts as well. There is Soitec as well. Luc will say more about that. In fact, that is why we are going to be seeing these longer investments for the medium term. Luc will give you all of the explanations about that, and he will talk to you about our new ambitions. We are calling this a new dimension.
You'll start to see what we're starting to see on some very promising and new end markets. We're calling it a new dimension because 2022 brought a lot of lessons for us. It confirmed our efforts in certain markets. You know, there are some markets such as aeronautics, which haven't fully come back yet. It was, nonetheless, overall an excellent year. What we've also seen, and this comes as no surprise, is that some of our most buoyant markets are becoming fantastic markets, in fact. 2022 reflected the results of where we had been investing our efforts. We've got 56% of our sales generated in the sustainable development markets. We presented an excellent plan last year. In fact, we were arriving at those figures very quickly at the high bracket.
We should, you know, really reach that quite quickly. There were some targets on some markets that we've already exceeded, as silicon, solar, wind, energy markets. All of that went more quickly than we thought. That's not all. You know, we've given you presentations on our different markets before. We generally, of course, you know, look at what clients are predicting in terms of demand. It's really with about one year visibility, for example. We look at the components that they will be ordering. You know, we're always really trying to keep an eye on these markets, particularly SiC lately, to see, you know, and some consulting firms will give you some predictions. You know, we knew that things would be accelerating.
But, you know, these are some figures that we would patch, you know, put together in-house based on what we knew. Just last year, we saw the number one on the SiC market, Wolfspeed, come in with a very precise roadmap with quantities for every month or even every week. Because if you watch their communication, they have invested in mega factories. They announce new contracts all the time. They came in with some really serious figures and some very clear ideas of what they want to do through 2027. This, you know, was close to what we were thinking about. This, in fact, was hard orders, not just an idea. We started to study the matter seriously. Of course, the market is of interest to many, to other players.
And, you know, there's a, a ON Semiconductor, for example, you know, other players that, you know, and they have their own ways of predicting the market. What we did was we looked at all of that, added up all of the potential market to come up with our own roadmap because it means that we have to make investments for several types of products. You know, it's not the same equipment. It's not the same factories. And if we add in Soitec as well, it means that SiC was going to keep us very, very busy. On top of all that, I think, you know, we were also very reassured around the fuse market, the protection, battery protection systems as well. There are some things that we can't yet communicate about, but we are in the process of being qualified, certified with a number of players.
The electric vehicle market, this goes well beyond our projections, you know, for 2026 or 2027. In particular, there's also bus bars. You know, last year, we didn't know if our product would be picked up by vehicle makers. You know, we decided really to wager on the SiC business. We had to do a lot of testing, of course. By the end of the year, we knew that our product was technically very interesting to clients. You know, there are entire platforms that rely on these technologies. We work a great deal with ST, for example, which is a main partner. Once you get qualified, it means, you know, you're looking at $200 million in potential sales. You know, it means investing to be able to achieve those figures. That's some of the background.
Really, picking up pace and a lot more reassurance that we are betting on the right markets. Both of our industrial segments will be concerned, obviously, materials with the SiC. You know, I can say a few words, of course, about how this works. You've got the wafers. Those are 15 centimeters. These are small. The SiCs are small, 0.5 in thickness. Once that has been produced, WolfSpeed and others will then process this to make power transistors. There are those small squares that you saw in the wafer. In the box system, I think there's something like 34 semiconductors in that box. That goes to the power conversion unit, which is fitting above the engine of the electric vehicles.
You have the battery under the seats, on the bottom of the chassis. That is where we will have our fuses as well. In some cases with SiC, for example, there will also be our bus bars connecting the cells. That is our main lineup of products here. Of course, that is rather simplified. Yeah, we are very focused on the bus bars and fuses, of course. Okay. This is a complicated slide, first thing in the morning, I know. You know, if you look at the number of vehicles being a market, in yellow on the left, you have the value in terms of the SiC, EUR million. On the right, the number of vehicles. It is 7 million for the year, for the year.
