Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I'd like to thank you for joining us here for the presentation of our annual results for the financial year 2024. I'd like to welcome the people who have tuned in online to the broadcast of this meeting on our website. Our financial performance in 2024, once again, goes to confirm the relevance of our growth strategy. We've seen major business success stories in France and abroad during this period, and we have also been able to achieve some external growth opportunities which lead to sustainable growth with the acquisition of Eco in Singapore, notably. In 2024, Séché has strengthened its position in France and abroad. You can see this on the sustainable development market and the green transition market.
Maxime Séché, who you know well, our Director General, you'll recognize him on my right, will be running down the various highlights of the financial year 2024. Baptiste Janiaud, our Financial and Administrative Director to my left, will then come in and explain business performance, operational performance, and financial performance especially. You can already send your questions via email to our Investor Relations Director, Manuel Anderson, on the email address that you can see on the screen. We will be delighted to answer your questions at the end of the presentation during our Q&A session that is now tradition. Financial and non-financial performance for Séché Environnement in 2024 confirms the relevance of our business model, which is both highly visible and brings sustainable and high growth. For the financial year 2024, we have achieved our revenue target, and we have gone above our gross operating profit target that we set.
We can also confirm the trends from our roadmap for 2026, as we presented at the end of 2023. This is once again evidence of the resilience of our growth model. The beginning of the year was marked by delays in a number of spot businesses, especially job sites. By that, I mean environmental emergencies and depollution efforts. Furthermore, in 2024, we saw a significant drop in energy costs that strengthened growth and also profitability of our energy recycling businesses. However, the quality of our second financial half and the overall quality of the financial year go to confirm the sustainability of our growth factors, the business dynamic, and also the correct strategic orientation of most of our businesses in line with previous years, especially in France. This sustainability in large part relies on the sustainability of our commercial offering for our industrial and local authority clients.
We bring together the entire value chain of waste management with rare knowledge and skills in producing low-carbon energy and materials and recycling industrial runoff. With our business, which is well in line with the European Green Taxonomy, Séché is able to offer its public authority and industrial clients an offering that is close to them and that meets most of their environmental challenges and can fit within their environmental regulatory framework for sustainable development and particularly for the green transition. Our business model is also a growth model. Once again, in 2024, our operating performance is high. Gross operating margin is up versus 2023, and this is true like for like and also, of course, including Eco's integration. It has absorbed in large part the impact of the drop-off in energy prices and the job site delays from the beginning of the year.
This high level of operating performance goes to show the resilience of our margins, our operating margins, and this resilience relies on a number of things. First of all, correct market strategy shown by strong business trends, but also on our ability to implement successfully our industrial efficiency policy, sorry, to improve the effectiveness of our tools. Finally, this shows our ability to swiftly integrate acquisitions and to implement business synergies with them, as well as operational synergies across the companies within the group. This operational performance further shows our ability to maintain solid financial positioning, to continue to generate free cash flow, and our ability to keep our debt under control to support growth. As such, net profit in 2024 is in large part a reflection of the one-off impact of the acquisition of Eco in Singapore. The non-financial performance is also not being forgotten.
As such, for the second consecutive year, Séché in 2024 has achieved its target set for 2025 when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. On top of that, Séché is deploying a number of efforts on environmental issues that are important for the group and for others, such as low energy use and low water use. I could also further mention the initiatives aiming to protect biodiversity. This is what we can call sustainable and responsible growth. I'd like to now share a few words on the opinion of the Board of Directors. This is a robust and innovative group that is able to find relevant answers to the needs of economic stakeholders with sustainable growth and solid profitability. The group has been able to acquire a new size dimension with the acquisition of Eco.
The Board of Directors will therefore be putting to the AGM a dividend of EUR 1.2, identical to that of the previous year. I'd like to give the floor now to Maxime Séché, who is going to present the detail of the strategic achievements of 2024. Maxime.
