Good morning, everybody here in Levallois and online. Welcome to the presentation of our 2023 results and the outlook for 2024. I'm here today with Félicie Burelle, our Managing Director. Bonjour, Félicie. And with Stéphanie Laval, VP, Investor Relations, and we will present you the numbers, the highlights for 2023 and for 2024. Before starting the presentation, I propose that we start with a short video. Let's start with the presentation. And as you can see, that is the new PO. And basically, 2023 was the first year of the new PO after 2022, where we had some acquisition in lighting, in electrification. 2023 was the first year for us with this new product portfolio. Therefore, a very rich year we will comment right now. A rich year based on the very strong performance of our historical business.
When we talk about historical business, we talk about our bumper business, about the fuel tank business, and module business, which is improving year after year in terms of market share, in terms of profitability, in terms of growth, in terms of free cash flow generation. And thanks to this strong performance, we are able to transform the company and to go for new ways, as shown before, as explained before as well. Like, for example, hydrogen. And hydrogen was also very strong year for us in 2023. Commercial successes: EUR 2 billion additional order intake in 2023 outside of Europe, mainly North America, but also in Asia. And we are building up capacities in hydrogen everywhere in the world to support the development of hydrogen, mainly for the light commercial mobility, but also the heavy mobility.
We still believe in hydrogen, and we are convinced that hydrogen will play a very important role in the decarbonization of the heavy mobility and the light commercial mobility. 2023 was the first year of lighting at PO. The acquisition was finished in October 2022. Therefore, the first year of lighting within PO, with massive improvement in terms of operation, with customer trust being confirmed, with a very solid order intake in lighting. Therefore, we are convinced that it was the right decision for us to go for lighting and that lighting will give us many opportunities in the future to continue to develop the company for the lighting business, but also lighting being integrated in the other divisions of the group. Then carbon neutrality. We have strong commitments for carbon neutrality. We are also improving year after year.
Next year, 2025, will be the first year of carbon neutrality at PO for the Scope 1 and 2. We are on track with this target. We are also continuing to reduce our CO2 emission on the complete scope, on the Scope 3 of what is impacting us. Therefore, many achievements. We have only four here, but there are many more than four for last year. When we talk about numbers, that was the first year for PO with a turnover above EUR 10 billion. That is always very important for a company. We are very proud of that. We had a very strong growth, 20% of growth last year. We had also very strong growth in our historical business because without acquisition, we had 13.4% of growth last year, outperforming the market.
Confirming what I said before, that our historical business is gaining market shares, is able to continue to develop, and is contributing a lot to the transformation of the group. We had also a fantastic year in terms of commercial successes. Our order intake was two years of revenue. That means we don't disclose the numbers, but there is a two in front of the number. Fantastic number, confirming that the customers are trusting us and that we made the right decisions in terms of strategy in the recent years. That means we have the right product portfolio. The customers are willing to develop with us, and that is confirmed again with the order intake in 2023. Financial performance is above the adjusted figures we communicated last year in October. Operating margin: EUR 395 million, which is more than the EUR 370 million-EUR 390 million, which was our commitment for last year.
The free cash flow: EUR 227 million, above the EUR 190 million-EUR 210 million, which we did communicate as well last year in October. That means at the end of the day, we had a very strong end of the year 2023 with better numbers than announced to the market in October last year. When we talk about growth, it was important for us to come back to what did happen in the last years. You see the development of the automotive market, the production volumes. Between 2018, sorry, and 2023 did decrease by 4% globally, but PO was able to grow by 38% in the same time. A big part of the growth is organic growth. Therefore, we are used to adapt to a changing market. We are used to anticipate the transformation of the market.
The track record of the last years, plus the order intake of 2023, is giving us a lot of confidence that we will continue to outperform the market in the coming years, even if there are a lot of uncertainty, even if newcomers is popping up, and even if geographies will be differently balanced in the coming years. Therefore, the track record plus the order intake is giving us a lot of confidence in our capacity to continue to grow and to outperform the market. When you talk about outperformance of the market, you can see the picture by region. That is the like-for-like. That means without the acquisition, Europe remains our biggest market. It's 51% of our turnover.
Clearly, we have the target to reduce our dependency on Europe in the coming years because we believe we have other geographies where we have more opportunities to grow than in Europe. Nevertheless, we outperform the market in Europe. We continue to grow in Europe. We will continue to grow in Europe in the coming years. We had a very solid growth last year in all the businesses by 16.4%. North America, aligned with the market. Since some years, we are outperforming the North American market, which is clearly a target for PO to develop in the coming years.
That will be probably the biggest growth engine for PO in the coming years, North America, where we are putting capacity in place for many, I would say, customers and where we do see a lot of opportunities for us to increase our market share for the actual business, but also to develop new customers in North America. China, we are underperforming the market in China. China, there is a different picture depending on the activity we are in. If we take the fuel tank business in the CES, for sure, we are declining in terms of sales because of the electrification. Therefore, there are less and less tanks being produced in China. The addressable market is going down. The module business is mainly focused on international OEMs suffering from the market transformation. From the other side, our biggest activity in China is a joint venture. We don't consolidate.
For the exterior part business, we have 26% of the Chinese market there. We are maintaining the market share we had in the past. The development of this joint venture is purely in line with the market development. Therefore, it's a different picture in China depending on which business we are talking about. The rest of Asia, growth engine for PO as well, strong outperformance of the market, especially in South Korea and in India. This year, we will put additional capacity in place in India. We will open a new facility in India this year. That is also a very important market for PO where we are continuing to develop in the coming years. Now we move to the business and strategic highlights, and I will comment that together with Félicie Burelle.
I will start, first of all, to talk about the market, but even more about us. That is how the market may develop. These are the S&P numbers. The question is not whether we believe in the numbers or not, but S&P is anticipating growth in the coming years in production. You can see from 88 million cars being produced last year to 94 potentially in 2030, but a strong push to electrification, for sure. I think we have learned in the recent years and months that we don't know how fast the EV is going to develop. But for us, what is important to mention is that we have 75% of our revenues, which don't depend on which kind of powertrain is going to develop, meaning the IES business, bumper, tailgate, the lighting business, and the modules, they don't depend on electrification or combustion engine.
Therefore, it's really important to have a balanced portfolio. 75% doesn't depend on the speed of the electrification. For the rest of the market, meaning for what is depending on powertrain, we are able to address all kinds of technology right now. We have the fuel tank business, which is gaining market share, which is going to be stable in the next five years at PO because we are going to gain market share and to compensate the fact that the addressable market potentially will decline for the CES business. But the electrification today is offering us the opportunity to grow in the electrification, by definition. And hydrogen as well is offering opportunities as well to potentially compensate the decline of the combustion engine. Therefore, we have a very balanced portfolio.
