Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, good morning. Welcome to Nexans' Virtual Capital Markets Day. I am Aurélia Baudey-Vignaud, Head of Investor Relations at Nexans. We would have loved to see you in person today, but due to the circumstances, we have moved into the virtual world. In today's presentation, we will provide a detailed illustration of Nexans' new strategic plan for the next three years, and the group's industrial ambition for the next ten years. We remind participants that some of the comments made today may include forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties based on our best estimates with the information we currently have in our possession. Obviously, these outcomes may change, and are also subject to the risks detailed in the Safe Harbor , as well as in our 2020 Universal Registration Document . Opening our session today, Christopher Guérin, Nexans' CEO.
Chris will provide an overview of how Nexans will electrify the future, and detail our new strategic outlook. Jérôme Fournier, Nexans' VP, Director of Innovation, will then unveil our groundbreaking innovations. After a short break, we will deep dive in electrification at Nexans and the group's operational outlook. Ragnhild Katteland will present the outlook for High Voltage subsea and land systems. Vijay Mahadevan will detail electrification in the universe of utilities, and Vincent Dessale will cover the perspectives of the building market. We will then have a first Q&A session dedicated to our operations, followed by the final session with Jean-Christophe Juillard, Nexans' CFO, who will provide our financial ambitions. The presentation will close with Christopher Guérin's final remarks and a Q&A session. I am now pleased to hand over to Chris.
Thank you, Aurélia. Welcome! Welcome to Nexans' Capital Market Day, here live from Paris, virtually connected with you all around the world due to the pandemic that impacts directly all of us. We are here to introduce our long-term ambition, our purpose, and our medium-term strategy. I will describe where we stand in the construction of the new Nexans project with regards to what I introduced to you in July 2018. I was looking for this day since end 2018, a day where we can embark you into our conviction that this is the time of change. But let's start with this quick video. As you can see, the amplification of risk in the world will amplify the demand on this conviction that we need to change. Because all kind of risks are rising: sanitary, global warming, power outage, fires.
Because those risks will require different models and new solution, because the world will become electric much faster than planned. This is the reason why this is the time of change. As I became CEO in July 2018, you all remember the roadmap I presented to you. When we look back, what we've done so far to build this new Nexans with the team is just amazing. We have modernized the company. We have strengthened our foundation on our innovation. We have developed our own recipe to transform the company under the program named Shift. We turn COVID from adversity to opportunity to reset the generation of free cash flow, and we are moving from a pure volume player to a value player.
We have to give this tribute to all the team in Nexans, everywhere in the world, that in spite of challenges and countries lockdown in 2020, they have made that year a tipping point, a tipping point for the company. Nexans has always been part of the history of electricity, from its discovery by Edison, Benjamin Franklin, to the future electrified world. Nexans is at the continuous part of this living history. For over a century, Nexans has played a crucial role in the world electrification, and it will continue. Because electrification is our DNA, and now it's time really to amplify our role by becoming a pure electrification player. The growth momentum in that sector is just exponential, and as you will discover today, we are the best positioned to take the lead in that market. Why are we becoming a pure electrification player?
Because Nexans' purpose is to electrify the future. The electrification of the planet is key to a sustainable, balanced growth, and above all, equitable growth that benefit all humanity, ignoring the rich and the poor, the north and the south division. All the megatrends converge to the same conclusion: electrification of the planet is the main energy at stake in the coming decades. Electrification of the planet requires more and more renewable energies. Electrification will require, as well, a complete electrical grid modernization and protection. From hospital to school to smart cities, it will be both difficult and vital to manage the risk of power access. Electrifying the world pose a considerable technological challenge, like the issue of electricity storage, that will become, in the near future, more and more crucial.
Knowing that 100% of the world population must have access to electricity by 2030 describe quite well how electrification will play a crucial role for the world. A new raison d'être for Nexans. A new raison d'être set our new values. We are pioneers of energy transition. We dedicate ourselves to the highest standard of performance, and we stand united to achieve this ambitious goal to electrify the future. No progress can be done unless it fight climate change. Everything is linked, because the climate is changing, the permafrost is melting. The world destroy, every day, biodiversity and forest. All this combined increase the number of new viruses, such as COVID-19. To face this new threat, I believe governmental action alone are not enough. The most efficient level is at corporate level.
If, and only if, designing their models, their habits, their means, and projects, global companies are pushing the climate change issue at the forefront of their top priorities. And parallel, we need to find between us, customers and suppliers, new ways to collaborate, hands to hands. Then we can, all together, have an impact on carbon emission. There is no global harmonized regulation on that question, just agreements when they are respected. In other words, efficiency is in our hands as global companies. We care for the planet's sustainability... We care for our children and their future, and we care for resource scarcity. As already announced, Nexans will become carbon neutral by 2030. But believe me, we will accelerate those efforts in the coming four years, thanks to a new company performance model that we call E3.
Becoming a pure electrification player in the coming four years requires a major shift to simplify our business, to amplify our impact. To do so, we need to make the company more readable for our stakeholders. We need to make the company more focused to amplify its actions. We need to make the company leaner and more agile to answer changes faster. We need to make the company innovative and focus on one ecosystem, one main problem, to answer the new customer demand. We will be able to make this turn by simplifying our portfolio. Nexans will reset its portfolio to only serve and focus on strategic customer, in order to converge all our solution, time and effort on investment on this electrification ecosystem.
All our solution, these times, those efforts, will converge on this new value chain, from the production of renewable energy, to the transmission of this energy, to distribution, up to the usage of this energy. This is where, in that chain, that Nexans will amplify its role. In one-page summary, after this amazing, successful transformation in less than 24 months, because of business evolutions and customer demand migration, it's time. It's time to change. It's, it's time to amplify our role from our purpose, electrify the future, to our values, our new ambition. The new Nexans strategy is there to simplify its business portfolio, to amplify its impact, supported by innovative solution to serve the entire market of electrification. But we won't do it at any cost. As I told you, Nexans will be carbon neutral by 2030.
Moreover, we will develop in coming years, in addition to that objective, new partnerships to amplify our role, as we need big firm, important company, to join force with us on what we call a mission-based ecosystem around this electrification market. The world needs broader group of effort, that companies to companies align business interest and as well, societal needs. Let me describe now what we mean by electrification. From generation of energy, offshore wind turbines, solar power plant, hydropower, nuclear, to the transmission of that energy through countries' interconnection, the distribution that require infrastructure modernization to sustain future demand of electricity, and finally, at the end of the chain, the usage, which are everywhere. Everywhere there is a human activity, either construction or powering data centers, infrastructures, hospital, industrial activities or commercial businesses.
The COVID crisis reinforced my personal conviction that we need to reset the way, the way we operate the company. I did interview a lot of CEOs and partners over the last 18 months to understand how to better operate a company on the three dimension: financial dimension, environmental dimension, and as well, social dimension. I heard many, many fantastic stories and example. In Nexans, we have decided to operate a bit differently on these three angles than what we were doing before. Now, we will operate in a very granular way.... We know that more volume doesn't mean more profit, but we know that more volume requires more resources, either natural resources or human resources. We know that more volume may generate, as well, more stress on productivity. We know that more volume may generate, as well, higher complexity to handle.
At the end, more and more volume of everything generates cost inflation on cash deterioration. This is why we are launching a disruptive company performance model that we call the E3. Every quarter, our activities, unit per unit, everywhere in the world, are challenged through this innovative model to find the right balance of performance between the three core elements that are the economics, the environment, and the engagement. That we will follow through the three following KPIs. The first one is the capital employed, the return on capital employed. The second is the return on carbon employed, and the third is the return on competence engaged. Each unit, in order to have the license to operate, to cap their ambition, they will have to go through this unique, virtuous, and holistic performance model.
Profit, yes, of course, but not at the detriment of the planet or not at the detriment of people engagement. I commit, I commit that we will bring you results every year through that unique model. I will ask external expert to challenge it, to improve it, to share it, because I am convinced that we have found something quite unique that solve many, many paradox. Winds of change. As I told you, there is an inherent silent killer that company never announce in their result, that always deteriorate company productivity or profit every day. What is this silent killer? This is what I call complexity. Of course, we can fight against it by constantly reducing cost, but it may, at the end, jeopardize. Yes, clearly jeopardize the company long-term development. This is why this strategy that we will show you comes into force.
The time when you need to make decision on what will be the next battlefield of the company. To become a pure electrification player, we need to simplify our business. We need to move from 8 microsectors covered, representing 34 subsectors on 30 different market drivers. So we need to move from 8 microsectors to 4, from 34 subsector to 12, with this unique electrification ecosystem, from production of energy, to transmission, to distribution, up to the usage of this energy. And because on the convergence of the world electrification, on the growing demand, it will require on raw material, specifically copper, copper or aluminum. In addition to this simplification, Nexans will enhance its autonomy through Metallurgy, as we are the only player in the world to be still vertically integrated from copper rods to cables.
You know, when the time of copper shortage may come, the recycling power of Nexans will be fundamental for the circular economy, but as well, will be fundamental to avoid supply chain disruption, like some of our competitor faced during COVID crisis. In the coming hours, we will guide you in our own strategic thinking process. Why change? What do we need concretely to change? Importantly, how to change, and what is our financial commitment for the first chapter of our ambition from now to 2024? I think I don't need to convince you. I don't need to convince you on the exponential growth opportunity of the world electrification. We want the world to be more digital. Great! Great, but you need more power. We do not want countries to be world's polluter. Fantastic, but we need to invest in sustainable energy.
We want to have electric cars, great, but we need to reinforce the energy grid. We want to stop having a fire in a building every two minutes in the world, sure, but we need to renovate the entire electrical architecture with safer products. All these megatrends are supporting our conviction that electricity landscape is only at the beginning of a new revolution. This conviction is supported by all recent announcements from U.S., to Europe, to China. Trillions of dollars, euros, RMB will be invested massively to electrify the world, because this is the only way. Yes, this is the only way for carbon neutrality. This is the only way for digitalization. This is the only way to modernize electricity landscape, and this is the only way for electricity system decentralization. You know, we always talk a lot about megatrends, but let me reinforce what I call the mega risk.
Yes, mega risk amplification, and it's obvious that COVID-19 is a wake-up call for the entire world. The fight for global warming require massive investment for the Green New Deal, like the one announced in Europe, in U.S., and in China. To avoid the risk of power outage, blackout in the cities, all countries, utilities are accelerating grid modernization on building energy highway transmission between countries in order to exchange green energy. Last but not least, electrical safety is a major concern, specifically for buildings built in the seventies or eighties, full of plastic PVC cables that are propagating fire and toxic smoke. Each requires major renovation investment. If I go to the customer demand migration, our sector cannot avoid it.
You know, this customer demand migration, like it happens in automotive sector, where equipment manufacturers 10 years ago were selling pieces and components, and now they are selling, providing full and turnkey solutions. Same in the Telecom world or consumer electronics. All companies, one day, had to reinvent themselves in order not to disappear. We take the year of 2020, once again, to conduct hundreds interviews. Confirming what? Confirming that this is now the time of the cable and wire sectors to evolve, because our customer are moving up, moving up into the value chain, and they need suppliers to follow them by providing not just cable or accessories, but smart, interconnected solutions, systems and subsystems.
One customer told me recently, I have to share that, "Chris, if you don't want Nexans to become the Kodak of the industry, you better to move your company right now." Imagine that, the Kodak of the industry. And he told me, "You need to accelerate this shift into interconnected solutions. Forget to sell just more, more tons of cables or more kilometers of cable in all sectors of the world. We need you, Nexans, to solve our constraints." Our problems, only we need you to better understand our future needs. Very strong statement, but we are working on it. We are working on it in parallel to our transformation since the last two years, and we will give you access to some customers' interviews, abstracts, for each electrification subsectors.
I don't want to be too arrogant on this topic, because we are only at the beginning, but believe me, Nexans is on the right path. So why this customer told me that if we do not move the company, specifically in the wire and cable industry, it may disappear, or at least be disintermediate? Simply because we are today just satisfying their very, very, very basic needs, not the complex one. Customer today wants one or two innovative product every semester. Believe me, a generalist has not the firepower to innovate at the same speed to all subsectors it covers. Customer wants new system solution with digitalization. A generalist focus on having a very, very large product component portfolio, but is lacking resources to focus on the system, lacking resources to focus on digital offers.
Now, each individual sectors become increasingly complex to understand and require specific know-how, which are missing or will miss soon to a generalist. When you cover X sector, 34 subsectors, you are spreading investment every year. One day you will wake up, 10 years later, where you will have jeopardized the development of some sectors. You will have jeopardized their future competitiveness. A generalist do not have the means, cannot have the arrogance neither, that we can follow all customer demand migration on all fronts at the same time, with the same impact and with the same quality. To follow customer demand migration, first, we need to have a deeper understanding of final markets evolution. We need as well to bring all our resources to build high added value solution. We need to scale.