Thank you very much and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to see you all once again for this presentation of our financials for 2024. This is the opportunity to come back to some of our major achievements that we saw last year. 2024 once again confirms the sustainability of our sustainable development markets and also the relevance of our offering. I'll be explaining how our strategy applied in the service of our customers has enabled us to achieve some business successes. I'll also be coming back on the acquisition of Eco in Singapore.
This is a transaction that is fully in line with our development strategy, i.e., international growth, with a positioning that involves circular economy and hazardous waste management for our industrial clients. Thanks to our achievements and the bounce back in the second half, we are able to confirm our 2026 roadmap for financial performance and non-financial performance. As you know, we're a group in sustainable development. We're specialists in the most complex waste and the services of the highest added value. That means that we stand apart with a range of offers for safe circular economy activities for all businesses, including the most technical ones. In 2024, industrial clients accounted for 88% of our overall revenue versus 85% in 2023. Hazardous waste, 69% versus 66% the previous year. Our industrial and business development contributed to further confirming that position.
International development is a strong growth driver for our markets, as we explained. There is complementarity across our offering, which helps us support our international customers, and the acquisition of Eco strengthens our international position up from 26% to 32% of revenue. For the very first time, the group is now subject to requirements for environmental reporting known as CSRD. This new regulatory framework requires disclosure of green activities as understood in the taxonomy. The revenue of the group, seen as green, is now at 66%, more than 66%. This shows that we are well positioned on future businesses. In fact, thanks to recent studies by Morningstar, the alignment of European companies on the taxonomy is at 13% right now. 2024 has also helped to strengthen our position in low carbon activities.
For the second consecutive year, we are ahead of our target of minus 10% greenhouse gas emissions, which we set for 2025. Energy self-sufficiency as a target is also making progress thanks to our increase in energy production from waste, especially with the Tready Strasbourg plant being plugged into the local grid. That is the local urban heating grid. We're also supporting companies in their energy transition. Over the last years, the company has been working on biodiversity, water, and also in helping our customers avoid emissions thanks to our circular economy business. We've also been able to set targets for 2030 as part of the new sustainability framework. These targets have been recognized by independent third parties, and these commitments, as you know, are part of our group DNA and further contribute to the attractivity of our offering.
I'd like to come back on two major projects to illustrate how we are strengthening our position in supporting our customers in lowering their carbon emissions through the circular economy. In last September, we opened two new solvent distillation plants at Saint-Vulbas in France. This is Speichem Processing. Thanks to our five sites across France and Spain, Speichem is a European leader in purification of hazardous chemicals. Therefore, Saint-Vulbas is able to better support pharma and industrial sites. To remind you, the reuse of a solvent has lower carbon impact by 80% than using a new solvent. In November, we opened up a new energy plant in Montauban in France. It's called Mouve. It produces low carbon energy from local waste. This energy then becomes a local alternative to fossil fuels.
The site will be producing the equivalent of the energy consumption of 15,000 homes and will supply the urban heat network for the equivalent of 4,200 homes. Another business success has been the renewal of our Nantes public service contract. This involves renovating a site that was produced in 1987, including renovation and maintenance. After the work will be finished, capacity will be doubled up to 260,000 tons per annum. This is a waste treatment and recycling plant that will meet the needs of a local region, including Nantes as a city and seven other local authorities, i.e., 1.5 million inhabitants. This project is fully in line with the energy transition as it will be producing energy for 25,000 homes and cover 75% of the heating needs of the local heating network for the Loire region. It will also be able to produce cold during the summer.
This will double the performance of the previous unit. This unit is therefore positioned as an energy unit that is highly optimized. Now we have two international business success stories to share with you. In Chile, we were awarded an international contract for depollution of a seven-hectare site in Viña del Mar for the real estate company Las Salinas. This is a former hydrocarbon storage site, and its renovation will lead to the development of a significant property development. This is highly visible in the media due to it being present in the Viña del Mar tourist region. Thanks to this flagship project and working with the third-largest property developer in Chile, we are positioning ourselves as one of the depollution leaders. This shows our ability to export our skills even for the most complex projects.
