Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here in London and for being connected online. I know that we have more than 300 people connected this morning. We are very, very pleased to welcome you. I think the morning we plan for you and the goal of today is so simple: it's to transfer our fervent belief that the most exciting journey of Nexans is the one that will start now. Indeed, the next four years will not only continue but actually accelerate and amplify our recent success. When you think about the last six years, the story journey we have been, we have generated a tremendous value creation for our shareholders, and we will keep the core ingredient of what made our success in the last six years and amplify them through new solutions, new services, new verticals, supplied and supported by artificial intelligence.
This is why we are calling this chapter "Sparking Electrification with Tech Solutions." It's not to become only, our goal is not to become only a pure player of electrification, but to grow our difference with new capabilities, new technology, to serve the market and our strategic customers with the best solution we can have for the long run. What we are today unveiling to you has been all about the history of electricity. Everything has started in 1890, when the pioneers of electricity, Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, but as well as Benjamin Franklin, needed cables to convey the electricity, and that was the first electrical revolution between 1890 to 1910. The second one, obviously, was post-World War II between 1950 and 1970.
And this is at that time that we've set up all the generations of electricity, but as well as all the electrical grids, which are today the foundation of most of the region. At the same time, we were in between those phases. We were in a kind of maintenance period. But this is what you can see on the slide here: this is the first time in the history of electricity that both developed economies and emerging economies will request the same kind of components, the same kind of cables and accessories at the same time. And we are entering in the developed economies in what we call the Third Electrical Revolution, but we need as well to keep investing in, I would say, developed or emerging economies. So that's the ground of the foundations of the electrification.
When we look at our market in detail, here, our new brand name for markets with the same, I would say, components inside, G&T is transforming Power Transmission, distribution is translated now in Power Grid, and usage is translated in Power Connect. When you look at what the core components of the growth of the three sectors, they are just phenomenal. We consider that in all the CAGR of those sectors that in Power Transmission, we still have a 10% minimum of compound annual growth per year, and we still have a EUR 20 billion pipeline in front of us of interconnections between regions or offshore wind farm development, obviously in some specific regions. Power Grid, we need to fortify the electrical grid. The Power Grid is the backbone of a nation's economy. The electricity goes through millions of cables every day.
When Infrastructure fails because of obsolescence, it's not only means direct asset damage, but life stops. You have no more access to telecommunications, you have no more heating system, and you have limited access to water. This is why each nation is waking up at the same time and needs to massively invest in fortifying and modernizing their electrical grid. That's the backbone of their nations. Connecting our daily life, we know that electrification is the fastest way for the world's decarbonization. This is why we need to connect electric vehicles, we need to connect solar roof panels, we need to electrify our daily life to ensure a decarbonized world. Of course, I can talk about mega trends, but let me first focus on mega risks because you know very well the mega trends. I believe that those mega risks will amplify the demand for our product.
Number one, we have 12 times more power outages today than in the past, induced, of course, by climate events like the one that we've seen recently in Spain or in the U.S., and these numbers of power outages will keep surging in coming years. Number two, renewable energies. Great, their development is going in the right directions, and they will represent more than 50%, 55% of the energy mix of the world in coming years. But of course, this induces much more complexity at the grid level. Number three is the convergence of electrification demand from developed economies and emerging economies. The fact that all converge at the same time will create some difficulties of access of raw materials because this is the first time this happened in the history.
Number four, you know, for that as well, beyond pure scarcity, we still need to believe that we just need. We cannot only electrify developing economies. We still have 600 million people that have no access to electricity. You cannot develop education without energy. You cannot develop economy without energy, and you cannot talk about health in your country without energy. This is why electricity matters. The collision of demand for medium voltage cables and accessories from all nations at the same time will create supply shortages. We know that already for a few months, we've seen some, I would say, some difficulties. Maybe it will not be immediate, but it will come out.
The required, what we know about Europe now with the evolution of artificial intelligence, the required data and the required energy of data centers, which is over 100 gigawatts, was not part of the strategic planning of any countries, but we need to connect them. You will see in the breakout sessions all technology about fire-safe solutions. A fire starts in every 30 seconds in the building, in the world, due to very old electrical architecture. Just in Europe and the U.S., 70% of the buildings have been electrified 40 years ago and need to be entirely renovated. If we stay on this specific market, which is building wires supported by distributors, we know as well that from our partners' view, the biggest complexity is not the diversity of their customers, it's the diversity of their suppliers.
And they will keep producing numbers of cable suppliers on the long run. So all those patterns, evolutions are again favorable for the market. Prosperity reborn from struggle to strength. It was a long story. Nexans has started in 2001 with ups and downs, you know that. But the last time we had a Capital Markets Day was in February 2021 in Paris. And we declare our goal to become a pure player of electrification. Of course, your main interest today, you here physically or online, is to understand and to get more information of what is our next ambition for 2028. But let me reflect a bit on what happened in the last six years because we are pretty proud about it.
First of all, when we started in 2018, I remember this question from a financial analyst saying, "How can you reinvent yourself being part of the company, the team, in the last 20 years?" I think we have been able to demonstrate that. Market capitalization has been multiplied by six, dividend per share multiplied by seven, and total shareholder returns close to 500%. Yes, I know that was last week's numbers. We couldn't change the slide. If you talk about profitability, so I will let JC comment the landing of 2024. He will not comment it anyway, but we are generating 2.5 times more profit than in 2018. And, was 2018 a bad year? No, that was the average of the EBITDA generation of Nexans from 2009 to 2018. So now we are every year breaking the record of the financials of Nexans.
Return on Capital Employed moved from 9% to 20%. If we talk about the high-voltage world, we started at EUR 1.4 billion of order backlog. Now we are at EUR 6.2 billion, and 90% of these numbers is only supporting subsea demand, nothing, very, very few in regards to land business. You know that we have a unique methodology, which is supporting Nexans' business system called SHIFT. But in the meantime, we didn't want to keep growing without rethinking our customer and product portfolio. This is why we have generated a massive complexity reduction over the years, -40%. What do we call complexity? Number of customers or projects multiplied by number of SKUs manufactured and as well multiplied by point of delivery or point of the process that we need to have to produce SKUs. -40% in complexity, +40% in density and scalability.
This has brought 20% productivity improvement inside our unit. But as well, talking about other elements that are not financial and not operational, we have been able to reduce by 36% our CO2 emission over the period. We consider today that we still have a massive room to run in the future. To demonstrate it, when you sum all the innovations that we have launched in the last five years, 40 of them, 40 innovations supporting the three markets that I've just commented, 70 patents per year in average have been, I would say, settled in the last five years thanks to our very strong innovations teams and as well our willingness to bring a difference in the market. What is important for you is that we do not start from scratch with this new journey.
We are proliferating, deploying those innovations day after day to all regions and to all customers. And we have a bunch of huge numbers of innovations coming up that my team will convey to you. Of course, we need to keep amplifying what has made our success, this Nexans Business System, which is pretty unique, where we will keep amplifying the evolution both on the gross level, EBITDA generation, and cash conversion of all our individual units. But what is important is depending on where you are positioned in the matrix, you don't have the same incentive scheme. Elite Drivers are the ones that are already achieving our 2028 target ratios. So those ones will have access to CAPEX. Those ones will generate a double-digit growth year over year.
Of course, I think the most interesting part of what makes our Nexans Business System very, I would say, different will be, you will see, will be amplified by artificial intelligence. But I don't want to say much about it right now. Scaling new height to profitable growth. It's important that we have thought and we think this process over a 10-year period. We have started in 2018. That was the phase number one. When we started in 2019 with JC and the team, we have lost all our tier one investors in Europe. In the U.S., they were already lost for years. We needed to transform the company and to restore trust. This is why this phase one was about restructuring, rethinking the model. It could not be about growth, could not be about strategy.
It was building the foundations of what will be the new Nexans. It has been a success. Phase two, winds of change. This is the time in February 2021 where, given our size and revenue, we declare that if we are everywhere, we are nowhere. We need to make choices. We need to allocate capital in few sectors. We need to rethink our R&D forces, focus on only few sectors. But it's as well a problem of management bandwidth. This is why we have decided to become a pure player of electrification and to divest the path, which is considered non-core. It's not 100% done, but significant progress has been made so far. Phase two, phase three, sorry, it's about amplifications. As a pure player of electrification, we need to amplify and to grow our difference with tech solutions.
So in a nutshell, what you will see is three core elements. How we will outsize profitable gross runway? How can we make sure that this growth is really tangible in terms of EBITDA generation and free cash conversion? This is why we are injecting new tech solutions that we've worked on for the last two years, supported as well by, I would say, partners that I will highlight a bit later. And of course, new vertical. If we want to become a pure player of electrification, we have to be the best supplier for our customers. I know that most of you love the Power Transmission market because it's high-tech. It's not only a question of production of cable. It's as well a question of installations with leading-edge vessels.
But what I want to tell you is that we see major patterns, market patterns shift towards Power Grid and Power Connect. First, supply risk shortage in some core components will drive up Grid and Connect. Demand verticalizations through specific market sectors and as well with dedicated teams, marketing services and tech teams for those sectors will drive up value creations. Technological SHIFT, you will see. You will see on the fireproof solutions, but as you will see as well that we will bring new initiatives thanks to artificial intelligence and with one key partnership that we've just signed a few days ago. And product to solutions, customers in the long run don't want just a cable on the drums. They want pre-connected cables supported by training, certifications, services, and eventually Internet of Things.
If we remain only a component provider in the next five years, we have a high risk of intermediation, disintermediation. This is why that we need to move from a component provider to a solution provider. This is vital, vital to succeed in the long run in that sectors. What is our addressable market? First of all, it's not my numbers, it's not our numbers, it's the numbers of the International Energy Agency. The electricity demand will grow six times faster than the energy demand in coming years, which is good news, good news for the planet, good news for our children. What is it about our cable market? Our cable market will move from EUR 108 billion- EUR 160 billion in coming years. So that means a CAGR of 7%.
But we will inject new value pool to generate more profit, higher customer experience, life-cycle solutions, and tech stacks improvement in our product. You will see that in all the slides of my colleagues. So it's not only the fact that we are addressing a EUR 120 billion market. We are expanding the total addressable market for Nexans with accessories and services that will multiply by two that numbers and, of course, tech and digital solutions that will multiply by four this number. We will convey the journey of these presentations, these plenary sessions through, of course, first, power and transmission. Pascal will invite you in that journey to follow power and transmission demand. Of course, from transmission, we will shift into grid. And the third, we will conclude by Power Connect. This is my last slide of introduction. Why do we consider that we have a winning strategy?