Yes, we need to scale beyond pure cable to build new interconnected solution with the support of partners' networks. This is why. Why we will move from a pure volume growth in multiple sectors to a value scale focused growth, in order to amplify our impact. It's always the habit to position a company, I know that, into a box. Yes. What is the box of Nexans, you will ask me? If Nexans is not any more generalist, means the company is a specialist? Let me say that the answer is different. Because in our markets, we will become the only company focused on one unique ecosystem, which is the biggest market demand of all the sector, on interacting in multi-regions with a very strong simplification of product range and as well, industrial assets, and keeping Metallurgy as a vertical integration.
But last but not least, 100% of our R&D, sales, marketing, top management will focus on electrification only. Following the statement, we cannot be the best owner for some sectors. This is why we are amplifying our investment firepower into electrification. More than EUR 200 million of additional CapEx will be injected in high-voltage businesses. EUR 200 million additional CapEx to support wind offshore development everywhere in the world, and as well, HVDC transmission demand in U.S. or in Europe. 100% of our R&D on services team will focus on electrification demand. And as you will see, the focus on high voltage, utilities, construction sectors that are the key components of this electrification ecosystem will simplify our way to operate the company. We will, of course, operate in all the main region of the world to support the customer everywhere they need us.
It's not just an additional equity story. I hope you understand that. We are reengineering the complete model to become the electrification pure player, to surf on this wave of new electricity revolution that will be a fantastic tailwind for the company. In parallel, we are building an ecosystem of strategic partners that will help us to scale faster. In this chapter, let me guide you on how, yes, the how we will simplify our business, on how we will amplify our impact. Electrification today in Nexans represent, in 2020, already 55% of our sales, whereas industry, sectors, and harnesses and telecom , respectively 17% and 7%. Industry and telecom are fantastic business, of course, with great potential as well, as you know.
But they require massive investment to keep following the demand, and as well to build a new economic model around solution, like the one we will do on electrification. That's the reason we believe that we will not be the best owner anymore for those fantastic sectors. We are not the best owner for their future development. We will take the next years to come, the right partners, the right owner, that will support their development, that will scale them, that will modernize their assets, that will just reproduce what we will do ourself into electrification in terms of innovation on M&A consolidation on those sectors that are industry and telecom. You know, the three main reason to simplify our business and to focus on electrification are pretty obvious. Number one, already today, electrification market represent more than 65% of world cable demand.
The growth per annum for electrification is about 4.3% for the next 10 years, higher than all the others. Number 3, as you can see, the market are still very fragmented and give us room, it give us room for M&A consolidation. Now, take the time to, to reflect how we will amplify our impact. You will see from everything we have said, since 2 years, on everything we are doing, as a logic, a rational, a robust storyline that support it. We have not wake up 2 months ago, say, "Hey, let, let's go into electrification." No, not at all. Everything has been elaborate since 2018, but of course, we have to respect a specific agenda. Specific agenda and a specific sequence in order to gain back all stakeholder credibility, but as well to forge our own conviction that this is the way.
I think we've made a pretty good job. We made a pretty good job, and it's clear that in the last two years, we gained back all the main stakeholders' credibility. The company has been re-rated, the branding of the company has been modernized and become now more visible, and more importantly, customers are more and more positively vocal on our new way of doing. The road is still long, but we have made significant progress. Once again, everything is a question of sequence. The last two years. We had to focus on our own transformation across all activities, launching important cost reduction initiative, deploying Shift program to reduce complexity, and as well, turning around value burner activities. Last but not least, improving our cash conversion to build this firepower for this new chapter to come. Now we will amplify.
Yes, we will amplify our electrification value growth through three main pillars. The first one is we will rotate company activities through divestment, on one hand, on acquisition, in other hands, in order to scale our leadership positioning on electrification. Shift Prime, a brand new enhanced process on methodology to increase value through innovation. But as well, third pillar, new innovation, ecosystem partnership that we just signed, and we carry on to sign in the future to accelerate our unique value proposition. Although, we will have to scale through acquisition, rotate our business portfolio, I am convinced that we still have a lot to improve in our today's portfolio. Let's have a look. First of all, as you can see, we are evolving our financial metrics, but you know, this is where we have positioned in 2018 all our activities.
But now, it's time to raise the bar for this new sequence of 2022 to 2024. You can see that we keep the EBITDA percentage criteria, but we have replaced the working capital ratio by the cash conversion ratio in order to take into account the CapEx that we will have to inject in some unit. Finally, we are creating a new category. You can see on the top corner, green part, that we call innovation driver. In that part, you will find units that are delivering an EBITDA above 10% on a cash conversion ratio above 70%. But last but not least, those units, beyond pure financial result, must demonstrate a strong innovation delivery process. Like you may find in other capital goods companies, I will not bring you the name, you know them by heart.
Those companies that are delivering significant value, thanks to every quarter, every semester, constant innovation. I know, you will tell me, "It's nice on paper, Chris, but concretely, how will you do it? Where is the method behind? What is the how-to?" As we said in the last months and years, we have our own recipe of success, our own recipe, supported by strong analytics and as well, big data management. But more importantly, this recipe follow a logical sequence. When an activity is burning cash, I'm not magician, they are losing money, first priority is not growth. No, it cannot be growth generation. The first priority is fixing the problem. Fixing the problem through restructuring and lean management methods. Once you have done it, here, Shift transformation model is coming into force.
Through 20 levers, highly analytical, in order to move an activity which is in difficulties to profit drivers and as well, cash contributors. Today, after 2 years, many of our unit are on the way to this category, profit driver, not all, but a majority. This is why of Shift Prime. Shift Prime is coming into the loop. We are building now this third category, as you can see before, innovative drivers, to explain our managers that our value creation journey is not over. We still have a lot to improve. You know, it's not only a pure financial demonstration. We need to become innovative, much more innovative than before. We need to become disruptive to satisfy new customer demands while improving our financial metrics.... You can see on the slide our 2024 ambition in terms of categories evolution per % of revenue.
I have Vincent Dessale a bit later in the presentation to color a bit more this part in his section. But you can notice that we have units today, in 2021, already in this innovative driver box. Let me color now the three new pillars, the three new pillars that will guide our performance from 2022 to 2024. Once again, what is Shift Prime? It's a new methodology, a new process designed by Nexans to make things happens, to shift company performance. Shift Prime is, in a nutshell, a method to convert innovation into free cash flow. We have done recently a lot of benchmark of capital goods companies that are generating this great value. We learn a lot.
You know, we have built this recipe of success to really go beyond pure transformation and really to scale innovation in order to increase the value generation for customers on our gross margin perspective by minimum 200 basis points. So I will not go into too much detail, but we are following five main levers, from digital supply chain implementation, end-to-end supply chain with customer, to Shift Prime, to bundle of subsystems offers, smart innovation with the integration of sensors on Internet of Things into our product and into our systems. Let me conclude my part on M&A, on how we will amplify our role into electrification market by making acquisition by 2024. There will be two types of M&A: consolidation and bolt-on innovation.
In regards to our competition, we have screened, in the last 12 months, around 130 candidates that are playing a strong role into electrification market. We have shortlisted 20 of them, 20 candidates right now, to ensure that they are the best fit with our new ambition. We will engage as well a similar screening for the bolt-on acquisition to support our new services and solution model, like our design on engineering services, but as well, data collection, data exploitation, and as well, our digitalization offer. But now, let me turn the floor to Jérôme. Jérôme will bring you concrete example on our innovation dynamic. Thank you, Jérôme.
Thank you, Chris. Hi, I'm Jérôme Fournier, Vice President of Nexans in charge of innovation. Energy transition, the increase of electricity needs, the rise of electric mobility are driving innovation. At the same time, solutions are needed to compensate the aging of the grid, to reduce the risk of power outage, and ultimately, to guarantee the climate trajectory below 2 degrees C. What does it mean for Nexans? We have decided to allocate 100% of our R&D and innovation to this purpose alone. Today, that means EUR 100 million R&D expenses, 800 experts, more than 50 innovations per year. We are committed to amplify customer experience as the principal value of innovation. Digitalization is a deep layer of innovation, bringing instant information, reliability, and sources of efficiency. Our purpose is to amplify sustainable solution to better optimize the total cost of ownership of electrical assets.
Innovation is making the electrical grid smarter. Superconductivity is a great example of a smart technology. A single cable with Nexans superconductivity technology can convey the equivalent power of three nuclear reactors in several seconds, anywhere, at any time. The main advantage is not only this outstanding power, but the ease of installation with nearly no civil engineering required, no thermal effects, and zero electromagnetic signature. Two-thirds of the world population will live in cities and mega cities, where the density of buildings and infrastructure does not allow traditional power line. Superconductive cable will bring the power downtown in Chicago today, in many other cities tomorrow. The magical powers of superconductivity don't stop there. We have developed a superconductive fault current limiter, which reduces significantly the level of fault. It provides a total protection of the grid in case of an overcurrent, allowing the integration of distributed energy.
Electrical network management has become extremely complex. On one hand, there are hundreds of parameters to be taken into account to optimize the electricity supply, maintenance, investment. On the other hand, there could be serious consequences in case of a poor decision. Can you imagine that half of the surface burned in California in 2017 was due to fires of electrical power origin? Electrical digital twin is a unique virtual model of a real grid, a simulation tool that take into account both physics of interaction and real-time, data-driven models. Let's keep in mind two figures. The lines, cable, supports, conductors, represent 50% of the electrical grid in value. At the same time, 58% of network faults are due to those lines. We, Nexans, we have the worldwide leadership in those lines and cable aging. Cosmo Tech is one of the smartest companies developing digital twin software.
Our solution, electrical asset management, provides visualization, analysis, prediction, optimization of all possible scenarios, and it allows 20% of operation efficiency and CapEx avoidance. The IoT, Internet of Things, is a very well-known technology. However, its field of application remains immense. IoT is enabling an holistic approach of the grid risks and challenges. Nexans has developed connected cable solutions, connected accessory, in order to improve the reliability, efficiency, safety of all types of operations in electrical industries using real-time data. The first application is tracking assets. Major industrial customer are delighted to subscribe to Nexans connected solution. They can monitor, at any time, the localization and the quantity of cable they require for installation. They can reduce loss, avoid tests, optimize CapEx, and reduce maintenance cost. The second application consists in monitoring the electrical assets during their lifetime to predict failure, maintenance, increase global reliability.
Nexans has developed a connected street cabinet called InfraBird. This is an intelligent, keyless access and cloud-connected asset that can be deployed in just few minutes. The third application allows to manage electrical assets and optimize operation and decision-making. We expect 25% of Nexans products to be connected by 2024. The main lever for innovation is a better understanding of usages, better seeking all needs. We have created a network of customer-centric design apps, so-called Amplify by Nexans, in order to enhance our innovation ecosystem, to enrich, to accelerate our offers in three main fields: customer experience, digital solutions, sustainable development. One of the most powerful factor to accelerate innovation is partnerships. We are signing major partnerships, long-terms collaboration with leaders in their fields. Nexans will leverage on Microsoft Cloud data, artificial intelligence solution, and technologies to design an ecosystem of digital solution, and reaching its offer to customers.
Orange becomes the preferred connectivity partner of Nexans for the worldwide deployments of its IoT solutions. Vincent Dessale will present in few minutes our partnership with Schneider Electric, supporting the integration of digital solution in the industrial process. But the best is to listen to some of those partner.
Simulation digital twins, it's a very advanced technology, AI-based technology, that is used to optimize operational efficiency in many industries. How to optimize the economic efficiency of electrical assets? It's complex because every time you make a decision to, let's say, this class of asset, to maintain them rather than replacing them, it has a lot of cascading effects on the team, on the financial aspects, the risk aspects, and you have a lot of things to take into account to be able to optimize that. Simulation digital twins are the solution to do that because it allows you to create a digital replica of the electric system, and then to be able to run simulations to know what will be the impact of this or that action. It gives visibility.
If we have the simulation digital twin expertise, Nexans can bring a great expertise in the question of critical electric assets, and also they have fantastic trust from the customers. We are very happy to work together, and we are very enthusiastic and optimistic about the success of this.
We are very proud to accompany Nexans in their digitalization journey. We are a partner in connectivity, and the next big thing, what we are driving together, is to make the industry of cables connected, which is the Internet of Things approach, IoT, for the Nexans product. We are convinced that this combination of smart industries, which also includes a big effort on sustainability, will provide a clear differentiation for the Nexans group. This combination of smart and green will therefore provide a better and smarter logistics value chain and supply chain for Nexans products and the value they create with their customers. It also will allow better sensitive, connected, and secure industrial goods, like InfraBird. And last but not least, it makes the cables smarter and better connected.
We help companies like Nexans to create trust around their products and their operations. Insurer studies show that more than 80% of claims in offshore wind are related to high voltage power cables. So creating trust in offshore wind means creating trust in high voltage power cables for current generation, but also for next generation of cables required to capture power in deeper water, further to land. By partnering today with Nexans, Bureau Veritas expects to build on our respective strengths to develop favorable standards for high voltage power cables, providing assurance that Nexans implements such standards.
