Okay. Hello. Hello, everyone. Welcome at Enstone, thank you for coming. It's, of course, a great honor for the whole team to have you here. I'd like to start maybe talking about the Renault Group in general, we get into the subject of Alpine. Can someone take this? I don't need it. Okay, good. You know that, in the last three years, we've gone a long way since the time when Renault was undergoing one probably of the deepest crisis of its history. In 2020, we lost, I don't want to even remember the figure, but it was in billions. I kind of removed it, at that time, we launched a Renaissance plan.
If you remember, you can see it on the chart, we had three phases. One was for resurrection, which was about saving the company. It was all a turnaround. The second one was the renovation. That was much more focused on developing a, let's say, good range of products. That is always, you know, the most important thing in the automotive industry, to have a good product offer, which we didn't have. Then the third one, we call it Renaulution. The whole story of the Renaulution was to prepare Renault for, you know, for the future, for the next challenges. If I recap a little bit, I think we have done a profound rework of the company in its operation, in its organization.
On the resurrection side, just to give you a few numbers that sometimes we share, especially with, of course, with our investors. I just remind you that in 16 months, we were able to reduce breakeven by 50%, and we're continuing. We have optimized our industrial footprint without making a big noise. We are already now flat- out on all, basically in average on all the plants. We have 100% production capacity utilization, which is always a good sign of how well sized our, you know, is the manufacturing footprint. When it comes to the renovation, we have been working on something like 22 models and new products.
They will come, you know, they've been coming so far, two or three of them, and then you have 18 from now to 2025, 2026. I think it's something that the company, Renault, has never done before, that quantity, that wave of new products coming. I also want to, you know, underline the fact that we did it by reducing our R&D and CapEx budget to EUR 4 billion, more or less, which represent around 8% of our turnover. We are in the bench with the market, but EUR 4 billion is not so much money. I would actually challenge any expert or analyst to see a company, even in China, that did 22 cars with EUR 4 billion budget.
I'm saying this because it shows you that we care about money. We know how to use money properly, okay? There is no doubt that the plan works, I would say probably better and faster than expected. You saw the number in 2022. We did 5.6. Actually, it was six points more than a couple of years before. 5.6, in absolute term, is probably not the best result of any of our competitors. Of course, we have room under, you know, we have gas under the accelerator, but for Renault, it was one of the best results in the last two decades. We also generated, and this makes a huge difference, we generated, like, a little bit more than EUR 2 billion free cash flow.
For Renault, it was historic. We have made basically more cash in two years than we did in the 10 years in previous years. The good news is that we have also built a machine that can produce cash, which is always very, very important for any, any investor. I think we are back in the game. We are ready to accelerate, and we are moving to the last phase, I think the most exciting one of the plan. We announced that how we were going to transform the Renault Group into what we call a next-generation automotive company.
The whole idea was to use the crisis as an opportunity to design an organization that would be more adapted than any other competitor to a new landscape in the automotive that would change fundamentally with different value chains, let's say, emerging around the classical value chain of an OEM. Our idea is that automotive is not more a single sport, as it has been before for a century. It's rather more, it's like Olympic Games. You have to play different disciplines. I talk about things like EV, which is different business than, and supply chain than ICE. Software, you know, different logic, different technology, different cycles. New mobility services, in general, share cars, system of payments, and different financial, let's say, tools that you need. Circular economy.
is also something that will become regulation, so you gotta handle that. All these new sports, in fact, they require different talents. They require specific trainings, maybe a specific diet, and the sometimes they are measured in a different way. It's like Olympic Games, sometimes you're measured by distance, sometimes you're measured by chrono, sometimes it's the weight you lift. That's the way we see it, and that's why what we are doing, and this is very important for you to understand, because the discussion Alpine is only part of the story, an important part of the story, is we are, let's say, focusing at least five very compact teams on each one of them. Each organization fully-fledged, you know, from engineering to manufacturing to, you know, to distribution, et cetera, and each one fully independent.
With their own governance, you know, their own mission, their own targets, and their own way of being measured by the group. Alpine is one of them. It is there to attract, I would say, affluent customers, that the people that like to spend money on cars like him. And, you know, people that value something that is special. We think that the switch to EV technology gives us a window of opportunity to create something that can stand the competition of anybody on the planet. This is the story of Alpine. I think it's, you know, I shouldn't do that as a father, but it's kind of one of my favorite things.
You, you shouldn't make any difference between your kids. Alpine is, for me, something absolutely special. To be honest, two years ago, it was in a dead end. There was no new car in the pipeline. After the A110, it would have stopped, I think, in 2024, right? The Dieppe plant was almost empty. We were producing, like, five, six cars a day. The engineering team of the Renault Sport, that is a very talented bunch of people, had no support and direction from a management, and the management was more concentrated on doing volumes with the mass market vehicles. These guys were, and are, very, very good. Formula One was not considered as an asset, but a cost, a mere line in the marketing budget. That was the situation. In only two years, everything changed.
We created what it's already de facto, a full-fledged high-end car company by bringing together top-notch engineering, high-quality manufacturing with unique flexibility. This is Dieppe. Selected distribution, you will see later, and of course, an ambitious racing program, putting Alpine at the pinnacle of motorsports with Formula One and not only. It's important because I was discussing with some of you before, it's the kind of thing that gives you prestige, that gives you credibility with the connoisseurs, and also gives you mass media awareness that is good to prepare the expansion of the brand. I think we can already see the results. You know, on the commercial side, we sold, you know, in two years with double sales. In France, the A110 is the best-selling sports car.
It is in the top five in the sports coupe segment in Europe. As I said before, Dieppe is flat- out and can't produce more, which is good. Last year, to celebrate the six years of existence of A110, we introduced three limited editions. All three found buyer in less than 30 minutes. This is the kind of fans' excitement you only see in brands like Lambo, Porsche, and Ferrari. It's a very, very good sign. We also have doubled Alpine network with 40 new outlets opening in 2022, and bringing the total to 140 outlets around the world. In addition, Alpine's ability to secure new partnership is telling evidence of its new attractiveness. We are very happy to be trusted by highly respected investors like RedBird, Otro Capital, and Maximum Effort.
They will help us to get, I think, to the next level, and we will be more precise later today. Finally, Alpine is breaking, for the first time, into the top 150 more most valued brands in France, reaching a value of more than EUR 500 million. It's a small thing, but it's a sign that what we're doing here is to create business, to create value, and not just to have fun on the weekends, which, of course, we have. Now everything is in place, in my opinion, to make Alpine one of the of the, I would say, next big things in the sports car business. We revealed our ambition November, with Laurent presenting that.
Alpine is shooting for 40% compound annual growth rate between 2023 and 2030. We target EUR 2 billion of revenue already in 2026. In 2030, it will be over EUR 8 billion. Half of it, which is very important, will be outside, not only of France, but also of Europe. We think that based on our projection, that Alpine is on track to break even in 2026. With, we're committing to a double-digit margin in 2030. Finally, Alpine will take sports car to the next level, also in terms of, I would say, sustainability is important for us, with an all-electric lineup by the end of 2026 and with net zero carbon by 2030.
Of course, we confirm the targets that Laurent gave six or seven months ago. Today we are here to go much more in depth with you and the team, and the whole team, showing how Alpine is going to build the next successes. I think that let's say discussion I had this morning with some of the colleagues, I think that what you will see today is the outcome of two years and a half of hard, very hard work, where we went a little bit undercover. Everything you will be seeing is very concrete. It's just not PowerPoint. These things, one after the other are coming, whether it's motorsports, on product, on distribution. Thanks again for coming.
Enjoy the ride. I'll leave it now to the real boss of Alpine. This is Laurent Rossi. I'm only a fan.
Thank you, Luca. Welcome, everyone. Welcome again. Thank you for being here. It's a privilege to be here talking in front of you. It's a privilege to be at the helm of Alpine. When Luca tasked me with the rebirth of Alpine in 2021, the first thing we did was to immediately define Alpine, because it was important for us to refine a new way, a common way for everyone to define Alpine. From the get-go, what came immediately was that Alpine DNA was racing, like, through and through. Based on that, we decided to define Alpine in three simple terms.
Alpine is born from racing, Alpine is made by racers, and Alpine is for racers at heart. I'm gonna give you a little bit of details around that. Alpine is born from racing is, this is simply our origin. This is the story of Jean Rédélé, crisscrossing the Alps, aboard his, like, five- gear, 4CV car , enjoying himself thoroughly. He was saying back then, "... je me suis bien amusé!" A very simple sentence that means, "I had good fun." That's the spirit of what he wanted to transmit. He wanted to transmit to everyone his passion for race car driving, for motorsports excellence, technology excellence. He decided to create Alpine back in 1955. A pure sports car, like brand. That's it. Initially, that's what, that's what Alpine was.
The racing DNA was forged into multiple successes and on track. For instance, 10 victories at Le Mans, or the first constructor to win the WRC championship. That's what we're talking about when we say Alpine is all about racing. Today, we define A-Alpine also as made by racers. In fact, there are 900 technicians and engineers working every day at designing sports cars, whether it's for track or for road. That's 50% of our workforce, 50% of people dedicated to developing technology and products derived from the racing knowledge. It's massive, and it shows that we're living up to our legacy, as simple as that. Everything we learn from the track, we apply it to our products. It's true for product and technologies.