First, we consider that we are part of the best in terms of positioning. Three main sectors, and those three sectors have a growth rate which is twice above the average world GDP. We have a pretty balanced exposure between risky business, which is high voltage. You have parent guarantees behind that, risk of executions. It's highly capitalistic. So that's the project business that we rebalance with the one that needs less capital, have almost no risk, which is Power Grid and Power Connect. And we try to have this well-balanced system in our revenue. We have the right assets. We are talking about investment. We already invested EUR 900 million for Power Transmission only, which are already there, almost. We're just waiting the second vessel to be commissioned. Full integrated supply chain.
Of course, the verticalization access to copper gives us an advantage, not only of access, but as well of cost because we don't have any intermediation between us and the mining producer. Right solution, this is what we will demonstrate today, end-to-end solutions, and of course, cable technology that we consider will be the core ingredients of our success in the coming four years. Ladies an d gentlemen, thank you for your attention. Now, please let me welcome Pascal and Guillaume for Power Transmission.
Hi. My name is Pascal Radue, and I'm leading the Power Transmission business.
Hello. I'm Guillaume Émery. I deal with transformation for the transmission business.
So you've just heard Power Transmission is the first step of a journey. We connect large areas of power generation to areas of power consumption. We basically take huge chunks of power and send it to the grid.
Our markets are driven by the energy transition and electrification. We can see in the period of until 2028, a market of 28 billion EUR in front of us. That means that translates into 72,000 km of subsea cables that we have to lay. And if you look at the overall project size, then 60% of these projects are actually non-cable manufacturing related, meaning that they're related to installation services, as Chris alluded to, which makes us ideally placed as an EPCI player. There are huge opportunities in front of us. But this comes with challenges. The interconnectors really shape the resilience of the electrical network. Our industry is scaling up at an unprecedented pace. However, our own estimate is that one fourth of the cable demand will not be met by 2030. So what does it mean for us?
Basically, our clients want us to manage the integration risk for them. This means we have to engineer, manufacture the cable, install, and even carry out the maintenance of the projects we deliver. The technology is changing, and it's changing quickly toward more powerful systems with much deeper installations and longer distances. The supply chain is under strong constraint, not only due to the lack of capacity, but also because of scarcity of key resources and skilled labor. So, Pascal, how do we tackle this? Basically, with a three-pronged approach. You see on the slide here, we believe strongly in long-term partnerships with our clients, but also with our partners that we have and our subcontractors. Why is that? Because it gives us a long-term vision of how our assets are loaded.
But also, it allows our teams to learn to work together and stay on that learning curve all the way through the period. That's crucial for execution. I'll come back to that. Secondly, we can leverage our early investments in capacity. We're ready to go now and build the energy transition. We have all the assets. And thirdly, and I come back to that as well, is the crystal-clear focus on execution because what matters is execution of the energy transition. Now, let's look at what our clients say.
Our relationship with Nexans is built on trust and collaboration.
Technically, we're a very good company with a good relationship with us.
What future developments do you anticipate in your field?
The North Sea is a power hub for the offshore grid connections and thereby the source for the renewable energy in the European countries.
And thereby, we need to build a target grid that connects the offshore power sources to the land. That requires a lot of offshore grid connections and a lot of cables. And that we can do best with our partners because it gives predictability to all of us, and we can use the learnings to expand it into the future projects.
We have to increase the production of offshore electricity. In France today, we are at approximately 2 gigawatts of production operating already. And in 2034, we need to be at 18%. We need a reliable supplier, Nexans being, of course, one of our key suppliers.
As we modernize and expand Greece's grid through national and international interconnections, we will increasingly rely on HVDC technology to enhance connectivity in the Greek renewables and meet the growing energy needs.
Over the years, Nexans has consistently provided us with advanced solutions, ensuring the success of our most critical projects.
How can Nexans help you tackle future challenges?
We will need Nexans to continue delivering innovative, sustainable, and reliable solutions. Their expertise in new technologies will be key in helping us meet future challenges, especially in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Together, we need to tackle upcoming challenges, which there will be for sure some. At the same time, we need to make sure that all of what we do remains affordable to society because at the end, that is what counts, and that's the customers of what we do together.
The challenges for RTE, you can imagine, is massive investment, a lot of projects to be developed in a short period of time. I think it is important to underline that Nexans has a role in the energy transition.
Nexans is having a responsibility on that energy transition, a social responsibility for everybody in the world, so we cannot make the energy transition without cables.
Last time we spoke to you, we made a promise to focus our investments in the transmission business. We kept that promise. We invested EUR 560 million in our assets. With that, we grew our business. We didn't just grow it. We changed its scale. We doubled our asset base, more than doubled it, and we more than quadrupled our backlog, and in parallel to that, we built a project backlog where the top line is actually secured to 80% until 2028, so 80% of our top line is already secured now until 2028, and of that 80% of top line, 90% is with TSOs, which makes us really stand on a rock-solid foundation.
Let's have a deep dive, quick deep dive on the assets that we got for the EUR 560 million. They're mainly manufacturing plants and vessels, installation vessels. Both asset types are brimming with technology. This technology is so cutting-edge that we have decided to patent 70 features of those assets. Let's look at the Electra. The Electra is our new flagship, which we'll have in 2026. When she leaves port and sails, she takes the equivalent of 1.3 times the Eiffel Tower with her in cables. She sails somewhere to the sea. She lays these cables in up to 3,000 meters of depth. One cable can carry the equivalent of one gigawatt of power, which is the equivalent of a nuclear power station at any given point in time.
So we're pretty happy with the assets we have, but we, of course, look into the future and will invest further if we have the right frame agreements and financial supports. But we're not just investing in assets. We're also investing in technology. Whenever you want to install offshore wind farms, you need to fulfill two conditions. The first one is that you obviously need windy area. Second, you need shallow waters. And the floating wind technology will enable areas lacking shallow waters to install offshore wind, for example, the Mediterranean Sea or California. But this comes with challenges. Why so? Because as they are floating, we need extra high-voltage cables that are flexible, but not flexible one time. They have to sustain thousands of flexion cycles. It's about leveling up the technology level of cables. Nexans has invested with partners in this know-how more than EUR 30 million .
And we see Power- from- Shore projects as a short-term opportunity to use this know-how. But while we prepare the future, we have to deliver the now. And the now is all about execution. So how do we make sure that we get execution right? There are basically three pillars we build our strategies on. Number one is we choose our projects very, very carefully. We make sure we have the right technology. We make sure that project is at the right geographical position. We make sure it's the right client, and we make sure it's the right timing. With that, we are standing on a rock-solid foundation before we even start execution. Then we go into the execution phase. And what counts in execution is making sure that you get the quality right first time, making sure that you deliver on time every single project.
And thirdly, making sure that these projects are delivered with the right tools and processes that allow financial control of the project so we can make sure we deliver the final promises, financial promises that we give to each other. And we do that for every single project. And the third pillar you see is about asset optimization. We don't just build one project. We build 30 projects concurrently. So these assets that you saw before, they need to work together seamlessly every single day. We do that today with tools and processes and people. Tomorrow, we're going to take one step further. We will tell you much more about Nexans and AI during the breakout session. But this use case is very exciting, and please let me bring you through it. Just imagine three plants, three vessels, 30 projects running together. They are linked. This business is weather-dependent.
It's a volatile environment. Things are changing every day. So our teams run complex calculations. They build up scenarios to anticipate and mitigate the risks. But this is not only about mathematics. It's about experience, and experience is reflected into the data. It's about having an intimate understanding of what our business is about. So a simple BI can simply not do it for you, but AI can. And with our partner Artefact, we are developing an AI-powered asset optimization tool that will enable us both to accelerate the construction of scenarios, but also to amplify the capability we have to mitigate risks. And the ultimate benefit is for our client. So let me wrap up. Power Transmission is two things I want you to take away. First, we promised that we have a laser focus on our investments. We kept that promise.
We've got an asset base ready to go and build the energy transition now. It's ready. Secondly, we are invested in execution. We heavily invested in execution, and we'll have AI solutions that make sure our performance can reach the next level. Thank you very much. With that, we go into the grid, Vijay.
Yes.
Thank you, Pascal. Thank you, Guillaume. Good morning. I'm Vijay, taking care of EMEA Grid and Connect.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Elyette Roux, the Vice President for Power Grid and Accessories.
Electrification is accelerating, and so is the grid obsolescence. Increasing demand for electricity on one side, and the supply side, renewables are adding to the grid. With this, integration of these two into the existing grid, which is already old, is adding complexity and challenges to us. Why? Because the grids in EU, Europe, and in America are already several decades old.
We have extreme climate conditions which are accelerating this obsolescence, and thereby, we have a lot of outages. We are currently in a perfect world for blackouts. This is the recipe for blackouts if we do not change anything. However, all the grids will have to be modernized, and we have a very good position to have the opportunity to grow with this. Elyette.
Facing those mega risks, we all need to add or replace 80 million kilometers of power lines worldwide by 2040. This is the equivalent of 200 times the full tour. So clearly, our grid has a huge, massive, and urgent need for modernization and extension driven by three main growth levers, where double is the magic word. Double the CAPEX from three major European DSOs, grid operators. Double the project investments in data centers, electric vehicles, and gigafactories. Double the project investment in renewables worldwide.
Vijay, how are we addressing the consequences of this growth?
This is a hypercycle of investments in grids. What does it mean for us? More kilometers of medium voltage and low voltage cables, more accessories and solutions. For the next five years, we have a great opportunity. The grid is growing at the rate of 7% per annum. This is actually more than two times the global GDP. On top of it, the renewable projects are also growing in double digits, and it is twice that of the grids. We have anticipated this great demand and increased our production of cables and accessories in our sites. This would allow us to grow even faster. However, the growth is not just easy because we have challenges. What are those challenges? We have a shortage of metal, a shortage of capacity, and a shortage of labor. Skilled labor is an absolute shortage.
The market is moving away from product supply to solution supply. Above all, the new challenge is the grid. Resilience and reliability, technology matters, and this is the need of the hour. So we have a fantastic possibility, and we are future-ready.
Indeed, Vijay. We are extending our investments in increasing access for advanced cables, more advanced cables, accessories that are connecting the grid, and critical competencies. We already made early investment for 50% additional capacity in more advanced cables worldwide. And why are we doubling on accessories? Because let me remind you all that 80%, yes, 80% of the Power Grid failures worldwide are due to the connecting accessories. So we leverage digitalization, robotization in our plants worldwide to bring our quality and capacity in accessories to the next level. And why are we doubling on services and trainings?