I obviously cannot disclose our innovation pipeline, but we do have unique assets and competitive advantage in both technologies and services. In the coming year, we will focus 100% of our R&D on the energy transition, from energy generation to usage. We will come back in more details in few minutes on HVDC and business continuity management for transmission, on engineering and electrical asset management for distribution, on our Nexans fire safety technology, and our digital supply chain will be a game changer. But now, let's welcome again, Aurélia.
Thank you, Jérôme. We will now take a short break and be back in 10 minutes.
Welcome back. We will now deep dive in electrification at Nexans and the group's operational outlook, starting with Ragnhild Katteland, to whom I will leave the floor.
Dear all, I'm Ragnhild Katteland, Head of Subsea and Land Systems Business Group in Nexans. What we are doing in this business group is really at the heart of Nexans' purpose to electrify the future. It is the major stake for the coming decade. Our core business is both interconnectors, facilitating the exchange of renewable energy between and within countries and continents, as well as cable solution for offshore wind farms. Let's look at a movie to see what we are doing exactly.
Energy is the basis of all life. It flows, changes form, and evolves, just like our societies. It moves people and connects us. It warms and entertains us. It educates and keeps people safe. Our world is changing at an ever faster pace, and the demand for power and more efficient energy is increasing. Nexans evolves in line with changing demands and provides sustainable solutions for the future. Over the past 100 years, we have facilitated the transportation of energy in an efficient and secure manner. Through rugged terrain, across fields and oceans, connecting small and large communities. From its source, we bring energy to the consumer. As new technologies for renewable energy emerge, Nexans will be there to connect industry, businesses, and populations to efficient, reliable, and safe power supplies.
The booming digital economy demands huge, ultra-fast, and reliable data connections, whether it's offshore, in remote areas, or in cities. We bring energy to life through an extensive range of cables and cabling solutions worldwide. Every day, we use our expertise, technology, and capacity for innovation to create a safe, reliable, and more efficient society for all. Wherever they are, we work closely with our customers to deliver cutting-edge solutions. Nexans delivers smart and sustainable products designed to be operational for decades. With our cable solutions, we support the development of societies and contribute to improving quality of life across the globe. For Nexans, no goal provides greater motivation than that of supplying people with energy.
Remember the value chain that was shown earlier? Generation and transmission, distribution, and usages. Now we are at the very beginning, and our journey begins with generation and transmission. We do everything from front-end engineering, design, manufacturing, installation, and protection. And when generation is running, we provide our clients after-market services for the high-voltage generation and transmission cable solutions. Our clients are offshore wind developers, national trust transmission system owners, grid owners, and more and more infrastructure investors. There is no longer any doubt, the world needs to address climate change, and renewable energies are a keystone of the sustainable energy transition. What we see in the offshore wind market is an incredible annual growth. We are talking about 200 gigawatts to be installed worldwide in the next decade. While Europe will remain the main market, Asia and the U.S. are to follow closely.
We are talking about an 11.5% annual growth of our cable and installation market, reaching EUR 8 billion annual market size in 2030. We at Nexans are already very well-positioned and engaged in this booming market. We are currently working on a wind farm of up to 1.5 GW, the Seagreen offshore wind farm outside Scotland, for our client, SSE. This unique offshore wind farm will supply more than 600,000 Scottish households with clean energy alone. One of the main drivers for this growth is the reduction of levelized cost of energy. The cost has been divided by more than five times in the last 10 years. Offshore wind is now increasingly profitable compared to other renewable technologies. Our industry will be the major enabler of the sustainable energy transition needed to achieve Paris Agreement goals.
The offshore wind farm cannot, by nature, always be placed close to the consumption areas. This is why we are linking renewable energy sources to every electricity grid by installing energy highways. The interconnector market, subsea and land high-voltage corridors, will have an annual growth of 14.3%. We are talking about more than 70,000 kilometers of cables to be installed. In the U.S., we expect investments of more than EUR 25 billion in HVDC corridors to integrate its grid and allow higher penetration of renewable sources. Nexans has a unique high-voltage cable facility based in the U.S., in Charleston, South Carolina. Nexans is the only local supplier able to answer to the future U.S. sustainable energy needs. The interconnected cables play an important part in EU's ambition of an efficient and sustainable renewable grid.
The interconnected cables will secure supply of energy between countries and connect renewable generation sources to the consumption areas. Nexans is a key enabler of EU's ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050. In the early 1970s, we installed the first interconnecting cable between Norway and Denmark. Our Halden subsea plant was built for this purpose only. Today, we have installed several thousands of high-voltage subsea interconnecting cables around the world. Currently, we are installing the North Sea Link interconnector between Norway and UK, and as well, the interconnection between Mindanao and Visayas in the Philippines. With this increasing amount of renewable energy sources to be connected, the energy highways will increase in size, power, and distance. Let's listen to Anders Hildebrandt from Ørsted and John Hill from SSE.
There is an increasing demand for subsea cables in the world. Over the last couple of years, the business have turned more over into export cables, high-voltage cables, connecting our offshore substations to shore. These cables are supercritical, as they are the lifeline of our wind farms.
... We chose to work with Nexans because, they're one of the few companies that have the expertise to provide a full engineering, procurement, construction, contract package, which brings together all elements of supply and installation, and manages the cost, the quality, and the program all in one contract package.
It's not easy to be the key supplier to Ørsted. We believe Nexans have the capabilities to continue being that, and we are looking forward to continue doing business with Nexans going forward.
So how will Nexans capture the strong growth of this sector? How will Nexans lead the energy transition? How will we support our clients? In 2021, our Charleston high-voltage cable plant in the U.S. will be fully converted to a subsea high-voltage cable plant, the only one in the U.S., perfectly placed to support the offshore wind development and the sustainable energy transition in the U.S. We will support U.S. clients' growing renewable energy needs. We already own one purpose-built cable laying vessel, Nexans Skagerrak. As our market is growing in volume and complexity, we must bring our capabilities and capacities one step further. This summer, we are excited and looking forward to taking delivery of our new cable laying vessel, Nexans Aurora. This unique lady is equipped with a 10,000-ton dual turntable and high-tech cable installation equipment. With these two investments, we are doubling our manufacturing capacity.
We have enlarged our laying capacities and capabilities, enabling us to take on board the most complex and challenging projects ahead. We are already utilizing these new capacities for the Seagreen project this year. However, this is not enough. We have decided to scale up even further to support electrification through our trusted partners and clients. I'm very proud to announce that we will increase our capacity further by more than 30% by 2024. Two new extrusion lines will be installed in our Halden plant in Norway, in addition to further upgrade of our Charleston plant in the U.S. These new investments will increase our capacity and efficiency in response to the expected growth in HVDC, both for offshore wind farm and for the energy highways to come. We have the possibility to even further raise capacity quickly in our Charleston plant at customer need.
We do not only invest in capacity and capability, we continuously invest in our skills. In the past years, Nexans has used a purpose-built in-house program called Shift, to reshape its backlog, decrease risk, while increase asset yield and generate value. This has been a true success in all areas implemented. We are now amplifying this unique model by deploying it in for our project business, bringing our portfolio's risk and return equation one step further. Firstly, for each project, we are modeling the overall risk by combining the technical risk with historical data and knowledge, and with in-depth reviews of project's terms and conditions. Secondly, we optimize the asset yield, both in manufacturing and in installation, to best fit our assets and capabilities. By combining project risk and yield, and by adding the financial return, we have an accurate risk and return indicator for each project.
This indicator is being used to steer the portfolio to the targeted upper right corner, lowest risk with the highest return. In a nutshell, a healthy backlog for our future that will not jeopardize the company development, neither our customers' projects. The key to success for any project is how it is managed, and most importantly, how all the risk related are managed. Cables remain the main driver of project claims, and account for more than 80% of claimed values in offshore wind farm projects. The growing size of wind farms make the risk more and more material for insurers. Our EPCI end-to-end approach combines analytics of historical data and proactive engineering and assessments, with our experience of risk and project execution. We have a very sound risk management track record.
We have experienced no internal failures of our export cables, neither for offshore wind, nor subsea cables for interconnectors. We are also assessing the environmental impact to reduce our carbon footprint. Increasing complexity for the project requires in-depth knowledge and expertise, and I'm happy to announce that today, we have entered into a long-term partnership with Bureau Veritas. Together, we will certify the Nexans Way of managing EPCI projects and risks, develop new standards for the offshore wind farm and interconnection industry, reduce risk profile of such projects, and reduce Nexans' time to market. Energy supply is more and more dependent on offshore wind farms, generating power, and the interconnectors energy highways. It is imperative that there are business continuity plans to secure the energy supply.
If a cable fault occurs, like the one on the picture here, where there has been an anchor grabbing the cable on the seabed, if no preparations, no planning are in place, it can take up to a year to repair the cabling and put it back into operation. With a Nexans service contract, the downtime or energy loss can be reduced by 70%. We are talking about massive savings. Our solutions enables to anticipate risk through monitoring and maintenance, to build up sound mitigation plans, and to intervene rapidly if an emergency occurs. Improving technology to support our clients and to broaden the scope of their possibilities is part of our DNA. We have today cutting-edge technology, both for the cable material choices, long distances, deep water, and dynamic application. Back in the 1970s, we delivered the first interconnected cable between Denmark and Norway.
In 2018, we completed the interconnector between Italy and Montenegro, installed at 1,500 meters water depth. We have fully qualified 525 kV DC extruded subsea and land cable systems. We delivered the first high voltage cable, dynamic cable, for the first commercial floating offshore wind farm, Hywind, in 2017, and this after a successful Hywind demo completed in 2009. To amplify our technical leadership, we invest massive efforts in R&D. The power transfer will increase, the interconnector EuroAsia will be installed down to 3,000 meters water depth. To enable the offshore wind, also where the water depth is not allowing for conventional offshore turbines, floating offshore wind farms will be needed, and with this, more dynamic cables. Our proprietary solution for thermoplastic cables, PowerBoost, will amplify the cleaner, more cost-efficient, and faster cable manufacturing.
By using our in-house technical experts and know-how, and working closely with universities and clients, we are broadening the scope of possibilities for our clients, both for offshore wind and for interconnectors, making us a proud contributor of the sustainable energy transition. Let me turn the floor to my colleague, Vijay, that will expose our ambition in the distribution of energy.
Thank you, Ragnhild. Hello, everyone. I am Vijay Mahadevan, Executive Vice President of Nexans for Distribution. It is a great pleasure to be here with you today to introduce Nexans' ambition in distribution. I will share with you the excellent opportunities ahead of us and how, as Nexans, we are positioned to lead in energy distribution. So what is distribution? It is the next step in electrification process, a fundamental link between generation transmission on one end and the usage on the other end. Network grid is the backbone of energy distribution. It includes utility-scale renewable generation and its associated network. We are talking about medium voltage hardware and Nexans turnkey solutions. During the next decade, growing population and ever-increasing needs will create a booming demand for electricity. To support the increased demand, localized renewable generation are mushrooming in all regions.
These renewable units are also moving closer to the consumption point for easy access and cost efficiency. I would like to highlight three significant trends for the coming decade. First, 1.8 billion inhabitants on this planet will have to be given access to electricity. Can you imagine that? Second, 17% additional power generation expected. That's huge. Third, exponential growth in the renewables area. Its impact, increasing demand for electrification, for sure. But we have an aging network today.... Europe and U.S. grids are one of the oldest. They have far exceeded the average life expectancy of network cables. This increases grid vulnerability and risk of blackouts. This is our challenge industrial nations are facing today. We have a good news. This dilemma has caught the attention of decision makers.
EUR 4.4 trillion, yes, EUR 4.4 trillion will be spent in distribution, modernizing aging networks and building new grids. What does this mean to Nexans? Estimated forecast, just in cables alone, a 4.2% CAGR. Additional EUR 20 billion potential market. That's a big number. All these investments require not only cables and accessories, also innovative ideas, smart solutions, and timely execution. Nexans is very well positioned to amplify in distribution area from a cable supplier to solutions provider. Today, we provide several solutions for electrification. You already heard from Jérôme about superconductivity, grid assessment, IoT, smart cables, asset management, to name a few. I will touch upon two more tested turnkey solutions of Nexans. One, to connect renewable farms to the grid. Second, NeoGrid, a rural electrification program. We have 80 engineers solely dedicated working on these solutions.
Let me give you more granularity to these two turnkey solutions. First, Nexans solution to connect utility-scale renewable farms. We have developed a unique know-how, thanks to the advanced simulation in grid connectivity. Based on our experience and knowledge, we balance the CapEx, OpEx spend to reduce total cost of ownership. This makes green energy more competitive and accessible. As an example, in Stockyard Hill, Australia, our turnkey solution delivered a 9% reduction in total cost of ownership through design change, layout optimization, architecture planning. It also lowered CapEx for our customer. The second solution I would like to highlight is the NeoGrid. This provides end-to-end connectivity, from arranging cost-effective financing to electrifying the villages, even in remote areas. For example, we successfully electrified 35 villages in Ivory Coast, participating in rural electrification program.