It's also true for the winning spirit, as a matter of fact. Lastly, Alpine is for racers at heart. That says a lot about us. We are a welcoming community, if you will, united around the passion for racing and the values of racing, where we compete ferociously on the track, but we welcome newcomers, and we recognize each other as racers. It's also a spirit of values that we have, such as equal opportunities for all, and I'll come back to that a bit later on. It's also talking about our customers. It's the vast pool of people interesting, interested in motorsports, which is huge. It's a pool in which we can tap, but not just. It's also the pool of specific customers for Alpine, people for whom life is a race.
Life is a race because they seek performance, self-realization, and those are the people that are usually choosing Alpine. Let me share with you a video about the spirit of Alpine.
Racing is our everyday obsession. It began on a curvy Alpine road, and it never left. Soaring engines and screeching tires are music to our ears. We challenge our limits on the racetrack, sharing battles with friends and foes, never stopping in our race to reach the stars. On all tracks, on all roads, in all fields, we feel the thrills of racing.
...It's in our mind, in our blood, in our hearts. We are a team. We are all racers at heart. We race for life. We race for emotion. Alpine, made by racers.
That's the spirit of Alpine. This is really racing DNA, like I said, through and through, and this is what we try and convey to our products as much as we do in our brand positioning. We're definitely a special brand, and as a matter of fact, we call ourselves a specialty brand. We're catering to discerning customers that are looking for agility, lightness, performance, while not sacrificing for elegance and comfort. This is Alpine. This is our product positioning. In fact, we're basically creating a wide space in between the traditional categories, as you can see on this chart.
This is this hybrid positioning that enables us to express our DNA, our racing DNA, every day, and to create distinctive products which leverage our savoir faire, this racing DNA I was talking about, which is inherited, not invented, completely cultivated by Alpine. The ultimate embodiment of this savoir faire is, of course, the A110, our icon. It was true yesterday, back in the days, with what was called then the Berlinette, which was the A110, that Jean Rédélé created, whose trademark was agility. It is true today, it is still true today with our current A110. Still agile, always agile. It's been hailed by countless awards across the world. Very light, true to the original principle of minimizing the weight to optimize the weight to power ratio.
With 3.7 kg per horsepower, our A110 is covering the 0 to 100 in less than four seconds. It's really also living up to its incredible legacy. Tomorrow, the A110 will still be the icon. We'll keep it front and center in our lineup because we feel like this is really the embodiment, the perfect embodiment of our philosophy. The A110 is living its best life. Luca mentioned that. We doubled the sales in two years. We're actually going to reach this year, very likely 4,200 orders or sales, I should say, registration. We have an order bank more than seven months full. That means that since the beginning, it will be almost three times the original figures that we had.
The Alpine recipe is working, and that's important. The momentum is there. It's something that we're building on to build awareness everywhere in the world. Like I said, we're here to build a brand, and building a brand means that equally important as commercial success is the brand value. Luca touched on this topic a little bit earlier. We multiplied the brand value tenfold in less than three years, as a matter of fact. We are well on our way towards the EUR 1 billion mark that we want to set for the brand, which was the brand value of comparable competitors. I'll let you do the search, but you will find out.
It's something that's important because it shows that not only our lineup and our car is good, but this indicator, this metric, usually embeds strategic outlook and financial solidity of the venture. For us, it's a good yardstick. It's almost like the weather forecast of where we're going. Now you have a good idea of what Alpine is doing in terms of positioning. We're on the rise. We have high ambitions, so I'm going to show you a little bit more what are the assets we're building to achieve those goals. To do that, we've designed almost an operating model, a blueprint for how do we build Alpine. It's a virtual circle, and I'm going to describe it to you.
It's all based around racing, like I said. Racing is our core DNA, we keep racing front and center, and it's out through North. Everything starts at the center with Alpenglow, the mother of all Alpines, which has been presented last year. It prefigures the designs of Alpines in the future. Alpenglow itself is a race car. This is how it's been thought initially, because we are building race cars. If you take Alpenglow and go to the racing branch through North, like I said, you have all of our sports, motorsports endeavors. F1, front and center. Renault Group has been in F1 for more than 45 years. Since the opening of the new Alpine chapter, I can tell you that we're here for another 45 years. I don't think Luca will contradict me here.
It is the main pillar of our motorsports engagement, involvement. We also announced, a few weeks ago, we revealed our contender for the 2024 LMDh season, and this also shows our intentions, ambitions in the endurance category. That means that Alpine will be present and fighting for the podiums in the two top motorsports categories worldwide. We also present via our junior, our Alpine Academy in the junior series, which, by the way, will not only enable us to be present in these categories, but will feed all of the other ventures, F1 and LMDh, but not just in the future in terms of drivers. We are also present via our customer programs in a great variety of other competitions, such as GT rallying.
Alpine is really about racing. It's important for us because others might claim it, we do it. It's a bit of a different story. Once you've said that, we need to translate that into products. True to the saying, we race on Sunday, and we sell on Monday. We derive our motorsports knowledge and transmit it to our customers through our sports icons. This is the branch, if you go on the left, and this is the branch where we express all of our knowledge from racing. At the moment, we have the only A110, a unique one, but it's only one car. We derive from that, motorsports and racing legitimacy, from racing and from sports icons. From that, we get increased purchasing power that we will apply to our lifestyle branch.
The lifestyle branch, you see it on the right, is now composed of four vehicles, the A290, which has been presented as a beta version a few weeks ago and will be released next year. It's our urban racer, our hot hatch. The year after, in 2025, we will release the C-Crossover GT . Rapidly, after that, we will have two other cars announced by Luca last year during the Renault CMD, the D- and E-Crossover GT . This lifestyle branch will produce volume and profit, which, in turn, will fund racing and sports icons. It's a virtual circle. The loop is looped, and it's helping us supporting the whole model. You understand why racing for us is important because it creates positive effects along the circle. It enables brand expansion and growth.
Let me deep dive a bit more into the sports icon , because I said there was only one. There's the A110, which is perpetuating the excellence. As I mentioned, it's really the icon, the central pillar of all our sports icon branch. At the heart of its success, there is one thing, just one thing that's critical, is the chassis. I mean, the A110 is not known for its equipment or even its power in it, which is a very good one, but not necessarily like above and beyond competition. The chassis, though, has an extremely important piece of the architecture. It's all aluminum. It's 150 kg, 200 kg lighter than most comparable cars, and that's what gives the A110 its fantastic lightness and agility.
When it came to following Luca's vision, which is to electrify Alpine, to make it eternal, well, we decided that this chassis was actually the perfect canvas to electrify Alpine, at least for a start. We created this car, E-Ternité, which was built around the A110 chassis, the aluminum chassis, the exact same chassis that you find in the ICE A110 , and using only components from the Renault Group. Power, engines, I would say, electric engines, batteries, and all. This car was a great proof that we could do it.
It helped us achieve performance and actually driving, feeling sensations that were very close to the A110 without even putting anything special into it, but the library of components we have in the Renault Group, which has an extensive experience in EV. It was something that we had to try. It was not just a one-off proof of concept. We quickly realized it was way more than that. It's actually almost like the key to our future, the cornerstone of our lineup. This is why we decided, and this is something you might have seen today already, to create the APP, the brand new APP, our proprietary Alpine Performance Platform, which is gonna be critical in our strategy because it will underpin all of our sports cars going forward.
In that sport branch that you saw, APP will be the key to all of our vehicles. It will start with the A110 that you can see here as a silhouette, and you will see for some of you, I believe, later on, as a maquette. We decided that since we have some regrets with the current A110, because the current A110 was actually only a one-off project, we should correct those regrets. One of the regrets we had was we were missing a Roadster. So we decided that we would also create the Roadster.
It's of course, a matter of style because you might see someday, soon, I guess, the design, the breathtaking. It is also a matter of business pragmatism, because actually, with a roadster, you end up more or less looking at twice the volume perspectives, depending on the markets, where you go, which helps solidify the economics of A110, suddenly. We figured that that was not enough, and we could do better. We decided to go with a 2+2 in the person of a A310, which is an addition to the mix, and will help grow our branch, the sports branch.
This is important because this will really change the deal for Alpine in the sense that we won't play on the sports icon landscape, only on one car anymore. For us, it's quite critical. You see APP basically with A110 group, A110 Roadster, A310 will offer us a more comprehensive sports lineup. It will enable us to not only show a mastery of the segment of motorsports or racing cars, but expand the customer profit pool, because suddenly we won't tap into a very small sliver of the people interested in sports car, but expand to much more potential customers. That's not all. We have more in store. We imagine that this platform is very capable of more than just that.
In fact, APP, as you can see here on this little schematics, will be able to, of course, create A110. You see here the engine, the batteries, the blue boxes, the wheels, the position of the driver, and you can see... You won't see it here, but you'll see it later, that the driver is more in a sports car perspective. APP can be expanded because it's a beam structure. It's basically four beams that you can move the way you want, so you can change the wheelbase, change the way you lay out your batteries, as you can see here, create suddenly the A310, and you can go further than that. Obviously, you can expand in multiple dimensions.