I think the most important for all of us in this uncertainty is to be balanced, also in terms of product portfolio. Order intake last year, you see the 2023, the two in front of the number I was referring to before. That is 2x our revenues. We had already in 2022 a very strong order intake in 2021 as well. What is more important, that the level of order intake, that is the quality of the order intake for us. When you talk about quality, we talk first of all about profitability of the order intake. And the average profitability of order intake is better than what we have in production, mainly because the inflation is already priced in the order intake, which is also a very positive point for the future.
But if we have a look as well on the mix of the order intake, it's pretty balanced again. We have about 55% for ZEV, that means zero emission vehicle, which is in line with the market development. And we have more than 60%, which is outside of Europe. And you may remember that 50% of our sales are in Europe, that we want to continue to develop Europe, but to grow especially in Asia and in North America. And that is reflected in our order intake as well. That means we have more orders being booked outside of Europe than being booked in Europe. If we have a look by division, by activity, also when we talk about the quality of the order intake, IES did beat again its record in order intake.
We do see in IES a strong push for plastic tailgate, more than in the past. We have been booking major businesses for Stellantis, for example, but Audi, the first plastic tailgate for Audi. Because the OEMs, they are all willing to develop new designs to reduce the weight of the vehicle, and plastic is the right technology for that. Recently, we booked an important order for an American OEM in Austin, Texas, also for a plastic tailgate. That means there is a strong push from the industry to go to this technology where we are number one in the world. Therefore, also opportunities here to continue to grow for IES. Lighting at PO, it's EUR 1.2 billion of sales last year, but it was EUR 1.6 billion in terms of order intake.
That is again the demonstration that the customers were waiting for us for Lighting, are supporting us, are believing in our asset, that we have the right asset. Therefore, Lighting will grow in the coming years, and we do anticipate a similar order intake this year for the Lighting business. Modules, one of the challenges for Modules in terms of growth is that we were very dependent on Europe. 70% of the module business was in Europe, and we want for sure to develop in other regions than in Europe. That is done because the order intake of module is 80% outside of Europe, a big part in America and another part in Asia as well. Therefore, Modules will be much more balanced in terms of customers and geographies in the coming years as well.
CES is potentially what we are the most proud of last year because everybody is talking about the combustion engine and the fact that the addressable market will decline. But in CES, we did post a very strong order intake, much higher than the sales last year, more than EUR 3 billion order intake, which is a record for the last years. Showing again that our strategy, the last man-standing strategy, and where we say we want to be the last one, if there is a last one for combustion engine in the coming years, is paying off. We will gain market share from 22% in the past to 30% in the future.
Therefore, we will be able to maintain the CES sales level at a similar level in the next five years at least, which is important for the team, which is important as well for the free cash flow generation of the company and the capacity to continue to invest in new technologies while generating free cash flow and deleveraging the company. New energies, I was mentioning also a very strong order intake, but also here in terms of quality, that is very diversified in terms of geographies. It's one-third in America, one-third in Europe, one-third in Asia, which is again very important in terms of balancing risk and opportunities. More than 90% is not for passenger cars. That is light commercial vehicle and EV mobility, which is also great for PO because, as you know, we want to develop outside of the passenger car mobility.
We also want to develop in all kinds of mobility that is also, we believe, a great opportunity for PO to diversify. Therefore, the order intake was strong in terms of numbers, but very solid in terms of quality when we have a look on profitability, geographies, and technologies as well. One of our targets as well is to diversify our customer portfolio. We all know that in the recent years, the traditional OEMs, most of them, they lost market shares, our main customers, because new OEMs did pop up. For sure, we want to be part of this journey, again, to balance our risk. When we have a look on the BEV market, the BEV market was 12% of the total market last year. It was 15% of PO revenues. That means we are, I would say, in line with the market development.
We have a bit more BEV than the penetration of the BEV market. It's mainly due to the geographies we are in. But we have, I would say, only 24% of our revenues in BEV with the newcomers, the Chinese OEMs, which are the ones at this time winning the race, basically. And we want to develop those customers while maintaining a decent share with the premium OEMs representing 43% of our revenues in BEV and the mass market 33%. Therefore, a topic will be for us to develop this newcomers, which is already a part of our order intake. I was mentioning before what we are doing in Austin, Texas, but we are also developing many Chinese OEMs, talking about NIO, MG, and so on, which are part of our portfolio. Therefore, that will be more balanced in the coming years.
Premium customers are accounting for 40% of our sales. We believe that it makes a lot of sense. It's also stability because premium OEMs are normally more stable in terms of sales than the mass market one. We will continue to maintain at around 40% the share of the premium OEMs. I was mentioning that hydrogen, it gives us the opportunity to enter into a new segment of mobility, meaning not passenger car, but heavy mobility, light commercial mobility, offering different growth perspectives, having less constraints potentially than passenger car mobility in some countries. Therefore, also a potential for additional growth for PO in the future. Therefore, we want to diversify geographies, customers, and we have the right technologies to do that in the future.
We had many launches last year, and the best for us is when we have no information about launches because that means they are flawless. That was the case. We had 64, that is 20 more than the year before. In all the regions of the world, the team of PO did a fantastic job. Everything was again flawless without issue, which is confirming the fact that we have a great team in our 150 factories around the world. You see the split by exterior systems, modules, and powertrain, which does reflect more or less the portfolio of the company. By powertrain as well, many for electric, but still many launches also in the world for either hybrid or purely combustion engine business. The geographies are reflecting our shares in those geographies.
There are many launches in China because in China, there are more and more variants and vehicles being launched, especially in BEV, and we are part of that. Therefore, many launches reflecting the rules. And the best news is there is no issue in our launches. That means we are performing well as well everywhere in the world. We have decided this year to change the way we are reporting to you. And hopefully, we want you to understand a bit better the strategy of the company. And I hope it will help us help you to have more transparency. I know that is something you are asking for since many years. Maybe it doesn't fit 100% to your expectation, but step by step, we are coming to your expectation. But the main reason for that is it does reflect the new profile of the group.
In the past, we did report from one side on Plastic Omnium Industries and Plastic Omnium Modules because they have different kinds of business profile. Now, we have decided to report on one side on exterior systems. And exterior systems, it is IES, bumpers, tailgates, and so on, historical business. And lighting, the newcomers. Why those together? Because there are a lot of synergies on the market in terms of technologies and because we believe there will be more and more lighting being integrated in the bumper business as well. On the other side, we have the powertrain one, which is the CES, traditional fuel tank business. That means where we are coming from. And based on CES, we have been developing in the recent years hydrogen from one side, but also the electrification.