15 more villages will be added soon, as they are in their last mile stage, awaiting just power on. We are on track on this project. We went beyond cables, using our expertise, securing cost-effective financing, design, supply, manufacturing, and installation, finally reaching electricity to rural users, a complete end-to-end solution for electrification. It is an emotion when we saw glow in the eyes of some people who saw light after sunset for the first time in their life. Nexans is committed to life-changing projects across the globe, a significant step forward in electrification, our purpose. We take pride in such accomplishments for the benefit of our stakeholders. Let me now share with you some of our customers' experiences with our turnkey solutions.
Nexans undertook the supply, installation, termination, and testing of over 100 kilometers of 33 kV underground cable for our Stockyard Hill Wind Farm project, the largest project of its type in Australia. Nexans offered this as a lump sum package, which differentiates them from others in the market and provides an additional option for wind farm balance of plant contractors to consider, particularly where they don't have their own trenching and cable laying equipment or where design optimization is an important consideration. [Foreign Language]
... The blueprint of all this, Nexans' unique position and fantastic growth in distribution segment, supported by a growing need for a safe, sustainable access to all reliable electrification. We will amplify our role with turnkey offers for electrifying the future. We will continue our journey in electrification. Vincent will now take you through the final step in electrification chain, usage. Thank you.
I am Vincent Dessale, Chief Operating Officer, leading Industry Oil and Purchasing function, and Head of Building Business Group. Let's continue together our journey on the energy highway. After generation and transmission, following the distribution, let's talk about the usage. Well, you know, it's very simple. Usage of electricity is everywhere around us. When you have a human activity, you have usage of electricity. In all buildings, residential, commercial, industrial, infrastructure such as schools, hospital, in all means of transportation, such as highway station, terminal airports, e-mobility, and data center, for which the electricity supply is as critical as data connectivity. And this market is full of dynamism, with a significant growth of the demand, plus 50%, 50% in the next 10 years, which represent EUR 26 billion increase. This major growth is driven by mega trends all over the world.
Growing population and urbanization, increases access to electrification in rural area, implementing new regulation, modernizing existing infrastructure, and rising technical revolution. Indeed, the building of tomorrow will become smart distribution network. They will produce energy, they will store energy, they will integrate photovoltaics in their structure, they will be equipped with electrical vehicle charging station. Consequently, building of tomorrow will be more and more sophisticated. They will need higher power, and you can say that there will be a kind of, electricity hub. These mega trends and technological re-evolution will have one common and critical requirement: safety. Do you know that 80% of the building fires are due to counterfeit cables in emerging countries? In Europe, one fire happens every two minutes due to electrical failures. Safe electrical power usage is and will be at the heart of our life places.
But I have already some comments. Great demand, useful cable for sure, but this market is a commodity market with low return. The answer to this question is no, and here is why. For several years now, we have, in Nexans, 5 business unit in our building segment with excellent returns. EBITDA close to 20%, ROCE up to 50%. You have 2 examples on the screen, one in Europe, one in South America. We call them innovation drivers. The key is marketing, branding, innovation. And we have formalized and deployed the business model of these units, enhancing further our Shift program to scale up. This model is named Shift Prime, a nomad program with a set of tools, analytics, and methods. And we have currently a team of 20 experts deploying the method in all our units with a weekly tempo.
Building, if managed properly, is a very contributive business. But we should not limit ourself to speak only about cable market. You know, it's, it's behind us. We are, and we will, speak more and more about system and subsystem, Services & Solutions . We, at Nexans, are addressing our clients' pain points, providing and helping them to improve their productivity at each step of their customer journey, from procurement to commissioning... We develop dedicated solution for our customers with safe cables and accessories system, easy to transport, easy to install. We simplify their day-to-day activity with the Nexans apps, improving the design and optimization of electrical network, supporting the preparation work and installation, allowing traceability of product and deliveries. Nexans brand are recognized by the end user for their added value. Let's take the example of MOBIWAY, one of our latest innovation.
50%, 50% of the customers, if they don't find MOBIWAY in one branch, they will go extra mile to find it in another location. But of course, leading innovation is not an easy task. This requires structure, process, and organization. We have 80 dedicated resources all around the world, with six regional design labs and three specialized design labs focusing on IoT, Internet of Things, end-to-end supply chain, digital solution on a unique Microsoft platform. These teams are working closely with our operations, sales and marketing team, but of course, with our customers and our partners. Nexans already has a robust pipeline of innovation for the coming years. And, you know, moving to solution is not a slogan. This is a fact for Nexans. Let me give you a concrete example.
30 million electric vehicle charging stations will be installed in Europe by 2030. With agility, Nexans is at the heart of the usage of electrification, with high technical solution, product and software. This is fully digital, supervision, fault detection, asset management, and supporting the e-mobility development. We are far beyond the pure cable. We are a pure electrification player. Another pillar of Nexans' unique value proposition is the end-to-end supply chain with three key pillars. First one, of course, optimal availability of product for the end user. By the integration of the different players, Nexans and its suppliers, Nexans and its customers, and also the customer of our customers, the supply chain becomes agile, connected, and real-time. Nexans, therefore, reduce capital employed. Second pillar, be vertically integrated. This is a strategic decision of Nexans.
The security of copper sourcing has been a major advantage for Nexans during the first wave of the COVID crisis last year. Zero factory stop due to shortage of copper. You know, the copper consumption is expected to increase from 20 million tons to 35 million tons by 2040. Mastering the copper supply chain is a guarantee for all our customers. The third pillar is what we call the square root chain, the return on capital employed versus the return on carbon employed. In other words, we will integrate in our customer portfolio management, the margin versus the distance of delivery and its corresponding carbon emission. You know, end-to-end supply chain, properly managed, will reduce the energy consumption by 25%, 25%, in transport and logistic areas by 2040. We, at Nexans, wants to do business, but not at the expense of the planet.
Being a local player, like Nexans, is a key enabler to reduce carbon emission. I can tell you that environment impact and digitalization capabilities are becoming a criteria of choice by our customers. Speaking about the planet, you know, the electrification is clearly a prerequisite to reach the 2 degrees Celsius target. The building of the future will be electrical, no doubt. More and more cables, more connectors, more system, subsystem... this network in buildings, and also the network in your house must be safe. Energy usage must be safe. Do you know that the electrical fires have increased by 10% in the last 10 years? 30% of fires in buildings are due to electrical fires just in Europe per year, to give you some figures.
It represents 273,000 fires, more than 1,000 fatalities, EUR 6.25 billion of property damage. Nexans has a long, robust, and demonstrated expertise in understanding fire behavior. We master technologies for safer electrification. In many countries, we have been able to launch on the market the halogen-free flame retardant technology, so-called HFFR, replacing the old-fashioned PVC technology. Do you know that a Nexans HFFR cable can withstand 1,000 degrees Celsius more than 2 hours while still transmitting the electrical power, which allows, of course, the people to exit the building in case of emergency in safer conditions. The low smoke emission characteristic of Nexans HFFR system allows a distance, in terms of view, in case of fire, of 50 meters, when the traditional PVC is only 5 meters.
You know, safety matters to us, and Nexans is dedicated to develop new technologies to continue to protect lives. But obviously, marketing, innovation, supply chain, technology needs to rely on a competitive industrial footprint. Therefore, Nexans has embarked the Industry 4.0 revolution by integrating the digital revolution in the initial process. Our factories are becoming more and more data-driven. And to ensure the success of this digital revolution, I'm very happy to announce that Nexans has made a worldwide partnership with Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric expertise will accelerate the digitalization of our factories. Their proven and advanced methodology will further improve the efficiency of our line of production, improve predictive maintenance, improve reduction of carbon emission. Nexans is building the factory of the future. And now, before concluding, let's listen together to Nexans customers.
Nexans is one of the global leader in cable. They are really one of the strategic partner we have. Since Christopher came and the new management team was established, clearly a lot of change. I think they have tackled certainly two of the most difficult question you have in historical company, is really analyze your processes and the way you do business and the way you generate your margin, and to look at your portfolio of activity and product and criticize it. We have always been loyal to each other, always been transparent, and I think you will find this quality from the top between management to the field.
Nexans have a top modern manufacturing plant in Sweden, not far away from our central warehouse and close to our customers in the Nordics. The proximity gives us the opportunity to coordinate shipment with fully loaded trucks, short distance for limited carbon footprint.
Looking at New Zealand as a country, it is long and skinny with two islands, and logistically, it's a very difficult country to get product around. We embarked on what we called an integrated efficiency project with the team at Nexans. This led us to look at logistics and freight and quantity and volume that we were looking to move around the countryside.
The partnership with Nexans is unique in three ways. It's transparent, and in fact, it's fact-based. What do we need? For whom? By when? At the same time, what can be done by them and how, and the reliability that comes out of it, it's facts-based, data-driven, and I very much like this approach. The second dimension is in the innovation field. What has been announced, has been promised, has been delivered. The third one, that we can think a little bit global. It's not one country, it's not one region. It can be in different parts of the world where it makes sense for the two companies. We work collectively at being efficient. I really enjoy what we are doing together. It's really solid.
Reliability, data-driven, fact-based, integrated supply chain, efficiency, innovation, collaborative, and global development are the words of our customers. Being a pure electrification player is the choice of Nexans to answer to their needs-
... and collaborate with them. Locally, to identify and implement appropriate solution, globally to scale up. Nexans DNA and future engagement is electrify the future. Thank you, and we will continue with the Q&A session, but before that, let's watch together a short movie on the megatrend.
Electrification is rather easy to get just what you need, where you need, for what you want to have: comfort, safety, security, productivity, everything.
The U.K. market is one of the largest markets for offshore wind in the world at the moment, and having installed 10 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity over the last 10 years. Over the next 10 years, expected to treble that exponentially to add 30 gigawatts of capacity.
You can see here, 50% of what is being presented is less than five years old. Innovation is everything. Yesterday, people were using one electrical product, now they use solutions.
The future is digital. The customer journey is becoming more digital. Share of e-commerce is growing faster, and the use of digital tools is becoming more frequent.
We want to have a fully decarbonized supply chain in 2040.
We focus on sustainable value chains, production, and production design. Driving sustainable innovation is key for success.
We have an agenda to decrease our CO2 footprint and support the sustainable economy. We are very aggressive on moving that agenda by promoting this solution in the electrical world, which are better in terms of efficiency.
Thank you, Vincent.
Now we are ready to take some questions. We receive a lot of question already by writing. Just for sake of clarity, I will not take any question regarding the financial commitment of the company in 2024, because just after the Q&A session, Jean-Christophe will drive you in that process, and we will have another Q&A session that will include the financial part. We will start with some questions that we have on the audio already are.
Yes.
We have a lot of questions as well by writing. We aim to have this session to stand for 20 minutes. I think it's Daniela.
Yes.
Daniela is on the phone. Daniela Costa from Goldman. Daniela?
One moment. A reminder that is star one, if you would like to ask a question live on today's phone. You may also ask questions online by pressing the Ask a Question button. Daniela, you are now unmuted. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good afternoon. Hope you can hear me well. Thanks for taking my question. I'll keep it once, as you said, to three questions on the operational side of the presentations. Actually, mainly directed towards the high voltage presentation from Ragnhild. First, can you elaborate. I think you've mentioned that you're scaling up the U.S. Charleston plant further into new exclusive lines in Halden. Can you link that with growth ambitions and how much those capacity expansions give you in terms of opportunities to further scale up the sales side in that business and maybe the kilometers amount that it equates to? And then the two other topics, more broader questions.
I was wondering if you could give us some thoughts on what you think the move towards hydrogen and producing potentially hydrogen, leveraging with offshore, what can that do to market size and opportunity on submarine cables for Nexans? The third one, regarding how you're positioning for wind offshore floating, what that means in terms of any changes on the way to produce and when do you think that's coming for real?
Thank you.
I'll keep it here. I'll go back to the queue. I have two other ones on the operations, but I'm not sure if you have other people. I'll go back.
Thank, thank you, Daniela. So a lot of questions regarding subsea, Ragnhild. So the first one is that we need to elaborate a bit of what is exactly this, high voltage CapEx about, this new, this new CapEx of EUR 200 million. The third is on hydrogen, on wind offshore development.
So, first of all, thank you for the question. For the CapEx that we have already done or are about to finish this year, that is really doubling the size versus what we have in Halden for these type of products. What we have actually now decided is to even double that more. So we will add the same size of what we're doing in Charleston, in Halden. And as well, we will also add some more CapEx in Charleston to make this plant even more efficient. So really to grow this capacity in this market.
So that would be more about XLPE CapEx expansion in Europe to cope with all the demand that we will have for interconnection on wind offshore in Europe, but in Halden is serving the world.
Yes.
And we will keep upgrading as well, in addition, Charleston, because we are pretty convinced that HVDC transmission corridors will have to be installed in U.S., like, you hear recently in Germany. Certainly, at big scale in order to connect the East Coast with the West Coast, with the wind offshore farm and the solar farm, and this is certainly something where Nexans will have to get ready. So get ready, of course, to keep developing the wind offshore on the East Coast of U.S., with the contract we have signed with Ørsted, and there is more to come with other customers that we hope to be able to convert, and that should be awarded this year.