You can see the beam structure a bit more here, therefore, change overhangs with wheelbase and imagine expanding into different body types, different segments. That holds a lot of promises, because with that, not only we will have access to more cars, more markets, but also will we robustify the economics of APP by adding cars over cars over cars, and therefore improving all of the fundamentals, the ROACE, the NPV of the platform. That's quite important to us because it's a business. We don't do it just for fun, as Luca is saying, it's not just for the sake of having fun on weekends. For us, APP is really critical. APP is an 800-volt EV-native platform , but it will also be able to receive other propulsion means, if needed. Luca mentioned hydrogen.
I believe, we exploring hydrogen as a fuel, so hydrogen ICE engines, potentially for very high-performance applications. That combined, for instance, with a proprietary technology that the group, the Renault Group is developing, such as, like, polymorphic tanks , we'll be able to potentially have, like, a hydrogen-powered ICE sports cars at some point. It's a possibility, but APP offers it. When you map this out on this wheel, this development circle, you can see that now we're getting to a much more balanced, again, comprehensive lineup. That's pretty robust because all branches here have a halo effect on the other, and the model is solid.
This model will clearly help us strengthen our presence in the core markets, Europe and Japan in the first place, also expand globally and tackle true sports cars territories, if you will. First of which would be the U.S. Important sports car territory, very large. We will enter the U.S. with all the models to be released from 2027 onwards. This is gonna help us big time in terms of rolling out the Alpine strategy. You can see that the goal is to move from a niche brand that we are today, with essentially a subset of the volumes addressed in Europe, less than 1%, to a truly global brand, with at the very least 70% of the volumes addressable.
Important because of the portfolio that we will have, because of the breadth in terms of segments that we'll cover, we'll be able to potentially address 70% of the volumes in each of the considered geographies. Those are the main ones, Europe, Japan, South Korea being our core targets, North America being the next big challenge, and China being considered as an opportunity that we will, of course, look at. Of course, when you compound, if you will, this geographic and lineup expansion, in terms of profit, that's also a big switch. It's a game changer, if you will. Today, we are only looking at the EUR 3 billion addressable profit pool because we have only one model sold in only one territory, if you will.
Tomorrow, thanks to all of the cars in all the segments, but also present in all the markets, we'll be looking at a share of the EUR 120 billion profit pool, that's constituted by the EV premium category, if you will. We're looking at 70% of that EUR 120 billion, which is EUR 90 billion, more or less, as you can see here. That means that we're going to move from EUR 3 billion to EUR 90 billion profit, addressable profit pool. That's massive. This is really a change of dimension for Alpine, and that's critical because this is what Luca was mentioning.
You haven't seen much in the last two years and a half because everything was done behind the curtains, in the background. Now you're going to see the beginning of that, starting next year with the first car and all the others coming in rapid succession, pretty much one car per year, more or less. Now you will wonder, is Alpine truly fit for the challenge? Because it's big, and I know everyone says that. I'm going to show you why we have good reasons to believe that we have pretty much everything to make it happen. In fact, we first and foremost, following what's usually called an asset-light model. That is to say, Alpine is at the center of a very strong, robust ecosystem of partners.
It starts, of course, with the Renault Group, the parent company, which is an incredible source of top-notch assets in which we can tap. I'm going to name a few. Ampere, for instance, our EV champion, will probably enable us to create synergies, strong synergies, industrial, technological synergies to develop the product and services that are key in the EV world. For instance, we're going to pair APP, our platform, to Ampere's SDV. SDV being the software-defined vehicle architecture, so the EV native software architecture. Having a partner like that within the group makes it much easier for Alpine to be directly best in class on the EV side. We've mobilized our mobility arm.
We have plenty of assets we can tap into, but I would like to mention, for instance, the financial, the captive arm of the Renault Group, which is critical in terms of, like, crafting commercial offers. Especially when you pair that with the usually higher residual value of Alpine, we'll be able to basically craft offers for customers that will draw and retain foster loyalty with our customers, especially in a very inflationist world, and in particular on the electric vehicle side. This is a big asset we can lean on to. Not just, I mean, there's other places where we can tap into. For instance, we can resort to the industrial network of the Renault Group, which is global.
If we wanted to, we could, for instance, use our Korean facility, their skill set, but also the free trade agreements, should we need it, for international endeavors. You can see that the Renault Group is providing us a strong series of assets. Outside of the Renault Group, we partner only with top-notch references, selected partners that share our vision and needs. We going to partner with Verkor for our batteries. The idea being, they will provide us with high chemistry, high-performance chemistry, which is critical for a brand like Alpine, because it's something that you need when you want to accomplish, for instance, sustained performance over several track laps, which is something that goes directly into a sports cars, because it wouldn't be a sports cars if it doesn't have sports attributes.
That's why we chose Verkor to help us on this on this journey. Already a partner of the group is Google, providing benchmark connectivity, also providing the ability for us to develop, like, bespoke solutions for Alpine. For instance, Alpine telemetrics, that will gather data and re ingest it in terms of driver support, especially for people interested in the performance of their car. We are a brand leaning on the sports branch, more than a branch, it's a sports franchise. As you've seen today, even in this field, we're trying to look for the best partners, the best in class, I believe we have found the best. The goal here is to grow the franchise, the motorsport franchise.
monetize it. In Otro Capital , RedBird, and Maximum Effort, I think we found the perfectest partners for us. To give you a bit more of details around the partnership, I'm gonna call on stage Alec Scheiner, founding partner of Otro Capital , and David Gendry, our VP of Sponsoring and Partnerships.
Good afternoon, everyone. As Laurent just explained, one of our goal is to create a sports franchise, and maybe we take a minute to explain to you what we mean by that. In order to create a sports franchise, you basically need two elements. The first element is that you need to create a brand or club that is bigger than your core product. If you see the best brand in the world, take Nike, for example. When you buy a Nike, you don't just buy a pair of shoes. You buy an emotion, you buy a story, you buy something that goes far beyond your core product. It's exactly what we wanna do with Alpine. The second thing you do in order to create a franchise, is you create a connection, an emotional connection with your fan, which is indestructible.
If you look, for example, again, in the country of football, I'm sure there's a lot of football fans here. You lose or you win, it's still your club. You can maybe in your life change your love partner, but probably you will never change your club, because it's part somewhere in your heart that you can't break. Of course, it's something which is very important when you talk about business. The revenues that you create with your fans, of course, depends on the sports result, but not only because the reaction is always the same, even if you lose, and God knows I'm a fan of a club who lose a lot, but I still buy the shirts, I still go to the stadium, I still buy the merchandise. My father did, and my son will.
That's part of the thing that you need to create when you create a franchise. How we're going to do that? We want to create a sports franchise. For this, you need to create credibility with your fans. You need to show that you're committed to it. Laurent said it all, I think we've shown in the past that Alpine was really committed to motorsport for a long time, but we want to do it, and we want to do more. This is why Alpine is the brand which is the most committed in the world to FIA championship , and you can see some example behind me, like GT4, for example. You probably saw yesterday, the podium in Pikes Peak. That shows the commitment that we have to the U.S., but also to rally world. Of course, we've got Le Mans.
The Hypercar was presented two weeks ago at Le Mans. We have also the rally, which is part of the DNF, our brand, since for a long time. Also, all the customer competition, all the cars we do for the, for the customers that are able to drive our cars, the esport, where we invest massively, and we generate tons of fans everywhere in the world. Of course, at the center of everything, you've got Formula 1. Why do we think that Formula 1 is the best thing to start with the... Sorry, I did the wrong way. To start a franchise? F1 has a momentum, which is absolutely amazing if you look at it from any angle. If you look at the global expansion of the sport, F1 is everywhere in the world now.
24, we talk about 25 GPs next week, next year, everywhere in the world. Especially if you look in the U.S. now, with incredible success, with three GPs in U.S., in Miami, in Austin, in Las Vegas soon, with incredible number of fans, incredible business that is organized around these events. The support of the fan, which is absolutely amazing. The second element, which is also very important is the cost cap. We are in a world now where the costs are capped, which is, of course, very important because you can create value just by improving the top line, and the costs are not linked to the top line, which is created. You create an environment which is economically very good in order to create this kind of franchise.
The third element, maybe the most important, is the media coverage and the fan support that we see here, which are absolutely amazing. We talk almost 1.5 billion viewers on TV. We saw an attendance that grew by 39% on the last three years. You see the media coverage, which is absolutely amazing. The number of social media interaction multiplied by five in the last three years, so we have never seen so much fun and so much passion around F1. It's the perfect moment to build these kind of things. Of course, you see the result in our financial sheet, balance sheet. Only for Alpine, the sponsorship revenue of Alpine grew by 20% year on year to year.
If you look at the sport in general, it's almost EUR 500 million that has been invested on the last since 2018 in the different teams. Why do we think we are very credible as a team in F1 to do that? Is because we are, first, here for a long time. Laurent Rossi said before, it's more than 45 years that we are here, so we are not, we've got a lot of credibility and a lot of legitimacy in the sport. We are a works team, means that we produce our engine, which give us an edge compared to the competition. We are also here in stone, you saw in the visit, 1,000 employees, super dedicated, with a long experience in the sport.
We won here, four driver championship, three constructor championship, 63 victory in GP, and a brand with a long history of victories and who knows how to win. That's it. That's the proof of the commitment, and as Laurent said, we're here, we're here forever, maybe. We think we can do more, and in order to do more, we decided to partner up with Otro Capital Management , with RedBird, and Maximum Effort, because these guys will help us to bring the franchise to the next level.