We're heading up to 10, 20, 30 million by 2030 with a lot of different manufacturers who have already said, for example, that they will stop heat engines. Renault, Volkswagen, I believe, so massive arrival on the market of electric vehicles. In fact, there was only Tesla who was using SiC until now. If you look at that curve in red, what you can see for 2022, you can see the ones that are equipped with the SiC. I mean, there was a little bit of Honda, but nearly nothing. You know, the beautiful Taycan, Porsche at $100,000. That was standard silicon. What's happening? I think costs have come down. Wolfspeed probably made some very attractive offers to car makers. It's a very efficient product, and it can help gain in range, and it occupies less space.
It was mostly for high-end cars. Now the industry is looking to use it across all ranges of electric vehicles. You can see the SiC will little by little be equipping, be fitted into all electric vehicles. If you look at the red curve, you know, Wolfspeed knows this as well. They've got 50%, if they've got 50% of the market, they know how much graphite they need to make this. Fuses is pretty much the same. That's not the big difference. The difference is with the SiC. On the materials side, EUR 52 million, that's for sales. That's a great growth, in fact, for the SiC market. You have a diagram here. You have the furnace. You have the different components.
The sort of dark gray on the slide, there are the graphite parts that we make. The insulations, the isostatic graphite, PVT, so physical vapor transport, that's what that PVT means. Because in the yellow area there, you know, you have to heat it up. There's an evaporation, and then it is condensed at a portion of the furnace. The end result is that gray ball or boule, as it's called in the industry. From there, you can slice about 20 wafers. This can take two or three days, up to a week, to, in fact, produce these balls for slicing. You need quite a number of furnaces, and they all have to be equipped with the graphite components. This means that we have to invest to be able to keep up with demand.
Once you've got your wafers, we're not explaining the epitaxy process. We have a lot of sales of sophisticated, very sophisticated products, highly purified, and processed. Once the wafers are ready, they might go back to Wolfspeed, for example. They will make the devices. Hitachi makes devices, but not wafers. Some of them are both device makers and wafer makers. ST has decided to make them in Catania, but they'll continue with the two technologies. They will make the power transistors that you see on the right. You've got the industrial version for vehicles on the right. They're often, you know, and they are specially designed. That's the process now. We've got, obviously, Wolfspeed. I think they've got about 60% of the market. They are really the driving force here.
I mean, they, and we've been working with them for 25 years. In fact, they are also very demanding in terms of technology and quality. SiCrystal is quite a bit smaller, but a very professional player. Then we've got the Japanese as well. You are familiar with ST, I'm sure. You know, they make the MOSFETs for cars. They have a big market share there. They are buying wafers from Wolfspeed. Then we've got ON Semiconductor. That sort of came out of nowhere, in a way. They bought a company, in fact, picking up a number of furnaces. It is a real chase on the market because everyone needs to get ready. There are other players that, well, our Chinese friends, of course, are always in the picture.
There are some, you know, and we deliver to the Chinese as well. Two six, small, but very interesting. The Koreans, you have to be, have to be very good to work with them. We are fully committed. We are really in the race. Just, you know, working with Wolfspeed, you know, we had to understand their needs. We have signed a contract through 2027. This would be $400 million in sales, so between felts and isostatic graphite components. There will be specific investments of EUR 120 million. In fact, they are going to help us with this. It should represent 200 jobs created primarily in the United States. The felts are made in Scotland. In fact, we make a very complicated product specifically for them from Scotland.
These are the leaders, making, you know, the most high-quality wafers. You know, they are up to 200 millimeters for the wafers. There is a call for a lot more 200-millimeter wafers. They will be producing that at the Mohawk plant in the state of New York. They have agreements, so their agreements with other players such as BorgWarner. We have ZF as well. Big German tier one manufacturers. We are, you know, we've got Durham involved. Then we've got contracts for devices as well to be sold to car makers. That is what the landscape looks like. We have to keep up with, you know, with the very impressive quantities. In fact, you know, we can perhaps come up with the figure of tons if you're interested. On the other side. Okay.
What about Soitec? I believe it's really a complementary technology. Okay. You know, there's room for Soitec, of course. And their products have a lot of advantages, in fact. So Soitec's technology, in fact, consists of taking, for example, a Wolfspeed wafer and splitting it into very fine layers, micron-thin layers. You know, they're at, you know, 400 millimeters. What they do is bond it to a P-SiC, a cheaper substrate, a monocrystalline substrate. The idea is for us to produce that substrate. This can be sold to fabs such as ST. You know, we should be well-positioned to work with ST. You've got something of the schedule, our calendar.