We're also currently doing an 11-hectare depollution of a former refinery in the center of Frontignan. To remind you, we also depolluted the Olympic swimming pool site that had previously been occupied by a gas plant, and that was difficult because it was in a closed-quarters urban setting. We were able to reuse resources, including the earth, and reduce carbon emissions thanks to shipping out the non-reusable materials. Peru is the third-largest copper producer in the world, and we are experts in sustainable mining over there. We were awarded two contracts for mining stakeholders accounting for 25% of copper production in the country. These are EUR 65 million contracts over five years. We were also recently awarded a contract for a gold mine in the north of the country, which opens up new perspectives in that region.
Our value proposition to the mining sector is differentiating thanks to our strategy to reuse materials and to be able to manage waste on site. We also have a plan to reuse waste with local companies, and we have awareness-raising programs with local populations to promote sustainable mining. We are remaining active in our targeted external growth strategy, including abroad, and especially abroad. External growth rounds out our offering, opens us up geographically, and also strengthens our growth dynamic. 2024 was a year during which we were able to position ourselves as a leader in a high-growth region thanks to our acquisition of Eco. In July 2024, we acquired 100% of Eco's capital.
They are leaders of industrial waste in Singapore, with a market share at 32% and 440,000 tons of hazardous waste treated per year for a total capacity of 650,000 tons per year across 16 facilities, including 12 incinerators. This is also accretive with an EBITDA margin at nearly 40% and revenue at EUR 75 million in 2024. Our growth strategy requires saturating existing capacity. One of our major targets is to develop this platform in Singapore. We will be rolling out a new carbon incinerator, and we will also be getting into new businesses for this subsidiary. We have already identified synergies in services and the circular economy. We also wish to be able to address the broader market of Southeast Asia. To achieve this development goal, we have decided to work with a financial partner that will hold a minority stake in the long term.
CVC DIF is an infrastructure fund that we brought on board with us. This means that we can maintain operational control while integrating Eco, and they also bring regional expertise and international development expertise. The fund was brought in on the same value conditions as us. The beginning of 2024 was marked by delays in the service business in France and elsewhere, but the dynamism of the second financial half absorbed and offset most of those impacts. We are now broadly in line with our targets for business and for operating profit. Thanks to our dynamic markets and thanks to the commercial developments that I described, we achieved an excellent second half marked by strong organic growth, plus 3.5% versus the second half of 2023, including the impact of an energy drop, which cost us 2 percentage points of growth over the period.
This comes along strong improvements of operating profitability, 25% of revenue, including 0.5% effect of the drop in energy costs. Despite that, we're able to be in some of the highest ranges ever recorded by the group. The correct strategic orientation of our group and our margins is further visible in France, as Baptiste will explain in just a minute. We remain confident in 2025 and 2026 in our ability to maintain these positive trends in business and in operating margin. These are the same trends that we presented at the Investor Day at the end of 2023 in our roadmap for 2026 and that we can reconfirm today. I'd now like to give the floor to Baptiste. Merci.
Thank you. After that quick round the world, let's run through the numbers, indicators of economic and financial performance.
The group is posting contributed revenue in 2024 of EUR 1.1 billion, EUR 242.3 million in EBITDA, and the margin goes from 21% to 28%, and a growth in COI of 5%. Operating income pretty flat. Financial income, as was said, that is up on the back of the change in the debt level. Net income, group share, EUR 35.5 million. That's earnings per share, EUR 4.57 per share, enabling us to propose that the AGM maintains the dividend at EUR 1.20 on a recurring basis. The group poses a recurring operating cash flow and available cash flow that is strong because of good meeting of CAPEX and WCR requirements with a net financial debt, which is the strict result of the change in financial investment acquisitions and financial leverage under control 3.2 times at the end of 2024, which is broadly in line with the target of three.