Thank you, David. I realized walking up here that most of you were probably expecting Ryan Reynolds, so I apologize, after today's news. We've been investing in sports for over 25 years. We've invested across various countries in the world, across almost every single sport. We've partnered with the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, the NFL Players Association.
... We've invested in football, we've invested in basketball and hockey, cricket in India. For us, when we look at sports investing, we look at three things. Number one, is there valuable intellectual property? Number two, can we provide value to the investment we bring? Number three, do we have like-minded partners? As we think about those things, and we look at Alpine, it checks every single box. It starts with the partners for us, and it started with Laurent and Luca. They came to us, which is how we like to start these partnerships, because it shows that there's a strategic value that we can bring.
That like-minded partnership is the most important thing, because we have to start with people who believe in what we believe in, which is the ability to bring commercial revenues to the table, to treat it like the scarce asset it is. So that's part one, and that was the easy part here. Part two is valuable intellectual property. If you think about F1 or you think about investing in sports in general, I always say to people, "This is the one business where you really should never leave your customer." I worked for the Cleveland Browns. If we couldn't lose our customers, then no one can, basically. This is a joke for American people, I guess. The beauty of sports is there's a tie to your brand that cannot be lost just because performance goes down in one year.
That is the moat around intellectual property that we find in F1. If you start from that, then you look at what Liberty's done, fixing the structure of the sport with the cost cap, then launching the sport in the United States, we think it's a perfect time to invest, and we think Alpine is the perfect vehicle for all of the reasons David just said, a works team, an iconic team, high performance built into it, and the brand is just getting started. That checks the box on the IP. Lastly, is how can we help? That's probably the most important question for us. For us, all of the things we've done in our career, all of the investments we've made, lend themselves to being able to help here.
We built a company called Legends Hospitality when I was at the Dallas Cowboys. We essentially outsourced food and beverage and sales sponsorships and ticketing sales. We built a business called On Location Experiences with the NFL as an equity investor, where we took the hospitality around the Super Bowl to the next level. We've invested in a business with the Players Associations, where we built a licensing business around video games and trading cards. All of these experiences will lend themselves to success here. As we look at this sport, we think it's incredibly well run, the team is incredibly well run, but we do see a lot of upside, the same way we saw it when we invested a few years ago in cricket in India, and we were proven to be right. I really appreciate the partnership.
I appreciate the people at Alpine and Renault for welcoming us. We can't wait to get started. Thank you.
Thanks, Alec. Thanks, David. Yeah, we said it, we only select partners to add value. I'm pretty sure with Otro Capital , RedBird, Maximum Effort, we're going to unlock a lot of value. What's also important is that we're going to reinvest some of that incremental value into the team, and therefore feed another virtual circle to accelerate the program of catch-up that we've already started two years ago in order to be at the level of the very top teams. The idea is also to reuse that in terms of a performance booster. Now, having said that, I'll go back to my asset-light model. At Alpine, we feel like, of course, we are asset light in terms of the way you would define it classically, but we call ourself asset- right.
Asset- right, because, yes, we have a strong network of partners that we can lean on when it comes to competing with the pure players that are usually built around the same model. Compared to them, what we do have, and that they don't, is a history that we can summon. It's the racing legitimacy I was talking about, that we can really leverage to extract more value above and beyond the competitors. This is why we can focus on developing the technologies, the products, the services that are very essential to support us attain our claims. I mentioned the APP, which is going to be extremely critical because it will keep lightness and agility at the heart of whatever we do, all our sports cars.
I could also mention the Alpine dynamic model modules, which basically will take advantage of SDV to develop very specific modules that are going to enhance the sporty drivability of our cars. We will also, for instance, develop, I mentioned that already a couple of times, the possible powertrains of the future that could complement nicely the EV lineup that we have. Alpine, in fact, can develop the very specific assets that are making our brand distinctive, and so doing, we can develop the drivers of competitive advantage, if you will. The driver of competitive advantage are actually also being developed in other drivers of competitive advantage, which are our centers of excellence. That's why we really like asset- right, because we have some assets, and they're all put to very good use.
It's all high-level, top-notch quality assets. We decided to be in Enstone today. It's not a coincidence or for the show, it's one of those assets. Enstone is basically the quintessential excellence of engineering, the motorsport pinnacle, if you will. It's the reason why we're here today, because the people of Viry and Enstone are working tirelessly to bring Alpine and the Renault Group back at the forefront of the grid by doing truly, like, pieces of art in terms of engineering that we use in our, in our, of course, race cars, but like I said earlier, also in our sports cars.
It was also an opportunity for us to pay a special tribute to the people of F1, the two sites, and to see a bit more about their job, their dedication, and their commitment, which I'm sure you've already appreciated during the tour. I'll have a little video I want to share with you. It's a little bit of behind the scenes. You've seen it during the tour as well. It's important for us to show you that, because you can see that there's way more than just, like, people running a car on a weekend, which in and of itself is already a very, very complicated task.
There's a lot of know-how, there's a lot of knowledge, a lot of expertise that goes into that. We use that in our, in our cars. We truly use it. There's a lot of technological transfers that are operated between the sports car branch and the racing branch and the rest of the lineup. We, for instance, share between the two, the all the three branches' expertise on EV. How to use and maintain a battery charge and how to deliver torque whenever needed, but also knowledge around everything that increases, for instance, the range, aero, mass reduction. All of this goes into all Alpines. That's why it's important. It's not a made-up claim that we are a true racing brand. There you have it.
Alpine is a brand built around a sports franchise, leaning on an asset-light model, developing a full lineup, enabling global expansion and driving profit. That's more or less our business model, our operating model, if you will. Now it's the last stretch. I'm going to give you a bit more insights on the results, the goals we're looking at. Before I do that, I wanted to share with you, shed the light, if you will, on three tenets of our operating model. These are three pillars that we believe, when combined to our operating model, like I mentioned in the strategy, will probably provide business serenity. These are equal opportunities, environmental sustainability, and tech for good. I'm going to give you a bit of details on each.
Equal opportunities is a cardinal value, as a matter of fact, at Alpine. It's the firm belief that your commitment, your hard work, and your results only should be the sole determinant of the opportunities that you are given. It's, we feel like it's a healthy, fair value, but it's also a way to increase immensely your talent pool, the available talent pool, because you suddenly don't limit yourself at pedigree or diplomas. It's really something critical. It's also fostering durable, superior performance because it's made on tangible results and not claims, again. This is the reason why we partner with our ambassador, Zinédine Zidane , because equal opportunity is something very important to him. He's a perfect sponsor for all of our initiatives.
I'm gonna mention here three programs that are important, but there's plenty of them. Rac(H)er, as you probably know, by now, which is a program aimed at promoting women at all the ranks across all of the divisions at Alpine, from the workshop up to the driving seat, hopefully one day. Very important program for us. A big, a big bet that few people, few entities make and that we believe in. The CEMA, the Concours d'Excellence Mécanique Alpine , which is a program designed to detect young technicians and open the gates of F1 that would be otherwise closed to them, in order to bring those people into the team.
It's good for them, it's really good for us as well, because it brings new talent, fresh talent, new blood into our team. The Alpine Academy is another very iconic program which of course supports budding drivers in making their passion, hopefully, a job one day. We have all of the sports discipline to find them an outlet. It's all consistent, and it's all virtuous, because we basically source the people with the right values from the onset, so they can become true drivers, true members of a band of racers, if you will. Another pillar, like I mentioned earlier on, is environmental sustainability. A lot of people leave that as a constraint or as an obligation. We embrace it as an opportunity.
There's obviously the non-negotiable. Net zero production, of course, is one. There's the choices we make. We investing a lot in both process and product development, to leverage the opportunity that environment is providing us with, because it can become a source of competitive advantage. We believe in it. Of course, one tangible example is the 100% EV lineup that we are building. We believe that we can combine our expertise in EV, also in chassis and sports cars, to create the sports cars of tomorrow. We'll also develop other things, such as specific race seats made of entirely recyclable, durable, and lighter fibers, such as hemp, in the case of this picture here, which actually provide even better feeling for drivers and obviously superior performance.
As I said, if correctly harnessed, this can become a competitive advantage, and that's something that we pursue actively. The last, but not least, is the objective to promote technology for good, which is something a bit different, a bit new. We have those 900 technicians and engineers available, and all of this human and knowledge capital available, we figured that we could put it to good use when they are not busy developing race cars or sports cars, which is rare, but it happens. They are mobilized whenever feasible, whenever there is a possibility, a capacity possibility, on projects with external partners that we deem are making a positive, tangible impact on society.
A couple of examples here amongst the five customers that we have since we launched the lab in September 2022. We developed, we partnered with a company, Ski-Mojo, developing exoskeletons, which basically promotes safety and performance. We feel like it's something that can improve a lot the way you conduct a couple of things, whether it's leisure or professional activities. We developed, we co-developed with Aqualines, ultra-fast, low-carbon boats, which basically lend themselves for cleaner transportation. We also developed with IQ Endoscopes specific devices, connected devices, which provide for smarter and possibly more reliable health practice.