Because also, let me remind you that 60% of the failures of those connecting accessories are due to human installation mistakes. So we had certifying trainings to tackle the shortage of qualified labor force. With those solutions, with these investments, we offer an end-to-end solution to decrease the network complexity, to decrease the carbon footprint of the grid, and to decrease the project risk. Overall, our solutions make the grid more resilient for the future. And resiliency of the grid is a key and core topic given its increasing complexity. So how are we addressing the complex grid?
The market of grid is moving from a commodity type of business to a value specialized play. The grid operators need specific tailor-made solutions depending upon the regions they operate, the condition of the equipment, and also the deliverables what they have. In mature markets, the grid is very old.
They are into the modernization phase, and they need technical solution, technology solution to support their grid resilience. On the other hand, when you move to the emerging economies, the grids are relatively young, and they are in expansion phase. They need our hand-holding. They need more of beyond-cable solutions. They need equipments. They need transformers and substations. And above all, they need technology to improve their reliability. The need for overall projects for renewables is entirely different. They are project-based, and they need agility and timely completion of the projects. This is as a pure electrification player. We know the pain points of all our customers, and we are able to customize the solution and give a tailor-made approach to them. Let us hear the testimonies of some customers.
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What challenges are you facing in meeting electrification needs?
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What is your take on the Nexans low-carbon offer?
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We listen to our customers and to their differentiated needs. By moving from a low specialty play to a high specialty play, we create structural value increase with our customers and for our business. Our Nexans value creation scheme relies on three main drivers. One, an enhanced customer experience.
Second, a life cycle solution for a sustainable grid. And last, our digital and tech stack for a smarter grid.
This is a win-win model. We will show the way. How these three levers are going to help in creating a structural value to us and also to our customers.
We revolutionize the grid. Whether it is for renewables projects, for grid extension and modernization, for electrification projects of data centers, gigafactories, and electric vehicles, we move away from basic offers. First, we enhance customer experience with new tech products, packaging, bundling accessories with cable, and bringing a superior service level. We are making the grid safer, easier, and faster to install. We innovate with life cycle solutions, bringing high environmental impacts, decreasing down by minus 50% the carbon footprint of cable systems. We are making the grid more sustainable worldwide.
Finally, we augment our tech and digital stack with IoT, Internet of Things, thanks to sensors, thanks to smart accessories, but also adding geolocation and anti-theft of drums assets, combined with digital and artificial intelligence services. We are making the grid more resilient and smarter to operate. With this revolution, 40%, yes, 40% of our Power Grid revenue will shift to advanced offers by 2028.
In Nexans, we invest in digital services and also in artificial intelligence. This is purely to improve the reliability and the resilience of the grids. We will show the way, and we will lead the way.
We augment, we expand our tech solution from grid monitoring to prevention and prediction of faults on the grid. These technologies enable grid operators to quickly detect and repair the faults when they happen, while also reducing the incidence by identifying the early signs of failures.
With these solutions, we power our customers with the right data to take the right decisions at the right time for the grid resilience. The best is now to hear from one of our grid experts.
In the context of growing electrification and massive integration of renewable electricity, our energy grids are being stretched to their limits. In many countries, Electrical Infrastructure was built decades ago. And now, a significant portion of these assets, especially cables, have reached the end of their theoretical lifespan. Knowing that 70%-80% of power outages in medium and low-voltage networks occur along cables and lines, these assets are critical. This is why 24/7 real-time monitoring of power cables has become an essential tool for power utilities. These technologies enable utilities to quickly locate and repair the faults when they happen, while also reducing incidents by detecting early signs of failure.
The technology behind cable monitoring is composed of three key building blocks. First, non-invasive sensors coupled with edge computing electronics are placed along the Cable Infrastructure to continuously measure and pre-process data on the cable performance. Second, a cloud data platform allows for the aggregation and storage of the data transmitted by the sensors to provide a permanent high-level visibility on the grid status and environment in real time. Last, artificial intelligence algorithms analyze the data sent to the platform and build the models capable of predicting and anticipating incidents. These systems have long been used in high-voltage grids, but the next wave of deployment is in medium and low-voltage networks, where 90% of renewable energy sources are connected. Thousands of these systems are already in operation, and in 2024, Nexans and its partners have installed grid monitoring systems in five continents.
Nexans' real-time grid monitoring solutions portfolio enables power utilities to modernize their network and reduce outages' impact by up to 50%. These technologies provide data-driven insights to operational teams, helping them anticipate issues and shift from a reactive emergency management to a predictive, preventive approach, fixing problems before they occur, so you heard about how we are improving the resilience of the grid worldwide while we are improving structural value increase in our Power Grid revenue. Now, let's hear about the next step in the electrification value chain with Julien and Jérôme.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Julien Hueber. I'm in charge of Grid and Connect for Europe and Asia.
Hi, I'm Jérôme Fournier, Corporate VP Innovation,
so we'll follow the flow of electrification. Now, we'll be talking about Connect, Power Connect, which is the last mile of electrification. We'll focus mainly on the value creation in this market.
You heard previously in the presentation the megatrends, which are also true for this Power Connect market. We talk about urbanization, electrical mobility, and more data requiring more electricity. But also, we are focusing on the megatrends, which are generating from amplified by mega risk. Mega risks are typically the lack or the shortage potentially to come on metal in the supply chain disruption. We're having also fires, which are damaging life and destroying real estate. We see that coming from obsolescence of Electrical Infrastructure in the buildings. We are seeing as well a shortage of qualified electricians that are slowing down the constructions and slowing down the developments of this market. While we are seeing this mega risk, we are also having at this moment a major shift in this market. Digitalizations. Our customers, electricians, installers are using their phone in order to access technical information.
They are using their phone to get online trainings, place orders, and follow up deliveries. In this market shifting, we are also seeing the emergence of new verticals that did not exist a few years ago. These are what we call the electrical-intensive markets, such as data centers, and we'll come back on that more in detail just after. The market is shifting also to more digital. The traditional PVC type of cable is slowing down, but we see an increase in growth twice faster for halogen-free fire safety products, so while this market is shifting, our customers are having challenges. Our customers are expecting from their partners more solutions, more technology, and more digital.
In Nexans, we have anticipated these changes, and we have built already, and you have seen that in the previous earlier this morning, the Vitality Index providing new products, new solutions, and more technology products. We are also building with our Platinum customers digital tools in order to get efficiency on the supply chain. We are expanding these solutions to all geographies in order to answer to our customer needs. We have one clear conviction: this market, Power Connect, is not anymore a commodity play. The one-size-fits-all is over. We believe, and we have clear conviction that today this market is moving to specialty plays with different markets inside, four of them: Residential, Infrastructure, Critical Building, and Special Projects. Each of them has different pain points. Each of them has different appetite for technology.
We will solve the problem of our customers by focusing on each of them in different manners. By answering to this specialty play, this is the only way to answer to our customer needs, and this is the best way to create value. Now, if we zoom in on these different markets, you will see that overall, the CAGR is 5% growth year on year to come. We will, of course, remain a leader in Residential, but we have decided to focus, allocate more time, invest in technology, and develop more solutions to two of them: the Critical Building and the Special Projects. This is going to be our main focus in the coming four years. The Critical Buildings are, in fact, verticals where you have a high density of populations, where you have high safety standards.
This is usually public buildings, hospitals, and healthcare, large commercial or large industrial projects. This market requires specific needs, specific technology, and we are here to provide and answer to this demand with our fire-resistant and fire-retardant solutions. The second market is what we call Special Projects. This is mainly data centers and gigafactories. And here, again, they have different requirements with energy monitoring or even more agile supply chain with a fast installation time. These two markets will enable us to create more values, but most important as well, will be a way to reduce our exposure to different demands cyclical. I've spoken several times about data centers. Now, I propose that we deep dive on the data center.
Data centers are a very good example of the market shift. The global capacity of data centers is expected to double over the next five years.
This is not only a huge addressable market in volume for Nexans. It's also a shift in quality in technical specification from commodity to innovation. Actually, 10 years ago, data centers were smaller than today, and nobody really cared about the cabling system because it was a very low stake. Today, the data centers increase, and even more tomorrow. They could reach 500 megawatts, and there are projects in the future from one gigawatt data center. So it's all about energy management, and every percentage counts. So there is a focus on the cabling system, but data centers, they are obliged also to care about generation. They will invest in their own renewable generation. They have to care on the connection to the grid. They have to care on the medium voltage and the low voltage now.
Today, the global consumption of data centers worldwide is the equivalent of the need of Germany. It's 3%, and we expect that to increase to 10%, which is more than India. So that's going to be huge. There is a need for a more efficient cabling solution, and this need is very clear. First, energy efficiency. Second is reliability, electrical reliability. Third is the time and the cost of installation, and four is sustainability. Nexans has developed solutions and expertise to power up data centers. The core of our offer is technical products. It's all those cables will be halogen-free fire safety cables. We will or we do offer services just-in-time delivery, inspection, certification, digital supply chain. We do offer new technologies, engineering. There is a great interest in superconductive link as a first connection and monitoring of those assets.
But data centers are not the only market where there is an interest in technology. It's also the same in renewable energy, in EV charger systems, and Critical Buildings. So let our customers speak out about innovation.
Nexans is one of our most committed and experienced suppliers in sustainability.
Nexans is our go-to for most of our cabling needs.
What challenges do you need to tackle?
We operate in a very competitive market where poor product choice can lead to huge cost implications, wasted resource, or even worse, reworks.
Nexans helps on a part delivering the best cable journey end-to-end, from the selection to the returns. We leverage each of our strengths to deliver the best on each other's platforms and experience together with the most efficient, integrated, automated supply chain.
We have started many years ago to push the message that electrification is at the heart of decarbonation.
Nexans is one of our most committed and experienced suppliers in sustainability, with a deep personal commitment of his CEO, Chris Guérin.
How does Nexans' sustainable innovation support your energy transition?
I know sustainability is a priority of the CEO, Chris Guérin, and we share that priority. Nexans has introduced many innovations, such as low-carbon product ranges. We push these innovations to our customers through our global omnichannel platforms.
At Rexel, we see ourselves as accelerators of the environmental transition, and cables are a central part of that effort.
Their innovative solutions help us stay on track.
We, Rexel, do not manufacture, and we need to be able to see if we want to sell a product under the umbrella sustainable. Because Nexans is able to give us reliable data on traceability and transparency, Nexans helps us to propose products that can accelerate the environmental transition.