But there is as well all the development of solar farm in the west part of U.S. on this certain corridor HVDC transmission line that will have to be installed in the coming 5-10 years in U.S. So this is what this CapEx will support: wind offshore, interconnection, and transmission in U.S.
And also to add on the CapEx side, definitely Aurora, the new vessel that will be launched this summer, will even more increase the capacity to do turnkey projects with DC cables that we have fully, as you have seen on the presentation, that we have fully qualified.
Oh, and we will keep Skagerrak.
We will keep Skagerrak, clearly.
Yes. Hello, hydrogen is pretty recent, and there is a big buzz regarding hydrogen on the... We receive as well, Vijay, some question regarding energy storage. That will be certainly, it will, it would come into force beyond certainly in 2025. But can you elaborate some discussion that we may have already in that sectors, in that field?
So, of course, for the hydrogen, it's another renewable source. And we need, of course, and we are following together with Jérôme's team, we are following this development, and also together with our clients. We are working on how we can support in this sector. Of course, hydrogen will not replace electricity, but it can be a storage possibility for the future. So, we are following, but still very early phase.
Regarding floating farm on wind offshore development?
Yeah. So, of course, today, what we see within the offshore wind is that we do get more and more complex project. You can have offshore wind projects further out from the coast, and then what we see, of course, is that we will have also offshore wind farm at deeper sea, and you need to have them floating. We were the first one to deliver this Hywind that we've talked about in the presentation. So we have all the capabilities and the technology to do so. I think that we will, as we go forward, we will see more and more floating coming in, and because those floating wind farms, they will be put in places where you cannot have fixed bottom type of wind farms. So clearly, in the future, you will see more coming in.
Yes, this is as well linked with the agreement that we have signed with Bureau Veritas, that you just mentioned just a few minutes ago, because it's as you say, 83% of claims is linked to bad cables installation of offshore wind offshore wind farm. We have pretty intense discussion prior to sign this partnership with Bureau Veritas, with insurers, to really understand what is the issue. It's. There is no claim once it's installed by Nexans.
No claim.
But, I think it's important to reduce the risk for our customers and to amplify as well, our actions to ensure the right installation for all these mega project that have to come.
I hope we answered your question, Daniela. We have other questions on the line. I think it's-
It's David Marcus from Bank of America.
David, from Bank of America.
David, when you're ready, please go ahead with your question.
Hi, everybody. Apologies for cutting out earlier, and thanks for taking my questions. I will try and, try and ask across the portfolio. Just to follow up on, on high voltage, on one of your slides, you talked about EUR 25 billion of potential land cable growth in the US. I think in the past, you've pulled back from land because of weak margins and, and cash execution. What gives you confidence that you can generate better returns in land in the US? That would be my, my first question.
Sure.
So whether it's land or if it's subsea, we will always use our methodology to really look into our risk profile of the project, both technology-wise, T's and C's, compliance, all those things. We will look into how we can yield our assets, both manufacturing and also if it's offshore with our vessels. And then what we will do, and we are doing today, we are looking at the risk of return as equation, as we also discussed earlier today. Whether or not it's subsea or land, we will use the same, same, same type of assessment. The investment that we're doing now, both in Halden and in Charleston, will allow for both, so both onshore and as well, subsea for DC.
As such, we are there if the projects and when the projects are coming.
Yeah, and, we have to recognize as well, David, is that we were losing money in the land business because of bad allocation of project versus the capabilities of our plant in Germany and Belgium, that we are fixed from now, but it doesn't mean that this market is not profitable. We believe as well, there will be a very strong convergence of demand, both for wind offshore and HVDC transmission in everywhere in the world. And you know that most of the time, the demand, either for land and subsea, are using the same production capabilities... the same production capabilities. So we will always use this unique method that we have to weigh the risk and return, whatever is at the wind offshore business or long HVDC business. That answer your question, David?
A quick follow-up, if I may, just on the high voltage side, following on from Daniela. I mean, clearly, as we know, the high voltage business can be quite lumpy, especially the size of the interconnection orders. What makes you confident that you can maintain that saturation, and also pricing level as you start to invest more? And is there any risk that we have a similar pricing situation to what we've seen in optical fibers?
I think what we're looking at here is again how we are choosing our project. We're not only choosing our project, we're also investing a lot in our clients. That's why we're here. What we're trying to do is to build long-term relationships with our clients with the way we are working, and as such, we will have the project coming forward. So this is what we are doing. So we both look at the risk, the yield, et cetera, as well as the client relationships and where we should go.
and David, I think it's an excellent question because to compare the telecom market with high voltage market, but the entry barriers are not the same. The capabilities and the know-how are not the same. Customers as well doesn't want to take risk with new emerging players that they don't know. You know, even some customers that we know very well since long years say, "Hey, are you sure that your Charleston factory has the right setup?" Yes, of course, it has the right setup, you know, but they like to be reassured. So I think emerging competition will come, but certainly not at all at the same speed and scale at what happened in the telecom fiber optic.
The Chinese will announce massive investment on wind offshore as well. I'm talking about, you know, you were there this morning, I was talking about 50 gigawatt to be installed just in China. So, player like ZTT, Orient Cable, will be fully converging on this national demand. Xi Jinping will announce a mega, certainly mega investments in China for the next 10 years. I think this question is certainly relevant, maybe in 2027, but, you know, there is so exponential growth in that sectors, and we are taking a lot of, I would say, time to decide which project to follow on the financial terms, on the technological risk, on the terms and conditions, on the contract aspect for each project.
Our aim is not to increase capacity to dilute the value, and of course, that will be our commitment by 2024. That will be reinforced, David, in the total presentation package that you will see with the financial elements that JC will provide you. We have other quest-
Yes.
You have a lot of questions on our end.
We have a lot of questions that came through in written, in writing.
Yeah. Yeah.
So we'll first start with Max Yates. And this question is for you, Chris. He thanks you first for the presentation, and his question is: The subsea cable market is relatively consolidated, so I assume it is difficult to acquire here. So what parts of electrification do you see as the most likely area for acquisitions?
Ah! It's a good question. I think you've seen, Max, that we've tried recently with some European players to find a way that has not been successful. That's why it's a bit less crowded in the high voltage world. I will not answer these questions because I'm sure we have 1,500 people listening, but certainly 5% of them are our competitors, so I will not elaborate more on what target we have. We have 20 candidates on the screening we've done in multiple sectors, means multiple sectors into the electrification, so it's already a straight answer. We will not invest in industry, we will not invest in telecom, we will not invest in other sector than that, except electrification.
So you have seen on what I have introduced to you. The electrification ecosystem is still relatively very fragmented and give us a lot of room to consolidate. Maybe a bit less in high voltage, I agree with you, Max, but we will elaborate a bit more later in the year about what acquisition we'll have to do.
We have a question coming from Akash Gupta.
Akash, yep.
Is this R&D figure of above EUR 100 million for the whole company, is it funded by R&D, or is this—does this also include third-party-funded research, including government grants for certain specific projects? How has this R&D figure moved in the recent years, and do you have any set target or how much... I'm sorry, on how much R&D should be as a percentage of sales in the coming years?
Jerome?
Sure. Those EUR 100 million R&D budget includes some funding in the range of 15%. It has been, it has been very stable during the last three years, except this year for, for COVID reason. We have react very fast in April, to with our operation, but also with our R&D, to adapt our project portfolio. We have reduced some material projects, and we have increased the system and, and services R&D project.
... now what should be the ratio, R&D versus sales? As a chief innovation officer, I believe that a highly leveraged innovator distinguish themself, not by the money they spent, but by the capabilities they have to demonstrate in ideation, project selection, developments, and commercialization, their potential of innovation. So by focusing our resources on only three micro segment, there is a first leverage effect, by factor two or factor three.
We have another question from Akash, which is: On the EUR 250 million-EUR 400 million range of cable per gigawatt in offshore, is this figure based on pipeline of projects or historic projects? Some of the recent orders in industry has been towards the lower end of, or even below the lower end of this range.
That's the value of cables per gigawatts in wind offshore.
Yes. Thank you for this question, Akash. As you say, you see, it's quite a wide range, and this is because in this offshore wind industry now, we do see very different projects. Some are more complex, some are bigger, some are smaller. So of course, you will have a wide range, as well as you have AC versus DC type of projects. This is based on—these figures is based on what we have seen in our pipeline, going both historic and going forward. So that's really the answer to that question.
We have another question from Max Yates: For the high voltage investments in Halden, Norway, this appears to focus on cable lines rather than ships. To avoid vessel bottlenecks, are further investments in new installation capacity not required?
For the installation part, he means, yeah.
So, so again, thanks. So, so what we will have now after this summer, we will have two vessels in operation, that meaning doubling our capacity. Skagerrak is an old lady, but she's fully functional. And of course, with Aurora, with the capacity that she has, we will, it's more than doubling, actually, what we are able to do. What you've seen in the past, if you go into our history, is that when we have any type of need for even more vessels, what we do is to go, do some charter of a third-party vessel. So I don't see this today as a bottleneck with the project going forward and with the capacity that we now have decided to invest in. So...
We have two other people that are connected to the audio, so we'll move back to audio. I think we have first, Sean from HSBC.
Sean? Yeah.
Good afternoon. Can I just come back to AC versus DC and just make sure I've understood? You're putting in two new DC lines, and but is your AC capacity staying flat? I mean, I saw that, you know, in the pipeline, you're looking at the majority of interconnectors, which I guess would be more on the DC side, but there's a lot of offshore wind that is AC, so just wondering how you're thinking about that.
Thank you. That's, that's a good clarifying question. The, the lines that we are putting in, both in Charleston as well in Halden, are the same lines for both DC and AC, when you talk about extruded cables, so we can do both. So again, what we will do is to decide the project, whether it's offshore wind or interconnectors, really going back to this ratio, risk, versus return, looking at our yield, our capability, capacity, et cetera. So, so again, it's, it's the same lines being used. So again, it's back to really making sure that we have a sound and good, portfolio going forward.
Thank you. Another question on the divestments and the divestment process. I mean, it's quite a lot that you're looking at carving out of this business to become an electrification pure play. So I'm just wondering how. You know, will you be doing this in several small-sized chunks? Will accretive M&A depend on how much you divest first, i.e., will you need to fund the process via divestment? And any parts that you're prioritizing for disposal? Thank you.
Well, okay, Sean, I will not talk about the logic of priority, but it will not be a small part. Because, you know, we care a lot for our industry business and telecom business. Prior to be CEO, I was in charge of this business, and they are fantastic businesses, and they see the same migration sector by sector that what we see in electrification. So, you know, the problem is that 80%, almost 77% is what JC will allocate of our CapEx already are going through electrification sectors. So if we stay like that, keeping investing in the electrification sectors and giving a very small portion of investment to industry and telecom business, we jeopardize their future. Because they need to modernize their assets, like all the others.
They need to invest in Services & Solutions . They need to scale up in the value chain. So, we will. It's not, will not be piece by piece, but we try to give a current format of divestments, and to find the most important thing for us is to find the right partner, the partner that will do the same thing that what Nexans will do on electrification. Consolidating, making acquisition, increasing the value chain offer, really to find the partner that will do what Nexans is not able to do. So if it has to take time, it will take time, because we are not in a rush. Those business are delivering fantastic profitability. But once again, we want to make sure that they will be in good hands.
If we have to find some joint venture to find co-partners, we will, if we have to think about it, we will think about it. But we will do, we'll do it in the right sequence. And after, of course, the objective, talking about sequence, is not to move the group from EUR 6 billion to EUR 3 billion and to make a promise to go back to EUR 6 billion. No, we'll have to find the right sequence between divestments and acquisition in a given 18 months frame. So that's the reason that we are as well extremely bullish right now on finding the right acquisition for the next months or years to come. There is no logic of priority because there is no specific urgency.
I heard a question, I think it was six months ago, will you get out, give up all your value burners? No, it's not the topic. The topic is to fix our problem first. As soon as we have transformed the company, we raise the question: What is the strategy for the company in the next 10 years? What is the next commitment in the next 4 years? So this is what we aim to present to you and to introduce to you today. It's what we are doing. Now, we fix a lot of things in telecom business, in industry. There are still more to do, but also, again, we have to find the right partner for the future.
Thank you.
We have now Geoffrey from Société Générale, who's also on the line. Geoffrey?
Geoffrey, hello.
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. During your presentation, Chris, you mentioned gross margin improvement as a target. When we're looking at the Shift methodology, I remember in 2018, you mentioned that you had more than 16,000 customers, of which 10% represented 90% of your gross margin. I was wondering where you were standing now on this target, and how if you've reduced the number of customers significantly, and if you have a target for your new plan? And secondly, looking again at Shift, but more on the product selectivity this time, have you been able to reduce your SKUs over the past 2 years, and can you go further?
Yeah. Thanks, Geoffrey, for the question. Yes, we've used really the 2020 crisis situation to turn it into opportunity. So we have accelerated our portfolio pruning to really determine what is the good fat and what is the bad fat in our product and customer portfolio. And, we have significantly reduced the number of customers that we are following. I know it's counterintuitive, but what we want to do is to move from a pure transactional sales mode, you know, selling more cables to more customers, to giving more product to them, to scale intelligently, you know, smartly with the customer that we care, the customer that will make our future.