Moving through the business, revenue, non-contributed revenue, EUR 80 million with a slight dip in concessive investment linked to the end of the work of the Mouve and TGAP tax just up. That's simply because of the changes in that TGAP scope. EUR 103 million made up of various items of FURIA that was consolidated in Q4 2023, consolidated full year, and so a scope effect on the first nine for EUR 49.7 million. Eco consolidated only in Q2 for EUR 37.2 million. I'd also add, and we'll see this in terms of earnings, but activity Eco's performance in Q2 is fully in line with what we indicated in our expectations. ESSAC an acquisition in Peru, EUR 3.4 million scope effect for the first nine, Rent a Drum in Namibia, EUR 8 million, small acquisition in South Korea chemical cleanup, EUR 4 million scope effect in France on H1, EUR 6 million.
Overall, when we analyze France versus international, as you can see, we have changes that are pretty different. The French segment, we note the solidity as well as the resilience of the French market and the industrial municipality market, contributive revenue up 1.9% in organic. Excellent H2 for the French segment because we posted an H1 at -3.4%, an unfavorable impact of energy prices, EUR 19.4 million that was offset full year with very positive commercial impacts throughout the year, positive price effects throughout the year, very good momentum H2 managing hazardous waste and the circular economy, an additional rider to the Strasbourg-Sénéval public service contract, which is a commercial uplift. International revenue, obviously the scope effect that I indicated, organic, we have a differentiated trend in Europe, +0.5%, which is also a good performance you recall in H1.
We suffered a negative impact in terms of activity primarily linked to Mecomare in Italy. Very good momentum in H2, essentially in Spain, Solar Carnivals, chemical decontamination and distillation of solvents. Southern Africa's down -12.4%, EUR 84 million. We had the presidential elections mid-2024 that hurt the business in 2024. Latin America down 3.7%, -20% H1. A true rebound in H2, which, as was indicated, the ramp-up of works, both of decontamination in the Chilean segment and total waste management in Peru. These major contracts contributed in H2 and will, of course, contribute across 2025. When we look at the picture by quarter, it's quite interesting. We see the difference across quarters, Q1, Q2 negative, and the rebound that we flagged on Q3 and strong growth in Q4.
In spite of a base that was substantial in Q4, we managed to deliver a significant performance, and we see the resilience displayed by the French segment top right with a Q4 coming in at +6.5%. International revenue, we see the recovery that occurred in Q4 with the ramp-up of the contracts that I indicated. Briefly, H2 is, of course, well on track, +5% in France between H2 2023 and H2 2024. Impact of energy, we told you about that, with a price effect of -EUR 19.4 million, which is quite interesting here in this small chart, is the volume effect that's positive, +EUR 6.3 million, be it on steam or electricity. That is structural insofar as these volume effects were consistent with our roadmap and represent a float of additional float of revenue of the circular economy.
When we look at the picture by division, the momentum changes between services, circular economy, and hazardous waste: 57%, 46% of scope with a significant scope effect, plus EUR 67.4 million with a delay or at least less spot on decontamination and FURIA, ECO, ESSAC, Rent a Drum and marginally SPPS. Circular economy, what's interesting is we have a positive contribution, EUR 357 million revenue, 32% of the business in spite of the energy impact, positive impact to be noted, good momentum of platforms, hazardous waste et al. in France, hazardous, EUR 247 million, 22% of revenue, that's the resilient portion with very positive commercial impact in 2024. Moving to EBITDA, several things to mention.
First of all, we had an increase of the operating income, EUR 220.9 million with a margin improvement, be it at constant scope or like-for-like, and in red, a contribution change in the margin that's significant in France from 23.3% to 24.6%. That is a pretty interesting performance. Internationally, to flag the good performance of ECO, including on the contributed revenue, EUR 613 million, 43% of EBITDA in the six months, 37.7, 16.1 million of EBITDA. It's H2, this will, of course, contribute to improving our margins as of 2024. Decrease of EBITDA international South Africa, Latin America linked in 2024 to business development that was down in 2024.