We like to consider the powertrain as one activity in PO, which has to be self-financed in a way and which has to cover all kinds of technologies for our customers. Module, we report separately, even if module is mainly exteriors because, again, we have a different kind of business profile in module than in industry, less investment and lower material margin. But again, a different profile. Therefore, that is the way we are managing the company, the way we want to report as well and to explain to you what we are doing. I hope it will help you to understand better what we are doing. Now, Félicie will give you a bit more information about what we are doing in those activities, what are the short-term challenges or targets and what the middle-term expectation for those activities.
Thank you, Laurent. Good morning to everybody.
So when it comes to the integrated exterior solutions, you know we are pretty convinced that we have a unique position on the market. Why? Because we are a part of the few suppliers on the market to have the external plastic panels, the lighting, and the module activity. And we believe there are very strong synergies in terms of product that can be provided in terms of new solutions to the customers. And we are, we believe also, one of the very few to have a specific organization to tackle this technology roadmap. So more concretely, what does it mean? So in terms of first awards, you can see that we have been awarded already with illuminated panels. So what does it mean? It's either panels or grilles in which we have integrated lighting. You have here two examples, so the Cadillac LYRIQ and the Renault 4EVER.
Two nice first awards. Obviously, that's only the beginning because our intention is really to grow around the full envelope of the car. In the very short term, we are investigating and discussing with OEMs some smart tailgates. What does it mean? It's basically smart modules on the rear of the car where you can obviously integrate a lot of elements, but also from a design perspective, really propose something different to the customer. And we want to do that on the full vehicle, so hopefully also on the roof potentially and on the side, always integrating more and more functionalities and value to catch that external value. And we believe it's clearly a trend, this modularization trend, because that's what will enable a customer to simplify and obviously have a better productivity in the future.
Simplification will be the name of the game in the years to come. So talking about lighting, as you said, Laurent, 2023 was year one for lighting in terms of integration and turnaround. We've really been focusing on optimizing all of our resources and improving the industrial performance. As you know, we were very happy with the quality of the assets that we bought, the two acquisitions that we have made. But obviously, in terms of operation, the level was pretty weak, giving us a lot of opportunities. And again, we really want to recognize the tremendous job that has been done by the team because we managed to cut the run rate of losses by EUR 10 over a year. So thanks to the team again for this achievement. And the second really important lever, as you said, was to restore the customer relationship.
And again, we've been able to demonstrate that with the solid order book of EUR 1.6 billion. Coming back quickly on what has been done, the focus, a lot of stuff has been done, but two key topics that we can highlight: the reduction of inventories and the reduction in labor cost, all of that enabling us to generate and to cut the losses over a year. I'll come back to that afterwards in terms of development, but also at the CES, again, for the second year in a row, we received an innovation award for the interior projection, which really demonstrated the quality of our product portfolio, which we believe will be a great lever in the future to develop our customer base. Talking about more short to medium-term priorities for the lighting activities, 2024-2025 will still be pretty much about getting fit for the future. How?
Again, developing again this customer base, increasing the order intake. We believe we can reach again a similar year in terms of order intake in 2024, which will enable us, obviously, to fully utilize our footprint of today. But also, we hope diversifying our customer base and our geographical footprint because, as you know today, although we are pretty happy with our BCC footprint, it's still pretty much European, and we want to develop that. We also want to keep on reducing our breakeven point. 2024-2025, unfortunately, we will inherit from the weaker order intake from the legacy business and the acquisition process. So we will have to absorb the decrease in sales over two years.
But we will be in a position, so more in 2026 and beyond, to boost the profit and come back to the level of profitability that we are enjoying in the other activities of the group. One of the levers we are activating to reduce this breakeven point and improve our efficiency is to accelerate the vertical integration of the electronics production, which we are already doing in China, but that we want to accelerate in Europe. Obviously, that will help to capture more value, but also to reduce, I would say, our risk and dependency on external suppliers on these projects that we believe will bring a lot of content in the future in our products. That was for lighting.
Regarding modules, a bit of a year of mixed feelings in terms of top line with a very solid growth in the first semester, which was thanks to catching up 2022, but also a strong start of the year. Fortunately, a weaker second semester impacted by a lot of stop-and- goes and also by delayed BEV sales, which is really reflecting what we see on the market, that there is a time delay on this segment. Also a very important year, and again here, special thanks to all the module team for being able to launch a new plant in 9 months in between the day we got the award and the day we started production, which is quite an exceptional job for a very demanding customer that you can see here in Austin, Texas.
So, a very solid and robust plant that is put in place and with a nice ramp-up that we are enjoying at the moment. That was one plant, but we also had two other plants in Europe. Priorities for the module activity 2025 and the years beyond, obviously, to better adjust to this European market, which is more tricky than the others. One way of doing that is to continue to diversify our customer base and again, catching new orders in other regions, North America. It was a great year last year to do so. We have to keep on doing that. Also, obviously, coming back to the integrated offer, we believe the module activity can bring a lot in terms of synergies and new propositions to the customers. That was it for the exterior solutions.
Looking at powertrain, so we are very happy now to be in a position to address all types of powertrain and mobility because it's on those markets that we have the greatest opportunities to tackle new types of mobility like heavy mobility, trains, and buses. Here with the fuel system and SCR traditional activities, but also the battery 48-volt e-Power activity and the hydrogen activity. So we are in a position to benefit really from the new mobility and the electrification trends that are happening right now, but obviously capitalizing on our strong historical storage activity. And we can adapt to the specifics of the market depending on the time and the shift of technology, which is not happening at the same pace in each region. Looking at CES, IES, as you mentioned, it was a very important year.
We've been very proud of that, increasing our market share in the years to come thanks to the mega deal that happened. We believe we will be in a position to really have this last-man-standing strategy, reaching a 30% market share from the 22% market share we are today by 2028. Also incubating our latecomer, the e-Power activity. CES, IES activity did a great job incubating our hydrogen activity a few years ago. We are doing the same process with the e-Power, which is great. We believe we will be able to benefit and switch our footprint when possible to benefit all of the powertrain activity. Last but not least, hydrogen. You said it's a very solid activity, commercially speaking.
So far, we've been able to take EUR 4 billion of orders, mainly in the commercial and heavy vehicles, which we believe will be the key market where hydrogen will play a key role in the years to come. Passenger car will happen, but at a later pace, we believe, and most probably a smaller size of the market than the heavy mobility and the buses. And obviously, which is great also for us, in terms of content per vehicle, what we can achieve in terms of sales on the heavy mobility part is much bigger in terms of revenue by vehicle than on the passenger car market. So all in all, we believe we can reach this ambition. It's not an ambition anymore. It's validated through the order intake to reach the EUR 3 billion revenues by 2030.