So we know that already we have 4,000 customers across the company that make 90% of our revenue. We want to scale with them. And today, that's right, we need 15,000 accounts to make 100% of the revenue. That was the case in 2019. This is not the case anymore in 2020, because we privilege our capacity, we privilege our time, resources, management bandwidth, innovation team for those top strategic accounts. And we already have a lot of discussions with all those customers all around the globe since a year on how we can we scale through more services, reducing risk, what Daniela, I've said, and as well, developing new offer on construction market to better perform together.
The feedback from the customers is exceptionally good from the last six months, and we will carry on to develop this methodology. Once again, this is our own methodology, is extremely granular. Now we are scaling up the methodology because, you know, we are calculating the return capital employed per customers and per product everywhere in the world per unit. But now we're calculating as well the return on carbon employed. Means we are calculate by units. We are drawing a circle around each unit to determine what is our total revenue in a circle of 500 kilometers of the unit, from 500 to 1,000 kilometers, and above 1,000 kilometers. We raise the question: What is the rationale of this unit to supply beyond 500 kilometers?
So to mix is what Vincent introduced, to mix the return on capital employed, the financial perspective, with the cost of carbon, so return on carbon employed. This is this new method that we will as well emphasize in order to keep improving our customer on product portfolio unit by unit. Sorry to be long. I'm passionate about it. Other questions?
Yes, I think we'll move back to the written questions. We have a question from Benjamin, from Kepler Cheuvreux: Does your move from a cable player to an electrification player come with new competitors? How will you differentiate from them?
I'm not sure that we have really, competitors. There is some, some actors that are playing already in those three main spheres, but in general, in one region. So we believe that we, we will be the first one to become a pure electrification player worldwide. Worldwide. Present in Asia, present in North and South America, and present in Europe. I'm sure that, it will create a lot of momentum for others. But most importantly, beyond pure competition, is what I told you just before, is staying as a generalist is a major risk. And like I say, I don't want Nexans to become the Kodak of the industry, because you have not take the, the, the, the right path at a certain time to shift strategy to amplify this action on some critical strategic sectors, and this is what we are doing.
We will see how the competition will react.
We have several questions from Lucie from Morgan Stanley. We'll take two.
Metallurgy.
We'll start with, can you comment on your Metallurgy business, please? Could that make you completely self-sufficient, and is your house sourcing also involve the plain raw materials, or could you see issues there?
I will talk about the evolution of copper and aluminum demand, but running our facilities and-
No, I think the-
Vincent.
Lucie, the answer is relatively simple. To give a picture, we have basically 50% of our capacity, which is used today internally, and 50%, which is external sales. So indeed, we have the full possibility to turn these external sales into internal needs and to cover our units all over the world, because we have this Metallurgy possibility in Europe, in North America, in South America.
Yes, and there is some. We will not cover 100% of the need of Nexans, you know, because we need some partners in Australia, for example-
... and in China. But why will we keep our Metallurgy business? Why are we the unique actors in the wire and cable sector to keep the vertical integration? You know, the disintegration that I rejected in the fiber optic because it requires massive investment, and we consider that there was no advantage for Nexans, at least. But the copper vertical integration for me, you know, coming from the Metallurgy world, will become a real, real asset. Because when you look the demand of copper, which is today more or less, Vincent, it's 20 million tons?
Yeah, we, we have around 20 million tons, and we know that indeed, we expect that thanks to evolution of the renewables, electrification-
The amount could reach around 35 million tons by 2040.
Indeed, by definition, mastering and controlling the sourcing and the process is important for us, but it's super important for our customer to guarantee the ability of the product.
Exactly. So this move from EUR 20 million to EUR 30 million is what Vincent just told you, is the convergence on all investment worldwide. Regarding green energy, regarding utilities, grid modernization, regarding building, it's all about copper and aluminum. It's all about copper and aluminum. But it's not only our sectors which is using copper. If you want to turn all the automotive, well, I would say, consumptions, new cars, productions into electric, you need twice more volume of copper. I think it's about 8 million tons in addition. So on for our sectors, it requires grade A cathode, top category of copper, to make our product.
So we believe that Metallurgy will become a strong, a very strong asset in the coming years, because we may face a risk of shortage, maybe, just few days, sometimes some few weeks. But we need as well, this Metallurgy to be strongly invested into circular economy, because today we take all our copper waste and that we recycle with our partners, and we bring them back in our facility in order to make it purely, 100% circular. So recycling of the copper will become as well a very strong asset that Nexans will keep in the coming years.
Another question from Lucie. Other partnerships you announce is exclusive?
Sure. Most of them are exclusive, yes.
Exactly, yeah.
All right.
We are working with this partner since discussions since a long time. Vincent spent a lot of time with the team of Christel Heydemann in Schneider Electric, France. We have done already some pilots. It's the same for Cosmo Tech. It's the same as well with Microsoft. That is announced, is announced today. So we have developed the offer behind just the press release. It's concrete offers, concrete actions, concrete work stream. And my colleagues will come back to in the different time of presentation announcement of the company to show the concrete results, thanks to this partnership. We need those company. We need those top leading companies to help us to scale.
I think there are still a lot of questions, but we'll move on to the rest of the presentation. We'll leave the floor to Jean-Christophe, but before, there'll be a short break so that we can clear the set. Thank you.
Thank you.
There will be a second Q&A session after Christopher Guérin's closing remarks. Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jean-Christophe Juillard. I am Nexans' Chief Financial Officer. After Chris' presentation on the need to change, and the previous one from my colleagues on what and how to change, I would like now to share with you the financial impact of this strategy and detail our new financial trajectory. Here starts the journey. I will first spend a minute or two on where we stand two years into our 2019-2021 plan. I will also give you an overview of our 2024 ambitions. I will explain why amplifying our electrification portfolio makes a lot of sense financially for Nexans, and I will show you how we intend to create more value. As M&A will be a key aspect of our new financial trajectory, I will go over our process and what we will be focusing on.
Finally, I will explain our path to our 2024 financial commitments and explain our cash flow allocation. But before moving to 2024, let's spend a minute on where we stand against our commitment taken two years ago. Well, we can say that without the terrible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, our 2021 targets would have been achieved. But again, because of the global recession due to COVID, our plan is now pushed by one year. If you recall, late 2018, we committed on three financial metrics: EBITDA, return on capital employed, and free cash flow. Let's take them one by one. First, EBITDA. Our target was to achieve EUR 530 million in 2021.
I announce this morning a range of EUR 410 million-EUR 450 million for this year, considering, of course, scope changes and the fact all businesses of Nexans have not yet fully recovered from COVID. Now, I confirm that the 2018 EBITDA commitment will be delivered in 2022. Second, importantly, we committed on achieving 15% return on capital employed. With a target range of 12.5%-14.5%, as I announced this morning, we will be very close this year. I am now confident we will exceed the 2022 roadshow target. Finally, we said two things on free cash flow. First, that we would reach EUR 200 million cash generation by 2021. As I said, with COVID impacting our revenues, this is postponed by one year.
We also said that we would deliver EUR 200 million of free cash flow over the 3 years of the plan. Thanks to Shift, disciplined execution, and despite COVID, we are very close to achieving our objective in 2020. So I am highly confident we will exceed the target of EUR 200 million cumulative free cash flow in 2021. My main message here is that 2 years ago, we committed to a deep transformation of the company with strong financial commitments. I am happily reporting today that we are well on track to achieve what we said we would achieve. Now, let's move to our financial commitments for the next strategic phase of Nexans, meaning the period from 2022 to 2024. As Chris and my colleagues have explained this afternoon, we will move the company to pure electrification.
The big question is, of course, what does this mean in terms of financial? Well, it means first, as you can see, we will not target sales growth. Nexans sales will only moderately grow from roughly EUR 6 billion today to something between EUR 6 billion to EUR 7 billion by 2024. However, the structure of our revenues will drastically change. Today, the electrification part of the business amounts to about EUR 3 billion. We will grow that part organically to about EUR 3.5 billion by 2024. Then, our businesses in Industry Solutions and telecom will be replaced by about EUR 2 billion to EUR 3 billion of new electrification businesses by 2024. This is what you see in yellow in the graph. During the same period, we will reduce the sales of the Metallurgy business from EUR 1 billion to roughly EUR 0.5 billion. Why?
Because if we see Metallurgy as a critical business, it is dilutive in terms of margin for the group. So we will make sure that we serve Nexans' needs first, and then reduce significantly external sales to cap the dilutive effect. What does this rotation of assets imply? It means we will simplify the portfolio, focus our resources, and scale up in value. In terms of financial performance, we will take two separate commitments. First, improve our ratios on our existing electrification business. We are committed at Nexans to grow EBITDA as percentage of sales from a range of 8%-10% to a range of 11%-13% by 2024. This is a 3-point increase. Further in the presentation, I will demonstrate how we get there.
In terms of cash conversion, we will move from a 30% normalized cash conversion rate in 2021, to a ratio above 40% in 2024. Return on capital employed will also increase significantly from about 15% in 2021 to above 20% in 2024. These are the commitments of Nexans for 2024, based on what we own today, meaning our existing electrification portfolio. As we've done in the past, we will put in place strict but sustainable management measures to monitor and report the progress on each indicator. Additionally, we said we will rotate the portfolio towards full electrification, replacing industry solution and telecom businesses by EUR 2-3 billion of new electrification sales. This is what we call inorganic transformation. It will be accretive for Nexans, thanks to shift and the expected synergies.
You see here the ratio for the group in 2024; they will improve as follow: EBITDA margin will expand, expand from a range from 6.5%-8% in 2021, to a range between 10%-12% by 2024. Again, later in the presentation, I will explain how we will achieve that. At the same time, we will roughly double the normalized cash conversion rate and exceed 40%. We will not commit at that stage on return on capital employed for the group in 2024, as it will depend on acquisition multiple. While we're committing to the growth, to the M&A, and to the swap of asset, we must also ensure that Nexans will not grow and transform itself at any cost.
As you can see here, we'll, we'll remain disciplined, and we will maintain several strict ratios to protect our balance sheet. First, operating working capital will not exceed 6% of current sales. Second, maintenance CapEx on standard sales will not exceed 2.5%. And finally, our net leverage will never exceed 2.5x EBITDA. These are Nexans' financial commitments for 2024. Today, as Chris said before, all Nexans businesses are good businesses. So why choose full electrification? First, as you can see, in 2020, electrification is a significant part of Nexans. It represents roughly 55% of our sales, but 66% of the EBITDA. And with 77% of the CapEx for the last three years, electrification is where Nexans has been highly investing. Also, as you can see, on all our key financial metrics, electrification is always more attractive. ROCE.
ROCE in electrification is 200 basis points above other cable businesses. Cash conversion is 500 basis points better for electrification, mainly thanks to lower working capital needs. Finally, EBITDA margin is also attractive, and we intend to further improve this margin with the deployment of Shift Prime. If you recall the summary page at the beginning of the presentation, we made a commitment on the existing electrification to increase EBITDA margin by 300 basis points, from 8%-10% today to 11%-13% by 2024. Let me now explain how we will achieve that. As you can see, we intend to boost EBITDA by EUR 150 million over the three years of the plan. We have four main actions on how to achieve that.
First, we will continue to streamline our cost base and improve our industrial performance to cope with inflation. We expect EUR 50 million from these actions. Second, EBITDA growth will come through additional volume from the building and utilities businesses, and also the ramp-up of Charleston and Aurora in the subsea business. We expect EUR 50 million from this. Third, Shift. With pricing improvement through innovation, as well as better selectivity of our customers, and also reduced complexity, EUR 40 million will be achieved with Shift. Fourth and final, we will invest strategic CapEx in our subsea business to increase capacity by two additional lines of production. Those two lines will contribute EUR 45 million EBITDA by 2024. This is how we will improve Nexans' EBITDA margin to reach between 11%-13% by 2024.
As we did in our previous equity story, we will also commit to deliver our achievement on a year-by-year basis. As you can see, for each of the first three pillars, the growth is quite linear. We are getting in about one-third of the target every year. The exception is the strategic CapEx, where obviously, due to the construction timeline, capacity will not be available before the last year of the plan, 2024. That's the phasing we are committing on. From 2022, I will be reporting to you every six months during our financial communication on how we are progressing on our action plan.
After the roadmap on how to improve, how to improve our current electrification business, let's now turn to the next big part of our equity story, the rotation of our businesses for Nexans to become a pure electrification player, and where this will take us by 2024. As explained earlier, a critical part of our plan is to rotate our portfolio to pure electrification. By 2024, we will have divested roughly EUR 2 billion of sales. They will be replaced by M&A for EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion of new electrification sales. The way we approach M&A is critical. Our M&A strategy is focusing on, first, transformative consolidation, meaning large asset that will generate scale effects and synergies, but also bolt-on innovation that will complete our electrification offer and enable Nexans to scale up with a new value proposition....