If we look at the price and volume impacts, we know volume impacts that are positive and price effects that are also positive, primarily linked to the good trend of volumes in France that absorb the operating costs, both payroll and subcontracting costs. Excluding energy prices, we have an EBITDA of the order of EUR 231 million. That is a sharp increase in EBITDA excluding revenue. The price energy is minus 10.5 different from revenue because we are paying fewer taxes on the inframarginal rent, EUR 21.5 million, that is the scope effect that I indicated on EBITDA. Several points, firstly a contribution that is positive of Eco in the 11.6, 31.6% operating margin. This overall improves the international segment.
New scope as compared to what we presented June 30th in France, a significant development, which is an increase of the appropriation to provisions of EUR 10.1 million, a risk of non-recovery of major overhaul costs. The public contract of Strasbourg-Sénéval, given the cost, the very age nature of this incinerator, we have additional costs at the end of the contract that is 2030 that are borne by the operator. They've been provisioned because of this risk of non-recovery. Moving down the P&L, we have an impact between EBITDA and operating income, primarily business combinations.
Those acquisition costs of the order of EUR 7.8 million, essentially with the Eco financial income impacted by the rising gross debt, cost of debt, gross debt that is stable, EUR 352 million versus EUR 349 million, an increase of EUR 10.8 million of the financial expense linked to a rise, other financial expenses and costs, that's of bridge loans for their commissions, corporate tax, EUR 18.3 million versus EUR 17.8 million, an increase in the effective tax rate for 32.2% to 25.8%. We can return to that if you have any questions. Good control of industrial investments, EUR 93.8 million in CapEx book, EUR 79.4 million disbursed. We're investing across our businesses and the recurring CapEx accounts, 6.7% of revenue, broadly stable versus 2023. This brings us to good control of cash flow with overall given the change in EBITDA.
We have a favorable change in recurring operating cash flow, EUR 206.4 million, WCR change low, EUR 5.4 million, essentially linked to the scope change and primarily to Eco. Interest paid, we mentioned that change with the debt, so available operating cash flow, 111.5%, that's 46% cash conversion rate and available operating cash flow, EBITDA ratio remaining high in 2024. Good financial agility, debt EUR 849.7 million, acquisitions for EUR 232.5 million. We remain with strong liquidity, EUR 356.7 million and a leverage that is under control, 3.2 times EBITDA. Debt maturity, the result of the temporary loan, the bridge to bond, current debt less than one year and debt maturity that is spread over time and long debt duration, targets for 2025, 2026.
Obviously, we maintain strict financial discipline with a focus that continues to be on cash flow generation, posting, as I indicated, a change in cash flow generation that is ever stronger, cash conversion to the tune of 46% for 2025. We're expecting CAPEX containment of EUR 110 million, including CAPEX mentioned by Maxime on ECO and, of course, WCR containment management focus, strong on WCR in 2025 to maintain good free operating cash flow return to financial leverage, overall below three times EBITDA. We should reach that target by June 30, 2025. You'll recall the first half of 2024 was broadly weak. We saw that in the quarterly changes. It should be stronger as of 2025. Turning now to working assumptions to give you the 2025 in terms of objectives. We expect resilience on strong markets, commercial impacts that will remain positive.
On the international front, we're expecting Europe to continue to be solid in line with what we saw in H2 2024. In Asia, an impact of the ECO integration for the first six months, which will lead to an improvement both in the business, all other things being equal, and the operating profit margin. In Latin America, we're expecting a ramp-up as we saw in Q4 of the major contracts previously mentioned, and in Southern Africa, we're expecting sooner or later a market rebound in South Africa. At least on our side, our South African management is reducing the cost base to leverage the rebound when the economic situation improves. Operating profitability, continued positive trends of H2 2023 with increased profitability of activities recently acquired. STI essentially continued improvement in savings and operating efficiency and international full year accretive effect of ECO consolidation, increased contribution for Southern Africa and LatAm.