You know, we have never developed, you know, okay, we had this product, but we had to do a lot of work to bring it up to the level. You can see there's a lot of R&D involved here, particularly to move up to the 200-millimeter size wafers. Now we are starting with our pre-series runs, and we are looking to be qualified by ST. This means that we need to also invest in the facilities, for example. About EUR 45 million devoted to Soitec. We have the Gennevilliers plant where we already had some of the facilities. We hope to be producing 200,000 wafers by the end of 2025. You know, I'm sure you've heard some of the announcements from ST about their volumes.
For us, the question is, do we need to expand a plant or facilities somewhere else? Okay. We are also, you know, we are also getting some state-aid IPCE. The European Program for Semiconductors, where we should get some grants for research. It is a great technological adventure. At Soitec, everybody is happy. The product is defined. The specifications look very positive. Now we need to produce it. You know, we will have to keep an eye on the costs as well through 2024 as we ramp up. Now if we look at the electrical components, this can be battery protections. There are a number of products that we make already on standard cars. There is a lot of protection systems. You have got the big fuses that are with high amp ratings.
Then you have some smaller fuses that protect auxiliary equipment. In two or three years, we have developed a range of products in line with prices that clients expect. If so, you know, none of this is standardized. Each manufacturer wants its own specially designed terminal. This is good for us because it sets us apart from the competition, and it is not too hard to do. We have the factories being qualified. Some are already qualified by the big manufacturers. You know, we try to seize every opportunity to be qualified by the different manufacturers. We are working with a lot of different partners on this. As for the bus bars, it is a slightly different story here. You can see the bent-shaped one, which is for converters. We are working on some new developments.
The one that has the strongest potential is the flat one, with the cell interconnection capacities. Car makers have been buying from the Chinese these packs, these sort of plug-in packs. It's all interconnected, but with rather basic technologies. Little by little, the manufacturers are looking to redesign the packs differently, working on the voltage 800, 1,000 volts, even up to 1,500 volts. They call on people like us to redesign what goes into these packs. We started with ST on redesigning the bus bars. That will connect 24 cells per pack. Or there can be a 12-Mersen bus bars coming on to production for ST. That's one of the big jumps for the year.
We are quite confident that working with the manufacturers who are redesigning the packs, we will be able to make some interesting offers for them. Renault is starting to get into the game here as well. Others are going to be looking for the laminated bus bars, which are more efficient. They can all be fully interconnected and instrumented. What you have here are our targeted markets. You know, we will not be seeing bus bars in every type of vehicle. It is not so much a question of the category of vehicles. Yes, it will be a higher range. Rather, in fact, it will depend on our penetration rates. For example, there are a few manufacturers who are currently redesigning their packs at the moment. There will be more and more.
When you look at the potential of the improvements thanks to our bus bars, that's where we start getting very interesting. The targeted market, as you can see there on the left, currently EUR 350 million on a global market of EUR 2.1 billion. We're looking to have a three-fuse making site. Shanghai's been qualified, delivering Chinese clients who will, but will also deliver to Europe as well. We're going to have to see what we can do about prices, though. In Mexico, in Juarez, with a lot of production lines. We deliver to Marquardt, etc., and the American market. For Europe, we already have a plant in Hungary where we're almost ready to start up on productions. For bus bars, this is a different story. We decided not to scatter ourselves. Most of the clients are in Europe, in fact.
This will be manufactured in Lyon. We have our expertise center there as well. That should keep us very busy for two or three years. You have some logos on the right. We are allowed to show those. The few Chinese, Neo BAIC. Not sure how they pronounce that. We are delivering Webasto, for example. This is for truck batteries. Delta, Rivian, Lucid, Panasonic. That is for BMW, in fact, Marquardt. That is Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi. Something is for Renault. If you buy an Alpine, you will have a Mersen fuse inside, TE, and then ACC, and Mercedes. ACC serves Mercedes. As Thomas was saying, we have dedicated teams for this. There is a cost to this, you know, few millions a year because we have to, you know, structure our teams.