All of that, as you know, with a well-diversified portfolio, the storage activity, the fuel cell stack, and the system depending on the need of the customer. So it's not an ambition anymore, also because we are in the development process of those programs, and we are in the construction process of our plants to come. Three on this slide. The one in South Korea for the Hyundai, one in France in Lachelle. And last year, we had a nice inauguration of the first steps of this plant to come. And we had, in January, Marc Perraudin was in China to have the groundbreaking of our plant to come in Shanghai with our partner Rein, which will be dedicated to the storage activity in China. So all in all, with all of that, we are validating our investment plan in the years to come.
And obviously, with a strong focus on adapting to the volume ramp-up of the customer and obviously of the potential time lag that we could have on this market.
Thank you, Félicie. We move now to the financials, and Stéphanie will present to you the numbers for 2023.
Thank you, Laurent, and good morning, everyone. Let's begin the financial presentation by some comments on the revenue. In 2023, Plastic Omnium posted economic revenue of EUR 11.4 billion and consolidated revenue of EUR 10.3 billion. The strong economic growth of +20% was driven by all businesses. What needs to be highlighted is that two-thirds of this growth is organic growth. Scope effect amounted to EUR 968 million, including mainly the impact of the acquisitions of AMLS and Varroc in 2022 for the lighting business. FX effect this year amounted to -EUR 279 million, notably on the US dollar, the Argentine peso, and the Chinese renminbi. Now, if we have a look on the performance per segment, exterior systems, which represent roughly 51% of the total revenue for the group, posted the strongest growth of +32%.
First, it is linked to a good performance from the IES division, mainly driven by the high level of order intake that we were awarded the previous years. Second, we get the full-year impact of the lighting activity compared to last year, which was just on one quarter. With an 80% growth, modules have the highest like-for-like growth in 2023. It was mainly driven by the strong activity in H1. In H2, volumes were lower 10% than H1, while benefiting from the first module assembled in the new Austin plant in Texas. Among powertrain, which is the last segment, the IES division or the IES activity maintained a high level of performance, which is good in a market that is progressively going to electric mobility. Moreover, New Energies posted some EUR millions in revenues linked to the EKPO Joint Venture and the new PO Rein Joint Venture in China.
If we now make some comments on the operating margin side, so first, the operating margin of the group amounted to EUR 395 million, which is above the target we gave in last October. It highlights the group's capability to adapt in a market and the solidity of the group. Second, if the group reported an increase of +EUR 31 million year-on-year, the performance of the operating margin must be analyzed considering the acquisitions with a full-year impact in 2022 and in 2023. In this respect, operating margin is up EUR 167 million year-on-year, pro forma, underlying the very positive impact of the turnaround of the lighting activity. This makes us confident in this activity to continue to improve its profitability in the coming years. The 2023 operating margin also includes the development of the hydrogen and electrification activities in line with the strategic roadmap.
If we now look at the operating margin rate through the new segment presentation. In this chart, you can easily measure the contribution of each main segment to the group's operating margin rate in line with our product portfolio. Operating margin for the group stands at 3.8% in 2023, with two segments presenting higher margin than the group's level. I mean Exterior Systems and Powertrain, as you can see on the chart. Exterior Systems margin rate is up 40 basis points compared to last year, thanks to growth in activity and operational excellence. Moreover, Exterior Systems was benefiting from the success of the measures that were put in place in the lighting business. If we now move on the Powertrain side, Powertrain shows a good level of margin at 4.4%, with the IES business still posting the highest operating margin rate among all the group's divisions.
The other activities linked to electric mobility, so New Energies and e-Power, continue their ramp-up with investment in R&D and industrial capacities in line with the group's strategy. Lastly, being an assembly activity, module has a lower margin. However, this activity remains slow in terms of capital intensity. After H1 with a top 2% margin, H2 faced some slowdown in activity and launch cost of new plants. The group, as Félicie mentioned, is working on improving the module's operating margin through operational excellence and customer diversification. Let's now have a look on the net results. One of the group's strengths is its capacity to deliver a high level of net result, which is key in a context of high interest rates. The increase of EUR 31 million in operating margin is offsetting most of the EUR 43 million rise in the financial costs.
I want to highlight that the financial costs only represent 1% of our total revenue. Non-recurring items are stable year-on-year at EUR 64 million and are related to reorganization costs and currency effects. Income tax remains also stable year-on-year and even showing a decrease of 10 basis points as a percentage of revenue compared to 2022. Consequently, net results share remain solid at EUR 163 million stable year-on-year. If we now look at the free cash flow, so free cash flow in 2023 amounted to EUR 227 million, exceeding the target of EUR 190 million-EUR 210 million. If we look at the free cash flow generated by the historical divisions in 2023, the performance is well above the 2019 level, which is very positive. The change in working capital was EUR 61 million in 2023.
The increasing activity this year was more than offset by better inventory reductions and by a better overdue, a drop in overdues. In addition, the group is already benefiting from the action plan put in place in the lighting division. If we now look at the CapEx, the group investment totaled EUR 482 million in 2023 compared to EUR 351 million in 2022. These investments in 2023 represent 4.7% of total revenue, fully in line with the group's target of maximum annual investment of 5% of the revenue. In 2023, they include investment on a full-year basis for the acquisition, so the lighting and e-Power. And in addition, the group continues to invest in its growth drivers like the hydrogen business and electrification. As a result, the strong generation of free cash flow enables the group to continue to deliver age.
In this slide, you can see that the group presents once again a sound and solid financial structure. Net debt at the end of 2023 stood at EUR 1.5 billion, down by EUR 129 million year on year, perfectly in line with the group's debt reduction strategy. The leverage ratio at 1.7x EBITDA versus 1.9x at the end of 2022, remaining well below the 2x threshold. We are particularly satisfied with our liquidity level at the end of 2023. We have managed to reimburse the last tranche of our 2016 Schuldschein and still maintain liquidity at the same high level as at the end of 2022, but with a higher level of cash available. This puts us in a very comfortable position in respect to future debt maturities, and we have the freedom to decide on future refinancing options.
I now turn to Laurent, who will comment on the sustainability performance.
Merci beaucoup, Stéphanie. As you can see, a very sound financial structure to attack the New Year due to the very strong 2023 numbers. Now, we talk about sustainability before moving to 2024. I commented at the beginning, sustainability is really important for all of us in PO. We have all the targets being deployed in all of our factories, and that is a topic we are following very closely, like the financial performance, by the way. One of the very strong ambitions of the group is the commitment we have to be carbon neutral in 2025 in our Scope 1 and 2. Potentially, the most important for us is to reduce or to increase the efficiency, to reduce the consumption of energy, and then to use green energy for that.