Financial structure, as I mentioned, CapEx under control and financial leverage less than three times as of June 30, which will continue throughout 2025. This brings us in terms of the numbers to revenue in 2024 for the order of EUR 1 billion 180 million, expected growth of revenue plus 6%. 6% includes the additional six months of Eco in H1-2025, and then we continue on the trend plus 5% with a normalization of economic cushion in 2026 with revenue of the order of EUR 1 billion 240 million. In 2025, we're expecting EUR 266 million-EUR 275 million with an additional margin point. This improved margin EBITDA is set to continue in 2026 in line with the trajectory indicated at the investor day. Operating income between EUR 130 million-EUR 140 million, up two points in terms of operating margin in 2025 and additional two points in 2026.
That's broadly the roadmap that we wanted to set out to you that confirmed the trends set out at the investor day adjusted to June 30 with the acquisition of ECO. We're available now to answer your questions. Priorité à la salle.
We'll take questions from the room first. DBHF, so we're seeing that the margin is slightly diluted, sorry, like for like 21% versus 9% versus 21.8% published despite the very positive contribution of ECO, even if it's only for half a year. Is the scope holding back the margin? Could we get more detailed information? We would have probably expected the opposite effect, a more accretive effect on scope. And I'd like to come back to that EUR 10 million provision. I didn't fully understand the logic behind it and the risk factoring that you have included. Generally, there will be costs in the P&L.
Can you come back to the reasons and the logic behind it and why you're talking about risk factors? Finally, on the minority stakes, I expected more of those because of the financial partner that's entered ECO's capital. You're saying that it's actually stable, and what about 2025? Thank you very much. Okay, more detailed information on operating margin changes. Indeed, there has been an improvement between the first half and the second half. This is due to ECO, and this is what improves the like-for-like measurements. However, what we saw in the scope effects in the first half is including FURIA's effects on costs as we were kind of setting up the structure with the Italian holding company, including integration costs for FURIA.
All of that is still being booked in 2024, so that led to a dilutive effect on margins that we have for FURIA with ROC at EUR 3.5 million out of revenue, EUR 49.7 million. That has been weighing down on the margin. There are some small little other effects related to other acquisitions, but the major effect is, as I just explained, there are structuring costs that we had already seen in the first half. On your second question related to risk and provisions, that is EUR 10.2 million that you will see in the ROC. Generally, when it comes to these public service contracts, there is going to be some kind of maintenance and renewal plan known as a GER in France that will be applicable throughout the contract.
Now, as more time goes by, the more changes we see on the likelihood of disbursement of those extra fees in that, or rather the chance of getting that money back goes down. We ended up with a GER plan in 2024. It runs up until 2030. We've seen a management change, a GER otherwise known as an overhaul plan, and the likelihood of recovering money from the overhaul plan, so the likelihood of getting that money back that we invested goes down. It's important to note that that plan is part of a regulatory framework and is part of the maintenance that we need to do up until the end of the service contract. Throughout the process, there are regularly amendments that are brought and implemented.
It is not a cost; it is indeed a provision, that EUR 10.2 million, because the discussions will continue to go forward as we decide what is done by the local authorities and what is done by us. On your final question related to minority stakes, we are going to keep a very close eye on this in 2025. It is important to note that in 2024, we had a whole period between July and the end of November. During this period, in the holding company, we had debt costs that were being handled. Sorry, let me restate that. We had debt that was equal to the entirety of the purchase amount, so there was a negative effect on the Singapore holding company. The minority stakeholder came into the Singapore holding company at the end of that period.
There were kind of two effects on the debt situation, and then we had the positive impact of the group share that came in in the second half of 2024. Nikola, your four questions, please. Help us understand that provision from an accounting perspective. Is this due to investments that you've already made and/or that are still to be made? Seeing as there's still five years ahead of us, should we expect that provision to be drawn down or to be disbursed over the next five years, maybe EUR 2 million per annum? What should that mean for CapEx? On STUI, I know that you were trying to clean up your contracts. Do you still have nonprofitable contracts? How much progress have you made on that, and how much progress have you made on the profitability of that subsidiary?