Our aim is, of course, to seek incremental growth with higher margin for the bolt-on acquisition and accretive cash flows for the large consolidation. Let's have a look now at Nexans' financial trajectory, 2021-2024, and how we intend to amplify value creation. A key commitment we are making today is to expand Nexans' EBITDA margin by 3-4 points by 2024. I explained previously how we will reach the first step, the scale-up on our existing electrification business, which is the EUR 150 million explained in the previous bridge. I also talked earlier in the presentation about the reduction of the sales of the Metallurgy portfolio and how this will improve the margin percentage of Nexans. We estimate this improvement to represent about 50 basis points.
The rest of the equity story is based on asset swap, divesting the non-electrification businesses and replacing them by new electrification asset. We expect that this rotation will improve margin by about 100 basis points. With a discipline and focused execution of our plan, we are confident Nexans will achieve the global target of 10%-12% EBITDA margin by 2024. Finally, the key remaining question is: how are we going to allocate the cash flow generated during the period? Let me take you through that. Our equity story, the way it is built, the commitments we are taking, will generate about EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million of cash over the three years of the plan. Before M&A, we propose to allocate the cash flow according to three main buckets.
The first bucket is a strategic CapEx investment, discussed earlier, which will represent about 40%-50% of the total cash flow of the company. This strategic CapEx is mainly the new capacity in the high voltage subsea business, as explained by Ragnhild earlier. Next, we plan to allocate a fair part of the cash flow generation to shareholders through dividend payments. Nexans has not been consistent in paying dividends to shareholders in the past. This period is over. We are committed to allocate EUR 150 million-EUR 170 million of the cash flow generation to dividends, with a minimum payout ratio of 20% each year. Finally, the remaining part of the cash flow will be used to further reduce the company's debt. Pre-M&A, we are targeting that by 2024, Nexans will be debt-free.
So with a debt-free balance sheet and without adding a leverage of 2.5 times EBITDA, the estimated firepower for M&A of Nexans goes up to EUR 2 billion. On top of this already significant liquidity, we will have the cash coming from the divestments. Altogether, cash available will be between EUR 2.5 billion-EUR 3 billion. I hope I have clearly demonstrated how we intend to grow the financial performance of our company and showed you the key financial target that we aim to achieve over the next three years. To conclude, the three key messages are: one, we will rotate our assets to become a pure electrification player, while at the same time, we are committed to materially improve our existing electrification assets, improving our existing electrification asset by delivering EUR 150 million of additional EBITDA over the three-year of the plan.
Again, this is before M&A. 2, we will scale up and improve our EBITDA margin by 400 basis points. We'll do that while reaching a cash conversion rate above 40%. 3, we will preserve our balance sheet with a strict and disciplined approach, while at the same time financing CapEx and M&A and ensuring a fair return to our shareholders. I will conclude my presentation by saying the following: the return of your trust and support over the past two years has been a critical step for Nexans. We achieved this by delivering on our commitments. We will continue to do so. I will now hand over to Chris for the conclusion. Thank you.
Thank you, Jean-Christophe. Just a word of conclusion. By 2024, Nexans will simplify its model to amplify the impact. By 2024, we will become the operational link from production of energy to transmission, to distribution, to usage of this energy. Nexans will become the first electrification pure player of its industry. By 2024, Nexans will support strategic customer in multi-region, while scaling innovation on digital services. By 2024, 25% of our product will be connected. All our offers will be amplified, thanks to our partner networks on the new mission-based ecosystem on electrification. By 2024, Nexans will amplify its carbon neutrality milestone. On our E3 license to operate, new performance model will be deployed everywhere in the world. We thank you for your attention. Now, let's open for the second Q&A session. Thank you.
Welcome back. Just give us a few seconds before Chris comes back from their second studio, and then we will kick off with your questions.
Thank you. Thank you. I'm ready.
So for now, we have mostly written questions. Of course, if you want to connect, and ask an audio question, do not hesitate, just press star one. We'll start with questions from, Daniela, from Goldman Sachs. Will the divestments and M&A likely take place at the same time, or will divestments come first, and then the cash generated be redeployed in the later part of the plan to acquisitions?
So basically, I think, Chris, you touched a little bit about the answer in the previous Q&A. We likely they will come around the same time, but we don't control necessarily all of those steps. What is important is even if they don't come at the same time, we have the balance sheet to support divestment or M&A first, and vice versa. So for us, I mean, for the financing of our M&A and the divestment, it's not an issue, so.
All right, then, second question from Daniela. Free cash flow, the range between EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million, is in 2024 or is it cumulative 2021 to 2023?
Cumulative. It's the three years of the equity story, cash flow generation, pre-M&A and pre-CapEx. Strategic CapEx, new CapEx are the two lines that Ragnhild described.
Then another question. Sorry, so, yeah, so can will be the investments take place, spins, IPOs, sales?
I will not comment on that. I mean, it's not the proper time to do so, and it's not the right time to comment on the type of divestment.
Maybe one last question from Daniela: How will the KPIs change in the organization to adapt to this new phase?
Well, there is the financial KPIs that you mentioned already.
Yeah, the financial key KPI described in the presentation, and basically monitoring the commercial margin improvement with the volume part on one side, which is amplified. And then after that, the part of innovation and services, which is come with Shift Prime, which is more, I would say, the pricing impact on the commercial margin, so the increase of the commercial margin percentage in value.
This is how we will report and how we will measure and report on a regular basis to you guys on during our financial presentation.
Yeah, and we said earlier. This is as well what Vincent just elaborate with some example on the new metrics with the innovation driver. As it is, we are not looking at only the working capital with the EBITDA, because we consider that we have make already a structural step change in the working capital management. So we are making sure that each unit are performing on EBITDA in percentage.
... but as well on conversion of EBITDA to free cash flow. And we are raising the bar for each unit. But I will, I have no time to elaborate on the other KPI, which is linked to our E3 model, because it's really fascinating. We have seen a lot of strong correlation between profit driver units and environment KPIs, on engagement KPIs. At the end, it's everything is about management. Whatever we are talking about, financial KPIs, environment, on engagement, is about management, and we believe that we have quite a good recipe to make sure that we are steering the wheel in the right direction on those three dimensions.
One other written question from Alejandro: How are you managing the impact of copper prices?
So we are not exposed, I mean, slightly exposed, but not exposed, I would say, generally speaking, to copper prices changes. All the flows in copper are hedged. There are no impact on EBITDA, no impact on working capital, as we have as much asset and liabilities, meaning tons in debt as we have in inventory and receivables, so a natural hedge on our balance sheet. The only part where we are slightly exposed is on our core exposure, the CoEx, which is a small quantity of copper in our plants that we don't hedge, that is turning for immediate needs, but that's very limited.
I presented this morning, for instance, we had in our net income, a copper CoEx impact of EUR 40 million, positive EUR 40 million in our net, net income in 2020, mainly due to the appreciation of the copper price at the end, at the end of the year. But that's really, I would say, the only impact we have. Everything is hedged, and, and, we are, protected on this.
Before we take another written questions, I think we have Lucie from Morgan Stanley, who's on audio. Lucie?
Hi. Thank you, and thank you again for taking my question. Thank you also earlier for the color, even on some questions that I hadn't actually asked. I have three questions. The first one is trying to understand a little bit more the objective you have in terms of electrification, because if I look at the sales you're looking for in 2021 and the objective in 2024, it seems to suggest about 5% CAGR in terms of organic sales for what I would call the core Nexans electrification that you have today, and that seems quite modest compared to the numbers and perspectives you provided earlier in the presentation. I think there was some 4% CAGR for distribution, but as much as double-digit growth for offshore and interconnection.
So can you explain the 5% CAGR here, please?
So, definitely. So what we're talking here is existing electrification. Existing electrification is, therefore, the portfolio we have today. The only, I would say, additional part to this, to this, electrification, existing electrification business, will come, at the end of the equity story, because it will come in 2024, and this is a two line of CapEx, which will represent roughly about EUR 200 million, EUR 220 million, to be more precise, of sales.
For high voltage-
Incremental.
Incremental at the end. The rest, which is about 2.1%, so 2.1% is this new CapEx. The rest of the 4.8 is basically growing the existing part of the business. Again, we are not looking for volume.
Yeah
... because this is, this is, our mandate, and we are consistent with our strategy. We are not looking for growth volume, but again, the growth will come through pricing, innovation, as described, services, and, and, and therefore, it will be more an impact on EBITDA and on margin than on sales.
Yeah, we want to find the right equation between pure volume growth with a value equation in terms of free cash flow generation. So of course, we slightly move in the coming years, depending of competition, the load of the factories, the convergence of project, that we may have some, I don't know, slippage of projects sometimes. We don't know, but we need to determine really what is the right value at the end, which is the best for the company in terms of free cash flow generation. So yes, growth will be there, that's for sure. Maybe we may be a bit more shy in some project because of risk exposure, but we will take still a significant part of it.
Thank you. So just to make sure I understand well the answer. So in the existing electrification portfolio that you have today, and excluding the extra sales from the line addition in Charleston and Halden, you are de facto expecting a low single-digit organic growth between 2021 and 2024?
Yes.
Very clear. My second question was also around the shift in terms of profitability. So, the step up from the existing electrification portfolio was very clear, but then you are talking about a margin for the group once the M&A will have taken place and the divestment will have taken place, which is actually, you know, quite below the margin you have in electrification. So is it because you're expecting to buy kind of assets in electrification, which are lower margin than your core, and you're not expecting to be able to lift them up? Or you think it will take more time to lift the margin profile?
No, no, no, Lucie, in fact, it's because when we're talking about electrification, we only talking about the asset of Building & Territories and high voltage. When we're talking the overall group, we are including, obviously, our headquarters, our corporate cost, which are driving obviously margin down slightly. And we have also the Metallurgy business, which represents at the end of the equity story, about EUR 500 million, EUR 600 million of sales, but with a margin, EBITDA margin level, which is quite dilutive, because we're talking between 1, 1.2 to 1.6%, EBITDA on sales. So the addition of those two explain why you see a much higher, I would say, EBITDA percentage on existing electrification business versus when you look at the entire portfolio.
But that means that you're not expecting really an uplift either from synergies and so on from-
Yeah.
-the target?
Yeah, we do model some synergy, and we are expecting some synergy. For the large consolidation, for instance, we will have synergy with our existing businesses, depending on the region and depending on the type of business. For sure, we will also... And this is why we have, I would say, on the inorganic M&A part, inorganic part, we have a range between 50 basis points to 150, with a midpoint of 100. It's because depending on where we acquire the business, the time you realize the synergies-
Yeah, what we acquire.
What we acquire, the time you realize the synergies, the time you apply our Shift methodology to transform the existing asset, basically can be more or less accretive for the group at the end of the year 2024, which is the last year of the plan. This is why we kept the range, which is about 100 basis point range on the two. Definitely, synergy and transformation will apply to the business, so they will be, at the end, accretive for the group.
Yeah, we will be certainly more vocal the day when this acquisition will come into force, with the concrete synergy that will come with it.
Yes.
We'll now take a question-
Thank you very-
Oh, sorry. We'll now take a question from Sean.
Oh, yes, just, just one on... If, if I can come back to your target, are, are there any synergies in your target, first of all? And secondly, given high valuations in the market, particularly for a company that's exposed to future growth trends in electrification, you know, your EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion war chest for acquisitions, I mean, what, what kind of assumption, pricing assumption do you, do you have in there?
Okay, so synergy is the first question. Yes, there is some synergy, but we have remained, I would say, conservative about the synergy. We, we take that more as an upside. Again, it really depends on when we, what type of asset and when we acquire the asset and the geography of the asset. So it's, we don't want to be too bullish on that, but we have a, I would say, a little bit of synergies in into our model. The other question is about our
Multiple.
Yes, multiple. So yes, definitely we believe that on the what we call the transformative consolidation asset, likely Building & Territories assets, larger scale, and accessories on top of them, we will apply Shift. We will grow the margin. We might pay them at a market multiple, which is we could compare them to current existing asset multiple. But we will also be selling assets, for instance, our ISP or our T&D assets, which are a higher multiple.
The divestment, between the divestment and the acquisition asset, after we do the transformation, we believe that with the EUR 2 billion of cash available, not including the divestiture or cash flows, will be way sufficient to basically do our equity story and transform the company.
Next question?
All right, we'll move back to written questions. First question comes from Akash, from J.P. Morgan: Looking at the inorganic growth targets, are you targeting to acquire companies with higher margins compared to assets that are divestment candidates? Or the higher margin in inorganic growth includes margin improvements of acquired assets, meaning you don't need to pay a high multiple to acquire such companies.
Well, it's very difficult to answer the question at that stage. It will be probably a combination of what you say, Akash. So there will be a company that likely we acquire at a lower multiple, but that we will transform and take a little bit of the transformation to raise them to the expected level of profitability for the group. There could be some very specific segment. If we talk, for example, accessories, that could be a different multiple range. So it's really a mix of all of the above, and we will be reporting on that.