We have been achieving a very solid number again last year, and in total, the group has been able to reduce the CO2 emissions by 20% since 2019. That means we are growing very fast, but we are able to reduce the CO2 emissions compared to 2019. For the Scope 3, which is for sure the biggest part of our CO2 emissions, our target, our commitment was to reduce by 30% between 2019 and 2030. We are already above 30%. Therefore, you can imagine that we will be much more aggressive for the coming years regarding the target for 2030 in terms of Scope 3 reduction. And we do target the full carbon neutrality in 2050, but what are the most important topics for us are 2025 and 2030 in terms of milestone.
All the targets we have, all the actions we have, they are recognized by the SBTi, and they are in line with a 1.5-degree trajectory. When we come to a concrete example about what we did achieve last year, we are very proud of the efficiency improvement. That means we have been able to improve the efficiency in our factory by 10% compared to 2022. Efficiency, that is the energy you need to produce a certain quantity of material, quantity of part. That means we are always monitoring, again, in each factory, the number of kilowatts being needed to produce a certain quantity of part of material. That is key for the performance of the company in terms of financials, but also in terms of energy consumption. In total, 10% improvement compared to 2022 and 21% compared to 2019.
We are also pushing all our sites to invest or to find investors to put either solar panel or wind turbine on the sites as well, to be green and as independent as possible. We have been able to develop that in 23 sites in 2030, and we want to be close to 40 this year in total. That means also here, that is an ongoing action everywhere in the world. Then we are working with partners. We wanted to highlight what we did communicate last year with EDF for France. That means we had an agreement with EDF, and we will be able to cover 50% of our needs for France starting in 2025 with green energy, either solar or wind turbine energy, again, going to the direction of the carbon neutrality for the Scope 1 and 2 in 2025 for all the PO sites.
We are also very pleased to see that it is not only our assumption that we are getting better, that is also being confirmed by some agencies, and we have been rated A for the CDP for the first time. We are coming from B some years ago, A minus last year, A. We cannot improve more than A, but we are very proud of that. That's really important for us because, again, it does confirm that what we are doing is not only paying off in our numbers, but also is paying off when we are getting rated by some agencies like the CDP. We confirm our EcoVadis platinum status as well, which is very strong because that is the top 1% of the companies they are assessing worldwide. It's a lot of effort of the team in terms of reporting, but even more in terms of action.
I wanted also to highlight that today again, that it is a strong commitment from the company, a fantastic job being done by the team, and I'm sure that we will continue to develop in this direction in the coming years. When we talk about sustainability, it's also not only about carbon neutrality. The most important for us is always safety, and we are benchmarked in terms of safety KPIs. We measure the FR2. The FR2 is the number of accidents you have by million hours worked, is 0.87 last year. We have 120-130 sites with zero accidents since more than one year, which is benchmark in the industry, which is our responsibility, our duty, but which is also important in terms of attractiveness for talents in the coming years. We are committed to go down to 0.5.
In terms of your employment as well, it's a very important topic for us, again, for our responsibility, but also to attract talent and to continue to develop the company. We had 1,233 apprentices V.I.E and so on in our staff last year, and we are able to convert close to 25%-30%. 40% of those people are female as well, which is also important for the diversity. Diversity remains a challenge for all of us in the industry. We are benchmarked in the board with 57.1%, and you can see the other numbers where we are trying to improve year-over-year. For sure, it's a challenge for all of us, but it's starting with young people, and therefore, we are pushing a lot on these youth employment topics I was referring to before. Basically, all the KPIs are improving.
I like to mention that all the directors of PO, they have 20% of their bonus linked with the sustainability target as well. Therefore, there is a strong motivation, strong engagement, and to make it happen and to continue to improve. Now, we move to the outlook 2024. I wanted to start with what we are going to propose to the shareholder meeting in April. That means to maintain the dividend we had also last year. We wanted to show what Stéphanie did highlight before. We are able to deliver strong performance in net result. I know that many of you are having a look on operating margin. We believe net is the real reality because net is after the financial cost, after what you may have to do in terms of restructuring, ethics, and so on.
The fact that even if the times are bumpy, even if the economy is volatile, we are able to maintain a certain level of net result, and then also to honor our shareholders is very strong for us. Therefore, we will maintain the dividend, and we have been able to pay dividend over the last 20 years in PO, and we will continue to do that in the coming years while investing in the company in new businesses and new technologies. Outlook for 2024. First of all, we believe that the market will be flattish or will decline slightly. S&P is talking about -0.7%. We will see at the end, but we don't see a growth in the market. The EV ramp-up is a question mark.
We don't question the fact that the EV is going to continue to penetrate the market, that on middle-long term, there will be more electrification, but we know that EV is linked also to subsidies, and subsidies are depending on policies all over the world, and we don't manage that. Therefore, we don't know. It's also linked to the price of the cars, and therefore, we are ready for all kinds of scenarios, but there is an uncertainty for 2024-2025 in terms of ramp-up of EV, especially in Europe and North America. And for sure, inflation remains important, and especially for the interest rate, I mean, the cost of money remains pretty high compared to what we had in the past. Nevertheless, even if the environment is still pretty challenging, I would say, we want to continue to outperform the automotive production.
Therefore, we will grow this year in PO, even if the market is not growing. That is thanks to the strong order book we have last year and the years before. We are confident about that. We have the ambition also to continue to increase our operating margin. That means the numbers Stéphanie did explain before. By improving our operation, by monitoring very closely and working on our fixed costs, meaning benefiting from the growth of the company to maintain our fixed costs at a decent level, we will increase as well our net group share, our result net this year, which is also, again, important for PO because at the end of the day, that is the real performance of the group. We will continue to increase the free cash flow. It was EUR 227 million last year. It will be more this year.
Close management of investment, close management of inventories, overdues, and so on. Therefore, the free cash flow of PO will be higher in 2024 than in 2023. That will bring us to a further reduction of our debt. That means the leverage at the end of the year will be better than the leverage at the end of 2023. Therefore, strong commitment to outperform, to improve all the financial key metrics, to continue the journey of the transformation of the group, and to create more value for the shareholders in the future.
As a conclusion, without repeating what we said before, which is always a challenge, it was, again, the first year of the new PO, 2023, and I want to use the opportunity really to thank the PO team, which did a fantastic work to integrate those new activities in our processes, in our habits, in our management routines, to continue the journey to develop as well our historical business, which is allowing us to invest in new activities. I want to mention the IES, CES, and HBPO, which are the foundation of the transformation of the company. They are getting better year-over-year, and now we are able to develop lighting, electrification, hydrogen, while continuing to generate free cash flow, to improve our profitability, and to deleverage the company. That is also to win the trust of our customers.