I'd also like to hear from you on predictions for revenue in 2025. Without ECO, we're talking organic growth of about 2.5%. That seems relatively conservative based on what you've announced today. Is it realistic, or are you seeing slowdown in France, or maybe is it West Africa that is starting to weigh you down? On ESG and environment for methane emissions, do you still have plans to reuse that methane? Is it biomethane? Is it still electricity? I can't really remember if you could just kind of re-explain that. Okay, on the work behind that provision, that work has already been done, therefore has already been financed by Séché as the contract holder. As to whether that provision will be disbursed until the final date, no. What may happen is some kind of change with the Strasbourg local authority.
If we're able to, for example, demonstrate that those costs should have been borne by them and not by us. On STUI, this is something that's very important, and it's important because it weighed down performance, financial performance in 2024. We saw very clear improvements in the final quarter of the year, and those improvements were seen in better performance and, to reuse your words, in our cleaning of contracts, kind of pruning of contracts. All of this contributes to the improvements in operational performance that we're expecting in 2025, without forgetting that early 2025 clearly shows already a significant improvement in that same operating performance on that segment. You were entirely correct in that. On the third question, right now, we're not seeing any shifts in trends, so we're still riding the wave of positive commercial effects and benefiting from the resilience of the French market.
However, it's early March right now, and I think it's fair to say that the world is not simple and predictable right now. As Séché always does, we're starting the year with predictions that you may judge conservative; we judge them as achievable, but we are announcing organic growth of 2.5%. That would lead to a full 6% if you include Eco, and we are confident that we will be able to achieve that performance. We have no forward visibility on the overall business situation, be it South Africa or Latin America. Right now, there's been no significant recovery in the South African countries, and all of that leads us to be conservative for this beginning of the year. On your question of biomethane, we are continuing to use biomethane. Given changes and costs, we're able to sell biomethane to the grid.
We're able to work with Wager, as they're known, and also in places where we've had legacy electricity production, we're able to produce electricity with that. Alors, j'ai quelques questions.
So I have a few questions that have been sent in by people who are on the call. Bradley Bull of M&G, so questions in English. I'll put it in French. I think our friends from translation, could you tell us the amount of dividend to the minority stake in ECO? Second question, are you expecting an increase in EBITDA organic in 2025 and beyond, excluding ECO? On the first point, today, there's no commitment to pay a dividend to the minority partners, so our financial policy is pretty clear. It's in the hands of the ECO board of directors, over which we have control with three members, as against CVC DIF.
It's in the interest of both partners to receive a dividend. I mean, there's no automatic formula that applies. The priority for the two shareholders is to invest in ECO, to grow ECO, and thereby reuse the cash flow as far as possible to invest in growth projects. There are a few that were mentioned, but we have a great many development and investment opportunities across the globe. Is that these be profitable investments? We mentioned the significant margins on ECO. We look at the investments. We look at the initial development plans. Those plans maintain or indeed increase the margins that we ended. The priority is, of course, to reinvest in those projects rather than to pay out dividend. Are we going to increase EBITDA in organic?
Obviously, our action plans, be it operational efficiency, cost reduction, positive price effects, positive commercial effects presented at the investor day. We want to improve EBITDA margins in organic. That's the goal. The group continues to grow on its historical scale. That should necessarily lead to an increase in organic EBITDA. We have two questions from CIC Market Solution. Could we have an indication on expected energy price changes in 2025, the rising gas prices Q4? Will that be a capital allocation priority for 2025, 2026? Is it just a reduced? Or is the scope for targeted acquisitions? On your first question, we've injected stability in our guidance assumptions. I mean, stable energy prices that are expected. Much the better if there's a rise because we sell more energy than we buy. We based our forecasts on stable energy prices.