All those three pillars are critical to us because they make sure that you can always achieve your targets, but you can achieve them not in the right way. Those keep us true to a mission that we believe is more sustainable. Now you have a better perspective on our positioning, on our assets, so it's basically time to wrap up. Luca mentioned that already. We're growing from a niche to a global brand. We have three phases. The first one is finishing this year. It was started under Renaulution when we created the fully fledged brand that Luca was mentioning, the business unit. The goal of this phase was basically to grow the brand awareness through F1, obviously, the central pillar of our strategy in terms of media visibility and racing legitimacy, as I mentioned.
Through the A110, which is also providing us with our racing legitimacy. We're maxing out the visibility of the car. It's a phase of investment. We're basically investing. We have been investing, that's what Luca was referring to when he was saying the stuff that you wouldn't see under the radar. We've been investing heavily in the products, in the commercial network, in the industrial network, in the marketing means, you name it.
It's the time where we've been creating all of the elements that are going to be put to good use in the second phase, this coming of age that I'm mentioning here, that will span from 2024 to 2026, in which we're going to roll out our first batch, the so-called Dream Garage, the first three cars that we had in sight when we launched the brand. We have an objective to really grow the brand, at least in its core territories. You can see here, we want to move from more than 50% of the sales in France to 2/3 of the sales outside of France. Basically, max out the potential in Europe, for which we have prepared the ground already.
Luca mentioned the fact that we moved from 70 to close to 150 point of sales at the end of this year. More importantly, we want to reach breakeven. This is the first, I guess, target that was set by Luca for the business unit, so to me. This is something we'd never compromised on, and we're well on track for that. Of course, during this phase, we're going to create revenue. We mentioned here, to be in revenue. Luca mentioned that earlier on, but we also reinvest to create the next batch of the lineup that I touched upon during this presentation. This next batch will enable the third phase.
I was about to say the last phase, but it's probably only the beginning, which will allow us to start looking abroad, I would say, and expand globally. By then, we will probably become truly a global sports brand and franchise. With half of our sales anticipated to be outside of Europe, driving profit, and that's the double-digit profitability that was mentioned several times today. We will reach up to potentially EUR 8 billion revenue if we look at all the territories. I think this is an ambitious plan, but I think we also have most, if not all, the tools to accomplish it.
Stay tuned for more Alpine news as we unroll new elements of the plan, pretty much like every six months in the future. In the meantime, Luca and I are available for your questions, I guess.
I think we are what? You are the Master of Ceremony.
Yeah. Hello, everyone. We are pleased to start the Q&A session. Please do not forget to introduce yourself before asking the question. We will start with question from the room, but for those who are online, you also have the possibility to ask your questions. We now have a question from George Galliers, Goldman Sachs. George?
Yeah, thank you for a very interesting day and for the presentation. I had two questions. First one is just with respect to the Alpine brand. Obviously, you're targeting more than 50% of sales outside of Europe by the end of the decade. Beyond the A110, the impression is that the next wave of cars will be smaller cars. Can you just sort of square how those vehicles, in your view, will fare in international markets, particularly markets such as North America and potentially China? The second question is just with regards to the Alpine line branding, which we're starting to see on some Renault cars. What is the mechanism in terms of the reward for Alpine financially for that?
Is this a royalty payment, or some other kind of mechanism, and is that part of the revenue projections for Alpine?
I'll take the first question, at least in order. You said smaller cars after the A110. Is that what you said?
Well, I think the next car we have seen.
Oh, yeah, the next car.
The concept-
The A290.
Yeah.
Yes.
So perhaps-
Yeah, yeah.
... can you give us some sort of insight into what comes after that, and how we should think about-
Yeah, yes.
... where the brand is positioned?
Maybe we could have the slide showing all of the cars in the market, but that's fine. I can comment without it. Yes, the A290 is an urban racer, as we call it. It's a hot hatch. It's smaller in a way, but it has 4 seats. It will expand actually our customer pool immediately, because we know that a lot of people that want to buy an Alpine, an A110, actually stop there because suddenly they realize that it's not going to carry all the family. It will probably expand a little bit the reach. After this car, though, comes the C-crossover , it's a much larger car, bigger car. It's 4.65 meter, it's a true four-seater as well.
It's capable of taking people on a highway for more than 500 km, and we don't communicate on the exact figure right now because we're still working on the technology, but this guaranteed more than 500 km of range. This is, like, gonna expand big time our reach. Yeah. Place that free, yeah? After that, you saw the A310 is also a four-seater, two doors, 2+2 sports car. Perhaps, in the middle of that, very likely, we're gonna have a D and E segment coming in, so SUVs, much larger. It's only gonna be bigger and bigger and bigger, in fact, which are cars adapted to the markets we look at, and especially the U.S., for sure. I think with that, I'm complete.
Then on the Alpine line, I will probably leave it to Luca, because he's the boss of all brands. We collaborate with the brands in order to define what's the content, and there's a mechanism, yes, that makes it all for everyone.
But maybe, what we are doing is actually. You don't have to look at the picture, you have to look at the movie, right. We'll start from B segment, C segment cars, because this is where we have assets already. And then we will move up, and as we move up, the more we move up, the more chances we'll have to go beyond Europe, where normally people buy compact cars. You, in Europe, between 3 meter 90 and 4 meter 60-65, you have 80% of the market. Not because people don't have the money, but because they just like, they need small cars, right. Otherwise, you don't get into a parking lot in Paris, for example. It will be very coherent, the whole thing, right.
International expansion and lineup expansion, also from an economic point of view, we are not de-mixing, we actually upgrading the range. The average price for Alpine will grow, which is good news for the business. The story of the Alpine, Esprit Alpine thing was, you have to understand also where we started. We had basically no money, and I had no possibility to, you know, to finance Alpine, you know, two and a half years ago. We come up with the idea that Renault was selling very few high-end trims, because the strategy went wrong.
I come up with the idea, so why don't we give it a spirit, a sporty spirit, and we take only the flavor of the Alpine with the colors, the materials, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe you will also have potentially an upgrade where we ask the Alpine engineers to give it a kick in terms of technology, and we're gonna do, you know, Alpine, Esprit Alpine , both design and technical. We made a deal at that time to actually help Laurent and his team that had no money. At every time we will sell an Alpine, a Renault, Alpine, Esprit Alpin e, then Renault will pay, because at that time I was also the boss of Renault Brand.
Renault would pay a royalty to Alpine to use it, so that he could do, you know, what he had to do. Even in our first forecast, it was enough money to, you know, play around with a few things and develop some of the ideas, et cetera, et cetera. I remember that we used to do probably, I don't know, seven, eight , 3% of high-end trims, sporty trims at Renault with the Renault Sport badge. In some cars, Esprit Alpine is 50%. Now we actually have the opposite problem, that the guys from Renault don't want to pay all that money to Alpine anymore. For him, it's good, because he can have some resources.
I'm not sure it, I'm not sure it's diluting at all the thing, because it's just like a flavor. It's a bit of a dream. The fact that 50% of the people are buying Esprit Alpine , it tells you also about the potential of the brand. If I'm driving my Clio, and I want to participate somehow, you know, to the dream of somehow owning an Alpine. This is not unique. I mean, I remember doing the same thing when I was at Audi with the red rhombus on the RS Line versus the RS. It worked very well. It was a very, very good business, I think. I, I think that the more we are authentic, advanced, you know, on Alpine, the less the risk is that people mix up, I think.
We don't have to exaggerate, but I believe that now in the Renault Group, with the Dacia as an entry price thing, Renault coming back into the core of the market, both in mix and in technology with electric, and we put Alpine on top, we are probably one of the group that has the clearest hierarchy of all brands. There is no overlapping between the things, and you have a lot of groups that have a lot of issues to, you know, manage brands that means basically the same. That's also an outcome of a very good work that strategically we did together as a team.
Great, thank you.
I don't know why you're laughing.
You know, I have a question from Pierre-Yves Quemener at Stifel.
Yes. Bonjour. Hi, hi, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. Pierre with Stifel. Actually, I've got two questions. The first one would be on capital allocation. You mentioned that Dieppe plant was running flat- out with roughly 4,000 cars planned for this year. In 2026, you probably plan to produce 40,000-45,000 cars, and in 2030, probably 150,000 cars. Where do you plan to manufacture all these cars? Will it be at one of Renault plants, or will you rely on other partner? Speaking of partners, you welcome today for Alpine Racing, a new financial partner, which is great. Can we talk about an older one?
for me is an industrial partner.
Okay, fair enough.
Yeah, because I think that.
I'll take that one.
I think it's important that, you know, it's just not a question of money, it's a question of doing things together, because they know how to do things that we are not able to do, and that's the beauty of it. Right, Tali?
Of course. Okay, duly noted. Regarding older partner, Geely, where are your relationship with Geely lately, between Alpine and Geely? Lotus, to be clear.
So, s-so-
Thank you.
Okay. In terms of capital allocation, I mean, what we're gonna clearly, you know, use the app, because that's, you know, our, you know, our capital, if you want. We have to make a, you know, we have a few decisions to make. Just assume that the app will continue to be flat- out and probably also develop in terms of volume. It's already embedded in the plan that the C-crossover and that the Renault 5, the A290 , will be produced in Douai. That's a great advantage, because we have the platform already installed there with, you know, Mégane, Scénic, and the Renault 5, Renault 4.
We can really use a very efficient, let's say, plant and platform, it will make the cost of the car also very competitive. We don't have to, you know, invest in gigafactorie s. Everything is there. That's the beauty of the story. Then we will see for the others. I'm not sure I get the question on the partnership, et cetera. What was the question? What is... What does it mean for us?