Stronger intake means that the customers, they believe we have the right strategy. We are convinced we have the right strategy. They do confirm that to us, and we are pretty confident that we will continue to grow and to improve our financial performance in the coming years. Many thanks to all of you for having listened to the presentation. Thank you, Félicie and Stéphanie. And now we hand over to you for the questions and for the open discussion on all topics you want to address. We have two questions in the room. Normally, the first one is always Thomas to ask a question. If Michael agrees, we can continue with this tradition. Okay, then we start with Thomas.
Thank you, Laurent. Good morning. I have lots of questions, so I'll ask them one by one, if that's okay.
I would like to start with your free cash flow prospects. Can you give us your assumptions in terms of CapEx and R&D, either in absolute terms or CapEx and R&D to sales versus the 4.7% you had this year? And what you're assuming as working capital tailwind for 2024-2025, because I think you still have a lot of room for improving and getting back to where you were before, even if it's complicated by the integration of new businesses. Do you want all questions or?
No, no. I'm getting older, and I may forget or I may select the questions, which is not good for you. No, for the free cash flow, Stéphanie mentioned that we want to be below 5%. We will be around 5% this year. Last year, in the investment, we had the positive effect of we sold some assets, as you know. That is also in the CapEx. And this year, we are forecasting around 5% for the investment. Investment is more or less half for R&D investment and half for industrial investment. That is the way we are managing the investment. That was the first question. We had a very important working capital improvement last year. We will continue this year as well. We still see some opportunities in managing our inventories, project inventories, or part inventories, and also to improve our overdues.
Therefore, it will be a similar tailwind in terms of working capital improvement this year compared to last year.
Very clear. Thank you. Second question. On your European exposure, can you remind us how many plants you have in Europe, how many plants you had in Europe in 2019, and how many of these you're ultimately going to have to shut down even if you manage to, much more smartly than a lot of other companies, reuse some of these plants thanks to the strategy you follow? So obviously, I don't want you to pre-announce a lot of restructuring, but let's say, realistically, given the prospects for European production, are you going to be able to keep 90% of your plants, 80% of your plant on a five-year view?
I mean, first of all, what's happening now is not new for us. We are one of the few, you know that, and sometimes you didn't like it to have said since many years Europe is going to suffer more than the other markets because stronger regulation in Europe, stronger regulation is always potentially a constraint because the push for electrification, which doesn't fit 100% to all the needs of the customers, is not something which the customer is asking for. It's something the regulation is pushing for. Therefore, there is always a risk on that. The cars are too expensive. The infrastructure may not come as fast as possible. Therefore, since many years, we say Europe is going to be under pressure compared to other markets. If we highlight that with some numbers, you know that the European market lost 13% of the production between 2019 and 2023, 13%.
The global market is at the same level. Europe lost 13%. PO was able to grow in Europe without acquisition. We want to make it like-for-like because you like the like-for-like. PO was able to grow by 6%. That means the market was going down by 13%. We were able to grow by 6%, but we reduced the headcount by 5%. That means what we have been doing in the past, we will continue to do in the future. We will continue to outperform the market. We don't believe Europe will see growth in the coming years in terms of volumes. Best case, it's going to be stable. It may decline in the coming years, but PO will continue to outperform the market and will continue to adapt its footprint to the market development.
Stéphanie was mentioning that we have EUR 60 million in our numbers, which are for ethics and restructuring. That is the number which is, I would say, normal at PO, and it will be the same in the coming years to adapt the footprint, to adapt the headcount to the market evolution. But there is not a big event to be expected. It's just step by step. It's about anticipation and so on. Last year, we announced that we are going to close a factory in Germany, in Bayern, just because it's a combustion engine. Therefore, the fuel tank business of this factory, we are going to put in Lozorno, in Slovakia, to consolidate the business in Lozorno. And the equipment we were using in Germany, we are going to move in other regions of the world where the combustion engine is still developing.
We also announced that we are going to close a factory in France, in Compiègne, for fuel tank business as well. But we are going to transfer the people to the hydrogen business. Therefore, we manage that, I would say, in a normal way. We know that Europe is getting constrained. We try to reuse the asset and the people as much as possible, but we do our jobs, and potentially, we will have less plants in 10 years than what we have today in Europe.
Thank you very much. Start question. I'd like to come back to several discussions we had over the last 12 months about orders and visibility of your business given the challenge to anticipate volumes for any given automaker or program. Can you just help us understanding whether the orders you're taking in 2023 integrate slightly better visibility or any commitment on volumes from any of your clients or still not, whether there was any one-off compensation from some of the clients that have kind of disappointed on volumes in 2023? And finally, on that same topic, Varroc obviously has the highest exposure within the group to these programs that have been, let's say, slightly disappointing to be nice to your clients. Is there any consequence to draw on either the goodwill of this acquisition or the timeline of the turnaround you've been planning?
I mean, in terms of orders, we used to discount always the customer volumes depending on the customers by 10%, 15%, 20%. That was the way we were always doing the business. We know that for customers, you shouldn't discount it because the volumes are always here. If you take big SUVs for a German brand being produced in the U.S., they always meet their expectations. That means for those ones, we like to keep the level of volumes they are announcing. For the other ones, we were always discounting between 10%-20%. We learned that for the EV market, especially for the traditional OEMs, that the volumes are 50% below the expectation on average. We work with all of them, premium or mass markets, and then when we have a look on the current volume production compared to RFQ volumes, it's 50% below.
Because we have learned what we do now in the order book is either we find a way with the customer to find an agreement to have a price depending on the volumes. That is possible for some customers, like the one in Austin I was mentioning before. Therefore, the price depends on the volumes, and then we are covered in terms of volume deviation, or we discount 50% of the volumes to make sure that even if we have 50% less, the project is still going to be profitable for the company. Having agreement on volumes for the other ones is more difficult, but that's the way we are addressing that. And for sure, now we are in strong discussion with some of them when the volumes are much lower than expected to get compensation.
But there is a mix of how do we adapt the way we are quoting and how do we adapt for what we have in production. That was about the orders. The ex-Varroc lighting system, yes, is the one suffering the most in terms of volumes. And as already mentioned, as mentioned by Stéphanie as well and also by Félicie, this year, we will have a drop in sales in the lighting business. It will be below EUR 1 billion. That means we will lose EUR 200 million of sales compared to last year, around, because of the order book of the past. And also, it will be more or less the same for next year, and then we will start to recover thanks to the stronger the book and stronger the intake and the confidence of the customers. Therefore, we're going to continue to adapt.