Nexans' cables and accessories stand out for the ease of installation, innovation, and high-quality standards.
What's your vision for future collaboration with Nexans?
I am very positive about the evolution of our collaboration. As we deliver our automation and digital agenda, we will strongly collaborate at different levels.
Nexans can help by providing us their best-in-class products in the sector and massive, accurate data to share with our clients and help them buy more sustainable products.
Looking ahead, we hope to expand this strong partnership to other countries, further driving sustainability across our projects.
So customer satisfaction is so important. And you know, in Power Connect as well, it's all about technology, data, customer experience. We have developed a range of products that make installation easier. I mean, we have been working during the fall last year on design thinking and customer experience.
Our latest innovation, Mobiway POP dispenser, is able to reduce by 70% the number, the time of uncomfortable position, and 38% the pulling time. This is a resounding success. This is a real disruption within the field of wire and cable. One of our customers said when we presented one year ago, "It's exactly the same as coffee, which was a commodity before Nespresso has disrupted the business, because those capsules will be the wire spool." And this Mobiway POP is a connected equipment. It does allow us to measure the residual length of the wire. It allows us to real-time stock management and automatically reorder pre-fill. It is the really first time that we have connected packaging or accessories for wire installation. We have taken the leadership in this type of innovation in customer experience, which makes Nexans the preferred brand of our customer.
We are convinced that this market has changed. It's not anymore a transactional with a quotation type of transaction with our customers. We have moved to a specific enhanced offer per vertical. And we have built a structural value creation model for that. In each of our quotations, in each of our offers per vertical, we will have three steps systematically. The first one being customer experience. The second one, the lifecycle solution. And the third one, tech and digital solutions. So in the customer experience, we have plenty of different smart packaging. You have seen one example just here with Mobiway POP. We will be also using the strength and the branding power of Nexans. A few months ago, we did in Europe a survey to our customers, to more than 500 electricians, on clearly Nexans was the preferred brand.
So we will use this reputation also in the market. The second element in lifecycle solutions, here again, we will offer, and we already started, systematically low-carbon products, either recycled polymer or recycled metal.
And finally, technology is playing an increasingly important role in this last-mile connection. There is a need for fire protection solutions, for digital technology, for digital sales. The direct current is now a standard in high voltage, but it's also occurring in medium voltage and low voltage. So that's LVDC. And there is a need also for monitoring, not only the health of the network, but also electricity consumption.
To summarize, we have built a recipe for value creation in Power Connect. This is a combination of three elements we just presented: enhanced customer experience, lifecycle solutions, or injecting more and more tech and digital solutions for our customers.
Combining the three of us will put us away from the cyclicality of the demand, and most important, we'll generate more than 20% EBITDA, and we will expand this to different geographies with a repeatable model, so we know where we are going, and we know how to do it. Now, innovation and transformation capabilities are key for value creation, and I will let Chris continue on that. Thank you.
Thank you, Tim. Let's have a quick word regarding innovation, so to sum up, what the aim is to say, we don't want to be just cable providers on a transactional mode. We want to enhance customer experience with design, deliver, and enhance experience supported by designers. You know, that's a job that was not existing four years ago. Now we are hiring specialists in design to rethink our product.
Lifecycle solution. All our R&D is focused on lifecycle solutions with low-carbon polymers. And of course, with recycling activities, or I would say investment that we have just launched recently. On tech stack, we have higher competence in IoT, in digital solutions, to really provide a different approach on a repeatable model for our customers. This is why that our commitment is that 40% of the revenues will go from basic offers, just pricing of cables on the ground, to all these lifecycle approaches from customer experience to tech stack. But we need partners. We need partners to enhance that. The first one is the one that we've launched in 2021, with Schneider Electric. With Schneider Electric, we work intensively every day. We do business in terms of asset optimizations, robotizations, automations.
Of course, to enhance the digitalization of the process, to better monitor the productions and the quality of the product, but as well, now we've just injected with Schneider Electric artificial intelligence to better control and prevent any risk, safety, but as well quality. Where are we? We are at a 67% progress ratio. We have already 30 sites that have been deployed since 2021, and we still have 15 sites remaining, so it will be, I think, achieved before 2028, thanks to Schneider Electric. SHIFT. You will have a full demonstration of what artificial intelligence will bring into SHIFT. We know that a lot of companies are deploying artificial intelligence specifically to reduce their cost and to automate some of the processes. We have decided to use artificial intelligence for pricing matters, product costing improvements, complexity reduction improvements.
Because you know, this is what Guillaume and Florent will show you in the breakout session. A manager today is using only 4% of the data available in the ERP system. What we have achieved in the last years is that SHIFT is using 20% of the data available in the system. And artificial intelligence will use 100%. So this is all this complexity from our business, our data systems that artificial intelligence will help us to solve in the coming years. You know that topic. I'm very vocal about the risk of scarcity. Because, of course, if all countries go in the same directions, all together for greater electrification means more copper and more aluminum are required. So the risk of scarcity will come in coming years.
This is why we've signed with Continuus-Properzi a specific agreement on investments in order to be able to recycle more than 80,000 tons of secondary copper per year. 80,000 tons is the equivalent of small copper mines in Peru, so it's not negligible. We know as well, and you have seen, you have listened through customers' interviews, that customers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products. This is what Nexans will be able to do with a full traceability of where it comes from the waste, but as well all the verticalization of the offer. We will be able to trace the CO2 emissions, but we will be able to bring to customers cables with 100% copper recycled and as well 100% recycled polymer. And that, we believe, will bring a price premium to the market. Talking about price premium, we need to talk about financials.
Now, please welcome JC, that will elevate the financial result of the group.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Jean-Christophe Juillard, the Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer of Nexans. I would like to take you for the next minutes on our journey through 2028. Before I start with our ambition of 2028, I will just spend a few minutes talking and looking at the past four years and the commitment we took four years ago, February 2021, when we put some ambitious and bold financials four years ahead of us to transform the company. So if we look at where we were in 2021, where we are at the end of June, last 12 months at the end of June 2024, almost at the end of this chapter before opening the new chapter, you see that we have done quite well in terms of financials.
You look at the first important metric, adjusted EBITDA. We have been at the target. We reached EUR 723 million adjusted EBITDA at the end of June, 12 months. Margin has increased 300 basis points between 2021 and 2024. If you look at the margin evolution, basically a lot doubling in Distribution & Power Grid and 60% increase in margin in Power Connect. This is a 56% improvement, margin improvement between the two periods 2021, June 2024. Cash has also been quite strong. Normalized free cash flow reached EUR 362 million at the end of June, 12 months. 50% normalized cash flow conversion, thanks again to our transformation platform, SHIFT, reduction of complexity, pruning our SKUs, selecting our customers, and basically improving our working capital significantly. The commitment we took in 2021 for working capital was to be below 6% during the equity stories through 2024. We have never exceeded 2%.
And of course, conclusion of that: better margin, better earnings, reduced working capital, management of our assets, and basically our Return on Capital Employed that improved by four points over the period. And if you look at electrification, the increase is even higher. We reached 22% Return on Capital Employed for the electrification assets. This is the commitment we took in 2021. You have basically the group commitment, financial commitment, and the electrification businesses commitment. You've seen that for all of them. You've seen a green spot we have either achieved at the group level or we have exceeded quite significantly at the electrification business level. Of course, we are not yet at the end of the year, but very close to the end of the year. And we'll confirm, and we'll have the guidance again in July to confirm the upper part of those figures.
So, quite, I would say, nice and expected for us: commitment achieved. In terms of cash also, as I was saying in the first slide, we've done quite well on cash. If you look at the two periods of the commitment of three years of the equity story and what we achieved between 2021 and 2024, the four years, we've generated EUR 1.4 billion of normalized free cash flow. I remind you, normalized free cash flow excludes the strategic CAPEX investment we've made in generation and transmission versus a EUR 600 million over three years commitment we took in 2021. This is an average EUR 150 million extra additional cash flow generation compared to the commitment of the equity story.
In terms of how we have allocated spend that cash, you see that 80% of that cash was devoted for growth, whether inorganic growth with M&A or organic growth investing massively CapEx, mainly again in Power Transmission, generation and transmission business. We've done that, still protecting the balance sheet. We have never exceeded a leverage of one times net debt to EBITDA. In fact, most of the equity story 2021, 2024, we were ranging between 0.3-0.67 times net debt to EBITDA, and again, despite the fact that we've done more acquisition on the equity story than divestment, so that's thanks to the very strong cash generation of the company, and that helped us, obviously, to improve our rating with Standard & Poor's and move from a B B, it was negative outlook in 2018, to a B B+ rating as of now. One word maybe on non-electrification.
You know that the business, non-core business, we want to divest. They have done also quite well. So I mean, they have been part of the renewal, the rebirth of Nexans and the performance of the company. You see that revenues have increased significantly, about more than 25%. But also margin has improved by more than two points margin over the period. So this is one of the reasons we got a lot of questions about when those assets were going to be divested from the group. We always said and committed to our employees, we will divest the asset when we find the right buyer, the right time for the high multiple. And we are getting close to that now. But again, those were good assets and did not harm the company at any point. And we always said that we'll do the right transaction when the time comes.
Let's talk a minute about also in 2021, 2024, how well we've done on the rotation. Because as you recall in 2021, we said we would be a pure player of electrification by 2024. We are not quite there yet. We've done the job, I would say, on the M&A side, on the acquisition side. We acquired three iconic prestigious companies, Centelsa in 2022 in Colombia, Reka Cables in Finland in 2023, and La Triveneta Cavi. More recently, we closed the transaction in June in Italy, in June 2024. Altogether, we acquired EUR 1.3 billion of revenues at a decent multiple of 6.4 times pre-Synergy, 4.8 times post-Synergy. And I will come back on the Synergy transformation. On the divestment side, we have only, I would say, divested within the period of time 2021, 2024, only divested the telecom business.
I mean, there's many reasons of why we have not been faster on the divestment, mainly linked to geopolitical situation in the world more recently. So we've divested the telecom, EUR 400 million of revenue. And we did it at a quite decent multiple 10 times. Of course, the focus is now on the three components that still need to be divested non-core. AmerCable, we just announced a few days ago, very recently, the signing with a potential buyer in Canada, Mattr for a $280 million enterprise value. So we are quite confident that this transaction should be closing within the next weeks. And then we have announced also the separation of and the forming and the separation of all the former industry and solution businesses under a name Lynxeo. So now it's a carve-out dedicated company ready for divestment. We've started the divestment process. You're probably aware of that.