When we get, but, you know, with the volumes that will come, the EBIT will become positive, of course. ACC, you've probably seen plenty of communication around this. It was a Saft Total, Saft Total, sorry. Not, yeah. There are, there's, so we, they, they've got their different teams, specifically ones for automobiles. Then we've got Stellantis and their brands. Mercedes has also joined the movement. It is a huge factory in Douvrain, in France. This is for cells. You, well, we, okay, we've blurred the image on the bottom right, because we can't reveal exactly how it's designed. You've got the smart laminated bus bars. It is a very sophisticated devices. This is what, you know, sets us apart from what the Chinese can do. EUR 200 million for the life of this contract, in fact, through 2027.
There are also plans for 2028 and 2029. The platform where bus bars are being used is developing even more quickly than originally planned, and so there are a lot of investments that will be made at our Saint-Bonnet site to serve this platform. Now, ACC has decided to build a mega factory in Germany. There is another one perhaps in the works for Italy and in the United States. For us, it's, you know, having the design team in France is great. If we can deliver to Germany and Italy, that's excellent. We are also working for the Mercedes platform. They like our products. Not forgetting, you know, all of the great work in silicon products as well. Here you can see the EUR 60 million in sales for 2022.
As you know, there was a bit of a stall on the market due to memory supplies. You have the big players. You know, you have the big Koreans. You have TSMC, in the U.S. a lot. You have Intel, of course. All of that is on the right track for us. A lot of the new components were already present on those processes. Okay. It is not on the same scale as the SiC. Okay. You know, in just four years of our work on SiC, we have already caught up with the silicon levels. On the solar market, you know, as we have said, we do not want to do more than we are currently doing there. Particularly, we do not want to be overly exposed to the Chinese market where the competition is very stiff.
We're talking about hundreds and hundreds of gigawatts coming onto the market. Now, we did do well this year by seizing some opportunities because we have the right size, right type of products for different processes. You know, the anti-reflective layers on the PVCD products. And, so we were able to provide the appropriate size and shape of products from our Chongqing plant. In fact, in China, we're present in China. In just a month, we were seeing demand from lesser-known companies who are investing in plants elsewhere in India, plus the US. Up to about 70 gigawatts. That represents a lot of tons of graphite, in fact. There could be, you know, a strong rebound on that market. And so, you know, these are, you know, they are doing the crystal pulling.
They are doing the whole chain. We are, we can be present on that. It is an interesting market. As for Colombia, you saw the investment plan that Thomas presented. Now, what about our outlook for the medium term and that new dimension I talked to you about? Here you can see what is going on on the CapEx side. What you can see here, EUR 300 million is specific to what is going on on the left. As Thomas has said, you know, the company is also spending on things such as maintenance. I do not like that word. You know, it is a replacement of machines. It is to do with a predictor. It is not the guy coming in with his wrench to fix a broken machine. That is not what we mean by maintenance. It is about upgrading. There are also safety and environment investments.
That $300 million is devoted, a very large part to SiC developments, and the rest for electric vehicles. For materials on SiC, we have our different plants, three plants. To move from 12,000 tons to 16,000 tons, that's in isostatic graphite. As for insulation felts, there are flexible and rigid felts. Tons do not mean much, in fact here, but we are multiplying our production by two. It all has to be machined and purified and coated by epitaxy processes. It means that we have to significantly expand four plants, three in the U.S., Bay City, that will double in size, and in France for Soitec. That is about EUR 30 million-EUR 40 million investments. We have everything for the EV platform, so not as heavy capital investment, but nonetheless, production lines, not too expensive. Mexico, China, okay.
In Saint-Bonnet in France, that's where we want to be doing more. They're going to have to have a new dedicated building there. We pushed the fuse production to Hungary because, you know, we already knew that this trend was coming and we were prepared for it. All added together, EUR 100 million also for certain acquisitions, more or less advanced in the negotiations. All of this is meant, is being done to bring in EUR 400 million in additional sales. For the period, this really pays off. It goes going quickly. It's true that we have to concentrate a lot of the investment in 2023 and 2024, quite a bit. Of course, we already anticipated in 2022. It should bring some impressive sales and very quick profitability and at high levels.
Looking at the figures, you remember no doubt what we were forecasting from last year. You've got the EUR 1.15 billion, that's with all of our different markets. EV's only at EUR 20 million right now. It will move up to 45% for the renewables and semiconductors and EV. By 2027, that's where it will be. You're going to see all of the different elements of SiC coming at EUR 140 million. These are the areas that are growing the most quickly. You know, it's something that we wouldn't necessarily have imagined even three years ago. Of course, there's always still the renewables such as solar. We can see how that evolves. This should bring us to EUR 1.7 billion. That's a new dimension for the group. You've been following us for years.