That is what Félicie also said before. We will continue to reduce the breakeven point, meaning to work on the labor cost. Last year, we don't like to mention it, but it's important for you to understand it. We reduced the headcount by 1,500 people in the lighting business. It's 20%. We will continue to reduce the headcount, especially in the fixed cost in the lighting business. We will concentrate the production surface, reducing in the biggest plant we have by 30%, internalize the warehouse and so on, I mean, to make us fit, basically. We will integrate more value because today, especially in Europe, we buy most of the electronic parts, and the electronic parts are close to 50% of the bill of material. If you want to be competitive in the lighting, you have to produce your electronic parts.
Therefore, we also are going to use existing production surfaces we have in the group for lighting to integrate the electronics. All in all, even if we will see a drop in sales, we want to maintain a similar performance in terms of financial this year in lighting than last year. Therefore, maybe not breakeven, but not far away from breakeven by reducing the fixed cost. We should improve next year, but the 2026 is for us the year where the lighting business should deliver a normal margin within PO because then we will be back to, I would say, a decent level of sales, and then we will grow in the coming years.
Very clear. Thank you. Last question. On the new reporting, I'm a big fan of your new reporting, I must say.
You're a big fan.
I love it. It's rare that I say that because usually, I.
The question is how long you are going to love it.
No, no, no, not at all. My question is, can you still give us an idea of the losses you incurred in both segments, I mean, in new energy and the different investments you're making in powertrain and the lighting losses, approximately, in 2023 versus 2022? I mean, I think the indications you gave were about EUR 30 million for new energies, and we had some indications as well for the four months of the lighting business. But for the time being, we either have to leave only with the fact that ICE is still your best business, which I think we knew, or you give us a little bit more. Thank you.
We don't like to talk about losses. We talk about investment because we believe those businesses are creating value. And therefore, instead of talking about losses of those businesses, I prefer to tell you that the exterior part business, I mean, the IES business and the CES business, are around 7% margin. And then the rest, you can make the math and find out what are potentially the losses of the other businesses, which are not losses, which are, again, investment for the growth of the company. But if you take IES and CES, in average, it's about 7% margin, which is, again, very strong when you have a look on how the market is developing and showing, again, that we have a fantastic asset we can count on to continue to transform the company.
Hello. Michael Foundoukidis, ODDO BHF. One quick question still on the divisions and on the module side. I mean, should we expect the module to be back to normal in terms of profitability this year? I mean, you talked about some improvement expected, but is it enough to be in line with historical performance?
In front of you, you have the new CEO of the module business. Therefore, he's asking himself what I'm going to answer. No, we always say that our target for module is about 3% operating margin and above 3% in terms of free cash flow generation, which was not the case last year for many reasons, market reasons, because module was depending on some BEV which didn't come or were postponed by 6-12 months from some German OEMs, and we were not able to react as fast as we wanted to react. That is the reason why we changed also a big part of the management of the module business and to be, I would say, more agile in the way we are acting and reacting when we have those kinds of topics.
For this year, I mean, in two years' time, we want to come back to this level of performance, and this year will be an improvement compared to last year. But the full effect of what we are doing today with Christophe Marceau, the new CEO of the module business and the team, is to come back to, I would say, the normal profitability we aim for in 2025. The new business we are launching is very positive in terms of contribution in volume, in cash, and in profitability compared to the legacy business. Therefore, for us, the main priorities are, from one side, to transform the new business because the ramp-up is pretty aggressive, and then to fix the issues we may have in some legacy business, especially with our customers.
Okay. Thank you. Maybe a second question on outperformance. I mean, you said you would outperform the market in 2024. I mean, we know the order book roughly, but where should we expect, I mean, biggest outperformance within the divisions and maybe geographies this year?
I mean, if I knew how the market is going to develop in the next six months, I could answer. In terms of division, the main growth will come this year from the IES business, and module will benefit from the launch of this new factory in Austin, while CES should be more or less at the same level of last year. Again, electrification, but we maintain the same level of activity. Lighting will decrease, as we mentioned before.
Okay. Thanks. And maybe a question regarding your customers. I mean, some of the new entrants have much lower development times than historically. Could you try to explain to us what does it change for you? Is it something that you see as positive? Is it something that you see as developing among legacy as well? Thank you.
I mean, first of all, normally, if you spend less time, you spend less money as well. Therefore, it's positive for everybody. And I think it's one of the reasons why those new OEMs are more competitive than the other ones. Félicie was mentioning the fact that we have been able to launch a factory within nine months. That means you get the award in FEB, and you produce in October. It's module. It's not industry, but still very challenging. If you do that with the traditional OEMs, it's about three years. Now, it's about less than 1 year. And the fact that they are much more aggressive and agile is a benefit for us because, first of all, we are able to follow and to make that with them. And not everybody is able to do it.
I think it's one of the USP of PO and the reason why we are able to develop those kinds of customers and because the exposure in terms of R&D cost, project cost, is much lower because if you reduce the time you need for the development, you spend less money. They are doing that, most of them, by having much less complexity. Especially if we talk about the exterior parts, if you compare traditional OEMs with the newcomers, if you talk about Tesla, which is the obvious one, the diversity is much lower in terms of exterior parts. Therefore, you have less development effort, less risk as well in the factories later on. It's easier to manage the working capital as well, and the costs are much lower. Therefore, we like it, and we believe all the OEMs are going to that.
Therefore, today, we do see a clear trend for all the mass market OEMs. They are willing to reduce the diversity and to be faster in terms of development time. It may be different for the premium one because they want still to differentiate with other features they can offer to the customers. No question in the room? Maybe we have some questions online. Apparently, yes.
Sure. Thank you. We'll now take our first audio question from Akshat Kacker with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Akshat from JPMorgan. Four questions, please. The first one, I want to get more clarity on the free cash flow guidance in 2024. You are guiding for higher free cash flow, more than EUR 227 million. What are the different moving parts here, please? Because the 2023 number did have EUR 60 million benefit from asset disposals as well as working capital. So I'm assuming your assumption is to offset that by higher profit growth, i.e., EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million profit growth, as well as working capital improvement in the same magnitude as 2023. So some more details on that would be helpful. The second one is on the lighting business. It is very clear that 2024 and 2025 will be a transition period for the business.
Could you just give us your expectations around the revenue development in those two years as well as the profit margin that you expect? The third one on your 2025 targets that you did discuss at this point last year, it looks like you're very comfortable with your revenue targets, but are you in a stage to confirm your operating profit outlook as well as the free cash flow guide, which is at 3%-4% of sales? And finally, on cross-inflation in 2024, just your expectations around the different moving parts, if you could discuss raw materials, energy, as well as labor inflation, how do all those elements net out, please? Thank you.