Again, there's a lot of appetite in those assets because those are performing good assets that we want to divest. Last but not least, Nexans Autoelectric, which will be treated as a separate entity for the divestment process. We are also starting the process, restarting the process. We were in 2022 very close from divesting that asset, but unfortunately, geopolitical reason prevented us from divesting the asset. We are now getting more momentum, and this asset will be also part, I would say, of the coming transaction for 2025. Very important because acquiring companies, integrating companies at once is one thing, but what is key is how much value you can extract from those entities when they join the group. We have been quite successful, I would say, and we are very proud about that, quite successful in extracting synergies in our acquisition.
A little bit early to talk about La Triveneta Cavi because, again, we just acquired the asset. But if we look at Centelsa, we acquired two years ago and Reka a year ago, you see here that we have extracted twice the planned amount of synergies, twice faster. And I think this is critical for Nexans. We have, with our SHIFT transformation model and our complexity reduction, our pruning of customer, reducing the SKUs, we have a fantastic way of creating value when integrating a business. And we have been demonstrating that over the past asset, and it looks very promising for La Triveneta Cavi as well. Overall, we will, out of those three assets, generate EUR 50 million additional recurring EBITDA from those acquisitions. Let's talk now about the future and how financially Nexans will evolve. We see Nexans evolving following the presentation you've had earlier this morning through 2028.
First of all, we'll talk about growth, which is new for us. We've always said, and we always have those many questions with our analysts and investors about growth when we report on a quarterly only sales and organic growth. We always have this discussion about we were not looking for growth, we were looking for value, we were looking for cash. Obviously, now that we have cleaned the company, transformed the group, we are much better geared for growth, and this is what we will do in our electrification businesses, so you see that for our three main pillars of electrification, we will grow. Power and transmission, it will be a high single-digit growth. Question here is obviously not getting new orders.
Of course, we will replace the recognized revenue, keep the backlog at a similar, slightly higher, but similar level as of today, replacing the revenue with new orders, roughly EUR 1.3 billion- EUR 1.7 billion per year of new order to replace the revenue. Growth at a single digit. We will therefore execute, and this is the presentation of Pascal all about execution, getting the margin up. I know there's a lot of expectation from you guys about how do we move from 10%, 11% to the 17% we're committing. We will get there, the journey of the four years, and we will be where we need to be. So execution of the backlog is the key about Power Transmission. Power Grid will be growing at single digit, mid-single digit. Here, we will basically capitalize on our room for capacity, on extended capacity.
I mean, you've seen the presentation also of Vijay and Julien and Elyette, sorry. We will definitely work on those new value-added services and solutions. We will increase the revenue share of accessories. We see it as a much better mix than the typical medium voltage cable. Power Connect, a little bit more, I would say, cautious here in terms of growth below what the market is showing. We want to grow with value here. We want profitable growth. And it's true for all of the electrification business, specifically true for usages where it's easier, I would say, to get high growth, but you can very quickly damage your margin if you take any new customer or any new orders just to grow the top line. So we want to be diligent. We want to, as explained earlier this morning, we want to strengthen ourselves in Critical Buildings, fire safety.
We want to reinforce also in specialized projects, mainly data centers, and this is where we will grow, but we will grow profitably, improving the mix of revenue from different sources to boost the EBITDA. Overall, electrification business for Nexans will grow at a 3%-5% organic CAGR over the period. EBITDA. So here, I'm talking electrification, and here I'm talking same perimeter, no change of scope, no M&A. We will add to the asset we have today EUR 350 million EBITDA versus the point of 2024. Again, this will be a mix of different things, similar to what we've done in the past equity story. I talked about the growth in the previous slide. There will be the mix I explained also, getting a better mix into our product, and the transformation will continue with SHIFT.
We will accelerate SHIFT in some assets, and we will continue to grow the margin and the EBITDA through the transformation platform of SHIFT. Altogether, again, same scope, EUR 350 million additional EBITDA during the four years. If you take that EBITDA growth for electrification and we look at what it means, we take the commitment of growing the EBITDA of Nexans and reach an all-time record for us, which is EUR 1.15 billion by 2028, which is roughly a 48% increase. If you take the midpoint of the guidance, EUR 750 million- EUR 800 million, it's a 48% increase growth of EBITDA over the next equity story. And you see definitely when you look at the history, it's far from anything that has been achieved in the company. How do we get there? I mean, and how did we put together this EUR 1.15 billion of commitment for EBITDA by 2028?
I talked about the first box, which is the organic growth and the EUR 350 million of additional EBITDA from electrification. That's the pillar. The rest, the assumption we've taken is we rotate the asset. We divest the non-electrification asset that I highlighted a couple of slides earlier, the three blocks, and we replace them with electrification asset. Here, no specific magic. It's difficult to predict how much additional EBITDA we will get from there. So the assumption, it's a like-for-like. I remove 200 million of EBITDA, I add 200 million of EBITDA. And therefore, obviously, if we do better, we have room here to exceed our target. We are quite confident in our ability to do that, first of all, because we've made significant progress on the divestment, as you've heard and read over the past press release.
And also, we've screened the market about all of the targets available in the world that could fit, that will fit our strategy: cable entities, accessories entities, tech entities, everything that will fit our new model. And we have screened EUR 20 billion of pipeline M&A revenue that we can work on as a basis to basically replace our 200 and something million EBITDA from non-electrification. And we are quite active. And I have to say that as of today, and I'm sure it will be part of our question, that the market has been evolving quite, I would say, in a positive way, in a buyer market. And we see much more opportunities for acquiring companies today. We are much more active on the M&A front than we used to be. We were 12 or 18 months ago. Return on Capital Employed.
Here, I mean, obviously, 20% is a nice way. It's a nice, it's an attractive Return on Capital Employed for a growth company. We commit to not go below 20%, which doesn't mean that we will stay at 20%. Our aim is to grow Return on Capital Employed, but due, again, to the type of asset we will acquire and the timing of when we will acquire those assets, it's difficult to put a too high of a cap in Return on Capital Employed. And we commit not to go down below 20%. Cash flow, oh, CAPEX, sorry, before cash flow, CAPEX. CAPEX, we will remain at a similar level than the previous equity story in terms of CAPEX, EUR 1.2 billion. We used to have EUR 1.3 billion, 2021, 2024, similar.
The split also between our CAPEX for maintenance CAPEX to maintain our asset and our growth, what we call our growth CAPEX to increase our capacities, it remains also the same, 70%, 30%, 30% maintenance CAPEX, 70% growth CAPEX. The difference with previous equity story is that we will be shifting a little bit from massively investing in Power Transmission, as we did over the past five years, to rebalance our investment and make them more aligned, and we're shifting from a 25% investment before in electrification outside of Power Transmission, so Power Grid and Power Connect, to more balance 55% of our growth CAPEX for Power Connect and Power Grid, more balance, which doesn't mean we are not investing in Power Transmission. We are investing, and you see here the major CAPEX of growth over the next four years.
The first one is obviously the completion of our vessel, Electra. We still have. We are halfway through the building of our third vessel, last generation that will be ready by 2026. We still have EUR 150 million of a total of EUR 300 million of investment of spending to complete the vessel. But we also have other investment in high voltage. The total bulk of the investment in high voltage will be about EUR 310 million. So we cannot say that we are not investing in high voltage. We are continuing investing. 40% of our growth CAPEX will continue to be in Power Transmission. Two very important investments as well. One in Power Grid with a new plant we signed with the Moroccan government a few months ago, but we will build a new medium voltage grid plant to address the local market, booming local market in North Africa.
EUR 80 million investment will take until 2028 to build the plant. So we'll not have the return of EBITDA inside the equity story, but post equity story. And also, obviously, our major strategic move, which is increasing our recycling capacity, moving from 5% where we are today in recycling to our target of 25%. This will require a EUR 90 million investment in recycling that will be ready up and running by 2026. So again, the message here is strong CAPEX oriented towards growth and a more balance between Power Transmission, Power Connect, and Power Grid versus the past, quite balanced. That goes with what they say.
We like the balance between Power Transmission, big backlog, long-term view, revenue and cash flow, but more risk of execution, more uncertainty versus the flexibility, the cash return that we have, and the very limited risk that we have on Power Connect and somehow in Power Grid. Free cash flow generation after CapEx. So I'm not talking. I'm sure you will like it. I'm not talking about normalize anymore. I'm focusing now on free cash flow. So free cash flow, EUR 1.4 billion of free cash flow generation over the four years. So after the CapEx, with a tremendous improvement, as you see in terms of cash conversion, we will move from 25%. That basically is a cash conversion of 2024 EBITDA to free cash flow. We will move to above 45% by 2028.
It will be gradual because we need to complete the CAPEX that I presented you on the previous slide, and you see that they will be completed during the next three years. When those CAPEX will be completed and the cash conversion will gradually improve year after year to reach again a ratio above 45% by 2028. Capital allocation priorities, M&A, definitely. This is where we will put the proceeds of the divestment. This is where we put a big part of our cash flow generation, replace the EUR 200 million of non-core EBITDA from non-electrification into new asset. Of course, taking the commitment to protect our balance sheet, not exceed leverage above one time, net debt to EBITDA.
That, of course, to continue to work on improving the rating of Nexans and shareholder return, continue to also increase with our cash flow increase, increasing our shareholder return, committing to a payout ratio above 30% with growing, obviously, recurring net income year after year during the equity story. Some share buyback, mainly to avoid dilution versus the employees' plan that we have every year. In terms of numbers of this capital allocation, 60% of our cash generation, the EUR 1.4 billion cash flow generation, will be allocated to growth, M&A again, and about 40% different level to shareholders, whether through the dividend or the share buyback I mentioned.
I was telling you that I feel quite comfortable about the fact that we have the means to succeed in our asset rotation and acquiring about EUR 1.5 billion- EUR 1.8 billion of new electrification asset because we have quite significant firepower ahead of us or with us. First of all, I'm not talking about the cash on the balance sheet that you see is already quite good. If we take 60% of cash allocation, that's about EUR 800 million. If we say that we have a little bit of flexibility in our balance sheet to get to 1x net debt to EBITDA, we are 0.7 times. So I have a little bit of flexibility here, roughly EUR 200 million. And the proceeds for the divestment, talking about EUR 200 million of EBITDA to be divested, take a 5x multiple, that's EUR 1 billion.