We were at EUR 800 million for a long time. But now we are really moving into a higher level. For us, you know, also with the new trends in power storage, energy storage, we have a role to play in that area as well. On top of all of the new vehicles coming onto the market. The KPIs, you can see our operating margin, 12%. That is 50 basis points up. It took the margin 19%. ROC 13%. So very profitable growth. You know, this is, we are already established in these areas. We are not taking off in unknown directions. It is very much under control for us. The products are there. There is always going to be R&D. We have the strong foundations. Our clients, we have been working with them for a long time.
We've got great history with Wolfspeed. You know, we know them very well. This is why we managed to sign such an important contract. The energy transition is going to be more in work for us. We're going to be seeing more on smart grids, for example. It's all, again, under control. Of course, there's a share of risk. You have to be good. You have to deliver according to contract. We can manage all of this. There you have it. Thank you. For questions, what we'll do is start with questions from the room. You will have to speak in the microphone so that everyone can hear you that's connected remotely and for the translation. We will also take questions by phone and via webcast. That will be the order that we will take the questions.
We're waiting for the microphone. Apparently, that microphone's not working, nor is that one. We're waiting for the microphone. There we go. Microphone's working. Okay. Thank you so much, for a question. But before we go back to your industrial plan, which is fascinating, but, if we could just focus on 2023, in relation to your guidance, you said 5-10% growth is going to depend on the fuse market, electrical distribution, other such products. What are your scenarios for prices in that 5-10% bracket? Is it to do with prices or volumes or inflation? Just a breakdown on that bracket for sales growth. And coming back to operating margin, you know, if we looked at the middle of the guidance bracket you gave there, my same question, what are your assumptions there? What are your ideas on, yeah, either, price increases?
You know, between that, I think you said 11% operating margin. That is what I'm trying to understand, the dosages here. Could you give me some indications there? I mentioned inflation, of course. There is wage inflation, okay? You know, this could be a 6% increase. This could, we talked about EUR 10 million in cost of energy. We are looking at about 4% overall inflation. Our goal is to try to offset that. We believe that through prices, we can pass on about 3%, perhaps up to 4%. What you are saying is that in that bracket, there is 3%-4% inflation. That is correct. Question. Coming back to your outlook for 2023, you seem to be pretty comfortable reaching the sales targets.
It looks like you'll be close, you'll need closer to 10% organic growth. Is that true? On operating margin, there appears to be the negative impact of Colombia on the one hand, which might no longer be negative in 2023. Then there's the EV. Let me start with your second question. You're quite right. Yes, there will be the EV costs, of course, and still some of the cost of Colombia. You know, we have to supply the plant for them to be able to produce. You know, we are moving toward production sales for Colombia. It's true that it's coming in phases. There was, you know, in EBIT last year, negative. We will be positive by the end of the year for the isostatic graphite.
On your first question, you know, as Luc was saying, you know, we are already not far from the EUR 1.2 billion, okay? If everything goes as planned, yes, we'll be at that 10%. You know, the figures that we are seeing now, we were expecting for 2025, but we're already there. What I'd like to add is that we probably couldn't have gone even further than this, you know, because, you know, it takes a lot of investment. Okay. Not a whole lot more. That's why you're seeing this strong acceleration, but thanks to additional CapEx. Hello, I have a question. I have several questions, in fact. First question. There was a slide on electric vehicles. You said you can have about EUR 300 in sales per car.
It seems to me that in older figures, there were, it was up to EUR 1,000. So I'm wondering about that change. And a question on Wolfspeed. What's the sequencing here? The advance payments and CapEx involved. Could you say a bit more? Third question, I want to be sure that I understood the CapEx budget. Is it 6 and a half plus 300 plus 100 from Wolfspeed? So the contribution from Wolfspeed, where does that fit in? Fourth question. If you could come back to the financing of your CapEx plan, your balance sheet is solid. So I'm having a hard time understanding why you don't draw the available credit lines. You've got to, could you say a bit more about that? Okay. Thomas, we'll take the first and the last question. First question. You're quite right.