But I want to elaborate on answer, which is as well a bit different. I think, you know, in your question, you're taking acquisition like it will be as normal, you know, like we were not simplifying our model. Like we were like, you know, next month, and we say we will make acquisition. This is not what we say. We say that we are simplifying our model to amplify our impact. The fact that we will concentrate all our effort on four macro sectors give us a strong leverage of improvement of performance because of the synergy between business. We have as well our own recipe of success in terms of transformation. Whatever we are talking about, the construction market usage, we are talking about the distribution, or we are talking about the high voltage.
We have our own recipe that goes much beyond pure synergy cost or pure purchasing effect. On the simplification of all the companies from 34 subsectors to 12. It's a fundamental change. You know, and back to your question, Sean, I think it was Sean or that asked me the question regarding customer portfolio. You've seen what we've done in 2020. You know, reducing the complexity at customer level, product level, unit by unit, generate a fantastic free cash flow on a record low debt since 10 years because of the simplification. So this recipe of simplification that we have been able to implement since two years with patience, with granular analytics, unit per unit, working, spending time on the return on capital employed for each unit, we will now scale it at activities level.
We consider that this simplification effect should have a tremendous potential for Nexans in the coming future to really amplify their financial result, but as well to amplify its offer versus its customer. Because we will become a pure electrification pure player, and we will be the only one in the entire ecosystem to be present worldwide. It's always difficult to say in advance what will be the impact of this simplification when the turnover will move from EUR 3 billion to EUR 6-7 billion, but I am extremely positive on all the creation, the value creation it will generate. Oh, yeah.
We have some questions now from, David from Bank of America. Just to clarify, Services & Solutions is definitely included in divestment of Non-Core?
Yes. Yes, David. The answer is yes. Believe me, we love that business. We believe, we are convinced that the team have done a fantastic job. We have to find the right time as well, yeah, because the Automotive Harnesses is getting better, but we don't want, you know, we are not on a rush to divest, but we need to invest. This business needs investment to move from the today's world of cars to the electrical mobility, we need to keep investing to follow our car manufacturer demand. So yes, we believe that long term, medium term will not be the best owner of this asset, but it's a fantastic, a fantastic asset.
Another question: Can you confirm you don't need to raise equity to get to your desired EUR 2-3 billion of inorganic sales?
Yes, I do confirm. Confirm.
and another
Confirm we don't need. Confirm we don't need. Yeah, exactly.
And another question, and last question from David. 25% connected products by 2024 target, what is this today? How much of this can you do organically versus M&A? Are you going after market share from Schneider, Siemens, etc.?
No, no. We are not getting market share from Schneider. They're on different parameters than Nexans. They are more on the usage world, and they are making a fantastic work. We want to connect our product. Our aim is not to connect the product of the others, but we want to connect our product. So today, we are close to less than 5% of product connected. We will rise it to 25%. But you know, if we do it by our own means, it will take 10 years. Look, look, look, those fantastic company that you mentioned, David, is Siemens and Schneider. It take 10 years of development, and they have made a fantastic transformation.
We aim to do a lot in the next four years, and that's the reason of partnership. More exclusive partnership will come into force in the coming years in order to help us to scale much faster because we need those resources, we need this knowledge, to really improve our product to become a bit, I will say, passive or slightly active to smart. We need to make our product smarter, and that requires some software competence that we will either acquire, either develop with a partner.
Now, we have a question from Luigi, from Equita.
Yeah.
Can... Sorry.
Yes.
Okay. Can you elaborate on the implied top line organic growth assumptions on the target to 2022, 2024, for the different business divisions, and which divisions are expected to contribute the most in EBITDA?
Well, basically, I can color a little bit what we're assuming, where we're taking as assumption. We're taking assumption, for instance, from the Building and Territories business, almost 3%, 2.9%, to be precise, of compounded annual growth. High voltage before the CapEx, about 2%, but after we put the CapEx, we're talking more in excess of 10%. And overall, we assume 4.8%-5% growth for the electrification, so the organic part of the business, which is above the market of 4.3%.
We have a follow-up question from Daniela, from Goldman Sachs: By key KPIs, I was more thinking about how you will change people compensation down the organization.
So today, already, we were making a big, a big change in 2021 regarding this E3 model that we'll bring you more elements in the coming months. People are awarded unit by unit every quarter regarding their performance on environmental aspect, engagement aspect, and of course, financial. And there is a part of this, I will say, three-dimensional objective, which is as well part of the compensation of our top 100 managers.
... We have another question from Akash, from J.P. Morgan. How this strategic shift will change DNA profile of the company? Wanted to get some sense of what operating margin target implied by 10%-12% EBITDA margin by 2024.
There will be an increase, obviously, of our D&A, depreciation, amortization, mainly coming from the new CapEx of the high voltage, and that will increase slightly. We're seeing basically a D&A level to be close to EUR 190 million for the end of the equity period.
We now have a question from Jean-François from Oddo in French.
Now in English, now.
I'll try and translate it. So you tried to maintain the Metallurgy activity within the group. How do you think you will improve profitability in this activity?
But it's what JC just show you in his presentation, that there is a pretty high level of sales today in the Metallurgy. We will shrink that level of sales to make sure that we are 100% focused on our own mean. So Metallurgy objective is to grow with Nexans growth, but not to be there to supply Metallurgy to our competitors in the future. So we want slowly but surely, we want by 2024 to shift all our Metallurgy asset for our own needs as much as we can. And in order to... You know, it's beyond profitability, is to avoid supply chain disruption. And I think is what we've seen during COVID time, during countries lockdown.
You know, it's copper, it's a pretty expensive materials. You don't have weeks of stocks, of inventories in the units of copper. You have a very tight supply chain of 24-48 days. We want to make sure to have no disruption at all in our units everywhere in the world, specifically in the year to come, because of all these conversions of demand that will come for copper and aluminum. And as a reason that we want to ensure the consistency of what we say, making sure that our customers will not suffer from supply chain disruption.
We have another question from David, from Bank of America, on EV charging. How much value is there for Nexans? Are you just producing the cables or the entire unit? How do you scale this business?
Yes, we are elaborating a business model for the business. So we are doing not the cable. We are doing the cables, but more importantly, we are doing the charging station, the hardware of the charging station and the software of the charging station. And we are finding, we try to find, which is on the way, a big scale partnership in order to implement those charging station, as soon as we can, broadly in Europe. We are still at early stage. We are still checking the fundamental quality of the business model that we are putting in place in this year , but we'll come back to your question, certainly in one year from now, to bring concrete objective on development.
We now have some follow-ups from Lucie, from Morgan Stanley. Can you detail what you do in the service business, in the project division, and the current uptake?
And the current what?
The current uptake.
We're getting Services & Solutions , so we have reallocating some pretty good, big part of R&D resources to Services & Solutions . We are hiring new profile in IoT field, supporting with our partners. What we do specifically right now, I will give you, but this is the example of Vincent, the end-to-end value, end-to-end supply chains. We help our customers to reduce their working capital by understanding what is the level of inventory that we have in our own factory for them. What level of factory, sorry, what level of inventory do they have of our product on their logistic platform? What do they have in terms of what is the level of inventory that they have as well on the front end of the customers?
We are elaborating the value of cash consumed on this entire value chain. By bringing IoT, by bringing, I would say, digital combined all together, our objective is to streamline this inventory level, to reduce the lead time, even if we have to increase the price to absorb such services for our customers. In order really to bring them an equivalent to 40%-50% working capital reduction, and to have a very lean supply from Nexans plants up to the front end customer usage. This is one example. We have in total 25 service and solution that we have currently developed, but I will not elaborate in front of my competitor.
Another question from Lucie: Do you see risk from storage structure, as if energy is generated locally, it does not need as much grid investments?
Right. To storage, energy storage will come. We need—the world needs energy storage. The world needs hydrogen, as well, to scale up in the coming years. But this is topic that we are talking since 2 years, and that are rising year, months after months. But look, we've talked about the wind offshore development in the last 10 years. Last 10 years. Now, it starts to scale up big, but it takes 10 years. So we need energy storage? Of course, it will reduce the development of grid modernization on, or some other aspect, but I don't see that before 2028 and 2030.
One last question. Considering the scale of M&A activity you are pursuing-
Shall we assume you have already advanced discussions on both acquisitions and divestments?
The answer is, we have some discussion, but I will not elaborate, furthermore.
We'll move to two questions from Klaus. What will be the main driver behind M&A besides electrification, technology, production capacity, synergies?
I can see, I can see the second part of the question.
Okay.
I think he said this one is interesting as well, combined.
All right. Would you prefer doing a few large acquisitions or a number of smaller transactions?
Yeah, yeah, Klaus, it's a great question. First, we say where we want to go. We say that acquisition will be on one of the top three sectors, which is, or four sectors that are taking electrification. So already, it's a very strong signal on what we want to do. And secondly, why we want to get there is because we know that the simplification of the company will generate a very strong amplification of financial results and as well capabilities of the company. So there will be two set of M&A consolidation, because we believe that generalist maybe make you a big company, but you are losing leadership at the end, sectors by sectors, because of very strong specialists, either in industry, in telecom, is the same on building.
You know, there is a company in construction market that nobody's talking about at all in Europe, specifically, Southwire. You know, Southwire is a EUR 4.5 billion company. It's a huge company in the construction market. So there are top-notch specialists. So we will converge on electrification. The second part of M&A, which is not acquiring competitors, will be acquiring innovation. So in terms of value, how does it play? Consolidation, the value of acquisition will be per company between EUR 200 million up to EUR 1.2 billion, from EUR 200 million up to EUR 1.2 billion. Of course, how will we decide? We will determine what are the very best strategic assets that we have screened, where they are localized.
Do we have synergy with our local activities already in place? And if we implement our Shift transformation program, will we be able to generate significant synergy levels? So that's for the consolidation part. Regarding the bolt-on innovation, M&A, regarding bolt-on, it's a smaller scale level at the beginning. We are talking about EUR 25 million up to EUR 150 million revenue level of company, but bringing a specific expertise, know-how, competence that we don't have in Nexans. So that's where we will play.
We'll now move on to a question from Benjamin, from Kepler Cheuvreux. What is the expected cost of your new plan? What amount of restructurations can we expect within 2022-2024?
There will be no specific new plan per se, like we've had in the past. There will not be additional or exceptional restructuring for us to deliver this new equity story. Basically, we continue, and we'll continue to have, I would say, a normalized level of restructuring, that between around EUR 50 million that we are continuing, we will continue to have during the equity until 2024, but nothing different than that.
We now have a question from Max, from Credit Suisse. On the portfolio rotation, could you help us understand how you will be able to do this and be debt free at the end of the process?
We will not be debt free at the end of the process. Maybe it's not clear in the presentation, but the cash flow allocation I presented was pre-M&A. So basically, EUR 500-600 million cash flow allocation among three buckets, the CapEx financing for the new CapEx in high voltage, a fair return to shareholders with dividend, and then deleveraging the company, and just before M&A, this is basically the plan. And doing that, again, before divestment and M&A, would be debt free by 2024. Now, obviously, to add on top of to that, we change the picture because the purpose of this equity story is also based on M&A.
What we're saying is basically, with the leverage maximized at 2.5 times EBITDA, we have room to go into debt within that ratio and to, with a total firepower of about EUR 2 billion for, our M&A, obviously, leveraging the balance sheet, but respecting this, this ratio of 2.5 times. And on top of that, we'll have also the cash flow, from the divestitures.
Now, I believe this is the last question from Daniela from Goldman Sachs. On acquiring innovation, can you help delineate how far from hardware cable assets are you willing to go in the electrification space, i.e., can you add completely new products in adjacent areas?
... Yeah, new products, but as well, services that enable customers to reduce risk. Because all the hundreds interviews we've done recently to support these strategic chapters confirm that, of course, there is needs, but customers want us to reduce their constraints. For example, we say, if I keep a very basic example on supply chain, we are imposing because of our own process constraints, 6-12 weeks lead time to customers. So 6-12 weeks lead times to customers means that the customers need to have 6-12 weeks of cables inventory, pure cash. So of course, we are working on this dimension. Of course, we will bring more services because we believe that putting IoT on our cables will help us to generate higher value for our customers.
How will be this part on the total turnover in 2024? We will give you more information in the coming months, because we are confirming the plan is there, is set. We are a bit more advanced compared to the question that we had before on the consolidation aspect in terms of M&A, because the screening is done, the list of 20-20 candidates have been set. There is some already some discussion. Innovation M&A process is just starting now. We have our roadmap, we have our radar screen, where to focus on, but we deserve, I think, more time with you, Daniela, on all the community to explore this new space. It's over?
Yes. Yeah, no more questions.
Thank you. We hope that you will... You know, it's virtual, and it's difficult not to be with you physically, face-to-face, but we will end this session. We hope that you like it. I think there was a little problem during your speech because of the two studios, but it has been fixed in one minute, you see. But thanks a lot for your attention. We have more than 1,500 people connected, and we hope that we have answered your questions. We done this session with love, passion, conviction, that it's time to change. Thank you very much, and stay tuned. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.