All of it we have with a protected balance sheet, cap leverage, and I would say not aggressive multiple for divestment, EUR 2 billion of cash ahead of us to execute our M&A strategy and replace those assets. M&A will be around four pillars, quite similar that we've had so far, whether we invest our existing geography and gain market share to become leader on the region, on the market. We grow into verticals, fire safety. We talked about fire safety, for instance. We grow in specific verticals. We get into new geographies where we are not present and we'll try to buy one of the top leaders to make sure we have sufficient market share to basically be an actor on the region.
And finally, but last but not least, very important, we're also planning and looking at assets that will bring us a tech advantage, a technology hedge to execute our strategy. That will be the four pillars of our M&A investments. Almost done. Summary. I will not repeat. I think what is critical here for 2028, adjusted EBITDA, EUR 1.15 billion, driven by electrification, EUR 350 million, cash conversion, 45% for the group by 2028, and electrification, again, an organic growth between 3%-5%. I gave you the detail. And an incremental adjusted EBITDA versus 2024 of EUR 350 million. That's the summary of the 2028 commitments we are taking. That being said, I give back the floor to Chris for the conclusion.
Thank you, JC. Just two slides of wrap-up, if you allow me.
First, what you just heard from the team, from Power Transmission, is just leverage the early investment we have injected in the last five years. Execute high-quality backlog. We have already 82% of our revenue up to 2028. We have significant awards to be announced in coming weeks, just under finalization. That will be sure. We will be able to announce 100% of, we'll say, full revenue coverage in coming months for the next four years. Of course, exploit an extensive our asset with great customer partnership, and we will announce as well some partnership on that regard in coming months. Power Grid. We have already injected a lot of investments in France. We are starting in Morocco, but we have done as well in Canada and in South America, and we need to make sure that these investments are fully leveraged to generate organic growth.
It's not organic growth. It will not be about cables, but it will be as well accessories, like Elyette explained. We need to double down on accessories, I will say, growth, and as well investments. We will have further announcements in that direction because we are convinced that the core elements for sustainable grid come from connectors and accessories, not only cables. On Power Connect, we are, I will say, talking with millions of electricians every day through our digital platform. Everything goes through our distributors, partners like Sonepar and Rexel, or like Ahlsell. What they need, they need customer experience. They need sustainable offer. This is why the recycling is connecting the dots. They want green product for Critical Buildings or for the Big Infrastructures. They as well understand, if you take the example of data centers, that cable is not only basics.
In the first age of data centers, there was full of PVC-type cable, PVC, the one that can burn in a minute. You will see in the breakout session that Jérôme will make a live demonstration, not live, I will say, but virtual demonstration. We are in a hotel in London, and we don't want to have the fire alarm starting, but he will show you the life of a PVC cable under fire versus our solutions, and you will understand the difference, and of course, we will bring more and more tech solutions. Guillaume, in the breakout session with Artefact, will show you how artificial intelligence will help us to grow faster, but to grow in a very profitable manner, and you will have once again, in breakout session, live demonstration about it.
To conclude with Power Transmissions, to make the loop, Pascal will show you with Brian a fantastic asset that we have in the U.S. called Charleston. You will be able to see a live tour of Charleston like we will have been in the U.S. today for 15-20 minutes. You will see it's a fantastic time. Let me conclude before getting your questions for these plenary sessions. First, on our commitment for sustainability. We have talked a lot about sustainability, but what is our own commitment? Our commitment is 46%, Scope 1 and Scope 2 reduction by 2030. And you know we've been really advanced already on that parameters in the last year. But I think what is important as well is not only the target, it's the how to.
We have developed a trendsetter model to better manage the company on the long run, which we call the E3. So each unit every year is qualified on their E3 compatibility. They have to deliver their profitability on their growth. But they have to make sure that this economical, I will say, result is not detrimental to environment, neither to engagements. So this is why we are lifting up all the unit in that direction, being good in economics, being good in environmental matters, and as well being strong in engagement. This is a trendsetter. We just signed different, I will say, partnerships with schools, but with HEC, they have just built a complete business case on Nexans, on the E3 model that will be available next year on the HEC platform, on Harvard platform for the students. So we are very proud about it.
That's concluded our plenary session. You heard about our journey of the last six years and the next four years to come. You've heard as well about our financial commitment and how we will make sure to deliver those financial commitments in coming years. We thank you for your intentions. We thank you for your trust because Nexans had ups and downs in the last 15 years. But we thank all our investors, all our customers for their trust in the last six years because without you, we're not being able to be standing out in front of you with those, I will say, fantastic results. I know it sounds a bit like a victory lap, but it's not over. The journey continues, and this is exactly what we presented today to you. Thank you very much. So now we open for Q&A.
We propose that we start Q&A with people, investors, and analysts in the room. Yeah. We'll come with a mic. Micro number two.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Eric Lemarié from CIC. I've got three questions. The first one on CAPEX. It looks to me you are very reasonable in terms of CAPEX for the next four years. And I was wondering whether it is the case for the other players in Europe as well. And I was wondering whether you see any risk of overcapacity in Europe for the high-voltage industry. The second question, I already asked it, actually, and you already answered it recently, but I would like to have maybe your fresh view on the risk related to a Trump administration in the U.S. for the offshore sector in particular and for your business. And the last question about metallurgy.
You didn't mention metallurgy, and I was wondering if you can share with us your ambition for the metallurgy business in terms of revenue and margin for the next four years. Thank you.
Okay. How do we share questions?
Well, you do everything, and I listen.
No, I take the simple one, and you take the complex one. Of course. No. Let me answer the first questions regarding our voltage. I think we have not reached yet the paradigm where we believe that we have a risk of overcapacity in the coming years. The demand is still huge. This is why I think I wanted to align it with the slides on the history of electricity. It's a secular trend. Your question is fundamental, but I think that will be certainly a critical question that we need to ask post-2030.
But at least for the equity story that we are discussing right now, you have no risk because you need the capacity to fulfill, to, I will say, leverage the backlog on the orders that you already signed. So we don't need risk of overcapacity. In medium voltage, neither, because we need to renew the entire foundations of the electrical grid in Europe. But you're talking about Trump presidency. It's the same in the U.S. It's the same in the U.S. In the U.S., they need to inject 20,000 miles of medium and high-voltage cables into the grid for a question of modernization. And they cannot avoid it. And do we have a risk under Trump presidency regarding offshore? I cannot comment on something that I don't know.
What I know is that when we injected $150 million of CAPEX into our Charleston facility in order to make sure that this facility is able to do land high voltage for the 20,000 miles that I've just referred to, but as well to interconnect offshore wind farm, we did it in 2019 under Trump presidency, and what we've seen, of course, he's not a big fan of offshore wind farm, but what we saw is that we were the only one bringing a local content. If you want to have an interconnector, I will say, subsea cable, which is designed by Americans and manufactured by Americans today, we are unique. So I think that will be positive, that will be negative. Of course, this unit is able to serve Europe in case of risk of demand or slowdown of demand in the U.S.
Your second question was about recycling on metallurgy. Maybe you want to say a word on metallurgy.
Yeah, metallurgy. We've done the tough job, I would say, because that was part of the previous equity story when we reduced revenue from EUR 1.5 billion to below EUR 1 billion. And that was sometimes quite difficult to explain because it impacted, obviously, our organic growth and sometimes difficult to explain. That was part of our strategy. We are now at the level of revenue where we want to be and to stay, which is, again, below EUR 1 billion of revenue per year. And basically, that will remain across the equity story. The main purpose was, I remind you, to reduce external sales to more focus on Nexans' needs. And we have achieved that, and we have the right equilibrium, I would say, in terms of size right now.
I missed one question, sorry.
In terms of profitability, in terms for the metallurgy business, will we have the same?
If we improve pricing at Lens, one of the reasons we wanted to reduce the volume on that business was to serve Nexans, but also because it was a little bit dilutive in terms of margin versus the rest of the group. It continues to be not at the level, especially that now the margin of Nexans has nicely improved. So it remains dilutive, but it's running more today at 6%-7% margin versus the 3% or 4% we had before. But it will not improve much beyond that.
No, that's right, because you need to combine it with the improvement of Power Connect. Because we've already interviewed more than 100 customers.
In that sector, customers are willing to pay a 5%-8% price premium if you are able to bring a cable which is made of recycled copper and recycled polymer. So this is our target.
Next question. So we have still mic number two.
Yeah, hi, good morning. Thank you, Alasdair Leslie from Bernstein. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about these shifts towards kind of advanced offerings. There's some really ambitious targets there, I think, for both connect and grid. I think, if I'm not wrong, within grid, you're talking about a shift of 40% of revenue shift towards advanced offerings. I was just wondering if you could break that down a little bit, sort of organic and M&A. It doesn't seem like a huge amount of selectivity in there because I think you're targeting mid-single-digit growth versus the market seven.
So a little bit of underperformance, a little bit of selectivity. I guess that just mechanically changes things. But also, how much of that comes from organic growth in those advanced offerings? You said in the past, I think 20% of that business was from accessories. So is that all advanced offerings? And then are we expecting to see more M&A fundamentally in grid as well going forward? And what's the field of opportunities there within that EUR 20 billion kind of pipeline? Thank you.
Yeah, I will answer from the last part of the questions. Yes, of course, all the M&A that I would say JC talk about, the EUR 20 billion pipeline is specifically and strictly into Power Grid and into Power Connect. And it's roughly 50-50. In terms of type of companies, it's other cable manufacturers.
So that's where we will be able, I will say, to increase our leadership in some given geographies. And as well, it's bringing different solutions like low voltage or medium voltage accessories. We will invest a lot on accessories because that's the neuralgic point of the grid. But maybe Elyette, you can say a word about it.
Yeah, thank you, Chris. Just to complement, indeed, I will just confirm that the majority of the investment, whether being CAPEX or the acquisition for Power Grid, will focus on these advanced offers starting with accessories, especially based on the criticality of this component for the grid. But also because, as you've seen, it is also bringing multiples that are much more attractive than we do have on basic offers.
And second, as you saw on the services, by making the grid more resilient, we are actually also bringing a better profitability into our mix thanks to recurring revenue. And this is linked to digital and artificial intelligence investment.
Yeah, maybe Jérôme, you can talk a bit more about to stay with us, Elyette, on the monitoring system because we see that we have questions on the way, a lot of questions regarding what Olivier Pinto explained of what we are doing in monitoring system. What is our ambition?
Well, Olivier is our innovation director for the grid. And what you mentioned, the offer is based on hardware, which are sensors or connected connectors, the data platform that allows you to have all those data in real time and AI. And in the last two years, we have sold in the range of 10,000 connected connectors per year.