We have reviewed the amounts of sale per vehicles, because, you know, here we're looking at more passenger cars. Okay. You know, EUR 1,000, that's more for a truck. Okay. So we didn't include those in the calculations, but we haven't really changed the overall picture. So answer from Luc on, the, Wolfspeed, the pace of their investment. Well, it's going to be spread across the 2023 and 2024, we believe. So, and the EUR 120 million from Wolfspeed are included in the EUR 300 million that you saw on that slide, that 300, sorry, 300 million. Excuse me. So that, and so, so, and there are, you know, other forms of CapEx, of course, for other business activities. So yes, the EUR 120 million from Wolfspeed is included in EUR 300 million. Thomas, well, we said we are looking at various options for financing. We didn't say it would all be through CapEx.
You're right. We do have credit lines to be drawn, but we want to keep our financial and strategic flexibility. The idea is, you know, we want to be able to make a good acquisition, okay, so that it will, you know, particularly if it will help us reach new contracts. Flexibility comes at a cost, of course. For us, we need that strategic flexibility. And of course, our shareholders, as well. We will have to examine the different options every time. It could include a capital increase. Question. Can you say something about any acquisition targets? Would it be a number of small ones or one big one? Where, in what sector? Luc. I can't give you any specifics. These are acquisitions, mostly on the materials side. They're generally at around EUR 120 million of sales, that size of company.
There's one even working in SiC. You know, we've always got that in mind. You know, to expand our industrial footprint and then some interesting opportunities are out there, companies that we've been working with. Luc, okay, it's always very targeted. You know, they tend to be bolt-on acquisitions. It's true that we had stopped during COVID. We are resuming and, in fact, bringing in, you know, additional expertise. Particularly, you know, there can be some smaller local family-run businesses, historically family business that do not have access to international markets. Those can be particularly interesting targets for us. I have another question. Your investment plan, particularly around SiC. You have the Colombia plant wrapping up. What is your capacity rate? You know, what will be the plan for that, for 2023, 2024 for isostatic graphite? Okay.
We know there's very high demand for SiC, but you've got, you know, everyone has limited capacity to produce. How do you think, see things evolving? You're massively investing as others are certainly looking to do as well. Is there room for everybody? Do you not worry about overcapacity? What is your vision on this utilization rate, based on the market demand and your ability to, you know, meet the demand? There has to be limits to this. You know, there are really only the three really big players here, so two competitors for you. You're close to something of a monopoly on those high-end products. Sorry, I threw in, threw a lot at you at the same time. Oh, okay. Answer from Luc. First of all, silicon and, okay, the SiC world is American. Silicon is Japanese. Okay.
Great products, but they do not appear to be in the race so much. They won't be able to catch up to Wolfspeed because they're so huge. That's the first thing. They, you know, and we have a big share of their work. Will we be able to deliver to a Wolfspeed? You know, we have to keep an eye on this. We have to have a good balance of delivering to the EV market as well. 120 million EUR investment on our side, but they're at billions in investment. The first time that, you know, we are looking, you know, the boss comes to us, you know, and we are the only ones capable of raising our isostatic capacity. Don't look to Japan.
They, you know, they are stuck with their limits, and they don't have any genuine qualifications with clients like this. AGL has announced things more along the finishing phases. Yes, there's a bit of epitaxy. Maybe AGL can do more than us, as for insulation felts. Ours are, you know, they're qualified, so are we, you know, but, you know, that's not the real topic. It's really around the isostatic. That's where nearly the only player capable of providing them. Okay. We don't want to overexpose ourselves on graphite in China because we believe that, you know, there are players there. 1,500, you know, you know, if you, you know, we don't want to be overexposing quantities in China. That's for Soitec.
You know, we are technically sufficiently advanced to capture the market, a good chunk of the market that they are aiming for. You know, Mersen is ahead of the game and still has room to grow even beyond 2027. You know, we know that some will stall along the way. You know, we do not see anyone who will be able to deliver the same quantities of isostatic as we can. Then there is the insulation that is, you know, we have, when you work for 30 years with an OEM, that gives you a very solid foundation. Also, you know, Thomas, now, as Luc said, you know, we showed you some of the figures from 2021, and we were already saying at the time was, you know, customer engagement. It is true that, you know, when, you know, you have to invest like that, okay, fine. All right.