Next, on utilization of capital today, the group's financial policy is managed with a very clear goal, which is financial leverage. Financial leverage goal is clear that it's below three. There are two ways of improving the financial leverage: generate cash so as to reduce the debt that was flagged and improving EBITDA. That should lead to financial leverage below three in 2025. No further questions from the webcast. Back to the room.
I'm from BBBA in the bank. We have seen a slight uptick in financial leverage. Is that likely to prevent you from further acquisitions going forward? Are you expecting acquisitions in other countries? What's your outlook on Latin America? Thank you.
What we have for you is a kind of snapshot of our financial leverage at 3.2, but that is at the very end, the final day of 2024.
Remember that in 2024, in July 2024, we undertook a significant acquisition, Eco, for EUR 430 million. Given the importance in our minds of solid credit and financial flexibility, we decided to bring in a financial partner that matched our valuation and that came in to reduce our leverage ratio. We were able to reduce by EUR 216 million the debt related to that acquisition. That is an important takeaway. To get down to 3.2, we had to make trade-offs. As we explained, Eco is an acquisition that we would have preferred to be alone on, but there was strategic relevance in bringing in a minority stakeholder because, first of all, it is our first project in Southeast Asia, and having a local partner working with us would be useful. It also means that we can keep our balance sheet very solid by bringing in this partner.
This enables us to be in line with our trajectory. We want to be back under 3 in the 12 months after the acquisition. We were at 3.2 at the end of the year. We will be under 3% by June 2025, and we're maintaining our strict management of our financial policy and keeping our gearing under 3. We might be above for a short time after a significant acquisition, but then that's followed up by plans to bring us back under 3% in the 12 months after that acquisition. That hasn't shifted, and that does not in any way affect the group's ability to do things. We are very strict from a credit perspective and from a financial perspective on our management of our balance sheet. To be very clear, right now, there are opportunities to grow. We have the ability to invest, significant capacity to invest.
We're focusing on our markets. 2025 is not going to be all about breaking ground in new markets. We're going to focus on our core markets because there's a lot of investment potential already. We have Chile, we have Peru, and there are opportunities as part of those environments as there are in France, in Europe, and in Singapore. No further questions? There's one there. What are you basing your hypotheses on for growth in 2025, international versus abroad? I imagine France is going to remain positive. You have -5% negative growth internationally. What figures are you working with in 2025? And also on margins, we're seeing a strong drop-off in international margins. What does that mean for 2025? Final question. You have restated a good outlook for 2025 and have reconfirmed your roadmap into 2026.
However, we can see that you've slightly adjusted your expectations, minus 5% for the EBITDA range in 2026. What led to that decision? We're expecting positive growth in 2025 in France and abroad. We've been conservative, absolutely, but we're not expecting negative growth to continue outside of France in either case. We've been cautious. On international margins, once again, this is something that should be understood on a case-by-case basis because changes are different depending on what you look at. We saw a one-off effect in the first half of 2024 in Europe, but we're expecting it to return to normative levels. We're not expecting any drop-off in Italy, so things should stabilize. Things are back in line with the second half. We haven't made any predictions for South African countries because we don't really know when it will be stabilized, when it'll bounce back, if it'll bounce back.
We're confident in the medium term in that region, though. For Eco, as we've communicated, we are clearly expecting an improvement in volume and a slight increase in margins. This will be due to the implementation and the ramp-up of the carbon incinerator. For Latin America, all we did was factored in the total waste management contract in Peru and the depollution contract in Chile. We're assuming those contracts will be followed through on. Targets for 2026 now. We have slightly adjusted some figures. The trends remain the same. We're expecting plus 5%. That's very important to remember. Remember that we have taken the real 2024 figures into account because we wouldn't want anyone to think that any aggregates will catch up that dip by 2026. Our trends are the same, but we've readjusted for 2024.
Do we have any further questions, please? Okay, time for coffee.
Do not forget to ask your questions. We are here to answer them. Thank you.