They measure intensity, they measure tension, they measure temperature. And keep in mind that in the grid, the failure occurs on those connectors mostly, not on a cable. And we have installed more than 100; it was an R&D project, but 100 systems with sensors with our partnership on cable and some of them on transformers. So part of this growing business will be basically with M&A on those monitoring systems.
Daniela, can we have a micro row number one here? Thank you, Elyette. Thank you, Olivier.
Thank you. Actually, the first one, which is kind of a two-part question, is a follow-up on what we just discussed regarding the moving to advanced offerings. You didn't mention explicitly anything regarding an R&D target. So just back to that question, is this mainly coming from the M&A side or there's an R&D increase inside your margins?
And on the M&A part, I think you've mentioned five times multiple, basically, for the divestments. This faster growth, more advanced areas, I suppose they will come at higher multiples. Maybe if you want to comment about how you're thinking about that.
I take the first questions. The first question is that when you look at our R&D spend in the last six years, it was, I would say, 80% supporting raw material or material development, new polymers, new technology, but really supporting cable industry. But as well, not only electrification because they were supporting as well the non-electrification business, different polymers that you need for aerospace business and rolling stock business. We have reinvested 100% of their spend on electrification only. On the rest, the 20% were 10% on smart components on digitalization.
We say, of course, we will keep increasing our R&D spend, but the spread will be different. It will be 50%-60% through digitalization, Internet of Things, connectors. This is where we will put on inject a lot of resources. We have already hired a lot of new kind of profile that were not existing in Nexans in the last five years. So there will be a lot of organic R&D, if it's part of your questions, that we will, I will say, deploy and grow ourselves to avoid making a big shift in terms of acquisition through tech M&A. There will be some M&A in the tech field, but we know that the level of multiple are a different space, different magnitude. So there will be M&A, but not, I will say, EUR 500 million type company at 20 times multiple.
We are investing a lot in R&D right now. We're doubling down everything we do on digitalization on IoT.
The question, your other question, Daniela, was regarding the divestment multiple versus acquisition multiple, no?
Yes, I think I understand. I kind of covered the answer. I have one more unrelated to this and focus back, trying to tie the picture on the transmission side. So you don't see overcapacity. The industry growth, I think, was 10% in one of the first slides. But on the other hand, you said the backlog, you aim to keep it flat. Historically, you didn't mention it today, you had a 17%-24% EBITDA margin that you mentioned sometime back in. Has your view on the attractiveness of the growth going forward then changed? And why do you not expect the backlog to grow?
It's a good question.
The backlog will grow, but once again, you have two kinds of elements of growth. You have the land part and you have the subsea part. So what we aim to have is 97%. We want to keep 97% of our backlog related only to subsea cables. So of course, if we go, it will grow. We are not rejecting orders, but we want to make sure that those orders are still good in terms of EBITDA generation on cash conversions. We are ready to invest more. We are ready to invest more if a customer comes with a long-term frame agreement and as well a very strong support on financing the CAPEX. If this happens in the coming years, we will do it. But maybe you can highlight more on JC regarding the metrics.
Yeah, on the backlog, Daniela, basically, the way we see it is that today we are at maximum capacity with the new CAPEX we put in the business, which gives us roughly, by the end of the equity story, close to EUR 2 billion of revenue for the business, roughly. Today, we have two things. We could do two things. We could get a bigger backlog that will extend visibility, will not change revenue because we are at maximum capacity. So we will just extend 12 months, 18 months, two years visibility by getting a bigger backlog. We prefer not to do that unless there are very accretive orders we really want to take, but want to differentiate ourselves versus competition and say we have earlier flexibility in our capacities than others who have a bigger backlog.
Or we could decide to invest, but it will only bring a higher backlog within five years, four years by the time we complete, which is post basically almost 2030 or close to 2030. So today, we have chosen to rebalance our CAPEX, to keep the backlog at the level, replace it every year with a revenue recognized. If there are fantastic orders coming up that will grow and extend visibility, we'll take it, but it has to be very accretive to the margin of the backlog. And this is our strategy for the management of the business. Do you still believe in the 17%-24%? Yeah, so definitely 24%. I'm not saying 24%, but definitely in the modeling of our equity story, we're moving to the low point of today, which is roughly 11%-17% by 2027, 2028. So that's part of the number you've seen here.
Over there, question. So micro number two.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. I'm Olly Anibaba from a primary research firm called Third Bridge. On the Power Transmission segment, given the project execution risks, in particular with the subsea interconnection projects, what are your expectations regarding Return on Capital Employed over the next, let's say, four years? And how might that compare to competitors in the marketplace?
So definitely Return on Capital Employed in the business today is low versus competition because obviously the margin that we are extracting from the business today is at the low point, as I said, since last year and again this year. But it will improve, first of all, because we'll get more earnings. We get a bigger revenue, bigger operating margin, and we will not invest more in our capital employed in that business. So we will have a very nice improvement.
I will not give the number per business, but we'll have a nice improvement, double-digit improvement of the Return on Capital Employed on the Power Transmission business over the next four years. Questions, Jean-François. So question number one.
Jean-François Granjon, speaking from ODDO BHF. Four questions from my side. Could you come back on your expectation for the growth expected for your sales a little bit lower than the growth expected for the market? This is the case for transmission, grid, and interconnectors. Why do you expect lower growth for the sales compared with the growth of the market expected? The second question, could you give us what you expect for the margin by division? So you expect, yes, more than EUR 1,100 million EBITDA. That means, I think, 14.1% EBITDA margin, if I well calculated that. What do you expect for each division?
Do you expect some strong growth for the transmission? And do you expect the same level between 14%-15% or more than that for the Grid and Connect? So could you give us more granularity about that? The third question, we'll take the first one. And the third question, running the recycling, you expect to increase the recycling components for the copper? Could you explain how do you want to reach this such target? Do you want to invest in new plants? For example, you mentioned recently the Cable Loop. So could you give us some more details about that?
Vincent will do it.
And the last question, could you give us just a little bit on the Great Sea Interconnector project?
Thank you. Okay. So I will take the first question.
The first question is why our growth ratio is a bit lower than the one that we mentioned in the first slides in terms of dynamic. It's a bit what JC mentioned during the presentation is you can grow much more. But you have to visualize the kind of sensitivity table where you have the growth ratios and you have your EBITDA percentage. And we try to find the ultimate point where growth will not be dilutive on your EBITDA ratio on Return on Capital Employed. And we believe that's between 3%-5%. There was a model that showed that we can go above 5%, but it will have been dilutive in that case, potentially, on the EBITDA ratios on the Return on Capital Employed. So this is why of those metrics. Regarding the second question, JC?
So your question, Jean-François, was regarding the growth of the EBITDA and the sales both, right? If I'm not mistaken. So I think you covered the sales part, but again, 3%-5% for electrification. A big part of the growth will come from the backlog execution and the Power Transmission business, of course. The other business I explained mid-single digits and low to mid-single digits. In terms of EBITDA, the big part of the growth of EBITDA, the EUR 350 million additional EBITDA, will come from Power Transmission because, again, as I explained, answer the question of Daniela, we're moving to 11%-17%, which is a 600 basis point improvement in the margin, driving about half of the total EBITDA, incremental EBITDA improvement. I would say the remaining part is pretty much split between the other two businesses.
Overall, the CAGR of EBITDA is 11%, almost 12% CAGR EBITDA for the electrification business over the equity story. So it's a quite strong, I would say, growth in our performance in EBITDA. And I think I answered your question, right?
Vincent, regarding recy cling? For recycling, without going too much in technical details, the first topic on which we are currently working indeed is to increase what I would call the collection of good quality of scrap. So this is why we are entering in developing partnership with our customers. So the famous Cable Loop that we have seen. So in other words, we are collecting the scrap from the platform of our customer, Rexel, Sonepar, and others.
And we are also now working with their own customers, and we are collecting the scrap from the electrician, the installers in the different branches that we are coming, collecting, and put back in the process. So here, I will say the traditional part of recycling. And the key topic is to increase the percentage. We are able on traditional broadcasting unit to do between 5%-10%. We know that we can do more, but we need to collect this good quality of scrap.
The second part, which is very important, which we're going to make a clear innovation, a breakthrough, is that we have this investment in Lens that we have announced recently, EUR 90 million, where we'll be able to recycle 80,000 tons of copper, but I will say lower quality copper at the entrance, but of course, with a specific process, the same quality of copper as a traditional system at the exit. This will allow us to move from this 5%- 25% that we have announced.
Your last question, Jean-François, regarding Great Sea Interconnector. Under the guidance of Pascal, we had achieved, I will say, stakeholders have achieved a major milestone in the last months with political agreements with all the revenue frameworks between Cyprus, Greece, European Commission. The next critical milestone is the monitoring survey of the sea bed.
We've done already a phase one in last July, but our vessel has been surrounded by seven navy missiles from Turkey. So we wanted to make sure that the phase two that we're starting now will not create any kind of geopolitical issue between Europe and Turkey. That's not the case. They've signed an agreement in the last days. So we will be able peacefully to launch this monitoring survey in coming weeks for a notice to proceed to be signed before the end of the year. So we receive as well additional cash down payments from the stakeholders to continue the production of the cable. So far, so good. Next questions. Micro number one.
Thank you. Hello. Lucas from Jefferies.
So the first question on transmission, you talk about 80% kind of secure top line in the plan to 2028, and then that gets to 100% potentially before year-end or into early 2025. Does that obviously include Charleston? And in that modeling of the 100% coverage, do you already use Charleston by the end of the period for European projects?
That's right. Maybe back related to the first question regarding what's happening in the U.S. In the backlog that we have today at 6.2 billion EUR, only 6% of this backlog is related to U.S. offshore wind farm. And 80% of those projects are under production or close to the end of their production or starting their production. So we don't see any risk of those 6%. The questions will be on upcoming orders.
In the model, when we will have reached 100% of the coverage of the revenue by 2028, we are not counting on U.S.-specific projects. That's right?
That's right. We have basically revenues, margin, and cash from U.S. offshore projects stopped in 2025 with the completion of the project Chris mentioned. Everything after that is modeled through pipeline projects that could be anywhere in the world and we have enough. And to preempt the question, it does not impact the margin of the project. The fact that it's, for instance, manufactured in the U.S. in Charleston and installed in Europe or somewhere else in the world because the marginal cost, the marginal difference in transportation cost is very minimal. And we have sufficient anyway contingencies and provision in the contract value to cover any of that.