We needed a customer commitment on volumes if we're making that kind of investment. It's true. Okay. And vast payment is a form of engagement. Okay. They are advances. They could be refunded, but it's, you know, it's not so much around that, but it's really about their commitment to volumes. There's not just Wolfspeed. I mean, that's the biggest of the contracts. There are others. That also secures us in the volumes. Okay. I mean, there's always a share of risk, but we are quite confident that we will be fully using our production capacities. Luc, 105%, in fact, you know, our scheduling, you know, for 2023, we need to be able to do more. We're trying to figure out ways to do more for SiC Crystal, for example.
For the first half of the year, we were not able to put online the additional capacity. Question. It is the isostatic 2023 that is going to increase capacity. That is not enough for 2023, you are saying? Luc. We are a bit short on isostatic and felts for 2023. Question. Yes, this is why I was asking about the sequencing. In fact, Luc, we will get to those 2,000 tons. The presentation was a bit simplified, but you know, we can talk at length about this if you like. There are also OEMs that are really hanging on. You know, epitaxy is an essential part of the process. So Extron and PE also need to be able to deliver. The epitaxy is difficult. That is why we position ourselves to buy it. Another question coming back to solar. Okay.
You said you didn't want to invest more in capacity, but you do. There is high demand. In your business plan, are you planning for progression or an increase? Is it a, is it a, you know, what's your business plan there? What's your, you know, even though you've said that you aren't looking to accelerate too quickly? Thomas, yes, in renewables, I didn't talk about solar in particular, but we're about to, $150 million and looking to move to $200 million. It could bring in more if there were specific projects, but outside of China. Question. You're saying that solar is going to be representing less than overall, Thomas? No, I'm not saying that, because it's not just in the materials side. There's also our electrical division, as well, you know, sell all over the world beyond China.
You know, we do not have to limit that, but, you know, 80% of our 80% concerns the materials department. You know, right now, those are mostly Chinese clients. We do not want to do more there. Luc. Okay. Now, there are some big projects in France as well. First Solar, for example. Okay. You know, we do not know what portion we will be able to capture on that. In the United States, when projects are announced, we know they are going to do them. First Solar or in France, I am not so sure. I have a question on profitability through 2027. I would like your views per division between materials and electrical. You know, there is a six-point gap there. What can you say about that? Do you see them converging? In semiconductors, you had 20, you were announced 25%.
You, you're a bit to margins. Have things changed? Thomas, the electrical division is currently impacted by the resources we're devoting to electric vehicles. It's true the margins are different. If you look at the ROCE, they're very close, in fact. That's one thing to keep in mind. Okay. The precise profitability, the avidity of semiconductors, I don't, I can't think of, off the top of my head, but they are good. Of course, you know, there's investment at the same time on the electrical division, the EV. In materials for semiconductors, there's going to be a bigger gap between EBIT and EBITDA. You know, I mean, as you've said, yes, the figures, we stick to, figures previously announced. Question. On your plan through 2027, the margins. Okay. What you've talked about, the business mix.
You've talked about the growth figures. There is a fair amount of pressure there. What are some of your other levers for growth also? For the core business of Mersen, are you seeing a shift in core business? I'm just wondering if there have been some long-term changes in the roadmap. Luc. For the SiC, everything that we're doing for the electric vehicles, all of this, we are relatively careful about our projections there, although we're confident that we will be even better. The SiC market is fantastic. It is discussions, negotiations with Wolfspeed are tough. It is profitable, of course.
You know, it should be quite profitable, but I wouldn't, so, you know, but it's impossible to say right now that we could reach 13% EBIT, you know. But I think all of the work that we're doing right now is aiming to be above 12% and to continue to capture business. so 18-20%, but losing our grip, you know, that's, you know, losing control. No, that's what we don't operate that way. Thomas, okay. And in terms of, you know, I'm not sure I agree with what you've said about EBITDA, you know, get, you know, we could get to 19.5% from where we are. And this does create value, you know, you know, because, you know, this is coming from $1.7 billion in 2027. And, but, you know, look at the ROCE.
Yes, there will be high investments in infrastructure, and they do take long to get a payback on this. Okay. Some things pay back very quickly, such as furnaces. But, you know, when you're talking about such quantities, it takes longer. Okay. And then it means that we are ready, beyond 2027. But the ROCE, you can see that, you know, we will not be negatively impacting our ROCE with these investments, in fact. And so it means that, yes, so we've got the strong return on the investments. That's why they have to be. This is the same thing for margins. We're investing a lot. And so there's depreciation, but this is what will allow us to keep growing. So, you know, the value there of the EBITDA is, that's what you need to be keeping your eye on. Question.