Where your partnership or your projects with Lotus currently stand?
I mean, on the... We have decided that we would develop our platform, because it's a bit, I don't know, it's a bit like Porsche. We'll never lose control over the platform, the 911, right? It's the core of the thing. That's our APP. It's a pivot that creates, you know, value and gives depth to the whole story. We had a very good, let's say, discussion for a long time with them, we realized that we had to produce the thing in our place, on our platform.
It doesn't mean that we don't have options in the future to do stuff with them, because as we're doing, like with Geely in Korea, between Renault and Geely in Korea, or the thing we're doing with on the engine. As soon as some opportunity will arise, we will look into it. We have a very fluid relationship with. It's a company that you can really admire. They have a lot of things, a lot of content. If you look at the latest product from Lotus Electric SUV, they are pretty impressive, so they can do stuff. You know, in that space of sports car, collaboration in the future is, let's say, is very, I mean, is very needed because of the volumes.
You've seen some news also coming on from other competitor. Everybody's trying to share a little bit because otherwise you have no size. The advantage of Alpine is that we have an internal partner. Alpine has an internal partner, that is Renault Group, and then, of course, we will be looking at other opportunities if they come, no? It's.
I think we've got next question from Harald. Please.
Yeah. Hi, I'm Harald at Citigroup. Two quick questions. One sort of strategic for both of you, really. We saw with this previous luxury IPO, it's been very successful, but as far as I'm concerned, it was all about the independence, right? Taking the luxury brand away from the big company. It was pretty clear during the process that the management was really looking forward to making those decisions for themselves in terms of what product to go to and whatever, right? The market valuation is very clear, right? Growth and return on capital are far more important than size, right? How do you ensure that independence for Alpine within your plan, right? If the EUR 8 billion turns out to be a little bit aggressive on volume relative to consumer expectations or something, you know, how do you decide, right?
It, you know, in other examples, that independence has been lost a little bit, and I think the brand has been hurt, right? How do you secure this brand once you get that into the market, with all the different pressures you're going to have between you? A slightly different question, why is hydrogen going into Alpine, and or is it going to be working very closely with the hydrogen developments inside of Renault? I don't really understand why it would be inside of Alpine otherwise.
We didn't talk about IPO, so don't worry, relax. We didn't talk about the fact that Alpine would be the only brand doing hydrogen. We're doing that for commercial vehicle. It's already in the market, right? I'm looking also maybe potentially for solution on the Renault brand that might not be, you know, putting a, I don't know, developing a V6 engine hydrogen to go racing. That's a different story. I think that you need to give, you, especially in places like Alpine, you can never close the door to the future. You gotta give these guys the, you know, the dream of doing something very avant-garde.
you know, the option that they've chosen is to take, instead of doing, you know, a mid-power fuel cell electric solution with hydrogen, to go for combustion engine, because racing car, they have to make noise. I think that it is as simple as this. hydrogen is not dedicated to the Alpine. On the rest, we are not making. Right now, it's the time to. We have already done a lot of work. We have assets, we have arguments, we have technology. Now it's a matter for the team to get this plan to be implemented, and then we talk about what all you were talking, and return on capital, et cetera, et cetera.
I think I can tell you one thing, is, the plan is financed. I'm not, you know, I don't need cash to do all that was written on the charts. This thing, every time in Renault since now three years, we are always filtering project based on a certain level of return on capital employed, which was not the case before. That's why when I came, I had a ROCE at -10, at Renault, okay? I can guarantee you that, you know, below 25% ROCE, we don't do anything, okay? There's no life, okay? You, you can imagine that Alpine is cut... You know, qualifies for being one of the projects that's above this thing in terms of, you know, the return on the capital you invest.
For me, it is important. We say 10%, you know, double-digit margin. It could be, I don't know, it could be 11, it could be 14, it could be 13. It is important for me that Alpine, as we are committing as a group to be a double- digit in that horizon of time, there is no way a business like Alpine should be dilutive to the rest of the group. That's why I give the task to the team. You go double- digit. If they do twice as that, I'm gonna be happy. If there is this space in the market where you can do really good returns and profitability %, is Alpine.
If they are likely to achieve this, even in a more natural way than the business on Renault or, you know, or Renault. I am pretty confident if we do the right thing, of course, compared to Renault, let's say Dacia is already there. Renault will probably get it in a few, you know, in a few years, and they still have to build the whole thing. If you start with the right mindset, then you get there, and the segment that, where they are working is probably more naturally you bringing, you know, double-digit profitability. That's a little bit of the description of the situation. I don't know if it answers to your question.
Well, like you're saying, when we get to sort of 2028, 2029, maybe we'll think about that again. You understand the independence thing, super important, right?
No, the Let's say, you know, you, we, you can always make it a very complicated governance discussion on rules and so, but, you know, at the end of the day, it boils down to people, in company like in life, right? For sure, you know, I leave them, you know, independence to do their things, in the sense that I give them responsibility to do what we have agreed. I put, of course, pressure, like a big shareholder, an activist shareholder, so that they can deliver, you know, what they've promised to the markets, to the company, et cetera, et cetera.
It is clear that the whole spirit of bringing people, pushing people and resources down in the organization, closer to the market, closer to the challenge, comes with the level of, you know, responsibility for these people to deliver what they have to do. At the same time, we, I give them the keys of the house and say, "Okay, this is the thing." Hopefully, you know, I have to be also, kind somehow, the person that ensures that kind of independence, and I can leave it to Laurent, who, of course, will not say the contrary, but I think I give them a lot of, you know, freedom. In two years, they would have not come up with a plan like this.
In a, you know, in the classical world where, you know, I don't know how many things we did, you know, a platform, you know, the engagement in Formula One, six or seven products that were not there, except this is the best, let's say, I think, proof that I'm pushing the guys to do their job. As simple as that, without having, you know, very complicated governance rules that, you know, are important, but in, you know, in a startup phase, I think it's more important the mindset, right? You want to say something.
Yeah.
Deny what?
No, no. I can complement. Yeah, I mean, obviously the governance is, at the moment, at the very least, it's been two years and a half, so I guess it's a sign that it's a governance that's working. Very straightforward. We have a roadmap. We do what we have to do. I come back to Luca and the board of Renault and the board of directors every now and then to explain in more details my ideas, my plans, my deviations to the plan. I get held to high standards, ROCE, NPV, operating margin, and if it doesn't work, I know the answer. If it does work, I get an opportunity to come back 6 months later.
In the meantime, what I do, to be honest, is it's rather me annoying him, because I know he's been done, like, he's done that for a living, so it would be a bit stupid not to use a page or two of Luca's book. That's about it. That's the way it goes. This is how we came up with A310, where we had, obviously, we wanted to do yet another sports car, 'cause we felt like a straight two-seater was a bit limiting. We came back with a sports car, and with Luca, basically, with back and forth, we ended up designing more or less, not designing the A310 in terms of what it's gonna, what it is gonna be.
Where is it gonna be positioned in the market for maximum success as a complement to the... That's how it works. It works out well. On the, on hydrogen, I know it's a bit weird to come back from such a high-level topic to the floor like that. I want to say that we are the lead, but we don't do it alone. We are the lead because, of course, when it comes to, like, running a V6, delivering 600, 700 horsepower, we're best positioned to do that. We work, like I said, briefly, in the presentation with the Renault Group, because of course, they develop their own hydrogen solutions more on the fuel cell side.
That's also why we pursue hydrogen, because we feel like it's a very compatible source of energy with electricity. It's basically, one way or another, you move into the fork, you can do one or the other. We work with the group also on the, on the tanks, for instance, on all of the vehicle architecture, because we basically just provide our expertise on the power unit, 'cause that's what, Viry-Châtillon, which is, almost a separate entity. It's a high-performance powertrain. They don't do just F1. As a matter of fact, Viry-Châtillon is not F1. For instance, today, we talked about RedBird. RedBird is a partner of Alpine, of course, but the investment is into Enstone. Viry-Châtillon is a bit of a different story. That's why we have the lead on that.
It makes sense, because this is where the expertise lies. We share it with the group back and forth. It's like, as a matter of fact, most of our engineers are Renault people. We're all Renault people, by the way. Are Renault people coming from Technocentre, going to Viry-Châtillon, going to Les Ulis. We have a lot of rotation, a lot of knowledge that's exchanged. We're just the lead.
We now have a question from, Thomas Besson, Kepler Cheuvreux.
Thank you. Two questions that are connected to each other. I mean, the Alpine brand, as you said, was founded by a French guy who is, I think, mostly known in France. Can you talk about beyond the partnership you've signed in the US, how, what kind of distribution model or partnerships you plan to develop to make it eventually one day a global brand? Remind us exactly what was the share of France in your total business in 22 or year to date. The second question, can you help us understand how you are going to differentiate and avoid confusion between Renault and Alpine? Because you've decided that Alpine was the face of Renault in Formula One, but the history is with Renault Motorsport, not with Alpine.
Are you going to make that differentiation, knowing that the next car, the A290, is visibly Renault 5 with a different color? How are you going to make sure that this is well-differentiated for customers, and that it doesn't bring back that kind of confusion? Thank you.