So I think we are risk-free when it comes to a worst-case scenario of which we don't believe, but you never know Trump stopping any tendering U.S. offshore activity in the next four years in the U.S.
You have a lot of projects in the U.S. on offshore wind farms that are very well advanced in different states. Of course, they can be stopped, but at least they are not part of the model. And if it comes, it will be a cherry on the cake because we are the only ones to be able to provide the local content, which is required under Donald Trump presidency.
Perfect. And sorry, I have two follow-ups. So the other one was on the higher growth segment within Connect, especially data centers. Can you explain a bit more on maybe the complexity of this cable and also this end market?
Have you worked already with data center? How much of the business would that be? And also, was the route to market that generally will not go through distributors necessarily?
That's right, yeah.
And as well, are there any disadvantages of not having the fiber part, which some of your competitors do have?
Yeah, I will take the growth part regarding the revenue recognition and let you everything which is technical for you. Let me start. Regarding data centers, as before, cables have not been considered by data center owners as a critical element. So they were buying cables through distributors, but all kinds of cables. Could be fiber optic, could be PVC cables. Now, in the last development that we've seen, they understand that it's a critical element because a PVC cable can burn. And in data centers, you cannot use water to stop a fire.
They understand why fire safety cables should be part of the critical element. Now we are shifting. Of course, our partners want to pursue that business, but now we are in more indirect contact with Amazon, Facebook of that world for data centers because of their, I would say, complexity of electrical architecture. Maybe you can develop a bit more.
Exactly. Data centers, as I mentioned 10 years ago, they were very small. We visit a lot of data centers. There is the aged one, which are downtown. It's 5 megawatts. There are 140 data centers in London. There are 8,000 data centers around the world. Then they moved from 5 megawatts to 50 megawatts. But even at 50 megawatts, they were purchasing cable as commodities and distributors. Now moving to hundreds of megawatts, they are focusing on the right delivery at the right time.
It's a question of weeks. They want to have full LFH cable because reliability is so important within the data center. But they're also very kind of having low carbon offer. We mentioned recycling. What is the reason of recycling? Is that copper impact is decreased thanks to recycling. Could be - 30% or - 50% with these new equipment. So in the data center world, they need that because basically, when you consume the electricity of more than India, you better have to explain what you did for the environment. So every single thing counts, which is energy monitoring. 1% is what we find out in engineering, a saving of 1% of electricity, which is huge when you talk about 100 megawatts.
So, cable system is based on basically. It's the cable we used to know, but our service we know to manufacture, but it's engineering, low carbon offer, and all those new types of architecture. And they have a great interest. I mean, anytime we visit Amazon or data center in the U.S., they have a great interest to understand if they can use superconductive link because it's zero loss. You can have one giga in less than one kilometer with zero loss.
Yeah. And I think it's not only what is inside the data centers, but what will be outside because you have a lot of utilities, TSO, that say to data center owners, "Guys, you cannot just connect to the grid like that.
You will consume so much power that we will force you to build your own source of energy for your own supply." That means more solar farm or whatever's renewable energy that would support the data center development.
Thank you, Jérôme. I take a few questions on the line. Two. One for you, JC, one for me. I'll take the first one. Do you have already candidates for M&A?
Yes.
That was my questions. Your questions, you will see. You will love it. When company's target is to discipline leverage with a net debt on adjusted EBITDA ratio of less than one and a commitment maintaining a strong credit rating, does it imply specifically a goal to raise the company's external rating to investment grade from S&P?
Yes. Voilà.
You want to elaborate more?
No. No, definitely.
I mean, one of the reasons I would like to keep the leverage down is, I think, in today's environment, you're a better protected arm and better capable of raising capital when you're investment grade. And I think the company is very close from getting there. I was expecting to get investment grade in February of 2024, but it has been postponed with the acquisition of La Triveneta Cavi. S&P wanted to see how the integration of the business into Nexans would work. And I think we will be there. We will be ready at the beginning of 2025, and we'll see how it moves. But definitely, that's the aim and the objective.
Andrea Cossai, to go back to the first question, I think JC mentioned that our 2 billion EUR firepower for M&A.
We know as well that one of our top main competitors that we love has announced a major acquisition in the recent months that put their level of debt pretty high, so I think it's the time for Nexans to make a major move in coming years, and we believe that all the conditions of the market are excellent right now, potential risk of recession for some local, I will say, competitors, access to copper, which is a bit more complex than before for the small, medium-sized companies, not for the big ones, and on succession issues, so we believe that M&A, of course, will be a strong driver for us. I don't want to promise anything. The only thing that I want to promise is that our M&A blueprint is working perfectly.
You've seen that we have been able to deliver, or we will be able to deliver by 2025, more than EUR 50 million synergy post-acquisition, and with our SHIFT program, our purchasing power, this is where we start to be very good at. Other questions in the room? So micro number two.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. So I want to follow up on how we should think about the margin for Power Grid because up to Q3, I think you were talking about the sensitivity table between organic growth and EBITDA margin. So now that we are targeting mid-single-digit organic growth for Power Grid, how should we think about the margin there?
They will continue to expand. I will not give you the exact because we don't disclose margin by business, but they will continue to expand. We'll continue on the journey.
I mean, obviously, the next step will not be as significant as the one we just closed between 2021 and 2024, where we doubled the margin, and we're not going to double the margin again. But definitely, we are on an expansion front when it comes to margin growth in Power Grid.
Okay. So related to that, I noticed that you pushed back the commissioning of your Moroccan investment to 2028. I think previously it was 2027. Has there been delays there?
No, not specifically, but we have injected in parallel a short-term CAPEX in France. We have seen that more than EUR 15 million. We keep investing in France because we see a very, very strong demand short-term. So it's just a question of capital, I would say, allocation on phasing. Nothing special.
And I will just add something because I'm thinking about it on the margin.
When I talk about the margin expansion of grid, it's with the existing perimeter. You know that definitely we said in the presentation of Elyette and Vijay that we want to increase in accessories. So if we do M&A in accessories, it will improve the mix of the margin of grid business, and then we could see further expansion of margin post-M&A.
Question here. Microphone number one.
Hello. Irakli Gabidzashvili from Kanou Capital. So my question is related to grid, basically medium-voltage cables. So given that you are expecting growth in that area, are you seeing any orders? So as far as I understand, your backlog right now is in transmission business, which is high-voltage cables. But if the grid is also growing, are you seeing orders there already, or how is that? Can you shed some light there? It's not orders. It's framework agreements.
This is why that is not in the budget. Maybe Elyette, you want to elaborate more about that question. And after, we have another question.
Yes. When it comes to Power Grid, just taking the example of France that you mentioned, Chris, we have received a major framework agreement ordering longer term, so moving to five-year type of agreement for everything that is linked to Power Grid, low-voltage cables. And it is also thanks to our low-carbon cables. Back to the topic of recycling, it's also linked to our capacity to collect and recycle our aluminum scrap. This is. But regarding the demand. Yeah, the demand is high. It will continue. I mean, you've seen now 7% CAGR. It will continue to rise.
Of course, right now, we are just looking to be able to complete and comply with the expectation on medium-voltage and low-voltage cables for Power Grid.
Follow-up question on that too. Think about sizing, right, in terms of volume. Let's say how to think about medium-voltage cable order or framework agreement volumes. Let's say you have 5,000 km order. How would you translate in terms of amount in EUR, such order or framework agreement?
As I said, it's not an easy conversion because not only the volume is increasing, but also the mix in the volume is different.
The sections.
Yes, exactly. Because in fact, why we talk about more advanced cables is that those cables now have higher cross-section, higher length because we are serving much more powerful renewables on one hand and data centers on the other hand. So the mix is really different.
And that's why you cannot convert as is to the 2B in terms of the Power Grid mix when it comes to volume and kilometers.
Thank you.
Other questions that we have here on the line? Elyette, you stay there.
You have a question in the room here.
M&A on accessories, monitoring, and services. Do you expect to have opportunities at reasonable multiple or maybe will be more expensive than paying for pure cable manufacturers? So on accessories, monitoring, and service, of course, the level of multiple is much higher. But our aim is not only to grow through M&A, but to make our own organic investments to support that business.
Yeah. Like I explained earlier in the previous answer, of course, this accessories business is already more valuable in terms of margin, EBITDA margin than it is for cables. So we will continue to increase that and improve that.
So you heard from my speech when it comes to both capacity and quality, this is where we are. Digitalization and robotization in our plants and our people and expertise are key for the next step organically and inorganically, but you can think that we have the same assets outside Nexans that we would be happy to grasp at the right place at the right time for the right multiple.
Thank you. Do we have last questions? Hey, Chris. I'm on the mic. Mic number one. Morning.
Yeah, thanks, Chris, and to everyone who presented. It's a follow-up to the grid revenue, the advanced solutions going to 40% by 2028. What's the margin differential on advanced solutions in aggregate versus basic solutions?
That's a good question. You will have answers in coming months. We will show you.
But on average, when you inject customers' experience, different customers' experience, you are able to lock long-term frame agreement better than others, which is because you have something more than just a price to offer. And my background is sales. And that's the core elements of an offer. You need to bring innovation. You need to show a greater customer experience for a customer to accept the premium on the price. And of course, we will elaborate much more in the context of the strategy of the equity story in the coming, I would say, months and years on how all these life-cycle solutions, but as well these tech solutions will keep improving the EBITDA ratio of that business. But it's not only a question of ratio. It's as well a question of recurring revenue that we can have thanks to data and thanks to the model.
This recurrent revenue that doesn't need any sales support or sales resources. This is the aim. But we don't want to show and to give the entire recipe of our equity story. Other questions?
Just one follow-up. In terms of the framework agreements, should we expect lengthening of these agreements? Typically, they're around three years, and customers were drawing them down faster. You were saying previously, as markets are getting tighter, will the duration of those expand, or will they stay the same?
I think it's really specific to customers. You have customers that are willing to sign for five years. That's the case of our French customers like Enedis. You have customers like Italian utilities like Enel that want to give a certain flexibility. So they are more in the renewal of a framework agreement of a 12-18-month pace, but that means as well increased volume.
So I think there is not a one-size-fits-all framed agreement type in the European market. Each utilities have its own specificities. In Greece, it's three years, Elyette, with the DSO. So I think that will not change. Voilà. That's the end of the plenary session. With thanks for all the people connected, now we will have a break, coffee break, and after, live experience for Charleston, live experience for artificial intelligence on fireproof.