Good. That, I will try to answer as good as possible, even if I don't give all the details you would like to have, Akshat. The free cash flow 2024, yes, we said it's more than last year. Therefore, more than EUR 227 million. We had last year asset disposal. We don't plan to have big asset disposal this year. Therefore, we will perform better this year. We will continue to improve our working capital, as mentioned before, in a similar magnitude than last year. And the rest will be because of stronger cash generation of our operation. Regarding lighting, we mentioned that we are losing about EUR 200 million of sales compared to 2023. In 2024, 2025, that's, again, due to the past legacy business, as mentioned before. The order book was not so full and exposed to some BEV vehicles not running very well.
Therefore, 2024, 2025, it's not going to be a transition year. It's years we are going to use to improve our operation, to reduce the breakeven point, to integrate some value. That means to make us more fit, I would say, and to continue to book orders in order to achieve the EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 1.6 billion we are targeting in the middle term. In terms of profitability, we want to maintain the similar level of profitability than in 2023, even if we are losing turnover this year, to be as close as possible from breakeven in 2025. And then in 2026 should be the year where we should have a normal profitability in the lighting business. The 2025 targets, we didn't mention today because we don't know the market in 2025.
If the market is in line with what we said last year, there is no reason to review the targets. But we will see how the market is going to develop in 2025. But again, if it's in line with what was said last year, no reason to change the targets for 2025. 2024 inflation, for us, the biggest topic is not raw material. For raw material, we are with most of the customers secured now, contractually secured for raw material. Therefore, we don't know how it's going to develop, but there is not a big risk behind that. Main topics on inflation for this year are going to be still energy, even if the energy prices are going down. The negotiation with our customers, we are not all in the piece price, but one shot sometimes. Therefore, we have to renegotiate with them.
That means energy is going to be a topic. Logistics may be a topic, and labor may be a topic. But labor, we want to address mainly with productivity internally because that's the best way to be competitive. I would say it will be, again, a normal year in terms of inflation management with our customers.
Thank you so much. Just one quick follow-up. I also noticed that the earnings performance of the China JV YFPO slowed down materially in the second half. Could you just talk about the business development there, please?
Yeah. The YFPO business, again, is a very solid business. In the biggest market of the world, we have 26% market share in the bumper. I think we can be happy about, for sure. The YFPO business has to develop as well. It's coming from 10 years ago from the SAIC and Volkswagen and GM and so on business, which is suffering today. But the team has been able to develop all the new customers. That means when I'm talking about all the new customers, that can be Tesla from one side being very strong in China, but also the pure Chinese, the MG you see in Europe that is with the YFPO inside. NIO is a big customer of us. BYD is not a big customer of us because BYD is producing the bumpers internally. Therefore, it's not an addressable market today. It may change in the future.
The YFPO is developing and will continue to develop at least in line with the market in China.
Thank you, Laurent, for the details.
Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from Steve Fernandez with Société Générale. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi there, Steve Fernandez from SocGen. Thanks for taking my question. Just one last on my side. With bumpers and tailgates, I believe there's still a large share of OEMs that produce these in-house. Could you talk about how that's trending and whether OEMs are more or less motivated to outsource than they have been in the past?
It depends. No, it depends. I think on long term, they will outsource. On short term, there are some OEMs willing to outsource as fast as possible to really focus on the assembly, to reduce the assets, to be faster in the assembly, to be more efficient. Other OEMs which are struggling with the people they have in the factories, and then they may tend to insource. Therefore, short term, we see different movements depending on the customers. Normally, when the customer is setting up a new factory, they outsource. When they are replacing a business, some of them, they are thinking about either insourcing or outsourcing. But basically, the addressable market for us is growing, and they are more outsourcing than insourcing for the middle term.
On long-term, we are convinced they will outsource more and more because that is not where they are going to differentiate. I'm convinced they have to use, and they will use their assets in different manner.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue currently. I'd like to hand it back to Jules. Over to you, Jules.
We have one written question from Patrick Borde. Could you give us more color on your business in China in terms of market diversity, evolution, competition, export, and competitiveness of Plastic Omnium?
Well, apparently, you like very much China because we talk a lot about China. No, I mean, PO in China, then I do it by division. In total, we have about 40 factories in China. If we talk about the joint venture and our own businesses, if we start with the CES business, the CES business is the fuel tank business. The addressable market is going down. We are one of the top three in China. We are maintaining our market share, but we will have to adapt to a market which is slowing down for the combustion engine. Therefore, it's part of our job, and we are doing that year-over-year, and not a big deal for us. If we talk about the module business, it's pretty small in China. It's EUR 200 million or EUR 300 million. It's mainly for traditional OEMs.
Therefore, the growth potential is not so huge in module, and we don't intend to grow the business in module in China dramatically in the coming years. We see much more opportunities in Americas than in China for the module business. Then we talk about the IES business, the bumper business. That is our biggest business in China. That is the famous joint venture I was referring to. We are not consolidating that, but we have 26% of the market in China. We are developing this business is developing in line with the market, basically, in the last years, slightly outperforming the market in the last years. And we believe that we will continue to develop in line with the market or outperform the market. We have been able to gain all the new customers.
I was referring to NIO, but it's also Huawei entering into the mobility, Xiaomi entering into the mobility, and so on. They are all part of our customer base. Therefore, we are confident that YFPO is going to maintain at least its market share in China. The lighting business is very small in China. We have only electronic and projection in China. Therefore, there is a potential to improve if we find the right partner in China. Then we have the hydrogen business. I think we are convinced we have the right partner in China for the hydrogen business. That is what Félicie mentioned before. We decided to go for a joint venture with Rein. Rein belongs to Shenergy. Shenergy is the big energy provider of the Shanghai region. Therefore, they do provide 90% of the gas in Shanghai, 30% of the electricity.
You know that when China is going to a new technology, it's being well organized by the government. Therefore, being with this partner, we will capture a big part of the market in the Shanghai highway area, which is a big market already, the Shanghai highway area, for commercial vehicle and for EV duty vehicle. Therefore, we are exposed, but not too exposed with this partner in China. Therefore, China will remain a very important market for us. We like to be there, but we don't want to be too exposed to China. In terms of export, we don't export out of China. We just export some electronic parts today for the lighting business. But we believe it makes much more sense to be regionalized in terms of supply chain.
Therefore, we are investing in electronics in Europe, and we will produce electronics in China for China, in Europe for Europe, and in Americas for America. But we don't have any export in China. But if you buy, I don't know, a Tesla in Europe, you have a bumper for PO in your Tesla. It's being produced in China for China.
Thank you. We have no more further questions.
If no question, we are fully on time, which is good. I want really to thank all of you for your time today, for the questions, and the PO team as well for the great performance in 2023. Many thanks.