On the U.S., we haven't signed anything yet, to be honest. Nothing is signed. We work with a partner, a possible partner, a thought partner, like I would say, because they know their job and there are also personal relationships there. Luca and I, we know Mike Manley, we figure it could be a good opportunity to explore. They were keen. Why not? We're doing it, they would obviously be a good candidate. For now, nothing is signed. Your first question, unfortunately, that's pretty much all I can say about it. I mean, the sales of the share of France into the sales, I wouldn't want to say anything wrong, I suggest that David will give you the exact number. I'd rather do that rather than make a mistake.
On the Formula 1 A290, Alpine is the face of motorsport at Renault today. If you have that question, it means that we haven't really fully accomplished the mission, because this is only Alpine. The fact that the A290 can be assimilated to a Renault, I don't know what was exactly your question?
My question was, you use the heritage of Renault Motorsport, and you're calling it Alpine.
Yeah.
I understand that now, today, Alpine is the brand you want to use for Renault Group, but the effective history is with Renault Motorsport.
Oh, okay.
What I'm saying is that the A290 looks very, very, very similar to Renault 5.
Okay.
just it's blue instead of being yellow.
There's 2 things in your question. First, the portion of Les Ulis, which is the place where we developed the sports cars for the road, was indeed before working on Renault Sport, but they're basically the motorsport division of the Renault Group. They were not wearing a color specifically. They're now folded into the Alpine division because we continue being motorsport. It was Renault because they were doing motorsport for Renault. They're doing motorsport for Alpine. They're more of a center of excellence than a brand themselves, and that's 400 people out of the 2,000 in Alpine. I think, I believe Alpine remains Alpine. The A290, yes, it's a car that looks like the big sister of Renault, which is normal.
This is a choice we made in terms of developing a car because partly, this is also what Jean Rédélé was doing, mind you, because you were mentioning him. He was taking a car, a Renault car, and, like, overcharging it, supercharging it. We figured the A290, the 5, first of all, because it has a history with Alpine, the predecessor of the real 5, and then second, because it's a great support to showcase our capabilities, because we're basically gonna supercharge this car, electrify it, over and beyond the, what it has already in store, and show the difference between a Renault and an Alpine. The way Luca mentioned that, it's two different positioning. No one will be able to mix one for another, even though they look similar.
We're gonna showcase what we can do with it. I think it lends itself well. It's a hot hatch. There's a category for that. We figured we should do a hot hatch. Why not? We can.
Maybe I can complement on what Laurent. I went through a couple of exercises like this in my career. It actually worked, okay? I have to say that I never had in my hand so many good ingredients to do something even better, like in Alpine. You can't look at the picture or you cannot, you know, only look at the picture, you have to look at the whole movie. This thing is in the making, right? The destination is, by the end of this decade, you will have two brands that are very differently positioned.
The substance that is behind the brand will be much more differentiated because of, for example, the decision we're making on the platform or the fact that Alpine will clearly be in segments, for example, where Renault will not be. Much more differentiated than other groups that are using this exactly the same technology to do different brands. I can guarantee you that we will ensure, because we know the business and we have a lot of respect for the customer that put the money, that they will find very different ingredient between an Alpine, a Renault, and a Dacia. We're not gonna mix up the thing.
On your call for Renault Sport to be the real brand, allow me to disagree completely into the thing, because between the pedigree for sports, for car enthusiasts, people that know the history of automotive, in the sports space, Alpine has another pedigree. I remember, you know, looking at the data, what was the impact of, you know, having a car in yellow on the Formula One? The marginal gain for Renault would have been like this, because Renault is already pretty well-known brand. For Alpine, that is an unknown brand, as you said, like limited, where in the number is 50% of the sales of Alpine in France, I think it was last year, et cetera, it was much bigger.
It's a much more sensible business decision to paint the car in Blue France and to become, you know, the national team of France in Formula One, and we are seeing that already from the numbers. You know, you need to give it a try and wait and look at the video because, you know, if we do the right things and you create an authentic brand that has something different to propose, you know, the Americans, Chinese, the Spanish, want. Tesla was actually before. You know, there was a car in California, and New York, he knows better than me, and now it's a global brand. You need time, but that's the destination.
Just one addition, for Alpine, completely true, friends. We have a question from Stephen Reitman, Societe Generale.
Thank you. You picked the revenue as under EUR 1 billion. I wonder if you could be more specific on the current business. We know, but if you could say how it's trading at the moment. Secondly, your point about making, you know, the clearly the new electric car, the coming out is going to be obviously the, a very sporty and really your whole essence of Alpine, and that's a differentiating factor. What does that mean for Renault, with the Renault 5 itself? Clearly, you've gone... The way you've made your the Renault vehicles, more expensive vehicles, have been the sportier and everything like that.
Do you think there's actually a scope for Renault also then to find another niche to go higher, to justify higher pricing, higher price positions for, let's say, the higher versions of Renault cars as well, if Alpine is already monopolizing sportiness part of the equation?
I think I can maybe start from the second. I think there is a space for, you know, we're doing what? In Europe, for example, at the global level, we're doing probably 3 something %, 3 point something % market share. In Europe, we're doing, you know, a little bit more than 10% right now. We have 90% to go. There is space, and you need to, actually to position the brands in a way that is simple for people to understand. Of course, I will have to make decision to limit Renault, to leave room to Alpine upwards, as much as I'm trying to shift Renault, actually in the place where it belongs.
The problem is that Renault was too much downmarket when I took it. 70% of the volumes, you know, selling Twingos and Clios, but Renault used to sell Méganes and, you know, C-segment cars in quantity, et cetera, et cetera. What we're doing is just bring back Renault in the place where it belong. That means in the heart of the market, and now, of course, you have the challenge to switch to electric, so we try to leapfrog and to be with Renault one, some of the one that do it faster than the others. It's, it's simply this. Then we grow, you know, we grow a high-end market, thanks to the credibility and the work that will be done on Alpine. Because, you know, historically, Renault never succeeded in the high-end market.
I mean, 30 years ago, when I was at ZOE manager at Renault, you can't believe how difficult it was to sell a Safrane to a dealer . We, with Safrane , Vel Satis, Avantime, all this work, right? There is a limit. That's a space where, you know, you have a whole highway, a few things with them. It's very simple. It's kind of very, I would say, vertical distribution of the thing. It's not very complicated. We only have three brands, so it's more complicated when you have 10, 12, 14. For us, it's very clear, and it will give us an advantage-
Thank you.
Because it's sharp.
We've got another question.
On the money, I think, how much are we doing? Like EUR 400 million?
Yeah, a little less.
It's right now, with one car, you can make the math very easily. We sell 4,000 cars at EUR 60,000-EUR 70,000. You can understand where we are at.
A bit more than that.
Now a bit more, yeah. It's, it's. You can't look at Alpine as a brand today. It's a mono-product thing, and that's why we are here. I think that many of the question, we should have probably done, the, let's say, the press conference after the presentation of the product, because many of the question or the answer to your question, you will have by looking at the cars.
What I can say is that we have milestones inside the group, obviously, until breakeven and after. It's basically the maximum losses that we are allowed, because at the moment, obviously, we're in that phase where we invest, and we are ahead in most, in all our exercises, because we sell more, because we reckon more revenue from sports, because we're more virtuous on operations, thanks to what's happening in the group. That's why we're confident that we're going to reach breakeven. It's trending in the right direction. You never know. We might end up selling 0 A290 or C-crossover . I doubt, for now, so far, we believe in our projections.
Compared to what the modeling we had, because we also do modeling. The modeling, three years ago, I think we are, you know, we are, you know, on the good side of the equation, I have to say. I remember when we were first, you know, discussion on how to build Alpine, we were much more conservative than what's actually happening.
Mostly because, I mean, it's a small figure at the moment. Obviously, you can make the math, as Luca said, nobody anticipated that the A110 will continue selling so strong. It's been seven years now. Most of the time, the cars' sales are declining. It's ever stronger. We breaking records one year after the other, and the profitability follows, by the way.
We've got another question in this room, and then we've got question online. Mr., please.
Alexis Renault from ODDO BHF Asset Management. Good afternoon. I have three, four quick questions. First one, regarding e-fuel. What do you think about it? Is it included in your... When you say, you speak about combustion engine with hydrogen, do you mean e-fuel or pure hydrogen? First question. Second question: What is the net investment or net cost of the group Renault in racing, Formula One, Endurance, and so on? I wanted to have just an idea about the investment, which, the money which is spent in this division. Third is relates to new launches you will do. We know next year is a new Alpine A290, but after, there is no date, or I didn't see any date for the new model you will launch in the next few years.
If you could have a little bit more information on it.
I will answer first one or two. e-fuels, we'll give it to HORSE, because we are carving out the, let's say, the engine division of Renault, as you know. bringing that together with Geely and potentially having an oil and gas company to enter in, exactly to reinvent the combustion engine, look at the problem from fuel side. the, let's say, the godfather of e-fuel will be Dacia, because we think that this is the smartest, let's say, and cheapest way to decarbonize. It makes a lot of sense that, let's say, Dacia takes ownership of that. Having said this, the Dacia guys will work with the Alpine, because by 2026, e-fuel will be in Formula One.