You mentioned a figure. The does 200 million for renewables, SiC, on 120 million, electric vehicles, 140 million. And so for the SiC semiconductors, what? No, 250. 250. Answer. 250 million was, the SiC. All right. What we'll do now is see if there are any questions from people connected via phone. Have any questions come in via phone? Perhaps not. We did get some on the chat. From Jean-François Grangeau of Odo. Okay. There are five questions. Five questions. First of all, what will be the ramp-up with Wolfspeed in terms of sales? The CapEx is, will we see a continuation of the investment level? And free cash flow, will it be negative for three years? Do you confirm that? What is the potential for improvement on advanced materials? What do you anticipate in variations in working capital requirements?
Is that it for now? Okay. Let's see. Thomas first. Wolfspeed and sales, it was the question about sales? Yes, sales to Wolfspeed. Thomas, over $100 million by the end of the plan, starting in 2023 at about $25 million. It is rather linear. The sales are more linear than the investments. There was a question, too many questions. The CapEx, EUR 200 million. Would we see the same thing in 2025? Thomas, we can't give you the figure. You know, there's a pretty big bracket that we gave you there. EUR 300 million. We mentioned, we said that that was for 2023-2024. We can't be any more specific than that beyond that. On free cash flow, we are going to have to see how things evolve in 2025.
but we can see that for through 2024, yes, it will be negative. You're correct. Luc, who cannot read Thomas's notes. So the potential of improvement of margins in materials. Thomas, we said there'd be improvement in margins across both divisions. As for WCR, here, we're careful in our prediction. Let's say 20-25%. That's our hypothesis. Perhaps better certain years and not as good at other years. Okay. Another question. On the $100 million for external growth, and the contribution to sales, is that included in the 2027 plan? Second question. When will you decide on your financing options? Thomas, the answer is, yes. We do include that in the projected sales. The second question, we are studying all of that, and we're also looking at marketing finance environment. We can't answer that. We have to see what the situation is, we were studying it.
Another question. R&D spending for 2022, is that 3% of sales? And is that a figure that will continue in the coming years? Luc. Yes. That's pretty much what we do every year. There was also Soitec in there, even though we've got some of the European aid for that research. 3%, yes, is generally the level we work with, Thomas. You know, we generally tend, you know, there's also, you know, there's also works done by our methods teams that isn't accounted in that. Another question. What about the financing, the investments? And do you include the ERA aid? Why do you, and what about the 100 million? Thomas. Okay. We didn't talk about a capital increase of EUR 100 million.
We said that it could, we could turn to a capital increase, perhaps, so that we will be in a position to make a pertinent acquisition. Okay. I never said that we would look to a EUR 400 million capital increase. Yes, the financing matter, everything's on the table and being studied. Look, from Luc. No, we're not taking into account any American state aid. You know, if we can get subsidies, then fine. I, you know, I've never received a whole lot of support from the American side, but why, why not? You know, there's the European aid. There's a French state aid for the CapEx at Soitec. You know, okay, there's a lot of fine speeches, but then you can sit and wait for the money to actually arrive, whereas we need to be moving quickly.
Okay. So, you know, we can sometimes hope for 25% support on our R&D. Thomas. In the United States, what we can see is the tax credit, particularly for Colombia, for example. And another question. Could you tell us about your financing options? Thomas. Again, it's all being reviewed. There are bank loans, capital, hybrid instruments. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of that. You know, for us, we really want to maintain strategic flexibility. We have to keep in mind, of course, the return on shareholder values. Regardless of the option, we have to, of course, protect our shareholders at the same time. All right. We have no other questions by webcast or on phone. If there are no further questions from the room, we do have a question by phone. Was there a question? A phone question? No.
No questions from the phone. Okay. We do have another question in the room. On the dividend payout policy, will you stick to that policy? Or would you have to look for some savings there? Thomas. No, currently there's no challenge on that dividend policy that's approved by the board of directors every year. For now, until there is a change at board level, we are within our policy between 30%-40% of net result. All right then. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your day.