A lot of the research that we do on combustion on e-fuels for Formula One, that means it starts tomorrow, because we are already developing the engine. Maybe the guys on HORSE, and therefore Dacia, will benefit from it. That's the way it works, right? Everybody has his own home turf, and Dacia is about e-fuels, biofuels, all alternative fuels for combustion engine, because they will electrify later. Renault goes into pure electrification, pure EV, gives a platform when it's needed and when it makes sense to Alpine. And that's, you know, it's a kind of all business are independent, but we have somehow a connection between the different parts.
Alpine with e-fuel is possible.
Uh-
Alpine with e-fuel is possible?
No, no, no. I said an Alpine Formula One is certain because it's the Formula One.
Yeah.
You, you've got to be a little bit sharp, otherwise, everybody does everything, okay? You know, the call from them is that they might look for combustion, a clean combustion with either rather than e-fuel. You know, some of the e-fuels are technical, are propanes. Imagine that there is a regulation that enables us to run a combustion engine. Maybe, yes, I think we have to be a little bit sharp, we need to develop high-end, high, super high energy electric cars that are light, so you have a small battery, and then well distributed on the chassis, so the thing is nimble and agile. I mean, you can't do everything, right? We have to develop things. That was the question.
Second question is?
The money spent and where-.
We used to spend, like, the thing would cost us a little bit above EUR 200 million cost, net cost at the time. I'm not gonna tell you the number now, it's... We're still not in breakeven, but I think that, you know, with the support of, if, for example, even from Red Bull, with sponsoring, what we're doing with the cost cap, et cetera, et cetera, with the fact that we might work on different motorsports.
Yeah
altogether, some of them are more expensive, others they're maybe profitable because you have, I don't know, customer racing, people that pay for the thing, and so you have a margin. The idea that in, within one or two years, we'll be breakeven on the motorsports, and that's the thing. We develop the business. Yeah, it used to be a cost of the marketing, let's say, budget. We're gonna reduce this impact. It's already the case, by the way, because of the work we've done on the sponsorship, and because of running Formula One is less expensive than they used to be before. Cause before you had to, let's say, engage with people that were spending double the money. Now everybody spends the same, right?
Whether you have Ferrari, Mercedes, Alpine, et cetera, McLaren, everybody spends the same. It's much lower than what they used to spend. It became easier to do this. Target is also one day that the motorsports activity will be on a breakeven. Yeah. The third question was?
The new launch, the dates.
It's next year is. No, 2025 is Crossover.
No, it's 2024.
2024 Crossover.
No.
2024, the A290 and the crossover 2025. All the others will come.
Yeah.
As Laurent say, every year we'll have, you know.
More or less every year.
one new model lineup for the. We will enter a new segment. The progression is very, very strong.
I'll take online questions, and then last question in the room. I've got questions from Matthias Schmidt: Is China part of the growth strategy, given the current trading conditions? Another one is: Do you confirm you will address the U.S. market with a 100% electric lineup?
With the?
100% electric lineup. China and the US.
You want to say this?
The first question about China, I didn't catch it entirely. What is the question?
Is China part of the growth strategy?
Yeah
-given-
Yeah. It's embedded in the figures you saw. For now, it's an opportunity because it is less developed, but our lineup is attached to, I mean, it's designed, sorry, in such a way that we can go to China. We have embedded in our lineup some figures for China that take into account some elasticity, because we don't produce in China, and therefore some volume. That's one piece. US, definitely, it's a bit earlier in time. We design our lineup specifically for the US as well, and we're more advanced into the go-to market, even though we cannot say much today. We anticipate to be able to reveal a bit more in the next in the next year or so.
We'll now take the last question from Henning Cosman, Barclays.
Hi, thank you. It came up earlier, but you didn't really comment on it. Would you be prepared to share the volume that's implied in the EUR 8 billion revenue figure for 2030? I think the number that was mentioned was 150,000, for example, so would imply.
No, you.
EUR 50,000 revenue per unit.
You don't know me, no? Do you know me? I never talk about volumes. When you give a target volume, and if I tell you 100, until I'm 99,000, I'm a loser, and then when I get to 100, you ask me, "What's next?" It doesn't matter. It actually doesn't matter. Of course, we need to have, get relevance for Alpine so that the brand is seen on the street, okay? That people know it. The most important thing for us is to do the right things, is to make money, and to reach a sizable, let's say, a sizable business that will allow us to reinvest, because this is a techno race, right? You need money.
Of course, they can count on the group, support, but in the spirit of this unit that are kind of independent, they have to, you know, they have to find their own life and their own financing. I will not talk about volume on Alpine. You can make your math, but you don't know exactly the mix of cars that we're planning to do. Of course, the, let's say, the more bigger car we will sell in richer market, the less volume we will need. That's, but I have never mentioned volume. Sorry.
The reason I'm asking is for Ampere. You've obviously given us a volume number, and it's quite useful in the context of the revenue target, and you've now recently in the press release.
Yeah
also said you're looking to reduce cost by 40%. just to understand the overall framework.
Yeah
in terms of revenue and profit per unit.
Mm.
How the whole system works is quite useful for us to understand.
Yeah, I think that in the Ampere case, I would have not personally, I would have not released, you know, a figure, but someone did, and then we were trapped into the thing. there is easier because, in fact, what we're doing is, let's say, switching Renault in Europe from a combustion engine brand into an EV brand. and we do more or less that number, right? the concept was, okay, as a regulation 2035 will force us to do full EV, we better do that five years before the others, and we switch. we put in the conditional brand, because at the end of the day, regulation might be, well, you know, reinterpreted.
You know, the market, the ultimate judge of all things is the customer, right? Maybe people, not everybody, 100% will want to go for EVs and whatever. More or less, the whole idea in Renault is to switch from being a combustion engine brand into an EV brand, and I have to work right from now to put the brand in the condition to do it. In the case of Alpine, it's a different story. It's a growth story, right? I mean, if you simply make the math, it's not very complicated. You know, they're talking about the CAGR of 40% from now to... We sell 4,000 cars. You know, more or less, where we are. It's not very good.
Don't force me to give you the number, because I think this is not a story of volume. This is a story of quality of the business. This is a story of growth, and that's what we wanna do.
Just one clarification, if you allow me. I think you said you would make the new volume in Douai, right? Because it's already set up...
Yeah
for the platform, yet you have this dedicated APP platform. Could you just clarify how it compares to the platforms you're going to be using in Ampere, and so why there's the synergy of making it in Douai when it's its own separate platform?
The crossover is based on the CMF-EV, heavily modified to ensure, you know, and you will speak later with Philippe, you know, on the technical thing and on the technical workshop. To actually embed, you know, Alpine DNA on that platform. For example, we have heavily modified the rear axle, so it will feature torque vectoring a little bit like, I don't know, Porsche GT3, et cetera, et cetera, because we want the Alpine to be extremely nimble and agile to drive with, even in a time where you have to carry a big battery to get to your 500-plus range. That's the thing, the platform is the same.
It goes on the same line with, 75%, if I remember correctly, carryover of parts, et cetera, et cetera. The car looks, you will see, completely different from a Mégane, has nothing to do, or Scénic, but the base is the same, and we put it in the way. Then, let's say you have all the amortization, you know, that are on big volumes. For a brand like Alpine, it would be impossible to spend EUR billions to have a platform like this. Impossible. This platform is used by us, is used by Nissan, is used by Mitsubishi, is something you would compare to an MEB of Volkswagen. It's one of the biggest, you know, platforms on the planet on that category of thing.
The guys from Alpine, they come, and they put it, you know, they put some spice or even a lot of spice on it, but industrially, that's a very efficient way of doing it.
We've got the very last question from the BBC. Please, sir.
Thank you. Yeah, how is what you've announced today gonna help you, particularly the investment, gonna help you win in Formula One? How are you gonna win in Formula One, given that you're not gonna hit your targets this year, it would seem? How important is it to win in Formula One for this brand-building exercise?
The investment, you mean the RedBird investment, right? Like I said, they're going to help us on the monetization side of the business, strictly speaking, not on the sports side, obviously. People here know what they're doing. People in Viry know what they're doing. They're going to continue doing what they're doing. They're going to help us boost our revenue, hospitality, sponsoring, licensing, merchandising, above and beyond what we had planned. A portion of that we will reinvest into facilities, into tools, into equipment. This is part of a plan that we already launched way before RedBird joined us, which we call Mountain Climber. A plan on which we commented, you might have heard last year, Otmar saying we're hiring 80 people. We're investing here, there.
We're gonna simply boost this plan, accelerate it even further in the limitations of the cost cap, obviously. This is how it's gonna help us, indirectly, continue on our path. The team is moving up. I mean, two years ago, we were a distant sixth, really. We fought against AlphaTauri. That was the fifth car, but they only have one driver. Last year, we finished fourth. This year, it's a little bit complicated at the beginning of the season, but it's getting back into order, I hope. We're gonna just continue. We have a roadmap, if you will. It's progress that you build one step at a time because it takes time to find the people, find the resources to complement our team, because our team is slightly smaller than top teams.
We're just gonna continue growing, expanding, up to a point where we have similar structures, and the way of doing makes a difference. We believe the way of doing will make a difference because we have expertise here.
Thank you. Thank you, Laurent. Thank you, Luca.
Thank you.
This conference is coming to an end. Thanks, everyone, for joining. Investor Relations, Media Relations remains at your disposal may you have further questions. Thanks, everyone. Have a good afternoon.
Thank you.